bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Visuality
Authors: Callahan William A.
Published: February 2020

Chapter 2 explores what is different about visual international relations—that is, how images can actively create sensible politics as visual performances that viscerally move and connect people. It develops the visuality strategy’s analysis of how images take on meaning and value through the visual construction of the social and the multisensory performance of the international. It thus expands on Chapter 1’s symbolic analysis of visual images to consider how “visual artifacts”—maps, veils, walls, gardens, and cyberspace—can shape IR as material modalities and sensory spaces that are experienced both individually and collectively. In this way, it develops the concept of “affective communities of sense” to move from assessing the ideological-value of visuals to appreciate their affect-work. Chapter 2 thus challenges the critique of ocular-centrism by outlining how the visuality strategy can help one appreciate how multisensory spaces can provoke social orders, world orders, and affective communities of sense.
Visualizing Security, Order, and War
Authors: Callahan William A.
Published: February 2020

This chapter critically examines another important approach to visual international politics: securitization theory, which argues that visual images can shape foreign policy events through their immediacy, circulation, and ambiguity. It uses the North Korea-US national security crisis provoked by the feature film The Interview (2014) to question securitization’s focus on the state, official elites, and the close relationship between existential threats and security problems. It then introduces the cultural governance/resistance conceptual dynamic to examine how Islamic State videos witnessed the creation not just of a sovereign state, but also of a new social order/world order: the transnational utopia of the Caliphate. Chapter 5 thus shows the visibility strategy’s hermeneutic approach to reading visual securitization and the visuality strategy’s attention to the broader issues of how social-ordering and world-ordering images can provoke affective communities of sense. It introduces and develops the cultural governance/resistance dynamic that is used in later chapters.
The Sartorial Engineering of Race, Gender, and Faith
Authors: Callahan William A.
Published: February 2020

Chapter 8 continues the exploration of how visual artifacts can provoke unexpected affective communities of sense. It explores visual body politics through the unlikely juxtaposition of young women (1) wearing Islamic veils and (2) participating in beauty pageants. These two practices are exemplary cases of the visibility strategy, especially where veil-wearing’s invisibility tactic makes women hypervisible. The chapter uses the conceptual dynamic of concealing/revealing to analyze how various groups—women and men, states and corporations—expend resources performing, policing, and resisting such sartorial practices. Using examples from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, the chapter first decodes how many women see it as an individual choice, then considers how the male gaze and the white/colonial gaze can shape these choices. Finally, the chapter examines how these sartorial performances visually construct the social and the international: you don’t just take the veil, the veil also takes you, in an experience that is creative as well as disciplinary. Because these are not just visual performances, but also involve touch, the chapter develops the idea of visual artifacts as material modalities and multisensory spaces.
Success and Failure in Nuclear Reversal
Authors: Mehta Rupal N.
Published: February 2020

To better understand the impact of inducements and to get a broader sense of the process of nuclear reversal, this chapter presents two vignettes of nuclear proliferation: the critical cases of Libya and China. These analyses help isolate core distinctions from the historical record: nuclear reversers from the current proliferators, allies from adversaries, those that tried and succeeded decades ago, and those that remained committed for decades with a failing nuclear program and ultimately abandoned it. These illustrative vignettes of success and failure help to delve deeper into the nuclear reversal process. This chapter provides a better understanding of how states embark on and are incentivized to end their pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Democracy Against the Law
Authors: Hansen Thomas Blom
Published: February 2020

Thomas Blom Hansen argues that the increasing strictures on freedom of speech in India, and the shrinking tolerance for dissenting ideas and opposition to the government since 2014, has deeper roots in how the relationship between the Indian state and the broader public has developed since the 1970s. Hansen focuses on how this relationship has been increasingly governed by two kinds of violence: a) a growth of the Indian state’s repressive capacities and an unchecked development of violent modalities of policing and control that disproportionately affects lower caste communities and religious and ethnic minorities in the country, and b) the increasingly routinized use of public violence – mob violence, destruction of public property, etc. – as a legitimate means of political expression and performance of grievances and anger. Hansen argues that larger groups across India have been mobilized around emotional attachments to their vernacular political communities, their caste and to perceived injustices in the name of popular sovereignty that is understood to exist beyond the state and electoral representation. Today, the limitations of politics, public violence, or the threat thereof, are no longer one of the most legitimate means of political (self) expression in the country.
A De Facto Ethnic Democracy?
Authors: Jaffrelot Christophe
Published: February 2020

