bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Merry and contented slaves and other island myths: representing Africans and Afro-Creoles in the Anglo-American world
Authors: Bagneris Mia L.
Published: May 2018

The chapter analyses the depiction – or lack thereof – of Africans and Afro-Creoles in British colonial art of the West Indies. It places Brunias within the context of other European painters in the British Caribbean during the long eighteenth century, particularly George Robertson and Isaac Mendes Belisario. James Pope-Hennessy and others have dismissed Brunias’s compositions as typical plantocratic propaganda designed to deny the brutal reality of plantation slavery. However, a deeper examination reveals the artist as standing apart from his peers in his attention to the human reality of the black presence in the islands. Brunias is unique in highlighting the African past of his black figures and the continuing influence of this past on the development of a vibrant Afro-Creole colonial culture that exists apart from the world of the planters.
New wine in old bottles? Ancien Régime schools imagine the future
Authors: O'Connor Adrian
Published: May 2018

While the Assembly and the public debated the possible reform of education, the administrators, instructors, students, and others affiliated with the schools were left navigating uncertain political, social, and institutional terrain. They too participated in the wide-ranging debate over educational reform discussed in the preceding chapters, proposing their own answers to questions about whether the educational institutions inherited from the Ancien Régime could be integrated into the new society and new politics, whether they could be turned into instruments of “public instruction.” This chapter examines local attempts to accommodate and realize the new politics in and through education by analyzing letters, proposals, memoranda, requests, and programs for reform generated by or for universities, collèges, petites écoles, and other educational institutions during the years of the constitutional monarchy. These sources reveal institutions and individuals trying to anticipate, accommodate, and influence the course of revolutionary politics, show mounting frustrations as the delayed promise of educational reform and as controversies over the role of religion in politics complicated the process of actually running schools, and remind us of the entanglement of practical, political, and ideological imperatives that characterized the work of revolution.
Republican instruction: an elusive ideal
Authors: O'Connor Adrian
Published: May 2018

The collapse of the constitutional monarchy and the establishment of the French Republic presented a deep fissure in the history of the Revolution and, with that, in the ambitions and expectations of revolutionary pedagogy. And yet, a close examination of the republican debates over education, and especially of the practical reform efforts undertaken by the National Convention and by local authorities and school administrators, suggests important continuities across the monarchy-republic divide. These attempts to preserve, reform, and reimagine educational institutions during the first years of the Republic suggest that the pursuit of public instruction, of contestatory politics, of critical and contributive citizenship, and of an engaged and educated citizenry was more sustained, more ambitious, and more nuanced than is often recognized. These points are highlighted in a re-examination of how the revolutionaries sought to use particular pedagogical instruments, such as republican catechisms, political festivals, revolutionary songs, and the like, and of their continued attempts to make the educational institutions inherited from the Ancien Régime work for the new Republic.
Globalisation-from-above and globalisation-from-below
Authors: Petersen Anne Ring
Published: May 2018

Chapter 1 outlines how ‘globalisation’ and ‘migration’ have been articulated in Western discussions of contemporary art since the 1990s, and how the discourse on art and globalisation intersects with the discourse on art and migration. Migration is at the same time one of the causes and vehicles of globalisation, and one of its effects. Migration can thus be seen as an aspect of globalisation, also in terms of conceptualisation. The discourse analysis of this chapter is structured by Stuart Hall’s distinction between two vectors in the globalisation processes: globalisation-from-above and globalisation-from-below. Following Hall, I contend that the discourse on art and globalisation primarily revolves around issues concerning globalisation-from-above, whereas the discourse on art and migration mainly revolves around problematics related to globalisation-from-below. The critical discourse analysis in Chapter 1 complements the literature review’s mapping of the field and considers texts by key researches such as Hans Belting, Peter Weibel, James Elkins, Mieke Bal, Griselda Pollock, and from Third Text.
The politics of identity and recognition in the ‘global art world’
Authors: Petersen Anne Ring
Published: May 2018

Questions of cultural identity and the status of non-Western artists in the West have been important to the discourses on the interrelations between contemporary art, migration and globalisation for at least two decades. Chapter 2 considers the connections between the critical discourse on cultural identity, the globalisation of the art world and the adoption of multicultural policies by Western art institutions. It critically engages with the British discourse on ‘New Internationalism’ in the 1990s as well as the wider and more recent discourse on ‘global art’. It is argued that discussions from the last twenty-five years have not only made it clear that institutional multiculturalism is not the answer to the challenge of attaining genuine recognition of non-Western artists in the West, but also revealed that the critical discourse on identity politics has not been able to come up with solutions, either. In fact, it is marred by the same binary thinking and mechanisms of exclusion that it aims to deconstruct. Chapter 2 concludes with two suggestions to how we can get beyond the deadlock of the critical discourse on identity politics.
The artist as migrant worker
Authors: Petersen Anne Ring
Published: May 2018

