bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Squeezing Blood from Rocks
Authors: Smith Gary
Published: March 2023

The concept of statistical significance was developed by scientists to assess whether empirical results can be explained away by coincidence. However, a myopic focus on statistical significance fuels tenacious p-hacking quests to find models with low p-values, and models judged by p-values alone are likely to fare poorly with fresh data. When we are told that a medication, business practice, or government policy has statistically significant effects and then find that the effects vanish or are trivial when the recommendations are followed, this erodes the credibility of scientific research.
Looking for Needles in Haystacks
Authors: Smith Gary
Published: March 2023

The erosion of the credibility of science is aided and abetted by data mining because data-mined results are easy to find, likely to be coincidental, and unlikely to persist. A virtually unlimited number of coincidental sequences, correlations, and clusters can be discovered in large databases. Those who use data-mining algorithms to discover something—anything—are sure to succeed. Those who do not appreciate the inevitability of patterns are sure to be impressed. Those who are seduced by these shiny patterns are likely to be disappointed. Those who act on the basis of data-mined conclusions are likely to lose faith.
Too Much Data
Authors: Smith Gary
Published: March 2023

The more data, the more likely it is that data mining will disappoint. Many of the false relationships discussed throughout this book were made possible by the availability of large databases. Scientists created Big Data and the tools for analyzing Big Data, but both of these have created more opportunities for scientists to embarrass themselves and to compromise their credibility. The problem today is not that we have too few data, but that we have too much data.
Artificial Unintelligence
Authors: Smith Gary
Published: March 2023

Computers are terrific. I use them every day—not just for writing books, research papers, and op-eds but for mathematical calculations, statistical analyses, and simulations that would otherwise be essentially impossible. I have three grown children who are computer/data scientists and could not do what they do without computers. I also recognize that, as wondrous as they are, computers are not intelligent. Attempts to treat them as intelligent are bound to frustrate. Attempts to market them as intelligent are bound to disappoint. Those who are disillusioned by the hype are rightfully skeptical and distrustful.
Restoring the Luster of Science
Authors: Smith Gary
Published: March 2023

This chapter contains a summary of several possible options for restoring the luster of science. Hopefully, some might be implemented by the time you read this, and more might be on the way. Many of these actions intended to combat disinformation will require the cooperation and expertise of tech companies, but companies need to be motivated by government laws, regulations, and oversight. The suggestions targeting data torturing and data mining rely on the informed goodwill of researchers and journal editors. It will be messy, but there aren’t any easy, effective options and we desperately need to restore the luster of science and scientists.
Introduction
Authors: Wolf Anne
Published: March 2023

This chapter introduces the book’s main puzzle: a sizeable number of members of Ben Ali’s ruling Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) party participated in the Tunisian uprisings and, in some instances, went so far as to call for the downfall of the regime and the dissolution of the RCD—their own party. One of the key premises of the literature on authoritarian politics is that ruling parties are a force for stability, in that they possess a number of positive-feedback mechanisms that strengthen regimes over time. By contrast, this chapter reveals that contention among RCD ranks played a key role in the collapse of the Ben Ali regime, though members’ rationales for challenging their powerbroker varied. It proposes paying close attention to the relation between a dictator and a ruling party in order to better understand such trends of internecine contention and, more generally, authoritarian stability and collapse.
All in the Family
Authors: Wolf Anne
Published: March 2023

Chapter 4 sheds light on why, in the 2000s, Ben Ali’s support base began to crumble—including among Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD) ranks—even though he propagated the same economic and security prerogatives and even launched a tentative political opening. It demonstrates how these policy priorities exhausted themselves in that people—including many RCD activists—no longer perceived them as credible. The regime had defeated the main Islamist party, the supposed terrorist threat; in addition, the President and his relatives were openly accumulating vast wealth at the expense of ordinary people, many of whom were struggling to make ends meet. Worse, Ben Ali began to groom a presidential successor from within his own family, further weakening the ruling party’s sway. For these reasons, a growing number of RCD activists came to question the legitimacy of Ben Ali’s rule, some even engaging in contentious activity, though often inconspicuously, against the regime.
Flows and Harmonic Functions
Authors: Needham Tristan
Published: March 2023

This chapter discusses flows and harmonic functions. Both the real and the imaginary parts of an analytic function are automatically harmonic. It is therefore natural to wonder if, conversely, every harmonic function is the real (or imaginary) part of some analytic function. As the chapter demonstrates, this is indeed the case. That is, given a harmonic function u, one can always find another harmonic function v, the harmonic dual of u, such that f = u + iv is analytic. The harmonic dual of a single-valued function may itself be a multifunction. The chapter then looks at the conformal invariance of harmonicity and of the Laplacian; complex curvature; flow around an obstacle; the physics of Riemann’s Mapping Theorem; and Dirichlet’s problem.
The Habitual Unity of Individual Sciences
Authors: Dika Tarek R.
Published: March 2023

