bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Internal Displacement and International Protection
Authors: Beaton Eilidh
Published: March 2024

There are gaps in the existing protection regime for internally displaced persons (IDPs). This chapter argues that the IDP protection regime should be reformed to minimize these gaps, and defends a three-level protection framework structured around Francis M. Deng’s notion of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’. On this model, the international community would have an obligation to assist national authorities with IDP protection when needed, and a duty to act as surrogate protectors when national authorities manifestly fail to protect IDPs within their borders and refuse offers of international assistance. This latter obligation includes a duty to undertake limited forms of intervention in order to promote the protection of IDPs, as well as a duty to extend the right to refuge to IDPs with no recourse to their home government.
Internal Climate Displacement and Territorial Justice
Authors: Stilz Anna
Published: March 2024

This chapter develops an account of internal displacement based on territorial justice. It argues that the aim of territorial justice is to constitute a certain globally recognized status, the status of being an equal common possessor of the earth. As a common possessor, every inhabitant of the globe has a claim to a ‘place’ in the world where she can access minimally just material conditions and political institutions (basic justice); securely pursue her located social, cultural, and economic practices (occupancy); and exercise political self-determination in common with others (self-determination). By shrinking the supply, and changing the character, of the world’s habitable spaces through their carbon emissions, industrialized states are threatening occupancy, basic justice, and self-determination for people in other regions of the world. The author argues that the current internally displaced persons (IDPs) regime is too limited to justly address climate displacement and she concludes by considering what would be required to supplement this regime in order to secure territorial justice.
The Clairvoyant
Authors: Hayes Kelly E.
Published: March 2024

Chapter 2 follows the biography of Neiva Chaves Zelaya, the former truck driver and mother of four whose visionary experiences are the foundation and raison-d’être of the Valley of the Dawn. It traces her early life, marriage, and widowhood; her move to Brasília and the onset of her visionary experiences; and the establishment of her first spiritual community. After the dissolution of that group, Neiva founded OSOEC, later known as the Valley of the Dawn. There she met Mário Sassi, the man who would become her most important collaborator. By her death in 1985, Aunt Neiva had become one of Brazil’s most famous spirit mediums and the community that she established was the center of a burgeoning new religion with affiliated temples throughout Brazil and abroad.
A Space Age Religion for Modern Brazil
Authors: Hayes Kelly E.
Published: March 2024

Against those who dismiss the Valley of the Dawn as an escapist fantasy that provides followers with a fanciful alternative to the present, my research shows that the movement attracts members not because it offers a refuge from modern life but because it offers a different vision of modernity itself. One reason that the Valley is growing worldwide is because the number of people dissatisfied by both traditional religions and modern secular society is growing. In contrast to many people’s everyday experience, the Valley has created an orderly world structured by the principles of progress and justice, in which all are able to advance through hard work and merit.
Ebbing Tides
Authors: Devienne Elsa
Published: March 2024

Chapter 7 analyzes how the consensus behind beach modernization efforts imploded in the late 1960s under the triple pressure of the modern environmentalist movement, the rise of the New Right, and controversy over oceanside high-rises. By the 1970s, most Angelenos perceived the beaches as natural spaces with a unique history that needed to be protected from the assault of developers and the wrecking ball. Meanwhile, in Orange County, resistance against “big government” championed by the New Right resonated with local beach homeowners who felt that “their” beaches should be closed off to outsiders. By the late 1960s, public beach acquisitions had come to a halt.
Sex
Authors: Rubio Julie Hanlon
Published: March 2024

This chapter wrestles with division between feminists and Catholics on the issue of sexual violence. Feminists have been on the front lines of movements to end violence against women since the 1960s, while Catholics have often been on the sidelines. Today, both groups condemn violence and share concerns about the sexual landscape, yet the church’s own failure on clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse and reticence to speak out on sexual violence remain. What can Catholics learn from feminists about the structural causes of violence? How can Catholics enrich the #MeToo movement? Despite enduring tensions with respect to sexuality, gender, and clergy-perpetrated sexual abuse; overlapping visions of good sex, shared recognition of structural sin or evil, and concern for human dignity provide a basis for dialogue and synergy. A Catholic and feminist approach to fighting sexual violence in the “space between” the personal and the political is both possible and necessary.
Marriage
Authors: Rubio Julie Hanlon
Published: March 2024

Chapter 4 acknowledges strains of contemporary feminism in which the idealization of marriage and sexual fidelity are questioned and new configurations of love and family are advocated. It argues that while this strain of radical feminism stands in tension with earlier Catholic visions of family, most feminists have been reformists when it comes to marriage. It turns to modern Catholic theology, first- and second-wave feminists, and Catholic feminist marriage movements of the twentieth century as models for affirming feminist concerns about mutuality while not abandoning fidelity or the potential contribution of strong marriages to a better world. Shared Catholic and feminist commitments to love, justice, and acceptance of a diversity of households are offering as potential grounding for authentic Catholic feminist identity today. In the face of more popular departure narratives stressing the important of freedom from ties that bind, this vision of lifelong, egalitarian, outward-facing marriage offers a compelling alternative.
Life
Authors: Rubio Julie Hanlon
Published: March 2024

