bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Embodied Burning, E-Waste Epidemiology, and Toxic Postcolonial Corporality
Authors: Little Peter C.
Published: November 2021

This chapter introduces the ways in which e-pyropolitics are embodied by exploring the illness narratives and bodily distress experiences of several copper burners. The author draws on ethnographic narratives to explore how Agbogbloshie workers narrate, understand, and refer to their own bodily distress to make sense of the toxic exposures and environmental health risks they face. In addition to exploring how toxic embodiment and experience break down or reconfigure demarcations of body and environment, the author highlights the ways in which toxicity and corporality become the site of laudable environmental health risk mitigation efforts that ironically fail to transform or reduce toxic corporality in an enduring postcolonial context. In this way, the author explores how a solutions-based intervention in Agbogbloshie overlooks the complexity and diversity of eco-corporeal relations in a tech metal extraction zone where bodies, toxins, and economies intersect.
Visualizing Agbogbloshie and Re-envisioning E-Waste Anthropology
Authors: Little Peter C.
Published: November 2021

Chapter 5 engages a critical discussion of the visual economy of e-waste ruination in Agbogbloshie. It explores how, through ethnographic research in general and participatory photography in particular, images make meaning and shape e-waste imaginations. Circulating e-waste images of Agbogbloshie, the author argues, expose the power and utility of e-pyropolitical imagery to make, tell, and even distort and mystify life in Ghana’s e-wasteland. The chapter interrogates the e-pyropolitical gaze conditioning how digital rubble and toxic colonialism are seen. Countering the e-waste “crisis of representation” in Agbogbloshie, the author considers the possible role of participatory photography as an alternative technique of e-waste visualization, in addition to considering the ways in which these worker-based forms of witnessing e-waste can help justify and provide a methodological grounding for the very decolonization of e-waste studies in Ghana in particular.
Looming Uncertainties of Neoliberal Techno-optimism
Authors: Little Peter C.
Published: November 2021

This chapter engages the looming politics of uncertainty and optimism surrounding Ghana’s e-waste management and infrastructural future. Beyond a discardscape of toxic risk, Agbogbloshie can also be understood as an intervention environment in the urban margins where uncertainty and neoliberal techno-optimism thrive. The ethnographic findings explored expose how efforts to address e-waste “crisis” in Agbogbloshie are conditioned by sociotechnical renderings of pollution control, risk mitigation, and e-waste economization efforts that tend to perpetuate green developmentalist agendas, projects, and discourses of hope centered on cleaning up Agbogbloshie. As explored in this chapter, other, more radical, perspectives, ways of knowing, and methods of intervention might be needed to address Ghana’s e-waste challenges, especially environmental health interventions and e-waste policies directly informed by emerging “just transition” and decolonization debates.
Bach the Humorist
Authors: Yearsley David
Published: November 2021

From chortling gags heard in his church music, to the off-beat physical humor enlivening his first published keyboard music, to the jesting chutzpah of his Brandenburg Concertos, Bach’s wittiest creations display the composer/performer’s irreverence for expectation and reflect his musical—and social—daring. While no composer’s image is sterner than that of Johann Sebastian Bach, his early admirers painted a more varied picture of the composer than did later commentators driven by the imperatives of Art and the rigors of unsmiling scholarship. Convivial, dramatic, domestic, and courtly contexts could spark Bach to indulge in droll escapades and jokes, but even beyond such occasions, the prankster lurks in the transgressions of genius.
Theoretical Foundations: Reflexive Governance, EU Enlargement Process, and Non-Discrimination
Authors: Lantschner Emma
Published: November 2021

Chapter 2 reviews explanatory models of rule adoption of Europeanization, policy transfer, and diffusion literature, and the conditions they identify for a successful transfer of norms and ideas. It argues that the external incentives model might best explain the likelihood of rule adoption but if the ultimate goal is that rules are applied and enforced, learning-based approaches have to be strengthened in the enlargement process. Different approaches to reflexive governance, from collaborative-relational to experimentalist, pragmatist, and genetic approaches, all focusing in different ways on the conditions required for a learning process to be successful, are presented claiming that they offer ideas that merit closer study to establish their potential in improving the performance in the EU enlargement process and beyond. The hypothesis is that reflexive governance is well suited to improve compliance and reduce likelihood of backsliding as it captures all the actors involved in framework regulation as is the case of the transposition of binding directives. To test the plausibility of the hypothesis, a case study on Croatia with a focus on the equality acquis is carried out by means of process tracing. This showed that while the argument could be partly confirmed, there is also a need for more consistent and transparent monitoring, which could be achieved by the use of indicators. Furthermore, pooling of results and the drawing of conclusions from such results, which is decisive for the success of a reflexive governance system, is given too little attention. The subsequent chapters thus set out to make a contribution to these identified lacunae.
Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Discrimination
Authors: Lantschner Emma
Published: November 2021

