bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Enhancing Human Cognitive Capital by Harnessing the Brain’s Inherent Neuroplasticity
Authors: Chapman Sandra B. , Cook Lori G. , Vas Asha K. , Robertson Ian H.
Published: January 2019

This chapter addresses the capability to enhance human cognitive performance (i.e., cognitive capital) through training, with the down-range goal of improving functionality in contexts of great complexity, including military/political operations, corporate directions, and educational preparation. It highlights a multidimensional framework to measure gains in cognitive capital on brain, cognitive, psychological, life-functionality, and emotional-cognition factors. To illustrate the potential to harness neuroplasticity, the chapter summarizes evidence showing improved agility and focus from a specific cognitive training that targets strategic thinking (e.g., filter/focus, big picture thinking, innovation). This chapter also adds to the notion of increasing peak performance utilizing moderate stress levels to boost responses. Optimizing performance in continually changing and stressful environments relies on strengthening human cognitive capital in the healthy brain across the life span—similar to that achieved for physical fitness.
Examining the Influence of Adaptive Instructional Techniques on Human Performance for Tasks Conducted in Extremely Stressful Work Environments
Authors: Sottilare Robert , Goldberg Stephen
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the potential benefits of computer-based adaptive instruction to human performance during the training of tasks usually conducted in extremely stressful work environments (e.g., law enforcement, firefighting, emergency medicine, or combat) that often include time, performance, and safety stressors. Adaptive instruction is training in which a computer-based intelligent tutoring system tailors its interaction with the learner to optimize learning and adapts the training environment (e.g., simulation) to maintain challenge level and flow. The design goal of adaptive instruction for tasks in extreme environments is to influence knowledge and skill acquisition to the point where the learner can successfully perform the expected tasks during training and then successfully transfer those skills to the work environment and perform regardless of the conditions. This chapter includes recommendations for representing and adapting work environment stressors during adaptive instruction to optimize learning and transfer of skills and is written for training developers.
Climate Change and the People's Health
Authors: Friel Sharon
Published: January 2019

Climate change threatens humanity and the planet on which we live. Social inequities, including in the health outcomes that different population groups enjoy, also pose a threat to humanity and our freedom to live healthy and flourishing lives. This book makes three key contributions to the current understanding of climate change and health inequity. First, it describes how climate change interacts with the social determinants of health and exacerbates existing health inequities. Second, the book introduces the concept of a “consumptagenic system.” This is an integrated network of market-based policies, processes, governance, and modes of understanding that fuel unhealthy and environmentally destructive production and consumption. Finally, the book outlines some of the progressive steps that are necessary to move from denial and inertia toward effective mobilization against the status quo and hope for the future. The book argues that this requires a systems approach and calls for action that uses fit-for-purpose knowledge and analytical tools from across the sciences, social sciences, and even humanities. The book finishes with the offer of a policy vision and describes some pathways forward across economic, social, and health policy domains that will reduce inequality, mitigate further environmental degradation, and improve health.
Climate Change, Global Justice, and Health Inequities
Authors: Friel Sharon
Published: January 2019

This chapter explains the role of human activities in driving climate change, and some of its most significant impacts. It discusses justice issues raised by climate change, including causal responsibility, future development rights, the distribution of climate change harms, and intergenerational inequity. The chapter also provides a status update on current health inequities, noting the now recognized role of political, economic, commercial, and social factors in determining health. This section also discusses environmental epidemiology and the shift to eco-social approaches and eco-epidemiology, noting that while eco-epidemiologists have begun to research the influence of climate change on health, this research has not yet considered in depth the influence of social systems. The chapter concludes with an overview of how climate change exacerbates existing health inequities, focusing on the health implications of significant climate change impacts, including extreme weather events, rising sea levels, heat stress, vector-borne diseases, and food insecurity.
A Pearl in Peril
Authors: Luke Christina
Published: January 2019

A Pearl in Peril: Heritage and Diplomacy in Turkey explores the relationship between an urban core and her rural hinterland. Known as the Pearl of the Mediterranean, Izmir is Turkey’s third largest city with a vast and changing countryside. Luke investigates Izmir’s hinterland in the context of its vexed and contested past as well as its burgeoning future. From the Greek “Big Idea” (Megali Idea) that foreshadowed the “Asia Minor Catastrophe” to Turkey’s first post–World War I International Fair in 1923 and the design of Izmir’s Kültürpark, this study probes the pivoting place of cultural heritage in the countryside of Izmir, from Classical ruins to active industrial landscapes. Case studies reveal contested negotiations and the legacies of the extraction industry, archaeologists, and the League of Nations; the untold story of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s project in the Aegean and open intelligence at the Izmir International Fairs; the effects at Sardis from Abu Simbel’s exorbitant price tag; and the relationship between organic olives, the European Union, highway expansion, and the preservation of Bin Tepe, Turkey’s largest royal burial. These examples illustrate the art of negotiation and diplomatic practice in archaeology as reflected in treaties, development dollars, and corporatism from the late nineteenth century to current day. Future centennial events of the League of Nations in 2020 and the Republic of Turkey in 2023 offer opportunities for reflection of Europe’s promise, Turkey’s vision, and the global context of heritage studies, human rights, and agendas of development.
Relational Claims-Making
Authors: Tomaskovic-Devey Donald , Avent-Holt Dustin
Published: January 2019