The concept of ethnic democracy as coined by Sammy Smooha illustrates a two-tiered citizenship, the majority enjoying more rights than the minority, both de facto and de jure and the Israel model remains the archetype of this phenomenon. This chapter highlights the shift from secular multicultural democracy to majoritarian ethnic democracy in the India. Although Muslims were always institutionally marginalized from the army, police and administration since independence, their involvement in the public sphere has been further undermined by cow vigilantism, mob lynching on the suspicion of carrying beef, prevention of interfaith marriages and prohibiting them from acquiring any property in residential areas. This rise of Hindu nationalism coupled with ostracism of the Muslim minority has meant that the Hindutva ideology has infiltrated all major institutions in India, and threatens to dominate the public sphere through grassroots work, which thereby makes India a de facto Hindu Rastra (state/ country).
Merchants of Hype and Hate
Authors: Bardhan Pranab
Published: February 2020

This chapter primarily evaluates the political economy of India under the Modi regime which came to power with economic development as one of the main promises. It analyses the ground realities backed up with official data, from the lack of employment creation, myth about being a corruption free government to the failure of demonetization and public relation coups including capturing the nationalism narrative using mainstream media. It also analyses some of the continued schemes like Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Aadhar continued from the previous UPA government. It further evaluates some good steps taken by the regime, including the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code and Ujjawala free gas cylinders program. However, cow vigilantism and dilution of the Forest Rights Act are some of the backward steps taken by this regime. Overall, the economic performance of India under the Modi regime is described as mediocre at best, but it’s socio-political landscape is in far worse condition.
Moderation, or On Economics
Authors: Hanley Ryan Patrick
Published: February 2020

Chapter 2 offers an overview and interpretation of Fénelon’s economic thought. Contra those who have found in Fénelon a precursor to certain radical economic ideologies, it argues that attempting to understand his economic positions via such categories is mistaken. Fénelon in fact stakes out substantively moderate economic positions on three fronts: his belief that the proper end of political economy is sufficiency and not austerity, his emphasis on stability and avoiding both contraction and dependence on growth, and his claim that flourishing economies embrace not just agriculture but also commerce and trade. To show this, the chapter examines the economic arrangements of several states depicted in Telemachus, as well as Fénelon’s practical proposals for the reform of the French economy—all of which are connected by a unifying distinction between “false riches” and “true riches.”
Courage, or On War
Authors: Hanley Ryan Patrick
Published: February 2020

Chapter 3 examines Fénelon’s theory of international relations. His commitment to peace has long been appreciated. But where many have suggested that Fénelon calls for a renunciation of war in accord with his ostensibly quietist spirituality, this chapter argues that his position on war is less pacifistic and idealistic than such readings suggest. For even as he disparages war on religious and humanitarian grounds, Fénelon’s realism manifests itself in two ways: a belief that peace requires readiness to use power as demanded by necessity properly understood; and a belief that peace can be made to last only if certain institutional structures are established (a teaching that informs his positions on strategic diplomacy and active bilateral engagement, international confederations and collective alliances, and international free trade). In so doing, the chapter emphasizes the significance of his distinction between “false courage” and “true courage” for his theory of just war and his balance-of-powers theory.
Faith, or On Religion
Authors: Hanley Ryan Patrick
Published: February 2020

Chapter 5 shifts from Fénelon’s practical writings to his writings on metaphysics, theology, and spirituality. In surveying these writings, this and the following two chapters aim not to provide exhaustive treatments of these areas of his thought, but to demonstrate their significance for Fénelon’s political philosophy. Chapter 5 begins this by presenting Fénelon’s views on the political significance of religious faith. In so doing, it focuses on his realist claims regarding how religious faith and institutions can serve as checks on political power. Its first part examines his claims regarding the connection of irreligion and tyranny. It then examines his claims regarding how religion can mitigate propensities to tyranny. Its final section turns to Fénelon’s nuanced position on the proper relationship of Church and State, which centers on the way in which religious institutions can provide useful checks on executive power.
Hope, or On Theology
Authors: Hanley Ryan Patrick
Published: February 2020

Chapter 6 turns to Fénelon’s theology, focusing on his treatment of hope and its significance for his political philosophy. It argues that he regarded hope not just as a key theological virtue, but also as a key virtue of political rulers and political reformers. Its discussion of the political implications of Fénelon’s theology proceeds in three parts. It first examines the role of hope in Telemachus. It then turns to the treatment of hope in Fénelon’s theology, focusing on three particular discussions: the place of hope in love, the relationship of hope to self-interest, and the place of hope in prayer. The final section turns to two aspects of Fénelon’s theology beyond hope which also have significant implications for his political philosophy: his understanding of the relationship of human being to divine being, and his arguments for the existence of God and their implications for universal order.
Dimensions of Moral Experience
Authors: Churchill Larry R.
Published: February 2020