Chapter 1 reconstructs the scholastic debate about the unity of scientific habitus from Aquinas (1225–1274) to Suárez (1548–1617). Section 1.1 introduces the concept of habitus and the role it plays in Aristotelian psychologies. Section 1.2 discusses Aristotle’s theory of demonstration in Posterior Analytics, above all his ban on genus-crossing (μετάβασις) in the sciences (i.e., employing the principles of one science in order to demonstrate conclusions in another science). The argument of Section 1.2 is that Aristotle’s ban on genus-crossing restricted the scholastic debate about the unity of science to a debate about the unity of individual sciences. Sections 1.4–1.5 examine the scholastic debate about the unity of science. Participants in the debate divide into two camps: those who maintain that a scientific habitus is a simple quality, which retains its simplicity (indivisibility) even as it extends to previously unknown principles and demonstrations (Aquinas, Henry of Ghent, Cajetan), and those who maintain that sciences are composed of many really distinct habitus, one habitus corresponding to each principle and demonstration in the science (Scotus, Ockham, Suárez, and the Conimbricenses). The chapter concludes by arguing that the scholastic debate about the unity of science ends in aporia. As Suárez recognizes toward the end of his discussion of the problem in Disputationes metaphysicae, different sciences have irreducibly different degrees of unity, and it is simply not possible to impose any one criterion of unity on all of them.
The Culture of the Method
Authors: Dika Tarek R.
Published: March 2023

Chapter 4 explains the role played by mathesis universalis in the formation of the Cartesian scientific habitus. The principal function of mathesis universalis is to shore up and intensify perspicacity in intuition and sagacity in deduction. Only after one has acquired sufficient practice in mathesis universalis can one apply the method to more complex problems. Section 4.2 discusses Descartes’s definition of mathesis universalis as the science of “order and measure,” and argues that, contrary to a widespread tendency to interpret mathesis universalis in expansive terms as either identical to Cartesian mathematics or (even more expansively) to Descartes’s method, mathesis universalis refers to one of the simplest mathematical sciences, well-known since antiquity: the theory of proportions. Section 4.3 argues that reflection on the operations needed to solve problems about continuous and mean proportionals yields Descartes’s theory of relatives and absolutes in Rule 6 of Rules for the Direction of the Mind. Section 4.4 argues that mathesis universalis also yields a classification of different ways in which perfectly understood problems may be solved. Section 4.5 shows how mathesis universalis builds on the abilities acquired via practice in recreational mathematics (discussed in Chapter 3, Section 3.6). Section 4.6 shows how mathesis universalis unifies mathematics, and Section 4.7–4.7.1 delves into the debate about the relation between mathesis universalis, Descartes’s mathematics, and the method. These sections draw on the Cambridge manuscript in order to bolster the principal arguments developed in Sections 4.2–4.5 and propose a revision in standard accounts of the controversial and rather complex chronological genesis of Rule 4.
Defining the Problem of the Limits of Knowledge in Rules
Authors: Dika Tarek R.
Published: March 2023

The problem of the limits of knowledge in Rules 8 and 12 of Rules for the Direction of the Mind must be solved by the method no less rigorously than any other problem. Chapter 5 argues that the problem of the limits of knowledge can be solved only by means of enumeration, not intuition or deduction. Section 5.2 reconstructs, in detail, the role played by enumeration in the solution to the problem of the limits of knowledge. Section 5.2 also explains why the nature of the problem of the limits of knowledge is such that intuition and deduction cannot be employed in its solution. Section 5.3 examines Descartes’s use of “suppositions” or “assumptions” in his solution to the problem of the limits of knowledge, while Section 5.4 distinguishes between two concepts of epistemic limit in Rule 8, and argues that only one these concepts is relevant to the problem of the limits of knowledge.
Imperfectly Understood Problems
Authors: Dika Tarek R.
Published: March 2023

Chapter 10 reconstructs Descartes’s proposed deduction of the law of refraction and the shape of the anaclastic lens in Rule 8. Section 10.1 frames the problem of the anaclastic in Rule 8. Section 10.2 discusses shortcomings in previous reconstructions of Descartes’s discovery of the law of refraction and the shape of the anaclastic lens. Sections 10.3–10.8 execute the deduction of the law of refraction and the shape of the anaclastic lens according to the order of research Descartes prescribes in Rule 8. These sections integrate Descartes’s physics and optical research in 1618–1628 into the deduction. Having shown that the law of refraction and the anaclastic lens can indeed be discovered by means of the method as described in Rule 8, Section 10.9 concludes that there is no reason to regard Descartes’s method as irrelevant to the practice of Cartesian science. Descartes’s method—i.e., the Cartesian scientific habitus—yields serious results in natural philosophy.
Britain
Authors: Binder Andrea
Published: March 2023