Relational claims-making is a two-step process and the proximate causal mechanism generating inequalities. The process is initiated by a claim on organizational resources and completed when that claim is endorsed or rejected by powerful actors. The ability to make a claim and its legitimacy reflect the social relations of status and power of the actors involved. Actors’ claims can be explicit, implicit, or silenced. Overt claims are explicit, but claims become implicit when they become embedded in taken-for-granted practices. Claims are silenced when actors lack the relational power to act or make claims. Claims-making is illustrated with cases examining the emergent division of labor in mental hospitals and pulp and paper plants, pregnancy discrimination cases, work–family policies, employer bonus systems, productivity metrics, sexual harassment, financial wealth distribution, declining union power, shifts from production to financial discourses, and diversity rhetoric.
Moral Peace and Social Trust
Authors: Vallier Kevin
Published: January 2019

This chapter explains why moral and political disagreement is pervasive and why there is a need to cooperate with diverse others anyway. It then develops conceptions of trust, social trust, trustworthiness, and moral peace between persons that are required to explain how people who disagree with one another can cooperate. More specifically, the chapter develops an account of social trust as a social relationship that can maintain cooperation between diverse persons while respecting the dignity and worth of all. It also describes a moral peace between diverse persons as a society with a high degree of social trust. Determining which institutions properly sustain moral peace is the aim of the rest of the book.
Public Justification
Authors: Vallier Kevin
Published: January 2019

This chapter develops a conception of the public justification of the moral rules that are the object of social trust. The goal is to explain how complying with moral rules and abiding by our personal values and commitments are compatible. When this compatibility relation is established, a system of social trust can sustain itself in the right way by driving appropriately trusting and trustworthy behavior, and motivating holding the untrustworthy accountable. When moral rules are publicly justified, that is, justified for each person by her own lights, the compatibility relation obtains and moral rules can then form the basis for trust and trustworthiness and so sustain a social system with a high degree of justified social trust-moral peace. The chapter explains precisely what is to be justified, the kinds of reasons that constitute public justifications, and how public justification is rooted in moral peace and social trust.
The Derveni Papyrus
Authors: Meisner Dwayne A.
Published: January 2019

After briefly describing the nature and provenance of the Derveni Papyrus (fourth century BC), this chapter introduces in the first section the Derveni author himself and his discussion of a ritual in the first seven columns of the papyrus. The second section presents the Orphic poem that is the subject of the Derveni author’s commentary, through a detailed analysis of the poem and the attempts of modern scholars to reconstruct it. The third section argues that the central event of this poem’s narrative is Zeus and the act of swallowing, which has significant parallels in other Greek and Near Eastern myths. Whether Zeus swallows the phallus of Ouranos or the entire body of Phanes, this act of swallowing is the means by which he secures his position as king of the gods.
The Hieronyman Theogony
Authors: Meisner Dwayne A.
Published: January 2019

This chapter is focused on the only two substantial sources for the Hieronyman theogony, the Christian apologist Athenagoras and the Neoplatonist philosopher Damascius. As shown in the first section, studying their approaches to the Hieronyman theogony is useful for introducing the problems that are encountered in chapters 5 and 6: namely, how apologists and Neoplatonists used Orphic theogonies, and how this affects one’s own interpretations. The second section reconstructs the Hieronyman theogony based on these two sources and questions their presentation in Alberto Bernabé’s collection of the Orphic Fragments. The third section looks at the narrative itself, questioning the influence of philosophy and eastern parallels for the time-god Chronos and the cosmic egg from which Phanes is born. The fourth section focuses on the birth of Dionysus, which appears in Athenagoras but not Damascius, and leads to the suggestion that this episode could have come from a separate poem.
Jesus Without Miracles
Authors: Moskalenko Sophia , McCauley Clark
Published: January 2019

This chapter retells the most famous story in the world, leaving aside claims of divinity, miracles, and resurrection and focusing only on the ideas of self-sacrifice and martyrdom in the Gospels. The authors ask how (without divine intervention) the story of Jesus could have had such remarkable success. What was it about Jesus’s martyrdom that made it the best-sold story of the past 2,000 years? What was it about Jesus’s teaching of self-sacrifice that was revolutionary then and is still relevant today?
Psychology of Altruism
Authors: Moskalenko Sophia , McCauley Clark
Published: January 2019

