bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Everlasting Empire
Authors: Pines Yuri
Published: November 2017

Established in 221 BCE, the Chinese empire lasted for 2,132 years before being replaced by the Republic of China in 1912. During its two millennia, the empire endured internal wars, foreign incursions, alien occupations, and devastating rebellions—yet fundamental institutional, sociopolitical, and cultural features of the empire remained intact. This book traces the roots of the Chinese empire's exceptional longevity and unparalleled political durability, and shows how lessons from the imperial past are relevant for China today. The book demonstrates that the empire survived and adjusted to a variety of domestic and external challenges through a peculiar combination of rigid ideological premises and their flexible implementation. The empire's major political actors and neighbors shared its fundamental ideological principles, such as unity under a single monarch—hence, even the empire's strongest domestic and foreign foes adopted the system of imperial rule. Yet details of this rule were constantly negotiated and adjusted. The book shows how deep tensions between political actors including the emperor, the literati, local elites, and rebellious commoners actually enabled the empire's basic institutional framework to remain critically vital and adaptable to ever-changing sociopolitical circumstances. As contemporary China moves toward a new period of prosperity and power in the twenty-first century, this book argues that the legacy of the empire may become an increasingly important force in shaping the nation's future trajectory.
The Monarch
Authors: Pines Yuri
Published: November 2017

This chapter describes the Chinese emperorship, which was a curious construction that combined the principle of the monarch's limitless power with multifarious attempts to prevent this power from damaging the sociopolitical fabric. This coexistence of two conflicting impulses was maintained through a subtle and yet discernible bifurcation between the monarchy as an institution and the monarch as an individual. Institutionally speaking, the emperor was omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent—in other words, all but divine. Personally, however, it was tacitly recognized that his abilities might be limited and his morality flawed, and that his individual input in political processes should therefore remain circumscribed. Nonetheless, amid continuous tension, the Chinese variant of “checks and balances” proved to be viable enough to survive for more than two millennia, occasional malfunctions notwithstanding.
Weimar Sociology
Authors: Kettler David , Loader Colin
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the status of the fledgling but burgeoning field of sociology from the waning days of the Kaiserreich through the last moments of the Republic. Two intellectual giants who did not live very long into the Republic's founding, Max Weber and Georg Simmel, set the agenda for the study of society in Weimar. The chapter suggests that it was the early demise of Weber and Simmel that permitted their heirs, most prominently Karl Mannheim, to render their writings canonical and to pursue the questions of modernity, rationalization, capitalism and the relationship of ideas and ideology to those phenomena with something like a common language—if not a language that facilitated intellectual consensus on any of these themes.
Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, and Weimar Criticism
Authors: Jennings Michael W.
Published: November 2017

This chapter offers a careful exposition of themes and debates in Weimar Kulturkritik, or cultural criticism, focusing on its two greatest exemplars, Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer. At first tentatively, and then beginning in 1926 with a new focus and resolve, Benjamin and Kracauer set out to reinvent German cultural criticism as a form. Their writings do not simply mirror the new set of preoccupations and circumstances that characterize cultural criticism in the Weimar Republic: no other writers were so instrumental in setting its agenda and defining its formal means and strategies. Kracauer and Benjamin virtually invented the criticism of popular culture. In books and essays such as One Way Street and “Surrealism” (Benjamin) and “The Mass Ornament” and “Photography” (Kracauer), the two writers reinvent cultural analysis as a specific form of the critique of the new urban metropolis. And in doing so, they formulate what is arguably the most compelling theory of modernity ever to arise from cultural criticism.
Aesthetic Fundamentalism in Weimar Poetry
Authors: Ruehl Martin A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter takes a historical journey into the George-Kreis or George Circle, the mysterious coterie of followers that surrounded the poet and political visionary Stefan George. His many acolytes included Karl Wolfskehl, Ernst Bertram, and the historian Ernst Kantorowicz. The Circle saw itself not just as a counter-cultural, but also as a “counter-intellectual” movement, in radical opposition to the “official” Zeitgeist of Wilhelmine Germany. Even before the First World War, members of the Circle had voiced their critical distance to contemporary academic scholarship, their different educational ideals, and their hope for comprehensive spiritual renewal. It was only in the Weimar period, however, when George became an iconic figure and his disciples played a more prominent role in public debates, that the ideas and ideals of the Circle came to have a palpable effect in German intellectual life.
Eastern Wisdom in an Era of Western Despair
Authors: Marchand Suzanne
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines a little-known aspect of Weimar intellectual life: the deep and serious interest many took in what was usually referred to as “eastern wisdom.” It focuses on the relatively obscure alternative institution which called itself the Schule der Weisheit, founded in 1920 in Darmstadt. The brainchild of the eccentric Baltic aristocrat Hermann Graf Keyserling, the Schule der Weisheit lends itself to easy parody; it was, by the account of one visitor, a “super-Chatauqua,” attended by poet-scholars with Whitmanesque hair and Byronic open shirts, bluestocking yoga fanatics and a not inconsiderable number of astrologers. And yet, the Schule's meditation lessons and lecture series also drew in scores of important intellectuals from across central and eastern Europe, and was crucial in popularizing scholarly findings and translations of non-western “classics” produced before and during the Great War.
The Weimar Left
Authors: Jay Martin
Published: November 2017