Chapter 3 addresses an issue directly related to the institutional transformation of the art world explored in Chapter 2, namely how globalisation and migration have also changed the role and work of artists by providing many artists with new conditions of possibility for developing cross-cultural artistic practices. The chapter unpacks the issue of artists on the move today and seeks to answer the questions that the title implies: Have artists in demand on the global exhibition circuit become a kind of migrant workers in the international labour market of the global art world? If so, what kind of migrants are they? And what kind of artists? The careers and positions of selected artists from India – Bharti Kher, Rina Banerjee, Ravinder Reddy and Anish Kapoor – are used as examples to substantiate the chapter’s proposition that internationally renowned artists have in fact become a kind of migrant workers. Moreover, this change of conditions delivers a further blow to the myth of the artist as a detached creator, because it invites a more profound exploration of how the artist’s role has been reconfigured as that of a translator, mediator and bridge-builder between people and cultures.
Migrant geographies and European politics of irregular migration
Authors: Petersen Anne Ring
Published: May 2018

Through close-readings of two video installations, Chapter 6 addresses the problematics of the increasing securitisation of nation-state borders in ‘Fortress Europe’ and beyond, which restricts the movements of people who are forced to migrate by war, destitution, persecution or environmental reasons. Ursula Biemann’s video-essay Sahara Chronicle (2006-7) is used to unpack the general question of how artistic productions can respond to discourses on complex political issues such as forced migration, European border policies, and the risk of reducing migrants to ‘bare life’ (Agamben) in the politico-juridical order. Isaac Julien’s video installation Western Union: Small Boats (2007) is used to examine how the enforcement of European borders against irregular migration surfaces in the artistic-cinematic imaginary. Chapter 6 explores the tensional interpenetration of politics, ethics and aesthetics in Julien’s installation. Using a concept coined by Mieke Bal, it proposes that Isaac Julien’s installation could be conceived of as an instance of ‘migratory aesthetics’. However, the sheer beauty of his cinematic representation of the real-life tragedies of migrants makes it necessary to move beyond the question of aesthetics and consider the issue of aestheticisation and the ethical relation of the artist to his subject matter.
Ghost-Haunted Land
Authors: Long Declan
Published: May 2018

Since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 — the formal end-point of the thirty-year modern ‘Troubles’ — contemporary visual artists have offered diverse responses to post-conflict circumstances in Northern Ireland. In Ghost-Haunted Land — the first book-length examination of post-Troubles contemporary art — Declan Long highlights artists who have reflected on the ongoing anxieties of aftermath. Conscious of the simultaneous optimism and uneasiness of the peace era, each of these artists has produced powerful, distinctive work that reflects on legacies of the Troubles years and represents the strangeness of Northern Ireland’s changing landscapes: places marked by traces of enduring division, haunted by lingering spectres of the unresolved past.This wide-ranging study of post-Troubles art addresses developments in video, photography, painting, sculpture, performance and more, offering detailed analyses of key works by artists based in Ireland and beyond — including 2014 Turner Prize winner Duncan Campbell and internationally acclaimed filmmaker and photographer Willie Doherty. The art addressed in Ghost-Haunted Land is acutely attentive to specific regional circumstances in Northern Ireland; but it has also developed in dialogue with international art during this period. ‘Post-Troubles’ contemporary art is thus discussed in the context of both local transformations and global operations — and many of the key points of reference in the book come from broader debates about the predicament of contemporary art today: about its current place and purpose in the world, and about the politics and aesthetics of its dominant forms.
New terrains: ‘Northern Irish art’ in the wider world
Authors: Long Declan
Published: May 2018

Chapter two asks how ‘Northern Irish art’ of the post-Troubles era might be critically approached and appraised in light of broader contemporary conditions. The relation of shifts in Northern Ireland’s art to wider developments in the global art world are addressed and the chapter discusses the ways in which artists from Northern Ireland have been positioned and presented internationally in the post-Troubles years. This chapter takes the 2005 exhibition of art from Northern Ireland at the Venice Biennale as the departure point for an extended examination of how the representation of ‘local’ concerns is shaped in relation to wider cultural and economic forces.
Conclusion – or against conclusions
Authors: Long Declan
Published: May 2018