Why would anyone do something unselfish? Evolutionary theories––Inclusive Fitness and Reciprocal Altruism––offer limited help in answering this question. Social psychology supplies two competing explanations of helping behavior: Distress Theory and Empathy Theory. We find surprising and informative parallels between textbook presentations of research on self-sacrifice and Gospel stories of self-sacrifice.
Curious Coincidences
Authors: Moskalenko Sophia , McCauley Clark
Published: January 2019

wwThe worldwide success of three blockbusters discussed earlier—the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series, and the Matrix trilogy—could be seen as a coincidence were it not for the presence of the same seven narrative conditions the authors identify in every one of the three stories. Taken together, these seven conditions make up a prototype of ideal martyrdom: seven ideal conditions for martyrdom (ICMs) that map onto the Gospel story of Jesus. Each ICM contributes to the appeal and mobilizing power of a martyrdom story.
Martyr Versus Terrorist
Authors: Moskalenko Sophia , McCauley Clark
Published: January 2019

Some contenders for the martyrs’ title wish to abuse the power of martyrdom against the West. These include terrorists, especially suicide bombers. Less dangerous, though no less misleading, are claims that self-immolators and victims are martyrs. Continuing to explore the interaction between martyrs and their audiences, this and the following two chapters focus on these cases of mistaken identity. Both martyrs and terrorists act in response to perceived widespread suffering and injustice. Martyrs are willing to pay a personal price for their cause, whereas terrorists intend to extract this price from others. In a sort of a literary experiment, readers are offered a chance to learn more about their own responses to suffering and injustice in order to appreciate the differences between terrorists and martyrs.
The Threat of Suicide Terrorism
Authors: Moskalenko Sophia , McCauley Clark
Published: January 2019

This chapter evaluates the moral threat of suicide terrorism. Political and psychological resilience to the threat of suicide bombing requires understanding the difference between suicide bombers and true martyrs. A martyr’s political power comes from the indisputable evidence—the martyr’s own suffering at the hands of the powerful—that the powerful are corrupt and unjust. This evidence is tainted if the would-be martyr indulges in provocation, aggression, or retaliation. The authors offer three directions that can help boost Western political resilience in facing suicide bombers, emphasizing the importance of clearly understanding the definitions of martyr, victim, suicide bomber, and terrorist and how perceptions can be changed in the immediate aftermath of an attack or an uprising.
Invoking the Name
Authors: Moskalenko Sophia , McCauley Clark
Published: January 2019

The Arab Spring brought to the front pages of Western newspapers stories of people who were hailed as martyrs by Muslims and accepted as such by the West. Two such cases are detailed in this chapter, one of a Tunisian self-immolator who started the Arab Spring; the other of a victim of the Iranian regime’s crackdown on the Green Revolution. The authors use these cases to build on the previous chapter in further exploration of the purposes and pitfalls of misusing the term “martyr.” These cases illuminate the power a word can have over mass politics and individual psychological reactions.
Bringing Us Together
Authors: Moskalenko Sophia , McCauley Clark
Published: January 2019

How and why does a martyr story spread beyond individuals to larger groups, permeating a cultural landscape? What are the social psychological mechanisms that make people want to share the story with others? This chapter will trace the effects of martyrdom beyond individual followers, to groups of sympathizers and opponents of the martyr’s cause. The authors suggest that a martyrdom story endows those who tell it with social status, creates a sense of community among those who agree with the martyr’s cause, and establishes a common value system. Martyrdom stories change people, sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse.
Bread Crumbs and Parting Gifts
Authors: Moskalenko Sophia , McCauley Clark
Published: January 2019

In the concluding chapter, the authors highlight the power of self-sacrifice and martyrdom as psychological, political, and cultural forces that persevere despite Western devotion to values of competition and self-interest. A case of self-sacrificial leadership in the military (General Slim) highlights the little-utilized power of leaders’ self-sacrifice to move and inspire followers. The chapter ends with suggestions about how elements of self-sacrifice in everyday life can make our lives happier and more meaningful.
Isn’t There a Better Way? (No, There Isn’t)
Authors: Metcalf Gilbert E.
Published: January 2019

This chapter reviews alternative approaches to putting a price on pollution to control greenhouse gas emissions. It reviews the history of the Clean Air Act and Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards and demonstrates that these policies cut pollution at a much higher cost than by simply putting a price on pollution. It also reviews subsidies for clean energy, state-level renewable portfolio standards, and information and voluntary programs and demonstrates that a carbon tax is superior to any of these alternatives.
Do You Remember House?
Authors: Salkind Micah
Published: January 2019

