bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Forever Free
Authors: Fields-Black Edda L.
Published: February 2024

This chapter talks about the steamship Boston and many of its passengers that were freedwomen. It mentions Camp Saxton that was the home of the First South Carolina Volunteers, the first regiment of Black soldiers mustered into the US Army. It also recounts Rev. Dr. W. H. Brisbane, who was a former slaveholder that had emancipated the people he held in bondage on Lawtonville Plantation in Beaufort and had been the pastor of Beech Branch Baptist Church. The chapter points out how most elite South Carolinians, like Brisbane, were born and bred into a class which believed people of African descent were created by God to labor. It highlights the “grand triumph” of the Northerners who had left their homes and families to assist Blacks in Beaufort and on the Sea Islands in the Port Royal Experiment.
Trust
Authors: Hannan Jason
Published: February 2024

Chapter 6 asks how we might confront the problem of trolling. It first revisits the conclusions of Amusing Ourselves to Death and After Virtue. Postman makes a desperate plea for turning to public schools as a mass medium for teaching television literacy and resisting the ideology of entertainment. MacIntyre calls for building local forms of community to resist the corrosive influence of liberal individualism upon our moral language. This chapter synthesizes their complementary pleas. Taking inspiration from the Hegelian philosopher Robert Brandom, it makes a case for building a spirit of trust to counter the culture of mass distrust that feeds the problem of political trolling. It further draws from Paulo Freire and bell hooks to propose a pedagogy of trust for creating “open learning communities.” It argues that classrooms can play a powerful role in building a spirit of trust, deflating mass cynicism, and countering the epidemic of trolling.
Expressive Arts Within a Liberation Psychology Framework in Field Education
Authors: Angulo Rafael C.
Published: February 2024

This chapter presents a powerful connection between the arts and practicum learning. A liberation psychology framework is deployed to cultivate students’ critical consciousness, to honor diversity, and to explore sensory ways of knowing. Described is the integration of expressive arts into fieldwork and assignments to promote self-awareness, advocacy, and social justice. The chapter expresses the belief that social work has lost its historic relationship to the arts; this loss of connectivity is viewed as a “tragedy,” one that has separated “the social worker from the poet, the dancer, the musician, the painter, the dramatist, the hip-hop rapper, and the filmmaker.”
Conducting Online Research in the Era of COVID
Authors: Arthur Marc , Pinto Rogério M.
Published: February 2024

Chapter 8 concludes the art-informed research section; it introduces a framework for online theatrical social work inquiry. Described are the roots of theater-based methods, and the benefits of virtual theater workshops, including forum theater and visualization exercises, are explored. Theater has a long history of being used by activists as a mechanism for raising awareness, unearthing discrimination and bias, including institutionalized stigma, and for promoting social change. The chapter opens with an impressive history of HIV/AIDS, chronicling the social factors and misunderstandings that have led to destructive stereotypes that continue to impede effective service delivery for the population with HIV/AIDS. A proposed implementation is described of virtual community-based theater methods to raise provider awareness of inherent biases, with the goal of improving overall HIV care. Insights are shared about the adaptability and accessibility of virtual modalities that readers will find applicable to their work across settings.
Social Determinants of Health
Authors: Fineberg Iris Cohen , Savara Jessica
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses the significance of different social determinants of health (SDOH), how these factors contribute to health disparities, and their connection with cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and palliative care experiences. Financial toxicity illustrates how SDOH affect the lives of oncology patients and families, differentially burdening portions of the population. Since its origin, social work has recognized and prioritized the critical and transactional relationship between the environment and people’s life experiences. However, it has not specifically used the terminology of SDOH. Understanding the definitions, relationships, and significance of SDOH and health disparities is important for social workers in oncology and palliative care as interprofessional colleagues, advocates, clinicians, educators, and policymakers. Notably, social work’s provision of assessment, intervention, resource identification, patient/family and interprofessional education, and multilevel advocacy represent some of the profession’s critical roles in mitigating and eliminating health disparities.
Managing the Challenges of Leading Multiracial Churches
Authors: Edwards Korie Little , Kim Rebecca Y.
Published: February 2024