In his short, fragmentary text ‘Some notes on problems and possibilities’, Willie Doherty writes of ‘the impossibility of the task/to find a trace of some essential matter/to make an image’. What results, he suggests, is ‘barely emerging // an inadequate response’.1 In addressing the art of Northern Ireland’s post-Troubles period in this book, it has been essential to acknowledge something of this impossibility and inadequacy. It has been vital to stress how the perspectives of Doherty and others are insistently partial and provisional, open to question, resistant to closure. These are surely appropriate characteristics to re-emphasise as an attempt is made to bring this discussion to a close – a discussion which, however detailed in parts, could only ever be ‘barely emerging’ in relation to the complexities of this time and place....
Thatcherism and South Yorkshire
Authors: Forrest David , Vice Sue
Published: May 2018

This chapter traces the effects of Thatcherism on Hines’s work, and on the region and communities he depicts. His screenplay for the 1981 film Looks and Smiles takes an art-cinematic form to explore the pressures of the era’s unemployment on young people, in his fourth and final collaboration with Ken Loach, while the unproduced play Fun City offers a blackly comic view of the era’s schooling. Unfinished Business (1983) examines the possibilities of social freedom for women, while 1984’s Threads is an exceptionally bleak documentary drama about the effects of nuclear war. Tracing the screenplay’s archival history reveals the detail of Hines’s aesthetic and political practice.
Knowing and doing with numbers: disaggregated data in the work of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination
Authors: Clark Joshua
Published: May 2018

Through the issue of disaggregated data collection, the chapter tracks the changes in CERD’s approach from its early days to contemporary questions, capturing shifts in the Committee’s priorities and engagement with States parties.
ICERD: the next fifty years
Authors: Diaconu Ion
Published: May 2018

The chapter highlights the continued and future relevance of ICERD. While racism as an official state policy no longer exists, racial discrimination remains a reality, taking new forms. The constructive dialogue between States parties and CERD will enable the continued application of the treaty to new and emerging situations and to new forms of racial discrimination.
Henry Dresser and Victorian Ornithology
Authors: McGhie Henry A.
Published: May 2018

This book explores the life of Henry Dresser (1838–1915), one of the most productive British ornithologists of the mid-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; it is also an exploration of ornithology during a period when the subject changed dramatically. The book is based on previously unpublished letters, diaries and photographs to provide the first detailed biography of any of the independent industrialist–naturalists who dominated nineteenth century British ornithology. Dresser travelled widely in Europe, New Brunswick and to Texas during the American Civil War before settling down to work in London in the timber and iron trades. He built enormous collections of skins and eggs of birds, many of which came from famous travellers and collectors. These collections formed the basis of over 100 publications on birds including some of the finest and some of the last of the great bird books of the late nineteenth century, combining cutting-edge scientific information with masterpieces of bird illustration. Dresser played a leading role in scientific society and in the early bird conservation movement. His correspondence and diaries reveal the inner workings, motivations, personal relationships and rivalries that existed among the leading ornithologists. This book is aimed at anyone interested in birds, history and natural history, and as a textbook for courses relating to history, history of science and museum studies.
Texas: the big adventure
Authors: McGhie Henry A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores Dresser’s visit to Texas in 1863–64, during the American Civil War. He was employed by some Liverpool and Manchester businessmen to take a cargo of goods to the Confederacy in exchange for cotton, which was in heavy demand in Britain. It follows his eventful journey and 18 months in Texas and Mexico, when he had a number of extraordinary adventures. Dresser narrowly escaped being killed a number of times and his business situation was often precarious. In San Antonio he lived with Adolphus Heermann, a well-known ornithologist. In between his difficulties, Dresser built a large bird collection, which formed the basis of a notable article on the birds of Southern Texas. The chapter is based on Dresser’s unpublished diary, which emphasises the ‘boy’s own’ aspects of his adventure.
Collecting
Authors: McGhie Henry A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores the collecting practices of collectors. It discusses the availability of specimens from different sources, including poulterers’ markets, gamekeepers, taxidermists, auctions, dealers and the risk of fraud from commercial dealers. It discusses closed networks among collectors and the importance of correspondence. It establishes how Dresser set up a ‘system of collecting’ with his contemporaries: a collecting network, based on exchanging specimens. The chapter compares his collecting to the ways he conducted business as a merchant. Dresser’s specialities and monopolies of particular species of bird are discussed. It sets out his increasing ambitions in exchanging specimens with museum curators. It also discusses the growth of Henry’s collection through the 1860s as a result of his relationships. It discusses the difference between those who thought of themselves as dealers of specimens, and enthusiasts who exchanged specimens to benefit their collections.
The 1880s: the rise of rivalry
Authors: McGhie Henry A.
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores the 1880s as a time when standards were set in ornithology, in terms of scientific practices of naming and drawing up agreed lists of accepted records of rare birds visiting Britain. Dresser was a key figure in this, at a time when a number of self-proclaimed authorities disputed evidence and practices. Dresser was involved in various arguments over scientific naming practices with American ornithologists, which would run for many years. His relationship with Henry Seebohm, an English collector with whom he had previously been on good terms, deteriorates as Seebohm set out to deinstall Dresser as the leading commentator on the birds of Europe and Siberia. The British Museum (Natural History) continued to develop its leading importance as a scientific research institution, attracting support from many of Dresser’s contemporaries and acquiring their collections. Dresser remained separated from the museum.
‘Drawing closer’: an ecocritical consideration of collaborative, cross-disciplinary practices of walking, writing, drawing and exhibiting
Authors: Tarlo Harriet , Tucker Judith
Published: May 2018