This interdisciplinary study historicizes house music, the rhythmically focused electronic dance sound born in the post-industrial maroon spaces of Chicago’s queer, black, and Latino social dancers. Working from oral history interviews, archival research, and performance ethnography, it argues that the remediation and adaptation of house by multiple and overlapping crossover communities in its first decade shaped the ways that contemporary Chicago house music producers, DJs, dancers, and promoters re-remember and re-animate house as an archive indexing experiences of queer of color congregation. Engaging with and extending the fields of African American studies, urban studies, gender and sexuality studies, dance studies, performance studies, popular music studies, ethnomusicology, and media studies, Do You Remember House? considers house music culture’s liberatory potential in relation to its flexible repertoire in motion, an ever-expanding archive of danceable sounds.
The Warehouse and The Music Box
Authors: Salkind Micah E.
Published: January 2019

Chapter 2 examines Chicago house music’s emergence in post-industrial spaces of queer, Black, and Latino sociality through an analysis of its two foundational spaces, The Warehouse and The Music Box. Working from oral history interviews, newspaper and magazine articles, and autobiographical accounts, as well as through close readings of commercial and amateur musical recordings, this chapter foregrounds the cultural work of promoter Robert Williams and DJs Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy. It builds on scholarship in African American studies, performance studies, and affect theory (Henriques 2010; Johnson 1998; Vogel 2009) to account for the ways that Chicago artists and entrepreneurs adapted New York City’s queer of color social dance traditions to meet the needs of Chicago’s musically omnivorous dancers (Gibson 2006; Novak 2013).
Dancing in Brave Spaces
Authors: Salkind Micah E.
Published: January 2019

The seventh and final chapter of Do You Remember House? uses auto-ethnographic research to bring together the theoretical interventions developed in the previous six chapters. Building on work in dance studies and popular music studies, this chapter employs the notion of dancing in brave spaces, rather than what have often been referred to in the extant literature on queer social dance as safe spaces. It suggests that Chicago house culture inculcates a way of living bravely with socio-sonic difference, in part by fostering experiences of inter-subjective intimacy and vulnerability. The theoretical insights articulated in this chapter are grounded in ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the spring of 2014 at Chances Dances and Queen! as well as during Boogie McClarin’s house dance classes at The Old Town School of Folk Music.
The Black Middle Class in White Space
Authors: Sacks Tina K.
Published: January 2019

This chapter describes and analyzes the Black middle class in the United States with a particular focus on how this group fares in healthcare settings. The author defines the term “Black middle class,” including data on the group’s economic well-being. The chapter argues that American healthcare institutions are best characterized as predominantly White institutions in which Black people are vulnerable to stereotyping and structural discrimination. The author describes the concept of stereotype threat and health-related stereotype threat, applies it to the study of health disparities among the Black middle class, and emphasizes implications for Black women. The chapter also presents empirical research on how racial stereotyping, allostatic load, and stress negatively affect Black people’s health.
The Mississippi Appendectomy
Authors: Sacks Tina K.
Published: January 2019

This chapter begins with a discussion of the historical antecedents of reproductive healthcare for Black women in America, including an overview of the overuse of hysterectomies among Black women, sometimes referred to as the “Mississippi Appendectomy.” The chapter outlines a theoretical framework, including racial essentialism in medicine, from which to understand contemporary reproductive health issues—particularly in the treatment of fibroids and hysterectomy. The chapter also illustrates contemporary practice patterns in which healthcare providers seemed to vacillate between dismissing women’s healthcare concerns to recommending intensive interventions, like major surgeries, to address common gynecological problems that may be treated with less invasive procedures.
The Myth of Holism in Early China
Authors: Slingerland Edward
Published: January 2019

This chapter documents the various forms of holist claims made about early China, showing how they are grounded in the sort of extreme cultural and linguistic relativism that is characteristic of postmodernity. It then focuses on mind-body concepts because this binary in particular tends to be the locus of holistic claims about early China and therefore serves as a helpful lens for viewing holism in general. The chapter characterizes what I refer to as the radical, or “strong,” mind-body holist position, which holds that any sort of distinction between mind and body is entirely foreign to early Chinese thought. The chapter concludes with a brief review of both textual and extra-textual evidence against the various flavors of holist claims about early China.
Embracing the Digital Humanities
Authors: Slingerland Edward
Published: January 2019

This chapter argues that, now that we have the texts of our traditions in fully searchable, digitized form, we can begin to read them in new ways. Basic quantitative textual analysis methods are introduced, as well as more sophisticated methods such as word collocation, hierarchical cluster analysis, and topic modeling. The use of online databases to share scholarly knowledge is also explored. Although digital humanities techniques have thus far been of only marginal use, their potential is huge, and they can provide entirely new and important perspectives on our corpora. Quantitative textual analysis of the early Chinese corpus confirms and deepens the conclusion from qualitative analysis that the early Chinese were mind-body dualists.
Hermeneutical Excesses
Authors: Slingerland Edward
Published: January 2019

