bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Berkeley on Perception
Authors: Fields Keota
Published: February 2022

This chapter interprets Berkeley’s theory of visual perception as more similar to contemporary constructivist models of vision than to the representationalist theories dominant among his predecessors. It also interprets Berkeley’s theory as addressing a problem of epistemic luck rather than perceptual error. Berkeley shows that the received representationalist solution to perceptual error—having ideas that are caused by and resemble external primary qualities—is neither necessary nor sufficient for veridically seeing those qualities. Berkeley’s constructivist approach to this problem of visual epistemic luck includes three unique features. First, visual processing has a linguistic structure. Second, visual experiences of the external world include normative contents. Third, natural laws ground both the linguistic structure of visual processing and the normative contents of visual experiences. It is argued that these features allow Berkeley to overcome both perceptual error and visual epistemic luck.
Berkeley and Collier
Authors: Stoneham Tom
Published: February 2022

Collier was a contemporary of Berkeley’s who also defended a form of immaterialism. This chapter begins with some historical background about Collier’s writings and their reception before considering two challenges to immaterialism—(1) distinguishing perception from imagination and (2) the nature of the perceiving self—where the two immaterialists had strikingly different approaches. While neither of them developed a fully adequate account of either imagination or the self, the exercise of comparing them shows that there was in the early eighteenth century the potential for a rich and varied tradition of immaterialist philosophy.
Berkeley’s Philosophy of Science
Authors: Atherton Margaret
Published: February 2022

Many treatments of Berkeley’s major works, Principles of Human Knowledge and Three Dialogues, omit all mention of philosophy of science, preferring to focus on Berkeley’s signature doctrine of idealism. Discussions of Berkeley’s scientific theorizing are often limited to his later works, De Motu and Siris, that do not take up his idealism. The Principles itself, however, contains a philosophy of science in which cause-based explanations of corpuscular materialism are replaced by explanations resting on the laws of nature, in which causes are replaced with signs. The new account of explanation provides the consistent link between the idealistic Principles and the later scientific works.
Berkeley’s Theory of Vision
Authors: Schwartz Robert
Published: February 2022

Berkeley’s New Theory of Vision has had and continues to have a major influence in vision science. Although his understanding of the nature of visual perception and the processes underlying it permeate his later more philosophical writings, his theory can be evaluated empirically independently of these works. This chapter attempts to summarize Berkeley’s theory of vision and explain his contribution to the field. When properly understood, Berkeley’s work on vision fits in well with his epistemic and metaphysical positions. Critics and defenders of Berkeley often offer interpretations of his theory of vision that are not consonant with issues in the empirical study of vision to which he wished to contribute. This chapter will attempt to show why.
The Life and Times of George Berkeley
Authors: Flage Daniel E.
Published: February 2022

After a brief survey of Berkeley’s life, this chapter focuses on the historical background to some of Berkeley’s discussions. The discussion of vision examines the geometrical theory of depth perception, Descartes’s empirical theory of depth perception, and the Molyneux problem. The method of analysis was prominent in the modern period in both philosophy and the sciences. The discussion shows that analysis is comparable to argument to the best explanation and illustrates its use in Berkeley’s discussion of vision. Abstraction is an epistemological process by which one (allegedly) knows general concepts. The discussion traces its roots to Aristotle and examines the distinction between the separation thesis and selective attention. Free-thinking was a movement that criticized revealed religion based primarily on Lockean principles of rationality. The discussion focuses on John Toland’s arguments. The discussion of mathematics focuses on infinitesimals in calculus.
Berkeley on the Economics of Poverty
Authors: Hight Marc A. , Lea Geoffrey S.
Published: February 2022

Berkeley shares with his contemporaries the view that the poor are typically lazy and idle, but, unlike them, he marries institutional concerns to his moral defect theory of poverty. This chapter characterizes the economic situation of the Irish in the eighteenth century and presents the problem of the idle poor. It then provides an economic model that explains why people might choose leisure and poverty over a bit less want but more work. It is argued that this model explains Berkeley’s Ireland. Perhaps Berkeley errs in his thinking about how a society might bring about the alleviation of poverty, but his diagnosis of the problem is innovative and sensitive to economic realities often ignored even today. His insights are then connected to contemporary capability theory.
Berkeley’s Theology
Authors: Airaksinen Timo
Published: February 2022

Berkeley’s theology is not a systematic set of doctrines but a collection of rather informally expressed views and viewpoints mainly concerning such practical questions as the reasonability of faith and human happiness in heaven. His most interesting ideas concern natural religion. He deals with these matters in his sermons and other minor writings, but also in Alciphron. An important question concerns ethics and moral virtue. To be virtuous we must obey God’s commands, but that is possible only if we have faith in him. The importance of the second condition is often underestimated because Berkeley is seen as a philosopher. The virtuous go to heaven, where their happiness is “large as our desires,” in other words, infinite eternal bliss. However, Berkeley says we know nothing of its characteristics, or what heaven is like. He even says that we need new, possibly angelic, faculties to experience it, yet we may speculate about the nature of afterlife.
Berkeley and Shaftesbury
Authors: Jaffro Laurent
Published: February 2022