Any attempt to address discrimination through litigation must be combined with efforts to prevent discrimination from happening in the first place and promoting equality. Articles 5, 10–13 RED and Articles 7, 12–14 EED are key here. Chapter 6 looks at the role played in this context by state authorities, Equality Bodies, and civil society organizations. As well as the possibility of taking positive action, state authorities have an obligation to disseminate information and raise awareness about legal rights and existing redress mechanisms. Research shows that awareness-raising activities are superficial, insufficient, and are not considered to be high priority by the Member States. This is an unacceptable situation in light of the low level of awareness in particular of support structures in place in the different countries. The task is sometimes (by law or in practice) delegated to Equality Bodies, which also have to fulfil an advisory role to the government. In countries with a predominantly tribunal-type Equality Body, these bodies, faced with financial constraints, tend to prioritize their decision-making function. When it comes to the dialogue with civil society organizations, a state obligation under the Directives having the purpose of increasing the effectiveness of national policies and awareness raising, the research has shown that the opportunities for NGOs to engage in a constructive dialogue with state authorities and to be meaningfully involved in law and policy making are shrinking. The chapter closes with indicators to measure the level of implementation of the respective provisions of the Directives.
Introduction to Quantitative Ecology
Authors: Essington Timothy E.
Published: November 2021

Modern practice of ecology, conservation, and resource management demands unprecedented levels of quantitative proficiency in mathematical modeling and statistics. This text provides foundational training in the concepts and methods of mathematical and statistical modeling used in ecology, for readers with all levels of quantitative proficiency and confidence. The first chapter presents a generalized approach to develop ecological models and introduces the “describe, explain, and interpret” framework for linking the model world to the real world. Detailed treatment of population models illustrates the myriad ways in which one can develop a model, shows how modeling choices are informed by the ecological question at hand, and emphasizes the epistemology of quantitative techniques. The second part of the book illustrates how to estimate parameters of models from data, and how to use mathematical models combined with statistics to test hypotheses. The third part of the book is devoted to an in-depth development of technical skills to implement models in two common platforms: spreadsheets and the R programming language. The book concludes by demonstrating a quantitative approach to addressing a question that spans density-dependent versus density-independent population models, fitting models to data, evaluating the strength for density dependence using model selection, and evaluating the types of dynamic behaviors that the population might exhibit.
Why Do We Model?
Authors: Essington Timothy E.
Published: November 2021

The chapter “Why Do We Model?” addresses the question of why it is important to use models. It is not possible to represent all of reality with a series of mathematical or statistical expressions. Luckily, modelers do not intend to do this. Rather, modelers simplify reality on purpose, so that they can better understand it. However, models must be faithful to reality. In addition, they must be purposeful, that is, they must guide experience in very specific ways. This chapter covers the epistemological basis of ecological models, introduces the core concept of “describe, explain, and interpret” as the core steps of learning from models, and then walks the reader through the process of model development.
Introduction to Population Models
Authors: Essington Timothy E.
Published: November 2021

The chapter “Introduction to Population Models” introduces unstructured population models and shows how model decisions can change model behavior, the different ways that feedbacks can be represented, and how one evaluates the consequences of those feedbacks. The goal here is to show how modeling a single entity, population density, can be done in many different ways, depending on the purpose of the model. Understanding the dynamics of populations remains one of the fundamental goals of ecology. Not surprisingly, many models have contributed to the theory of population dynamics and regulation. The models vary considerably in terms of depth, breadth, intended uses (e.g. prediction vs. generality), and structure. This chapter will largely focus on the behavior of simple models, to see how intrinsic factors can dictate variability in population size. Density-independent and density-dependent models are covered, as well as methods used to understand model behaviors.
Stochastic Population Models
Authors: Essington Timothy E.
Published: November 2021

The chapter “Stochastic Population Models” introduces the concept of stochasticity, why it is sometimes incorporated into models, the consequences of stochasticity for population models, and how these types of models are used to evaluate extinction risk. Ecological systems are (seemingly) governed by randomness, or “stochasticity.” A stochastic model is one that explicitly includes randomness in the prediction of state variable dynamics. Because these models have a random component, each model run will be unique and will rarely look like a deterministic simulation. In this chapter, simple unstructured and density-dependent models are presented to show core concepts, and extensions to structured and density-dependent models are given.
Bayesian Statistics
Authors: Essington Timothy E.
Published: November 2021