This chapter challenges long-perpetuated and exaggerated narratives concerning the mistakes and missed opportunities of the German Left during the Republic: neither the brutal repression of radical socialists at the Republic's birth nor recurrent fissures between the Social Democrats and Communists throughout its history guaranteed either the collapse of the Republic or a diminishing influence of the Social Democrats (SPD) within it. Ultimately, however uninevitable were the disastrous outcomes that befell the Republic and especially members of the Left. The chapter argues that a fresh engagement with Weimar political history might serve as lessons for future socialist movements within liberal and social democracies.
Putting Natural Law Principles into Practice
Authors: Neier Aryeh
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses how a number of efforts were made to promote human rights internationally over a period of almost two centuries, from the start of the antislavery movement in Britain. However, it is possible to cite ancient roots for the principles of human rights. Hammurabi's Code, the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle must be considered among the sources for the concept of justice. The roots of thinking about rights can also be traced to non-Western sources, such as Mencius and Asoka. In the more than three centuries that followed the struggle for rights in England by John Milton, the Levellers, and other dissenters, there were episodic attempts to secure rights relevant to such grave issues as slavery, religious persecution, the subordination of women, forced labor, racial segregation, and the suppression of dissent.
International Human Rights Law
Authors: Neier Aryeh
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the two sources of international law: custom and treaties. Customary international law is the term used to describe rules that are so widely accepted and so deeply held that they help to define what it means to belong to a civilized society. The question of whether customary international law is binding on the United States came before the U.S. Supreme Court as long ago as 1900 in a case called Paquete Habana. Whereas treaty law often covers the same ground as customary international law. Torture is forbidden by customary international law, for example, and prohibitions against torture are also set forth in several multilateral treaties. The effect is to reinforce recognition that a particular norm set forth in a treaty has the status of customary law.
International Humanitarian Law
Authors: Neier Aryeh
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores how international humanitarian law and international human rights law initially developed independently, but have converged and are now deeply interwoven. Since ancient times, some who take part in armed combat have recognized that placing certain limits on the way in which they conduct hostilities can be advantageous. It can be a sign of civilized behavior, enhancing their own prestige; it may be a way to encourage their opponents to behave in a similar manner; and it may contribute to the reestablishment of peaceful relations in which the rule of law prevails. Whether or not these limits confer advantages, they do most often have the effect of asserting a commitment to humane principles.
Human Rights Watch
Authors: Neier Aryeh
Published: November 2017

This chapter talks about how, despite the Human Rights Watch becoming one of the two most important institutions for the protection of human rights worldwide, its beginnings in the late 1970s did not seem to foreshadow its subsequent development. The organization is an outgrowth of the efforts of a handful of people to address one particular human rights problem of the era. They did not plan in advance its expansion to address a full range of issues worldwide. Nor did they begin with the intent to adopt the modus operandi that soon came to define the organization's character. Those developments were, to a large extent, accidents of history.
The Worldwide Movement
Authors: Neier Aryeh
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores thousands of other organizations, aside from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, that are also active in the human rights movement. Many of them make distinctive contributions by focusing on abuses of rights in a particular country or locality; by addressing violations of rights suffered by discrete segments of the population such as gays and lesbians, indigenous peoples, women, members of racial, religious or ethnic minorities, or persons suffering from mental or physical disabilities; by dealing with a particular form of abuse, such as torture or the denial of freedom of expression; by using a particular method to promote human rights, such as litigation or the rehabilitation of torture victims; or by enlisting members of a certain profession, such as lawyers, physicians or journalists, in the struggle for human rights.
Accountability
Authors: Neier Aryeh
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses that a major goal of the international human rights movement has been to secure accountability for especially grave abuses. This focus has led to the so-called “truth commissions” in many countries, principally in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, but also in several countries of Asia and in Morocco; prosecutions of literally scores of former heads of state before national courts in various parts of the world; increased use of the principle of universal jurisdiction in prosecutions, mainly in Europe, against those accused of gross abuses committed in other countries; and, what is likely to be the most lasting and significant means of securing accountability, the establishment of several international criminal tribunals to prosecute and punish those accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.
Rights after 9/11
Authors: Neier Aryeh
Published: November 2017