Given the massive evidence, both internal and external, against strong mind-body holism, this chapter explores the reasons that the position has remained so popular and widespread. Common interpretative mistakes include monolithic views of cultures, mistaking theory for everyday cognition, and allowing normative or religious commitments to trump evidence. Part of the work of disentangling “partial truths” from the excesses of Sinologism or neo-Orientalism involves documenting the various ways in which acts of interpretation can, under the influence of prejudices or ideologies, go astray. These ways are often intertwined, and the individual types distinguished in the chapter below are not hard and fast categories. This chapter concludes by acknowledging that early Chinese views of the self and self and society are importantly different from modern Western views and can teach scholars much, but only if these views are not overly exoticized.
A Buddhist Philosophical Foundation for Social Theory
Authors: Long William J.
Published: January 2019

Because all political and economic theory and practice are founded on specific, axiomatic convictions and doctrines, this chapter discusses the unique Buddhist philosophical principles that form the foundation for Bhutan’s democratic and development theories and compares this foundation with Western, liberal, Enlightenment principles. The chapter demonstrates that, because of their distinctive ontological, epistemological, and ethical stances, Bhutanese Buddhist and Western liberal conceptualizations of the status of the individual “self,” “human nature,” and “the pursuit of happiness”—the building blocks of democratic theory—are profoundly different. Hence, what constitutes “good government” differs in critical ways, even though both Buddhist and liberal approaches are “democratic.” Likewise, because of their distinctive conceptions of what constitutes human flourishing and happiness, their respective approaches to “appropriate economic development” also differ significantly. The method used here will be dialogical or hermeneutical—relying on interpretation of core teachings.
Bhutan’s Nascent Democracy
Authors: Long William J.
Published: January 2019

Moving from theory to practice, Chapter 4 considers Bhutan’s approach to democracy. Beginning with a brief historical sketch, this chapter concentrates on Bhutan’s adoption of a democratic constitution and its early years of implementation in the 21st century. In its structure and function, Bhutan’s democratic constitution and institutions resemble Western parliamentary systems in many ways. But, here too, Bhutanese democracy offers many unique approaches to perennial issues such as checks and balances, the role of political parties, and the integration of cultural values in policy that suggest an alternative to Western democratic practice. The chapter concludes by assessing the status of Bhutan’s democracy and determines that by most measures of democratic consolidation Bhutan has successfully transitioned from a monarch to a democracy in less than a decade.
The United Kingdom
Authors: Gegout Catherine
Published: January 2019

Chapter five argues that the United Kingdom is less present militarily than France in Africa, and that its military interventions are primarily motivated by security and prestige. The chapter begins with a discussion of the United Kingdom’s active aid policy, and its limited trade interests in Africa. It then argues that there have been a limited number of British military interventions there, and they were never influenced by economic motives. Britain did however carefully consider making military interventions in its former colonies, and taking part in French and EU operations. The chapter shows that, as predicted by normative realism, the United Kingdom promoted its image at home, in the United States and in the United Nations, and it made sure its security interests were protected in, and now outside its former colonial zone. Humanitarianism was a component of its interventions in Somalia in 1992-1993, Sierra Leone in 2000, and Libya in 2011.
Introduction
Authors: Devji Faisal , Kazmi Zaheer
Published: January 2019

The relationship between Islam and liberalism has been a subject of scholarly as much as popular debate for at least a century and a half. Its progress sometimes hailed and at other times found wanting, this relationship has been marked by the unchanging and even stereotypical terms in which it has been debated, including issues such as the separation of church and state, the status of women and the rights of non-Muslims. Each of these issues serves as a litmus test to measure the liberalism of Muslim individuals as well as societies, and each is also drawn from the real or imagined history of liberalism in Europe. However, as a historical and variable phenomenon, liberalism does not in fact possess a normative definition but constitutes a family of shifting and overlapping ideas having to do with the freedoms of property and contract, speech and movement, or of rights and representation....
Postcolonial Prophets
Authors: Yavari Neguin
Published: January 2019

More often than not, the course of history in the Islamic world has caught scholars, pundits and governments in the West by surprise. This chapter investigates that dissonance.
The Dissonant Politics of Religion, Circulation and Civility in the Sociology of Islam
Authors: Salvatore Armando
Published: January 2019

This chapter explores how the sociology of Islam can contribute to moving beyond looking at Muslim politics through the imperial and post-imperial lenses of Islam vs liberalism. Combining Marshall Hodgson’s sociologically nuanced narrative of the “venture of Islam” in history and a reinterpretation of Norbert Elias’ civilizing process, the study rearticulates Muslim politics in history as inherently rejecting those lenses. This is a type of politics investing in circulation rather than of drawing and policing the boundaries of polities, self-regulating selves, and domesticating and subjecting others. Far from nostalgically proposing a pre-Westphalian idyll immune to the dilemmas of how to cope with the aporias of liberalism, this contribution spells out how we can rebalance our political heuristics by investing in a sociological commentary on the virtues of transborder connectedness and global civility.
The Political Meanings of Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam
Authors: Curtis Edward E.
Published: January 2019

