bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Myanmar’s Transition to Peace and Democracy
Authors: Zin Ohn Mar , Janet Naw , Zulueta-Fülscher Kimana
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores Myanmar’s political journey from colonial times to the 2021 military coup d’état, which reversed ten years of a difficult yet hopeful transition to peace and democracy. After decades of military rule, Myanmar’s shift to a civilian government in 2010, under a military-sponsored constitution, constituted a significant turnaround, which paved the way for the start of a transition to peace, democracy, and economic development. The 2008 Constitution, however, guaranteed key institutional powers to the Myanmar armed forces, which ensured that it controlled key ministries in Myanmar’s executive, and the possibility of vetoing constitutional amendment proposals in the Union Parliament. The armed forces, and its commander-in-chief, thus remained key actors—and potential veto players—in Myanmar’s myriad transitions. This chapter looks closely at the democratic transition first under the military-sponsored Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), then, since 2015, under the government of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD). It also describes the way in which the very fragile and politically charged dynamics between the NLD, the armed forces, and a myriad ethnic groups and their representatives challenged progress in the peace negotiations and, as a result, on constitutional reform and the planned transition towards federalism and institutional reform. The coup d’état on 1 February 2021, after the NLD again won the November 2020 elections by a landslide, constituted a setback, though it allowed the emergence of a stronger resistance movement against the armed forces.
A Vision for Engaging the Arts in Social Work Practice
Authors: Kelly Brian L. , Lanza Carrie , Travis Raphael , Ellis Taylor
Published: February 2024

This chapter guides readers to consider a richer palette of art-based possibilities for culturally responsive, antiracist, and trauma-informed micro, macro, and mezzo client and community-centered practice. Introductory statements described background, positionality, as well as theoretical sensitivity and distinctive spin on arts and social work are provided. Intersectional identities are explained as workers/artists—artists/workers, situating the commentary in grounded yet simultaneously disruptive challenges to the field’s privileging of depersonalizing, outcome-oriented practices. While acknowledging hurdles to needed change, readers are not allowed to dwell in negativity or lose hope. Instead, they are assured that art makes it possible to “work within unrest” and address distress toward a more united and better world.
Living and Working Through Pandemics, Disasters, and Other Traumatic Events
Authors: Hedlund Susan , Miller Bryan , Nehru Leena
Published: February 2024

This chapter highlights the enormous stresses that COVID-19 has imposed on the health care workforce. Burnout is an occupational hazard that has reached new critical levels for health care professionals. Disaster preparedness, response, and recovery-related research, theories, and models have evolved over the past several decades. In addition to new and complex challenges the pandemic has created, it also creates opportunity for further research to provide guidance for optimal models of support for health care professionals. Understanding the mental-health needs of the health care workforce is essential both to recovery and to prepare for future pandemics, disasters, and other traumatic events. Oncology and palliative social workers are poised to take a leadership role in assisting organizations in recognizing and addressing inequities, compassion fatigue, staff burnout, and institutional resilience strategies.
Advantages to Leading as Pastors of Color
Authors: Edwards Korie Little , Kim Rebecca Y.
Published: February 2024

Given the tremendous pull of homophily and the reality of racial segregation in the American religious landscape, it is altogether reasonable to ask why anyone, particularly a person of color, would want to pay the significant costs of leading multiracial congregations. In an effort to address this important question, this chapter explores the advantages that pastors of color have as leaders in multiracial spaces. Pastors of color tend to have three main advantages. One is that they are multicultural. By this, we do not mean their heritage is multicultural; rather, they are fluent in more than one culture. They are familiar with, for instance, the behavioral norms, values, ideologies, theologies, ways of speech, language, and style as well as material culture, like music, food, clothing, art, and technology, of their own ethnoracial culture and the dominant white culture. Another advantage is that they are able to see, comprehend, and navigate the racialized social system. A third advantage is that they can act as bridges between their ethnoracial religious community and their current religious network.
Regret, Valuing, and Virtue
Authors: McQueen Paddy
Published: February 2024

This chapter examines the relationship between regret, value, and virtue. It provides a detailed discussion of R. Jay Wallace’s account of regret, which asserts that we should experience regret when things that we value are harmed. Wallace also argues that we are unable to regret things that are causally necessary for the existence of things that we are attached to. Both claims are challenged. The chapter also critiques Carla Bagnoli’s account of regret as a response to unrealised values. It then considers emotional responses to tragic dilemmas / tragic conflicts. Contrary to what many philosophers assert, it argues that one ought not to regret a decision one made, so long as one recognises that it was the best choice that one could make in the circumstances. This applies no matter how undesirable the choice is.
Consequentialism and Epistemic Utility Theory
Authors: Singer Daniel J.
Published: February 2024