If Catholics are pro-life and feminists are pro-choice, it seems impossible to be both feminist and Catholic. Abortion is the first of several “hard cases” in the book. The author suggests proceeding by considering women’s stories of pregnancy, prenatal loss, and birth alongside abortion, centering women’s experiences and exploring the ways in which these experiences overlap. Bracketing intractable political arguments allows the author to uncover common threads of agency, relationality, and concern for the most vulnerable in women’s accounts of what it means to carry, lose, or give birth to new life. While focusing on stories does not yield political common ground, it does allow for constructive strategies of accompaniment. By taking seriously both Catholic valuing of unborn and women’s lives, and feminist accounts of women’s agency in the context of constrained choices, the chapter attempts to honor what is sacred to both feminists and Catholics, let unresolved tensions be, and seek unity in accompaniment.
Misplaced Ideas?
Authors: Palti Elías J.
Published: March 2024

Is there a Latin American thought? What are its characteristics and nature? What distinguishes it from the thinking of other regions? What are its main expressions in political, cultural, and social life? These questions have obsessed the thinkers of all times and countries in the region. The present book does not intend to answer these questions but will turn them into matters of critical scrutiny: How did they emerge? What kind of anxieties did they denote? It thus seeks to approach the issue from a historical-intellectual perspective, unraveling the epochal conceptual foundations on which the very interrogation of Latin American identity has been formulated and re-formulated. This is revealing of the intricacies of the dynamics of the production and circulation of ideas in the so-called peripheral regions of Western culture. The book thus takes the Latin American case as a platform to address theoretical issues whose relevance transcends the specific region.
Latin American Philosophy I
Authors: Palti Elías J.
Published: March 2024

Chapters 2 and 3 analyze the emergence in the 1970s of the “Latin American philosophy.” The former focuses, more specifically, on the historicist line of it, whose main representatives were Leopoldo Zea and Arturo Roig. This current intended to trace the genealogy of a distinct Latin American thought, its emergence and historical evolution. The hypothesis presiding over our approach is that, rather than describing an actual reality, these narratives are revealing of the concerns of the very intellectual milieu in which those narratives emerged. Ultimately, they provide fundamental keys to comprehend a critical moment in Latin American history, as well as the nature of the dilemmas that, at that juncture, obsessed an important sector of Latin American “lettered city.”
Latin American Philosophy II
Authors: Palti Elías J.
Published: March 2024

Chapter 3 analyzes the phenomenological current of “Latin American philosophy,” which spans from Rodolfo Kusch through Enrique Dussel. It recreates the intellectual operations and rhetorical devices put in each case at work for the construction of an image of that “being,” and how it became posited as standing in opposition to an authoritarian, imperialistic “Western rationality.” This is thus approached as a case of “inverted Orientalism,” a paradoxical example of self-exoticization. Ultimately, the images the Latin Americanist philosophers create of that Latin American being are like mirror images of their own present condition, reflecting their perplexities and conflicts in their attempt to come to terms with the postcolonial condition.
Revisiting the Topic of “Misplaced Ideas”
Authors: Palti Elías J.
Published: March 2024

Latin American philosophy co-existed and disputed with another important current, which was highly critical of its tenets: the so-called dependency theory. The creators of dependency theory rendered problematic the essentialist assumptions behind the perspectives that posited the presence of a “Latin American being” underlying cultural and historical evolution. It was denounced as a metaphysical illusion which prevented grasping the true origins and nature of the colonial or, more precisely, neocolonial condition of Latin America as an integral part of world capitalist system. Roberto Schwarz proposed translating the postulates of the dependency theory to the field of cultural theory. He provided an insight into the complexities of the dynamics of ideological processes and the circulation of ideas in the peripheral areas of Western culture. This chapter seeks to highly de deeply problematic nature of the conceptual issues the dependency theorists intended to consider, and proposes some alternative theoretical frameworks to approach those issues.
From Tradition to Modernity?
Authors: Palti Elías J.
Published: March 2024

Chapter 6 is dedicated to the study of the recent narratives that, in the context of the celebration of the bicentennial of the revolutions of independence, which gave rise to the emergence of the “revisionist” historiography, whose main proponent was François-Xavier Guerra. This current is highly critical of the teleological assumptions behind both the liberal-nationalist historical narratives of the end of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, as well as the revisionist currents, of a Marxist matrix, that spread over the region in the 1960s and 1970s. As Chapter 6 shows, despite their crucial contributions to a better understanding of the period of the revolutions of independence, the most recent challengers of both traditional approaches fail to effectively break the teleological assumptions they intend to counter. As a matter of fact, they change their contents preserving the basic structures of the former perspectives molded on the basis of the scheme “from tradition to modernity.” Ultimately, the hesitant methodology of the recent revisionist currents is revealing of deeper theoretical problems to approach these kind of events of historical and political ruptures.
Maria W. Stewart
Authors: Jones Douglas A.
Published: March 2024