Moral perplexities are not of a single type; they take a variety of forms. They need to be appreciated before trying to resolve them through ethical systems or theories. Ethics begins in curiosity about why we think and feel as we do and why we differ from others. Everyone is engaged in ethics, and everyone can learn to exercise the skills that will make for a meaningful moral life. Engaging in moral dialogue is a humanizing activity; it requires suspension of judgment and respectful exploration of our own values and those of others. Three obstacles to ethics are defined: moral arbitrariness, absolute certainty, and perfectionism. Four aims of ethics are explored: discovering and claiming the moral values that define us; identifying the values of others; achieving consonance between internal values and external actions; and solving problems. The final section considers whether and how ethics can be taught and learned.
Basic Skills I
Authors: Churchill Larry R.
Published: February 2020

Nine different skills are discussed as essential to ethics, 5 in chapter 2 and 4 in chapter 3. These skills are named according to the capacity that is required to exercise them. The first and most basic skill discussed in this chapter is one of probing—interrogating our moral prehistories. A moral prehistory is what we all acquired from our families of origin and the communities that nurtured us through childhood. None of us chose our prehistories, rather they are the “taken for granted” moral orientation each of us begins with. Learning to look both critically and appreciatively at this moral inheritance is the initial skill for ethics. The others described in this chapter are decentering skill (taming moral vanity and recognizing others), relinquishing skill (the act of giving up the comforts of moral certainty), emotional skill (learning from our feelings), and cognitive skill (thinking slowly).
Moral Concepts in Practice I
Authors: Churchill Larry R.
Published: February 2020

This chapter and the chapter that follows define and explore a select number of concepts that are central to ethics. The emphasis is on how these concepts operate in moral life, their uses, misuses, and limitations. A lifespan approach to these concepts is important to keep in mind. Concepts that seem remote at one life stage, such as death, take on central importance at a later stage. The concepts discussed in chapter 6 are the anchoring value of truth; forgiveness and freedom; the varieties of love; the moral uses of spirituality; and the persistence of hope. Forgiveness is described as a gateway to a less encumbered life. The varieties of love are enumerated and their relevance to various dimensions and stages of life explored. Spirituality, including religious beliefs and practices, is explored for its moral importance. Hope is distinguished from optimism and does not require an object or something hoped for.
Islamophobia as New Racism
Authors: Abbas Tahir
Published: February 2020

A historical process of framing Muslims negatively within popular discourses in society during imperialism and colonialism reveals how the emergence of Orientalism and the birth and eventual dominance of neoliberal capitalism had coincided. In the current period, both mainstream and social media continue to disseminate negative views on Islam and Muslims - transmitted through the 24-hour new cycle – which is heightened by an emphasis on extremism, radicalization and terrorism. These concerns reflect the unease felt about matters related to security and counterterrorism, and reinforce the notion that Muslims en masse are somehow antithetical to the norms and values of all of society. A populist politics of division has forced through the ideas of ethnic nationalism, which have come to define this anti-Muslim moment. The confluence of far right normalization in media, and Islamophobia propagated through the news cycles, has real-world implications – from attacks on people and property. In exploring the Danish Cartoons Affair of 2006, which had a global impact on Muslim-non-Muslim relations and perceptions, and the localized nature of anti-Pakistani sentiment in a popular BBC television sitcom, Citizen Khan, there is a discussion of the local and global being bound in framing Muslims.
Plugged Into the Rage
Authors: Abbas Tahir
Published: February 2020

This chapter is an attempt to explore the theoretical and conceptual nature of the symbiosis that defines and characterizes far-right and Islamist extremism. It synthesizes current knowledge on the similarities and differences between these two types of extremism, which are based on a disjuncture between the interplay of social structure and identity, the knowledge gaps in existing research, and the implications for policy and practice in this area. These kinds of extremism need to be recognized as two sides of the same coin. Both forms of extremism feed off the rhetoric of the ‘other’, compounded by an elite discourse that seeks to divide and rule when it comes to dealing with differences in society, combined with the issue of the diminished status of white working-class communities in general. It is therefore crucial that there is greater understanding of the linkages, interactions and symbiosis between these two oppositional but related extremisms.
Vanquishing False Idols
Authors: Abbas Tahir
Published: February 2020

The online world is a space for exploring identities, learning more about the ‘other’ and questions of being and becoming in a much wider space than previously understood. This online world of the far right and Islamist is an alternative reality that enables people to promote their own political views. Unreconstructed patriarchy, in the form of an anti-feminist discourse grounded on selective aspects of conservative Islamic and Christian norms, is finding a new voice on the internet, coupled with hate towards the ‘other’, more generally presented as a common enemy to the collective male ‘self’. The individuals attracted to various forums are often reclusive and difficult to identify. The victims in both cases are young men who are angry, enfeebled and distrustful of one another, now morphed into a cyber-realm where their rage finds a voice online, where their digital tribalism gives them new meaning in an otherwise broken and divided world. A crisis of masculinity is at the heart of the malaise facing young men all over the world. Both radical Islamists and the far-right fringes have galvanized in the online space in resistance to neoliberal globalization, their loss of identity and the increasing prominence of women in society.
Tomorrow Belongs to Those …
Authors: Abbas Tahir
Published: February 2020