Epistemic utility theorists, accuracy-first epistemologists, and truth-loving epistemic consequentialists all agree that, in a sense, epistemic norms are about maximizing accuracy in our doxastic states. This chapter focuses on two objections to the former views and asks whether they translate to truth-loving epistemic consequentialism. It starts by considering an objection from Gibbard (2008), which says that aiming at the truth is insufficient to explain the requirements of epistemic rationality. It then considers objections from Caie (2013), Greaves (2013) and Carr (2017), which say that despite what the theorists claim, epistemic utility theorists can’t use the standard tools of decision theory to justify their conclusions. The chapter argues that the objections don’t apply to truth-loving epistemic consequentialism. The upshot is that, even though the views agree that epistemic norms are about accuracy, there are important differences about the targets of the views and how accuracy is understood.
Consequentialist Epistemology
Authors: Singer Daniel J.
Published: February 2024

This chapter starts by giving an overview of the most important structural features of the truth-loving epistemic consequentialist view fleshed out in the previous chapters. It then digs into further defending two of the most novel (and likely most controversial) aspects of the view: (1) the aspect of the view that treats right belief as importantly distinct from justified and rational belief, and (2) the aspect of the view that says that epistemic evaluations apply to things other than belief. In fleshing out the first aspect, the chapter considers different options for how epistemic consequentialists might think about epistemic justification. The chapter then shows how truth-loving epistemic consequentialism can serve not just as a theory of what we should believe but also as the foundation of a broader truth-centric conception of epistemology.
Improving Maternal and Child Health Outcomes: An Opportunity for Expanded Primary Healthcare Teams
Authors: Loafman Mark , Thomas-Allen Kenya , Isama Anita , Calvo Ahmed V.
Published: February 2024

Improving persistently disparate outcomes in maternal and child health (MCH) requires additional insights and action beyond the remarkable investment and advancements in maternal and neonatal healthcare. A life-course perspective calls for a more comprehensive scope of practice for MCH populations, all key components of high-performing primary care. In addition, there is an urgent need to address worsening maternity care workforce shortages. A well-trained and strategically deployed family medicine workforce appears to be the most feasible and readily attainable approach to help address disparities in both access and outcomes. Workforce and scope-of-practice improvements are tangible, evidence-informed components that can help drive transformational shifts in training and practice.
It’s Not a Flip of the Switch: One Healthcare System’s Collaborative Approach to Engaging External Partners to Support the Maternity Journey
Authors: Hernandez Brisa Urquieta de , Brocato Christine , Lecamwasam Manoja Ratnayake , Anuradhika Anuradhika
Published: February 2024

With continued diversification of the birthing population, it is critical for healthcare systems to engage with external partners to better support birthing people’s care experience. This chapter presents steps healthcare systems can take to engage with external partners to address gaps in care for vulnerable populations. It provides a case study from one of the largest Medicaid providers in the country. It highlights the importance of acknowledging a commitment to health equity, followed by the process to identify external partners, as well as the criteria involved in that process. Last, it describes ways to codify the relationship and to ensure measurement of success.
An Approach for Whole-Person Health: Oral Healthcare Integration for Improved Maternal Outcomes
Authors: Ricks Timothy L. , Brian Zachary A.
Published: February 2024

This chapter highlights the importance of maternal and child oral health and outlines some of the factors affecting oral healthcare access and outcomes among women and children. It discusses factors affecting the oral health of pregnant mothers and the relationship between maternal and child oral health. It examines how increased integration of oral healthcare services into primary care and other nondental settings can help improve child and maternal oral health and overall health. The chapter outlines professional associations and scientific organizations’ guidelines for integrating oral health services in primary care and nondental settings. It also offers practical tips for medical providers seeking to offer oral health screenings and preventive treatments in their practices and to increase referrals to dental homes.
Historical Context Matters: Structural Racism, Maternal Health, and Reproductive Justice
Authors: Velez Christine M. , Ávila Maria Mercedes
Published: February 2024

Racism is a key determinant of health, affecting maternal health and well-being and contributing to racial disparities in health outcomes. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the history of structural racism in the United States. We begin with outlining the relationship between structural racism and social determinants of health. We go on to describe how the trans-atlantic slave trade and policies that supported forced sterilization programs for Black, Latina, and Indigenous people are part of the historical context that undergirds contemporary inequities. We conclude with an overview of reproductive justice and posit that it is an equity-focused framework that can be used to address structural racism in maternal health.
Introduction to Maternal Health Equity: A Consensus-Driven Definition and Research Priorities
Authors: Mosley Elizabeth A.
Published: February 2024