Britain holds a special place in the offshore world. Unlike any other country, it is at once a high tax country, a large economy, and an offshore banking centre. From the inception of the Eurodollar in the 1950s to the onset of the global financial crisis in 2007, offshore finance strengthened British state power. The politics of the invisible helped to keep domestic capital engaged in financing the state despite the expansion of mass democracy and the welfare state. At the same time, it obscured the structural privileging of large economic actors over everyone else. The centrality of the City of London in the Eurodollar system also afforded the British state international influence beyond its actual political and economic weight. However, when in 2007–09 the global financial crisis—rooted to a significant extent in the offshore dollar markets—hit the country with full force, the relationship between offshore finance and state power turned destructive. The crisis laid bare the fragility of offshore money creation and the politics of the invisible. British state power became contested simultaneously from within and by foreign governments. For Britain, offshore money creation has been more consequential than offshore tax planning and money laundering.
Human Dignity and Social Justice
Authors: Gilabert Pablo
Published: March 2023

Human dignity: social movements invoke it, several national constitutions enshrine it, and it features prominently in international human rights documents. But what is it, why is it important, and what is its relationship to human rights and social justice? Pablo Gilabert offers a systematic defence of the view that human dignity is the moral heart of justice. In Human Dignity and Human Rights (OUP 2019), he advanced an account of human dignity for the context of human rights discourse, which covers the most urgent, basic claims of dignity. This book extends the Dignitarian Approach to more ambitious claims of maximal dignity of the kind encoded in democratic socialist conceptions of social justice. In particular, this book focuses on the just organization of working practices. It recasts in a dignitarian format the critique of capitalist society as involving exploitation, alienation, and domination of workers, and revamps a neglected but inspiring socialist principle. In its dignitarian interpretation, the Abilities/Needs Principle (‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs!’) yields reasonable and feasible requirements on social cooperation geared to empowering each human being to lead a flourishing life. While Human Dignity and Human Rights offered the first systematic philosophical account of human dignity in human rights discourse, Human Dignity and Social Justice presents the first systematic application of the dignitarian framework to the core ideals of democratic socialism.
The Dignitarian Approach
Authors: Gilabert Pablo
Published: March 2023

This chapter outlines the Dignitarian Approach—the view that we have reason to organize social life in such a way that we respond appropriately to the valuable features of individual human beings that give rise to their dignity. The essential aspects of this approach are presented. They include the correlative ideal of Solidaristic Empowerment and the conceptual network of dignity comprising the notions of status-dignity, condition-dignity, dignitarian norms, the basis of dignity, the circumstances of dignity, and dignitarian virtue. The fruitfulness of the Dignitarian Approach for the justification of requirements of social justice is clarified, showing that it helps us vindicate a commitment to universalism and to justify moral humanist rights, foreground the importance of combining self-determination and mutual aid, illuminate the stance of people struggling against social injustice, and explore the arc of humanist justice. The chapter then explains and motivates this book’s specific focus on labour rights, showing how the arc going from basic to maximal labour rights can be encompassed, and how the critique of injustices in which those rights are violated can be articulated.
Kantian Dignity and Marxian Socialism
Authors: Gilabert Pablo
Published: March 2023

This chapter explores two important historical sources inspiring the Dignitarian Approach. It starts with a discussion of Immanuel Kant’s moral and political philosophy, in which dignity plays a central role, and then shows its relevance for articulating and developing in a fresh way some normative dimensions of Karl Marx’s critique of capitalism as involving exploitation, domination, and alienation, as well as the view of socialism as featuring a combination of freedom and solidarity. What is recommended here is not Kant’s own conception of dignity, but an account that partly builds on that conception and partly criticizes it. For example, although the chapter endorses Kant’s view of dignity as a fundamental, non-conventional, and egalitarian status of persons, it challenges his narrow view of the basis of dignity which only concentrates on certain capacities for reasoning as well as his insufficient characterization of human well-being. The same is the case with the account of socialism in relation to Marx’s work. Although the chapter highlights the significance of his critique of the domination, exploitation, and alienation of workers, and salutes his positive view of socialism as form of society that overcomes them, it challenges his neglect of explicit and sustained exploration of the moral grounds of social critique and emancipatory practice. As articulated, Kantian dignity and Marxian socialism turn out to be quite appealing and mutually supportive.
The Critique of Exploitation
Authors: Gilabert Pablo
Published: March 2023

