bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism
Authors: Tran Jonathan
Published: February 2022

Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism contrasts two approaches to antiracist theory and practice. The first emphasizes racial identity to the exclusion of political economy. This approach’s prevalence, in the academy and beyond, now rises to the level of established doctrine. The second approach views racial identity as the function of a particular political economy—what is called racial capitalism—and therefore analytically subordinates racial identity to political economy. The book develops arguments in favor of the second approach. It does so by employing case studies of two Asian American communities: a Chinese migrant settlement in the Mississippi Delta (1868–1969) and a religious base community in the Bayview/Hunters Point section of San Francisco (1969–present). While focused on groups and persons (i.e., the Delta Chinese and Redeemer Community Church) the book more broadly examines racial capitalism’s processes and commitments (i.e., the Delta Chinese business model and Redeemer’s “deep economy”) at the sites of their structural and systemic unfolding. Constructively, the book proposes reframing antiracism in terms of a theologically salient account of political economy. In pursuing a research agenda that pushes beyond the narrow confines of racial identity, the book reaches back to trusted modes of analysis that have been obscured by the prevailing antiracist orthodoxy. Approaching race through political economy will not get at everything that racism is, and does, but it gets at what can be managed, and in the last resort lived. Accordingly, the book invites readers into a different life with race and racism, reimagining what they are and are doing.
Introduction
Authors: Bulutgil H. Zeynep
Published: February 2022

This chapter fulfills five goals: (1) it provides and discusses the conceptual definition of institutional secularization that the rest of the analysis uses and distinguishes this concept from neighboring ones such as religious liberty;(2) it describes and critically evaluates the existing arguments that emphasize the role of throne-altar relations, rational actor competition, or economic modernization; (3) it summarizes the theory of the book on the emergence of secular movements and their success or failure; (4) it outlines the research design and, in the process, highlights the role of each empirical chapter in the methodological approach of the book; and (5) it presents the roadmap for the rest of the book.
Comparative Historical Analysis II
Authors: Bulutgil H. Zeynep
Published: February 2022

This chapter presents the comparative historical analysis of Turkey and Morocco from eighteenth century onward. The chapter analyses the differences between Turkey, where a secularizing political movement appeared relatively early and established secular institutions by the 1920s, and Morocco, where such movements did not appear until the late twentieth century and have not yet introduced secular institutions. For Ottoman Turkey, the discussion delves into the role of modern schools, bureaucracies, and newspapers in the emergence of the secular political movement. It also discusses why the religious reformists were historically weak compared to the seculars, and why the religious reformist challenge that has emerged since 1970s has been able to introduce adjustments that have eroded secular institutions. For Morocco, the discussion concentrates on why religious reformist parties emerged much earlier than their secular counterparts, how secular political movements eventually appeared in 1970s, and why they have encountered an uphill battle in fulfilling their goals.
Analyzing the Conceptual Border
Authors: Bulutgil H. Zeynep
Published: February 2022

This chapter addresses the question of whether the theoretical insights of the book can account for why some cases of institutional secularization remain closer to the conceptual border that separates secularized systems from nonsecular ones. The chapter focuses on two cases, the United Kingdom and Tunisia, to address this question. Both cases fall under the category of secularized systems as defined in this book, but both also display characteristics that make them less secular than comparable cases such as France and Turkey. The UK became progressively more secular between 1828 and 1870, but this institutional trend stopped short of disestablishing the Anglican Church in England. Tunisia also adopted a set of reforms including a secularized family law but kept sharia-inspired laws on inheritance and Islam as state religion. The chapter shows that the book’s arguments on timing and organization account for the softer version of secularism in these cases.
Conclusion
Authors: Bulutgil H. Zeynep
Published: February 2022

This chapter concludes by summarizing the main contributions of the book around four themes: (1) the existence of multiple types of reformism; (2) the role of ideas and their dissemination; (3) the role of civil society organizations; and (4) the salience of timing, sequence, and path dependence. Each section outlines the specific theme, its role in the argument of the book, and the empirical evidence that pertains to it. The discussion in each section also delves into the broader implications of each theme for theories of political institutions, state formation, and modernization.
Documentary's Expanded Fields
Authors: Kim Jihoon
Published: February 2022