Despite persistent inequities in maternal health, there is little consensus among researchers about the definition of maternal health equity. This chapter presents one group’s efforts to create a definition with the input of multiple stakeholders. In Georgia, the Center for Maternal Health Equity at the Morehouse School of Medicine and the Johnson & Johnson Health of Women Team in the Office of the Chief Medical Officer established the Georgia Maternal Health Research for Action Steering Committee. The committee included researchers, clinicians, policy experts, and community leaders. Collaborating with the Georgia Community for Action Group, the Steering Committee defined maternal health equity using the Delphi consensus method. The group also identified 14 research priority areas for Georgia, ranked by importance and urgency. The process of creating a consensus definition and setting research priorities can be replicated in other states.
The Integral Role of Community-Based Doulas in Supporting Birth Equity
Authors: Dillion Twylla , Sulaiman Zainab
Published: February 2024

This chapter focuses on the disproportionate number of birthing people of color, especially women, who suffer poor maternal health outcomes, are at increased risk of experiencing traumatic birth experiences, frequently undergo medical interventions during childbirth, and suffer from high maternal mortality rates. The chapter focuses on a model of care that includes providing a wider array of services through a holistic and multifaceted approach, building ongoing relationships with community members, and sharing lived experience, culture, and language with the communities they serve. Leveraging natural support systems within communities and focusing on wellness and healing are crucial for community-based doula care. Community-based doula models use community strength as scaffolding for program delivery, and this approach rejects the prevailing deficit-based approach used in most clinical settings to support underresourced communities.
From Grassroots to Telecommunication Innovation: Bridging the Gap in Perinatal Mental Health
Authors: Raines Chris , Davis Wendy
Published: February 2024

Focusing on examples of telecommunications and community-led endeavors, this chapter highlights two organizations: Mahmee, a perinatal care management platform that empowers and facilitates connection between patients and providers, and Homeland Heart Birth & Wellness Collective, a community program in Nashville, Tennessee, that promotes optimal infant and maternal health in communities of color. Fragmentation and inaccessibility are addressed by the Mahmee platform’s comprehensive toolkit for providers who are likely to work outside large health systems and hospitals and lack access to secure electronic health records, providing software that is uniquely beautiful and simple and has even been described as “fun” to use. Allied health professionals from nutritionists and therapists to doulas and pregnancy coaches use the platform daily to document the care they provide, to host secure virtual visits, and to participate in the expanded reimbursement landscape that is evolving to be more inclusive of professionals who are positioned to improve maternal health outcomes.
Words Bizarre, Misbegotten, and Born by Mistake
Authors: Liberman Anatoly
Published: February 2024

This chapter features the origin of the words bizarre, bamboozle, chicanery, pun, conundrum, punk, spunk, funk, quiz, gig, oof, tip “gratuity,” and helpmate. Most of them have been objects of partly inconclusive discussion. The happy exceptions are conundrum and oof, whose etymology was discovered almost by chance. Hence the attraction of their stories. Yet the etymology of conundrum, buried in an obscure note in an old nonlinguistic periodical, is here brought to light for the first time. Helpmate, like conundrum, shows that a word coined almost by chance can have a long and successful life. Bamboozle is slang and illustrates the almost insurmountable difficulties in dealing with words of the popular register. Punk, funk, and spunk are puzzling because they sound so much alike, and their senses overlap. Yet they are different words, not derived from one another. Quiz and gig are bizarre coinages, like the word bizarre itself. Though their origins are still disputed, enough has been suggested about them for a word historian to risk offering more satisfactory formulations about the circumstances of their coinage. In any case, bizarre is not a borrowing from Basque and has nothing to do with moustache (probably a sound-imitative or sound-symbolic adjective).
Suspicious Usage and Troublesome Phonetics
Authors: Liberman Anatoly
Published: February 2024

Emphasis in the first two sections of this chapter is laid on the interplay of etymology with grammar and phonetics. The discussion turns around the history and status of ain’t and the origin of the preterit snuck. This discussion is inseparable from the problem of popular usage versus the conservative norm enforced by the teaching establishment and editors. Popular usage is also the main subject in the section on the parasites like and you know: both are devoid of content but play an important role in emotional, uncensored communication. Emphatic phonetics is the subject in the section on the origin of the words nudge and kitsch (the concluding section of the chapter). Here, the discussion concentrates on the role of the affricate -dge in the mysterious origin of the word nudge and finds some confirmation of this hypothesis in the story of the almost equally opaque German (now widely known) word kitsch.
Case Study: Harvey Weinstein, Ronald Sullivan, and Harvard University
Authors: Wendel W. Bradley
Published: February 2024

A highly visible controversy broke out at Harvard University when a professor in the law school, who was also a residential house advisor, joined the team representing Harvey Weinstein, the film producer who had been credibly accused by numerous women of forcible sexual assault. The lawyer and his colleagues at Harvard responded with the usual defense of representing unpopular clients. They seemed surprised that critics were looking for a different type of explanation, involving the lawyer’s own personal reasons for lending his support to the defense. Although American lawyers are not bound by the “cab-rank rule,” requiring representation of all clients, vigorous advocacy for the accused in a criminal prosecution is justified as a way of checking the power of the state and protecting the dignity of individuals. Beyond that, though, lawyers may owe an account that engages with first-personal reasons for representing a client.
Some Concluding Thoughts
Authors: Wendel W. Bradley
Published: February 2024