The chapter “Bayesian Statistics” gives a brief overview of the Bayesian approach to statistical analysis. It starts off by examining the difference between frequentist statistics and Bayesian statistics. Next, it introduces Bayes’ theorem and explains how the theorem is used in statistics and model selection, with the prosecutor’s fallacy given as a practice example. The chapter then goes on to discuss priors and Bayesian parameter estimation. It concludes with some final thoughts on Bayesian approaches. The chapter does not answer the question “Should ecologists become Bayesian?” However, to the extent that alternative models can be posed as alternative values of parameters, Bayesian parameter estimation can help assign probabilities to those hypotheses.
Mathematics Refresher
Authors: Essington Timothy E.
Published: November 2021

The chapter “Mathematics Refresher” provides a brief reminder of operations with logarithms, matrices, and calculus, for student reference. It starts off by reviewing the differences between regular logarithms and natural logarithms and provides some examples of common operations with logarithms. It then introduces derivatives and integrals (although it is never necessary to compute an integral in this book, it is still useful to know what an integral is) and explains the sum rule, the product rule, the quotient rule, and the chain rule. Next, it provides a brief overview of matrices and matrix operations, including matrix dimensions, and addition and multiplication of matrices. It concludes with a discussion of the identity matrix.
Skills for Dynamic Models
Authors: Essington Timothy E.
Published: November 2021

The chapter “Skills for Dynamic Models” provides worked examples of the dynamic models presented in Part 1, both in spreadsheets and in R. It also covers some of the mathematical steps used in model analysis. In most cases, instructions are given for both spreadsheets and R. However, when some activities are far easier to do in a programming environment than in spreadsheets, only the instructions for R are shown. The chapter starts out by discussing the skills needed for structured population models, including setting up age structure and creating cobweb plots. Next, it reviews the skills needed for multivariable models, including calculating isoclines and Jacobian matrices. Finally, it introduces the concept of Monte Carlo methods and provides guidance on how to implement them.
Putting It Together: Fitting a Dynamic Model
Authors: Essington Timothy E.
Published: November 2021

The chapter “Putting It Together: Fitting a Dynamic Model” provides a synthesis of the material presented in the book, by presenting a worked example that embraces concepts of density dependence, complex model dynamics, parameter estimation, and model selection using the Akaike information criterion. The example chosen is the recovery of gray wolf (Canis lupus) population in Washington State since 2008. The chapter begins by explaining how to fit an observation error model. Next, it examines how to fit a process error model. It then discusses parameter estimates and model selection. The chapter concludes with discussion of how to determine whether the population given as an example exhibits complex population dynamics.
Introduction
Authors: Anderson Peter
Published: November 2021

The Introduction explains the key features of the age of mass child removal and the central role of the juvenile courts. It examines how the historiography has overlooked the transnational origins of the courts and their role in child removal. The introduction further shows how the neglected history of the courts in Spain allows scholars to challenge the existing consensus of Francoist child-removal practice. The courts carried out the vast majority of removals and owe their origins to child-welfare reformers rather than Francoist psychiatrists such as Antonio Vallejo-Nágera. The courts also carried out removals in everyday life and this focus makes it possible to overcome the privileging of removals from ‘political’ families. The Introduction further brings into question the view that the Francoist removals were imposed upon passive victims and parents who permanently lost contact with their children and the ability to bring them up according to their own beliefs.
Removing Children
Authors: Anderson Peter
Published: November 2021

This chapter traces the rising belief that the state could provide superior guardianship to abusive parents and that it should remove children from the company of dangerous adults. The prison-reform movement helped lead the way by proposing the removal of children from the company of corrupting adults and placing them in reformatories. These reformatories were to replace abuse and corruption with love and redemption and were increasingly organized along the lines of surrogate, and improved, families. Reformers across the world and in Spain also started to encourage visitors to the poor to intervene in family life and separate children from dangerous parents and adults. Social Catholics determined to move beyond charity work and to solve social problems became particularly attracted to this family visiting work. This work also offered Catholic women a chance to stake a claim for a public role in the defence of children and motherhood.
Hardening Francoist Attitudes towards Political Opponents
Authors: Anderson Peter
Published: November 2021

During the Spanish Civil War, a bitter debate over which side better protected or represented a profound threat to children led to harsher attitudes towards opponents and campaigns to ‘rescue’ children from the clutches of those presented as a danger. Government supporters charged that Francoists allowed children to witness executions behind the lines, while they protected youngsters from the criminal bombardment of civilians behind the lines. For their part, Francoists claimed that only they could protect youngsters from the barbarians on the left. Increasingly, Francoists hoped to win back the ‘souls’ of children ‘corrupted’ by ‘Reds’. The Francoists campaigned strongly for children evacuated overseas or to other parts of Spain to be returned from ‘Reds’ and to be re-educated as ‘Spaniards’. Catholics played an especially important role in these campaigns and in re-education initiatives, and this outlook would become part and parcel of the thinking of juvenile-court staff.
Epilogue
Authors: Mitchell Lee Clark
Published: November 2021