This chapter demonstrates how, in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, some of those active in efforts to promote human rights feared that the era in which their cause held a prominent place on the world stage could be over. That era began about a quarter of a century earlier as an outgrowth of the Cold War, and it had a part in bringing the Cold War to an end. Dictatorships of the Right and the Left had fallen—with help from those denouncing their abuses of human rights—yet those who hoped that there would be a substantial decline in gross abuses worldwide had been disappointed.
Going Forward
Authors: Neier Aryeh
Published: November 2017

This chapter explains that the most widely used method for promoting human rights—collecting and disseminating detailed and reliable information on rights abuses and assessing the findings against the requirements of international law—is not difficult to master. The main requirements are a commitment to fairness and accuracy, care in taking and crosschecking testimony from those with first-hand knowledge, and a grasp of the principal provisions of international law protecting rights. Ensuring that the information gets to the places where it can have an impact in a timely fashion is easier than ever in an era in which information technology has advanced with such astonishing rapidity.
Port
Authors: Simpson James
Published: November 2017

This chapter begins by looking at the development of port wine for the British market, and the geographical separation between grape production in the Douro valley and the maturing and exporting houses in Porto. It then discusses the development of different types of port wine and how the sector responded to the challenges of the second half of the nineteenth century, namely, the problems of maintaining supplies and product quality during the phylloxera epidemic, and the opportunities and difficulties faced by producers in creating a mass market for cheap ports. Finally, the chapter considers the conflicts between the British exporters and Portuguese growers over regulation and regional appellations from the eighteenth century.
Australia: The Tyranny of Distance and Domestic Beer Drinkers
Authors: Simpson James
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how Australians learned to grow grapes and make wine, and the advances in wine-making technologies linked to dry table wine production. The Australian wine industry dates from the end of the eighteenth century, but as in California and Argentina, it was only in the two or three decades prior to the First World War that it became commercially important. The chapter then considers the problems of vertical coordination, or “cooperation” as contemporaries called it, between grape growing and wine making. Finally, the chapter shows that the Australian commodity chain differed from California in that it was market driven from Britain and explains why attempts to create an alternative Australian distribution network failed.
Additive Functionals of Symmetric Markov Processes
Authors: Chen Zhen-Qing , Fukushima Masatoshi
Published: November 2017