When the next occasion arises for public criticism and defense of a lawyer representing an obnoxious client, several points can be taken away from the consideration in this book of the morality of client selection. First, people tend not to be persuaded by the rule of law as an abstract ideal, without a connection to the intentions and attitudes of a particular lawyer. Relatedly, public criticism shows the limitations of legality as a justification. The law does not exhaust the field of morality and people know that. Finally, commitment to a social role while not losing sight of one’s own humanity may involve a certain amount of regret, sorrow, or reluctance.
Philosophical Mechanics in the Age of Reason
Authors: Brading Katherine , Stan Marius
Published: February 2024

Philosophical Mechanics in the Age of Reason argues that the Enlightenment was a golden age for the philosophy of material bodies, and for efforts to integrate coherently a philosophical concept of body with a mathematized theory of mechanics. Thereby, it articulates a new framing for the history of 18th century philosophy and science. It explains why, more than a century after Newton, physics broke away from philosophy to become an autonomous domain. And it casts fresh light on the structure and foundations of classical mechanics. Among the figures studied are Malebranche, Leibniz, Du Châtelet, Boscovich, and Kant, alongside d’Alembert, Euler, Lagrange, Laplace, and Cauchy.
A golden era
Authors: Brading Katherine , Stan Marius
Published: February 2024

Bodies are everywhere, or so it seems: from pebbles to planets, tigers to tables, pine trees to people; animate and inanimate, natural and artificial, they populate the world, acting and interacting with one another. And they are the subject-matter of Newton’s laws of motion. At the beginning of the 18th century, physics was that branch of philosophy tasked with the study of body in general. In Chapter 1, the authors present the central theme of their book: the problem of bodies. They articulate the main analytical tools they use to address it, including “philosophical mechanics,” the framework within which they assess progress toward solving the problem of bodies. They give a chapter-by-chapter synopsis and preview their conclusion that the 18th century is fruitfully viewed as a golden era of philosophical mechanics.
Building bodies: Euler and impressed force mechanics
Authors: Brading Katherine , Stan Marius
Published: February 2024

During the early decades of the 18th century, theorists working in rational mechanics came to terms with the insufficiency of Newton’s laws for treating the motions of extended bodies. After the 1730s, rational mechanics learned how to tackle the motion of extended bodies with internal constraints, such as rigidity and incompressibility. In Chapter 10, the authors investigate these developments in relation to the problem of bodies. The greatest advances were due to the Bernoullis, d’Alembert, and especially Euler. These figures relied on a dual idea: constraints are due to internal forces; and the balance laws for impressed external forces govern the actions of internal constraints as well. The upshot was a broad-scope mechanics in a specific formulation, due to Euler. The authors make clear the successes and limitations of Euler’s achievements, with respect to the problem of bodies.
With the Laity
Authors: Stratton Hild Elaine
Published: February 2024

Chapter 3 leaves behind the powerful, urban centers of Rome and Sens and moves to Orsières, a village isolated in the mountainous terrain of southwestern Switzerland (Canton Valais). In a stroke of luck for historians, a manuscript associated with this small community survives from the fourteenth century. The source offers a rare opportunity to better understand the liturgical practices conducted by a lay community at the time of an individual’s death. This chapter argues that the deathbed liturgy of Orsières shares profound similarities with those of prominent religious institutions, while mirroring none exactly. The chapter concludes that rituals for the dying remained unstandardized even into the fourteenth century, and that the community of Orsières maintained a version that circulated locally.
The Impermissibility of Moral Deference
Authors: Saemi Amir
Published: February 2024

There is something off-putting about moral testimony, and various explanations have been offered. According to al-Rāzī, the point of morality is the redemption of the soul, and this can be achieved only through understanding, which is lacking in the case of moral deference. Despite his view, some unproblematic cases of moral testimony are presented. The main argument for the permissibility of moral deference is that it makes it more likely that we act morally. The chapter argues that this argument does not show that it is rationally permissible to defer to Scripture. The chapter defends the Moses principle, according to which one should not act on the basis of moral testimony when the stakes are asymmetrically high. Using this principle, we might deny or suspend judgment about the objective reliability of our independent moral judgments, while holding that our moral judgments are rationally reliable. This constitutes an ethics-first solution to the problem of prescribed evil.
Valuing Health
Authors: Phelps Charles E. , Lakdawalla Darius N.
Published: February 2024