This closing statement addresses the conventionality of all genres, and their conservative social appeal. That disposition explains the violence that resolves personal and social disruptions. Instead of delays of the law, noir narratives satisfy our need for immediate satisfaction, and do so with minimum fuss and maximum delight in characters who rarely let us forget their thin presentations and diversionary attitudes.
Defending an Ability Analysis of Control
Authors: Whittle Ann
Published: November 2021

In this chapter, a defence of the ability analysis of control proposed in chapter six is offered. The chapter begins by outlining some advantages of the analysis; briefly, not only does it explain the deep connection that appears to exist between freedom, moral responsibility, and the ability to do otherwise, it captures our judgements regarding moral responsibility in a wide range of tricky cases. The chapter then examines how to understand the ‘ceteris paribus’ clause in the ability analysis of control, and defends the proposed asymmetry between praise and blameworthy actions. By so doing, the chapter also ties the previous discussion of control more overtly to issues regarding moral responsibility.
The Problem of Unfairness
Authors: Whittle Ann
Published: November 2021

In this chapter, a significant objection to contextualist theories of moral responsibility is examined, ‘the problem of unfairness’. After outlining the problem, reasons are offered to support the claim that moving to an invariant analysis of moral responsibility is unwarranted. It is argued that there is good reason, independent of contextualism, to divorce the concept of moral responsibility from that of blame, when the latter is construed as entailing harmful treatment of others. Even if this is denied, however, inter-agential judgements of moral responsibility can still be rendered fair. Consequently, a contextualist theory of moral responsibility can be retained whilst avoiding the problem of unfairness. This undercuts a significant motivation for endorsing an amelioration of our concept of moral responsibility, in either the direction of invariant compatibilism or that of invariant incompatibilism.
Jerome's Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles and the Architecture of Exegetical Authority
Authors: Cain Andrew
Published: November 2021

In the late fourth and early fifth centuries, during a fifty-year stretch sometimes dubbed a Pauline “renaissance” of the western church, six different authors produced over four dozen commentaries in Latin on Paul’s epistles. Among them was Jerome, who commented on four epistles (Galatians, Ephesians, Titus, Philemon) in 386 after recently having relocated to Bethlehem from Rome. His commentaries occupy a time-honored place in the centuries-long tradition of Latin-language commenting on Paul’s writings. They also constitute his first foray into the systematic exposition of whole biblical books (and his only experiment with Pauline interpretation on this scale), and so they provide precious insight into his intellectual development at a critical stage of his early career before he would go on to become the most prolific biblical scholar of Late Antiquity. This monograph provides the first book-length treatment of Jerome’s opus Paulinum in any language. Adopting a cross-disciplinary approach, Cain comprehensively analyzes the commentaries’ most salient aspects—from the inner workings of Jerome’s philological method and engagement with his Greek exegetical sources, to his recruitment of Paul as an anachronistic surrogate for his own theological and ascetic special interests. One of the overarching concerns of this book is to explore and to answer, from multiple vantage points, a question that was absolutely fundamental to Jerome in his fourth-century context: what are the sophisticated mechanisms by which he legitimized himself as a Pauline commentator, not only on his own terms but also vis-à-vis contemporary western commentators?
Keats Amid the Alien Corn
Authors: Everest Kelvin
Published: November 2021

This chapter begins, from a religious reference in the ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, to explore Keats’s experience of home and belonging. It develops a close reading of the Ode, by developing comparison with Yeats’s ‘Sailing to Byzantium’, and through discussion of related texts including works by Hazlitt, Malthus, and Burke. Keats’s own lack of Christian belief, and general absence of functional biblical reference in the poetry, is contrasted with his use of Anglican-derived imagery throughout the Odes. His unusual reference to the Book of Ruth in the Nightingale Ode is considered in light of the biographical reality of his restless short life, in which Keats enjoyed no settled personal home after childhood. These issues are related to the theme of immortality through the art of poetry.
Keats Meets Coleridge
Authors: Everest Kelvin
Published: November 2021

This chapter considers the impact on Keats of his only meeting with Coleridge in April 1819. Beginning with an analysis of Keats’s famous account of the meeting, the essay reviews its background in Keats’s medical training and in his prior knowledge of Coleridge’s work. The different life stages of the two writers are contrasted. There is discussion of the possible content of Coleridge’s conversation as recalled by Keats, particularly in the effect on Keats’s poetic ambition in the moment immediately preceding composition of the Odes. The ‘Ode to Psyche’ is characterized by a newly suggestive consciousness of philosophical concepts, including Coleridgean interest in the paradox of conscious reflection on the activity of thinking. A possible influence on the Ode by Biographia Literaria is proposed.
Shelley and his Contemporaries
Authors: Everest Kelvin
Published: November 2021