This chapter is devoted to the study of additive functionals of symmetric Markov processes under the same setting as in the preceding chapter, namely, that E is a locally compact separable metric space, B(E) is the family of all Borel sets of E, and m is a positive Radon measure on E with supp[m] = E, and this chapter considers an m-symmetric Hunt process X = (Ω‎,M,Xₜ,ζ‎,Pₓ) on (E,B(E)) whose Dirichlet form (E,F) on L²(E; m) is regular on L²(E; m). The transition function and the resolvent of X are denoted by {Pₜ; t ≥ 0}, {R
α‎, α‎ > 0}, respectively. B*(E) will denote the family of all universally measurable subsets of E. Any numerical function f defined on E will be always extended to E
∂ by setting f(∂) = 0.
Time Changes of Symmetric Markov Processes
Authors: Chen Zhen-Qing , Fukushima Masatoshi
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the time change. It first relates the perturbation of the Dirichlet form to a Feynman-Kac transform of X and deals with characterization of the Dirichlet form (Ĕ,̆‎F) of a time-changed process. The chapter next introduces the concept of the energy functional of a general symmetric transient right process, as well Feller measures on F relative to the part process X⁰ of X on the quasi open set E₀ = E∖F. It derives the Beurling-Deny decomposition of the extended Dirichlet space (̆Fₑ,Ĕ) living on F in terms of the due restriction of E to F with additional contributions by Feller measures. Finally, Feller measures are described probabilistically as the joint distributions of starting and end points of the excursions of the process X away from the set F using an associated exit system. Examples related to Brownian motions and reflecting Brownian motions are also provided.
Augustan American Literature: An Aesthetics of Extravagance
Authors: Giles Paul
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the Augustan tradition in American literature, arguing that it should not be seen as confined to the world of belles lettres. It suggests that Augustan American literature involves the creative entanglement of potentially contradictory narratives, and the peculiar power of its art derives from its sense of being deliberately out of place, of transgressing the boundaries of civil convention in the interests of exploration and extravagance. The chapter explores the relationship between plantations and the aesthetics of extravagance by offering a critique of Cotton Mather's Magnalia Christi Americana, which describes an increasing sense toward the end of the seventeenth century of the importance of geography, of the position of New England in relation to the rest of the world. It also analyzes the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, Timothy Dwight, and Richard Alsop.
Medieval American Literature: Antebellum Narratives and the “Map of the Infinite”
Authors: Giles Paul
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how the notion of medieval American literature not only makes a paradoxical kind of sense but might be seen as integral to the construction of the subject more generally. It argues that antebellum narratives situate native soil on a highly charged and fraught boundary between past and present, circumference and displacement. In itself, the idea of medieval American literature is hardly more peculiar than F. O. Matthiessen's conception of an “American Renaissance.” Matthiessen sought to justify his subject by aligning nineteenth-century American writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne with seventeenth-century English forerunners such as William Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. The chapter considers resonances of medievalism within nineteenth-century American culture and how many antebellum writers consciously foreground within their texts the shifting, permeable boundaries of time and space, suggesting how fiction and cartography, the writing of history and the writing of geography, are commensurate with each other.
Metaregionalism: The Global Pacific Northwest
Authors: Giles Paul
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the metaregional dimensions of the Pacific Northwest and the ways in which its very inscription as a region elucidates the fraught and contested relation between text and place in American literature. Elettra Bedon coined the term “metaregionalism” to describe a self-conscious manipulation of certain forms of dialect. On analogy with metafiction, metaregionalism might be said to foreground the assumptions involved in traditional ascriptions of place. The chapter first considers the epistemology of space before discussing how the Pacific Northwest was tackled in the writings of Gary Snyder, Ursula Le Guin, and Richard Brautigan. It also analyzes the fiction of William Gibson and Douglas Coupland; Gibson deploys Vancouver to achieve critical distance from the behemoths of U.S. capitalism, and Coupland brings his native Pacific Northwest into the wider oceanic orbit of Asia and Australasia in order to chart a generational passage away from domestic security and entitlement.
American Literature and the Question of Circumference
Authors: Giles Paul
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter argues that global remapping of American literature involves drawing attention to the contingent and historically variable nature of narratives about the relation of America to the rest of the world. It contends that to reconceive American literary studies in global terms is not to reject the significance of spatial location or corporeal embodiment but to make place contingent. It also challenges the idea that a commitment to liberal democracy should be a prerequisite of American studies scholarship. Rather than associating globalization merely with a triumph of flattened market forces and a wholesale rejection of aesthetic values, the chapter suggests that it would be more valuable to consider ways in which social forces of all kinds can represent illuminating lacunae within literary texts, of the kind that have always been accessible to careful critical scrutiny.
A Way of Happening
Authors: Wasley Aidan
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that Auden's extensive and largely unexplored impact on the post-war generation of American poets helped not only to define the terms by which these younger poets framed their own work and careers, but also offered a new and influential model for understanding what it meant to write poetry in America after World War II and after Modernism. In particular, Auden's redefinition of his own poetic identity following his emigration from England helped to shape American poetry in terms of what Auden called “the burden of choice”: How to select an inheritance from the myriad possibilities opened up in the wake of Modernism's shattering of notions of a unified native tradition. By framing his post-1939 poetry as “a way of happening,” Auden inaugurated a poetic vision of post-Modernist America as an open, inclusive text defined not in terms of shared ideals of national, ideological, or historical inheritance, but by the freedom, and necessity, to choose among the kaleidoscopic range of formal, cultural, or transnational poetic identities made available by the collapse of those earlier ideals.
Environmental Data
Authors: Peterson A. Townsend , Soberón Jorge , Pearson Richard G. , Anderson Robert P. , Martínez-Meyer Enrique , Nakamura Miguel , Araújo Miguel Bastos
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the conceptual and applied aspects of environmental data in the context of building and interpreting ecological niche models. It first examines how different suites of environmental factors may affect species distributions across a range of spatial scales before discussing which and how many variables are needed for ecological niche modeling. It then reviews the diverse sources of environmental datasets that are of potential utility in ecological niche modeling and concludes by considering a number of challenges involved in designing and choosing environmental data for ecological niche modeling. These challenges include data preparation, data quality, spatial extent, resolution in space and time, types of environmental data, and ancillary data.
Modeling Ecological Niches
Authors: Peterson A. Townsend , Soberón Jorge , Pearson Richard G. , Anderson Robert P. , Martínez-Meyer Enrique , Nakamura Miguel , Araújo Miguel Bastos
Published: November 2017