Documentary's Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary offers a theoretical mapping of contemporary non-standard documentary practices enabled by the proliferation of new digital imaging, lightweight and non-operator digital cameras, multiscreen and interactive interfaces, and web 2.0 platforms. These emergent practices encompass digital data visualizations, digital films that experiment with the deliberate manipulation of photographic records, documentaries based on drone cameras, GoPros, and virtual reality (VR) interfaces, documentary installations in the gallery, interactive documentary (i-doc), citizens' vernacular online videos that document scenes of the protests such as the Arab Spring, the Hong Kong Protests, and the Black Lives Matter Movements, and new activist films, videos, and archiving projects that respond to those political upheavals. Building on the interdisciplinary framework of documentary studies, digital media studies, and contemporary art criticism, Jihoon Kim investigates the ways in which these practices both challenge and update the aesthetic, epistemological, political, and ethical assumptions of traditional film-based documentary. Providing a diverse range of case studies that classify and examine these practices, the book argues that the new media technologies and the experiential platforms outside the movie theater, such as the gallery, the world wide web, and social media services, expand five horizons of documentary cinema: image, vision, dispositif, archive, and activism. This reconfiguration of these five horizons demonstrates that documentary cinema in the age of new media and platforms, which Kim labels as the “twenty-first-century documentary,” dynamically changes its boundaries while also exploring new experiences of reality and history in times of the contemporary crises across the globe, including the COVID-19 pandemic.
Expanded Activism
Authors: Kim Jihoon
Published: February 2022

This chapter positions citizens’ vernacular online videos within the larger field of participatory culture in which documentary is expanded in sync with political upheavals across the globe since the late 2000s, from the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street to the recent mass protests in Hong Kong and the United States for democracy and social change. It argues that the rapid developments of Web 2.0 platforms and social media rekindle and update the participatory mode of documentary cinema and its activist tradition, on the one hand. At the same time, however, this chapter further contends that the technologies’ activation of citizens’ direct engagement with the production and circulation of factual records fundamentally transforms the traditional definitions of activist documentary forms and media while also generating their political effects, on the other. In order to demonstrate the synergetic coevolution of the two domains within the larger fields of the global protests, I propose the concept of “hybrid docmedia ecosystem,” classifying and examining the types of citizens’ vernacular videos produced and circulated within it.
The Silk Road
Authors: Winter Tim
Published: February 2022

Evocative and enigmatic, the Silk Road occupies a unique place in contemporary culture and international affairs. Across the world, it has captured the imagination as a story of camel caravans crossing desert and mountain, of precious goods moving between East and West, and of ideas, religions, and technologies migrating across land and sea. As China seeks to “revive” the Silk Roads for the twenty-first century, this compelling, yet poorly understood, narrative of history now serves as a platform for building trade, diplomatic, infrastructure, and geopolitical connections. The Silk Road: Connecting Histories and Futures is the first book to critically investigate the merits and problems of this fabled geocultural narrative of history and map out the role it plays in international affairs. Four thematic sections trace its rise to global fame as a domain of scholarship and foreign policy and as a celebration of peace and internationalism and how it created dreams of exploration and grand adventure. China’s Health Silk Road and civilizational politics are among the themes discussed that open up the Silk Roads as a space for critical enquiry. Pathbreaking in its analysis, The Silk Road; Connecting Histories and Futures presents an entirely new reading of this increasingly important concept, one that is likely to remain at the center of world affairs for decades to come. Crossing borders and topics, the book sits at the intersection of world and cultural history, international relations, and cultural theory and will be of interest to scholars and general readers alike.
Swami Vivekananda's Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism
Authors: Medhananda Swami
Published: February 2022

Swami Vivekananda, the nineteenth-century Hindu monk who introduced Vedānta to the West, is undoubtedly one of modern India’s most influential philosophers. Unfortunately, his philosophy has too often been interpreted through reductive hermeneutic lenses. Typically, scholars have viewed him either as a modern-day exponent of Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta or as a “Neo-Vedāntin” influenced more by Western ideas than indigenous Indian traditions. Swami Vivekananda’s Vedāntic Cosmopolitanism rejects both of these prevailing approaches to offer a new interpretation of Vivekananda’s philosophy, highlighting its originality, contemporary relevance, and cross-cultural significance. Vivekananda, the book argues, is best understood as a cosmopolitan Vedāntin who developed novel philosophical positions through creative dialectical engagement with both Indian and Western thinkers. Inspired by his guru Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda reconceived Advaita Vedānta as a nonsectarian, life-affirming philosophy that provides an ontological basis for religious cosmopolitanism and a spiritual ethics of social service. He defended the scientific credentials of religion while criticizing the climate of scientism beginning to develop in the late nineteenth century. He was also one of the first philosophers to defend the evidential value of supersensuous perception on the basis of general epistemic principles. Finally, he adopted innovative cosmopolitan approaches to long-standing philosophical problems. Bringing him into dialogue with a galaxy of contemporary philosophers, the book demonstrates the sophistication and enduring value of Vivekananda’s views on the limits of reason, the dynamics of religious faith, and the hard problem of consciousness.
Introduction
Authors: Medhananda Swami
Published: February 2022