The generalized risk-adjusted cost-effectiveness (GRACE) model generalizes standard cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) by introducing diminishing (instead of constant) returns to health in creating utility. This one simple change importantly alters the proper ways to measure value of medical treatments or technologies in six ways: (1) The willingness to pay (WTP) for a given amount of improvement in health-related quality of life (HRQoL) rises exponentially with illness severity; (2) WTP for treating people with permanent disabilities is higher than for otherwise similar nondisabled people, in stark contrast to the conclusion drawn by standard CEA methods; (3) reducing the uncertainty (variance) in treatment outcomes adds value, independent of average gains in HRQoL (“the value of uncertainty”); (4) increasing the likelihood of positive outcomes, holding variance constant, increases value (“the value of hope”); (5) increasing the precision of estimates of treatment outcomes adds value (“the value of knowing”); and (6) people’s trade-off rates (“marginal rates of substitution”) between HRQoL and life expectancy vary by baseline HRQoL, in contrast to standard CEA methods, which assume that this trade-off rate is the same for everybody. This book provides two methods for researchers to use the key risk-preference parameters in the domain of HRQoL. It also provides sensitivity analyses to show how value measurements change as these key parameters change. It concludes with some comparisons of the implicit ethical assumptions of standard CEA and GRACE methods.
Microbes
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: February 2024

Microbes are responsible for controlling the carbon cycle, for supporting food chains on which all organisms depend, and for many other activities that are essential for maintaining natural ecosystems. These ecosystems, organisms, and everything else on the planet are now threatened by climate change brought on by human activity. Along with animals and plants, microbes produce and consume the most important greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, but only microbes have anything to do with two other powerful greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide. The rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change, is due mostly to the burning of fossil fuels, whereas microbes are the main sources of methane and nitrous oxide, which are also increasing in the atmosphere. Although microbes contribute to the problem by producing greenhouse gases, climate change would be even more severe if not for other microbes that consume greenhouse gases. Solving the climate change problem starts with eliminating the use of fossil fuels, but that is unlikely to be enough. Microbes can help keep fossil fuels in the ground by making biofuel and other forms of green energy. Other microbes can be harnessed to reduce release of methane and nitrous oxide from agriculture, which accounts for about a third of all greenhouse gases emitted by human activity. Geoengineering solutions involving microbes could pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, providing the negative emissions needed to minimize global warming. Understanding and solving climate change, the biggest environmental problem facing us today, depends on microbes.
Carbon Pumps in the Oceans
Authors: Kirchman David L.
Published: February 2024

Climate change would be a lot worse if not for the carbon dioxide (and heat) taken up by the ocean via carbon pumps, the largest being the biological pump. Phytoplankton carbon is exported to deep waters by particles such as zooplankton fecal pellets, marine snow, and other aggregates and by dissolved organic carbon (DOC). As part of the microbial carbon pump, bacteria contribute to the formation of refractory DOC that is 6000 years old. As carbon dioxide increases in the ocean, another gas, dissolved oxygen, is decreasing. Oceanic deoxygenation is caused by warming seawater and by bacterial activity stimulated by global warming. The worry is that bacteria are using refractory DOC that had sequestered carbon away from the atmosphere for thousands of years. Even if climate change doesn’t alter the ocean’s contribution to carbon sequestration, it seems likely to disrupt microbial communities that are the base of life in the ocean.
Organising Sharia Politics and Governing Violence
Authors: Anzalone Christopher
Published: February 2024

In Chapter 4, Christopher Anzalone looks at governance efforts by al-Shabaab. Focusing on al-Shabaab’s conception of “law and order” and its interpretation and implementation of sharia and Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), the chapter considers the political economy of its governance strategy and operations and the key role of on-the-ground public communal events in broadcasting its governance, authority, and authenticity and legitimacy claims. The chapter also argues that al-Shabaab are largely shaped by more localized dynamics in their respective areas of operation. Growing out of a specific geographical and socio-political context and conflict environment, al-Shabaab’s leadership must contend with local and regional dynamics and identities which results in an inconsistent mix of transnational “globalist” militant pan-Islamism à la al-Qaeda Central’s and a more regionalized, Somali, and East African revolutionary Islamism.
Idlib and the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham Conundrum in Syria
Authors: Khalifa Dareen
Published: February 2024

In Chapter 11, Dareen Khalifa examines Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria. The chapter explores how the jihadist group that broke with both ISIS and al-Qaeda and survived the civil war in Syria has become a unique case study for the evolution of jihadist governance. Khalifah demonstrates how the group’s leaders have shown a high degree of strategic pragmatism in their governance model and in their dealings with foreign power brokers, while also navigating all the pressures they have been subjected to, ensuring the group’s survival and control. The chapter considers how the endurance and evolution of HTS’s governance model has wider implications on transnational Salafi jihadist movements elsewhere.
Islamist Governance and PVE Policy in Indonesia
Authors: Sumpter Cameron , Wardhani Yuslikha Kusama
Published: February 2024