This chapter explains how environmental data can be used to create models that characterize species’ ecological niches in environmental space. It introduces a model, which is a function constructed by means of data analysis for the purpose of approximating the true relationship (that is, the niche) in the form of the function f linking the environment and species occurrences. The chapter first considers the “meaning” of the function f that is being estimated by the algorithms before discussing the modeling algorithms, the approaches used to implement ecological niche modeling, model calibration, model complexity and overfitting, and model extrapolation and transferability. The chapter concludes with an overview of differences among methods and selection of “best” models, along with strategies for characterizing ecological niches in ways that allow visualization, comparisons, definition of quantitative measures, snf more.
Conservation Planning and Climate Change Effects
Authors: Peterson A. Townsend , Soberón Jorge , Pearson Richard G. , Anderson Robert P. , Martínez-Meyer Enrique , Nakamura Miguel , Araújo Miguel Bastos
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the use of niche models to help address the “what” and “where” questions in conservation biology as well as climate change effects. It first reviews the conceptual aspects of the “what” and “where” questions in conservation planning, focusing on topics such as inferences about extinction risk, identification of regions for species reintroductions, conservation reserve network planning, and considerations of how climate change may affect species distributions. Each of these conservation applications is then examined with respect to the conceptual framework laid out for ecological niche modeling. The chapter concludes by offering practical recommendations regarding calibration and evaluation of niche models.
Linking Niches with Evolutionary Processes
Authors: Peterson A. Townsend , Soberón Jorge , Pearson Richard G. , Anderson Robert P. , Martínez-Meyer Enrique , Nakamura Miguel , Araújo Miguel Bastos
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how the process of ecological niche evolution and diversification helps us better understand ecology, biogeography, and biodiversity. It first considers how species respond to changes in the environmental substrate on which the niches are manifested before discussing the concept of niche conservatism as well as tests of conservatism in areas such as species invasions and comparison of the ecological niche requirements of sister–species pairs. It then explores how temporal change in niche dimensions occurs, how it can be studied, and what can be learned. It also describes some of the challenges associated with applications of ecological niche modeling in the realm of evolution and concludes by outlining future directions for research.
Conclusions
Authors: Peterson A. Townsend , Soberón Jorge , Pearson Richard G. , Anderson Robert P. , Martínez-Meyer Enrique , Nakamura Miguel , Araújo Miguel Bastos
Published: November 2017

This book has described a comprehensive framework for thinking about the geography and ecology of species distributions, arguing that such a framework is critical to further progress in the field of ecological niches and distributions. To develop this framework, traditional concepts in ecology have been radically reworked. In this conclusion, some of the challenges for future work regarding ecological niche modeling are discussed, such as fully integrating the BAM diagram with central concepts of population biology and statistical theory; clarifying the notion of niche conservatism versus niche evolution as regards scenopoetic versus bionomic environmental dimensions; and improving the link between correlational and mechanistic approaches to estimating and understanding ecological niches. The book argues that careful conceptual thinking must be combined with detailed empirical exploration in order to address each of these challenges.
My Language Is My Homeland
Authors: Ginsburgh Victor , Weber Shlomo
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the importance that people attach to their native language and culture. It argues that the preservation of linguistic diversity and respect for the cultural heritage of members of a society is an important and much-needed task. However, in making policy and operational decisions, one has to recognize two caveats in protecting an excessive degree of diversity. The first is that sustaining a high degree of societal diversity could require allocating substantial resources to creating educational institutions and developing communication and coordination between groups. The second is that there is an upper bound to the degree of heterogeneity that still guarantees proper and sustainable functioning.
Moment and Least-Squares Based Approaches to Meta-analytic Inference
Authors: Rosenberg Michael S.
Published: November 2017

Chapter 8 introduced variance and structural models and various statistical inference approaches used in meta-analysis. This chapter describes the basic details behind the moment and least-squares approach to meta-analysis. This approach represents “classic” meta-analysis; it is the one most frequently found in meta-analytic introductions and used in ecological meta-analyses to date. This approach to meta-analytic inference has the advantage of using fairly simple formulas (for basic structural models) that can be easily calculated, and it is clearly and directly comparable to common statistical concepts, such as weighted means and sums of squares. The disadvantages of this approach is that it is less amenable to more complex modeling, particularly when considering features such as interaction effects; it also has certain limitations that in some cases reduce the applicability of random-effects models.
Software for Statistical Meta-analysis
Authors: Schmid Christopher H. , Stewart Gavin B. , Rothstein Hannah R. , Lajeunesse Marc J. , Gurevitch Jessica
Published: November 2017