The introduction discusses some of the textual difficulties relating to The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda and then outlines the cosmopolitan hermeneutic approach to Vivekananda’s philosophy that will be adopted throughout the book. At the methodological level, one of the primary aims of the book is to reconstruct Vivekananda’s philosophical views on a wide range of issues, including the nature of God, the ontological status of the world, the ontological basis of ethics, religious pluralism, the epistemology of mystical experience, the powers and limits of reason, the dynamics of religious faith, and the hard problem of consciousness. However, the book also makes a sustained case that Vivekananda’s philosophical positions and arguments are not merely of historical interest. Drawing upon the recent work of Jonardon Ganeri, the book argues that Vivekananda was an “immersive cosmopolitan” philosopher who developed innovative philosophical ideas by rethinking aspects of his own inherited Indian tradition and critically engaging a variety of Western thinkers.
Grounding Religious Cosmopolitanism
Authors: Medhananda Swami
Published: February 2022

Chapter 3 argues that Vivekananda’s views on the harmony of religions evolved from 1893 to 1901 in three phases. In the first phase from September 1893 to March 1894, Vivekananda defended the equal salvific efficacy of the major world religions but claimed that a “universal religion” that would harmonize all the world religions was an “ideal” that did not yet exist. In the second phase from September 1894 to May 1895, he claimed that the universal religion already exists in the form of Vedānta, which he expounded in terms of the “three stages” of Dvaita, Viśiṣṭādvaita, and Advaita. However, by late 1895, he abandoned his earlier attempt to ground the harmony of religions in the three stages of Vedānta. Instead, he held that every religion corresponds to at least one of the four Yogas, each of which is a direct and independent path to salvation.
Perceiving God
Authors: Medhananda Swami
Published: February 2022

Central to Vivekananda’s doctrine of the science of religion is the controversial assumption that supersensuous experience is a genuine source of knowledge. He defended this assumption by presenting a sophisticated argument for the epistemic value of supersensuous perception, which this chapter reconstructs and further develops. One of the key premises of Vivekananda’s argument for the epistemic value of supersensuous perception is an epistemic principle of perceptual justification that he adapted from traditional Indian pramāṇa epistemology—namely, svataḥ-prāmāṇyatā, the doctrine of the “intrinsic validity” of cognitions defended by Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsakas and Vedāntins. On this basis, he argues that we are justified in believing the testimony of mystics who claim to have directly perceived supersensuous realities. The chapter refines and develops Vivekananda’s argument for the epistemic value of supersensuous perception into a seven-premise argument by drawing upon Vivekananda’s own ideas as well as contemporary analytic philosophy.
Epilogue
Authors: Medhananda Swami
Published: February 2022

One of the dominant scholarly paradigms for studying modern Hinduism and Vedānta is the “Neo-Vedāntic” paradigm inaugurated by the German Indologist Paul Hacker (1913–1979). According to Hacker, modern Indian figures such as Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan were “Neo-Hindus” who championed “pseudo-Vedāntic” philosophies shaped more by Western values than by indigenous Hindu traditions. Strikingly, countless contemporary scholars continue to refer to modern Vedāntins like Vivekananda and Aurobindo as “Neo-Vedāntins,” even though many of these scholars reject—either in part or in full—Hacker’s specific arguments about the primarily Western provenance of modern Vedāntic ideas. The epilogue interrogates this seemingly benign practice and defends what it takes to be a more nuanced and fruitful “cosmopolitan” hermeneutic approach to modern Indian thinkers.
Global Tantra
Authors: Strube Julian
Published: February 2022

The global prominence of Tantra today owes much to the publications of “Arthur Avalon,” the name under which a team of learned South Asians and the British judge John Woodroffe wrote. In the early twentieth century, the Avalon publications were pivotal to the academic recognition of Tantra as an integral part of (South) Asian culture. The present monograph demonstrates that their project was the outcome of Bengali efforts going back to the second half of the nineteenth century. Engaging with orientalist scholars and representatives of Theosophy, occultism, and Spiritualism, the Bengali Tantrics transformed perceptions of Tantra and yoga, a project whose ramifications are still felt today. Combining perspectives from religious studies, global history, South Asian studies, and the study of esotericism, the book illuminates the exchanges behind these developments. Rather than assuming the diffusion of “Western” perceptions of Tantra and yoga, the book highlights the active role of Indians within global exchanges under colonialism. The book employs sources in Bengali and European languages to contextualize local struggles about “orthodox” versus “reform” Hinduism, anticolonial revolutionaries, and seekers of “Aryan wisdom” in global debates about the meaning of religion, science, esotericism, race, and national identity. It elides boundaries between historical contexts that have hitherto been viewed merely in isolation, tackling issues such as revivalism and reformism, as well as the emergence of comparative religion and religious studies in relation to esotericism—an integrative approach that suggests proposals to resolve scholarly and public controversies about (post)colonialism, cultural appropriation, and contested meanings of modernity.
Habitat use and constructions
Authors: Rosell Frank , Campbell-Palmer Róisín
Published: February 2022