Leading multiracial churches is exhausting. This is the case for all pastors, regardless of their race. Yet pastors of color experience unique and added burdens leading multiracial congregations. This chapter addresses these distinct and additional challenges and examines how pastors of color try to manage them. They rely on three strategies to manage their additional challenges and compensate for the dearth of resources available to them in their positions. One strategy is to overachieve, or at least achieve more than their white counterparts. A second strategy is to hide or suppress their racial selves in their role as head clergy, in an effort to minimize any negative effect that they perceive their racial minority status may have on their church. Although pastors of color can be quite critical of the religious structure and practices of their ethnoracial home churches, particularly in comparison to established white churches, many also find considerable and necessary social, psychological, and spiritual support from co-ethnic and co-racial ties, including those ties that come from their ethnic home church. This gives them the energy and courage to press on in their role as head clergy of multiracial congregations in what often feels like a wilderness experience. Thus, a third strategy is to get “recharged” by spending time with people, often other pastors, who share their ethnoracial identity. The chapter concludes with recommendations of what can be done to support the well-being of pastors of color in their role as head clergy of multiracial congregations.
Conclusion
Authors: Edwards Korie Little , Kim Rebecca Y.
Published: February 2024

The conclusion summarizes the book’s major findings and arguments. Together, they reveal that racial diversity in churches is a project of white Western Christianity. That is to say it is rooted in the theologies, cultures, and structures of white Western Christianity. The rewards of racial diversity in white Western Christianity are bestowed only under certain conditions. It must maintain the centering of whiteness. What this study reveals is that even if we are talking about the head pastor, this is the bargain that has been struck to do religious racial diversity. We propose that there are three factors that impact how they lead: passion, potential, and pressure. These three factors affect how they will practice pastoring a multiracial church in such a context and find opportunities for social change.
Anna Julia Cooper
Authors: Wright Almeda M.
Published: February 2024

Chapter 1 overviews Cooper’s contributions to educational and religious thought as well as her efforts to educate young Black men and women. Beginning with her early life, the chapter illustrates how Cooper’s early educational experiences alongside ministry candidates led to her calling as a teacher and an activist. The chapter carefully explores Cooper’s written publications, including A Voice from the South and a later unpublished essay, “Sketches from a Teacher’s Notebook.” It further discusses how Cooper’s activist views on education were shaped by her radical theology of progress that empowered Black people, especially women. This chapter highlights how Cooper embodied her radical theological and pedagogical commitments through her persistent advocacy for the education of Black youth amid her own personal struggles.
James Lawson
Authors: Wright Almeda M.
Published: February 2024

Chapter 6 overviews the unique life and pedagogy of James Lawson, the central strategist on nonviolence in the civil rights movement. An advocate for nonviolence, Lawson’s conviction can be traced from his mother’s admonition for a better way to Lawson’s inspiration by the works of Ghandi, and even to his missionary work centered on international resistance. Solidifying this conviction of nonviolence is its alignment with Christian values. This chapter illustrates how Lawson skillfully imparted this conviction of nonviolence to passionate, energetic young people. Lawson’s radical pedagogy involved warning his students of the dangers of unchecked emotions, leading his students in Christian praxis, and giving space for his students to speak and cultivate leadership skills. Lawson’s pedagogy also included the practice of radical listening, honoring the stories and experiences of Black men and women. Lastly, this chapter describes the application of Lawson’s educational activism: through practice, rehearsal, and preparation, Lawson and his students developed the mental fortitude required to stay true to their conviction of nonviolence.
Down with Career Politicians!
Authors: Ollion Étienne
Published: February 2024

The book opens with a brief history of the term “career politicians.” The chapter shows that worries over “political professionalization” are consubstantial with the rise of democracy from its inception, in Europe as well as in the United States. In the 19th century, as hereditary claims to political office gave way to popular suffrage, more and more candidates could not afford to perform their duties without pay. Disputes over the legitimacy of financial remuneration for political service continued into the next century. The controversy would eventually quiet, but it bequeathed a nagging suspicion that politicians are motivated by monetary gain. This chapter traces the arc of the history of opposition to career politicians, from the right-wing criticism against workers entering politics to the stylized opposition between the people and the elites that took hold in the latter half of the 20th century. But why did this rhetoric acquire such resonance at that particular moment? And how did such a pure product of the French establishment as Macron manage to pass as an “outsider”? Drawing on an original, extensive data set, it identifies the central transformations of the political field since the 1970s, and in particular the closure of the French political field.
Agriculture Policy
Authors: Stull Valerie J. , Patz Jonathan A.
Published: February 2024

Climate change and agriculture share a bidirectional relationship; agricultural activities are both driving climate change and are directly impacted by it. Policies and farming activities that lead to deforestation or the conversion of marginal lands to crop production are damaging, often emitting extensive greenhouse gases and increasing environmental pollution, including hazardous nutrient runoff. Agriculture policy is often embedded in energy policy; production of crops for energy (biofuels) is a critical consideration for both human health and climate change. Subsidies and other agriculture policies in the United States incentivize widespread production of a few crops, especially corn, which leads to homogeneous land use, increased use of fertilizers, and pollution, and adversely affects food availability, energy independence, and human health. A healthy food system is diverse and resilient, supported by policies that promote crop rotation, reduce soil disturbance, lower reliance on resource-intensive inputs, and diversify diets.
Promoting Health Through Nature-Based Climate Solutions
Authors: Frumkin Howard , Shane Brendan , Schottland Taj
Published: February 2024