To conduct a meta-analysis, a researcher will need software to perform all but the simplest calculations. Three types of software can be used, depending on user needs: a spreadsheet, a general purpose statistical package, and a program developed expressly to carry out meta-analysis. This chapter first reviews the stand-alone programs, then discusses the general purpose software, and finally briefly reviews two programs that can extract the data underlying a graphical display. Readers need to keep in mind that software features, cost, and availability all change fairly rapidly over time; while some of the specific information provided may soon be out of date, the general issues and principles discussed in choosing software for meta-analysis will have a longer half-life. Web searches, the Methods sections of recent research syntheses, and professional meetings where research synthesis results and methods are presented, are good resources for keeping up with both software availability and developments in methodology.
Meta-analysis of Primary Data
Authors: Mengersen Kerrie , Gurevitch Jessica , Schmid Christopher H.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses statistical approaches to the meta-analysis of primary data in ecology and evolutionary biology. This type of meta-analysis is appealing for a number of reasons. Most importantly, each study can be analyzed in a consistent manner, thus producing directly comparable effect estimates that have been similarly controlled for potential biases and other study-specific issues. This avoids, for example, the problem of attempting to combine published effect estimates that have been adjusted for different covariates. Moreover, this type of analysis affords an opportunity to address other questions that typically arise in meta-analysis, such as the role of covariates, potential confounders, and alternative models that can be investigated using the primary data. This may not be possible when the analysis is only based on reported summary data. The chapter begins by addressing the important issue of collecting primary data in preparation for a meta-analysis.
Meta-analysis of Results from Multisite Studies
Authors: Gurevitch Jessica
Published: November 2017

Research synthesis in ecology has typically been based on literature reviews, as is also common in other fields. That is, a search is conducted for relevant data addressing a particular research question, the utility of published and unpublished data is assessed, and the results are synthesized to address questions based on all of the available evidence. This chapter discusses the case of individual researchers who wish to combine the results of distinct experiments that they have conducted themselves or within a single research group, sometimes over the course of many years. Such efforts have many similarities with literature-based quantitative research synthesis, but differ in some important ways. It begins with several examples of such work, and investigates the challenges, potential pitfalls, advantages, and issues involved in using meta-analysis for the synthesis of such large-group collaborative experimental work.
Quality Standards for Research Syntheses
Authors: Rothstein Hannah R. , Lortie Christopher J. , Stewart Gavin B. , Koricheva Julia , Gurevitch Jessica
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents guidelines to address the following questions: What makes a quantitative research synthesis good or flawed? How can authors improve the quality of their review at various stages in the process of planning and carrying out a research synthesis? What criteria can editors and reviewers use to assess whether a quantitative synthesis should be accepted for publication, revised, or rejected? How can readers of published syntheses determine how to evaluate the quality of what they are reading, and in doing so decide whether or not to trust its results and their interpretation? The guidelines are outlined in the order of the stages involved in conducting a synthesis. In addition to reviewing the questions that should be asked at each stage of the synthesis, the chapter also describes ways in which poor choices at each stage can compromise the integrity of the review; it also provides examples of good and poor practice.
Graphical Presentation of Results
Authors: Lortie Christopher J. , Lau Joseph , Lajeunesse Marc J.
Published: November 2017

Visualizations of data are one of the most compelling means to effectively communicate ideas in science. Graphs present data in a visual form enabling the reader to read values, identify patterns, assess the outcome of a statistical technique, or analyze relationships within or between variables. Effective visualizations of meta-analyses have been discussed extensively in the evidence-based medical literature and to a lesser extent in ecology and evolutionary biology. The two most common meta-analysis plots are derived from the social sciences and include (1) modified error bar plots called forest plots used to summarize and compare weighted mean effects, and (2) meta-regression plots (scatterplots with significant fit lines) used to show the relationship between main effects and covariates. This chapter describes these two standard meta-analysis plots and provides sample graphics to illustrate usage. Details are also included for the use of simple histograms and funnel plots.
Using Meta-analysis to Test Ecological and Evolutionary Theory
Authors: Jennions Michael D. , Lortie Christopher J. , Koricheva Julia
Published: November 2017