This chapter offers a normative exploration of what exploitation is and of what is wrong with it. The focus is on the critical assessment of the exploitation of workers in capitalist societies. The chapter argues that exploitation is wrongful when it involves a contra-solidaristic use of power over others to benefit oneself at their expense. Wrongful exploitation consists in using your greater power, and sometimes even in making others less powerful than yourself, in order to get them to give you more than they ought to. The chapter contrasts this account of exploitation with others, and argues that it is comparatively appealing because it simultaneously addresses three morally significant dimensions of exploitation—its material and social background, the relational (interpersonal and systemic) attitudes it enacts, and the final distributive results it generates. Exploitation is indeed a multidimensional social process. The flipside of the proposed critical characterization of this process is a positive ideal of solidaristic allocation and use of economic power, which the chapter articulates in terms of the socialist Abilities/Needs Principle and defends as a fitting response to human dignity.
Towards a Comparative Indian Literature
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

This chapter provides a discussion of the general problems connected with reading bhasha literatures in comparison. It examines the radical ways in which the idea of comparative literature has been rethought in recent days to incorporate into it the lessons of the cultural turn that of late has overtaken literary studies. The approach is important for the study of Indian literature inasmuch as Indian bhashas are perceived to partake of the unique dynamic of a polyphonic ethos combined with a complex and ambivalent relationship with colonial modernity wedded to elite aesthetics and the notion of literary universalism. A comparative reading of the works in Indian bhashas would reveal bhasha writing to be representing not the literary universalism of traditional comparative literature, but a unique combination of linguistic and cultural identities that can only be explained in terms of the tenets of an alternative modernity.
Modernity and Kesari’s Ambivalences
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

The focus in this chapter is on the critical interventions of Kesari A. Balakrishna Pillai, one of modern Kerala’s and India’s early public intellectuals and an architect of literary criticism in Malayalam. Kesari’s critical essays and journalism illustrate the divide in the Indian mind that arose from its contact with colonial modernity. The divide is evident in the writer’s critical assimilation of the East-West split and his conception of immanent experience and the art of the present, both of which can be integrated into his larger vision of an implied indigenous modernity geared to his unique idea of progress and secularism.
Region and Nation in Bhasha Poetry
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

The chapter provides an analysis of the conflicted relationship between the nation and the region as it appears in selected bhasha poems from the languages of the Northeast as well as from Bengali, Odia, Telugu, and Malayalam. As literature originating from the geographical area lying outside the boundaries of the Hindi heartland, the conflict in the relationship could certainly be seen as related to the political tension existing between diverse bhasha communities on the question of the idea of India. In one sense, it is modernity’s schism that surfaces as the rift between the local and the national in the poetry reviewed. However, the discussion also demonstrates that the democratic and egalitarian spirit that underlies bhasha literatures is strong enough to thwart attempts at cultural tyranny by the advocates of hyper-nationalism.
M.T. Vasudevan Nair
Authors: Raveendran PP
Published: March 2023

This chapter focuses on M.T. Vasudevan Nair, novelist, short story writer, literary journalist, and filmmaker, who is one of the most popular fiction writers in India today. The chapter looks upon Vasudevan Nair as a typical representative of the expressive realist mode of fiction writing, which is another way of saying that he considers fiction to be a representation of the reality of experience truthfully expressed through a skilful arrangement of words. While this simple but effective approach to fictional representation links him up with modernity, he is critical of the formalism of the modernists of his own day who according to him are greatly limited in their resources.
Brains at War
Authors: Edgerton David
Published: March 2023

The chapter assesses the importance of expertise, invention and technical novelty in the conduct and outcome of the war. Experts from a wide range of backgrounds in engineering and the sciences were needed for everything from the development of weapons to improvements in medicines and medical care. Research and development expanded only in key areas, and the major areas for wartime development, from radar to aero-engines were common across the warring powers. Many breakthrough developments were of limited use, while the reliance on standard weapons and equipment remained important as well. Rockets, nerve gases and biological weapons were developed but little used, except for the strategically unimportant V2.
From World War to Cold War
Authors: Roberts Geoffrey
Published: March 2023

The chapter considers the post-war geopolitical order produced by the defeat of the three Axis powers and the new global dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union. Some co-operation was possible between the former wartime Allies, particularly over the Nuremberg Trial. The disagreements over the future of Germany, and the subsequent blockade of Berlin, and the communist takeover across Eastern Europe opened up the Cold War. The Korean war showed that the world was now divided between a communist Europe and Asia, and the ‘free world’ of Western Europe, the United States and the British Dominions. A major war was avoided because neither side wanted to risk it with the advent of nuclear weapons on both sides.
Iron Age
Authors: Grabbe Lester L.
Published: March 2023