Known for its radical resistance to white supremacy, US foreign policy, black Christianity and the liberal dream of racial integration, Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam (NOI) was a prime target of US governmental surveillance and repression. Its very presence was perceived as a threat to the ideological foundations of 1960s US liberalism, which rested on anti-communism and the suppression of political dissent both at home and abroad, on the rhetoric of equal rights under the law and sometimes racial integration, and on federal welfare programs. At the same time, the Nation of Islam’s leadership appropriated and furthered what were at the time several other modes of liberalism: it policed its members’ middle-class, straight sexuality; it embraced the dream of black capitalism and encouraged entrepreneurship; it used the US courts to argue for freedom of religion and framed its activities as such; and it forbade its members from engaging in violent revolution or even nonviolent political resistance against many of the very liberal institutions that it identified as a religious evil.
Post-Islamism as Neoliberalisation
Authors: Mandaville Peter
Published: January 2019

The debate on post-Islamism generally focuses on ideological compromise by political ideologues seeking support from the mass electorate. This chapter argues that what we call post-Islamism is actually better understood as a product of the advent of neoliberal religious subjectivity defined in terms of individualization, consumption practices, and lifestyle ethics. New social movement theory is employed to provide an analysis of new forms of television preaching and religious popular culture in the Middle East.
Nizam al-Mulk and Alterity
Authors: Yavari Neguin
Published: January 2019

Alterity is inflected with allegorical valences in Nizam al-Mulk’s biographies. Medieval historians imagined the vizier as the sultan’s alter ego: he is old and wise, learned and vigilant, Persian and Shafi‘i; the sultan is young and brash, frivolous and uncouth, Turkic and Hanafi. They also upheld him as a paragon of non-partisanship and stressed his willingness to compromise. In Siyar al-muluk, his mirror for the Saljuq prince, on the other hand, governance is inflected with the language of religious and ethnic difference. This chapter attempts to reconcile these seemingly contradictory assessments. The vizier’s policies vis-à-vis Turkic rulers, Abbasid caliphs, and heretics including Shi‘is and Sufis are scrutinized to suggest that secular, political concerns couched in the language of religious metaphors may be read to reveal the scaffolding of authority in medieval Islamic thought.
Scent of Paradise A Study on the Most Honourable Sacrifices of Worshippers; Death and Martyrdom Campaigns
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

Here we have an introduction to a book which Zawahiri published initially in 2004 on the topic of martyrdom and martyrdom operations (i.e. suicide attacks) in particular. Written initially in the aftermath of the 9/11 suicide-hijackings, Zawahiri began his first edition with references to the asymmetric qualities of martyrdom operations, that rendered the material prowess of the West—acquired through treachery—meaningless. He condemned those who spoke against that tactic, warning against the consequences such criticism would have for the Muslim nation. Nine years later, Zawahiri’s second edition of his book comes at a time when martyrdom operations and the excessive casualties they inflict had become something of a liability. In this edition, therefore, Zawahiri warns against ‘deviation’ and ‘exaggeration’ in the application of the tactic, arguing that some have not respected the parameters defined by proper reading of scripture. The two introductions, therefore, shed interesting light on ongoing debates about the boundaries of legitimate and sustainable militancy from the perspective of public opinion, which is a recurring theme in this discourse.
The Islamic Spring, Part 1
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

First instalment of a multipart series, which Zawahiri begins by mourning the death of the leader of Al-Shabaab, whose fealty he had accepted in 2012, and reaches out to affiliates, allies and sympathizers in places like Somalia, Palestine, Yemen, North Africa, the Caucasus, as well as Syria. He claims to have wanted to temper his criticism of ISIL, hoping that the infighting between jihadis would come to an end, but ultimately to have seen no other option than presenting the evidence of al-Baghdadi’s transgressions, which he says go against the prescribed method of the prophet Mohammed. He challenges IS’s understanding of takfir, excommunication, and warns against ways in which religious zealotry can turn to tyranny. In presenting the Muslim Brotherhood as being too compromising and weak, and IS as being too extreme, Zawahiri thus charts a clear ‘middle way’ for Al-Qaeda and its understanding of the world, which he claims will ultimately be victorious.
March Forth to Sham [Syria]!
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