In Chapter 14, Cameron Sumpter and Yuslikha Kusama Wardhani look at preventing and countering violent extremism (P/CVE) in Indonesia and Islamist political actors’ opposition to such policies. Noting that politically active Islamists may have very few connections with those willing to carry out acts of terrorism, many remain suspicious of the government’s motives regarding the prevention of violent extremism. The chapter analyzes this tension by first outlining the evolution of political Islam in Indonesia before detailing the emergence of terrorist organizations seeking an Islamic state and the resulting expansion of domestic counterterrorism capacities in the country.
What Is the Global Priority Thesis?
Authors: Leite Adam
Published: February 2024

The Global Epistemic Priority Thesis is roughly the thesis that the evidence for the totality of our beliefs about the world is limited to what is given to us by our experiential states. This chapter initiates exploration of whether that thesis arises out of the commitments of everyday epistemic life. The thesis is clarified and distinguished from truisms of ordinary epistemic life. Arguments for it from twentieth-century epistemologists such as A.J. Ayer and Roderick Chisholm are shown not to be compelling. Chisholm’s suggestion that some beliefs are “self-justifying” does not establish the Global Epistemic Priority Thesis. Nor is there good reason to think that we are always in a position to tell what our evidence is or whether we have adequate evidence.
Why joking matters
Authors: Horisk Claire
Published: February 2024

Public opinion about derogatory jokes is divided. Some people think that racist, sexist, and other derogatory jokes should be condemned, and the courts have ruled that racist jokes can be elements of hostile environment harassment, as in Swinton v. Potomac Corporation. But others think that jokes fall in a special category making them immune to criticism. Because of the perception that jokes, unlike slurs and hate speech, are essentially harmless, derogatory jokes are still in frequent use, and ‘I was just joking’ is a first line of defense for people who are reproached for what they said. This introductory chapter briefly outlines some of the distinctive properties of jokes and humor, and argues that confusion about the morality of derogatory joking can be dispelled by explaining how humor communicates derogatory stereotypes and ideas. It also introduces the main themes of the book as a whole.
Is the popular wisdom supported by science?
Authors: Horisk Claire
Published: February 2024

There are scholarly versions of the three claims of popular wisdom. This chapter uses evidence from social psychology and the law to show that none of them is wholly true. Derogatory jokes cause harm, including negative attitudes, beliefs, and behavior among those with pre-existing hostility to some derogated groups, as well as distress in people who are derogated; indeed, they cause more harm than derogatory statements. So, Harmless Fun is false. Wrong Audience is correct that members of derogated groups suffer negative consequences from hearing derogatory jokes. But empirical work has also shown that audiences who are uncritical about derogatory jokes are more likely to be affected by hearing them, so audiences who take offense mitigate the harm done, contrary to Wrong Audience. Finally, audiences are less likely to be critical of a joke if the joker belongs to the derogated group, so Wrong Joker is false.
Crossing a line
Authors: Horisk Claire
Published: February 2024

This chapter argues that the idea that the difference between morally acceptable and morally unacceptable derogatory jokes is that one “punches up” and the other “punches down” is overly simplistic. Rather, morally unacceptable derogatory jokes convey negative ideas or stereotypes that play or have played a role in supporting or maintaining unjust disadvantage for a social group; they shore up unjust social structures and hierarchies, and support discrimination. This is why one may joke about a powerful person’s vanity but not about their weight. The chapter introduces a term for jokes that support or maintain unjust disadvantage—these are belittling jokes, as opposed to disparaging jokes. The chapter also draws a distinction between two types of speech that are often called jokes—scripted jokes and jocular remarks. Finally, it briefly discusses moral considerations about non-derogatory jokes and mockery.
Joking and power
Authors: Horisk Claire
Published: February 2024

First, this chapter discusses the importance of belittling humor in communicating ideology that supports unjust social disadvantage, since explicit expressions of racism have become increasingly unacceptable. Second, it considers how disparaging humor can undermine powerful people, and thus how it is sometimes a force for good. However, it cautions that humor about powerful people is belittling if it transmits ideas about a disadvantaged social group to which the powerful person belongs—such as people who have a disability or who are obese. Furthermore, in some contexts even disparaging humor should be avoided, e.g., when the target is a newcomer to a group. Finally, it considers J. L. Austin’s reasons for excluding jokes from his theory of speech acts. Jokes are locutionary and perlocutionary acts, and the chapter argues that Austin gives no principled reason for supposing that they cannot be illocutionary acts as well.
Birds in Creation, Evolution, and Creation Stories
Authors: Gardella Peter (Petra) , Krute Laurence
Published: February 2024