Nature-based climate solutions represent a set of strategies and tools that can help mitigate carbon emissions, remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, promote adaptation to climate change, and build resilience. They need to be implemented as part of an integrated set of climate actions. They aim to accomplish specific mitigation and adaptation goals effectively, economically, and safely. They deliver a wide range of co-benefits, including co-benefits for health and well-being. Nature-based climate solutions can cause unintended and even harmful consequences, and therefore need to be carefully planned, implemented, and managed. This chapter explores nature-based climate solutions in cities as well as in rural and wildland areas. It discusses tradeoffs, policy levers, economic levers, communications, and equity considerations that arise in implementing nature-based climate solutions. The chapter also includes a textbox on ecosystem services and nature’s services to people, and a textbox on the number of trees that the world can support.
Communicating the Health Relevance of Climate Change
Authors: Sarfaty Mona , Maibach Edward
Published: February 2024

Communication can be an indispensable strategy for education of patients, the public, and policymakers about the human health impacts of climate change and engaging them in solutions-oriented actions. Recently, there has been a large increase in public concern about climate change and growing public awareness of its relevance to human health. However, most people continue to see climate change as primarily an environmental, scientific, or political problem. Presenting health-framed information about climate change and measures to address climate change is effective for engaging people across the political spectrum on the issue and building public support for measures to address climate change. There is growing evidence on how to effectively present health-framed information about climate change. While misinformation and disinformation abound, there are proven strategies for “debunking” and “inoculating” people against erroneous and misleading information. The chapter also includes a textbox on principles of climate change communication.
Building Movements to Address Climate Change
Authors: Potter Teddie M. , Nerbonne Julia Frost , Surapaneni Vishnu Laalitha
Published: February 2024

Effective social movements are necessary to address the climate crisis. Much can be learned from the experience of the Environmental Justice Movement and other social movements that have addressed environmental issues. Systematic movement building frameworks, such as those of Marshall Ganz and Manuel Pastor, can provide valuable guidance. Effective social movements engage in practical and systemic actions, and they build and maintain relationships. Policies and actions to address climate change are likely to succeed if they are associated with social movements that engage people, develop shared goals, pool their resources, and focus their energy. The chapter includes textboxes on the Climate and Health Movement, Greening of the Healthcare Sector and Three Innovative Climate Change Initiatives.
How to Take Skepticism Seriously
Authors: Leite Adam
Published: February 2024

This book argues that external world skepticism is false for straightforward reasons. To make this case it develops and defends a neglected methodological approach involving a distinctive process of first-person reflection. We begin within the practices, procedures, and commitments of ordinary life and science. We then seek some reason to think skepticism true, carefully scrutinizing all the most important arguments. Finding no reason to think it true and decisive reasons to think it false, we reject it. As the book shows, this is a fully satisfactory refutation. No epistemological theorizing is needed. The book begins by exploring and defending this method in seminal works of G.E. Moore and J.L. Austin. Turning to contemporary epistemology, it asks why we shouldn’t appeal to considerations about the world when responding to skeptical argumentation. No good reason is found, despite exploration of a wide range of central issues in recent epistemology. To the contrary, perfectly ordinary examples indicate that it is correct to reject the skeptical scenarios—the dreaming worry, Descartes’ evil demon, the brain-in-a-vat—by appealing to things we know about the world. Likewise, considerations about sensory perception do not provide any reason to think our evidence excludes considerations about the world. Along the way, methodological lessons are drawn from consideration of the most important skeptical arguments in the contemporary literature. The book concludes by defending the satisfactoriness of its approach. What emerges is a new understanding of what philosophical illumination might look like in relation to core epistemological issues.
Epistemic Asymmetry
Authors: Leite Adam
Published: February 2024

This chapter highlights and explores a feature of ordinary epistemic life that is central to the overall argument of the book. The Moorean anti-skeptic takes there to be an epistemic asymmetry between our situation in the actual world, in which we know and have good evidence that we are not being deceived by an evil demon, and the situation of an evil demon’s victims, who inevitably go wrong about what situation they are in. This chapter clarifies the notion of epistemic asymmetry and shows that there are perfectly ordinary examples of epistemic asymmetry that display exactly the structure the Moorean anti-skeptic postulates. This form of epistemic asymmetry is thus a familiar feature of ordinary epistemic life. There is consequently no reason to think that the structure of the skeptical scenarios prevents us from having good evidence against them or from knowing that they do not obtain.
Climate Change
Authors: Zack Naomi
Published: February 2024