This chapter describes beaver habitat selection and modification activities. It discusses their unusual ability to modify environments to suit their needs, including lodge and dam construction, location selection for these structures, and alteration of vegetation. Historically beavers have been described as a forest species. Whilst beavers may preferentially select wooded freshwater habitats, particularly in more northern landscapes, they are capable of successfully establishing in widely varying terrain, including mountainous, brackish, tundra, cultivated, and urban landscapes. Beavers occupy a wide range of freshwater bodies (ponds, streams, rivers, marshes, and lakes) but will also travel through brackish and saltwater bodies during dispersal. Beavers prefer still or slow-moving water with stable water levels of at least 0.6–1.0 m in depth, but they are highly adaptable and can modify many types of natural, cultivated, and artificial habitats. When preferred habitats are unavailable or already occupied by other beavers, they will select narrower watercourses and construct complex dam structures to create preferred/suitable habitats. In the process of engineering their habitat, beavers create trails and canals to access forage. They harvest saplings, shrubs, and trees, which they consume and use to fill their food caches for the northern winter.
The First Chapters
Authors: Hill Charles E.
Published: February 2022

The First Chapters uncovers the origins of the first paragraph or chapter divisions made by scribes in copies of the Christian Scriptures. It takes as its main point of departure the magnificent, fourth-century Codex Vaticanus (Vat.gr. 1209; B 03), perhaps the single most significant ancient manuscript of the Bible, and the oldest material witness to the first large-scale attempt to equip the books of Scripture with numbered chapter divisions. The First Chapters sketches the history of textual division, starting from when copies of Greek literary works offered virtually no spaces, marks, or other graphic techniques to help the reader along. It explores the origins of others numbered systems, like the better-known Eusebian Canon Tables, but its focus is on the early set of numbered divisions in Codex Vaticanus, what nineteenth-century textual critic Samuel P. Tregelles labelled the Capitulatio Vaticana. It establishes, against the tide of prevailing opinion, that these numbers were not late additions to the codex but belonged integrally to its original production. It then breaks new ground by demonstrating that the Capitulatio Vaticana has precursors in the unnumbered divisions of some much earlier manuscripts. This study is thus able to shine a light on a long, continuous tradition of scribally placed, visual guides to the reading and interpreting of Scripture. Finally, The First Chapters exposes abundant new evidence that this early system for dividing the text of Scripture played a much greater role in the history of exegesis than has previously been recognized.
State Laughter
Authors: Dobrenko Evgeny , Jonsson-Skradol Natalia
Published: February 2022

The Stalinist reign of terror was not all gloom and darkness. Much of it was, or aimed to be, entertaining, full of laughter and joy. This book explores how, and why, humor was a necessary component of one of the most oppressive regimes of the twentieth century. It covers a variety of genres, from film comedy to satirical theatre, from war caricature to court speeches at show trials, from Stalin’s political writings to traditionally bawdy folk verses and fables. The authors combine close textual analysis with reflections on genres of the comic in general. The book offers the first comprehensive analysis of state-sponsored humoristic genres of popular culture in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Tracing the development of genres associated with official humor, satire, and comedy of the Stalin era from the late 1920s to the early 1950s, the authors argue against the conventional view that humor was a feature mostly of subversive texts of the time. According to the authors, satire and popular humor were a foundational element instilling state ideology and legitimizing Stalinist culture. The book is grounded in Soviet intellectual and cultural history and, more generally, in literary theories of laughter and the comic. The authors introduce, and demonstrate possible applications for, a number of innovative concepts.
Introduction
Authors: Dobrenko Evgeny , Jonsson-Skradol Natalia
Published: February 2022

In the introduction, some general approaches to the phenomenon of Soviet laughter and the most common misperceptions are discussed. These include the classical Sovietological vision of laughter as by definition democratic, anti-hierarchical and anti-establishment. The nature of the concept of “state laughter” is introduced, as an alternative to the approaches that do not do justice to the historical reality of the period. The chapter also surveys the main works on the topic of the book, clarifying the methodological approaches used by the authors. In addition, it explains the structure of the book with a detailed description of each chapter, with reference to the genres and works analyzed.
The Soviet Bestiary
Authors: Dobrenko Evgeny , Jonsson-Skradol Natalia
Published: February 2022

This chapter looks at Soviet satirical fables, from the first post-revolutionary years (Dem’ian Bednyi) to the decades of established socialism (Sergei Mikhalkov), via the little-known peasant poet Ivan Batrak. These texts were typical for the Soviet culture, but most untypical in the general allegorical tradition: Aesopian language that supported the official regime. The analysis follows through the progression from the raw violence of post-revolutionary years, translated in a very particular type of allegorical humor, to the routine devices of allegorical satire in the years of established socialism, when it became possible to use whole blocks of references as minimal recognizable units of the new type of allegory and to turn boredom into a special experience of humor.
Metalaughter
Authors: Dobrenko Evgeny , Jonsson-Skradol Natalia
Published: February 2022

