bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Accretion onto a Black Hole
Authors: Bailyn Charles D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores the ways that accretion onto a black hole produces energy and radiation. As material falls into a gravitational potential well, energy is transformed from gravitational potential energy into other forms of energy, so that total energy is conserved. Observing such accretion energy is one of the primary ways that astrophysicists pinpoint the locations of potential black holes. The spectrum and intensity of this radiation is governed by the geometry of the gas flow, the mass infall rate, and the mass of the accretor. The simplest flow geometry is that of a stationary object accreting mass equally from all directions. Such spherically symmetric accretion is referred to as Bondi-Hoyle accretion. However, accretion flows onto black holes are not thought to be spherically symmetric—the infall is much more frequently in the form of a flattened disk.
Formation and Evolution of Black Holes
Authors: Bailyn Charles D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the formation and evolution of black holes. Stellar-mass black holes are generally understood to be created in supernova explosions that mark the end of the life of a massive star. However, many supernovae create neutron stars rather than black holes, and the precise conditions under which black holes form are still not fully understood. If the black hole is to be detected, further events are required, such as the formation of a binary star system of a kind that can be observed, and in which the existence of a black hole can be demonstrated. In contrast with stellar-mass black hole formation, there is no obvious route to the creation of a supermassive black hole directly from collapsing interstellar gas. Most discussions of the origin and evolution of supermassive black holes posit an initial “seed” black hole of relatively low mass, which then grows over time.
Black Hole Exotica
Authors: Bailyn Charles D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores some of the predicted effects of black holes on people's lives and the possibility that they might someday be explored in fact as well as in fiction. These predicted effects include the Hawking radiation, wormholes, and multiverses. The Hawking radiation—in which the interaction between quantum mechanics and relativity has been explored with some success—is a process through which black holes are expected to emit energy and ultimately evaporate. Meanwhile, one of the most enticing possible effects associated with black holes is that they might form wormholes through which widely separated parts of the Universe can be closely connected. Lastly, one final suggestion that might be contemplated is that a separate universe might exist inside the event horizon of a black hole. This is one version of the multiverse concept, in which a variety of universes with a variety of characteristics exist.
Infertile Subjectivities
Authors: Inhorn Marcia C.
Published: November 2017

This chapter begins with an analysis of Ziad's story, who suffers from a very serious case of male infertility. Because male infertility is not a visible medical condition, most men have no idea that they are infertile until they attempt to impregnate their wives. Moreover, Ziad assumes that his infertility problem is unique. He knows no other infertile men and so does not realize the high prevalence of this condition across the Middle Eastern region. Without sophisticated DNA analysis, the causes of most cases of male infertility remain strictly speculative. This conflation of male infertility with problems of virility (i.e., sexual potency) is common. Ziad's story is interesting in that it conveys a full range of masculine responses to male infertility, including shifts in subjectivity over the course of a man's lifetime.
Introduction
Authors: Nakhimovsky Isaac
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's focus, namely Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814), whose investigation of the idea of perpetual peace culminated in his Der geschlossene Handelsstaat, or The Closed Commercial State (1800). Fichte was a sometime disciple and self-appointed successor of Kant, and is widely regarded as a major philosopher in his own right, but much of his political thought has yet to receive the sustained attention it deserves. His Closed Commercial State was a pivotal development of Kant's model of perpetual peace. This book shows how Fichte redefined the political economy of the Kantian ideal and extended it into a strategic analysis of the prospects for pacifying modern Europe. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Conclusion
Authors: Nakhimovsky Isaac
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the broader implications of Fichte's work. Fichte's The Closed Commercial State was an intensive investigation into the prospects of Europe's transformation into the kind of international federation envisioned by Kant. His analysis was not the product of an alien ideology but represented a notable attempt to join the constitutionalism of Rousseau, Sieyès, and Kant to widespread and fairly mainstream eighteenth-century views of commerce, finance, and the European states system. Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation, delivered in occupied Berlin in the winter of 1808–9, have achieved much greater notoriety than The Closed Commercial State as a supposed transmission of ancien régime power politics into the age of nationalism. In fact, they represent a further effort to extend Fichte's constitutional theory into a strategic response to immensely constricting historical circumstances.
From Voyagers to Martyrs
Authors: Alexander Amir
Published: November 2017