The first verses of Genesis describe God as a bird hovering over a nest. Most creation stories involve birds, laying eggs among Hindus and Finns and saving Sky Woman as she falls among Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). Ravens guided humans as they moved from Africa to the Americas, so that Tlingit and others call ravens creators. Birds appear in the cave paintings of Lascaux, at Paleolithic sites of Australia, and in the earliest cities. Vultures were depicted at the first sites of funerals, where they disposed of bodies. Because dinosaurs included theropods, the ancestors of birds who survived the meteor strike that killed off great lizards, birds actually did take part in making the world. Birds replanted forests after ice ages. Bird communication signaled the birth of self-consciousness millions of years before humans.
Birds and Humans in Each Other’s Rituals (and Costumes)
Authors: Gardella Peter (Petra) , Krute Laurence
Published: February 2024

Birds perform many rituals, from flamingo mating dances to crow funerals. People have copied many bird rituals, such as the Hadza, whose dances involve the calls they make to honeyguide birds that find beehives to share with humans. The words “augury” and “auspicious” for telling the future derive from the Latin auspicia aves, looking at birds. Augury is also practiced in Kenya and Tibet, with rules different from those of Rome but with the same idea that birds give messages about conditions. Costumes made from birds appear in all human cultures. Ritual meals like Thanksgiving and Christmas commonly feature birds.
Bird Heroes and Villains
Authors: Gardella Peter (Petra) , Krute Laurence
Published: February 2024

Birds save kings from the Manchu dynasty of China to King Arthur and the Tower of London. In the Hindu Ramayana, a vulture saves Queen Sita. Geese saved the Roman republic from Gauls. Sparrows throwing stones saved Mecca from war elephants in the year when Prophet Muhammad was born. Seagulls saved Mormons in Utah by eating insects that devoured their first crop. In World War I, a pigeon saved an American battalion trapped behind German lines. In the Israeli Six-Day War of 1967, a dove guided and saved a soldier and became a hero to fundamentalist Jews and Christians. Fictional bird interventions drive the plots of Aristophanes in The Birds, of Siegfried in Norse mythology, of Swan Lake, and of Angels in America.
Voices for Transgender Equality
Authors: Billard Thomas J
Published: February 2024

Whereas social movements of earlier eras could fight for representation on four broadcast television networks and in a handful of national newspapers with confidence that success would mean their issues were experienced by most of the population, contemporary activists have no such assurances. For their issues to be experienced by the majority of the population, they must secure representation by reaching audiences through highly individualized flows of content across countless media. Achieving this requires pioneering new approaches to media activism. These new approaches are the focus of Voices for Transgender Equality. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research at the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) in Washington, DC, during the first two years of the Trump administration, this book argues that contemporary activism is no longer structured around achieving visibility in mass media, as they have been decentered as the primary avenue for the flow of political information, perspectives, and opinions. Rather, contemporary activism takes a more holistic approach to activism that seeks influence across the communication system. This system includes mass media but extends into local and community media and into interpersonal communication networks (both digital and face-to-face). It further argues that the chimaerizing influence of digital technologies—how they fuse the logics, contexts, and practices of different media—requires the concurrent management of every domain of the communication system. Such system-wide management is necessary to maintain influence over the flows of political information about transgender issues and identities and, consequently, to improve the sociopolitical standing of the trans community.
Chinese Consumption
Authors: Han Enze
Published: February 2024

The increase in Chinese consumption has led to a variety of contract farming practices in the Mekong region, where, depending on the type of agricultural products, different non-state Chinese actors engage with local farmers to satisfy Chinese consumers’ demands. This chapter provides a few snapshots of China’s domestic consumption’s ripple effects in mainland Southeast Asia. First, it analyzes the effects of the maize boom in northern Myanmar on its ecological system by showing how rising demand for maize in China has led to an accelerated rate of deforestation. The chapter then presents the story of how China’s demand for beef has led to a transnational network of live cattle smuggling. It then looks at the case of Chinese demand for durian and watermelon and its implications for business networks in Thailand and Myanmar. Finally, the chapter examines Chinese businesses’ commercial banana plantation in Laos and their environmental externalities.
The Nazi Waste Regime
Authors: Berg Anne
Published: February 2024

This chapter provides an overview of the origins, features, and infrastructures of the Nazi waste regime. Focusing first on the discourses that conveyed racial difference, social deviance, degeneracy, and criminality as the inverse of cleanliness and orderliness, the chapter discusses National Socialist ideas about the environment and explains how a biopolitical paradigm shaped social and national security considerations across Europe, grounding the emerging Nazi emphasis on racial purity in a broader scientific consensus. The chapter then shows how environmental and economic thinking congealed into a comprehensive strategy to extend resources through waste avoidance and recycling. Understanding itself as a resource-pour nation, the regime saw eastward expansion as essential and recycling as a means to produce the resources that would power Germany through a war of imperial conquest. The last part of the chapter provides an overview of the transformation of the secondary materials economy and the changing structures of waste reclamation.
Rag Farming
Authors: Berg Anne
Published: February 2024