Poet Harriet Tarlo and artist Judith Tucker discuss their collaboration over several years on a number of place-based projects. This dialogue between them was born of close observation of each other’s practice, and of their shared exploration of the similarities and differences between producing texts and producing images, both in and out of place. Examples of this collaboration show Tarlo’s radical landscape poems side by side with Tucker’s landscape drawings. One such place is an abandoned mill-owner’s garden, near their homes in the South Pennine landscape, where the house and mill have long been submerged in a reservoir. Further away from this familiar landscape, Tarlo and Tucker explored unfamiliar terrain on the Lincolnshire estuarial coast, where they contributed to the multi-disciplinary Excavations and Estuaries project. Within this chapter ecocritical ideas are integrated with the discussion of how this creative partnership has led to a body of work and the subsequent exhibitions and readings in which it has been taken to the public.
Nature matters: notes on Ackroyd & Harvey, ecocriticism and praxis
Authors: Ropek Eve
Published: May 2018

In this chapter Eve Ropek claims that to approach any artwork ecocritically, it is necessary to bring to it some knowledge of current scientific thought regarding the biosphere. Indeed the breadth and complexity of the ideas and issues of humans' place within the Earth's ecosystems encourage an interdisciplinary approach; to join together methods and insights in order to inform the next steps at what is seen to be a crucial global point is an urgent and daunting task. Artists working today are very well aware of the narrative of change and of environmental issues. Ropek considers how this inter-disciplinary approach can be applied to selected artworks by British artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey, who practise in partnership as Ackroyd & Harvey. The examples she discusses include such artefacts as: photographs in which the negative image is projected onto grass as it grows, so that the resulting portrait is developed on the grass itself; an artificial diamond made from a polar bear bone; and an installation based on the skeleton of a minke whale. These artists create works that are directly related to climate change and its impact on the biosphere.
Signs and sentiment in British wildlife art
Authors: Welstead William
Published: May 2018

Wildlife art does not receive the critical attention that it deserves. In this chapter, William Welstead considers how the images made after close observation in the field incorporate the signs and visual clues that enable us to identify the species, have some idea of what the individuals are doing and how they relate to the wider environment. These are all important factors in building an informed view of the non-human world and establishing how we feel about it. Wildlife artists tread a difficult path between serving science and catering for the affective response of viewers and between the representational and the abstract in depicting their subject matter. Welstead suggests that the way we recognise wildlife by its overall look or ‘jizz’ means that drawings and paintings can capture in a few lines and shapes the essence of the creature. This economical application of lines and colour therefore allows for at least some level of abstraction. The subject would merit further attention from ecocritics.
Treaty obligations: science and art in Antarctica
Authors: Pearson Mike
Published: May 2018

In this chapter Mike Pearson takes us to Antarctica. This continent is a vital record of past climate patterns, and our future depends on the fate of its covering of ice. Pearson considers how international treaties have imposed strict environmental controls on what is permissible on the continent, and discusses its unique status as an area where military activity is banned. These controls cover the scientists who are stationed there and the relatively small number of visitors that will arrive in cruise ships. He notes that science holds an unchallenged hegemonic position and that the Treaty makes no acknowledgement of the arts and that the advent of tourism was unforeseen. In this context, he considers how more recent programmes have aimed to promote understanding and appreciation of the values of Antarctica through the contribution of writers, artists and musicians. He considers how such initiatives as the Antarctica Pavilion at the 56th Venice Art Biennale have challenged the scientific domination of the continent by claiming Antarctica as a cultural space.
The Scots colleges and international politics, 1600–1750
Authors: Marks Adam
Published: May 2018