The biblical text gives us a story of the Judges and Kings Saul, David, and Solomon. The question is, to what extent can the historian rely on this? The texts were written much later than the events they describe, but critical analysis of the text by generations of Hebrew Bible scholars, together with archaeology, inscriptions, and social science considerations allows us to write a plausible history of this period. Many of the details of the text are not credible, but the general outline of the beginning of a kingdom of Israel and its first kings emerges. It is not the mighty and gold-encrusted kingdom ascribed to Solomon, but it shows a collection of tribes coalescing into a chiefdom and then a small but developing kingdom with interesting potential.
Israel and Judah
Authors: Lemaire André
Published: March 2023

Evidence from contemporary epigraphy, from archaeology, and from a critically informed reading of biblical sources is combined to present an outline of the history of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Israel, with its changing dynastic leadership (including the Omrides and the dynasty of Jehu), eventually fell to the Assyrians with the capture of its capital Samaria in 722 bce. Judah in the south, with its capital in Jerusalem, survived for about a further 135 years under such kings as Hezekiah, Manasseh, and Josiah. It eventually fell to the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar and much of the elite population was exiled to Babylon.
Babylonian Exile and Restoration
Authors: Williamson H. G. M.
Published: March 2023

During the short period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the community of Judean exiles was the principal centre of religious and intellectual development. Under the Persians, some returned to Jerusalem and for the following decades the leadership (Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and others) was consistently of Babylonian origin. Our knowledge of events during those two centuries is extremely limited, and for many decades non-existent. With Judah now as a minor province in the empire rather than a sovereign state, this was nevertheless a period of crucial importance in the development of the religion of Israel to what later became Judaism. The development in the northern province of Samaria into what later became the religion of the Samaritans is a closely related phenomenon.
The Hellenistic and Roman Era
Authors: Collins John J.
Published: March 2023

The history of the Holy Land in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods (332 bce – 135 ce) is outlined. Highlights include the Maccabean revolt, the reign and building activity of Herod the Great, and the fall of Jerusalem after the great revolt (66–73 ce). Particular attention is paid to the impact of political developments on religion and to the variety within Judaism during those centuries—Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes (with discussion of the Dead Sea Scrolls), Jesus, and the rise of later Rabbinic Judaism.
The Coming of Islam
Authors: Levy-Rubin Milka
Published: March 2023

This chapter describes the changes which took place following the rapid conquest of the Holy Land, ruled previously for over 300 years by the Christian Byzantine Empire, by the followers of Muhammad’s newly founded religion (634‒640). It discusses the nature of the conquest (peaceful vs. violent), the establishment of Umayyad rule, and the construction of immediate symbols of Muslim power represented by monumental building projects such as the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque, the renovated road network, and the caliphal palaces. It then continues to survey the upheavals in the following centuries with the rise of the Abbasids, the Tulunids, and other dynasties, as well as the effects of the relationships of the Muslim rulers with the Byzantine Empire. The chapter reviews the significant impact the conquest had on various aspects of the lives of the local population. These include the creation of a special status of Ahl al-Dhimma (the protected people) or Ahl al-Kitab (people of the book) for the non-Muslim inhabitants, as well as various processes such as emigration, the rise of Arabic language and culture, conversion to Islam, and spatial Islamization of the Holy Land, and the impact these had on the life and culture of Christians, Jews, and Samaritans. All of these processes were greatly affected throughout the early Muslim period by various political conflicts both within the Muslim caliphate, as well as outside it.
The Holy Land in the Crusader and Ayyubid Periods
Authors: Hillenbrand Carole
Published: March 2023

The chapter covers the recurring antagonism and interplay between the Muslims living in the Holy Land and the Crusaders (Franks) who arrived from Europe to ‘liberate’ Jerusalem; they had chosen a perfect moment of Muslim political weakness to attack a disunited Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. The discussion also focuses on certain prominent personalities on both sides, such as Baldwin of Jerusalem and Zengi, who recaptured Edessa, the first of the Crusader states to be restored to Muslim control. During the initial years of the Crusader presence in the Levant military engagements against the Muslims were a regular feature. These were often followed by treaties and alliances across the religious divide. Coexistence was also an important aspect of life between the two political entities. Medieval Arabic sources, above all the contemporary memoirs of Usama b. Munqidh, reveal that there were often close relations between Crusaders who met Muslims not only on the battlefield but also in everyday life, for example on the domestic scene, on the hunt, in the bathhouse and even in places of worship. They also learned from each other in the sphere of material culture, for example in the building of castles.
Pilgrimage
Authors: Walker Peter , Hoyland Robert G.
Published: March 2023