This chapter delves into the world of British Muslims who have experienced a whole host of interconnected challenges at the national and local levels, with the perils of Brexit sowing deep divisions. It also introduces the so-called ‘Trojan Horse’ affair of 2014, which demonstrated that Islamophobia had reached the highest levels of government. After seventy years of post-war immigration, settlement and adaptation to society, many Muslim minority communities continue to face racism, prejudice, intolerance, bigotry and discrimination, affecting educational outcomes and their sense of identity. Dominant notions of race and nation have thrust Muslims into the limelight as the most racialized, objectified and ‘othered’ group in education, but adaptation and social integration has simply not occurred because of the workings of wider society. The presumption that promoting ‘British values’ will somehow eliminate the structural inequalities that result from modern racism is nonsensical, as it will simply reproduce the status quo, recreating the conditions for disadvantage and discrimination. It is an attempt to preserve ethnic nationalism in the face of its ongoing disintegration.
Fear and Loathing at the End of History
Authors: Abbas Tahir
Published: February 2020

This chapter explores the notion that Islamophobia is not only a lived social and political experience facing British Muslims. It is conflated by a paradigm of anti-multiculturalism, which has sought to abandon a critical acceptance of differences in society and replace it with an outmoded, reductive and exclusive notion of English nationalism, especially in the post-EU referendum era. It reflects the normalization of anti-Muslim hatred, which has grown exponentially since the outset of the war on terror that began after 9/11, a period that has witnessed growing intolerance, bigotry and the development of far-right, radical left and religious extremist groups. Cumulative extremisms at the margins of society incubate the discourses of intolerance and hate that allow these subgroups and their ideas to flourish. Accepting differences between groups clearly raises challenges for those who regard such differences as a threat to wider society. Yet, for others, these differences are an asset. This is where politics enters the fray and helps to explain why the idea of ‘multicultural societies’ has caused so much confusion. It is possible to think about the ‘management’ of differences in society.
Epilogue
Authors: Abbas Tahir
Published: February 2020

The final chapter returns to the core themes of this book-Islamophobia and radicalization-to suggest some possible ways forward in breaking down the formidable cycle of hate, intolerance and cruelty. This concluding chapter summarizes the primary messages of this book, which have concentrated on establishing the sociological, political and ideological associations between two important concepts in the current period–Islamophobia and radicalization. The main contribution of this book has been to outline how they are interrelated but also mutually reinforcing due the interaction of global, national and local forces. In this process, the nature of Muslimness is being molded by the state, which seeks to create a moderate Muslim amenable to the idea of an identity based on ‘values’. In an uncertain future, the only inevitability is change itself.
Dag Hammarskjöld’s Credo and The United Nations
Authors: Melber Henning
Published: February 2020

Firstly, this chapter illustrates the specific constellation of interests within the UN Security Council, due to which Dag Hammarskjöld became the accepted candidate to succeed Trygve Lie as second Secretary-General of the United Nations as ‘the unknown Swede’. It then summarizes his convictions, which were already internalized when he was a civil servant, as well as his loyalty to the values and principles of the UN Charter as a ‘secular bible’. Solidarity and universal humanity were among Hammarskjöld’s key notions and guided his ethics. It finally explains how Hammarskjöld defined the need of the international civil service as being independent from the individual influences and interests of UN Member States to act in neutrality to fully serve the defined principles of global governance as laid out in the UN Charter.
Arafat, the Icon as President, and His Antihero Successor
Authors: Klein Menachem
Published: February 2020

This chapter deals with Arafat and Abbas’ personalities, early careers in the PLO, their different leadership styles, Arafat as a national Icon, Arafat’s demonic perspective in the eyes of Israel, and Abbas’ road to power.
In-House Order
Authors: Klein Menachem
Published: February 2020

This chapter concerns Arafat and Abbas’ domestic politics, government and legislative institutions, building regulations, lack of democracy, authoritarianism, their security service oppressing opposition groups (mainly Hamas), the youth i.e. students and political activists, the legal system and the criticism of civil society.
Succession Struggle
Authors: Klein Menachem
Published: February 2020

The chapter describes the struggle to succeed Abbas. It identifies his successor – Hamas, the alternative movement; head of a security agency that cooperates or veteran Fatah leader, Dahlan, the ousted opponent; Barghouti, the popular leader in Israeli prison; and direct Israeli occupation.
Fake News
Authors: Introvigne Massimo
Published: February 2020