The nature of the Scottish reformation and the Presbyterian settlement that followed meant that from the very onset of Protestantism in Scotland Catholics were forced to look elsewhere for their education. Historians have largely focused on the resulting Scots colleges as individual entities, producing capable and detailed accounts of their educational achievements. This chapter will move beyond this by analyzing how they operated together to pursue the common goal of restoring Catholicism to Scotland and the rest of the Stuart Kingdoms. The conflicts that engulfed Europe from 1618 onwards provided ample opportunity for this newly developed network to lay out an alternative and Catholic vision of the recently formed British-Stuart state. Developing from the Thirty Years’ War the outbreak of the British Civil Wars in 1638 changed this and increasingly emphasised the Stuart outlook of the college network. The politics of the colleges became increasingly bound to the dynasty over the latter part of the century as they became associated with the Jacobite cause. Crucially, the activities of the colleges need to be understood not just from the perspective of individual episodes, or indeed from narrative collegial histories but within an arc that spans both chronologically and geographically the rise and fall of the Stuarts to the British monarchies. The confirmation that domestic Catholic life could continue through the use of missionaries provided a base from which Scots college alumni could build, allowing them to influence not only the piety of Scots Catholics but also, in an indirect way, the government of Scotland. Through an analysis of these networks it becomes apparent that the colleges had a British rather than an exclusively Scots context. The Colleges were undeniably Scottish in terms of personnel and patronage but their outlook was thoroughly British and Irish as their policies were not confined to their home nation but considered also the other Stuart Kingdoms. This chapter will analyse the political activities of the colleges from their beginnings to the mid eighteenth century. It will emphasise their broad British outlook. Throughout their existence the specific aims of those associated with the colleges evolved but the institutions themselves never lost their international perspective. By looking beyond the religious education provided by the colleges it is possible to re-integrate the Scots collegial networks into a broader understanding of the historical experience of Scots, English and Irish Catholics and their relationship with the Stuart dynasty.
The Greek Justice System: Collapse and Reform1
Authors: Papaioannou Elias , Karatza Stavroula
Published: May 2018

This chapter discusses the key structural deficiencies of the Greek justice system and proposes concrete policy reforms. The first part provides an account of the Greek legal system using cross-country indicators reflecting the formalism, quality, and speed of resolution mechanisms. The analysis shows that the Greek justice civil system has failed to perform its basic tasks. Trials in all types of courts take years to complete, in some instances seven or even ten years. At the same the quality of laws protecting investors, contracts and property, is low. Using comparative data from other EU jurisdictions, the chapter shows that the key reasons behind these failures are the absence of information technology, the lack of support staff, the absence of specialized courts and tribunals, and a hugely dysfunctional administration. At the same time there is minimal assessment of the judges' performance and limited possibilities for continuing professional development. The second part details a set of policy proposals. The proposals consist of immediate measures for clearing the large backlog and a set of ambitious medium-term reforms, many of which require a constitutional amendment. They aim to make the Greek justice system professionally administered, less formalistic, suitably flexible, and more accountable. Given the strong link between legal institutions and development, justice reform should be an absolute priority of the policy agenda, though sadly it is not.
Public Administration and the Tragic Trident: Understanding the Organizational and Structural Drivers of the Greek Malaise1
Authors: Jacobides Michael G.
Published: May 2018

This chapter proposes reforms to public administration that include making the evaluation and disciplinary processes for civil servants more rigorous and less formalistic, benchmarking the performance of public agencies against key performance indicators that can be monitored publicly, and devolving more powers and accountability to lower levels of the administration. It emphasizes the importance of reforming public administration, as it is the foundation of an inefficient, nepotistic political system built on granting favors and privileges for influence. To that end, this chapter reviews the nature, structure, and evolution of the Greek public administration, as well as some measures showing its relative underperformance. It then analyzes the underlying pathologies and the causes of the underperformance. Finally, the chapter looks at what has been done so far to fix the administration before considering what lies ahead.
The Ecological and Economic Conditions of Exploitation Strategies
Authors: Burton-Chellew Maxwell N. , Kacelnik Alex , Arbilly Michal , Santos Miguel dos , Mathot Kimberley J. , McNamara John M. , Mengel Friederike , Weele Joël van der , Vollan Björn
Published: May 2018

In many situations across biology and economics, there is often one individual, or “agent,” that invests effort into a beneficial task and also one individual that, in contrast, foregoes the effort of investing, and instead simply exploits the efforts of another. What makes an individual choose to invest in production versus exploiting the efforts of another? If everyone invests, then exploitative strategies become very profitable; however if everyone is exploitative, there will be no investments to exploit. How does natural selection resolve this dilemma? What can economic institutions do to encourage investment? Can biologists and economists learn from the approach of each other’s discipline? This chapter outlines the commonalities and differences in approach of the two disciplines to the general problem of investment versus exploitation. It develops a model to encapsulate the general features of many scenarios (“games”) involving potential exploitation and explores the benefits of a unified approach, outlining current limitations and important areas for future investigation.
Common-Pool Resource Management
Authors: Oldekop Johan A. , Hajjar Reem
Published: May 2018