The chapter tells the long story of pilgrimage to the Holy Land—as practised in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—starting with Abraham, moving through the pages of the Old and New Testaments, through the Byzantine and early Islamic periods, and then through the era of the Crusades to the rediscovery of pilgrimage in the nineteenth century. The major focus in the post-biblical period is upon the practice and theology of pilgrimage within the Christian church—highlighting how, after a predominantly negative view towards such practice in the first three centuries ce, pilgrimage came into its own in the Constantinian period. Once the Holy Land came under Muslim rule, the impulse towards pilgrimage took a softer form; but this was powerfully re-awakened by the Crusaders and again in the nineteenth century as archaeologists, Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox—as well as Western political powers—all found themselves lured to the Holy Land for a variety of potentially conflicting reasons. Pilgrimage has thus been a vital part of the Holy Land’s unique history, causing it to be a much-trodden as well as a much-contested one. Yet despite all the differences of belief and practice—both amongst Christians and between them and Jewish or Muslim pilgrims—there has been much that united them: a real attachment to the Land, a highlighting of the particular historical reasons for their own particular attachment, and a common emphasis on the importance within religious faith of setting out on a journey.
Sacred Spaces and Holy Places
Authors: Hess Richard S. , Pringle Denys
Published: March 2023

This chapter surveys sacred places in the Holy Land from pre-historic times down to the end of the Ottoman Empire. They are mostly attested either in archaeological remains or as structures which still stand today. Particular attention is paid to pre-biblical ‘Canaanite’ shrines with altars and standing stones, high places that continued into the Israelite period, synagogues from antiquity and more recently, churches throughout the centuries, including the Crusader period, and mosques.
Scripture and the Holy Land
Authors: Silverstein Adam
Published: March 2023

This chapter considers the idea of the Holy Land, focusing on the scriptural bases for it. Jewish, Samaritan, Christian, and Muslim attitudes to the Holy Land, as reflected in their respective scriptures, are surveyed. A number of debates surrounding ‘scripture’ within and between these religious communities are highlighted: Which book(s) make up the scriptures? How are these scriptures to be read? And with what consequences? It is shown that the answers to these questions bear directly on each tradition’s attitude to the Holy Land, with Christians tending towards a spiritualization of the Holy Land and Muslims tending towards a transferal of the temporal Holy Land to the Arabian Peninsula.
Medieval and Early Modern East Asia
Authors: Brokaw Cynthia
Published: March 2023

The countries of East Asia shared several different print technologies before the introduction of mechanized printing in the nineteenth century: xylography and wooden moveable type, inventions of the Chinese, in the seventh and fourteenth centuries respectively; and metal moveable type, developed by the Korean state in the thirteenth century. China first developed a full-fledged book culture, supplied, over the course of the ninth and thirteenth centuries, with publications from religious (primarily Buddhist) institutions, the imperial state, individual literati, and commercial houses. Trade and diplomatic relations between China, Korea, and Japan—and the fact that Chinese was the written lingua franca of East Asia—eased the transmission of technologies and texts from China to Korea and Japan and back. Cultures associated with and resulting from printing, however, took different forms in each country. In China, an aesthetic ‘golden age’ of high-end publishing in the late medieval period gradually gave way, in the early modern period, to the rise of commercial publishing and (not coincidentally) a rapid expansion in the reading public. The result was an explosion in the production of popular texts, designed for a broad audience even if aesthetic quality was sacrificed. In Korea, the state maintained control over publishing, and approved texts in metal type were sent to outlying provinces for xylographic reproduction and controlled distribution to local elites. Japan, after a half-century experimentation with moveable type, re-embraced xylography in the late sixteenth century, and, like China, enjoyed an exuberant commercial publishing boom that both signalled and stimulated expansion in the reading audience.
South Asia
Authors: Shaw Graham
Published: March 2023

The history of textual transmission in South Asia extends back almost 4,000 years through traditions of orality and public performance, manuscript production, and print. Oral transmission and public performance have persisted from 1750 bce to the present day, while manuscripts were widely produced from the fifth century bce to the nineteenth century. Print as a major cultural carrier came to prominence only from the nineteenth century onwards. In Hinduism, oral transmission maintained the Brahmin’s monopoly on sacred knowledge. The breakaway movements of Buddhism and Jainism ushered in the manuscript era to record the teachings of their founders. Xylography did not permeate the subcontinent but Buddhist Sanskrit texts were woodblock-printed in Central Asia. Typography, from its introduction by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, remained the preserve of European evangelists and colonialists until 1800. Indian-owned presses proliferated only after the liberal Press Act of 1835, leading to an explosion of print in all the regional languages. At the same time, lithography became popular among Muslim communities. Paper as a writing medium was only introduced in the thirteenth century by Muslims, replacing the indigenous surfaces of palm-leaf and birch-bark.
Industrialization
Authors: Cachin Marie-Françoise
Published: March 2023