This last chapter of the book discusses meta-laughter on the example of the most popular musical comedies of the Stalinist era, whose subject was Soviet laughter itself. This self-reflection emphasizes the important place occupied by laughter in the Stalinist order, where official discourse and low culture were closely interrelated. Their synthesis gave birth to one of the main principles of Socialist Realism ‒ that of popular spirit, which made it possible for the authorities to create the image of the People as the highest legitimizing instance of the authorities themselves. This ideological perpetuum mobile was the most essential trait of the culture of Stalinism.
Futures of work
Authors: Anwar Mohammad Amir , Graham Mark
Published: February 2022

If the future of work in Africa is to contain decent jobs and fair outcomes for African workers, we need to ensure that we appropriately conceptualize the transnational networks in which digital jobs are embedded. Employers and workers, through the affordances of digital technologies, are seeking each other out on genuinely planetary labour markets, escaping some of the constraints that previously bound them exclusively to their local labour markets. A planetary labour market of digital work that can go anywhere does not necessarily mean that it exists nowhere. Economic production is embedded in socio-political and cultural contexts. Thus, to create a better future for workers in Africa, state and its institutions, trades unions, and civil society organizations, must rise to the challenge of not just thinking globally, but also acting globally if we want a planetary labour market to represent anything other than a global race to the bottom.
A ‘World Out of Gear’
Authors: Ferris Natalie
Published: February 2022

According to the poet Edwin Morgan, antipathy towards abstraction persisted well into the second half of the twentieth century, but those misgivings had shifted from art to literature: ‘Abstract painting can often satisfy, but “abstract poetry” can only exist in inverted commas’. Where abstract art may have come to fulfil or fortify an impression of post-war taste, abstraction in literature continued to be treated with suspicion. The twentieth century was witness to a mounting fascination with the ways abstract art might be thought to constitute more than the progressive development of recognizable image to abstract structure, adopting an eloquence of its own. The perception of art was increasingly likened to the interpretation of a literary text, and vice versa, but on what terms, if at all, does the abstract work communicate? This book takes this question as its object, charting the course of abstraction in British visual culture from 1945 to 1980 to observe the ways in which certain aesthetic advancements initiated new forms of literary expression and readerly agency. It argues for recognition of the work conducted at a local level by individuals, groups, and institutions in Britain, and for an expansion of the critical parameters beyond the dichotomy of poetry and painting to include discussions of the novel, film, prose, screenplays, sculpture, installation, and kinetic literature. How did abstraction become a provocation for these writers?
Côte d’Ivoire
Authors: Merckaert Jean
Published: February 2022

The chapter tells the story of capital flight from Côte d’Ivoire, focusing on the cocoa sector. The impressive economic growth fueled by cocoa exports after independence, once hailed as the “Ivorian miracle,” evaporated after the collapse of cocoa prices and the explosion of foreign debt. As the country plunged into an economic crisis, followed by a political crisis that culminated in civil war, the primary commodity sector continued to be highly vulnerable to illicit financial flows. The chapter traces the continuities and changes across political regimes since independence in the mechanisms of resource rent capture and personal enrichment and the roles of the key national and foreign players. It shows how the patronage nexus linking state power to market power contributed to large-scale capital flight and the failure of the country to take full advantage of its natural resource endowments.
Everyday Metaphysical Explanation
Authors: Miller Kristie , Norton James
Published: February 2022

The philosophical notion of metaphysical explanation has received a lot of attention over the last decade. Despite tantalising claims about how metaphysical explanations are part of everyday life, the everyday notion has not been explored. The task taken up in Everyday Metaphysical Explanation is to develop an account of the everyday notion of metaphysical explanation: the notion that we all use in ordinary contexts when we ask for, and receive, explanations of a certain sort. The book presents the striking results of the first empirical investigation of folk judgements regarding what metaphysically explains what. On the basis of these results, together with evidence of our ordinary practices surrounding the notion, three unique accounts of the phenomenon are built. These accounts are, unashamedly, very different from recent accounts of what the book calls philosophical metaphysical explanation. First, all three are ones on which everyday metaphysical explanations are context-sensitive. Whether they hold for a subject at a context depends in part on psychological features of the subject at that context. Second, none of the three accounts appeals to the recently popularised notion of grounding. Primarily, the book seeks to generate further interest in, and investigation of, the phenomenon of everyday metaphysical explanation.
The Beginnings of the Ottoman Empire
Authors: Foss Clive
Published: February 2022

This book illuminates the founding of the Ottoman Empire by drawing on Turkish, Greek, Arabic, and Latin sources, including coins, buildings, and topographic evidence. It describes the rugged homeland of the founder of the Ottomans, particularly his achievement in the context of the once mighty Byzantine Empire and its terminal stages. It also charts the progress of Osman's son Orhan, until the fateful moment in 1354 when his forces crossed into Europe and began their spectacular conquests. The chapter reviews the obscure origins of the Ottoman Empire, which ruled the Near East, dominated the Mediterranean, and terrorized Europe for centuries. It references scholarly monographs and editions on the history, literature, thought, and material culture of the Byzantine world.
Caribbean Women’s Use of Susu, Partner, Sol, and Boxhand as Quiet Resistance
Authors: Hossein Caroline Shenaz
Published: February 2022