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) initiatives aim to link socioeconomic development with sustainable natural resource use and the conservation of biodiversity of natural resources. CBNRM relies on the concept that rights, responsibilities, and authority for natural resource management decisions should rest with local communities; the decentralization of natural resource management is central to a rights-based sustainable development approach. Despite a global push to decentralize natural resource governance over the past two decades, many initiatives have failed to reach their intended goals. Much research has focused on identifying the kinds of enabling conditions and accompanying institutional arrangements needed to promote collective action (investing) and reduce free riding (exploitation) to bring about more sustainable and equitable management of shared resources. This chapter reviews the theory and conditions thought to aid and allow communities collectively to manage resources more equitably and sustainably. Management of community forests is used to explore current knowledge gaps and what these represent for sustainable development interventions.
Governance of Renewable Resources
Authors: Valone Thomas J. , Barta Zoltán , Börner Jan , Cardenas Juan-Camilo , Giraldeau Luc-Alain , Kokko Hanna , Oldekop Johan A. , Pauly Daniel , Rustagi Devesh , Sutherland William J.
Published: May 2018

Renewable resources have the potential to be used sustainably but typically are not, often due to the existence of exploiters or free riders. This chapter analyzes free-riding behavior using the prisoner’s dilemma-based public goods model and the producer–scrounger model. Overuse of renewable resources is examined under four investor–exploiter scenarios, derived from modifications of the classic producer–scrounger model, and which vary in the degree of excludability of a discovered resource and in the cost of adopting each strategy. Two important factors reduce overuse: when a finder’s advantage can be created for investors, and when the costs of playing exploiter are increased relative to the costs of playing investor. Applying the investor–exploiter model to a fisheries scenario, discussion follows on how interventions designed to reduce overuse may be consistent with the existence of a finder’s advantage. A variety of existing interventions can be seen as increasing the costs of adopting the exploiter strategy.
Metaphysics
Authors: McGinn Colin
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores philosophical issues in metaphysics. It begins by distinguishing between de re and de dicto necessity. All necessity is uniformly de re; there is simply no such thing as de dicto necessity. Indeed, in the glory days of positivism, all necessity was understood as uniformly the same: a necessary truth was always an a priori truth, while contingent truths were always a posteriori. The chapter then assesses the concept of antirealism. Antirealism is always an error theory: there is some sort of mistake or distortion or sloppiness embedded in the usual discourse. The chapter also considers paradoxes, causation, conceptual analysis, scientific mysteries, the possible worlds theory of modality, the concept of a person, the nature of existence, and logic and propositions.
The Question Concerning Technology and Community
Authors: Dotson Taylor
Published: May 2018

This chapter presents a far different approach to concerns regarding technologically driven changes to communal life than is typical. Rather than lament lost community or celebrate the present, it describes the status quo as sociotechnically constructed. Technological societies need not be characterized by the relatively thin and fragmented social practices of networked individualism; things could be otherwise. This take on community and technology is further distinguished by how it sees different arrangements for providing belonging as political: They provide some people with a satisfying experience of community but not others. Although network scholars see networked individualism as liberating, many people are as lonely as ever. Finally, this approach parts ways with traditional science and technology studies: 1) Rather than focus on sexy, esoteric technoscience, it concerns itself with the needs and experiences of average people 2) It analyses the barriers to change instead of merely providing an historical or ongoing account of it 3) It emphasizes the role of the built environment, a technology often overlooked within technology studies.
Toward Technology Studies That Matter
Authors: Dotson Taylor
Published: May 2018

This chapter provides a summary of the book’s argument. It begins by drawing analogies between the contemporary provision of belonging in technological societies and the Oneida religious commune. The two are more similar than one might first expect. Next, the book’s arguments are summarized. The preceding analysis is described as presenting the networking of community as a case of technological lock-in: The sociotechnical makeup of many so-called advanced nations has made any mode of life other than networked individualism increasingly difficult to realize. Not only do artifacts, techniques, infrastructures and organizations stymie citizens’ efforts but policies, dominant economic arrangements, cultural norms and beliefs, and entrenched practices, in turn, reinforce and stabilize their influence. The chapter ends with a discussion of the advantages of the reconstructivist approach to the question concerning technology and community taken in this book and a call for more technology studies research to focus explicitly on providing assistance ordinary citizens. If technology scholars are not on the forefront of exploring how a more desirable technological civilization might be realized, who will be?
Valuing Green: The Content of the Information
Authors: Bullock Graham
Published: May 2018

