bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
3 Islamic Objections to Citizenship in Non-Muslim Liberal Democracies
Authors: March Andrew F.
Published: May 2009

This chapter presents the Islamic doctrinal opposition to liberal citizenship in three parts: the problem of migrating from (hijra) or residing in (iqama) a non-Muslim state; the problem of loyalty (muwalah) to such a state; and the problem of political solidarity with non-Muslims. One can readily find, within classical and modern legal discourses on jihad and loyalty/disassociation (al-wala wa’l-bara’a), prohibitions on submitting to the authority of non-Muslim states, serving in their armies, contributing to their strength or welfare, participating in their political systems and, indeed, even residing within them. These prohibitions are not mere medieval legalisms, but rather are reflections of a range of more general Islamic beliefs, including that Muslims must always strive to live under Islamic law and political authority, that Muslims have obligations of loyalty (perhaps exclusively) to Muslims and Muslim polities, and that non-Muslims are not eligible for relationships of solidarity.
Conclusion
Authors: March Andrew F.
Published: May 2009

This chapter summarizes the arguments of the book and introduces general observations on how Islamic methods are used to justify liberal citizenship and the relationship of moral obligation with non-Muslims. One pattern is that of broad, general, conservative statements (often against certain aspects of liberal citizenship) followed by clarification or qualification in the details. A second pattern consists in a general claim about the inherent flexibility, pragmatism, and eudaemonism of Islamic law, with an emphasis on the cost-benefit analysis of each individual practice. A third pattern emphasizes the general substantive aims of Islamic law (maqasid al-shari’a) and ethics without necessarily claiming that this constitutes or necessitates a general rethinking or reworking of shari’a. All of these approaches are made easier when one assumes that the non-Muslim state in question proclaims a public neutrality similar to Rawls’s political liberalism.
The Autonomy of Tradition
Authors: Weiss Richard S.
Published: May 2009

This chapter considers the largest social compass that siddha practitioners have claimed as their own—that of Indian traditional doctors. In opposition to British medical imperialism and later Western biomedicine supported by the Indian state, siddha doctors have joined forces with practitioners of the other two major traditional medical systems in India, ayurveda and unani, to argue for the inadequacy of Western biomedicine in healing Indian bodies. They have formulated an autonomous space of Indian medical practice and knowledge, ascribing a radical uniqueness and relativism to their knowledge that renders it immune to the critiques of biomedicine.
The Miraculous Origins of Siddha Medicine
Authors: Weiss Richard S.
Published: May 2009

This chapter provides a detailed analysis of narratives that Tamils tell about the siddhar yogis, the ascribed founders of siddha medicine. It highlights the rhetorical force of narratives of the miraculous, especially when such narratives are expressed within broader accounts of community. Accounts of the siddhar Tirumular are treated in some detail, in order to argue that the Tamil character attributed to this yogi, and the identification of him as a siddhar, are largely modern. The chapter concludes with a consideration of contemporary narratives about the siddhars’ scientific and technological mastery. It argues that insofar as the siddhars are identified with the Tamil community, those who tell these narratives participate in an apologetic formulation of Tamil civilization as advanced, scientific, and modern.
The Invasion of Utopia
Authors: Weiss Richard S.
Published: May 2009

This is an exploration of the utopian elements of accounts of the history of siddha medicine. Siddha practitioners and authors of Tamil revivalism often locate the origins of siddha medicine on a primordial, utopian island called Kumari Kandam or more commonly Lemuria. They describe this island as a place where pure Tamil traditions flourished and where siddha medical knowledge was at its most effective, unadulterated by non-Tamil traditions. Later, with the rising of the seas, Aryans descended on the Tamil lands from the north, bringing an end to the harmonious society and pure sciences of the Tamils. In these utopian medical narratives, the other, sometimes biomedicine but more commonly ayurveda, plays the role of the destroyer of utopia. This demonization of ayurveda emerges out of broader Tamil nationalist and revivalist formulations of Tamil civilization as a protest against the homogenizing project of the Indian state.
The Loss and Recovery of Medical Knowledge
Authors: Weiss Richard S.
Published: May 2009