The Third Earl of Shaftesbury was one of Berkeley’s main targets throughout his career, and especially in Alciphron. The English moralist, who claims to adapt ancient philosophy, particularly Stoic philosophy, to the taste of a modern audience, is in Berkeley’s eyes a promoter of anti-Christian free-thinking. It is on the occasion of his criticism of Shaftesbury that Berkeley expounds his own views on the epistemology of ethical and aesthetic values, and on education. Berkeley sees in Shaftesbury, as in Hutcheson, a philosopher who makes the mistake of devaluing reasoning in favor of feeling, whereas it has a rightful place in the ethical and aesthetic fields. He rejects Shaftesbury’s appeal to “enthusiasm” and “natural taste.” Berkeley also blames him for trying to confiscate the Socratic legacy in the service of a libertine project, as if the philosophy of the ancients did not prefigure Christianity.
Berkeley on Ideas and Notions
Authors: Hill James
Published: February 2022

This chapter seeks to understand the nature and the significance of Berkeley’s crucial distinction between ideas and notions. Ideas are treated as the passive objects of mental perception, while notions are immediately known mental acts. Ideas provide us with sensory knowledge of bodies (construed idealistically), while notions mark the transparency of our own doings and our active spiritual natures. It is argued that the doctrine of notions is a significant part of Berkeley’s system, accounting for our knowledge not only of the inner, but also of intellectual elements such as “substance,” “causal power,” “relation,” and “unity.” The doctrine of notions thus represents a rationalist strand in Berkeley’s philosophy, and it is suggested, by way of conclusion, that it should lead us to question the routine categorization of Berkeley as an empiricist.
Berkeley’s Arguments for Idealism
Authors: Hill Benjamin D.
Published: February 2022

This chapter presents the current lack of consensus regarding Berkeley’s arguments for idealism. Discussed first are ways of interpreting Berkeley’s conclusions, as partial idealism, limited idealism, or total idealism. Interpretations of Berkeley’s justifications for idealism are then organized into three categories: the intuitively known; the demonstratively known, metaphysical; and the demonstratively known, epistemological. Berkeley’s reasons from Principles 1–6 (the semantic argument and the two simple arguments) are presented, followed by the reason commonly adduced from Berkeley’s immaterialism (the likeness principle argument). Discussion of the master argument then follows. Next, attention is directed at Berkeley’s reasons from the Three Dialogues, where the pain-pleasure argument and the argument from perceptual relativity are presented as attempts to justify key presumptions behind the simple arguments of the Principles. The master argument briefly reappears as well. The chapter concludes with discussion of the attempts to understand the conceptual basis of the arguments for idealism: heterogeneity, anti-abstractionism, and immediate perception.
Berkeley on Objections to Idealism
Authors: Dicker Georges
Published: February 2022

This chapter presents three objections to Berkeley’s idealism that he anticipates and states very clearly, and assesses Berkeley’s own attempts to refute them. These objections are that his idealism (1) cannot accommodate the distinction between appearance and reality, (2) entails that ordinary objects exist intermittently, and (3) entails that such objects are not intersubjectively perceivable. The chapter argues that Berkeley’s replies to these objections are largely unsuccessful. His reply to (1) does not allow for the distinction (emphasized by Kant) between the time-order in which objects are perceived and the time-order in which they exist, and it also attributes to ideas of sense an order or regularity in time that can be safely attributed only to a mind-independent realm. His reply to (2) depends on an appeal to an all-perceiving God that rests partly on a circular “continuity” argument and partly on a “passivity” argument that has much the same weaknesses as Hume found in the teleological argument. And his reply to (3) wrongly conflates the qualitative identity of two or more ideas with numerical identity.
Berkeley on Minds
Authors: Migely Genevieve
Published: February 2022

This chapter proposes to offer an interpretation of Berkeley’s theory of mind in light of his dualistic idealism. Berkeley’s idealism posits a dualism of active and inactive beings. Minds as perceiving agents and ideas as perceived dependents shape the landscape of Berkeley’s position on substance. Rather than demand that his views on immaterial substance adhere to a traditional account, Berkeley’s revisionist ontology is treated as coherent in its own right according to Berkeley’s overall philosophical positions. Defining the mind as an agent affords Berkeley a way to both establish his ontology and ground his morality. Though the mind’s different operational functions seem to challenge its active nature, the mind expresses its activity in willing, perceiving, and thinking.
Mexican-Descent Catholics
Authors: Matovina Timothy
Published: February 2022

This chapter examines the history of Mexican immigration and the ongoing struggles of Mexican-descent Catholics. An expanding Mexican and Latino population is part of larger demographic shifts within US Catholicism. The US Catholic Church is no longer an overwhelmingly immigrant church, as it was a century ago at the end of the great period of European immigration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nor is it solely an “Americanized” church. The Roman Catholic Church in the United States is a church largely run by middle-class, European-descent Catholics. Mexican-descent Catholics do not just add another chapter to the general history of US Catholicism, but a lens through which to examine significant components of that history such as its origins, westward expansion, ongoing immigration, and the struggles of non-European groups for dignity and justice.
Popular Religion among Latinos/as
Authors: Pulido Alberto López
Published: February 2022

This chapter adopts a place-based analysis of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism, which recognizes and affirms the significance of a community-generated and self-defined expression of the sacred. A place-based analysis appreciates the intimacy of the sacred in the lives of people and how it serves as a powerful source for responding to external forces that would seek to minimize or erase the significance of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism as an expression of resistance. This chapter emphasizes contested “spatial struggles” over systems of meaning and orientation with an eye toward incorporating new perspectives on gender, race, and ethnicity when seeking to explain the significance of Latina and Latino popular Catholicism. This chapter posits that popular religion is simultaneously about manifestations of resistance and affirmation of Latina and Latino sacred traditions and practices.
Cuban-Descent Catholics
Authors: Maldonado Michelle Gonzales
Published: February 2022

This chapter examines the history of Cuban Americans, who are the second largest Latino/a immigrant group in the United States. In the first forty years after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, around a million Cubans immigrated to the United States. The Cuban American population is distinctive from other Latino/a groups and internally diverse. They are distinctive in light of the historical events that led to their mass exodus to the United States and the manner in which they were received by the US government. They are diverse, given the historical moment of their arrival and the manner in which this shapes their political, religious, and social worldviews. This chapter focuses on the unique history of the Cuban exile, which was instrumental in the creation of the Catholic Church in Miami. While the local Miami Church played an instrumental role in the resettlement of Cuban exiles, it was the exiles themselves who were instrumental in the establishment and growth of the Catholic Church in Miami, the center of Cuban Catholic identity and diaspora in the United States.
Occupying the Church
Authors: Hinojosa Felipe
Published: February 2022

While most studies on Latina/o religious politics center on clergy or religious leadership, this chapter investigates the role of activists outside of the church (nonclergy) with little or no real strong ties to the institutional church. Rather than assume that Latina/o religious politics begins with religious leadership, this chapter proposes a narrative framework for religious politics in the civil rights era that outlines how both religious insiders and outsiders together came to shape, influence, and in many ways undergird what historian Anthony M. Stevens Arroyo has called the “Latino religious resurgence” in the 1970s. This chapter investigates the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, an era that saw the rise—theologically and culturally—of Latina/o religious politics. The chapter argues that to understand this era we must move beyond the walls of the church and the religious leadership that is so often at the center of these narratives. Instead, we must include the broad range of religious experiences in the Latina/o community, both formal and informal, religious and nonreligious, that have pushed back against urban renewal, racial discrimination, and anti-immigrant/refugee policies.
The Catholic Church and Central American Immigrants in the United States
Authors: Menjívar Cecilia
Published: February 2022

This chapter focuses on the historic and contemporary role of the Catholic Church in leading ecumenical efforts in supporting Central American immigrants. In sharp contrast to the state, which has refused to extend assistance to the migrants, the Catholic Church (as well as some mainline Protestant congregations) has offered Salvadoran, Guatemalan, and Honduran immigrants assistance and protection. Since the 1980s, these churches have created sanctuaries throughout the country to protect these migrants from deportation to life-threatening conditions in their homelands, have provided settlement assistance, championed the legal struggle that eventually granted Temporary Protected Status to Salvadorans as well as other legal battles that have extended protection to these immigrants, and issued pastoral calls to remind Catholics to welcome immigrants into their communities. This chapter focuses on churches and their efforts to change immigration policy and, in doing so, to change the broader context of reception for Central Americans and for other immigrants as well. The Catholic Church continues to play a pivotal role in all spheres of life in Central America as well as among Central American migrants in the United States.
Latina/o/x Mormons
Authors: Vega Sujey
Published: February 2022

This chapter traces the history of LDS Latinas/os, which is marked by moments of consecration, conversion, and coming to voice. Latina/o Saints navigate Mormon doctrine and Mormon culture through multiple reference points. Some find their conservative values supported, while others grow frustrated by the lack of adequate response to larger social justice issues like immigration, gender, and race politics. Some welcome the callings they receive to lead their wards as a way to make positive changes in ethnoreligious understanding, while others prefer to follow and obey the dictates of those in power. Far from a monolith, Latina/o Saints are a conglomerate of various national origins, class, political, and educational circumstances. This chapter emphasizes that whether or not they are genetically connected to the Book of Mormon, the presence of Spanish-speaking Saints from multiple backgrounds continues to grow. This chapter argues that if the population projections are accurate, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints must come to terms with a shift in minority–majority relations.
Self-Theologizing in Hymnology
Authors: Yang Jayhoon
Published: February 2022

Wherever the biblical texts are delivered, they follow the process of inculturation to make their messages understandable to the recipient of the gospel. This process includes interpretation and reproduction of the biblical texts in the recipient’s culture. Exploring the Korean biblical products, like dendroclimatology, helps us understand how Korean Christians understood the biblical messages and why they did as such. We discuss the biblical interpretation of Korean Christians through Korean Christian music which tells us, like growth rings, what Korean Christianity was like. The theological significance of different musical traditions and their dynamic of biblical interpretation for a contemporary context are examined. In particular, this exploration canvasses four hymnological periods from the Korean Catholic gasa music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries during the advent of Korean Christianity, to the Protestant gasa of the early twentieth century, to the Protestant hymns of the twentieth century, and finally, to Park Dong-Jin’s Bible Pansori pieces, which capture contemporary emotions and ideologies of Minjung theology.
Self-Theologizing in Preaching
Authors: Yang Sunggu A.
Published: February 2022

This chapter investigates how Korean preachers approach the Bible according to five culturally pertinent interpretative hermeneutical codes and variant styles of each code. These include eschatological pilgrim, evangelical mission, Confucian egalitarian, Buddhist-Shamanistic, and Pentecostal liberation codes. These are not a prefixed set of interpretative goals. Rather, they provide an interpretative dialogical window through which preachers view scripture, history, and culture for uniquely contextual Korean congregants. Beyond the interpretive use of the five codes, the essay demonstrates by relevant sermon snippets that preachers also utilize the codes as the constructive foundation for sermon design and writing. The survey shows that Korean preachers typically intertwine all five codes and their styles and use them at the same time as an integrative interpretational framework, to gain maximum effectiveness out of preaching.
Minjung and Han
Authors: Yoo Yoon Jong
Published: February 2022

This chapter applies the concept of han in and through exilic prophetic literature and contemporary Korean challenges. Traditionally, han has been treated as inseparable from the suffering of Korean minjung. Now, however, han bears universal meaning. It expresses the internalized pain in individual hearts as well as the collective struggle of people, spanning the time of ancient Israel to modern Korea. The Bible is replete with stories of minjung having han, the deep anger and sadness stoked by oppression and exploitation. The most severe suffering stories are attested to in exilic prophetic literature of the golah community that endured forced migration and spiritual and psychological pain. With transformative energy from internalized han, the golah community overcame imperial oppression by confessing monotheism and realizing their identity as a light to the nations. Returning to Judah, the exilic situation continued under the Persian Empire. An exilic spirit arose from han and created ethnonationalism, transformative power, and a diaspora identity. Similarly, in Korean history, the minjung’s han originated from internal exploitation and oppression by the upper class and sparked transformative resistance against Japanese colonization. In today’s divided Korean peninsula, the minjung still bear han that needs healing.
Mapping Korean Biblical Interpretation in the Shadow of Powers
Authors: Lim Sung Uk
Published: February 2022

In geopolitical terms, the Korean peninsula is surrounded by great powers, such as China, Russia, Japan, and the United States. Accordingly, realpolitik affects biblical interpretation. Anticolonial, liberationist, and postcolonial reading strategies respond to the colonial, military, and neoliberal powers that have shaped modern Korean history. Specifically, in the colonial era, Kim Gyo-Shin, Ham Seok-Heon, and Gil Seon-Ju provided an anticolonial reading strategy grounded in both biblical authority and religious imagination to inspire a population to oppose foreign imperialism. In the Cold War domestic face-off of South Korean military oppression and democracy movements, Ahn Byung-Mu and Cyris H. S. Moon conducted a liberationist reading strategy using minjung theology and biblical narratives to confront military regimes. Now amidst neoliberal globalization, Korean and Korean American biblical scholars, such as Seong Hee Kim and Uriah Y. Kim, employ a postcolonial reading strategy that empowers gendered and ethnic minorities to restore their agency and identity through critical engagement with biblical narratives. Across these three eras, Korean biblical interpretation has disrupted the exercise of unjust power, revealing the liberative power of the Bible in pursuit of divine justice.
Minjung Biblical Hermeneutics
Authors: Lee Jae Won
Published: February 2022

This chapter addresses the seminal minjung aspect of Korean biblical interpretation through the work of Ahn Byung-Mu’s reading of the Gospel of Mark. The three core themes integral to Ahn’s biblical hermeneutics are reviewed. First, Ahn articulates the “Jesus Event” as a political hermeneutic for interpreting the historical Jesus and the Galilean minjung. Second, he reads Mark as a story of the minjung with emphasis on their social memory of suffering, resistance, and liberation. Third, he identifies Mark’s unique option for ochlos (the multitudes) as a reference to the Galilean minjung. Significantly, Ahn’s interpretation anticipates recent attention to these issues by other global New Testament scholars. Korean biblical scholarship may seize upon Ahn’s hermeneutics not only to build on his legacy but also for transformative purposes in engaging the complex context of the Korean minjung today.
Diversity within the Korean Diaspora
Authors: Lee Boyung
Published: February 2022

Utilizing Rita Nakashima Brock’s notion of interstitial integrity, this chapter names Korean American women’s social and reading location interstitial spaces—worlds between Asia and America, centers and margins, home and foreign land, and multiple spaces in between. A Korean American woman’s reading of the Bible from an interstitial space refuses to disconnect from any multiple and in-between locations and borders wherein she resides. While not pledging allegiance to a singular space, one may pursue solidarity with others who also live in various interstices for the wholeness of all. Using such principles, this chapter reads the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard as God’s invitation to solidarity for justice across various borders. The parable teaches the danger of the demanding equal rights without first fighting for equity and the liberation of the most marginalized. The parable calls for solidarity of all people to bring forth the reign of God, a community of “WEs.”
Minjung in Global Context
Authors: Kwon JiSeong James
Published: February 2022

Scholars in Korea have compared Job’s suffering to that of minjung, but they are less concerned with the drastic change of Job’s character in his final speech (Job 29–31). Although Job, as a righteous sufferer, most likely causes readers to acknowledge him as a representative of minjung who knows trauma, a careful reading of Job’s heartless speech toward the social underclass in Job 30:1–8 identifies him as an oppressor advocating bias and injustice. Acknowledging Job’s character variation, this chapter underscores the difficulty of designating simple categories of minjung in Korean history and twenty-first-century society. Furthermore, responses to minjung concerns raise self-critical examination. For instance, what support do democratic forces and Protestant churches render the marginalized in Korean society? The fresh discernment of minjung suggested by Ahn Byung-Mu mirrors the complex character of Job in the poetic dialogue (Job 3–31). Is Job a new model of minjung? Finally, an example of newly emergent minjung comparable to those treated as abandoned animals (Job 30:1), this chapter lifts up migrant workers as people oppressed by the liberal ruling party and the Moon Jae-In’s administration, though they supposedly count upon the absolute support of the minjung of Korea.
Shamanistic Influence on Biblical Interpretation
Authors: Sweeney Soo J. Kim
Published: February 2022

There are solid cultural affinities between Korean Christianity and Korean Shamanism. Consequently, Christian leaders and scholars are understandably anxious about syncretism. Yet fearing too much religious proximities can obscure possible insight into biblical interpretations. This chapter examines Korean shamanistic influence on biblical interpretations and explores hermeneutical bridges across the two religions and their cultural practices. How might the two core attributes of shamanism—all-connectedness and the (over)active role of the human mediator—be embedded in Korean biblical interpretations? For example, is there a more inclusive theology in reading the David-Gibeonites Story of 2 Samuel 21:1–14 through these shamanistic attributes?
Daoist, Buddhist, and Christian Readings on Creation
Authors: Kim Eun Kyu Micah
Published: February 2022

Despite the East-West and historical differences, human thought transcends time and space in the creation myths of Taoism, Buddhism, and Judeo-Christianity. The guiding myth of each accounts for the origin of the universe, creation, nature, and humanity. Although these religions share etiological reasoning about ultimate truths, each illuminates a different perspective. Therein lies insightful comparison and contrast. Although Buddhism denies a divine being, the concept of an absolute Nothingness expresses the reality of divinity. Daoism’s “Oneness” teaches about a vast universe and creation. Christian theology, which is based in part of comparable Hebraic creation myths, can extend a hand toward Daoism and Buddhism for the development of each other. While Christianity has been largely exclusive for two millennia, the Korean context of interreligious textual exchange offers an opportunity for mutual discernment.
Thomas Morley, Robert Johnson, and Songs for the Shakespearean Stage
Authors: Duffin Ross W.
Published: February 2022

Thomas Morley’s possible association with, and contribution to, the Shakespeare theatre has been proposed and dismissed with equal weight by a host of scholars over many years. This chapter re-examines what we know, offers solutions to major problems, and concludes that it is probably time to put the controversy to bed once and for all. The songs of Robert Johnson have long been admired by those interested in early seventeenth-century English theatre. Songs by or attributed to him survive for plays by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Webster, Thomas Middleton, Francis Beaumont, and John Fletcher, and many of them are exquisite. Is it possible, however, that our eagerness to have the original songs to the plays has led us to presume that any musical setting that survives in a seventeenth-century source was used in the relevant play’s first production? This chapter re-examines what we know of Johnson’s career and of the surviving sources for his play songs, explores the limits of what we can safely claim about his settings and, in some cases, proposes alternative original settings to the lyrics.
Shakespeare and Soviet Music
Authors: Assay Michelle
Published: February 2022

Despite recurrent mutual suspicion between the Soviet Union and the West, Shakespeare was almost as sacrosanct to the Soviets as their own canonical authors were. Many of the greatest Soviet (and post-Soviet) adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare’s works have been enhanced by musical scores provided by the most prominent composers of the time. During the Soviet regime, several of the most famous Shakespearean musical works were introduced to the repertoire, from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet ballet to Shostakovich’s setting of Sonnet 66 and his film music for the screen adaptations of Hamlet and King Lear. Soviet composers were also active in the field of operatic adaptation of Shakespeare, though in this regard their works have received less international attention. Soviet musical responses to Shakespeare have inevitably been intertwined with the cultural-politico climate of the country, and in many ways they could be used as a means of understanding that context and the vacillations of artistic freedom. Disregarding boundaries between ‘learned’ and ‘popular’, this chapter offers an overview of the wide range of musical responses to Shakespeare and his works in Russia and the Soviet Union, covering works in which music has been central (as in symphonic poems, operas, ballet, songs) or accompanying (theatre and film music).
‘Let the sky rain potatoes’
Authors: Hazrat Florence
Published: February 2022

In his fantastical mood, Falstaff bids the sky perform miracles: ‘let [it] rain potatoes, let it thunder to the tune of Greensleeves’. At any moment, he can burst into snatches of ballads on King Arthur, or Robin Hood. Falstaff, Shakespeare’s quintessentially English figure, creates an aural environment that resonates not only with music, but more specifically with songs that conjure up ideas of England which are at once more elusive and more available by being in everyone’s ear, and in everyone’s mouth. This chapter examines the creation of a ‘sonic nationhood’ in Shakespeare’s plays through songs which had seeped into collective (musical) memory. In primarily oral societies, refrains, repetitions, and tunes acquire a key role in the mnemonic and sonic circulation of national narratives: their catchy brevity comes to emblematize the song, helping playwright and audience to remember. Shakespeare’s plays are particularly peppered with tune quotations from popular songs and ballads which reflect, suggest, and test national and local identities. Alternative stories are heard, literally, through music made and evoked. ‘Sonic nationhood’, therefore, does not complement but subtly qualifies official attitudes, while remaining elusive—just sound, depending as it does not on writing but on human memory. It is precisely this slipperiness which makes it hard for us today to listen back, though all the more exciting as well, when we give ear to the singers from the centre stage, or indeed the margins: the buffoons, the revellers, the Falstaffs.
Music in Akira Kurosawa’s Filmic Adaptations of Shakespeare
Authors: Koozin Timothy
Published: February 2022

This chapter explores how music is used in Akira Kurosawa’s three Shakespeare films in order to explore problems of Japanese modernity. Working with composers Masaru Sato and Toru Takemitsu, Kurosawa created films that are widely regarded as among the most successful and also the most radically new filmic adaptations of Shakespeare. Throne of Blood (1957), with a score by Sato, is Kurosawa’s adaptation of Macbeth. Set in fifteenth-century Japan, it uses Shakespeare’s plot to depict the treachery, lawlessness, and violent power struggles that occurred between rival clans embroiled in civil war. Music is an essential component as Kurosawa projects the Shakespearean drama of murder, madness, insanity, and tragedy into a spirit world inspired by Nō drama. The Bad Sleep Well (1960), a dark satire based on Hamlet, is Kurosawa’s rebuke of modern Japanese corporate corruption. The film borrows conventions of the Japanese medieval drama, reconfiguring the Samurai warrior as an urban businessman. This study explores musical irony in Sato’s score, showing how styles of Western and traditional Japanese music are deployed to highlight binary oppositions and ironic reversals in Kurosawa’s radical reimagining of his source text. Kurosawa’s historical epic, Ran (1985), is a transcendental lament based on King Lear. The epic scale of image and sound expresses the technological and social amplification of violence deeply rooted in humanity. Takemitsu’s score includes solo flute music derived from Nō, Mahler-like scoring composed at Kurosawa’s request, and the strategic use of silence as a narrative tool.
English Shakespeare Song in British Concerts, 1901‒1951
Authors: Waddington Muse Pam
Published: February 2022

A study of Shakespeare song in UK concerts during the first half of the twentieth century reveals a developing appetite among performers and audiences for more cogent song programming capable of satisfying a range of demands beyond pure entertainment. For example, concerts providing education, a philanthropic platform, or improvement through participation in ‘high’ art (albeit passive) appealed to audience members from a spectrum of social classes; and singers too participated in this gradual move away from the variety-hall style of performances that tended to be prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Shakespeare song in particular provided easy access to cultural prestige. Additionally, it evoked nostalgia for the perceived glories of the Elizabethan age (often referred to as the ‘Merry England’ effect). In the first half of the twentieth century, a number of composers of English song who had a strong influence on song programming (Quilter, Warlock, Gurney, and Finzi, for example) produced Shakespeare settings that were popular additions to programmes, lending themselves to coherent theming and groupings. The German Lied, and the song cycles of Schubert in particular, had dominated song recitals in the United Kingdom and provided a ready-made programming strategy for performers; but many star singers, such as John Coates and John Goss, were eager to promote English song, and Shakespeare settings were a recurrent feature of their recitals. These singers were particular favourites at London’s Wigmore Hall, but their performances featuring Shakespeare song were repeated nationwide to great acclaim.
The Cantus Database and Cantus Index Network
Authors: Lacoste Debra
Published: February 2022

Perhaps the oldest and certainly the most enduring of online, medieval chant databases, the Cantus Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant and its sister site Cantus Index: Catalogue of Chant Texts and Melodies have experienced stimulating growth over many years. Developments in software and web technologies, coupled with institutional and government support, have enabled multiple rejuvenations for the Cantus Database, now in its fourth decade. Although the original manuscript inventories continue to be the foundation of the Cantus Database and the principal focus of many online searches, its expanded contents and the interactive nature of the website allow for a variety of uses as well as the collection of new data from worldwide contributors. Through sample textual and melodic searches, description of the resources in the database, and demonstration of the infrastructure that ensures compatibility and interoperability with other chant research websites, the place and impact of the Cantus Database and Cantus Index in fields related to medieval musicology and digital humanities are explored in this chapter. The well-known “Cantus” websites, traversing into public musicology and engaging academic crowdsourcing, continue to supply scholars with both raw data and comparative digital tools for chant research, all freely accessible online as the products of collaborative efforts.
Political Communication
Authors: Lee Han Soo
Published: February 2022

This chapter introduces political communication by focusing on electoral campaign communication. The evolution of campaign communication is associated with communication tools. Up until the 1997 presidential election, the main campaign method may be considered to have been mass rallies. The 1997 presidential election is considered the first TV election in South Korea. Since the 2002 presidential election, online communication tools have played a significant role in campaigning. Today, no candidate can win an election without using online communication tools in South Korea. Candidates mainly use online communication tools to mobilize voters, rather than to discuss policies. The influence of new media on South Korean voters is yet uncertain. The use of new media tends to positively affect political participation online, and online political participation is associated with offline political participation. However, the use of new media neither significantly nor consistently explains offline political participation and individual vote choice.
The Press
Authors: Kwak Ki-Sung
Published: February 2022

This chapter examines how partisanship and progressive–conservative divisions have influenced the press and the relationship between the press and political parties in Korea since the 1990s. To better understand this dynamic, it identifies the major features of the Korean press and examines the way in which the legacy of authoritarianism has affected political reporting and the press–party relationship. It argues that the interplay between the press and the political parties has continued to be marked by elements of a parallel relationship between the two—the major features of the Korean press mirror the characteristics of the political parties. It also argues that political parties and the press have been the major contributors to the current conservative–progressive divisions in Korea, and this has been worsened because the country’s press has been continuously subjugated to its own political and ideological commitments.
Decentralisation and Local Government
Authors: Bae Yooil
Published: February 2022

South Korea’s central–local relations since its democratic transition in the late 1980s have been marked by institutionalization of local politics and delayed decentralization. After the long dominance of centralism, the past two decades have experienced the introduction of democratic institutions for local politics, including popular election of local politicians and delegation of formal authorities to lower levels of government. On the one hand, this development has empowered localities, nurtured some prominent politicians and democratic citizenship, and created a local political arena. On the other hand, weak administrative and fiscal capacities of localities have led to frequent confrontation with the central government and a growing gap among localities. Higher fiscal dependency on central transfer and a shrinking local population is expected to further burden localities and widen regional economic disparity, which may pose a threat to local democracy.
Corruption
Authors: Min Kyoung-sun
Published: February 2022

It is widely perceived that while South Korea has shown miraculous economic development, the level of corruption has not decreased overall. However, this general perception is not valid, due to the decoupling of petty corruption from grand corruption. Several corruption indices indicate that petty corruption has successfully decreased. This chapter explains the difference between petty corruption and grand corruption and measures the level of petty and grand corruption with various indices. The chapter also analyses the decoupling of petty and grand corruption by using historical institutionalism. A critical juncture created by the Asian Financial Crisis, democratization, and internet technology explains a low level of petty corruption. Path dependence, fortified by crony capitalism and prosecutorial power, helps us to understand a high level of grand corruption. Political leaders should show their political will to fight grand corruption if they want to control it. Unfortunately, political will has not been enough to fight grand corruption. To test this assertion, this chapter evaluates the anti-corruption policies of South Korea.
The ROK–US Alliance
Authors: Cha Victor D. , Katz Katrin
Published: February 2022

This chapter explores drivers of the resilience of the South Korea–US alliance in the midst of changes and challenges that could have led to its weakening or collapse. Since its founding in 1953, the alliance has expanded far beyond its original mandate of preventing a second North Korean invasion and containing the spread of communism during the Cold War. A number of dramatic changes have taken place over the lifetime of the alliance, including South Korea’s remarkable economic development and democratization, the end of the Cold War, and the rise of China to become the world’s second largest economy. The alliance has also weathered a number of difficult phases—including the ‘Nixon and Carter shocks’ of the late 1960s and 1970s, tensions over North Korea policy in the early 2000s, and recent years of discord over narrow alliance issues like military cost-sharing, while coordination on pressing security matters was sparse. This chapter reviews alliance patterns since its foundational years and argues that a combination of two factors explain the resilience of the alliance: (a) the persistence of common security interests; and (b) alliance management strategies in Washington and Seoul—including periodic US efforts to reassure South Korea of its security commitments and South Korea’s pursuit of new areas of cooperation, even as it has developed and sought greater autonomy.
Gender, Digital Toxicity, and Political Voice Online
Authors: Sobieraj Sarah
Published: February 2022

Participatory technologies have radically expanded the opportunities for political voice and visibility, a boon for those who have historically been marginalized. While women have been quick to capitalize on these tools, many find that their contributions to public discourse are met with identity-based hate and sexual intimidation. What’s more, offline inequalities among women persist online, impacting whose voices are centered or sidelined as well as the patterns of hostility. Many of sociology’s key concerns—power, inequality, culture, oppression, identity, and resistance—are central to understanding the causes and consequences of digital abuse and harassment, but thus far, few sociologists have contributed to the burgeoning research on these issues. This chapter reviews key findings from the interdisciplinary literature on women’s political voice and visibility in the digital arena, with special attention to the ways identity-based attacks negatively impact women’s participation and the broader information landscape, taking a toll on democratic vitality. The chapter closes by identifying areas where sociological interventions can advance the field.
Neoliberalism, Globalization, and Late Capitalism
Authors: Carroll Toby
Published: February 2022

This chapter details the mutually reinforcing relationship between globalization, neoliberalism, and late capitalism. The chapter emphasizes the dialectical and politically determined evolution of all three, explaining how intensifying patterns of competition have resulted in diminishing the power of progressive social forces and increasing the leverage of competitive fractions of capital and powerful capitalist states. Neoliberalism—often conveniently dismissed by liberals and conservatives alike as a nebulous concept—is explicitly defined as the application of market and market-like discipline to the reorganization of state and society. Forged out of a set ideas and reductionist assumptions emanating from orthodox economics, in its applied form neoliberalism comprises the evolving policy sets demanded by the most powerful (‘competitive’) fractions of capital and the states that represent their interests. In a structural sense, real-existing neoliberalism serves as the institutional ‘software’ of globalization, combining with the integrative techno-logistical infrastructure that makes the ongoing reorganization of production—‘globalization’—possible. Four decades of neoliberal reform and resultant globalization have produced what is often referred to as ‘late capitalism’. Late capitalism is characterized by hypercompetition between and within states, the heightened power of finance capital and grand contradiction—the latter including gross inequality and deprivation amid plenty, deindustrialization and the ‘death of development’, and systemic environmental decline. While resistance to neoliberalism is evident in many (sometimes reactionary) forms, the all-enveloping nature of late capitalism and the ongoing reinvention of neoliberalism as the ‘only’ solution to contradiction make the political task of reimagining and realizing alternative social orders formidable.
Locating Agrarian Labour within the Contours of Imperialism
Authors: Banerjee Arindam
Published: February 2022

The neo-liberal processes of globalization of capital and financialization of economies have had profound implications on agrarian labour and petty producers, particularly in the global South. Analysed through the lens of interconnected historical developments in the North and the South, neoliberalism can be comprehended as a set of continuities and discontinuities between the old imperial order and the new structures of imperialism. Why neoliberal policies with elaborate promises of reducing rural poverty do not benefit the agrarian population in a generalized manner needs to be understood in the inherited agrarian class structures in the South from the colonial and postcolonial national development experiences. The emergence of transnational corporations (TNCs) in agriculture as the hegemonic force under neoliberalism has an impact for the agrarian sector in multiple ways. Land grabs as part of international and national land deals/acquisition can potentially alter the value relations drastically with severe implications for the rural poor. This chapter surveys the impact of neoliberalism on the agrarian communities, particularly labour and petty producers. It also looks at the economic and political resistance that have emerged or failed to do so in various contexts as a response to the hegemonic neoliberal order and identifies possible alternatives as agrarian policy that can retain greater value within the agrarian domain, thereby enhancing both well-being and productive investments in peasant farms.