This chapter reveals how the development of new technologies and the industrializing economies of Europe and North America transformed publishing and the market for books in the nineteenth century. Innovations in printing, paper-making, typesetting, binding, and illustration, including photographic replication, led technical changes that hugely reduced costs and dramatically increased production. The printed book became a much cheaper, more popular, and more diverse product, a history traced in this chapter through the development of numerous new processes, organizations, and activities, from new iron presses, lithography, stereotyping processes, and steam-driven cylinder presses, to the creation of new kinds of large publishing firms, many international in reach, and using new developments in faster and more capacious transportation. An important aspect of this development was also the advance of public, private, charitable and national libraries, book clubs, and educational reforms that supported new levels of literacy, all contributing to the flourishing of a variety of literary forms, including newspapers, magazines, serials, novels, children’s books, guide books and other educational and practical publications. The buoyancy of the new mass reading public further reflected changed relationships between authors, agents, publishers, and printers in all parts of the West.
Modern China, Japan, and Korea
Authors: Reed Christopher A. , Steele M. William
Published: March 2023

This chapter examines the modernization of book production, publishing, and literary content across the three East Asian countries of China, Japan, and Korea from about 1800 to the present. For over 1,000 years, cultural and political elites in China, Korea, and Japan had maintained a strong respect for the knowledge, power, and authority gained from reading books, especially the Confucian Classics. In the nineteenth century, all three nations began the transition from woodblock printing of books to their production via lithography, moveable type, and letterpress, and, today, Internet and digitally made books. To traditional genres have been added many new categories adapted from the rest of the industrialized world. Each country has emerged as an active participant in the information explosion that characterizes our world today. China, which has been connected to the Internet since the mid-1990s, prints many of the books consumed around the globe, and is itself today the world’s second-largest book marketplace after the United States. And, as part of Japan Cool and the Korean Wave, Japanese and Korean literature, manga, and other publications are eagerly consumed at home and abroad, especially in Asia, sometimes altering notions of what constitutes a book.
Books Transformed
Authors: Schnapp Jeffrey T.
Published: March 2023

This chapter is concerned with the long transition from page to screen (and then back again, from screen to page) and its impact on the notion of the book and expressions of bookishness in twentieth- and twenty-first-century culture. It argues that the dream of bridging the gap between print artefacts and electronic books is not a creation of the television or the Internet eras. Rather, its lineage extends back to the aspirationally electrified avant-garde experimental books of the 1920s, forward through the electric information age paperbacks of the 1960s, as well as experiments with new CRT page architectures carried out by the Architecture Machine Group and the Visual Language Workshop, and forward again into today’s proliferation of reading devices and Web-inspired forms and formats. The chapter argues that at each of the stages of this century-long evolution there are significant shifts in the ways that books are understood, read, performed, produced, experienced, shared, and disseminated.
The Trump Phenomenon and Right-wing Extremism
Authors: Mizruchi Mark S. , Gălan Raul
Published: March 2023

Drawing on the history of populism in the US, we examine the extent to which Donald Trump exhibited populist characteristics as both a candidate in 2016 and as president. Although American populism in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries was primarily a left-wing movement (at least in terms of economic policy), it became associated with the far-right of the political spectrum after World War II. Distinguishing between economic and cultural populism, we argue that Trump, in his 2016 campaign, drew on both versions, speaking for the average American against privileged elites, but also demonizing immigrants, Muslims, and (less overtly) certain racial and ethnic minorities. Once in office, however, Trump abandoned his economic populism, governing as a conventional contemporary Republican by supporting tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, businesses and banks at the expense of consumers, and employers at the expense of workers. We conclude with a discussion of the role of big business in Trump’s rise, and the role of business in analogous situations in the UK and Germany.
Threats and Opportunities
Authors: Baltz Matthew J.
Published: March 2023

Trump’s populism was seen as challenge not only to the ‘liberal international order’ that preceded it but also to the business elites that Trump routinely castigated in public pronouncements. But to whom or what did Trump and his administration actually mount a challenge against? This chapter examines this question, arguing that Trump’s populist style of leadership and his willingness to invoke the powerful imagery of the nation on the campaign trail and in office presented both threats and opportunities to business elites. It further argues that Trump’s populism created space within his administration for nationalists that sought to use state power in pursuit of normative priorities and military objectives quite distinct from Trump’s populist nationalism. These too presented distinct sets of challenges to business elites. It concludes with a brief discussion of prospects beyond Trump’s term in office.
Populist ‘Order and Progress’
Authors: Doering Heike , Barros Amon , Gomes Marcus , Silva Caroline Rodrigues
Published: March 2023