The subject matter of intersectionality cannot be predicted. But this is an asset, allowing for creativity and response to new oppressions. Intersectionality’s vagueness as a theory is like successful scientific theories, because varied applications of the theory become possible. A general need is answered by successful vague theories, and intersectionality provided ways for feminists to consider differences among women. Intersectionality can also be expanded beyond women. There are two limits to intersectionality. When it gets too specific, it becomes narrative and should be replaced by that. But when intersectionality is made more general, those who do not experience multiple oppressions may support solutions for those who do, because such solutions also benefit them.
Intersections within Intersections
Authors: Zack Naomi
Published: February 2024

Transgender people who are obscure are treated differently from rich celebrities, and sex workers also experience different forms of abuse and discrimination if they are poor and unknown. Multi/mixed raced people are not fully accepted by the different racial groups in their makeup. These intersections within intersections all have at least one added factor of oppression that merits analyses. For transgender people and sex workers without prior resources, violence and death are disproportionately experienced. When multi/mixed race people present themselves as members of different races in different contexts, this is transraciality or passing. Passing from black to white met with extreme disapproval in the twentieth century, but in the twenty-first century, those passing from white to black have received the most severe censure.
Insidious Trauma in Sophocles’ Women of Trachis
Authors: Weiberg Erika L.
Published: February 2024

Chapter 2 delves into the themes, plot, diction, and stagecraft of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis for examples of “insidious trauma,” which broadens the definition of trauma to address pervasive fear of sexual assault, populace-ravaging warfare, and other kinds of violence, to which female characters in tragedy know that they are vulnerable, and for which they are often blamed. In Women of Trachis, Heracles’ homecoming is derailed when Deianeira discovers that he has raped and enslaved a woman named Iole, whom he has sent home to be his concubine after sacking her city. Deianeira fashions a love charm for Heracles out of blood that she received from a centaur who sexually assaulted her, without realizing that this charm is in fact a poison. Deianeira’s stories about her past and decisions in the present thus touch on discrete episodes of sexual assault as well as those best described as insidious trauma, including the pain of waiting for her absent and neglectful husband and her nostalgia for a childhood free from fear of sexual violence. Despite the significant challenges to recognizing this range of experiences as traumatic, Sophocles’ Women of Trachis teaches spectators to bear witness to women’s trauma through the mistakes and late learning of two internal witnesses: the Chorus of young Trachinian women and Deianeira’s son, Hyllus.
Euripides’ Helen and the Trauma of Survival
Authors: Weiberg Erika L.
Published: February 2024

Chapter 4 argues that Euripides’ Helen dramatizes the trauma of survival after a military disaster that killed many soldiers abroad. Helen takes a different approach from the earlier tragic homecoming stories by giving both husband and wife a future together after the events of the play. Yet far from being a simple romantic comedy of adventure and escape, the novel plot of Helen requires its protagonists to navigate together the difficult condition of survival after traumatic loss. This crisis of survival is faced by marginal characters in earlier homecoming plays—the Chorus or Hyllus or Amphitryon—since they are the only ones left standing at the end. Helen instead casts its protagonists, and particularly Helen, as survivors of losses that continue to haunt them, as well as virulent stories that challenge their sense of their own memory and identity. This chapter traces this crisis of survival through formal tropes such as repetition, doubled scenes, and performances that re-enact past trauma. Helen shows how these repetitions and returns can function as ways of working through past trauma by changing the survivor’s relationship to the traumatic experience.
Coda
Authors: Egeler Matthias
Published: February 2024

While the preceding chapters focus on the rural landscape as it is viewed and experienced by its inhabitants, the Coda highlights that landscapes are perceived not only by the people who inhabit them but also by those who pass through, who visit them, or who for other reasons look at them from the outside. To engage with such an outside experience of the land, this chapter approaches the representation of the Strandir countryside in the town of Hólmavík, and more generally the engagement with landscape in art. Studying the way the landscape is represented there for outside visitors opens up some broader perspectives on the urban or outside engagement with the landscape in contrast to the rural experience of it. Between the country and the city, the engagement with the landscape differs markedly.
Due Process As American Democracy
Authors: Redish Martin H.
Published: February 2024