This chapter traces the history of mathematics, from the late sixteenth century to the present, through the lens of mathematical stories. The period is divided into three main epochs and a possible fourth, each characterized by a different dominant mathematical story, which in turn is related to a different dominant mathematical style. Each period reveals one or several dominant narratives that enjoyed wide currency not only among the broader population but also among practicing mathematicians. The chapter examines the transition of mathematics from the older narratives, spanning the Enlightenment and the exploration mathematics periods, to the time of tragic mathematical heroes such as Évariste Galois and Georg Cantor.
Mathematics and Narrative
Authors: Teissier Bernard
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines why a story or proof is interesting by considering the relation between mathematics and narrative, with particular emphasis on clues. It first presents an early view of the “cognitive meaning” that may shed some light on the connection between mathematics and narrative. It then discusses the cognitive interpretation of mathematical objects, arguing that the meaning of the mathematical line is the protomathematical object obtained by identification of the visual line and the vestibular line. It also contends that what makes the narration or the mathematics interesting is the vivacity of the dialogue and of the meaning it evokes, as well as its coherence as a construction.
Formal Models in Narrative Analysis
Authors: Herman David
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers formal models of narrative and the nature of the theory of narrative. After discussing the diachronic and synchronic approaches to investigating the role of formal models in narrative analysis, the chapter looks at those ideas about models and modeling as a kind of bridge between humanistic and technoscientific discourse. It then evaluates descriptive and functional classifications of models, along with a range of perspectives on mathematical models and modeling. It also presents a case study in metanarratology, with a particular focus on modeling practices that have been brought to bear on focalization. It also analyzes some instances of the confluence of the formal study of narrative and mathematics, including the use of permutation groups, as well as the synergy between mathematically based theories of structural linguistics and early work on story grammars.
Egypt and Mesopotamia
Authors: Katz Victor J. , Parshall Karen Hunger
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores the beginnings of algebra in Egypt and Mesopotamia. They are the earliest civilizations to have left written mathematical records, and they date back thousands of years. From both, we have original documents detailing mathematical calculations and mathematical problems, mostly designed to further the administration of the countries. Both also fostered scribes of a mathematical bent who carried out mathematical ideas well beyond the immediate necessity of solving a given problem. If mathematics was thus similarly institutionalized in Egypt and Mesopotamia, it nevertheless took on dramatically different forms, being written in entirely distinct ways in the two different regions. This key difference aside, the beginnings of algebra are evident in the solutions of problems that have come down to us from scribes active in both of these ancient civilizations.
Algebraic Thought in Medieval India
Authors: Katz Victor J. , Parshall Karen Hunger
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores medieval Indian algebraic thought in the works of Āryabhạ‎ta, author of the astronomical treatise Āryabhạ‎tīya (ca. 500 CE), and Brahmagupta, who wrote the Brāhma-sphụ‎ta-siddhānta (ca. 628 CE), before moving on to consider the contributions of later Indian mathematicians to such topics as solving determinate and indeterminate equations, including the so-called Pell equation Dx² + 1 = y², where D, x, and y are positive integers. It closes with a look at some of the more advanced algebraic topics in the work of the Kerala school, which began in the fourteenth century in the south of India and lasted for over two hundred years.
Transmission, Transplantation, and Diffusion in the Latin West
Authors: Katz Victor J. , Parshall Karen Hunger
Published: November 2017

This chapter follows the growth and development of the intellectual culture in the West after a period of decline roughly concurrent to that of the decline of the Roman Empire. It explores the intellectual reawakening of the Western world following the efforts of the clergyman Gerbert of Aurillac, who transmitted classical and Islamic learning and strove—through his innovative use of the abacus, celestial spheres, and armillary spheres of his own fabrication—to raise the level of learning of the mathematical sciences in the Latin West. Among his students was a generation of Catholic scholars who went on themselves to establish or to teach at cathedral schools and to influence educational reforms in royal courts throughout western Europe.
From Analytic Geometry to the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra
Authors: Katz Victor J. , Parshall Karen Hunger
Published: November 2017

This chapter follows up on the mathematical advances made during the sixteenth century, especially in the work of François Viète as he aspired to transform his algebra to realize his aim to “solve every problem.” Though Viète's algebra was not up to the task, two of his followers—Thomas Harriot and Pierre de Fermat—helped to transform that algebra into the problem-solving tool he had envisioned, and René Descartes would later recognize the significance of this work and begin circulating these ideas, thus jumpstarting the transformation of algebra, which this chapter explores through a number of noted intellectuals during the period.
A Global Crisis
Authors: Patel Kiran Klaus
Published: November 2017