This chapter describes nine case studies that illustrate how meta-analysis has contributed to theoretical developments in basic research in ecology and evolution. The main research topics cover are maintenance of biodiversity (Case 1); sexual selection (mate choice/fighting behavior) (cases 2, 8, 9); sex ratio theory (Case 3); allometric scaling (Case 4); the invasiveness of exotic plants (Case 5); seed size and plant abundance (Case 6); and the role of competition and predation in structuring communities (Case 7). It is hoped that these case studies will resonate with the reader and provide “templates” for ways to conduct comparable tests on analogous controversies in their own fields of research.
History and Progress of Meta-analysis
Authors: Lau Joseph , Rothstein Hannah R. , Stewart Gavin B.
Published: November 2017

Meta-analysis was first introduced in medicine and the social sciences, and was used extensively in these fields decades earlier than in ecology and evolutionary biology. This chapter reviews the development of meta-analysis in medicine and the social sciences in order to illustrate its background and compare its application in these fields to those in ecology and evolution. Here, “medicine” refers to all aspects of health care and the biomedical sciences, including the diagnosis and treatment of individual patients, public health policy, health care financing and decision making, and basic and clinical biomedical research. Social science, as defined in this chapter, covers a variety of disciplines, including social, clinical, and organizational psychology, education, social welfare, criminology, business management, and economics. It encompasses both basic and applied research, and may focus on theory formulation and testing, or on informing policy or practice.
Contributions of Meta-analysis to Conservation and Management
Authors: Côté Isabelle M. , Stewart Gavin B.
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks back through the relatively short history of meta-analyses and systematic reviews of conservation interest and highlights four areas to which these methods have contributed significantly. These include challenging conventional wisdom, measuring effectiveness of management interventions, replacing large-scale monitoring with small-scale surveys, and identifying gaps in knowledge. The chapter shows that meta-analyses and systematic reviews have contributed to answering a number of important applied questions. However, although these answers often have clear implications for conservation policy and legislation, they currently remain the focus of primarily academic interest. Given a little more time, evidence bases that are collated using systematic reviews, particularly in association with meta-analysis, are expected to increasingly influence decision making in the environmental sector, just as they have in medical fields.
Conclusions: Past, Present, and Future of Meta-analysis in Ecology and Evolution
Authors: Gurevitch Jessica , Koricheva Julia
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that despite the strong advocates of the application of meta-analysis in ecology and evolutionary biology, it is important to recognize that meta-analysis is not always appropriate; it is useful for some applications and not in others, as with any other statistical or conceptual tool. It is inappropriate when it makes no sense to combine studies. Other cases in which meta-analysis is not a useful tool include those where data are insufficient. The remainder of the chapter discusses current challenges for meta-analysis in ecology and evolution, factors facilitating progress of meta-analysis in ecology and related disciplines, and the potential and future of meta-analysis in ecology.
Population and Community Ecology of Ontogenetic Development
Authors: de Roos André M. , Persson Lennart
Published: November 2017

Most organisms show substantial changes in size or morphology after they become independent of their parents and have to find their own food. Furthermore, the rate at which these changes occur generally depends on the amount of food they ingest. This book advances a synthetic and individual-based theory of the effects of this plastic ontogenetic development on the dynamics of populations and communities. The book shows how the effects of ontogenetic development on ecological dynamics critically depend on the efficiency with which differently sized individuals convert food into new biomass. Differences in this efficiency—or ontogenetic asymmetry—lead to bottlenecks in and thus population regulation by either maturation or reproduction. The book investigates the community consequences of these bottlenecks for trophic configurations that vary in the number and type of interacting species and in the degree of ontogenetic niche shifts exhibited by their individuals. They also demonstrate how insights into the effects of maturation and reproduction limitation on community equilibrium carry over to the dynamics of size-structured populations and give rise to different types of cohort-driven cycles. Featuring numerous examples and tests of modeling predictions, this book provides a pioneering and extensive theoretical and empirical treatment of the ecology of ontogenetic growth and development in organisms, emphasizing the importance of an individual-based perspective for understanding population and community dynamics.
Summary
Authors: de Roos André M. , Persson Lennart
Published: November 2017