Maria W. Stewart: Essential Writings of a 19th-Century Black Abolitionist offers the most comprehensive and contextually dynamic collection of Stewart’s incredible corpus to date. All of Stewart’s known essays, lectures, and fiction, including recently discovered texts, are in this volume. Its extended introduction and detailed notes situate Stewart’s political philosophy in the rich intellectual contexts within which she worked, including abolitionism, black nationalism, feminism, and sentimentalism. Key works by other thinkers that shaped or were shaped by Stewart’s writings are also included.
Mrs. Stewart’s Farewell Address to Her Friends in the City of Boston
Authors: Jones Douglas A.
Published: March 2024

In her farewell address to the city of Boston, Stewart explains why she was so harsh in criticisms of African Americans. She would not change her approach, she says, because God called her to speak the way she did. Although she had no regrets for how she acted, Stewart admits she will miss her friends. Shortly after this speech, she left Boston for New York City.
Hosea Easton, A Treatise on the Intellectual Character, and Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States; And the Prejudice Exercised Towards Them; With a Sermon on the Duty of the Church to Them (1837) (selections)
Authors: Jones Douglas A.
Published: March 2024

Hosea Easton wrote his Treatise in response to the wave of antiblack violence that swept northern cities and towns in the 1830s. In these selections he attacks the race-based inconsistencies and hypocrisies of American democracy. He also rejects the idea that African-descended persons are inherently different from their white counterparts; it is the conditions of American chattel slavery and antiblack racism that produce differences between black and white, he argues.
Framing a Racialist Placeholder
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

The power of reason over ideology should not be overestimated. This section rejects the popular antiracist notion that false beliefs about race have been leaders in defense of color-conscious injustice—as if inherited slavery, settler colonialism, and enforced segregation could seek sober rationalization through racial stories. The “race” placeholder lent a guise of seriousness to reports about innate mental differences between Europeans vis-à-vis other (sub)continent-wide populations. This was amid Western commitments to acquiring natural resources, human labor, and larger markets, which called for extreme subjugation and exploitation of non-European peoples. From a deflationary critical perspective, the section shows there are no race concept puzzles that demand theoretical or empirical solutions. Any of the many impacts of race ideology-rhetoric can be studied without concern over a metaphysics or science of race.
Giving Up the “Race” Ghost
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

No new natural or social facts about human beings will be discovered that could resolve controversy and deliver a master meaning for “race.” It has been argued that endless debate turns on which notion of race might ever gain title to the word—not on some prior facts that would settle disagreements over the metaphysics of race, the world of perceived racial being, or the politics of “race” usage. The geoancestry concept offers a straighter, cleaner path for understanding continental color consciousness in local or global contexts. There is nothing deeply mysterious about recognition of Africa-identified, Europe-identified, or Asia-identified peoples. Yet designation by social-political lineage will generally be more informative for reasonable purposes—which include demographically distinguishing (Africa-identified) descendants of American slavery from other Africa-identified national peoples.
Parting Political Thoughts
Authors: McPherson Lionel K.
Published: March 2024

The challenge for any progressive American politics is how to support transformative progress toward Black social equality in the wake of majoritarian non-Black resistance. This will require rejecting incrementalist approaches tacitly premised on leaving Black America in a better bottom caste place. Part III has argued that there can be no way around directly addressing Black America’s intergenerational social disadvantage and disrepair rooted in inherited slavery and enforced segregation. American “racial” caste hierarchy will not dissipate through passage of time, kinder attitudes, “rising tide” neoliberalism, “diversity” evasions, “intersectional” identity politics, or “people of color” sloganeering. Non-exclusionary Black political solidarity means a post-partisan, de-raced commitment to Black politics that calls all Americans who care about the profound historical circumstances and corrective justice claims of Black Americans as descendants of American slavery.
“Representation with Real Force”
Authors: Englert Gianna
Published: March 2024

This chapter delves into the liberal pluralism of Benjamin Constant, who has recently been called the first French liberal democrat. Against this characterization, however, it argues that Constant spoke the language of political representation rather than liberal democracy. It excavates Constant’s novel electoral theory, through which he hoped to represent a pluralistic society in all of its complexity. It situates Constant in two contexts: first, in the post-Revolutionary contests over the meaning of representation and second, in the deliberations over a free press and a limited franchise that took place during the Bourbon Restoration. This chapter argues that, despite rarely engaging with the subject of democracy for himself, Constant’s electoral arguments cannot help but implicate those heated disputes over the definition of modern democracy that are featured throughout the remaining chapters.
Édouard Laboulaye’s Enlightened Democracy
Authors: Englert Gianna
Published: March 2024