The chapter discusses the notion of fake news and how it is used in propaganda against controversial religious movements. It then examines several accusations against the CAG originating with Chinese anti-cult organizations and media. Based on the transcript of the 2015 trial and other sources, it discusses the murder in a McDonald’s restaurant in Zhaoyuan, Shandong, in 2014, when a woman was killed by supposed missionaries mentioning the name Almighty God. Chinese authorities immediately attributed the crime to The Church of Almighty God. However, documents clearly prove that the assassins belonged to a different religious movement, which recognized an Almighty God other than the one The Church of Almighty God believes in, a unique divine soul living in the two bodies of the small movement’s female leaders. The accused also denied ever having been members of The Church of Almighty God.
The Taliban at War
Authors: Giustozzi Antonio
Published: February 2020

How does the Taliban wage war? How has its war changed over time? Firstly, the movement’s extraordinary military operation relies on financial backing. This volume analyses such funding. The Taliban’s external sources of support include foreign governments and non-state groups, both of which have affected the Taliban’s military campaigns and internal politics. Secondly, this is the first full-length study of the Taliban to acknowledge and discuss in detail the movement’s polycentric character. Here not only the Quetta Shura, but also the Haqqani Network and the Taliban’s other centers of power, are afforded the attention they deserve.
The Taliban at War is based on extensive field research, including hundreds of interviews with Taliban members at all levels of the organization, community elders in Taliban-controlled areas, and other sources. It covers the Taliban insurgency from its first manifestations in 2002 up to the end of 2015. The five-month Battle of Kunduz epitomized the ongoing transition of the Taliban from an insurgent group to a more conventional military force, intent on fighting a protracted civil war.
In this latest book, renowned Afghanistan expert Antonio Giustozzi rounds off his twenty years of studying the Taliban with an authoritative sitrep detailing the evolution of its formidable military machine.
The Emergence Of Alternative Centres Of Power To Quetta
Authors: Giustozzi Antonio
Published: February 2020

The Miran Shah Shura predated the Quetta Shura, but only in 2007 did it start to drift away and become more and more autonomous. The main grudge held against the Quetta Shura was the concentration of power in the hands of southern Taliban. The new Peshawar Shura, established in 2005, also opposed the southern bias of the Quetta Shura and sought to provide an alternative center of Taliban power in the east.
Introduction
Authors: Gifford Paul
Published: February 2020

John Peel has remarked, in reference to conversion in Africa:

The only workable definition of conversion is the process by which people come to regard themselves, and be regarded by others, as Christians. This social identification is what being a Christian most immediately and unarguably ...
A Cognition Transformed
Authors: Gifford Paul
Published: February 2020

This chapter traces the transformation of cognition in the West. By sketching the example of Christian belief in the Christendom of the Middle Ages, this chapter shows that the natural, immediate and normal way of understanding reality was in terms of otherworldly forces; events were actually experienced as the work of these forces. Manipulating these forces was often achieved through relics, and resulted in miracles. Beginning in the sixteenth century, this cognitive style gradually receded in importance, as the scientific revolution and its subsequent application in technology, steadily encouraged a completely new mode of cognition, one seeking explanation in terms of this-worldly causes. Religious tradition and authority gradually gave way to observation and experiment. Not all cultures share this scientific approach, as is argued in reference to Africa (Senegal in particular) where the normal explanation of worldly events is in terms of malleable otherworldly forces.
Western Religion Today
Authors: Gifford Paul
Published: February 2020

This chapter argues that Western religion today, besides losing public importance, has also largely been transformed in accordance with this cognitive shift to the ‘this-worldly’. The chapter shows how arguments like ‘believing but not belonging’ and ‘vicarious religion’ do not discredit the secularization thesis; nor does the idea that Christianity gave rise to Western modernity and therefore the West must be religious. The decreasing salience of Christianity became undeniable in the Victorian age. The 1960s saw this trend intensified and diffused more widely; this cognitive shift is illustrated in both the workings of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) and in the World Council of Churches Uppsala Assembly (1968). The Christianity that the mainline Western churches exhibit today has become internally secularized, evidenced in characteristic works of modern academic theology.
Apt Imaginings
Authors: Gilmore Jonathan
Published: February 2020

Do people’s responses to works of art track their responses to the real world? Specifically, do emotions, cognitions, and desires elicited by fictional stories and visual imaginings differ—in their constitution or the norms that govern them—from those based on beliefs and perceptions? A commitment to one or another answer to this question animates reflection on the nature of art from Plato’s banishment of dramatic poetry from his ideal state to theories in cognitive science of the role of imagination in our mental life. This book defends a thesis of normative discontinuity: although the doxastic representations, emotions, desires, and evaluations that one forms in engaging with a fiction depend on much of the same psychological and neurophysiological machinery one employs in navigating the real world, the norms that govern the appropriateness of those attitudes toward what is fictional or imagined can be contrary to the norms that govern their fit to analogous things in the real world. In short, this book argues that the functions of art ground, on occasion, a kind of autonomy of the imagination: what would be the wrong way to feel or think about states of affairs in the real world could be the right way to feel or think when those states of affairs are only make-believe.
Introduction
Authors: Gilmore Jonathan
Published: February 2020