In Tamil-speaking south India, and in South Asia more generally, secrecy as a mode of disseminating knowledge has undergone a radical change in value, from its consideration as a moral duty that keeps powerful knowledge in the hands of the good, to its regard as a selfish act that has led to the disintegration of a unified Tamil community. This chapter documents the historical trajectory of obfuscation in siddha medicine, a history that is just one instance of more general debates in South Asia about whether the proper locus of knowledge is in public or private spheres, in the archive or in the home. It argues that the function of secrecy as a strategy for garnering prestige is now served by another form of concealed knowledge—that is, Tamil medical knowledge that has been lost in the ravages of time.
Conclusion
Authors: Weiss Richard S.
Published: May 2009

This final chapter gives recipes for two siddha medicines, one that is said to have the potential to restore youth and cure all diseases. It then discusses two general features of siddha medical discourse. The first is the ambiguous and often ambivalent relationship between science and religion in siddha medical rhetoric. In promoting their medicine, siddha practitioners often join physics and metaphysics, the banal and the extraordinary, in order to ascribe authority to the manifest world of Tamil society and material culture. The chapter then discusses the globalizing aspirations of siddha medicine, arguing that for the time being, siddha vaidyas continue to focus their commercial efforts on local, Tamil audiences.
Introduction
Authors: Gubar Marah
Published: May 2009

This introduction proposes that Golden Age children’s authors and members of the cult of the child were at best ambivalent and often hostile to the growing cultural pressure to conceive of children as a separate species from adults. Rather than wholeheartedly embracing the “Child of Nature” paradigm, figures such as Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame conceived of children as socially saturated, highly acculturated beings—and, unlike Dickens and other chroniclers of childhood writing primarily for adults, these and other children’s authors refused to assume that precocious exposure to the civilized world would doom the child to a depressing fate. Contemporary reviews of Golden Age children’s classics and 19th-century discourse about the cult of the child reveal that Golden Age commentators recognized this: ironically, the two groups most strongly faulted by recent critics for portraying childhood as a static, remote, and idealized state—children’s authors and members of the cult—were censured in their own time for failing to promote a Romantic ideal of primitive simplicity.
“Our Field”
Authors: Gubar Marah
Published: May 2009

Self-conscious about the fact that adult-produced stories shape children, Golden Age children’s authors represented young people as capable of reshaping stories, of revising rather than simply reenacting the scripts handed to them by adults. Their ground-breaking decision to employ child narrators provides the best concrete illustration of this tendency. In tracing how this technique caught on, this account acknowledges the crucial role played by critically neglected writers such as Dinah Craik and Juliana Ewing, even as it challenges the common assumption that the act of employing a child narrator allows adult authors to obscure their own presence in order to secure the child reader’s unreflective identification with an ideal of innocence. Rather than characterize child storytellers in Romantic terms, as visionary beings who effortlessly produce original work, these writers depict child narrators as highly socialized, hyper-literate subjects who work with grown-ups, peers, and pre–existing texts in composing their stories. The child narrator thus provides Golden Age authors with a vehicle to explore how young people enmeshed in ideology might nevertheless deviate from rather than ventriloquize various social, cultural, and literary protocols—including the imperialistic ethos that often pervades boys’ adventure stories.
Partners in Crime
Authors: Gubar Marah
Published: May 2009

Like many of the other authors studied here, Nesbit portrays children as marked but not necessarily disabled by the influence of adults and their texts. Blurring the line between child and adult, reader and writer, she characterizes young and old alike as “treasure seekers” who trespass onto other people’s property: grown-ups plunder the realm of childhood for literary material, while children swipe scenarios for their games from storybooks and shape their speech and behavior around texts created by adults. To keep this cycle of cross-colonization pleasurable and productive for both parties, Nesbit suggests, children must learn to become better borrowers, to plunder texts selectively, stealing what appeals to them and rejecting—or revising—the rest. Thus, her child protagonists get into trouble when they adhere too closely to treasured texts, whereas magical adventures begin when they improvise on texts rather than plagiarizing them. Nesbit’s use of a child narrator in The Story of the Treasure Seekers and its sequels provides child readers with an extended lesson in how to deviate from rather than ventriloquize what they read: Oswald Bastable manages to find his own inimitable style by mimicking, criticizing, and improvising on the work of other authors.
THE Cutt of the Child and the Controversy Over Child Actors
Authors: Gubar Marah
Published: May 2009

This chapter argues that critics have overestimated the extent of the Victorians' investment in the ideology of innocence. The “otherness” of children was not an accepted fact in the 19th century, but the subject of a long, drawn-out fight. The phenomenon of the cult of the child reflects this larger cultural ambivalence. While cultists such as Carroll, Burnett, and Barrie were indisputably drawn to and affected by Romantic figurations of childhood purity, they also resisted the growing tendency to conceive of children as a separate species from adults. Thus, even as they extolled the child’s innocent simplicity, they also opposed activists' efforts to erect a strict line of division between youth and age. For example, during the century-long controversy over the popularity of child actors, many commentators complained that the phenomenon of the stage child constituted a threat to the Romantic ideal of innocence. Yet the cultists eagerly embraced these figures, glorying in their precocious abilities and resisting reformers' attempts to portray them as incompetent victims who needed to be shielded from the glare of the public spotlight.
Burnett, Barrie, and the Emergence of Children’s Theatre
Authors: Gubar Marah
Published: May 2009

This chapter traces how Frances Hodgson Burnett and J. M. Barrie both participated in and resisted the creation of the emerging subgenre of children’s theatre. On the one hand, Little Lord Fauntleroy and Peter Pan drew large numbers of children into the playhouse, and turn-of-the-century commentators credited them with helping to establish the category of “children’s play” as a distinct dramatic genre. On the other hand, when we compare these two dramas to other productions which aimed to attract child playgoers during this time, it becomes evident that Burnett and Barrie were resisting the increasing pressure to cater shows specifically and exclusively to the young. Even as more and more critics began to insist that children needed their own specially simplified and sanitized shows, these playwrights stubbornly continued to include “adult” content in their dramas, clinging to the old pantomime tradition of trying to attract a mixed audience and resisting the idea that children needed to be shielded from such matters and addressed in very different terms from adults. Their plays thus provide a final piece of support for Gubar’s argument that Golden Age authors often resisted the growing pressure to conceive of the young as a race apart.
8 Once and the Sixties
Authors: Dietrich Ralf
Published: May 2009

ONCE had two lives, each of which can be associated with one half of the 1960s. Chronologically, the ONCE Festival of musical premieres in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the nationwide performing ONCE Group overlapped, but they differed in terms of funding, repertory and audiences. Aesthetic and political frames of reference, changing over the course of the decade from post‐war conservatism to baby boomer defiance, informed ONCE's use of electronics and theatricality and widened the scope of ONCE performances. Focusing on pieces by Robert Ashley (Public Opinion Descends Upon the Demonstrators; The Wolfman Motor‐City Revue) and Gordon Mumma (Megaton for William Burroughs), this chapter outlines correlations between the societal changes of the time and ONCE's status as an avant‐garde music venture.
12 From Scriabin to Pink Floyd
Authors: Schmelz Peter J.
Published: May 2009

The first Soviet synthesizer was developed in the late 1950s by a military engineer named Yevgeniy Murzin. Named after Murzin's hero Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, the ANS synthesiser was soon toured overseas as a symbol of the Soviet Union's technological prowess. However, by the mid 1960s official interest had waned and both the synthesizer and its studio, although continuing to be supported by official subsidies, fell into the hands of the musical“underground”. The studio thereby became a centre for“unofficial” concerts which undercut the dominant Soviet Realist aesthetic codes. It also witnessed a generational shift within the underground, from the older“academic” avant‐gardists to a younger generation fascinated by progressive rock. The multimedia“happenings” staged at the studio in the early seventies finally precipitated the studio's closure, although it was the synthesizer's brief association with avant‐garde composers such as Schnittke, Denisov and Gubaidulina that figured most prominently in the official justification.
Hierarchic Paternalism
Authors: Buckley F. H.
Published: May 2009