Chapters 4 and 5 excavate the contributions of two of the forgotten liberals who began their careers under the illiberal phase of the Napoleonic Second Empire. This chapter reconstructs the constitutional scholar Édouard Laboulaye’s recommendations to enlighten democracy even under universal suffrage, which had been introduced in the republican Constitution of 1848. Drawing on Tocqueville’s new political science, Constant’s pluralist and religious liberalism, and even Guizot’s conception of the new democracy, Laboulaye updated the meaning of democracy once again. Yet he did so to embrace rather than to reject universal suffrage. By highlighting Laboulaye’s educational and political vision for the new liberal party under the Second Empire, this chapter shows how the more progressive liberals after 1848 co-opted what were originally antidemocratic strategies to unify liberal principles with democratic procedures, and thus to support liberal democracy itself.
Secular Sacredness: Rudolf Otto
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

Rudolf Otto’s The Idea of the Holy (1917) plays a crucial role in the understanding of religion in German-speaking countries, similar to the role of William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) in the English-speaking world. This chapter first analyzes the background to a deeper grasp of sacredness as crucial to an understanding of religion in the early twentieth century. It then demonstrates how Otto’s conception of the “numinous” and its rationalization differs from an understanding according to which rationalization leads to the disappearance of the “numinous.” Otto’s theory is compared to Durkheim’s with regard to the question of whether specific material qualities play a role in processes of sacralization. The chapter ends with a plea for the timeliness of Otto’s work under the conditions of secularization, namely with regard to “secular sacredness.”
A German Idea of Freedom?
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

While considerable attention has been paid to the dispute between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer in Davos in 1929, an event that has been interpreted as a watershed in European intellectual history, the interaction between Cassirer and Ernst Troeltsch has been widely ignored. This chapter attempts to remedy this situation by focusing on two interrelated learning processes, one—in the case of Troeltsch—leading from historicism to a positive evaluation of Western ideas about political freedom, the other—in the case of Cassirer—leading from a Kantian pro-Enlightenment to an increasingly hermeneutical approach without giving up the normative implications of the Enlightenment. The remaining differences in the understanding of religion are shown to shed much light on contemporary debates.
Religion and Globalization: José Casanova
Authors: Joas Hans
Published: March 2024

This chapter provides a portrait of the work of Spanish-American sociologist José Casanova. It starts with his early writings before turning to his world-famous 1994 book Public Religions in the Modern World, which marks a true paradigm shift in the sociology of religion, putting paid to the notion of the advancing privatization of religion. In his later studies, Casanova not only extended the investigation of the public role of religion to other societies, but also examined the development of transnational religious relationships under the conditions of globalization. Taking up ideas from H. Richard Niebuhr, he refers to the present as a time in which territorial religious monopolies have become impossible and a “global denominationalism” is emerging.
Environmental, Energy, and Sustainability Issues
Authors: Bicalho Tereza , Bellezoni Rodrigo A. , Puppim de Oliveira Jose A.
Published: March 2024

This chapter analyses the potential for environmental and sustainable technological transitions in Latin America. It draws particular lessons from the successful case of the policies related to the biofuel transition in Brazil, in view of that country’s long-term energy security and climate change mitigation strategies. The key elements in the approach identified are the transition from state-led to market-led innovation, the alignment between governance at global and national levels, and the importance of the connection between sectors to reinforce the innovation processes in each. These can help us to understand how to best promote future ecological innovation in the sustainability transitions in a Latin America context. The discussion indicates the extent to which imperatives around energy security and environmental sustainability can be effective prime movers for innovation, the building up of new capabilities, and, ultimately, the creation of new sources of competitive advantage in global markets.
Energy Transition in Brazil
Authors: Figueiredo Paulo N.
Published: March 2024

This chapter examines the process of technological leapfrogging—measured in terms of innovation capability accumulation—and the underlying learning strategies in the Brazilian bioethanol industry, and its consequent contribution to the country’s energy transition. Through an effective technological leapfrogging process, Brazil was propelled towards being the world leader in production, technological innovation, and large-scale use of low-carbon biofuel, based on sugarcane bioethanol. The chapter analyses the deliberate qualitative changes in the different learning processes and mechanisms needed to support effective technological leapfrogging. These learning efforts involved a combination of initiatives from different components of the sectoral system, such as producing firms, suppliers, lead users, universities, and research institutes. There was also a convergence of the private sector and government efforts around a common objective.
Argentina
Authors: Kosacoff Bernardo , Fuchs Mariana
Published: March 2024