Rags, and textiles more generally, constitute the focus of Chapter 5. After explaining the constrictions in the textile economy during the 1930s, the chapter examines the development of textile pilfering in the Nazi-occupied east. In occupied Poland, the Nazis coerced thousands of ghettoized Jews into textile workshops, where they toiled for their survival while outfitting the German army and police formations. In Soviet territory, the destructive entrepreneurship of the so-called Ostgesellschaften, companies that merged administrative and market-based structures for the purpose of gutting enemy territory, ostensibly “developed” the colonial lands. Instead of expanding crops of textile fibers, the regime ended up mining the local population for rags and other inferior products. In addition, they forced underresourced and terrorized workers in ghettos and labor camps in the occupied east to turn the spoils of genocide—human hair—into felt boots for German soldiers.
Bombed Out and Trashed In
Authors: Berg Anne
Published: February 2024

Chapter 8 examines the final fits of the Nazi waste regime before it suffocated in the glut of materials freighted back to Germany. As German cities were carpet-bombed and shortages of all sorts throttled the economy, the regime invested in technologies that promised to turn urban garbage into garbage soil with fertilizing properties to boost agricultural production. Exposing the disconnect that separated Nazi ideologues from the realities of military implosion and infrastructural collapse, the chapter details how the wastes of war conquered urban environments. Civil administrators revoked garbage-sorting requirements, simplifying burial regulations, and prohibited the transport of corpses to crematory to deal with endemic shortages in fuel and coffins. Despite the reeking matter that accumulated inside Germany—garbage, rubble, sewage, corpses—Germans clung to the idea that hundreds of thousands of dying prisoners would turn junk into weapons and essential goods for final victory.
Inducing Compliance as a Transformative Process
Authors: Bogdandy Armin von , Urueña René
Published: February 2024

This chapter explores the apparent paradox that, despite a dismal rate of compliance with its decisions, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) is constantly right in the middle of the most important controversies in Latin America. To do so, it argues that “compliance” is too narrow a prism to account for the transformative effects of the IACtHR’s expansive compliance activities. By focusing solely on compliance, we risk concealing the wider impact of the Court’s orders, which comes to light when the Court’s influence on the Latin American community of human rights practice is considered. It is in that dynamic process of interaction that the transformations triggered by the Court take root, and it is thanks to the work of that community of practice that the broader impact of the Court occurs. In the Inter-American System, compliance is transformation, and the community of practice is the key step that takes us from compliance to impact.
The Impact beyond Compliance of the Case of Azul Rojas Marin
Authors: Esdaile Chris , Sandoval Clara , Vicente Alejandra , Politi Renata , Sanchez Nataly
Published: February 2024

What has been the impact of the case Azul Rojas Marin on LGBTIQ+ rights in the Americas and beyond? What is the significance of the case for inter-American case law? What can we learn from the case of Azul Rojas Marin in understanding impact, and how it happens? These are the key questions that inspire this chapter. It analyzes the landmark precedent set up by the case of Azul and its meaning for advancing the protection of the rights to human treatment, personal liberty, reparation, and access to justice for the LGBTIQ+ community. The chapter explores the impact this landmark case has had so far and the potential impact it could have in the future, analyzing its context, precedents, and potentialities in strengthening the international protection of LGBTIQ+ rights.
Impact of the IAHRS Principles on Freedom of Expression and the Need for Their Expansion in the Digital Age
Authors: Lanza Edison
Published: February 2024

This chapter analyzes the development of the inter-American standards on the protection of the right to freedom of expression in the Inter-American System and its impact on the region, considering the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression, and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. In the regional context of dictatorships and authoritarianism, the chapter analyzes the development of a common inter-American legal framework for the respect and promotion of rights linked to freedom of expression and the strengthening of democratic systems. The analysis also encompasses the emergence of the internet and how the inter-American standards on freedom of expression have responded to contemporary challenges. It argues for further inter-American standards on freedom of expression in the digital age.
Proposals for the Improvement of the Work of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
Authors: García Joel Hernandez
Published: February 2024

This chapter aims at identifying concrete areas for improvement in the work of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. It highlights the main features of the Inter-American Human Rights System, mainly the gradual and evolutionary interpretation of the American Convention on Human Rights, which has led to a robust corpus juris. As the system stems from the willingness of States, the chapter examines the Commission’s challenge to uphold its decisions. Compliance with the decisions of the Commission is identified as essential to have an impact on the protection of victims of violations of human rights. Taking into account the consensual nature of the international system and standing State obligations under international law, the chapter outlines the following areas of improvement: strengthening national capacities, advancing standards through the selection of cases to remedy structural situations, and promoting compliance with the decisions of the Commission.