Procedural due process guarantees to individual members of the polity that government will treat each of them with fairness and respect when seeking to take their life, liberty, or property. Although enshrined in the US Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, the scope of those guarantees has long been a source of public and academic debate. Due Process as American Democracy develops an entirely new approach to the procedural due process, grounded in foundational precepts of American political theory. It argues that American political thought comes from an adversarial understanding of democracy, where individuals need to protect their own interests, because no one else can be trusted to do so. This skeptical democracy informs the separation of powers and operates as the protector of liberal democracy. When applied to procedural due process, adversary democracy dictates a skepticism of both judges and those who seek unilaterally to represent the individuals’ interests. The end result is a demand for strong prophylactic protections of judicial neutrality and independence far beyond what is presently required and imposition of serious restrictions on the ability of courts to appoint others to protect individuals’ legally protected interests. The book applies these underlying democratic premises to areas of modern civil procedure and constitutional law, urging dramatic alterations in both.
Constitutional Remedies as Due Process of Law
Authors: Redish Martin H.
Published: February 2024

Like the chapter that precedes it, this chapter focuses on due process issues in the context of pure constitutional law. It concerns the often ignored anomaly of allowing the very majoritarian branches of government that are the primary regulatory targets of the countermajoritarian US Constitution to have all but total control over the remedies which the courts are permitted to issue to prevent or punish violations of that Constitution. The chapter argues that abdicating the judicial responsibility to ensure that the majoritarian branches of government do not violate the Constitution violates core notions of adversary democratic due process, which is grounded in a skepticism concerning the good faith of those wielding majoritarian power.
Motivational Interviewing Communication Skills
Authors: Schechter Nicole , Wegener Stephen T.
Published: February 2024

This chapter presents the motivational interviewing (MI) tasks and skills that are used to make the MI spirit come alive in the rehabilitation context. The foundational MI skills—open-ended questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries (OARS)—are used strategically to mobilize change talk and move patients toward goals. Open-ended questions help the patient say more about desired changes and clarify the path. Affirmations increase patient confidence. Reflections help the patient feel heard and highlight discrepancies between behaviors and goals. Summaries are used to bring the session to a close, reinforce the patient’s reasons for change, and move to action. OARS and other skills discussed in this chapter are interwoven in the four MI tasks: engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning. Each task incorporates distinct goals and different ways of using the skills. Ultimately, when MI skills are used to guide a patient through the four tasks, change is achieved.
Motivational Interviewing Training, Training Resources, and System Change
Authors: Schechter Nicole , Torres Laura
Published: February 2024

This chapter presents approaches to incorporating motivational interviewing (MI) training in a rehabilitation clinic, department, or organization. It discusses the importance of connecting MI to the organizational mission and offers recommendations on how to determine the most effective approach to implementation of MI training and integrating MI practices into clinical work. The chapter discusses assessment of organizational readiness for MI training and implementation and offers ideas for who to train, when to train, and how to train. This chapter outlines different types and combinations of MI teaching formats and training resources, including strategies to support skill maintenance and the sustainability of training programs. The importance of and how to evaluate training effectiveness and learner knowledge and attitudes are also covered in this chapter.
Guns and the Unanticipated Consequences of COVID-19
Authors: Stein Michael D. , Galea Sandro
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses the intersection of COVID-19 and gun violence, a challenge that continued to rise during the pandemic era. This rise reflects the deep roots of the gun crisis in America and the need to engage with the structural drivers of gun violence to meaningfully address this challenge.
Russia in the Pacific
Authors: Ziegler Charles E.
Published: February 2024

For more than a century, Russia has aspired to recognition as a great power in the Asia Pacific, yet Russian leaders from the tsarist through the Soviet and post-Soviet eras have encountered repeated setbacks in the region. At certain points Russia appeared poised to make a breakthrough, but outcomes never matched expectations. Structural factors constraining Russian regional aspirations include geographic challenges, demographic imbalances, and persistent low levels of economic development. Institutional factors—the hyper-centralized, secretive character of Russian foreign policymaking, bureaucratic competition, and dominance of a single powerful executive—have been critical in shaping Russian foreign policy toward the Pacific. Agency in the form of unique personality traits of autocratic executives, and their receptiveness to ideas of imperial dominance, expansion, and national identity are important, but the persistence of certain patterns in Russia’s Asia policy suggests even the most powerful autocrat faces constraints. Starting with Russian imperial expansion in the late nineteenth century, this book assesses Soviet Asian projects during the Cold War, then considers diplomatic, economic, and military dimensions of Vladimir Putin’s pivot toward the Asia Pacific. The conceptual approach is analytically eclectic, combining realism’s focus on military and economic dimensions of power with a constructivist’s attention to questions of national identity.
Introduction
Authors: Ziegler Charles E.
Published: February 2024