This chapter sets the stage and interprets the Great Depression as a global event, as a time of testing for both democracy and capitalism. The Great Depression was not solely an American experience, even if the United States was one of its main origins and particularly hard-hit by its consequences. The slump had global repercussions, and it fundamentally changed the way that Americans and others were connected to and interacted with the wider world. While political reactions tended to separate and segregate, the suffering was shared across latitude and longitude. By 1933, it was still unclear whether the crisis would destroy or fundamentally transform capitalism along with the fabric of capitalist societies. In the wake of the Depression, this ambivalence reverted to economic nationalism, protectionism, and a rather parochial attitude.
In Search of New Beginnings
Authors: Patel Kiran Klaus
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the early New Deal years and explores the Roosevelt administration's initiatives while putting them in global context. The New Deal sought to relativize the culture of individualism; social control and the regulation of previously private matters were not foreign to it. Thus, eugenics were broadly compatible with New Deal ideals, and the increased New Deal funding to state agencies is a critical reason why sterilization figures went up in many states during the 1930s. However, eugenics was not a formative element of the New Deal. Roosevelt's agenda instead stood out for its focus on economic regulation. The New Deal aimed at improving individual morality and social behavior, but it did so mainly through the economic lens, whereas many other states also introduced programs directly aimed in this direction.
Into the Vast External Realm
Authors: Patel Kiran Klaus
Published: November 2017

This chapter concentrates on the multiple global connections that the New Deal created, redirected, or discontinued—and how the meaning of “global” changed thanks to these encounters during the 1930s. Early New Deal action largely concentrated on domestic intervention. Hence, solving the world's problems at the international level was not the main concern for the New Dealers. From a global perspective, such a narrow focus makes little sense, mainly for two reasons. For one, the New Dealers' dealings with the wider world and their domestic agenda interacted closely with one another. For another, inactivity is a form of politics, too. By and large, the Roosevelt administration preserved the status quo on some issues, deepened the course of insulation it inherited from the Republican era on others, and in a third group, aimed to create new links around the globe.
Redefining Boundaries
Authors: Patel Kiran Klaus
Published: November 2017

This chapter builds on the findings of Chapter 2 and examines the New Deal's domestic initiatives in a global context during the second half of the 1930s. The years 1933 and 1935 did not stand for different philosophies or economic models. More than new policies or programs, it was the domestic and international context that was different two years into the New Deal, and the term “security” in particular took on a new meaning. In the United States, the political debates were much more entrenched in 1935 than in 1933, when the advocates of laissez-faire capitalism had been shell-shocked by the Great Slump. Internationally, things were just as bad, given the triumphs of fascism and communism in various regions of the world. The threat emanating from political and military developments in other parts of the world impacted the domestic agenda much more than before, thus redefining the meaning of the global for American politics.
The American World Order
Authors: Patel Kiran Klaus
Published: November 2017

This chapter assesses the medium- and long-term effects of the New Deal through 1945 and beyond. Seen from this perspective, discontinuities leap to the eye. With World War II, American society lost the markedly civilian nature that had characterized it during most of the interwar years. The concept of security, so central during the early Roosevelt administration, acquired a fundamentally different meaning, shifting from domestic welfare to international warfare. But there were significant continuities. Many features of the New Deal lived on or hibernated during the war. The global conflict even saved and strengthened many existing programs that peace might have seen canceled or shelved. State attempts at social control over the body loomed large. The military, government, and other institutions worked to overcome the crisis of masculinity of the 1930s and create a hypermasculinized ideal, reflecting the country's rising status as a world power.
From Consensus to a Crisis of Confidence
Authors: Waterhouse Benjamin C.
Published: November 2017

This chapter outlines the political, economic, and cultural changes that combined to enflame business's “crisis of confidence” and incite its political mobilization in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It suggests that this experience marked a departure from the early postwar years often described as one of “liberal consensus.” Traditionally, the liberal consensus framework argued that the intense class-oriented battles between labor and business of the Progressive and New Deal periods cooled down after the war, when Cold War imperatives prompted both sides to unite around ideals of liberal democracy and the promise of mass consumption. However, recent scholarship has convincingly demonstrated that many prominent business leaders never accepted New Deal-style liberalism and in fact campaigned actively and vehemently for its rollback from the 1930s onward.
The Birth of the Business Roundtable
Authors: Waterhouse Benjamin C.
Published: November 2017

This chapter demonstrates how the Business Roundtable—a consortium of chief executive officers from approximately one hundred and fifty of America's largest publicly and privately held corporations—holds a unique place in the history of business lobbying. It emerged in direct response to business's crisis of confidence and quickly became a powerful symbol of business leaders' desire to shape politics as well as an expression of their collective power. The first decade of the Roundtable's activism coincided with the dramatic shift of production away from the United States, the permanent decline of both productivity growth and unionization, and the supplanting of manufacturing by financial services as the nation's most important industry. The specific policy threats that drove the leaders of American big business to create the Business Roundtable reflected these shifting dynamics.
A Tale of Two Tax Cuts
Authors: Waterhouse Benjamin C.
Published: November 2017

This chapter analyzes how the interlocking problems of taxation and the federal budget set the stage for the contentious politics of business in the 1980s. During the Reagan administration, ideological small-government conservatives clashed openly with the heads of manufacturing and other traditional capital-intensive business firms. In spite of their superficial common opposition to Keynesian demand stimulus and organized labor, these disparate groups of conservatives held sharply divergent priorities. Their struggle produced a tale of two tax cuts. One, supported by industrialists, aimed to revitalize manufacturing by providing incentives for investment and savings. The other, an antistatist quest to lower all taxes, garnered greater populist appeal. Although not mutually exclusive—both found a way into Reagan's tax reduction legislation in the summer of 1981—these competing visions marked an emerging schism within the ranks of conservatism.
American Politics, American Business
Authors: Waterhouse Benjamin C. , Waterhouse Benjamin C.
Published: November 2017

This epilogue asserts that business's influence on politics is historically contingent. It is thus vital to recognize that neither “business” nor “politics” in the second decade of the twenty-first century operates in the same way as it did during the 1970s and 1980s. For some business theorists, the old concept of the corporation as a social institution is a relic of a bygone era; in an age of high finance, instantaneous communication, just-in-time production, cheap global outsourcing, and overhyped IPOs, the modern corporation often appears as little more than a convenient legal construct. If a corporation merely exists as a “nexus of contracts,” any larger sense of identity disappears as atomized individual economic actors seek immediate material gains for themselves.
Congress, Minority Interests, and Federal Policymaking
Authors: Minta Michael D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Congress' historical and contemporary role in overseeing the bureaucracy as it relates to enacting and implementing racial/ethnic and social welfare policies. Most of the congressional politics literature examines whether Congress as an institution pays attention to particular issues; rarely do studies examine to what extent individual legislators devote attention to these same issues by intervening in agency policymaking. The chapter offers a historical examination of the collective efforts of Congress and of individual legislators to advocate for the interests of racial and ethnic minorities during the eras of Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the Great Society by way of providing context for the analysis in the chapters that follow.
Congressional Oversight and Social Welfare Policy
Authors: Minta Michael D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the advocacy efforts of members of Congress for policies designed to help poor people. It investigates whether the differences that exist between black, Latino, and white legislators in racial and ethnic hearings also occur in social welfare hearings. It examine legislators' interventions in committee deliberations during part of the Clinton era (1993–1997) and the first term of the George W. Bush presidency (2001–2003). It focuses on how actively legislators engaged in the deliberations in terms of questioning witnesses and interacting with fellow members of Congress. It also examines other legislative interventions, such as testifying at hearings in favor of social welfare policies that benefit the poor and requesting hearings designed to help poor people, who are disproportionately minorities.
Paradox of the Idler
Authors: Saint-Amand Pierre
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores how Diderot makes the idler into a figure of modernity. Diderot's idler appears in urban space. In the title character of Le Neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew), he offers an example of alternative subjectivation. The dialogue between the philosopher and the vagabond brings face to face two opposing figures of idleness, as well as two opposing relationships to the work. Like Marivaux's Spectator, Diderot's philosopher enjoys free-floating, vaporous thought. The chapter shows how grouping idleness and laziness together under the rubric “désoeuvrement” (inactivity) establishes distinctions based on differences of social status and economic condition, which shed an interesting light on Diderot's dialogue.
The Decentering of Democracies
Authors: Rosanvallon Pierre
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter considers the definitions of legitimacy in the context of democratic politics. Expressions such as the “great majority” or “vast majority” established the law of numbers, in contrast to the minority rule characteristic of despotic and aristocratic regimes. At first, it was the difference in the origins of power and the foundation of political obligation that was crucial. Later, the majority principle came to be recognized in a more narrowly procedural sense. The chapter traces this evolution within the history of democratic elections, positing a decentering of democracy as newer forms of political investment emerge, making democratic politics into something more than merely electing representatives.
The Legitimacy of Identification with Generality
Authors: Rosanvallon Pierre
Published: November 2017

This chapter turns to an approach that was at once more modest and more effective in countering the dysfunctions of the electoral-representative system and its unrequited need for legitimacy than the concept of unanimity—the bureaucracy. The idea of the bureaucracy was to create an institution capable of embodying the general interest. Thus, the chapter traces the development of the government bureaucracy through the emergence of a corporatism of the universal and through the constitution of an objective administrative power not subject to any particular influence and absolutely identified with its task. The chapter studies both to reveal how precisely they can be useful instruments for legitimation and for serving the general interest.
The Democracy of Impartiality
Authors: Rosanvallon Pierre
Published: November 2017

This chapter asks whether independent authorities are representative in character, whether society can exert control over them, and whether they meet standards of establishment and accountability. It also considers what type of generality these independent bodies implement. These authorities are, after all, created by law and consequently enjoy what might be called a derivative legitimacy. But that legitimacy does not flow directly from the citizens of the state, because these are not elective bodies. Nevertheless, a different type of relation exists between them, having to do with the importance and quality of the services they render, though the chapter goes further to consider whether or not these independent authorities can be endowed with a certain kind of democratic legitimacy in their own right.
Reflexive Democracy
Authors: Rosanvallon Pierre
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses reflexive democracy, which is democracy's attempt to correct and compensate for three flawed assumptions, thus giving rise to a “generality of multiplication.” In contrast to negative generality, which depends on creating a new position from which the demand for unanimity can be satisfied, here the method is to multiply various more limited approaches so as to achieve a relatively comprehensive vision of the whole. The strategy is one of pluralization rather than detachment and has two components: adding complexity to democratic forms and subjects on the one hand and regulating the mechanisms of the majoritarian system on the other. To describe this reflexive effort of democracy on itself, the chapter first establishes that electoral-representative democracy is itself a disciplined and chastened version of “immediate democracy.” It then describes the effects of multiplication.
Attention to Particularity
Authors: Rosanvallon Pierre
Published: November 2017

This chapter investigates the changing relationships between the citizenry and their government. As new democratic institutions are being developed, citizens are becoming increasingly aware of the way in which they are governed: in short, they want to be listened to and reckoned with. They want their views to be taken into account. They expect the government to be attentive to their problems and to show genuine concern with their everyday experiences. Everyone wants their particular situations to be taken into account, and no one wants to be subject to inflexible rules. The chapter takes a closer look at this phenomenon and the new relationship configurations arising between citizen and government as a result of this emphasis on particularity.
The Democracy of Appropriation
Authors: Rosanvallon Pierre
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter discusses recent developments in democratic legitimacy. It first examines the changing democratic ideals, which have since moved from a democracy of identification to a democracy of appropriation. The main aspects of a democracy of appropriation are: the role of distrust, the agencies of indirect democracy, and the insistence that leaders conduct themselves democratically constrains their actions in ways independent of their mode of selection. From here, the chapter explores the threat of “unpolitical democracy” and then reflects on the history of democracy, briefly tracing its development over the years as well as the recent revival of a range of procedures and institutions that had preceded the advent of universal suffrage.
Holiday Custom and Entertainment
Authors: Barber C. L.
Published: November 2017

During Shakespeare's lifetime, England became conscious of holiday custom as it had not been before, in the very period when in many areas the keeping of holidays was on the decline. Shakespeare, coming to London from a rich market town, growing up in the relatively unselfconscious 1570s and 1580s and writing his festive plays in the decade of the 1590s, when most of the major elements in English society enjoyed a moment of reconcilement, was perfectly situated to express both a countryman's participation in holiday and a city man's consciousness of it. This chapter considers two principal forms of festivity, the May games and the Lord of Misrule, noticing particularly how what is done by the group of celebrants involves the composition of experience in ways which literature and drama could take over.
Prototypes of Festive Comedy in a Pageant Entertainment: Summer’s Last Will and Testament
Authors: Barber C. L.
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on Nashe's Summer's Last Will and Testament. Written two or three years before A Midsummer Night's Dream, it presents a variety of roles, gestures, and ways of talking which were current in pageantry and game, precisely the traditional materials which Shakespeare used in developing festive comedy. Nashe's piece, because it is a pageant, is not completely detachable from the occasion of its production. Read for a play, it often seems jerky and sprawling, without a controlling movement. It lacks the control provided by plot, by events inside the fiction, because the event it was designed to express was the occasion of its performance.
The Merchants and the Jew of Venice: Wealth’s Communion and an Intruder
Authors: Barber C. L.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. This play as a whole is not shaped by festivity in the relatively direct way as in Love's Labour's Lost and A Midsummer Night's Dream. The play's large structure is developed from traditions which are properly theatrical; it is not a theatrical adaptation of a social ritual. And yet analogies to social occasions and rituals prove to be useful in understanding the symbolic action. The chapter pursues such analogies without suggesting, in most cases, that there is a direct influence from the social to the theatrical form. Shakespeare here is working with autonomous mastery, developing a style of comedy that makes a festive form for feeling and awareness out of all the theatrical elements, scene, speech, story, gesture, role which his astonishing art brought into organic combination.
The Social Brain
Authors: Rose Nikolas , Abi-Rached Joelle M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at the social brain hypothesis. The term social brain has come to stand for the argument that the human brain, and indeed that of some other animals, is specialized for a collective form of life. One part of this argument is evolutionary: that the size and complexity of the brains of primates, including humans, are related to the size and complexity of their characteristic social groups. However, the social brain hypothesis is more than a general account of the role of brain size: for in this thesis, the capacities for sociality are neurally located in a specific set of brain regions shaped by evolution, notably the amygdala, orbital frontal cortex, and temporal cortex—regions that have the function of facilitating an understanding of what one might call the “mental life” of others.
Islamist Momentum in the Arab World
Authors: Jamal Amaney A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter first offers a general overview of Islamist positions vis-è-vis the United States in both Jordan and Kuwait. Second, it emphasizes the exogenous nature of anti-Americanism, arguing that it is a function of U.S. policies. It also shows how international developments influenced Islamist stances relative to the United States. Jordan's dependency on the West, the continuation of the occupation of Palestinian lands by Israel, the Jordanian peace treaty with Israel, the so-called War on Terror, and the War on Iraq have further reinforced anti-American sentiment among Jordan's Islamist opposition. Finally, the chapter posits that the democratic reversals in Jordan, which marked much of the 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century, were directly linked to the fear of anti-American opposition movements then gaining momentum. It concludes with a discussion about the role regimes and the United States play in sustaining barriers to democracy in these settings.
Engaging the Regime through the Lens of the United States
Authors: Jamal Amaney A.
Published: November 2017

This chapter provides a detailed account of how ordinary citizens rationalize their political preferences. First, it documents the causal logics citizens employ when supporting the monarchy in Jordan. It illustrates how people who believe that the current regime has privileged and important relations with the United States may come to support a regime even when it is otherwise not in their apparent interest. This is so because they fear the role anti-American Islamists may play in harming the relationship if they come to power. Furthermore, the chapter demonstrates that this is not the case in Kuwait, because the Islamist opposition is pro-American. Second, it examines the ways citizens who oppose the regime in Jordan cling to an elastic definition of Sharia, one that seeks to challenge the geopolitical status quo altogether. This chapter relies on a series of open-ended interviews conducted by two research teams in Jordan and Kuwait.
Introduction
Authors: Goertz Gary , Mahoney James
Published: November 2017

This book investigates the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative research traditions in the social sciences, with a particular focus on political science and sociology. It argues that the two traditions are alternative cultures with distinctive research procedures and practices, each having its own values, beliefs, and norms. The book considers the ways in which the traditions differ in terms of methodology, such as type of research question, mode of data analysis, and method of inference. It suggests that the two traditions draw on alternative mathematical foundations: quantitative research is grounded in inferential statistics (that is, probability and statistical theory), whereas qualitative research is (often implicitly) rooted in logic and set theory. This chapter discusses the book's approach to characterizing and comparing the two cultures of social science research and explains what is distinctive about qualitative research.
Within-Case versus Cross-Case Causal Analysis
Authors: Goertz Gary , Mahoney James
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how the qualitative and quantitative research traditions treat within-case analysis versus cross-case analysis for causal inference. In qualitative research, the primary focus is on specific events and processes taking place within each individual case. Leading qualitative methodologies of hypothesis testing, such as process tracing and counterfactual analysis, are fundamentally methods of within-case analysis. By contrast, quantitative research traditionally involves exclusively cross-case comparison. The chapter begins with a comparison of the typical roles (or nonroles) of within-case and cross-case analysis in case studies versus experiments. It then considers how causal inference in quantitative and qualitative research is linked to the use of “data-set observations” and “causal-process observations,” respectively. It also explains the differences between process-tracing tests and statistical tests and concludes by suggesting that cross-case analysis and within-case analysis can and often should be combined.
Introduction
Authors: Kligman Gail , Verdery Katherine
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter provides a background of the collectivization of agriculture in Romania. The collectivization of agriculture was the first mass action, in largely agrarian countries like the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and Romania, through which the new communist regime initiated its radical program of social, political, cultural, and economic transformation. Collectivizing agriculture was not merely an aspect of the larger policy of industrial development but an attack on the very foundations of rural life. By leaving rural inhabitants without their own means of livelihood, it radically increased their dependence on the Party-state. It both prepared and compelled them to be the proletarians of new industrial facilities. Moreover, it destroyed or at least frayed both the vertical and the horizontal social relations in which villagers were embedded and through which they defined themselves and pursued their existence.
Pedagogies of Persuasion
Authors: Kligman Gail , Verdery Katherine
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at “persuasion work,” explaining aspects of village social organization upon which it hinged and arguing that unpersuasive cadres secured not commitment to the collective project but the performance of consent. Persuasion work began with “plans of action” developed in Party meetings at each level—region, district, commune—and applied to people at every level as well. Higher-level cadres would do persuasion work with lower-level ones: to enlighten them was at least as important as enlightening the peasantry, if they were to do their job. Persuasion was used toward a number of different goals—making peasants hand over their quotas, pay taxes, bring in bigger harvests, and so on—but for the villagers, it came to mean especially the attempt to get them into the associations (TOZs) or collective farms.
The Restratification and Bureaucratization of Rural Life
Authors: Kligman Gail , Verdery Katherine
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines new chances for social mobility and how village life was bureaucratized and politicized, along with the transformation of the earlier organizational forms involving kinship and social status. Industrial development and the bureaucratization of society meant the proliferation of new jobs for people in villages, even as they lost the land that had rooted them in their communities. Among the consequences were a re-stratification of village life, as prior hierarchies based on owning means of production gave way to new ones based on political position and other bases of inequality. Additional changes affected family and household, including new patterns of authority and modifications in kinship, which receded in importance as against new kinds of personalistic ties. Especially significant were changes in gender roles and generational expectations. Moreover, the bureaucratization of work changed that basic daily reality for peasants, along with the personhood ideals that had been tied to it.
Embodied Risk Made Visible
Authors: Lock Margaret
Published: November 2017

This chapter illustrates an account of the shift, commencing in the late 1980s, to the molecularization of Alzheimer disease (AD), and the attempt to identify significant bodily changes as much as 20 years before behavioral changes can be diagnosed in individuals. It considers the rationale for efforts to formulate a “prodromal” diagnosis before behavioral symptoms or memory loss are detected, followed by a presentation of the involved molecular diagnostic tools (biomarkers) with emphasis on spinal taps, neuroimaging, and genetic testing. The significance of the first two of these biomarkers is attributed to their apparent ability to detect the onset of the amyloid cascade process. The chapter also discusses the anomalies and uncertainties associated with biomarker testing.
Genome-Wide Association Studies: Back to the Future
Authors: Lock Margaret
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines findings from the newly developed technology of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) being applied to the investigation of Alzheimer disease (AD), primarily in the United States, United Kingdom, and France. These linked research projects make use of many thousands of DNA samples procured from individuals diagnosed with AD, which are then assessed using high-speed throughput technology and compared with control samples, in an attempt to find out what combinations of genes put individuals at increased risk. To date, these enormously expensive projects have provided few if any startling new insights, and many researchers are highly skeptical as to their value. However, others believe that GWAS is a first step toward a more sophisticated way of understanding the interrelated pathways of the numerous genes that appear to be implicated in AD.
Living with Embodied Omens
Authors: Lock Margaret
Published: November 2017

This chapter begins with a brief consideration of the anthropological literature on divination. This is followed by a condensed discussion composed primarily of ethnographic research findings about the responses of individuals and their families to genetic testing for single gene disorders such as Huntington disease and to genetic testing for breast cancer. Throughout the analysis, the concepts of genetic body, geneticization, and biosociality are introduced. The chapter also presents an account of a National Institutes of Health randomized trial carried out with individuals whose families have one or more members diagnosed with Alzheimer disease (AD), and who have undergone genotyping for the susceptibility gene APOE. The findings in this account represent the first extensive analysis of the responses of individuals undergoing testing for a susceptibility gene.
Chance Untamed and the Return of Fate
Authors: Lock Margaret
Published: November 2017