The goal of this chapter is to analyse the main characteristics of Argentina’s economic development and the way in which the country has attempted—sometimes successfully and sometimes not—to confront structural constraints preventing sustained and inclusive growth. The central focus is on the role of the public policy and its influence on the productive environment, especially in terms of firm capability-building. The chapter establishes that despite Argentina’s much-publicized economic problems, significant strengths have been built up in knowledge-intensive services, industry, and natural-resource-intensive activities. The chapter suggests that, with an appropriate policy framework (both sector-specific and macroeconomic), these advantages can be leveraged, re-igniting growth that is more inclusive, sustainable, and dynamic. To this end, it is argued that the key challenge facing Argentina centres on constructing a shared public-private vision of economic development which makes use of the enormous productive assets that have been built up.
Peru and the Search for a Development Model That Works
Authors: Crabtree John
Published: March 2024

Peru has been in constant search of a formula capable of delivering sustained and inclusive growth. Charting the recent history of economic management in Peru, this chapter aims to elucidate some of the unresolved problems afflicting Peru’s development model. In so doing, the discussion hints at fruitful ways in which the county may need to proceed if it is to overcome its growth and development impasse. While some productive diversification has been achieved, and commodity cycle-related growth surges experienced, Peru’s economy remains characterized by low productivity, lack of innovation, and a failure to close the gap with richer countries. The chapter argues that these problems stem from limited incentives to broaden the country’s economic base. These in turn arise from a failure to build political and societal consensus around an economic development model capable of producing better results. For Peru to advance, institutional and political change will prove indispensable.
The Early Christian Displacement of Animal Sacrifice (c. 50–c. 150 CE)
Authors: Rives J. B.
Published: March 2024

This chapter examines sacrifice in early Christian tradition. The first section surveys the relationship of the earliest Christians with existing sacrificial traditions. Although there is little evidence that they rejected animal sacrifice, it had a limited place in their cultic life for practical reasons. The second section traces the application of sacrificial imagery to Christ, which occurs in the letters of Paul and became widespread in the early second century CE. Although this imagery could have provided a framework for commemorating Christ’s death with actual animal sacrifices, Christian leaders instead came to reject the practice altogether. The third section analyzes the factors that contributed to this development: the exclusion of meat from Christian communal meals and the tendency of early Christian thinkers, especially after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, to argue that Judaean sacrificial cult was a prefiguration of Christ’s life and death and either had been superseded or was a misinterpretation. This allowed people to theorize the end of Judaean sacrificial cult as proof of God’s hostility to animal sacrifice. These factors redefined the terminology and conceptual framework of sacrifice: what began as a set of metaphors came to displace ritual practice as the real meaning of “sacrifice.”
The End of Animal Sacrifice?
Authors: Rives J. B.
Published: March 2024

This chapter surveys the place of animal sacrifice in later Christian and European culture. The first section concerns the scholarly tendency to treat animal sacrifice as a marker of primitive culture, starting with E. B. Tylor and William Robertson Smith and extending down to Walter Burkert and René Girard. The second section examines animal offerings within the Christian tradition, from late antiquity down to the present day, which are understood by those who make them as acts of charity rather than animal sacrifices. The third section analyzes some Christian transformations of sacrifice, including the ritual of the Eucharist, the conduct of a virtuous life, and the martyr’s death. These reconceptualizations completely remove the idea of sacrifice from the sphere of ritual and instead redefine it in relation to a person’s actions more generally. In recent centuries, they have become increasingly independent of a specifically Christian worldview, so that for many people in the contemporary world, the term “sacrifice” refers primarily to self-sacrifice, the action of a person who voluntarily gives up something of value for the sake of something else, whether an individual, a group, or a cause.
Conclusion
Authors: Michaels Axel
Published: March 2024

Despite its many structural problems and challenges, Nepal is not a failed state where state power has eroded, public services and infrastructure no longer function, and state-to-state relations are no longer possible or have been frozen. It is a state with a unique cultural, religious, and social diversity, transcultural histories of the regions, different political claims and forms of organization, multiple and fluid identities, and economic entanglements. If Nepal succeeds in continuing down this road, preserving its ethnic and cultural diversity, then the country might become a model for a transcultural state and for unity in diversity, even in the age of leveling globalization.
Introduction
Authors: Cyr Taylor W. , Flummer Matthew T.
Published: March 2024

In this introduction, the authors begin by mentioning several examples of references to free will and moral responsibility from day-to-day conversations. They then briefly mention some of the philosophical questions surrounding free will and moral responsibility, and then they explain what philosophy is and how questions surrounding free will cut across the various sub-disciplines of philosophy, including metaphysics, value theory, and epistemology. The authors then recount how they came to create a podcast called The Free Will Show and how some of the early interviews from the podcast were transformed into this book. They conclude by describing the structure of this book.
Alfred Mele on the Problem of Luck
Authors: Cyr Taylor W. , Flummer Matthew T.
Published: March 2024