Mutual aid and coming together has been a way of life for the African diaspora since enslavement and the legacy of it that continues in everyday life. The Black diaspora, and especially Black women, contend with vile forms of racism and exclusion in business and society, but this is not what defines Blacks in the Americas. This chapter focuses on Caribbean women who organize rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs), which are cooperative banking systems embedded in social relationships. This work draws on J. K. Gibson-Graham’s community economies theory, as well as Caribbean and Black liberation theories, to understand the business exclusion of Black women. The empirical interviews with hundreds of Black Caribbean women in Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, and Haiti show the purposeful way in which they organize ROSCAs to be considerate of people’s social lives in relation to their business needs. These women, in choosing cooperation, are quietly resisting commercial and individualized forms of banking. In this chapter, the author argues that Caribbean women organize Susu, Sol, Partner, and Boxhand, all names for ROSCAs, use banking cooperatives alongside conventional banks as a way to quietly push against commercial and elitist financial institutions.
A Quiet Resistance
Authors: Rado Istvan , Thongmak Seri
Published: February 2022

This chapter discusses the impact of a local saving group on an ethnic-minority Karen community in the Thailand–Myanmar border area. The savings group is locally referred to as Klum Omsap. It was established in 2007, with the assistance of a non-governmental organization (NGO), the Pattanarak Foundation, in order for the Karen people to overcome their economic and political marginalization in a predominantly Thai context. With time it has opened up further opportunities by facilitating the creation of new economic ventures, such as community stores, grassroots welfare schemes, and, more recently, a waste-management system. The authors are applying a diverse economies (DE) perspective in tracing the evolution of these community-driven economic ventures. The saving group has not only helped the local Karen people to overcome their exclusion from the formal economy, but it has also proved to be a driving force in the socioeconomic empowerment of local women, who now manage their own community enterprises.
English Prepositions
Authors: Dixon R. M. W.
Published: February 2022

This book provides an account of 50 most common prepositions in English. It shows the semantic range for each preposition through a scheme of linked senses that are related to the grammatical frameworks in which they are used. For each preposition there is an account of its genetic origin and shifts of form and meaning over the centuries. The book provides an instructive way to appreciate the meanings of prepositions by studying instances where two prepositions may be used in the same frame with meanings that show some similarity but also a significant difference, such as the factory is shut up vs the factory has been shut down. The exposition is illustrated by examples taken from standard corpora, which includes several hundred examples of use for each preposition, fully illustrating its structural and semantic scope.
Moral Authority in Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill
Authors: Vincent Bridget
Published: February 2022

How do poems communicate moral ideas? Can they express concepts in ways that are unique and impossible to replicate in other forms of writing? This book explores these questions by turning to two of the late twentieth century’s most important poets: Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill. Their work shows that a poem can act as an example of a moral concept, rather than simply a description or discussion of it. Exploring these two poets via their shared preoccupation with poetry’s moral exemplarity opens up new perspectives on their work. The concept of exemplarity plays an important role in these poets’ key preoccupations, from moral complicity to the nature of lyric speech to influence to memorialization, responsibility, and aesthetic autonomy. Through this analysis of critical prose, drama, and archival materials as well as poetry, this book offers a groundbreaking study of ethics in the later writings of these two poets, including recent and underexplored posthumous works. In turn, the book also makes an important intervention in larger debates about literature and morality, and about the field of ethical criticism itself: this is the first book-length study to expand ethical criticism beyond its customary narrative focus. So far, the ethical criticism of fiction has largely been an exercise in methodological advocacy, urging the use of more literary examples in moral philosophy. As this book shows, including poetry among these examples introduces new, lyric-inflected caveats about the use of literature as a form of moral example: caveats which remain invisible in narrative-centred ethical criticism.
Introduction
Authors: Vincent Bridget
Published: February 2022

The introduction gives essential background on critical and philosophical debates about the moral exemplarity of literature. It shows how debates about the use of literary works as examples in moral philosophy have focused on narrative writing while, in the main, ignoring poetry. The chapter introduces the value of bringing lyric poetry into these debates, proposing that reading Seamus Heaney and Geoffrey Hill from the perspective of their preoccupation with moral exemplarity can offer transformative new critical perspectives. Most importantly, it argues for the importance of the concept of exemplarity in the moral thought of both poets.
The Exemplary Seamus Heaney
Authors: Vincent Bridget
Published: February 2022

Chapter 2 assesses the longstanding critical controversies surrounding Heaney’s negotiation of the concepts of public and private, political and aesthetic, community and autonomy. A new way into these ongoing controversies can be found, the chapter argues, by reading Heaney’s poetry through the lens of his interest in literary exemplarity. The chapter’s close readings show that Heaney had an ongoing preoccupation with exemplars, paradigms, and ideals. Through these readings I argue that the concept of the example was a key mode through which he negotiated the tension between political engagement and aesthetic autonomy which was present throughout his life.
Exemplary Readership in Heaney’s Prose
Authors: Vincent Bridget
Published: February 2022