This chapter surveys the extent of Shelley’s fame and notoriety while he was alive. The period before his move to Italy in early 1818 was mainly isolated, but he was nevertheless known about in the privileged circles into which he was born—a landed aristocratic family, Eton, and Oxford. His eccentricity and strong views set him apart from his own class, but the extremity and free expression of his radicalism also alienated fellow radicals. In poetic terms he was astute in recognizing those contemporaries of lasting value. Specific attention is given to Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Thomas Moore. The years in Italy were also isolated except for the period of the ‘Pisan Circle’. Keats and Byron are an important presence in Shelley’s later work, rather than overt influences.
Shelley’s Doubles
Authors: Everest Kelvin
Published: November 2021

The contradictions of Shelley’s radical politics and his aristocratic birth and upbringing place him as a potential victim of the revolutionary change he envisages and wishes for. He embodies some of the qualities which his own social critique deplores. This imports a quasi-suicidal logic into his work, where his influence is felt to be most effective once emancipated from his living person and social identity. This contradiction is explored in analysis of passages from Prometheus Unbound, and then in a sustained reading of Julian and Maddalo, where the central figure of the ‘madman’ throws into relief the civilized, gentlemanly manners of the Shelley/Byron characters. The contrast between ‘civilized’ and ‘mad’ is represented not simply in thematic terms but as a contrast in poetic styles.
Sources for political conversations in Late Republican Rome
Authors: Rosillo-López Cristina
Published: November 2021

Chapter 2 considers Cicero’s letters, which are the main source of this book. These letters are exceptional since they were largely written shortly after conversations took place and, although they underwent several processes of selection throughout their transmission, they were not rewritten and are deprived of hindsight bias. Thus, they provide us with an insider’s perspective on conversations and politics, transmitting the political uncertainty of the period. This contrasts with how later historians, from Nicolaus of Damascus onwards, depicted political conversations during the Roman Republic, paying attention to other elements and markers, such as non-verbal gestures, instead of focusing (as Cicero did) on the impressions from conversations, feelings, and speculations about the future.
How to have conversations
Authors: Rosillo-López Cristina
Published: November 2021

Chapter 4 addresses the question of the social aspects of conversation. It studies how young Romans learnt the dynamics and workings of conversation and personal meetings during their tirocinium fori, and later by entering into a network of conversation. It discusses how this path could be different for young men from Italian towns and for the scions from the political aristocracy. The Roman practice of political conversation and meeting had customs and social expectations that had to be met and mastered; otherwise one would run the risk of social condemnation and political failure. Conversations, as we will see, were thus anchored in sociability: they could take place anywhere, but dinners constituted a habitual setting for them. This chapter will also study two other settings that could be related to political conversations: the senaculum and consilia.
The role of non-senatorial actors in conversations and meetings
Authors: Rosillo-López Cristina
Published: November 2021

Chapter 7 posits an important hypothesis for this book: senators could not reach everybody for many reasons, so they were surrounded by a wide spectrum of people, non-senatorial actors who intervened in conversations with several degrees of agency and thus played an important role in the transmission of information and, therefore, in politics. The chapter focuses mainly on two groups: freedmen and elite women; finally, it questions the role of courtesans within this system. Elite women did not intervene in politics exclusively in their own realm; instead, their role in conversations attests to their inclusion within the broader network of conversations and the circulation of information that sustained Roman politics. Trusted liberti also played a relevant role. Even those actors with a lower degree of agency were not mere mouthpieces who parroted words that they had been taught. These actors played a limited role in institutional politics. However, they were a sine quibus non within the sphere of extra-institutional politics.
The Senate from an extra-institutional point of view
Authors: Rosillo-López Cristina
Published: November 2021

Chapter 8 studies how conversations and meetings impacted political deliberation and deal-making in the Senate, thus fusing extra-institutional and institutional politics. How did senators look for support and probe each other regarding specific issues? How did preparatory conversations work? It is a fact of life, in ancient Rome as nowadays, that the written text of a decision does not fully reflect the previous groundwork, negotiations, and discussions that led to it. The study of Atticus allows us to consider the role and influence of non-senatorial actors. The aim of this chapter is not to claim that a certain measure was enacted because A and B had a conversation during a dinner or because someone secured the support of C and D during a quick chat in the Forum or in a corner of the Senate house (although such actions are described). Going beyond the micro-scale and specific instances, the interest of this study is to analyse how these actions illuminate our understanding of how the Roman political system worked in practice. This chapterargues that the role of conversations and meetings did not mean that all was decided beforehand; a senator could gather support for a draft of a law or a policy through previous conversations, but he still had to defend it and fight for it in public institutions (the Senate, contiones, and assemblies), without always being able to guarantee success beforehand.
Possessing Reasons
Authors: Whiting Daniel
Published: November 2021