Since the late nineteenth century, successive Russian regimes have made repeated attempts to secure territory, exercise influence, and be accepted as a great power in the Asia Pacific. However, Russia has encountered significant obstacles in its quest for recognition as a major power in the region. In the early nineteenth century tsarist Russia was far more active in the Pacific than the United States, but the latter dominated the Pacific throughout much of the twentieth century. The USSR could only briefly challenge Washington, in the 1970s, and lost ground with the collapse of the Soviet state. Employing a broad historical approach makes it possible to discern certain patterns in tsarist Russian and Soviet foreign policy that shape current Russian policy. A brief survey of Russia’s expansion eastward indicates some parallels to America’s westward expansion, though Russia’s imperial ambitions suffered a major setback during the Russo-Japanese War, and Soviet efforts were only partially successful. This chapter outlines the plan of the book.
Socialism
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

This book provides an introduction to arguments for and against socialism. The approach is logical and analytic: arguments are broken down into numbered steps, with each step clearly labeled as a premise or an inference from previous steps. This method effectively lays bare the structure of an argument, allowing the reader to see exactly what is assumed by the argument and whether those assumptions really do logically imply the claimed conclusion. While the book aims to be fair to the arguments from both sides, it ultimately sides with socialism: it defines socialism as coming in degrees, and maintains that the arguments indicate that we should move in a strongly democratic socialist direction. The overarching argument has relatively simple premises: socialism promotes human well-being better than capitalism, and socialism does not violate rights of individuals. Naturally, the defender of capitalism will deny these premises and will claim that capitalism better promotes human well-being; many capitalists also claim that socialism does violate individual rights, particularly property rights. The bulk of the book sorts through the data and arguments on both sides, considering arguments from philosophers like G. A. Cohen, Jonathan Wolff, David Schweickart, Ronald Dworkin, and John Tomasi. But the book also considers arguments by scholars from other fields, including economists F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman.
The Case for Markets
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

This chapter analyzes two classic arguments for the superiority of markets: F. A. Hayek’s claim that decentralized markets utilize information better than could ever be done through central planning and Milton Friedman’s argument that free markets are superior because they harness the power of self-interest. If such arguments are correct, then they would work to undermine the Democracy Argument for Socialism presented in the previous chapter. However, it is shown that both of these arguments rely on a crucial assumption: that if each person does what is best for them, we will arrive at a situation that is best for everyone. That assumption will be questioned in the succeeding chapters.
Market Failures II: Monopolies and Monopsonies
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

This chapter contends that the Hayek- and Friedman-inspired arguments for the superiority of markets fail when it comes to monopolies, monopsonies, or other situations in which shopping is impractical. When monopolies threaten, prices no longer provide the decentralized information that was meant to be the great advantage markets had over more democratic control; even when each actor works rationally in their own best interest, this does not result in a situation in which well-being is maximized overall. A monopsony exists when there is only one buyer of a particular good. Since most people have only their labor to sell, this situation too can undercut the reasons for thinking that markets will increase overall well-being.
Conclusion
Authors: Sehon Scott R.
Published: February 2024

This chapter acknowledges that we cannot expect to easily sort out all issues, especially deep political issues, through an iterated process of laying out our premises and inferences in numbered step arguments. Nonetheless, the chapter contends that there is great value in this approach, even if there are limits to what we can hope to accomplish. The chapter then summarizes the arguments covered in the book, and explains how the book made a case for the soundness of the Master Argument for Socialism, according to which socialism better promotes human well-being and does not violate rights, and that we should therefore move in the direction of socialism.
A Livable Planet
Authors: Powers Madison
Published: February 2024

This book argues for a targeted human rights approach, assigning priority to a bundle of rights strategically important for counteracting ecologically unsustainable, economically predatory market practices that exhaust natural resources or degrade the environmental conditions essential for a livable planet. Climate disruption is an important example of the ecological consequences of such practices. However, our ecological predicament consists of a cluster of concurrent, mutually reinforcing crises, including climate change, land-system change, loss of biodiversity and biosphere integrity, alteration of biogeochemical cycles, and decreased freshwater availability. They are causally intertwined and resistant to resolution in isolation. Their harmful effects result from or are exacerbated by the structure of the global political economy, especially institutions that influence the acquisition, control, and use of land, energy, and water resources. These institutions shape the economic decisions that have transformed every region of the globe and altered the planetary conditions that support life on Earth. A livable planet therefore requires changes in humanity’s relation to the rest of nature, which in turn requires the transformation of our economic relationships and the political and economic ideals underpinning them. Specifically, the balance of power between states and markets should be reversed by implementing an enforceable institutional bulwark against market practices that subvert the ecological conditions essential for the secure realization of human rights. These practices enable the powerful to hoard economic opportunities, crowd out sustainable alternatives, extract resources from vulnerable communities, shift environmental and economic burdens, dodge political and market accountability, and hijack public institutions for private purposes.
Sustainability and Political Economy
Authors: Powers Madison
Published: February 2024