In this chapter, Taylor Cyr and Matthew Flummer speak with Alfred Mele about the problem of luck for libertarianism. Libertarianism is the conjunction of the thesis that we have free will and the thesis that free will is incompatible with determinism. The most widely discussed challenge to libertarianism is the problem of luck, which arises from the view’s requirement of indeterminism for free will. According to Mele, luck refers to events that are not under our control and that affect our lives positively or negatively. After discussing apparent problems for each version of libertarianism—non-causal, event-causal, and agent-causal—Mele presents his own solution to the problem.
Gregg Caruso on Free Will Skepticism
Authors: Cyr Taylor W. , Flummer Matthew T.
Published: March 2024

In this chapter, Taylor Cyr and Matthew Flummer talk with Gregg Caruso about free will skepticism, the view that no one is ever morally responsible in the basic desert sense (i.e., no one ever deserves praise or blame just because they knowingly performed some action). They go on to discuss motivations for free will skepticism, which include the manipulation argument and the disappearing agent argument. Next, they discuss implications of the view, including why Caruso favors what he calls optimistic skepticism concerning free will. They conclude by discussing how the view demands changes in our thinking about the treatment of criminals.
Kadri Vihvelin on Dispositional Compatibilism
Authors: Cyr Taylor W. , Flummer Matthew T.
Published: March 2024

In this chapter, Taylor Cyr and Matthew Flummer talk with Kadri Vihvelin about dispositional compatibilism, the view that free will is compatible with determinism and may be understood in terms of agents’ dispositions. They first discuss the nature of dispositions, such as a cube of sugar’s disposition to dissolve in water. They then introduce Vihvelin’s view, which is that our abilities to choose are active dispositions. Next, they clarify the view and talk about the motivations for it. Finally, they go on to discuss various common objections to dispositional compatibilism. For instance, free will cannot be a disposition because it is not up to the sugar whether it dissolves.
Islam, Fiqh, the Ḥukm Shar‘ī, and the Differentiated Realm
Authors: Jackson Sherman A.
Published: March 2024

This chapter establishes that the bounded nature of sharī‘ah is neither a modern innovation nor a restriction imposed upon Islam-cum-sharī‘ah from without. Rather, Muslim jurists have recognized that sharī‘ah’s scope is limited for at least a thousand years. This is through their restricted understanding of the ḥukm shar‘ī (legal ruling) and it differs from assessments that are not based on the sources of sharī‘ah. As sharī‘ah is the sum-total of ḥukm shar‘īs, it can ultimately go no further than the latter will take it. Thus, any restrictions on the ḥukm shar‘ī are restrictions on sharī‘ah. This establishes that sharī‘ah and Islam are not coterminous and that there is “space” between them. This space is that of the realm of the Islamic Secular. The chapter also deals with two potential challenges to my thesis. The first is the “sharī‘ah-minimalism” in the form of the Ẓāhirī movement. The second is the “sharī‘ah-maximalism” of the likes of such influential jurists as Ibn Taymīyah and Ibn al-Qayyim.
The Islamic Secular and The Impossible State
Authors: Jackson Sherman A.
Published: March 2024

Here I engage with the thesis of Wael Hallaq in his provocative book, The Impossible State. I argue, on the one hand, that Hallaq’s definition of the state, with which he argues that Islam-cum-sharī‘ah is incompatible, could not be successfully applied to any number of non-Islamic states across the globe. As such, even on his criterion, there should be nothing unique about Islam’s alleged incompatibility with the modern state. More importantly, however, I argue that by ignoring the Islamic Secular, Hallaq cannot successfully analyze the relationship between Islam cum-sharī‘ah and the state. For, neither Islam nor Islamic law can be adequately understood in the absence of the Islamic Secular. I engage with Hallaq’s definition of the state, his limiting Islam to morality, and his understanding of the relationship between Islamic law and reason. Ultimately, I argue that the Islamic State would be far less “impossible” were Hallaq to consider the Islamic Secular and rethink other arguments of his that I find to be overstated.
Introduction
Authors: Liu Cuilan
Published: March 2024

This chapter opens with this book’s core question: Was the perception of Buddhist clerical legal privileges a Chinese invention? To understand the formation of these privileges, this chapter introduces two key terms borrowed from the Christian context: sanctuary and the benefit of clergy. It then situates the discussion of Buddhist clerical legal privileges in the context of the study of Buddhism and the law and highlights how this book differs in its disciplinary orientation from other existing books studying China’s religion, law, or history—namely, in that it examines the issue over a long historical period across dynastic transitions as well as the transition from imperial to post-imperial China. After providing a sketch of the primary sources used by this book, the introduction ends with an outline of each chapter.
The Adulterous Wife’s Sanctuary
Authors: Liu Cuilan
Published: March 2024