To possess a fact as a reason is to be able to act in light of it. This chapter asks what it is to possess a reason so understood. First, it defends the idea that to possess a fact as a reason a person must know it. Second, it shows that knowledge of a fact that is a reason is not enough to possess it. In addition, its status as a reason must in some sense be apparent to the person. This chapter develops the modal account of reasons in a way that captures this thought. What makes a fact a reason is that there is correlation between it and some way in which it is right to act in nearby metaphysically possible worlds. A person does not possess it unless that correlation also holds in nearby epistemically possible worlds. The chapter unpacks and defends this idea.
Liberal Democracy and Its Discontent
Authors: Mény Yves
Published: November 2021

There is unanimous agreement about the growing discontent vis-à-vis liberal democracy. Despite a considerable diversity of its manifestations, the disenchantment with democracy, its institutions as well as its policies is universal. The disease has contaminated every democratic system: those recently set up as well as consolidated democracies such as the UK and USA; rich countries as well as less affluent ones; social-democratic regimes as well as neoliberal ones; federal as well as centralized states. This new trend is well consolidated. Thirty years after the fall of the Soviet regimes, the naïve belief that there was no alternative to liberal democracy has faded away. This chapter argues that the crisis is not a mere effect of the post-2008 financial collapse but rather a consequence of three processes. First is the incremental but deep transformation of what we call democracy over the past 50 years. We have a single word (democracy) to label systems which have gone through a profound transformation and which, at the end, do not fit with democracy’s ideals, hopes, and expectations. The second process is the shaking of the very foundations of the past equilibrium based on a compromise between two conflicting values: the power of the people, on one hand, and the liberal limitations on the people’s capacity to act, decide, and control, on the other. The new equilibrium reached after many years of slow evolution is characterized by a serious imbalance between the popular input and the checks and balances, contributing to the frustration of those who are, in theory, the ‘sovereign’. Third is the increasing discrepancy between democratic systems and institutions that have developed exclusively within the Westphalian nation-state, and policies that are more and more framed by or dependent upon global actors. Finally, the failure of the European Union to tackle the so-called ‘democratic deficit’ has disillusioned those who had dreamed of reconciling democratic processes and policies with supranational institutions, flows, and actors. The populist outburst in both its anarchic and authoritarian versions, while fuelling discontent, might become a mere ‘impasse’. There is, indeed, ‘only a single bed for two dreams’ and some new balance between the contradicting values of democracy and liberalism has to be established for the future.
The Quest for European Autonomy
Authors: Tocci Nathalie
Published: November 2021

In his In Defence of Europe, Loukas Tsoukalis posits that globalization and European integration are two sides of the same coin. Both are premised on the gains in peace and prosperity to be reaped by openness and interdependence. Hence, the twin crises of globalization and European integration are not merely closely intertwined; their fundamentally similar natures mean the latter has been unable to control the excesses of the former. Moreover, the European project has been undergirded by an international liberal order resting on US hegemony. As that order has started to crack, with the USA unable and unwilling to sustain the system that it was decisive in establishing, and other global powers challenging its core norms, the EU’s vulnerabilities are coming to the fore. For decades, the EU has pursued its internal and international policies insulated from geopolitical encroachments. Today, Europeans find themselves exposed to the vulnerabilities of asymmetric interdependence, lacking not the capabilities but rather the psychological predisposition and political willingness to act together. Appreciating this predicament, several European leaders have called for European sovereignty, power, and autonomy. Underpinning these slogans is the recognition that if Europeans are to stand up to Trump, Putin, and Xi, and manage the epochal challenges stemming from demography, climate change, and the digital age, they can only do so together. This chapter concludes by outlining what European sovereignty and autonomy may mean, notably in the economic, digital, and defence fields, and why meeting the challenge of autonomy is existential for the European project.
The Moral Habitat
Authors: Herman Barbara
Published: November 2021