This chapter surveys criticisms of prominent conceptions of sustainability, and it defends a definition suitable for assessing the multiple, mutually reinforcing ecological consequences arising from the configuration of global political and economic arrangements. Subsequent sections examine four ecological critiques that pinpoint unsustainable features of the global political economy: the “logic of capitalism,” understood as the relentless pursuit of profits; a self-destructive consumerist ethos, whether deeply rooted in human nature or artificially sustained by a flawed ideal of social progress; macroeconomic policies that make economic growth the synoptic goal of social organization; and the causal impact of economic inequality. The conclusion is that each diagnosis is useful but incomplete and that the primary focus of critique should be those political institutions and market practices most responsible for undermining both the sustainability of the global political economy and the basic elements of well-being protected by human rights.
Human Rights and Ecological Goals
Authors: Powers Madison
Published: February 2024

This chapter defends a human rights approach tailored to provide practical guidance for a transition to a more just and sustainable global political economy. Its aim is to curb ecologically unsustainable, economically predatory market practices and change the institutional arrangements that support them. There are three main components. First, some human rights deserve enhanced priority because they serve dual purposes. They secure the basic elements of human well-being that ground those rights, and they perform their normative function, in part, by securing the ecological conditions that sustain human life and make possible the satisfaction of basic needs. Second, central to the approach is the state’s duty to protect human rights, primarily by counteracting structurally entrenched economic disadvantages and cumulative concentrations of power that systematically undermine their secure realization. Third, the chapter responds to normative and conceptual objections to human rights theories generally and their specific application to complex ecological crises.
Dobbs and Our Privacies
Authors: Huq Aziz Z. , Wexler Rebecca
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses the relationship between reproductive autonomy and data privacies. It documents first the scope of anti-abortion criminal and civil investigations after Dobbs and explains why these investigations will seek to exploit digital personal information, creating new risks to the pregnant and their care providers as well as broad spillover harms to data privacy more generally. It then describes the expansive production of digital personal data in the information economy and explains how such data can put reproductive autonomy at risk. The role of, and risks from, digital data in the coming abortion wars will ultimately be determined by two groups of actors: private tech firms and state actors who will set the rules for anti-abortion investigators’ access to the data. The chapter concludes with a detailed prescriptive account of what tech firms and state actors should do to protect digital privacy after Dobbs.
Higher Education
Authors: Nichols Tom
Published: February 2024

This chapter details the transformation of higher education from an elite pursuit meant to prepare young people for careers into a democratized mass experience based on consumer satisfaction, and how the commodification of education undermines respect for expertise. The chapter covers problems such as grade inflation, majors, and teaching evaluations.
Thalamocortical mechanisms for spike-and-wave epileptic seizures
Authors: Destexhe Alain , Sejnowski Terrence J.
Published: February 2024

This chapter focuses on thalamocortical mechanisms for spike-and-wave epileptic seizures. It discusses the genesis of paroxysmal discharges in the thalamus and how they lead to spike-and-wave seizures in the thalamocortical system. Experimental data found that seizures are generated by mechanisms that are similar to those that generate spindle oscillations. The chapter looks into the experimental results of the results of in vivo and in vitro experiments as per the context of the thalamocortical-loop framework. It explains how computational models provide an integrated view of the genesis of pathological oscillations, with the different types of synaptic receptors involved, and resolve the apparent contradictions in the interpretation of the experimental data.
Starting from the Basics
Authors: Dell'Erba Marco
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores the problem of systematization entailed in smart contracts. From a commercial law perspective, it discusses whether the rules provided in the commercial context for the conclusion of contracts between two ‘human’ parties may be safely extended to blockchain smart contracts. After analysing smart contracts and their main properties, this chapter surveys the relevant North American and European regulations. The chapter suggests that applying the existing regulatory framework to the new emerging commercial practices is the best solution and emphasizes the need for uniform principles as a precondition for commercial practices to prosper. It takes into consideration important historical precedents, such as the Law of Merchants (lex mercatoria), and its new form, the so-called lex cryptographia (or cryptographica), as the correct paradigms to be applied to the globalized cryptographic-based context. Finally, this chapter emphasizes the need for both public regulation and self-regulation as two complementary sources in commercial law, and the role that self-regulatory organizations and industry representatives should play in the shift towards a new technologic area.
‘It Wasn’t Worth the Pain to Me to Pursue It’
Authors: Henry Nicola
Published: February 2024