This chapter traces the importance that ideas of exemplarity hold in Heaney’s prose. Heaney’s prose helps reveal the significance of exemplarity as a category in his poetics, and in his beliefs about writerly influence—influence exerted both on other poets and on the larger social world. As was the case for his poetry, examining Heaney’s prose through the lens of his interest in exemplarity offers new angles on some of the features of his writing which have prompted significant critical debate. In particular, this chapter shows how ideas of exemplarity permeate not only the content but the form and style of his prose writings. The chapter shows how the category of ‘exemplary readership’ plays an important role in Heaney’s critical and theoretical prose.
The Exemplary Prose of Geoffrey Hill
Authors: Vincent Bridget
Published: February 2022

This chapter shows how ideas of exemplarity provide a key to understanding some of the ongoing critical questions surrounding Hill’s prose. The lack of linearity of Hill’s prose has prompted considerable critical attention and scepticism. I propose that treating exemplarity as a structuring principle of his prose style—as well as the focus for some of its content—provides a way into some of these interpretative difficulties. The chapter offers a close analysis of ‘Civil Polity and the Confessing State’ and other essays in order to show how the associative structure of Hill’s writing proceeds through the presentation of exemplary instances. An analysis of reviews in Style and Faith shows how adherence (or lack thereof) to the example set by earlier writers emerges as one of Hill’s key critical desiderata: a guiding principle in his assessment of other writers.
Exemplary Qualifications
Authors: Vincent Bridget
Published: February 2022

Having explored the various dimensions of exemplarity in the poetry and prose of both writers, the book returns in the sixth chapter to the framing philosophical questions. This chapter begins by showing how the close readings of both poets might ultimately be used in service of a more categorial argument for poetic examples. Then, drawing on semiotic and theatrical theories of exemplification and ostension, the chapter suggests that poetic examples (especially Heaney’s) present a unique vantage point for the consideration of questions surrounding literary specificity and inherent exemplarity. Most importantly, it suggests that the unease expressed by both poets about their moral authority in general and the exemplary dimensions of it in particular presents a lyric-specific set of anxieties which narrative-centred debates, with their different inflections of writerly self-doubt, cannot capture in quite the same way. Without this study, these ultimately productive anxieties would remain hidden from critical view.
Theory of disordered superconductors with applications to nonlinear current response
Authors: Sauls J A
Published: February 2022

I present a review of the theory and basic equations for charge transport in superconducting alloys starting from the Keldysh formulation of the quasiclassical transport equations developed by Eilenberger, Larkin and Ovchinnikov, and Eliashberg. This formulation is the natural extension of Landau’s theory of normal Fermi liquids to the superconducting state of strongly correlated metals. For dirty metals the transport equations reduce to equations for charge diffusion, with the current response given by the Drude conductivity at low temperatures. The extension of the diffusion equation for the charge and current response of a strongly disordered normal metal to the superconducting state yields Usadel’s equations for the nonequilibrium quasiclassical Keldysh propagator. The conditions for the applicability of the Usadel equations are discussed, the pair-breaking effect of disorder on the current response, including the nonlinear current response to an electromagnetic field in the dirty limit, τ ≪ ℏ/Δ, are reported. The same nonlinearity is shown to lead to source currents for photon generation and nonlinear Kerr rotation driven by the nonlinear response to excitation of the superconductor by a multi-mode electromagnetic field. The potential relevance of the nonlinear source currents to superconducting radio-frequency cavities as detectors of axion-like dark matter candidates is briefly discussed.
Branched chain amino acids in the treatment of polymyositis and dermatomyositis: a phase II/III, multi-centre, randomized controlled trial
Authors: Kimura Naoki , Kawahara Takuya , Uemura Yukari , Atsumi Tatsuya , Sumida Takayuki , Mimura Toshihde , Kawaguchi Yasushi , Amano Hirofumi , Iwasaki Yukiko , Kaneko Yuko , Matsui Toshihiro , Muro Yoshinao , Imura Yoshitaka , Kanda Takashi , Tanaka Yoshiya , Kawakami Atsushi , Jinnin Masatoshi , Ishii Tomonori , Hiromura Keiju , Miwa Yusuke , Nakajima Hiroshi , Kuwana Masataka , Nishioka Yasuhiko , Morinobu Akio , Kameda Hideto , Kohsaka Hitoshi
Published: February 2022

Objectives

To assess the efficacy and safety of branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) in the treatment of PM/DM prior to official approval of their use in Japan.