This chapter provides a summary of the topics covered by the present volume. The summary serves the purpose of clearly showing how different chapters fit together in a general framework with respect to model approaches as well as results obtained. Reading this summary chapter will show readers the different types of community modules that will be analyzed as well as provide a clear impression of the results and insights that presented in this book. Topics discussed include biomass overcompensation, ontogenetic (a)symmetry in energetics, emergent community effects of biomass overcompensation, ontogenetic niche shifts in consumer life history, ontogenetic niche shifts in predator life history, competition between consumers with and without ontogenetic niche shifts, and ontogenetic (a)symmetry in energetics and population dynamics.
After Colonial Rule in Asia: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
Authors: Barany Zoltan
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at two pivotal states of South Asia: India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan gained their independence in 1947. India succeeded in placing its armed forces under firm and virtually unchallenged state control right from the beginning of independence. However, civil–military relations in Pakistan have been far more “eventful.” The chapter makes three arguments. First and most important, by the end of the first postcolonial decade, the patterns for the drastically different military politics of India and Pakistan were already set. Second, of the numerous reasons for the evolution of different civil–military relations in the two countries, several lie in the circumstances of the 1947 Partition and in the immediate post-Partition period. Third, the British colonial period left behind profound legacies, most of which have positively influenced military affairs in the Subcontinent. The chapter also addresses Bangladesh—from its independence in 1971 to the military take-over in 2007—and what sets its military politics apart from Pakistan's.
After Colonial Rule in Africa: Ghana, Tanzania, and Botswana
Authors: Barany Zoltan
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on Ghana, Tanzania, and Botswana. During the periods under study here, Ghana experienced intermittent military rule while Tanzania was a socialist state; their armed forces were not committed to democracy and, in Ghana's case, not even to civilian rule. Unlike Ghana, Tanzania was successful in establishing civilian control over the armed forces. Civilian control must not be confused with democratic control, however. In Tanzania, civilian control was unitary, the party-state's domination of the armed forces hardly surprising considering there was no independent legislature, judiciary, or any other political organization free of TANU/CCM control. Tanzania's example demonstrates that civilian control can be successful while incorporating the armed forces into the general political arena. Botswana's situation is similar to Tanzania's insofar as one party has ruled the country since independence, but with the major difference that in Botswana, during the same time period, free elections have been held at regular intervals.
Conclusion
Authors: Barany Zoltan
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter assesses the arguments of this study. The fundamental contention of this book is that consolidated democracies cannot exist without military elites committed to democratic governance, that their support is a necessary if insufficient condition of democratization. It also argues that the six settings—major war, civil war, military rule, communism, colonialism, and (re)unification and apartheid—present different challenges to would-be democratizers intent on crafting democratic armies and civil–military relations. Finally, it contends that it is virtually impossible to come up with a general theory that provides substantive and useful explanations for civil–military relations in such diverse political and socioeconomic environments. The chapter then outlines the policies and conditions that advance or inhibit the development of armies supportive of democratic rule.
Time Out of Joint, 1967–76
Authors: Litvin Margaret
Published: November 2017

This chapter begins with the cultural impact of the June War and its coda, Gamal Abdel Nasser's death in 1970. As the chapter shows, the defeat fundamentally altered Arab conceptions of political theatre's role. A well-developed high culture was no longer considered enough to guarantee the world's respect. Psychological interiority was irrelevant: what mattered was not deserving agentive power but seizing it. Disillusioned with their regimes, dramatists stopped addressing subtly allegorical plays to the government; instead, they appealed directly to audiences, trying to rouse them to participate in political life. Analyzing two early 1970s Hamlet adaptations from Egypt and Syria, the chapter demonstrates how the 1970s Hamlet became a Che Guevara in doublet and hose. Guilt and sadness over his father's death only sharpened his anger; his fierce pursuit of justice left no room for introspection or doubt.
Hamlets without Hamlet
Authors: Litvin Margaret
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter reveals a recent convergence between the political concerns of Anglo-American intellectuals and their Arab counterparts. For many Anglo-American intellectuals, recent events have thrust the Arab and Muslim worlds into focus, for better or worse, particularly in their experience of modern Arab politics: the feeling of being ruled rather than represented by one's own government. The chapter thus looks at the applications of political theatre today and how Hamlet is, once again, finding his way onto the modern Arab stage. Amid this discussion of Hamlet and twenty-first-century politics, the chapter also considers whether or not there will continue to be a distinct Arab Hamlet tradition.
Political Polarization and Issues: A New Perspective
Authors: Lapinski John S.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses how policy issue substance matters for studying political preferences. Fully exploring how policy issue substance matters for studying political polarization in Congress, the chapter begins by introducing a new large data set that comprises the estimated induced preferences of members of the House of Representatives and U.S. senators by policy issue area over a very long time horizon: 1877 to 2010. It also explores the literature on elite polarization in Congress by policy issue area and studies polarization across a 124-year period (1877 to 2010) by the policy issue areas defined as “tier 1.” The chapter shows that issue content is extremely important for understanding political polarization and that many of the empirical facts about polarization depend on not disaggregating policy by issue areas.