Chapter 2 introduces and explores questions about the content of information-based strategies with a motivating example focused on food choices. What values are embedded in programs that evaluate food products and companies, such as USDA Organic, Food Alliance, and Fair Trade? Different conceptions of value and values, are used to analyze the content of these and other similar initiatives. These concepts help reveal the many factors that determine whether different audiences will respond to environmental certifications and ratings, from the nature of the information provided to the personal preferences of individuals and their exposure to different forms of marketing and education. The chapter asserts that values are essential to understanding the perceived relevance of different forms of information content, and presents a range of data and theories about the relationships between values and different product categories, geographic scales, types of goods, and parts of the value chain. It concludes with a discussion of the most promising and problematic practices for increasing the perceived relevance and importance of the content of information-based strategies.
The Unreliable Nation
Authors: Jones-Imhotep Edward
Published: May 2018

Natures and technologies have long been central to the making of modern nations. Only recently, however, have scholars seen nations as sites where the very understandings of the “natural” and the “technological” were articulated, contested, and remade in the interests of the nation. This book examines the role of technological failure in crafting both national identities and the distinctive natures that support them. Focusing on the mid-twentieth-century attempt to extend reliable radio communications to the Canadian North, it explores how a group of Canadian defense scientists sought to visualize, map, and catalog the connections between a distinctive natural order of ionospheric storms, auroral displays, and magnetic disturbances on one side, and the particularly severe communication failures that cut the North off from the rest of the nation on the other. Through that project and its related efforts, they gradually transformed machine failures in hostile environments, from the Arctic to outer space, into a defining characteristic of Canadian identity at a time of national redefinition. Tracking those efforts through continental defense strategies, engineering practices, clandestine maps, and material cultures, the book argues that the real and potential failures of machines came to define the nation, its Northern nature, its cultural anxieties, and its geo-political vulnerabilities during the Cold War. More broadly, it argues for technological failures as key sites for linking historical technologies and historical natures, and for writing the histories of “other” nations during the Cold War.
Coda
Authors: Kagan Jerome
Published: May 2018

This concluding chapter highlights the book's aim to document the value of gathering patterns of measures representing possible causes of outcomes and evaluating their predictive power with patterns of measures, many of which should be brain profiles. Investigators should gather as many different sources of evidence as they can because a variable thought to be irrelevant can be a clue to understanding. Ultimately, the research posture advocated in this book requires neuroscientists and psychologists to be more concerned than they have been with the features in the laboratory setting, the details in the procedure, the participants' expectations, the specific evidence cited as the basis for an inference, and the vocabulary used to describe a brain or behavioral outcome.
Objectivity: A Bulwark against Bias
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

An account is procedurally objective just in case it is either impersonal or impartial. This is compatible with its being perspectival. As van Fraassen argues, science must be perspectival if it is to be responsive to evidence.
Embodied Understanding
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

Dances, although not truth-apt, embody and advance understanding via exemplification. They highlight features and underscore their significance. Being symbols, dances require interpretation. Audiences need to know how they symbolize to glean the understanding they convey.
Chekhov’s Gun
Authors: Elgin Catherine Z.
Published: May 2018

Epistemically effective models are felicitous falsehoods. Via representation-as, they exemplify features and impute them to their targets. A model may reconfigure a domain, drawing new boundaries to mark out significant kinds. As Chang shows, this can amount to reconstituting the phenomena the model bears on.
To Serve and to Protect: Food Trucks and Food Safety in a Transforming Los Angeles
Authors: Vallianatos Mark
Published: May 2018

This chapter explores the evolution of food trucks and food safety regulations for these vehicles in the Los Angeles region between WW2 and the present. It shows how food trucks have reacted to and influenced the region’s industrialization and deindustrialization, and how food trucks became more informal and public as immigration made Los Angeles a majority non-white metropolis. In considering how food safety changed as operators began cooking on board trucks, the chapter examines how safety rules can both protect the public and reflect social norms of legitimacy around identity and public space.
Conceptual Innovation and Environmental Policy
Authors: Meadowcroft James , Fiorino Daniel J.
Published: May 2018

This chapter present a general introduction to the issue of conceptual innovation in environmental policy. It argues that attention to concepts is important for understanding argument and practice in the environmental domain. Over the past half century there has been more or less continuous development in the thought categories used to structure discussion of environmental issues. The chapter offers a basic framework for understanding conceptual change in the environmental sphere and presents the outline of the chapters to follow.
Adaptive Management: Popular but Difficult to Implement
Authors: Layzer Judith A. , Schulman Alexis
Published: May 2018