The Moral Habitat is a book in three parts that begins with an investigation of three understudied imperfect duties which together offer some important and challenging insights about moral requirements and moral agency: that our duties only make sense as a system; that actions can be morally wrong to do and yet not be impermissible; and that there are motive-dependent duties. In Part Two, these insights are used to launch a substantial reinterpretation of Kant’s ethics as a system of duties, juridical and ethical, perfect and imperfect, that can incorporate what we learn from imperfect duties and do much more. The system of duties provides the structure for what I call a moral habitat: a made environment, created by and for free and equal persons living together. It is a dynamic system, with duties from the juridical and ethical spheres shaping and being affected by each other, each level further interpreting the system’s core anti-subordination value initiated in Kant’s account of innate right. The structure of an imperfect duty is exhibited in a detailed account of the duty of beneficence, including its latitude of application and demandingness. Part Three takes up some implications and applications of the moral habitat idea. Its topics range from the adjustments to the system that would come with recognizing a human right to housing to meta-ethical issues about objectivity and our responsibility for moral change. The upshot is a transformative, holistic agent- and institution-centered, account of Kantian morality.
Due Care
Authors: Herman Barbara
Published: November 2021

This chapter explores the imperfect duty of non-negligence or due care. It is a complex secondary duty that regulates the performance of primary duties. Its norms of attention and execution are responsive to a primary duty’s interpreted value. Due care often requires motivational capacities that track moral value across complex circumstances of action—a claim inconsistent with a dictum that duties cannot impose requirements that depend on motive. Middle Work 3 argues that the dictum depends on a rejectable view of motive, one modeled on a modular account of simple desires. The idea of a system motive is introduced as an affective organization that make an agent responsive to a region of value. This makes a moral motive an agential response to moral value and moral agency a motive-involved competence. We can then have a motive-involved duty without having a duty to have a motive.
A Dynamic System
Authors: Herman Barbara
Published: November 2021

Part Three of the book investigates the practical and theoretical consequences for the Kantian moral habitat of having as its moral structure a system of juridical and ethical duties principles that is dynamic, empirically responsive, and so subject to change. Although the moral theory is based in a priori principle, it requires a pragmatics. This is illustrated by arguments about public education, about state-supported elder care, and about the moral challenge of homelessness (discussed in detail in Chapter 10).
Game Data Science
Authors: El-Nasr Magy Seif , Canossa Alessandro , Nguyen Truong-Huy D. , Drachen Anders
Published: November 2021

This book is aimed at giving readers an introduction to the practical side of game data science and thus can be used a textbook for game analytics or game user research class or as a reference to self learners and enthusiasts. Game data science is a term that we use to denote a process composed of methods and techniques by which an analyst or a data scientist can make sense of data to allow decision makers in a game company to make informed decisions. This process involves: statistical analysis, visualization, abstraction of low-level data, machine learning and sequence data modeling. The book introduces different methods borrowing from different fields including human computer interaction, machine learning, and data science, focusing on methods and techniques used by both industry and researchers within the field of games. The book examples and case studies specifically focus on gameplay log data. The book takes a practical stance on the subject by discussing theoretical foundation, practical approaches, and delves deeply into the different techniques proposed and used through labs, examples, and comprehensive surveys of various case studies from both industry and academia. Topics range from simple approaches to more advanced ones. No prior knowledge is required. The book is developed to be self contained and can be used as a good way to introduce the reader to data science and how it is applied to the filed of games.
Song of the Earth
Authors: Ervin-Blankenheim Elisabeth
Published: November 2021

This book is a scientific, historical, and philosophical narrative for general readers that explores the relationship between humans and the Earth and the geologic principles of time, plate tectonics, and change in life forms. Illustrated with striking historical maps, figures, and pictures, this comprehensive work can be read as a thrilling biography of the Earth itself, including narrative sections on the lives of pioneering geologists; the reality and sublimity of geologic time; the birth, destruction, and rebirth of the planet and its atmosphere over repeated cycles spanning some 4-plus billion years; the science underlying both mountain building and oceanic evolution; the influence of climate change and species extinction on the development of the Earth; and the interplay between not only how Earth has influenced life but how life, in turn, has distinctly shaped our planet.
Geologic Time
Authors: Ervin-Blankenheim Elisabeth
Published: November 2021

Geologists first unraveled the geologic time scale by relative age-dating, discussed in the last chapter. Once geologists sorted out the order of rock units, subsequent advances in methodologies, detailed in this chapter, by chronometric and numerical means based on radioisotopes, other atomic measures, and quantitative techniques, were employed to measure time. Many minerals and rocks have “clocks” within them that can be used to pin down the actual age of the particular geologic sample or the age of boundaries between formal units of the geologic time scale. This chapter explains how geologists decipher those clocks and determine the ages of rocks by numerical age-dating. The history of radioisotopes is tracked, starting with Ernest Rutherford and Pierre and Marie Curie. The modern geologic time scale is depicted and expanded upon, along with why it is essential for geologic maps and how the time scale can help with people-sized problems and challenges faced on the Earth.
Church Planting
Authors: Pitt Richard N.
Published: November 2021