Zawahiri has noted that he did not want Al-Qaeda’s presence on the ground in Syria to become known, as this would distract from the goal of toppling the Assad regime and serve as a propaganda victory for local Shia forces seeking to present the conflict in a more international light. This was part of his publicly articulated frustration with al-Baghdadi’s declaration of the ISIS, initially as a merger with Jabhat al-Nusra, which Zawahiri rejected. In this statement, Zawahiri insists that he does not desire material or political power, in Syria and elsewhere. This goes back to his previous conceptualizations of Al-Qaeda as a ‘mode’, message and mission, which he presented as bin Ladin’s legacy and ultimately his own legacy too. If the people of Syria and its mujahidin fighters came to an agreement regarding their Islamic leadership that would end the infighting, Zawahiri insisted, he would be happy to offer the consensus his backing. At the same time he continues to present IS and al-Baghdadi as illegitimate, praising instead the Nusra Front. The latter declared its independence from Al-Qaeda, with Zawahiri’s acquiescence, in July 2016, potentially giving it more freedom to maneuver within Syria and garner local support.
From Souk to Cyber Souk
Authors: Zakaria Norhayati
Published: January 2019

Cultural values provide a way of understanding consumers’ acceptance or rejection of the way business is conducted, given their culturally-attuned preferences, choices and tastes. Culture has also been shown to affect almost all aspects of business, including transactions between seller and buyer, from how the seller attracts the customer’s attention to the way they negotiate a deal to the moment the transaction is completed. The notion that globalization results in a “universal taste” is no longer an effective promotional element for enticing international customers. Instead, marketers need to customize their products, services and systems to suit the customer’s specific needs. This chapter is to explore two questions: In what ways does culture impact e-commerce and what are the culturally-rooted challenges of conducting e-commerce in the MENA region? The chapter concludes with a set of propositions based on the argument that culture does influence the adoption of e-commerce for MENA consumers.
Working for Free
Authors: Anderson Jon W.
Published: January 2019

While freedom dividends from spreading the Internet specifically and information technologies more generally across the Arab Middle East have proven problematic, hopes for economic dividends endure throughout the spectrum from national policy-makers to developers and users in nearly all countries in the region. Enthusiasms for investment in Internet and IT generally have rested on broad supply-side orientations at macro levels that do not link with the actual sociology of IT development, deployment and use at more micro levels, where returns to working on and through the Internet have been elusive. This chapter focuses on Internet developers as the missing link and identifies factors from piracy to strategies for pursuing returns by selling the firm rather than the product and forms of rent-seeking that add problems of getting paid to practices in which IT workers elsewhere have been found to share value orientations of entrepreneurial IT firms, while value is extracted upward and marginal returns on primary production fall at the micro level and fail to register as productivity at the macro level.
E-Government in the GCC Countries
Authors: Radcliffe Damian
Published: January 2019

The digital revolution has impacted all aspects of our lives. For governments agencies ICT can improve inter-department business, as well as deepen relationships with businesses and citizens. It can do this by enhancing and streamlining service delivery, creating a more informed and active citizenry and making government more accountable, transparent and effective. This paper explores how the six countries in the Gulf Co-operation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) have responded to this opportunity and challenges, and how they will need to react to emerging technological trends if they are to maintain the momentum and potential afforded by e-Government. Given the pace of technology-related changes, this chapter encompasses academic literature, industry perspectives, and news reports to tell this emerging story.
Introduction
Authors: Moller Dan
Published: January 2019

This introduction lays out the key claims of the book. It contrasts versions of libertarianism grounded in absolute rights with the approach taken in this book, which appeals to everyday moral beliefs we have about shifting our burdens onto others. This difference can be illustrated in different kinds of speeches we might make to our fellow citizens containing different sorts of demands. The introduction also emphasizes the wide-ranging, interdisciplinary nature of this endeavor, in contrast to more conventional political philosophy in the Anglophone tradition. History, economics, and philosophy are all relevant to the sort of political economy this book represents. Finally, there is a precis of the chapters to come.
Property as a Constraint on the State
Authors: Moller Dan
Published: January 2019

This chapter argues that private property constrains what the state may do. Figures like John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, and G. A. Cohen have advanced views according to which ownership is not a consideration that significantly hems in the content of just institutions. But this chapter shows that private property has independent weight that must be acknowledged in organizing a just society. A social contract that ignores the independent moral importance of private property is not one that should command our respect. This raises the question of whether it is ever permissible to take someone’s property by force, without which we would arguably be left with anarchy. The answer sketched relies on an anti-free-rider principle that permits us to compel people to contribute to projects we cannot reasonably forgo, which people benefit from and could opt out of, and which they may otherwise free-ride on.
Justice and the Wealth of Nations I
Authors: Moller Dan
Published: January 2019