This chapter shows how Buddhist legal writers presented Buddhist institutions as sanctuaries where monks and nuns were immune from being tried for having committed preordination crimes. In this presentation, Buddhist legal writers documented a widely known tactic where fugitives sought to become ordained Buddhist monks or nuns to avoid punishment from the lay law enforcement. These writers presented women convicted of adultery or theft as the most common fugitives to take advantage of Buddhist nunneries as sanctuaries to avoid their pending capital punishment. Different versions of the Buddhist monastic law texts, however, relied on different strategies for this tactic to succeed. These strategies ranged from a then-existing law that required a king to protect ordained Buddhist monks and nuns, to stories of faithful Buddhist kings who were willing to arbitrarily intervene—or even to break an existing law—in order to forgive a newly ordained fugitive.
Dead Monks, Living Heirs
Authors: Liu Cuilan
Published: March 2024

This chapter examines a series of legal disputes over the estates of deceased Buddhist monks and nuns in China from the 1980s to the present. These lawsuits resulted from conflicts between China’s Law of Succession, which grants inheritance rights to the biological children of deceased monks and nuns, and Buddhist monastic law and customary practice in Chinese Buddhism, which grant these rights to the deceased’s host monastery or nunnery. In practice, most judges ruled in favor of the Buddhist institutions over the lay heirs. China’s legislature was also reluctant to clarify the jurisprudential conflict through legislation. The judiciary’s tendency to rule in favor of the institution and the legislature’s unwillingness to undermine Buddhist monastic law and customary practice in the Buddhist community thus show how historical negotiations over the jurisdictional boundary between the state and the Buddhist establishment continue to influence legal practices in China today.
Epilogue
Authors: Liu Cuilan
Published: March 2024

This chapter summarizes why the Buddhist campaign for clerical legal privileges was not a Chinese invention but originated in Indian Buddhism. Contrary to their Indian predecessors, Buddhists in China adopted a unique approach to collaborating with the state to build a hybrid court and form a set of hybrid laws to deal with Buddhist offenders. In so doing, the Buddhist establishment in China was able to maximize its jurisdictional control over ordained Buddhists. This chapter further situates the Chinese Buddhist approach in the wider pan-Asian context to show how Buddhists in South Asia sought a radically different approach by focusing on establishing full-fledged Buddhist monastic courts whose jurisdiction expanded to cover both ordained and lay Buddhists. By comparing the Buddhist and Christian campaigns for clerical legal privileges, this chapter reveals how Buddhists and Christians were interested in demarcating a jurisdictional boundary with the state but for achieving different goals.
Uninitiated Policy Shifts in Peru
Authors: Herrera Veronica
Published: March 2024

Slow-moving harms became part of the everyday landscape for the Rímac River, where communities historically suffered in silence amid growing toxins from industry and mining. Decades later not much has changed, and Lima’s main waterway represents the habituated pollution of most urban rivers in the Global South. This chapter examines the anemic mobilization around the Rímac River and the numerous public institutions that are staunchly resistant to change. Process tracing shows how low levels of bonding mobilization and missing bridging mobilization were shaped by hostile conditions that narrowed the window for autonomous civil society organizing. After the armed conflict, human rights mobilization was squashed by conservative presidential administrations aligned with military officials and extractivist interests. In Lima, human rights and environmental issues remain largely disconnected. Communities are besieged with fast-moving harms from mining, floods, and proposed relocation, and exposure to slow-harms river pollution continues unabated.
Introduction
Authors: Duncan April D.
Published: March 2024

Black youth are robbed of their childhood at an early age because of constant interactions with racism, discrimination, prejudice, and microaggressions, otherwise known as racial trauma. Therefore, school social workers should be aware of how racial trauma affects the moods and behaviors of Black students when assessing their mental state in a clinical setting. They also can benefit from applying play therapy in individual, group, and family therapy with Black students to address racial trauma symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and suicidality. Building rapport with Black children and their caregivers will be another key step to helping Black children learn healthy coping skills to combat racial trauma.
Play It Away!
Authors: Duncan April D.
Published: March 2024

This chapter discusses the rising rate of suicide in Black students and its correlation with racial stressors. It explores suicide rates across the lifespan, as well as important risk and protective factors to consider when working with Black students experiencing suicidal thoughts and/or engaging in self-harming behaviors. The chapter also analyzes signs of suicide contemplation in Black students, as well as signs of suicidality in play therapy sessions. It describes the steps of suicide risk assessments and the importance of safety plans and documentation. Game play and art-based interventions for Black students of all ages are explored for use in individual and group play therapy to increase self-esteem and decrease depressive symptoms, negative thoughts, and self-harming behaviors.
A Life in Zombies
Authors: Hart Adam Charles
Published: March 2024