Chapter 2 is intended to be a primer for laypeople on a number of basic dynamics of church planting. As this book is less about church planting than it is about church planters themselves, this chapter provides a brief introduction to the contemporary history of church planting as a phenomenon. Drawing primarily on secondary sources, the chapter will give context to the issues raised in the rest of the book. Some of the basics of church planting—why denominations do it, forms church planting takes, the various customer bases for new congregations, and how new church plant locations and names are chosen—are described as well.
“Pack Up Your Office and Go”
Authors: Pitt Richard N.
Published: November 2021

This chapter describes four catalysts for planting new congregations that seem driven more by terrestrial chance and happenstance than celestial directives. The first of these, difficulties on the job market, not only is a catalyst for the decision to start a new congregation but is claimed as the God-influenced rationale for doing so. The second social catalyst, congregational conflicts and division, is a common dynamic of established congregations that has a common but unexamined outcome: the birth of a new church. In the third social catalyst for church planting, being “pushed out of the nest,” leaders of parent congregations encourage their associate ministers to plant a new church. The final phenomenon, the evolution of a parachurch ministry, is the most serendipitous catalyst for finding oneself in a founding pastorate. These entrepreneurs set out to create parachurch organizations, usually for Bible studies, with no interest at all in starting a formal church.
But, What Actually Happens When We Engage with “Art”?
Authors: Pelowski Matthew , Leder Helmut
Published: November 2021

In this chapter, the authors report on how they joined in the exciting project to lay the theoretical foundations describing aesthetic experiences with artwork. Their 2017 paper was a culmination of meetings, later intense collaboration in Vienna’s empirical aesthetic research group, and the convergence of the models that the authors had independently developed in the past. The joint model described here was a major development that included a pre-state incorporating schemas (working maps of the world, expectations, beliefs, cued behaviors, actions, meanings, responses, and a general idea of self) that one might bring to an art encounter and also addressed the implications of different outcomes from all engagements, with especially visual media. The authors’ general aim was to answer what, broadly speaking, could happen when individuals encounter any design or visual art.
The Cognitive Neuroscience of Aesthetic Experience
Authors: Nadal Marcos , Pearce Marcus
Published: November 2021

In the paper discussed in this chapter, the authors aimed to develop a consensus conceptual framework for neuroaesthetics. They wanted to present a joint vision of what they believed neuroaesthetics was about. The authors aspired to outline the fields’ aims and scope in a way that would accommodate most researchers, to answer some of the criticisms that had been leveled at the field, and to show how much the field could contribute to scientific disciplines, like psychology and neuroscience, and to humanist disciplines, like philosophy, the arts, and anthropology. One of the main points made was the importance of distinguishing between a cognitive neuroscience of aesthetics concerned with the biological mechanisms involved in aesthetic experience of all sorts of domains (not just art) and a cognitive neuroscience of art, which investigates the biological mechanisms involved in creating and appreciating art (not just aesthetically).
Art Is Its Own Reward
Authors: Lacey Simon , Sathian K.
Published: November 2021

The “art infusion effect” suggests that people evaluate products more positively when they are associated with art images than non-art images. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging during viewing of art and non-art images matched for content, the authors investigated whether artistic status alone could activate the reward circuit. Relative to non-art images, art images indeed activated reward-related regions including the ventral striatum. This activity was uncorrelated with response times, ratings of familiarity, or aesthetic preference for art images, suggesting that these variables were unrelated to the art-selective activations. Effective connectivity analyses showed that the ventral striatum was driven by visual cortical regions when viewing art images but not non-art images and was not driven by regions that correlated with aesthetic preference for either art or non-art images. These findings suggest that visual art involves activation of reward circuitry based on artistic status alone and independently of its aesthetic value.
Toward a Computational Understanding of Neuroaesthetics
Authors: Iigaya Kiyohito , O’Doherty John P.
Published: November 2021

Among the most challenging questions in the field of neuroaesthetics concerns how a piece of art comes to be liked in the first place. That is, how can the brain rapidly process a stimulus to form an aesthetic judgment even for stimuli never before encountered? In the article under discussion in this chapter, by leveraging computational methods in combination with behavioral and neuroimaging experiments the authors show that the brain does this by breaking a visual stimulus down into underlying features or attributes. These features are shared across objects, and weights over these features are integrated over to produce aesthetic judgments. This process is structured hierarchically in which elementary statistical properties of an image are combined to generate higher level features which in turn yield aesthetic value. Neuroimaging supports the implementation of this hierarchical integration along a gradient from early to higher order visual cortex extending into association cortex and ultimately converging in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex.