bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Political Activism and Electoral Democracy: Perspectives on Economic Inequality and Political Polarization
Authors: Schlozman Kay Lehman , Verba Sidney , Brady Henry E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter uses evidence about political activity to shed light on two puzzles. First, the chapter considers why, in a two-party system with equal voting, contrary to the logic of the median voter model, the majority who have incomes at the lower end of the economic ladder do not use their voting power to foster public policies that redistribute wealth from those above the median. Second, the chapter looks at why the two parties and their candidates do not converge at the preferences of the median voter but instead offer genuine policy alternatives. In response, the chapter reveals that voters are not equal in their voting strength.
Weapon of the Strong? Participatory Inequality and the Internet
Authors: Schlozman Kay Lehman , Verba Sidney , Brady Henry E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at the potentially democratizing impact of the Internet on political participation, and asks both individuals and organizations the same kinds of questions already posed earlier regarding whether processes of political recruitment can alter familiar participatory patterns. If the Internet is bringing new people and new organizations into politics, the chapter considers if it is bringing new kinds of people and new kinds of interests into political activity. Furthermore, even if the Internet is effective in generating additional political activity, the chapter considers if this new activity is simply replicating the same participatory inequalities that have emerged over and over in this volume.
What, if Anything, Is to Be Done?
Authors: Schlozman Kay Lehman , Verba Sidney , Brady Henry E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on changes that would have the result of making the participatory input from individuals and organizations more representative of the American public in terms of a variety of politically relevant attributes—not only such demographic characteristics as social class, race, gender, or age but also preferences and needs for government policy. It seeks to provide some analytical hooks to facilitate systematic thinking about the various strategies that might reduce inequalities of political voice, and emphasizes the reasons as to why political change is so difficult to realize and why it is so often a disappointment when it is achieved.
Meeting at Penn Station
Authors: Cronk Lee , Leech Beth L.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses coordination problems in relation to cooperation. Coordination problems are essentially problems of information: although people would benefit from coordinating their activities, they lack common knowledge about how to do so. Even worse, they may actually have common knowledge about how to solve the problem but not know it. Thomas Schelling recognized one way to overcome this problem: focus on prominent, salient focal points that others are also likely to focus on. The chapter first examines the so-called “Theory of Mind” or “mentalizing” before explaining how collective action dilemmas can become coordination problems. It also explores trust and conflict in coordination games such as Stag Hunt Games and the Battle of the Sexes Game, concluding with anti-coordination games and how coordination operates in the real world.
Proustian Jokes
Authors: Prendergast Christopher
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines “Proustian jokes” of the kind that gives pause for thought rather than to inflict a wound. Most of the mad beliefs in À la recherche du temps perdu are droll as well as crazy, and have their place in what is often and rightly said of the novel, that, among so many other things, it is also a great comic novel. The chapter considers examples of Proustian jokes that it suggests also reveal some of the key sources and terms of Marcel Proust's own aesthetic: the idioms of philosophical Idealism, the practice of naming one thing as another, the transposition of one order of sensation to another, and the drama of the unfinished or unfinishable sentence. It argues that the target of self-directed humor in the Recherche is not just an empirical self but the category of Self and the risk-laden practices of self-talk.
Transmission to Medieval Western Europe
Authors: Beckwith Christopher I.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how the recursive argument method was transmitted to medieval Western Europe. The appearance of the recursive argument method in Latin texts was preceded by more than a century in which Classical Arabic learning was increasingly translated and introduced to the Medieval Latin world. A trickle of translations of Arabic scholarly books into Latin had already begun to appear in Italy and Spain by the mid-eleventh century, but none of the works known to have been translated at that time seem to use the Arabic version of the recursive argument method. The recursive argument method first appears in Western Europe in Avicenna's De anima “On the Soul” or “Psychology.” The chapter considers other examples of the recursive argument method in Latin, including works by Robert of Curzon, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great), and Thomas Aquinas.
Conclusion
Authors: Beckwith Christopher I.
Published: November 2017

This chapter raises three objections about the development of a full scientific culture and examines the modern descendants of the recursive argument method. It suggests that colleges and the recursive argument method, though they had developed together in Buddhist Central Asia, and continued to develop in Islamic guise when that region converted to Islam, seem to have been focused mainly on theology and religious jurisprudence in Classical Arabic civilization. It also discusses the difference between a civilization that has a few scientists and some science, and a civilization that has a full scientific culture. Finally, it considers the scientific method, the use of the recursive scientific method in modern science, experimental psychology, and the ideal structure of a modern humanities dissertation.
Triage
Authors: Hafner-Burton Emilie M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter advocates a process called “triage” for resource allocation that requires investing more heavily in areas where the evidence indicates that human rights promotion is most likely to work. It argues that the universality of human rights norms, which are the bedrock of the international human rights legal system and the core idea of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is not a tenable guide for the most effective implementation of human rights norms. It explains why human rights is a matter of national interest and how assessments of leverage impact human rights. It shows how triage can help stewards in the area of international legal reform and concludes by outlining steps that could transform the process through which government stewards work to protect human rights and increase the returns on international promotion efforts for human rights protection.
Mathematical Tools for Understanding Infectious Disease Dynamics
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

Mathematical modeling is critical to our understanding of how infectious diseases spread at the individual and population levels. This book gives readers the necessary skills to correctly formulate and analyze mathematical models in infectious disease epidemiology, and is the first treatment of the subject to integrate deterministic and stochastic models and methods. The book fully explains how to translate biological assumptions into mathematics to construct useful and consistent models, and how to use the biological interpretation and mathematical reasoning to analyze these models. It shows how to relate models to data through statistical inference, and how to gain important insights into infectious disease dynamics by translating mathematical results back to biology. This comprehensive and accessible book also features numerous detailed exercises throughout; full elaborations to all exercises are provided. The book covers the latest research in mathematical modeling of infectious disease epidemiology; it integrates deterministic and stochastic approaches; and teaches skills in model construction, analysis, inference, and interpretation.
Data-driven modeling of hospital infections
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

The treatment of hospital patients suffering from bacterial infections is increasingly hampered by antibiotic resistance. When the means of curing infections diminish, the prevention of infection gains importance. If we want to ascertain the effectiveness of various potential control measures, we need to know whether cross-transmission or opportunistic growth is the predominant colonization route. For the former, advocating hand washing and other traditional methods of infection prevention makes sense, whereas in the latter case a more prudent use of the arsenal of antibiotics should be pursued. But how to assess the relative importance of these two routes to colonization? This chapter shows in detail how to model the dynamics of a pathogen in a very small dynamic population (nosocomial infections in an Intensive Care Unit of a hospital) based on the type of data that will be routinely available. It shows that maximum likelihood estimation is feasible when bookkeeping is done in an efficient way. An alternative approach would be to iteratively improve guesses about missing data in a Bayesian setting, using the Markov chain Monte Carlo method.
Confucianism as a World Religion
Authors: Sun Anna
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents an overview of how Confucianism has been classified as a world religion in both popular and academic texts over the past century, suggesting that this classification has had a lasting impact on both the popular imagination and academic institutions. It argues that the notion of world religions has become the universally recognized “achievement” that provides model problems and solutions to a community of practitioners. In this case, this community consists of scholars in religious studies, as well as scholars who study Chinese religions in other fields, such as sociology, history, philosophy, and Asian studies. The chapter focuses on the acceptance and implementation of this paradigm in American academia, instead of comparing it to that of another country, such as Great Britain.
The Politics of the Future of Confucianism
Authors: Sun Anna
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the possible future developments of Confucianism in Chinese society: as a cultural identity, political ideology, ethical outlook, ritual practice, symbolic tool in politics, and even the foundation for the civil religion of China. The chapter presents three events that can be seen as corresponding to key issues involved in the future development of Confucianism in China. The first one is called the “politics of epistemology”; the second is the “politics of the religion question,” and finally, the “politics of Confucian nationalism.” However, despite the uncertainties in the politics of the future of Confucianism, its nature as a foundation of morality and possible source of civil religion will never go away.
Introduction
Authors: Maurer Noel
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter discusses the shift from politicized confrontations like the imbroglio of 1900 to legalized disputes like the more orderly affair of 2007. It advances four basic findings. First, American government intervention on behalf of U.S. foreign investors was astoundingly successful at extracting compensation through the 1980s. Second, American domestic interests trumped strategic concerns again and again, for small economic gains relative to the U.S. economy and the potential strategic losses. Third, the United States proved unable to impose institutional reform in Latin America and West Africa even while American agents were in place. Finally, the technology that the U.S. government used to protect American property rights overseas changed radically over time.
Escaping by Accident
Authors: Maurer Noel
Published: November 2017

This chapter demonstrates how the Great Depression allowed Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt to pull back from Theodore Roosevelt's imperial commitment. The Depression facilitated the end of the first American empire by breaking up the coalition between creditors and direct investors. Under Depression conditions, however, governments faced a painful bind: they could maintain payments on their foreign debt at the cost of austerity measures that undermined political stability; or they could impose tax hikes that directly influenced the profitability of foreign direct investments; or they could default. In the battle between bondholders and direct investors, the direct investors won: the Depression had devastated the domestic influence of the financiers.
Are Subaltern Studies Postmodern or Postcolonial? The Politics and Sensibilities of Geohistorical Locations
Authors: Mignolo Walter D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses South Asian subaltern studies as well as their adaptation by Latin Americanist historian Florencia Mallon and by the Latin American Subaltern Studies Group. It is important to keep in mind the differences between the original projects of South Asian Subaltern Studies Group formulated in terms of querying the “historic failure of the nation to come to its own” and of making clear that, “it is the study of this failure which constitutes the central problematic of the historiography of colonial India.” Although one can say that it is this problematic that engages Mallon's and the Latin American Group's adaptation, in both cases, there is a lack of attention to the fact that Latin America is not a country—like postpartition India—and that the many countries of Latin America obtained their independence at the beginning of the nineteenth century and not in 1947.
An Other Tongue, An Other Thinking, An Other Logic
Authors: Mignolo Walter D.
Published: November 2017

This afterword extends the observations from previous chapters, which distinguished postmodern from post-Occidental thinking as a critique of modernity from the interior borders (postmodernism) and from the exterior borders of the modern/colonial world (post-Occidentalism), to deconstruction and to world system analysis. Postmodern criticism of modernity as well as world system analysis is generated from the interior borders of the system—that is, they provide a Eurocentric critique of Eurocentrism. The colonial epistemic difference is located some place else, not in the interiority of modernity defined by its imperial conflicts and self-critiqued from a postmodern perspective. On the contrary, the epistemic colonial difference emerges in the exteriority of the modern/colonial world, and in that particular form of exteriority that comprises the Chicano/as and Latino/as in United States—a consequence of the national conflicts between Mexico and the United States in 1848 and of the imperial conflicts between the United States and Spain in 1898.
Introduction: What This Book Aims to Do and What It Is Not
Authors: Wagner Günter P.
Published: November 2017

This book examines homology, the correspondence of characters from different species or even within the same organism, from a mechanistic perspective. Homology is explained by derivation from a common ancestor that had the same character or trait. This explanation applies at least to characters from different species. Accordingly, this concept has applications in many fields of biology by referring to morphological characters, behaviors, proteins and genes, gene regulatory networks, and developmental mechanisms and processes. The book considers one class of homology relationships, that between morphological characters, and describes the so-called character identity networks. It argues that the evolutionary origin of characters and body plans is the origin of those gene regulatory networks that underlie character identity.
Digits and Digit Identity
Authors: Wagner Günter P.
Published: November 2017

This chapter investigates the evolutionary and developmental biology of digits, focusing on what these appendages can teach us about character identity and character origination. The idea that digits have individuality and that it is meaningful to distinguish between the thumb, the index finger, and all the other digits is both intuitive and controversial. With it arise questions regarding how digits evolved, how they were gained, lost, and then possibly regained, and whether or not they had changed place in the limb. The chapter first considers the origin of digits, with emphasis on the issue of the nature of the pentadactyl limb, before discussing the developmental and morphological heterogeneity of the tetrapod hand. It also examines digit loss and re-evolution in amniotes, the pentadactyl autopodium type, and developmental developmental genetics of digit identity. It suggests that the “tetrapod limb” is likely the result of a dynamic evolution of character identities.
Arithmetic Compactifications of PEL-Type Shimura Varieties
Authors: Lan Kai-Wen
Published: November 2017

By studying the degeneration of abelian varieties with PEL structures, this book explains the compactifications of smooth integral models of all PEL-type Shimura varieties, providing the logical foundation for several exciting recent developments. PEL-type Shimura varieties, which are natural generalizations of modular curves, are useful for studying the arithmetic properties of automorphic forms and automorphic representations, and they have played important roles in the development of the Langlands program. As with modular curves, it is desirable to have integral models of compactifications of PEL-type Shimura varieties that can be described in sufficient detail near the boundary, which this book explains in detail. Through the discussion, the book generalizes the theory of degenerations of polarized abelian varieties and the application of that theory to the construction of toroidal and minimal compactifications of Siegel moduli schemes over the integers (as developed by Mumford, Faltings, and Chai). The book is designed to be accessible to graduate students who have an understanding of schemes and abelian varieties.
An Introduction to Interoception
Authors: Craig A. D. (Bud)
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter provides an overview of interoceptive awareness. The significance of interoceptive awareness of feelings from the body for human awareness of emotional feelings is a central tenet of so-called embodiment theories of emotion. A major distinguishing feature of emotion theories is whether emphasis is placed on the body or on the mind, reflecting the inherent dualism in Western culture. Embodiment theories of emotion relate emotions to the condition of bodies, and they are remarkably consistent with the pathways in brains that underlie bodily feelings and affective feelings. The embodiment theories of emotion emphasize the role of visceral sensation and autonomic activity in the body and brain as a causal source of emotional feelings. In other words, embodiment theories of emotion posit that feelings are generated by autonomic activity and emotional behaviors.
Feelings from the Body Viewed as Emotions
Authors: Craig A. D. (Bud)
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the fundamental significance of homeostasis and the autonomic nervous system. The goal of homeostasis is the balanced, energy-efficient maintenance of the integrity and health of the body in support of the well-being and advancement of the individual and the species. The optimal utilization of energy is key for the survival of every living organism, and it is an essential and decisive determinant of natural selection. Virtually every facet of homeostasis interacts with hormones, neuromodulators, and signaling peptides that are directly involved in energy balance. Ultimately, the need for optimal energy utilization in both body and brain is the evolutionary pressure that produced the progressive interoceptive integration in the insular cortex that led to the emergence of human subjective awareness.
Bodily Feelings Emerge in the Insular Cortex
Authors: Craig A. D. (Bud)
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents evidence that supports the idea that activity in the interoceptive cortex in the posterior insula is re-represented, integrated, and transformed in the middle and anterior portions of human insular cortex to generate the feelings that one experiences. It also explains how vivid feelings are generated in a model of interoceptive integration that engenders homeostatic sentience. The emergence of bodily feelings provides the foundation for the generation of emotional feelings in the anterior insular cortex as if they are feelings from the body. The chapter then describes the evidence for the embodiment of emotional feelings, including the recent use of Botox to elucidate central mechanisms for the facial feedback hypothesis.
The Anti-Tyranny Dossier from Eresos
Authors: Teegarden David A.
Published: November 2017

The earliest extant inscriptions from Eresos record punitive actions taken by the Eresian dēmos against tyrants and their descendants. This chapter argues that the “anti-tyranny dossier” documents Eresos's transition from an unstable, nondemocratically governed polis to a stable polis governed by an authoritative dēmos. The argument is presented in three parts. The first part interprets the actions recorded in the first two texts of the dossier. Therein, it argues that Alexander ordered the Eresians to try the two tyrants in order to establish the pro-democrats' threat credibility and thus stabilize the new democratic regime. The second part interprets the actions recorded in the third, fourth, and fifth texts. The argument in that section is that the exiles' attempts to return to Eresos were potentially destabilizing because they suggested that exogenous factors (i.e., events outside of Eresos's new unilateral deterrence game set up by the trial) might undermine the dēmos's threat credibility. The third part interprets the action documented in the sixth text. It argues that the pro-democrats, now confident that the kings would not intervene on behalf of tyrants, proactively ended their potentially destabilizing struggle with tyrants by definitively proclaiming the permanent credibility of their threat.
The Philites Stele from Erythrai
Authors: Teegarden David A.
Published: November 2017

Alexander's conquest of western Asia Minor marked a dramatic turning point in Erythraian politics. For the previous fifty-four consecutive years (386–332) and for seventy-two of the previous eighty years (412–394 and 386–332), oligarchs controlled that polis. By the end of the 330s, however, the democrats were in control. What many Erythraians likely considered to be the natural and immutable political order had been completely upended. This chapter analyzes the Erythraian democrats' efforts to maintain control of their polis in the face of efforts by their anti-democratic opponents to reinstate the pre-Alexander status quo. Based on an analysis of the events referred to in the Philites stele and their likely historical contexts, it argues that the creation and subsequent manipulation of the statue of Philites played an important role in the foundation, contestation, and ultimate securement of the democracy that was established in Erythrai in the wake of Alexander's conquest of western Asia Minor.
Financial Activities in the Medieval Marketplace
Authors: Shatzmiller Joseph
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at mostly peasants and humble citizens, and how there is not much in terms of beauty that can be expected to be discerned from the objects that these simple people brought to the market. Their relationships with the pawnbrokers are studied through the exploration of the tribunal registers of Manosque (in Upper Provence), which indicate the rules that governed the practice of exchange and exhibit the complications and disagreements that may have arisen between the business partners. The chapter shows that while the church condemned credit operations as “usurious,” society and its political leaders on the other hand appreciated credit as an energizer of economic growth. Jews, therefore, who were not under the church's jurisdiction, were ideally suited to serve in the money economy.
High Finance
Authors: Shatzmiller Joseph
Published: November 2017

This chapter deals with moderate to high financial assistance that was required at times by well-to-do urban inhabitants and by members of the princely class; even members of royalty sometimes borrowed from Jewish moneylenders. Much more aesthetic value was present in the objects and was brought to the pawnbrokers' premises by the royal borrowers. It is not hard to imagine how Jews could have been enchanted by pledges offered by the very upper class of society. But the Jews eventually moved beyond a passive enjoyment of the arts and crafts of their surroundings. Some engaged in stylistic borrowing from the environment while others who could afford it asked Christians to produce liturgical objects that were in accordance with their religious laws and special sensitivities.
Life and the Riddle of Randomness
Authors: Bonner John Tyler
Published: November 2017

This chapter first discusses the concept of randomness and its role in evolution. Unlike natural selection which carves out novelties that lead to evolution, randomness seems to go nowhere; it just shuffles things backwards and forwards. While there is some truth to this way of putting the matter, it is fundamentally wrong. This book focuses on variations in morphology, specifically eukaryotes, whose cells contain a nucleus and come in a great variety of shapes. Those vast numbers of varieties involve both unicellular and multicellular forms. The remainder of the chapter deals with role of chance in evolution, size and randomness, and sex. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
The Division of Labor
Authors: Bonner John Tyler
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses two cases where, in cell and insect societies, there is a small reversal, and randomness is brought back to the fore to play a key role in their respective developments. During the course of evolution, the division of labor has arisen a number of times and it is determined in different ways. First there is the conventional method associated with organisms that develop from a single cell, such as an egg that undergoes repeated cleavages with the increase in size. Then, there are those cases where the division of labor arises in separate units, be they cells, as in cellular slime molds, or whole organisms, as in insect societies. What will be novel here is that in these latter cases there can be specially engineered periods of nongenetic or phenotypic variation that play a key role in determining the division of labor. It is a return to randomness—where randomness is put to good use.
Where Are We Exactly?
Authors: Prewitt Kenneth
Published: November 2017

This chapter calls for very specific changes in the census race and ethnic questions. The strategy depends on a close understanding of the political and technical landscape. It is often the fine print that has to be changed to bring about change. In the case of census race questions the fine print is knowing exactly what is being asked by the Census Bureau, when it is asked, and on which of its many different surveys. Powerful political constituencies are wedded to the current statistical races, especially the well-organized African Americans and Hispanics. Commercial interests are organized around familiar race data, which they use for product placement and location of retail outlets. These and other sources of resistance contribute to what social science describes as the self-reinforcing tendencies of political and social institutions.
Getting from Where We Are to Where We Need to Be
Authors: Prewitt Kenneth
Published: November 2017

This chapter talks about what to change and how to change it. Politics and policy do not like abrupt change, therefore it becomes necessary to introduce incremental modifications. Racial statistics create as well as reflect realities, therefore use the census to shape selected “realities” critical to effective use of racial statistics in the twenty-first century. Every generation opens up fresh possibilities, therefore it is important to design a strategy that takes advantage of generational turnover. Immigrants are much more likely to see themselves through a national origin lens than a racial lens, therefore add a fuller national origin dimension into America's statistics. Immigrant assimilation was not a major policy issue a half-century ago, therefore a second-generation question should be added to the census.
On the Muslim Question: Philosophy, Politics, and the Western Street
Authors: Norton Anne
Published: November 2017

This introduction examines how the figure of the Muslim has become the center where questions of political philosophy and political theology, politics and ethics converge. It explains how the Muslim question has depicted Islam as the preeminent danger to politics; to Christians, Jews, and secular humanists; to women, sex, and sexuality; to the values and institutions of the Enlightenment. It considers how liberty, equality, and fraternity become not imperatives but questions in relation to Muslims and Islam. It argues that European states—indeed all the states of the liberal and social democratic West—are faced with continuing questions about their commitment to democracy and about the status of women, sexuality, equality and difference, faith and secularism.
Women and War
Authors: Norton Anne
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how the participation of women in war was advanced by both the military and the media as evidence for the equality of women in the West. Attention to the plight of women in the Muslim world turns the gaze of feminists and other potential critics away from the continuing oppression of women in the West. Western women are enlisted, with Western men, in the project of saving brown women from brown men. In participating in this campaign, they learn to look upon Western models of sex and sexuality as liberating, universally valid, and exempt from criticism. The chapter considers the tragedy of the presence of women at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. It argues that women's supposed sexual freedom was deployed by the military as a weapon of war. Women soldiers, supposedly the equals of their male colleagues, were reduced to sex workers.
Authorities
Authors: Ossa-Richardson Anthony
Published: November 2017

With the revival of pagan antiquity came a revival of interest in its religions. The humanist movement, in full swing at the outset of the sixteenth century, put itself to setting out and interpreting the classical and patristic sources on the many aspects of these religions, among which the oracles of ancient Greece held a prominent place. By this process the oracles became an object of historical knowledge: in context, individual sources could contribute to the rounded picture of an institution with its own cultural contours. This chapter outlines the classical and patristic sources, and their reception by early modern humanists.
Solutions
Authors: Ossa-Richardson Anthony
Published: November 2017

This chapter deals with the aftermath of the Fontenelle–Baltus exchange, and its eventual overcoming, via a series of new perspectives and scholarly disciplines, in the transformed intellectual world of the nineteenth century. In the new century we find the imposture thesis in all the authors and texts we would expect: in the English Deists, John Toland, Matthew Tindal, and Conyers Middleton; in the exiled Italians, Pietro Giannone and Alberto Radicati; in Louis de Jaucourt's entry on oracles in the Encyclopédie, and the French libertins Nicolas Fréret and César Chesneau du Marsais; in Bekker's German supporter Christian Thomasius; in the Spanish polymath Benito Feijóo; in the Traité des trois imposteurs; and much later in Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. But also in many more forgotten places, frequently but not always with reference to Van Dale and Fontenelle, and the dispute with Baltus.
Babylonian Epistemology in History
Authors: Van De Mieroop Marc
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the important role of Babylonian epistemology in history. While the Babylonians shared the aims of modern philosophers, they never abandoned the primacy of the texts, and actually found in them an unparalleled power to create. It was not physical reality but writing, with its creative processes, that determined the parameters of what was possible and needed to be investigated. The chapter first considers the creativity of the ancient Babylonian texts, citing as examples the Babylonian science of lexicography and the law codes. It then examines empiricism vs. rationalism in Babylonian writings and concludes with an overview of three moments that were important for Babylonian intellectual history: the early second millennium in Babylonia and adjacent areas, later in that millennium across the entire Near East, and at the end of the first millennium, in the Babylonian heartland.
Going to Be Buried Right Here
Authors: Wuthnow Robert
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines what people mean when they say their town offers a slow pace of life or a more authentic place in which to raise children. It is unusual in contemporary America to find anyone whose family has lived in the same small town for as long as six generations. Even in small towns the average length of residence is only nineteen years. The chapter considers the residents' reasons for living where they do and what their perceptions tell us about the changing meanings of community. It shows that residents are fully aware of the disadvantages of living in a small town, but they compensate by, for example, organizing local cultural events and traveling more frequently to cities. The chapter concludes by considering the challenges and concerns that residents talk about as they see their communities changing, such as immigration, population decline, lower standard of living, and increasing racial and ethnic diversity.
The Frog Pond
Authors: Wuthnow Robert
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the ways in which residents of small towns make sense of their own lives, and especially with respect to work and money. People in small towns know it is unlikely that they will ever become rich living there. Job opportunities, for one, are limited. Many lines of work that might be interesting are simply unavailable. This is particularly true for people seeking employment in the professions or managerial occupations. Nevertheless, the scale of one's community can have a decided effect on the scope of one's aspirations. The influence can be understood as a frog-pond effect. The chapter suggests that small communities create a frog-pond identity that residents draw on to formulate narratives about why they chose to live in a small town, how that choice has limited or enriched their career opportunities, and whether they feel regret or are satisfied. It also considers the impact of agriculture on the lives of small-town residents.
The Insider’s View on Terrorist Organizations
Authors: Shapiro Jacob N.
Published: November 2017

This chapter explores the managerial challenges inherent in terrorism by analyzing 108 memoirs written by participants in terrorist organizations that carried descriptions of individual's activities in those organizations. This approach addresses one of the key challenges in studying the internal dynamics of terrorist organizations: the relative dearth of data on what actually happens inside these inherently secretive institutions. Aside from a few highly salient examples (al-Qa'ida, Fatah, al-Qa'ida in Iraq), the internal correspondence of terrorist organizations has not been readily available to scholars and so it is hard to pinpoint the pervasiveness of hierarchy and control inside these groups. The chapter shows that agency problems are pervasive in terrorist organizations and security-reducing paperwork and bureaucracy were present in many of them.
The Tradeoffs
Authors: Shapiro Jacob N.
Published: November 2017

This chapter begins with a discussion of how the covert nature of terrorism inevitably creates opportunities for operatives to expropriate organizational resources for their own purposes, leading to the security-efficiency tradeoff. It then turns to an analysis of the security-control tradeoff, modeling the tradeoff as arising from an unusual agency problem in which principals are better informed than their agents about which actions will best serve the political goal. The chapter also looks at how this tradeoff plays out, since communicating with these agents creates security risks and sanctioning them for misbehaving is costly. The game-theoretic analysis provides rich intuition for what one should expect to see in terms of differences between organizations that vary in distinct ways on the key variables of discrimination, uncertainty, preference divergence, and security.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Authors: Shapiro Jacob N.
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter reviews the evidence, comments on U.S. government counterterrorism policies in light of the agency theory perspective on terrorist organizations, and offers a series of policy recommendations that flow directly from the organizational analysis. One potential criticism of this analysis is that it focuses too heavily on organizational outcomes while ignoring the kinds of behavioral outcomes of greatest interest to policy makers: who gets attacked, when, and by which method. The policy recommendations show this concern to be misplaced by demonstrating how systematically taking terrorists' organizational challenges into account can yield better counterterrorism policy. In particular, there are subtle ways to push groups into adopting security-reducing management practices that will work against some groups, but not all.
A Return to the Magic Bullet?
Authors: Cueto Marcos
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the recent cycle of malaria elimination and control efforts and to raise some questions about the future of global health. It discusses policy changes that occurred against the background of the slow but steady growth of a killer that is second in its global impact only to tuberculosis. Despite a general decline in malaria morbidity during the 1960s and 1970s, especially in semitropical and temperate climate zones, the number of cases and deaths increased in the following years. Among the social factors that explain malaria's increase in the developing world were floods of refugees fleeing civil wars and famine, the marked precariousness of medical systems during a period of structural adjustment, and the growing number of unemployed rural people moving to previously uncultivated lands where infection rates were higher and medical care was scarce.
Evidence-Based Global Public Health
Authors: Adams Vincanne
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the impact of “evidence-based medicine” (EBM) on global public health. An epistemic transformation in the field of global health is underway, and it argues that the impact of EBM has been twofold: (1) the creation of an experimental metric as a means of providing health care; and (2) a shift in the priorities of caregiving practices in public health such that “people [no longer] come first.” The production of experimental research populations in and through EBM helps constitute larger fiscal transformations in how we do global health. Notably, EBM has created a platform for the buying and selling of truth and reliability, abstracting clinical caregiving from the social relationships on which they depend.
Bird Brains, Social Contact, and Song
Authors: Schulkin Jay
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the evolution of bird brain, social contact, and birdsong. Communicative capabilities are widespread, whether in song or through other forms of intimate social contact. One mechanism for this is the regulation of information molecules in the brain such as vasopressin and oxytocin. The chapter first provides an overview of information molecules before connecting these processes to song in frogs, crickets, and birds. It then considers neurogenesis and how information molecules work in the human brain, focusing on some core biology underlying animal song and social contact. It shows that steroid hormones facilitate neuropeptide expression in many species, which underlies song tied to the regulation of the internal milieu, territorial expression, reproduction, and a much wider range of social behaviors.
Human Song
Authors: Schulkin Jay
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the fundamental link between cognitive systems, movement, and the organization of the brain; what psychobiologist Karl Lashley emphasized in his essay on the “serial order of behavior” in which he also discusses music. Many different cognitive and motor systems fuel our ability to organize action, thought, and music. Musical expression is just one example of serial orders of behavior and diverse human creative expression. The chapter first considers the relationship between speech, song, and language in the evolutionary context before discussing how cognitive motor systems are embedded in language and gestures. It then looks at the neurotransmitter dopamine, a vital chemical for syntax, song, movement, discrepancy, and the prediction of reward. It also explains how, from an evolutionary point of view, the organization of thought is embedded in the organization of action. Finally, it provides an overview of procedural and declarative cognitive/memory systems.
Musical Expectations, Probability, and Aesthetics
Authors: Schulkin Jay
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the human problem of grappling with the unexpected while sustaining the familiar, a core feature that underlies human experience and inquiry in general, but which is also essential, in part, to musical sensibility. One neurochemical that is often linked to expectations and the organization of behavior, including that of music, is dopamine. The chapter explains how musical expectations permeate diverse forms of problem solving, such as coping with “the shocks and instabilities, the conflicts and resolution” that we experience every day. It also discusses music and musical expectations in relation to aesthetics and aesthetic judgment, learning, probabilities, discrepancy, uncertainty, change, brain activation, statistical inference, abduction, emotions, and numbers. Finally, it explores the concept of musical meaning, musical order, and musical syntax.
On simple maps
Authors: Waldhausen Friedhelm , Jahren Bjørn , Rognes John
Published: November 2017

This chapter deals with simple maps of finite simplicial sets, along with some of their formal properties. It begins with a discussion of simple maps of simplicial sets, presenting a proposition for the conditions that qualify a map of finite simplicial sets as a simple map. In particular, it considers a simple map as a weak homotopy equivalence. Weak homotopy equivalences have the 2-out-of-3 property, which combines the composition, right cancellation and left cancellation properties. The chapter proceeds by defining some relevant terms, such as Euclidean neighborhood retract, absolute neighborhood retract, Čech homotopy type, and degeneracy operator. It also describes normal subdivision of simplicial sets, geometric realization and subdivision, the reduced mapping cylinder, how to make simplicial sets non-singular, and the approximate lifting property.
The Postscript
Authors: Lowrie Walter
Published: November 2017

This chapter provides some insights into the 1846 publication of Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript to the Philosophical Fragments. The book was the sequel to the previously published Philosophical Fragments (1844), a “thought project” which abstractly discusses the fundamental themes of Christianity. The Postscript, meanwhile, deals both discursively and profoundly with the philosophic problems involved in Christianity. Rather than embarking on an analysis of the Postscript, however, the chapter instead considers its publication history, the nature of the pseudonym Kierkegaard had taken on for both this work and its prequel, how it relates to the rest of Kierkegaard's oeuvre, as well as the treatment of the Postscript by other intellectuals.
The Edifying Discourses
Authors: Lowrie Walter
Published: November 2017

This chapter deals with Kierkegaard's Edifying Discourses in Diverse Spirits (1847), comprised of eighty-six discourses which are now published in English in seven volumes. The Edifying Discourses were written during the time when Kierkegaard became more or less exclusively a religious author, after the publication of the Postscript and in consequence of the affair of the Corsair. These discourses constitute not only a proof of his religious intent in general, but of a very precious and specific illumination of his meaning. The chapter lays out the background of the publication of the Edifying Discourses, revealing insights into Kierkegaard and how he treated his subject matter, as well as how his Discourses should be read in turn.
Leave Your Zoot Suits Behind
Authors: Wu Ellen D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the ways in which Nisei zoot-suiters became a lightning rod for the prescriptions of resettlement's stakeholders, and how this illuminates critical features of wartime culture that operated to reset the terms of Japanese American citizenship after Exclusion. A professed political loyalty to the United States overshadowed the reimagining of Nikkei as assimilable Others. Gender and sexuality especially figured prominently in determining the contours of postcamp social standing. Scattered evidence indicates that community members tagged Nisei women regarded as morally wayward as yogore—derived from the Japanese verb yogoreru (to get dirty). The chapter shows how yogore expressed an alternative masculinity that deviated manifestly from dominant expectations of male citizens during wartime.
How American Are We?
Authors: Wu Ellen D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter illustrates how the experience of World War II was very different for Japanese and Chinese Americans. Configured as enemy aliens, Nikkei endured mass removal, internment, the effective nullification of their citizenship, and a coercive dispersal. Whereas the Chinese enjoyed sounder social footing as a result of their real and presumed ties to China, the United States' partner in the Pacific War against Japan. For all these disparities, however, war mobilization impacted Japanese and Chinese American lives in comparable ways. Most fundamentally for both groups, geopolitical forces opened up novel opportunities for national belonging. Encouraged by the outpouring of wartime racial liberal sentiment, Chinese Americans, especially the native-born cohorts just coming of age, asked new questions and desired new answers about life in the United States.
America’s Chinese
Authors: Wu Ellen D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter talks about how the ethnic Chinese throughout the United States greeted the news of the People's Republic of China's entry into the Korean War with immense trepidation. Almost overnight, the prevailing images of Chinese in the American public eye had metamorphosed from friendly Pacific allies to formidable, threatening foes. Chinatown's Korean War Red Scare dramatized the ways in which the Cold War structured the reconfiguration of Chinese American citizenship in the post-Exclusion era. The ascendance of anti-Communism as the defining paradigm of US foreign policy after World War II introduced new imperatives to clarify Chinese America's social and political standing. To address these issues, both parties looked to the identification of Chinese in the United States as Overseas Chinese—that is, members of a global Chinese diaspora with ties to each other and China.