This chapter identifies a general dilemma in descriptive and explanatory claims about the arts. On the one side is the pull of continuity, in which responses to the contents of fictions and other imagined creations are said to be modeled (morally, affectively, epistemically) on responses to ordinary real-world states of affairs. On the other is the pull of discontinuity, in which such engagements are posed as offering potentially sui generis sorts of experiences that resist assimilation or reduction to those encountered in the everyday. This chapter identifies the place of the book’s discontinuity thesis within that general tension, and discusses the thesis’s main rivals: (1) those who argue that our affective states are not the same kind across encounters with fictions and the real world; and (2) those who argue for continuity or invariance of affective states across those contexts.
Evaluative Emotions
Authors: Gilmore Jonathan
Published: February 2020

This chapter outlines a theory of the emotions intended to accommodate both traditional philosophical conceptions of emotions as cognitively inflected evaluative appraisals and more recent empirical approaches that highlight their subdoxastic dimensions. Here some empirical evidence is introduced to demonstrate that affective mechanisms of the mind and brain process the contents of imaginings in ways that are parallel to how they process the contents of beliefs and other veridical representations. This chapter then shows how the general theory of the emotions oriented toward objects of belief and perception must be modified and supplemented to account for (i) the particular kinds of emotions elicited in the imaginative experiences elicited by works of art; and (ii) certain asymmetries in the conditions under which fiction-directed and real-world-directed emotions are formed.
Apt Emotions and Normative Continuity
Authors: Gilmore Jonathan
Published: February 2020

This chapter characterizes a set of parallel assumptions. One, shared by many otherwise different contemporary philosophical treatments of the emotions, is that our affective responses are susceptible to assessments of rationality, fittingness, or some other notion of aptness. The other is that analogous norms of fittingness apply to those emotions directed at what is only fictional, or what is only imagined to be the case. This chapter identifies the relevant concept of emotional aptness that is at play in both kinds of assumptions, and which is at the core of the disagreement between the theses of normative continuity and normative discontinuity. The chapter then develops and assesses arguments in favor of the continuity thesis: the claim that the criteria determining such aptness of responses to contents of artistic representations apply invariantly to responses to analogous states of affairs in real life.
Defending Discontinuity
Authors: Gilmore Jonathan
Published: February 2020

This chapter introduces and diagnoses the inadequacy of two prima facie plausible, but ultimately inadequate, arguments for the discontinuity thesis based on framing effects. The chapter then develops and defends a more powerful argument in discontinuity’s favor based on the functions of fictions. The chapter also looks at what turns on the debate between continuity and discontinuity, i.e., what consequences its resolution on the side of discontinuity has for the experimental study of the emotions; the role of responses to works of art as evidence of moral character; and the putatively edifying value of engaging with fictions in educating and refining attitudes about the real world.
Epistemology of Fiction and Rational Imagining
Authors: Gilmore Jonathan
Published: February 2020

Earlier chapters addressed whether the norms governing our emotions are invariant across fictional and real-world contexts. There the question of continuity was asked of an emotion as a whole. Here the focus is on the cognitive bases upon which emotions, and other affective attitudes, depend. Philosophers and psychologists have worked out a substantial picture of the kinds of normative constraints that are constitutive of epistemic rationality when applied to beliefs—what rational criteria govern a person’s formation, maintenance, transitions among, and relinquishing of her beliefs. This chapter asks whether the norms that govern the formation of our truth-apt representations of the real world apply invariantly to analogous (doxastic) imaginative representations of the world of a fiction. In short, is “make-belief” rational in the same sense as belief?
Discrepant Affects
Authors: Gilmore Jonathan
Published: February 2020

This chapter addresses a puzzling feature of one’s engagement with certain kinds of fictions. This is the problem of discrepant affects: one sometimes takes pleasure in fictional events that one would deplore in real life; one aligns oneself with or even admires fictional characters whom one would find despicable if encountered in the actual world; and one forms desires for events to occur in fictions that, in actual experience, one would want to prevent. Highlighting certain dimensions of simulative and empathetic processes, this chapter explains such normatively deviant responses as reflecting an appropriate fiction-motivated breakdown in the quarantine separating how one really values things from how one only imagines doing so.
Introduction
Authors: Phillips Victoria
Published: February 2020