Popularized by scientists in the 1970s, adaptive management is an integrative, multi-disciplinary approach to managing landscapes and natural resources. Despite its broad appeal many critics complain that adaptive management rarely works in practice as prescribed in theory. This chapter traces the history and evolution of the concept and assess its implementation challenges. One reason adaptive management has not always delivered on its promise to make natural resource management more “rational” is that in the real world of policymaking scientists and natural resource managers must contend with advocates that have conflicting values and goals. Scientists and managers also operate in the context of institutions that create particular constraints and opportunities, and are generally inflexible and resistant to change. In recognition of these sociopolitical realities, the focus of much adaptive management practice and scholarship has shifted to governance, particularly collaboration with stakeholders, transformation of the institutions responsible for management, and the process of social learning.
Green Economy: Reframing Ecology, Economics, and Equity
Authors: Fiorino Daniel J.
Published: May 2018

The real and perceived conflicts among economic growth and ecological protection define one of the central tensions in environmental policy. The premise of the concept of a green economy is that it is possible at some level to transform this assumed, traditional zero-sum into a positive relationship. Although its intellectual origins may be traced to the fields of ecological economics, business greening, and ecological modernization, the green economy concept gained particular visibility in the wake of the 2009 financial crisis. This chapter argues that the green economy concept may be influential both in policy framing and as a framework for guiding and carrying out economic and political change. Three modifications in treatments of the concept would make it more acceptable and relevant for future policy debates: rethinking the purpose of growth as well as how it is achieved; shedding more light on economic inequality and its ecological consequences; and emphasizing the intrinsic as well as the utilitarian value of ecological assets and services.
The Demographic Transition and Long-Term Development
Authors: Cervellati Matteo , Sunde Uwe
Published: May 2018

This introductory chapter discusses the role of the demographic transition as a key turning point for economic development. It begins by describing the stylized pattern of the demographic transition and detailing the facts regarding similarities and differences across countries. By looking at the close links between demographic and economic development, the chapter highlights the different mechanisms through which the demographic transition affects economic growth. It also illustrates the implications of the nonlinear dynamics of the demographic transition for economic development through the human capital-acquisition channel; addresses the fundamental determinants of the transition; and provides an overview of likely implications for future development.
Land Inequality, Education, and Marriage: Empirical Evidence from Nineteenth-Century Prussia
Authors: Cinnirella Francesco , Hornung Erik
Published: May 2018

This chapter offers an account of how institutional factors affect marriage, fertility, and education decisions. It reveals that higher landownership concentration was associated with lower enrollment rates as well as a negative relationship between marriage and enrollment rates, which suggests that political and economic inequality might be an important cofactor of the demographic and economic transitions. According to the study, the initial existence (or formation)of an economic elite will lead to the concentration of political power in the hands of few, which will in turn lead to the introduction of political institutions designed to sustain inequality. Such societies fail to adopt redistributive policies that allow for an optimal investment in physical and human capital. Therefore, in the long run, elite-based societies will not develop institutions conducive to sustainable economic growth.
On the Very Idea of Sex with Robots
Authors: Migotti Mark , Wyatt Nicole
Published: May 2018

If a sex robot is a robot is a robot with whom (or which) we can have sex, then we need to know what it is to have sex with a robot. In order to know this, we need to know what it is to have sex, and what a robot is. This chapter examines the first question, what is it to have sex. It argues that having sex can be understood as a an epitome of being sexual together in much the same way having a conversation can be understood as an epitome of what Paul Grice calls a “talk exchange”. The answer to this question sheds some light on the second by telling us some of the criteria a robot would have to meet before we could plausibly have sex with it. The chapter concludes that as long as the sex robots in question do not exercise real agency, then sexual relationships between human beings will continue to offer something that sexual activity involving the sex robots does not.
Should We Campaign Against Sex Robots?
Authors: Danaher John , Earp Brian , Sandberg Anders
Published: May 2018

In September 2015 a well-publicised Campaign Against Sex Robots (CASR) was launched. Modelled on the longer-standing Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, the CASR opposes the development of sex robots on the grounds that the technology is being developed with a particular model of female-male relations (the prostitute-john model) in mind, and that this will prove harmful in various ways. In this chapter, we consider carefully the merits of campaigning against such a technology. We make three main arguments. First, we argue that the particular claims advanced by the CASR are unpersuasive, partly due to a lack of clarity about the campaign’s aims and partly due to substantive defects in the main ethical objections put forward by campaign’s founder(s). Second, we argue that it would be very difficult to endorse a general campaign against sex robots unless one embraced a highly conservative attitude towards the ethics of sex, which is likely to be unpalatable to those who are active in the campaign. In making this argument we draw upon lessons from the campaign against killer robots. Finally, we conclude by suggesting that although a generalised campaign against sex robots is unwarranted, there are legitimate concerns that one can raise about the development of sex robots.