This chapter provides a chronological overview of Romero’s career that includes both the feature films that made him famous and the work he did in between. It begins with early projects, like the filmed but never completed Expostulations (1961–1962) and the unfilmed Whine of the Faun (1964), as well as his formative appearance in a production of Jack Gelber’s boundary-pushing play The Connection. The chapter then follows the ups and downs of Romero’s career as a director of feature films: massive successes like Night of the Living Dead (1968) and Dawn of the Dead (1978) and financial failures like There’s Always Vanilla (1972) and Season of the Witch (1972). It discusses his commercials and TV work, including his series of sports documentaries, The Winners (1973–1975). As he gained prominence in the industry, he became increasingly pigeonholed as a maker of horror films, even more specifically, as a maker of zombie movies. But the unfilmed scripts that he wrote show a diverse range of interests in a broad range of genres. From the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, Romero wrote dozens of scripts and treatments that were never filmed, including some of his most inspired, most passionate creative work. This chapter places his feature films in the context of the unfilmed projects he was working on alongside them and identifies some of the major themes appearing throughout his filmed and unfilmed projects.
Now and Future Time
Authors: Hart Adam Charles
Published: March 2024

This chapter details George A. Romero’s unproduced science fiction films of the 1980s and 1990s, focusing on Copperhead, written with Marvel Comics’ editor-in-chief Jim Shooter, and War of the Worlds: The Night They Came, a radical reconception of the H. G. Wells story. Romero uses science fiction as a vehicle for exploring the dystopian dangers of technological fascism. In Copperhead, written in the early 1980s, Romero and Shooter follow a soldier who is transformed by a future government into a Robocop-like cyborg, supposedly to fight the “terrorist” rebels who murdered his wife but mostly, as he slowly realizes, to maintain the fascist government’s control over the population. The drafts explore the difficulties of overthrowing a fascist regime without installing an equally authoritarian government: the great danger is that those strong enough to seize power will keep it for themselves. War of the Worlds takes place in contemporary New York City, where a single spacecraft has crashed into a skyscraper. The story follows a small group of people in the building as they try to survive, then defeat, the aliens, who are there to enslave the human population. Doing so requires teamwork and trust, and the script ends—uniquely in Romero’s work—with optimism about humanity’s capacity to work together to fight the coming alien invasion.
Sucking the Life Out of You
Authors: Hart Adam Charles
Published: March 2024

This chapter details a number of unfilmed scripts that George A. Romero wrote in the period from the late 1980s through the early 2000s in which corporate capital creates dangerous monsters or is itself monstrous. This was a period in which Romero’s feature film productions were scarce but he was extremely productive, writing dozens of scripts, treatments, and proposals even as he grew increasingly frustrated with the limitations of the film industry. This chapter shows how Romero articulates frustrations with greed and capitalism into systemic critiques in unfilmed projects such as Resident Evil (1998), in which the military-industrial complex has created a virus that might end the world, and Apartment Living (late 1980s–early 1990s), in which a trendy condo building literally feeds off new inhabitants, granting wealth and immortality to the established residents who “own” it, and an adaptation of R. L. Stein’s Young Adult book series Goosebumps, in which a factory owner’s control over his employees and their families extends long past their deaths.
Shahrazad in the Tropics
Authors: Hassan Waïl S.
Published: March 2024

In Vozes do deserto (2004, Voices of the Desert), Nélida Piñon (1937-2022) reworks The Book of a Thousand and One Nights by centering it on its famous storyteller, Shahrazad. Set in Baghdad during the Abbasid Caliphate (ad 750–1258, the novel presents the Arab world not as the repository of “Oriental wisdom,” as it was for Malba Tahan, Humberto de Campos, and Glória Perez, but as a paradigm of patriarchal despotism and masculinist sexual violence. Like the Orient of Montesquieu’s Lettres persanes and Voltaire’s Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le prophète, Piñon’s Orient is a convenient trope through which to criticize domestic Brazilian norms.
Al-Andalus Re-Imagined
Authors: Hassan Waïl S.
Published: March 2024

O escriba de Granada (2014, The Scribe of Granada) by Gilberto Abrão (b. 1943), and Enigmas da primavera (2015, Enigmas of Spring) by João Almino (b. 1950) evoke the memory of al-Andalus to comment on contemporary crises: the Arab Spring uprisings, the emergence of ISIL, the rise of xenophobia and Islamophobia, the economic downturn, corruption scandals, and a worsening political impasse in Brazil. Abrão creates a proto-fascist character who descends into madness following his discovery of his descent from a fifteenth-century Spanish Arab, while Almino’s teenage protagonist, also of Arab descent and obsessed with Granada’s fall in 1492, has a nervous breakdown before he finds direction in his life in the context of the youth movements sweeping the Arab world, Spain, and Brazil. The mental illness of both protagonists is a metaphor for an aggravating crisis of national identity.