“When they sensed internal mayhem / They sent out Martha Graham / That’s what we call cultural exchange,” wrote Dave and Iola Brubeck with Louis Armstrong for the opera The Real Ambassadors. Graham disavowed political attachments: indeed, understanding what she said she was not is often a way to understand Graham as an actor in US diplomatic history. Allegedly not political, she also disavowed herself as a modernist, feminist, and American missionary. Rather than proving that she was what she said she was not, the introduction outlines the methodology to understand why Graham made these pronouncements while touring for the US government during the Cold War. While Graham initially was a part of the targeting of the elite in “trickle-down diplomacy,” over time she grew older and modernism ossified, just as the government sought to target the youth. In response, Graham posed for pictures that billed her as “Forever Modern,” with dances that were “Too Sexy for Export?” featuring a troupe of young, technically brilliant dancers to represent the United States. Graham passed away in 1991, the same year as the official Cold War end.
“And Martha Knew How to Play That”
Authors: Phillips Victoria
Published: February 2020

In 1978, Martha Graham capitalized on the Egyptomania that was sweeping the United States and choreographed Frescoes, the story of Cleopatra, which opened at the newly situated Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Architecture again met dance as diplomacy. In September 1978, the same month that the Temple of Dendur first opened to visitors, President Jimmy Carter had supervised the negotiations between Egypt and Israel at the presidential retreat Camp David that led to a historic peace treaty between the two nations. In August 1979, Graham would perform Frescoes in Egypt and tour in Jordan and Israel on what her dancers called the “Jimmy Carter Goodwill Tour.” Although the company could not perform in Lebanon because of civil war, dancers were brought to Amman to take class and see the repertory, which they could take back to Beirut. In Israel, the company performed Legend of Judith, using Israelis for the set and music. Despite crumbling relations over time, and with the promise of cultural diplomacy being realized, diplomatic representatives gathered in Cairo and signed the 1980 “Cultural Agreement between the State of Israel and the Arab Republic of Egypt.”
Introduction
Authors: Lin Ken-Hou , Neely Megan Tobias
Published: February 2020

The introduction to this book asks a number of questions that will be considered in the rest of the book: How did finance become an essential fabric of contemporary American life? What are the consequences for inequality in American society? How did finance become the most lucrative of all businesses? How has it transformed US corporations? When did every household decision become an investment decision? Most importantly, how has finance shaped the distribution of resources among Americans? The introduction describes the book’s attempts to answer these questions. It ends with an outline of the chapters that follow.
The Great Reversal
Authors: Lin Ken-Hou , Neely Megan Tobias
Published: February 2020

This chapter discusses the definition of finance and the meaning of financialization, a concept introduced long before the 2008 financial crisis that has since gained popularity in both academic and public discussion. It argues that finance, while having served an important function in many societies, has become too much of a good thing in the United States, and cites evidence demonstrating its extraordinary growth in and beyond the last quarter of the 20th century. The chapter also provides a brief historical account that identifies the political and institutional roots of financialization, from the Bretton Woods Agreement to the political reorientation in the 1980s, underscoring that the shift was not a natural result of capitalist economy but a historical product contingent on a wide variety of developments.
The Social Question
Authors: Lin Ken-Hou , Neely Megan Tobias
Published: February 2020

This chapter considers the issue of inequality. It provides a synopsis of the existing explanations for rising inequality and identifies some of their shortcomings before outlining the contours of the investigation into the connection between financialization and inequality. It argues that the rising inequality in the United States is not a “natural” result of apolitical technological advancement and globalization. Instead, the widening economic divide reflects a deeper transformation of how the economy is organized and how resources are distributed. Financialization has motivated or complemented many inequality-inducing developments through three interwoven processes: the extraction of economic rents from the nonfinancial economy to the financial sector, the demise of the capital-labor accord, and the dispersion of economic risks from the state and organizations to families.
The Financial Turn of Corporate America
Authors: Lin Ken-Hou , Neely Megan Tobias
Published: February 2020

This chapter examines financialization in the supposedly “nonfinancial” sector and how it results in greater inequality. The last 40 years have seen a turn in which many nonfinancial firms have increased their participation in financial markets. The chapter describes why nonfinancial firms took a financial turn in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It focuses on two aspects of financialization: the advent of nonfinancial firms actively lending and trading in financial markets and the rise of the shareholder-value model in corporate governance. It concludes by identifying the “winners and losers” created by these developments and how financialization has devastated most working Americans.
A People’s Portfolio of the United States
Authors: Lin Ken-Hou , Neely Megan Tobias
Published: February 2020

This chapter focuses on how finance has transformed household wealth—a trend with long-term implications for how social-class inequality becomes entrenched. It first reviews the uneven distribution of wealth in the United States. Wealth inequality has risen since the last quarter of the 20th century. Today, fewer American families have sufficient means to accumulate wealth over time, and the concentration of capital in the hands of a select few has widened the fault line between the richest and the rest. The chapter also examines how the distribution of wealth has changed across generations—more precisely, what social scientists call “cohorts.” That is, wealth for the baby boomer generation differs greatly from wealth among the millennials. Since wealth accumulation develops over the course of a person’s life, families in young adulthood and near retirement are considered.
Rapid Effects of Estradiol on Dendritic Spines and Synaptic Plasticity in the Male and Female Hippocampus
Authors: Kato Asami , Murakami Gen , Hojo Yasushi , Horie Sigeo , Kawato Suguru
Published: February 2020