This chapter demonstrates a reader-friendly discussion about the shift in orientation by molecular biologists away from genes per se, into the wider fields of genomics and epigenetics—that is, to the contextualization of genes. Emphasis is given by many of these researchers to the dynamic interaction of DNA with both micro-environments internal to the body and macro-environments external to the body, and their interrelationship. This approach takes into account individual developmental and life course experiences that may bring about long-lasting modification to or even permanent changes in gene function. These emerging epigenetic models embrace complexity and acknowledge irresolvable uncertainty. The effects of historical, political, and social environments on individual biology and lived experience are also recognized, but thus far only spottily researched.
The Rise of Sexual Freedom
Authors: Grossman Joanna L. , Friedman Lawrence M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses some of the dramatic changes in the law relating to sexual behavior since the middle of the twentieth century. The ultimate cause, of course, was changing sexual mores. But at several points, the Supreme Court, by recognizing a constitutional right to privacy, acted in ways that gave these changing mores a solid foundation in law. This right of privacy was expanded over time to include contraception, abortion, and even same-sex behavior. Through these cases, the Court authorized marriage without sex (by prisoners, for example) and sex without marriage (between gay people, who were forbidden to marry). It also authorized marital sex without reproduction (through contraception and abortion) and reproduction without marriage (through rights of illegitimate children and unwed fathers).
Parents and Children: Rights and Duties
Authors: Grossman Joanna L. , Friedman Lawrence M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at the rights and obligations of those who have earned (or been saddled with) the legal status of “parent.” It examines state intervention in troubled families and challenges to parental authority by third parties (grandparents seeking visitation rights, for example). The chapter also looks at children's procedural and expressive rights against the state, and the rights against their parents related to financial independence, sex, marriage, and reproduction. It shows that American law has empowered children—at least to a degree—and has defined not only their rights, but also what society and their parents owe them, though enforcing these rights can be somewhat difficult regardless.
Chosen People: Adoption and the Law
Authors: Grossman Joanna L. , Friedman Lawrence M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter briefly traces the history of adoption law and takes a look at some of the more tricky issues that surround this institution—cross-racial adoption and the role adoption plays in the formation of gay and lesbian families. It also shows how adoption reflects the major cultural trends in American life. Americans generally, in the age of expressive individualism, try desperately to fashion for themselves unique and satisfying selves; and discover, in a sense, who they really are. For adopted children, this can include a search for their “real” parents and the discovery of their true genetic code. Men and women can decide to have children or not. Adopted children, uniquely, have in a way the right to decide to have parents or not, or more accurately, to decide which parents to cling to.
Into the Void
Authors: Grossman Joanna L. , Friedman Lawrence M.
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter returns to the history of family law and the changes it has undergone throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Traditional morality has suffered serious defeats. Living in sin is no longer a sin for most people. Illegitimacy has lost its bite. Sodomy laws are history. Tough divorce laws have given way to no-fault. Gay marriage seems to be just beyond the horizon. All of this, in hindsight, has the smell of the inevitable; of course, no legal change occurred without a battle, sometimes a bitter one. Moreover, the chapter cautions against speculating on the future of family law, emphasizing that, as the history of family law shows, the future is not often as inevitable or predictable as one might think.
Who Killed Chevalier Gluck?
Authors: Goldhill Simon
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck's opera reforms responded to Victorian culture to become the revolutionary icons his contemporaries believed them to be. Gluck was music tutor to Marie Antoinette in Vienna and, after her marriage to Louis XVI, followed her to Paris, where he was a regular at Versailles. He died two years before the Revolution broke out. His music, according to Jean-Baptiste Leclerc, led to the shattering of the throne of France. The chapter considers formal elements of composition as well as frames of comprehension: the role of classicism in the critical understanding of theater; the role of dance in opera; the role of the chorus as a specifically classical element in modern opera. It also analyzes the differences between Vienna and Paris and London as sites for Gluck's operatic success and failure—within the incipient but self-conscious nationalism of the era.
For God and Empire
Authors: Goldhill Simon
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the Victorian conceptualization of history and of the historical novel as a genre of fiction by situating novels of the Roman Empire within four interconnected polemical contexts to which they made an active contribution: religion, history, national identity, and politics. It begins with a story about Fred W. Farrar, who embodies so fully what is at stake with historical fiction—not least through the normative thrust of his diverse but interconnected writings. For what makes these novels of the Roman Empire so interesting is precisely what Farrar's collected works offer in germ: the heady combination of religious controversy, the power of nationalist narrative coupled with self-conscious debate about the reach and aim of Empire, the educational anxiety and idealism attached to classical antiquity, the heightened appreciation of history in the age of progress. Such fiction about the Roman Empire and the origins of Christianity raised deeply worrying and interconnected questions for their Victorian audiences.