This chapter argues that recent economic growth represents a species-historical phenomenon that philosophers writing in political economy must not neglect, and one which raises difficult questions for critics of capitalism. It further argues that criticisms of capitalist-style economic systems are mistaken to focus on global poverty. For the most part, this poverty reflects the default position of nations that have not stumbled onto economic growth yet. Alternative accounts grounded in imperialism or imperfect global institutions neglect key structural facts about economic growth. These include its long-term development, its cross-cultural character, and its independence from the onset/ending of practices like imperialism and slavery. The causes of growth with these characteristics are unlikely to be morally suspect.
Policy transfer and innovation for building resilient bridges to the youth labor market
Authors: Petmesidou Maria , Menéndez María González
Published: January 2019

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, rising levels of youth unemployment led to an array of policy responses involving learning, transfer, and experimentation to address the complex needs of youth at risk. Reviewing these recent experiences, this chapter examines nine European countries (including Turkey) representing a range of different school-to-work transition regimes and with varying levels of youth unemployment and gender inequalities. It analyzes the institutional and process “enablers” of and “barriers” to policy learning and innovation, and it traces the pathways and major foci of learning and transfer within and between countries, as well as through supranational channels. This examination highlights where changes in policy governance have occurred. It is concluded that innovative initiatives for sustained labor market integration of youth require a policy environment that is conducive to coordinated sharing and diffusion of knowledge between different levels of administration and joint stakeholders’ bodies.
Youth transitions and job quality
Authors: Filandri Marianna , Nazio Tiziana , O’Reilly Jacqueline
Published: January 2019

This chapter explores how youth unemployment, discontinuous employment, and working in low-quality jobs affect individuals’ subsequent occupational conditions. Using cross-sectional and longitudinal EU-SILC data (2005–2012) for five countries, the chapter distinguishes between different types of good and bad jobs, examining the effect of family background on successful transitions. Findings show that young people from families of higher social class have better chances of making transitions into good-quality jobs than do youth from lower class families. Securing a good entry job is crucial to achieving a successful outcome, whereas experiencing either brief periods of unemployment or employment continuity has limited effects. These mechanisms are evident across all countries considered. The findings reinforce established knowledge on patterns of stratification, evidencing a direct channel of social transmission of inequalities through education and an indirect channel through better labor market entries.
The worklessness legacy
Authors: Berloffa Gabriella , Matteazzi Eleonora , Villa Paola
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines how intergenerational transmission of worklessness varies according to the gender of parents and their children in 26 European countries. The analysis draws on EU-SILC 2011 cross-sectional data, using a sample of young people aged 25–34 years for whom information about parental background characteristics when the young people were aged approximately 14 years is available. Fathers’ and mothers’ employment conditions during their children’s adolescence were expected to impact differently on the labor outcomes of sons and daughters, with cross-country differences depending on national-specific socioeconomic structures and institutional contexts. Empirical findings suggest that having had a workless mother increases both sons’ and daughters’ likelihood of being workless at approximately age 30 years in all but the Nordic countries. Fathers’ employment matters for both sons and daughters in Mediterranean and Eastern countries, only for daughters in English-speaking countries, and only for sons in Nordic countries.
Europe’s promise for jobs?
Authors: Spreckelsen Thees F. , Leschke Janine , Seeleib-Kaiser Martin
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the labor market integration of recent migrant youth from Central and Eastern Europe (EU8) countries, Bulgaria and Romania (EU2), Southern Europe, and the remaining European Union in the German and UK labor markets. The chapter measures levels of employment, income, marginal employment, fixed-term employment, (solo) self-employment, and the skills/qualification mismatch of each group compared to nationals before and after the financial crisis. Despite institutional differences, young EU citizens are well integrated into the respective labor markets (especially in the United Kingdom) in terms of employment rates. However, EU youth migrants’ qualitative labor market integration seems to mirror the existing stratification across regions of Europe: EU8 and EU2 citizens often work in precarious and nonstandard employment, youth from Southern Europe take a middle position, and youth from the remaining EU countries do as well or better on several indicators compared to their native peers.
Do business start-ups create high-quality jobs for young people?
Authors: Ortlieb Renate , Sheehan Maura , Masso Jaan
Published: January 2019

Since the onset of the recent economic crisis, there has been renewed interest among policymakers across Europe in measures to stimulate self-employment and entrepreneurship as an alternative to unemployment. However, fundamental questions about policies that promote self-employment, especially among young people, remain unanswered. For instance, do such policies create new jobs or just promote new forms of precarious, poor-quality employment? This chapter finds that for some young people, self-employment is an option that offers high-quality jobs. Young self-employed people report that they can use and further develop their skills, and they appreciate the high degrees of autonomy and flexibility. However, the actual volume of jobs created through self-employment is low. Moreover, job quality is impaired by poor social protection, with severe negative consequences especially in the long term. Policies are needed to address the risks associated with self-employment, especially in relation to unemployment, health care, and pension benefits.