Methods

Treatment naïve adults with PM/DM were enrolled in a randomized, double-blind trial to receive either TK-98 (drug name of BCAAs) or placebo in addition to conventional treatment. After 12 weeks, patients with an average manual muscle test (MMT) score <9.5 were enrolled in an open label extension study for a further 12 weeks. The primary endpoint was the change of the MMT score at 12 weeks. The secondary endpoints were the clinical response and the change of functional index (FI).

Results

Forty-seven patients were randomized either to the TK-98 (n = 24) or placebo (n = 23) group. The changes of MMT scores at 12 weeks were 0.70 (0.19) [mean (s.e.m.)] and 0.69 (0.18), respectively (P = 0.98). Thirteen patients from the TK-98 group and 12 from the placebo group were enrolled in the extension study. The MMT scores in both groups improved similarly. The increase of the FI scores of the shoulder flexion at 12 weeks was significantly greater in the TK-98 group [27.9 (5.67) vs 12.8 (5.67) for the right shoulder flexion, and 27.0 (5.44) vs 13.4 (5.95) for the left shoulder; P < 0.05]. Frequencies of adverse events up to 12 weeks were similar.

Conclusion

BCAAs showed no effect on the improvement of the muscle strength evaluated by MMT and the clinical response. However, they were partly effective for improving dynamic repetitive muscle functions.

Trial registration

UMIN-CTR Clinical Trial, https://center6.umin.ac.jp/, UMIN000016233
Validation of Species-Specific PCR Assays for the Detection of Pantoea ananatis, P. agglomerans, P. allii, and P. stewartii
Authors: Shin Gi Yoon , Smith Amy , Coutinho Teresa A. , Dutta Bhabesh , Kvitko Brian H.
Published: February 2022

Species of Pantoea represent a group of plant pathogenic bacteria that infect a variety of agro-economically important plant species. Among these, a complex of P. ananatis, P. allii, P. agglomerans, and P. stewartii subsp. indologenes cause center rot in onion, resulting in significant economic losses. As species of Pantoea are phenotypically closely related, identification of Pantoea species relies on the sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of housekeeping genes. To aid in rapid identification of Pantoea species, efforts have been made in developing species-specific primers to be used in PCR assays. In the current study, two P. ananatis, one P. allii, one P. agglomerans, and three P. stewartii published primers as well as newly developed P. agglomerans PagR primers were evaluated for their specificity against 79 Pantoea strains, belonging to 15 different species. To ensure that selected primers were evaluated against accurately identified species, sequencing and phylogenetic analysis of housekeeping gene infB were conducted. Thereafter, PCR assays using selected species-specific primers were performed. The results showed that previously described P. ananatis-specific PANA_1008; P. allii-specific allii-leuS; P. stewartii-specific PANST_rpoB, 3614galE, and DC283galE primers; and one newly designed P. agglomerans-specific PagR primer pair were highly specific for their target Pantoea species. They accurately identified these strains into their species and, in some cases, their subspecies level. The findings of the current study will facilitate rapid and reliable identification of P. ananatis, P. agglomerans, P. allii, and P. stewartii.
The Medical Community’s Evolving Focus on Physician and Surgeon Pregnancy: Thematic Trends From a Scoping Review
Authors: Hanchuk Stephanie , Casilla-Lennon Marianne , Zheng Sijin , Kim David D. , Press Benjamin , Nguyen Justin V. , Grimshaw Alyssa , Leapman Michael S. , Rickey Leslie M. , Cavallo Jaime A.
Published: February 2022

Purpose

The authors aimed to chronicle the evolution of the medical community’s study of physician and surgeon pregnancy by investigating thematic trends in the literature in the context of pertinent sociopolitical events.

Method

A scoping review was conducted in Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, Ovid MEDLINE, Ovid Embase, Scopus, and Web of Science Core Collection from inception through August 11, 2020, using vocabulary and terms for physicians (including surgeons), pregnancy, and family leave. Study populations were categorized by all physician specialties or exclusively surgical specialties as well as by all career levels or exclusively trainees. Subthemes and themes were based on a priori assumptions of physician pregnancy and extrapolated from previously published reviews, respectively. Thematic trends were analyzed by plotting the total number of publications and the frequency of themes and subthemes by publication year.

Results

After title and abstract and full-text reviews, 407 manuscripts met inclusion criteria. Publications on physician pregnancy first emerged in the 1960s and surged from 1988 to 1996 and again from 2010 to 2019. The first known manuscript exclusively on surgeon pregnancy was published in 1991; subsequent publication frequency trends for surgeon pregnancy generally paralleled those for all physician pregnancy publications albeit in reduced quantities. Four major themes were found: impact of pregnancy on the physician and her colleagues, pregnant physician work productivity, physician maternity leave policies, and physician maternal–fetal health outcomes.

Conclusions

As the number of women physicians increased and the sociopolitical environment progressed, the thematic focus of the literature on physician pregnancy evolved. Multi-institutional prospective observational studies are needed to develop definitive evidence-based recommendations that will positively impact physician pregnancy.