In 2018, a little-known ex-military man with authoritarian leanings won the presidential elections in Brazil. He seemed to upend previously held ideas about inclusive populisms in Latin America. There is a consensus that a perfect storm of economic crisis, corruption allegations and rising crime helped Bolsonaro secure victory. We, however, focus our attention on how business elites became part of Bolsonaro’s electoral coalition. We are interested in how ‘loyalty’ to a populist candidate becomes an active choice for business. Complementing Feldmann and Morgan’s analysis of the conditions for business ‘voice’ in the context of noisy politics, we examine the conditions for ‘loyalty’. In the case of Brazil, a conservative exclusionary agenda, anti-PT sentiment and the credentials of an ultra-liberal as prospective super-minister provided legitimacy, incentives and the promise of space for business. Ultimately, the separation of economic and socio-cultural policy arenas during the campaign offered conditions of quiet politics for business despite populists’ aim of raising the volume of politics for other constituencies.
Right-wing Populism vs. Climate Capitalism
Authors: Gomes Marcus , Böhm Steffen
Published: March 2023

In this chapter, we critically investigate the threat of right-wing populism to rapid climate change action and governance and highlight its role in undermining the global co-operation necessary to tackle the carbon lock-in of the global economic system. This chapter contributes to the scant literature on climate change governance and populism by arguing that right-wing populism’s ‘critique’ of climate capitalism is an integral part of the capitalist system that sustains market approaches and inequalities that emerge from it to tackle climate change. While right-wing populists focus on climate denial and the negative impact of environmental regulation on the those ‘left behind’, supporters of climate capitalism consolidate neoliberal climate change governance (CCG) as the only politically viable option to tackle the climate emergency. Both approaches are essentially elitist, in the sense that they have a clear track record of supporting extractive and financial business elites, while creating historically unprecedented inequalities and injustices around the world. While right-wing populism focuses on climate denial discourses, posing CCG as a threat to national sovereignty and the economy, the marketization of climate change is in denial of the need for deep transformations within capitalism. Consequently, this double movement enables the extractive and financial businesses elites to thrive, posing a continued and real danger to the climate crisis.
Business Associations and Right-wing Populism
Authors: Kinderman Daniel
Published: March 2023

Right-wing populists present a difficult challenge for business associations. This chapter discusses business association responses to the populist right, beginning with the rationales for support and opposition. The interests of business associations and right-wing populists overlap in certain ways. However, right-wing populists threaten the interests of trade-dependent firms and weaken or undermine the lobbying strategies upon which business associations have long relied. Because some of their policy positions are attractive to business while others are problematic, right-wing populists can lead to growing divisions and disunity in business associations. The chapter provides case studies of business association responses to right-wing populism in Germany, France, and Switzerland. German business associations have been loud and outspoken critics of the AfD. The Swiss People’s Party is a formidable force in Swiss politics, yet Swiss business associations have found a campaign strategy to win trade, EU, and immigration-related referenda in the Brexit-Trump era. French business associations are struggling to find an effective mode of engagement with the National Rally and its small-business supporters. While there is considerable variation across and within cases, business associations have a tense and difficult relationship with right-wing populists.
Populism and Trade
Authors: Curran Louise , Eckhardt Jappe
Published: March 2023

This chapter explores the strategic responses of trade dependent firms (TDFs) to growing populism and trade protectionism, focusing on the EU business elite over the period 2016–2020. It firstly highlights the threats posed to TDFs by several protectionist shifts (primarily Brexit, US protectionism under the Trump administration and its threat to the WTO). It then explores their strategic responses in the EU, mobilizing interviews with policy makers and trade associations in sectors which are highly dependent on trade. It finds that, overall, the mobilization of EU business elites was relatively low profile. In most cases, firms relied on their associations to lobby on their behalf. Although, in the case of Brexit, a very clear and present threat, these associations created quite extensive coalitions, including with civil society, individual company mobilization was still relatively limited. In the case of the more generic threats we explored, although associations were very active, individual TDFs were not. Interviewees attributed this passivity to concerns about reputation effects from supporting a controversial issue (free trade), limited understanding of the extent of the threat, and lack of capacity in many smaller companies.
Populism, Risk and Business
Authors: Feldmann Magnus , Morgan Glenn
Published: March 2023

This chapter discusses the main findings of the volume and their implications for understanding the relationship between populism and business in comparative perspective. It analyses the main risks that populism poses to business by distinguishing between the risks associated with populism as a political style, the impact of populism on electoral politics, and political systems and the associated policy risks. By building on the framework developed in Chapter 1, this chapter discusses the most common business responses to these challenges, whilst highlighting the ambivalence many businesses feel about populism given the contradictory elements of the populist agenda and the complex strategic considerations surrounding the choice of the most appropriate response. This chapter also reflects on the broader significance of the populist turn, including its likely durability and its long-term impact on business, especially in the face challenges surrounding economic management, political legitimacy, and various contingent events.