The non-consensual taking, creating, or sharing of intimate images, also known as ‘image-based sexual abuse’, is a widespread global problem. While there has been growing attention to this phenomenon, little empirical research has investigated victim-survivor experiences either of their abuse or of their search for justice after the abuse. This chapter focuses on justice responses to image-based sexual abuse, drawing on semi-structured, qualitative interviews with twenty-five Australian victim-survivors. The author notes that based on negative perceptions of the police or previous experiences, most participants thought there was ‘no point’ in reporting their experiences to the police. Although participants had diverse conceptions about what justice entailed, they all wanted some kind of recognition for the harm done to them. They wanted greater awareness, training, and education, as well as access to information. The chapter concludes with recommendations for law, policy, and practice to enhance justice outcomes for victim-survivors of image-based sexual abuse.
Conversations with Dostoevsky
Authors: Pattison George
Published: February 2024

Conversations with Dostoevsky is a series of fictional conversations taking place between November 2018 and spring 2019 in the narrator’s Glasgow apartment and elsewhere in the city. Starting with Dostoevsky’s story A Gentle Spirit, the conversations spell out Dostoevsky’s response to the vision of a loveless world with which the story ends and move on to his advocacy of faith in God, Christ, and immortality. The themes discussed include suicide, truth and lies, guilt, determinism, literature, the Bible, Mary, Christ, Dostoevsky and film, ‘the woman question’, nationalism, the Church, the Jewish question, immortality, and God. The main text is accompanied by a series of commentaries that contextualize the issues discussed in the conversations with references to his novels, journalism, letters, and notebooks as well as engaging the relevant critical literature. The work is not a conventional academic study and instead of chapters there are (fictional) ‘conversations’ followed by a series of ‘commentaries’. This should be clear in what follows, although the abstracts/keywords format does not in all cases facilitate representation of the fluid nature of the ‘conversations’.
NPM (2.0)
Authors: Karlsson Tom S.
Published: February 2024

This chapter concerns (re)emerging discourses over political and administrative organisation in pre- and post-NPM contexts. Its analytical framework is based on a typology of market and management, and it poses the questions of (i) which problems are being identified, and (ii) how solutions are being proposed during two different time periods. It shows how discourses concerning slow government and excessive regulation (re)emerge as problems, and that the proposed solutions are similar over time. It is argued that an era of NPM 2.0 is now emerging, wherein political and administrative organisation react to similar problems and cope through similar solutions thereby risks reiterating the same outcomes as previous reforms has done.
Foundations of Property Law
Authors: von Bar Christian
Published: February 2024

This book is an abridged translation of the first volume of Gemeineuropäisches Sachenrecht—a milestone in European private law theory, and in comparative property law more broadly, which elaborates property law (the ‘law of things’) as a sub-discipline of European private law for the first time. The English version sets out the conceptual framework of ‘property law’ as a domain of erga omnes monopoly rights that govern the relationship between persons vis-à-vis objects of value. Within that framework, a reflexive relationship appears between property rights and their objects—in which property rights play a role in constituting the very objects (‘things’) in which they are held. With magisterial comparative scope, insights are gleaned from all the jurisdictions of the European Union (including those of the United Kingdom) and brought to bear on the subject matter without the monotony of parallel descriptions of national law. Instead, the property law of diverse legal systems is brought together in a single picture without contradiction or repetition: a systematic elaboration of the objects of property rights, the role that ‘rights’ and ‘things’ play in determining the province of ‘property law’, and various questions regarding the identification of things, their separation, alteration, or combination.
Real Things
Authors: von Bar Christian , Allen Jason Grant
Published: February 2024

This chapter elaborates the concept of ‘real things’, a fundamental category of objects of property rights. In particular, it sets out the way that real things—physical, tangible objects—serve as reference points for property rights. It also explores the special position of animals and money in the taxonomy of property law’s objects. Although they are sentient, animals are generally treated as objects (and never as subjects) of property rights subject to certain qualifications that are usually external to the logic of property law itself. In the case of money, it is necessary to distinguish between money per se, ‘money tokens’ (such as banknotes and coins), and the monetary unit. Of these, only money tokens are ‘real things’ and are most straightforwardly apprehended as objects of property rights. Exploring these cases at the margin helps to explain the core of the concept of ‘real things’.