Although the potent estrogen, 17β-estradiol (E2), has long been known to regulate the hippocampal dendritic spine density and synaptic plasticity, the molecular mechanisms through which it does so are less well understood. This chapter discusses the rapid modulation of hippocampal dendritic spine density and synaptic plasticity in male and female rats, with particular attention to studies in hippocampal slices from male rats. Among the mechanisms described are the roles of specific cell-signaling kinases and estrogen receptors in mediating the effects of E2 and progesterone on hippocampal neurons. In addition, dynamic changes of spine structures over time and sex differences in spine regulation are also considered. Finally, the chapter ends by discussing the importance of local hippocampal synthesis of E2 and androgens to hippocampal spine morphology and plasticity.
Hippocampal Synaptic Stability and Plasticity
Authors: Rune Gabriele M.
Published: February 2020

Estradiol synthesis depends on the activity of aromatase, the enzyme that specifically and irreversibly converts testosterone to estradiol in steroidogenesis. Aromatase is expressed and is active in the hippocampus, a brain region related to learning and memory. Dynamics of spines and spine synapses, including expression of presynaptic and postsynaptic proteins, are controlled by hippocampus-derived estradiol in female rodents, but not in male rodents. This also holds true for long-term potentiation. Inhibition of aromatase, either pharmacologically or by genetic approaches, results in a decrease in synapse density and synaptic potentiation in female animals and in neonatal hippocampal cultures that originate from females. The consistency of the findings in rodents and in perinatal primary hippocampal cultures points to sex-specific differentiation processes during embryonic development, which underlie sex-dependent differences in neurosteroid action in the hippocampus.
Who Are You and What Do You Know?
Authors: Sheppard Paul A. S. , Kuun Talya , Paletta Pietro , Choleris Elena
Published: February 2020

This chapter examines both the classical (genomic, long-term) and rapid (nongenomic) effects of estrogens on social recognition and social learning with regards to behavior and neurobiology. The chapter discusses how estrogens regulate an animal’s ability to recognize a previously encountered conspecific (social recognition) and how estrogens regulate an animal’s ability to acquire socially transmitted information from a conspecific (social learning). It reviews the different brain regions and estrogen receptors involved in these skills. Furthermore, it discusses mechanisms that may drive estrogens’ effects on these behaviors, such as via the oxytocin system or via cell signaling pathways.
Hormone Therapy in Postmenopausal Women
Authors: Driscoll Ira , Rapp Stephen R. , Johnson Karen C. , Espeland Mark A.
Published: February 2020

Before 2002, hormone therapy (HT) was commonly prescribed to restore naturally diminishing hormonal levels during and after menopause. HT was also thought to prevent many health conditions faced by menopausal women, including osteoporosis, heart disease, cancer, and dementia. Support for these claims came primarily from epidemiological studies and basic research suggesting biological plausibility. Women now live a third of their life beyond ovarian function cessation. Given that cognitive impairment and dementia increase with age, increasing life expectancy may result in greater public health consequences. This chapter reviews the potential risks and benefits of HT, with a focus on cognitive function. It also discusses the implications of menopausal HT on cognitive impairment and dementia prevention, diagnosis, and treatment for aging women.
Estrogenic Regulation of Neuroprotection and Inflammation in Ischemic Stroke and Aging
Authors: Sohrabji Farida , Bake Shameena , Selvamani Amutha
Published: February 2020

Stroke is the fifth leading cause of mortality and the major cause of long-term disability in the United States. Epidemiological studies report sex differences in ischemic stroke occurrence, mortality and functional recovery. In younger demographics, the overall incidence of stroke is higher in men than younger women, but in the elderly population, stroke rates are higher in older women compared to age-matched men, indicating an interaction of age and sex as important modifiers of disease. The increased risk for stroke in older women is attributed to loss of ovarian hormones, principally estrogens. However, estrogen/estradiol therapy is not always neuroprotective for stroke, especially in aging populations. Age-related changes in central and peripheral immune cells and the blood–brain barrier may play a crucial role in modifying stroke outcomes and the effects of estrogens. This chapter discusses the role of estrogens as a stroke protectant in younger females in contrast to its anomalous effects in the aging brain. Furthermore, the chapter describes age-related changes in support cells in the brain and in the periphery and evaluates the evidence that age-associated inflammation underlies the switch in estrogens neuroprotective action in young females to its neurotoxic effects in older females.