Hierarchic paternalism distinguishes between a superior set of paternalists and an inferior set of subjects who are incapable of looking after themselves properly. People in the latter category include: non-controversially, children, and the mentally impaired. Formerly, African-American slaves and women were also subjected to paternalistic fetters, on the grounds that these would leave them better off. Such views belong in a political bestiary today. Paternalistic restrictions make sense when they treat children like children — but not when they treat adults like children. Nevertheless, ostensibly benign rules that impugn choices continue to be proposed, and attract support from those who are suspicious of free markets and free choices.
Akrasia
Authors: Buckley F. H.
Published: May 2009

Akrasia is weakness of the will, where a person knows what choice is in his best interest, but lacks the strength of will to make it. The akrates might be in the grip of an overpowering passion; he might be an addict; he might be self-deceived about his strength of will; he might be a divided self, where a strong- and weak-willed person battle for control, or undergo a reversal of preferences in which a later self regrets choices made by a prior self. Finally, he might be a hyperbolic discounter who over-consumes in the present and doesn't save enough for the future. None of this makes a case for paternalism if the person might remove temptation from his path through self-binding strategies.
Information Costs
Authors: Buckley F. H.
Published: May 2009

Paternalistic restrictions on choice might in three ways economize on the cost of producing information. First, contracts that appear to impose extreme burdens upon a party, such as contracts of slavery, might be banned because of the information production or screening costs that a court would incur in determining whether the party really consented to be bound. Second, the plethora of choices offered a consumer might be thought to impose the excessive search costs of finding exactly the right goods to buy. Third, a person might have an incentive to bear excessive signaling costs in revealing information about himself unless paternalistic rules prevent him from doing so. Except in extreme cases, none of these provide a strong basis for paternalism.
Social Perfectionism
Authors: Buckley F. H.
Published: May 2009

A subject's actions may have the third party spillover effects which economists call externalities. What you do affects others, for good or for ill, and this may supply a reason to restrict your freedom. John Stuart Mill descried this, as an invitation to tyranny. This assumes that legislating morality is a slippery slope, and that any move to enforce morals will necessarily lead to extremism and abuse. However, this is an empirical proposition, and the evidence in western countries is that liberal regimes can adopt moderate forms of perfectionism without tumbling into a holy fascism. These issues were discussed fifty years ago in a debate between H. L. A. Hart and Lord Devlin.
An Extension: Nationalism
Authors: Buckley F. H.
Published: May 2009

Nationalism refers to the patriotic sentiments we have for our country or nation. It is also an externality that depends upon the shared nationalistic feelings that fellow-citizens have. The liberal nationalism of the United States is rooted in a common allegiance to the libertarian principles of the Founders and the Constitution, and this serves as a corrective against nationalistic excesses. A nationalist perspective suggests that basic liberties should enjoy constitutional protection at the national level, and not be left for the states to legislate. But for the argument from nationalism, a strong case could be made for limiting national constitutional liberties to a thin set of rights, or for empowering states to opt out of the Bill of Rights.
Innovation
Authors: Carrier Michael A.
Published: May 2009

This chapter focuses on innovation. It begins by defining innovation and describing its stages and subjects. It then examines factors that affect innovation such as government funding, education, and tax policy. It offers examples of innovation, reveals different types, and highlights the difficulties of measuring it. The chapter concludes by surveying the literature that explores the link between innovation and economic growth.
Antitrust and IP: 21st Century
Authors: Carrier Michael A.
Published: May 2009

Intellectual property (IP) maintained its predominance over antitrust in the first decade of the 21st century. This chapter starts by looking at Microsoft, the most prominent antitrust case in recent years, exploring the IP aspects of the U.S. and European Union cases. It then examines innovation markets, standard-setting organizations, and patent pools before concluding with settlements and other activity in the pharmaceutical industry.
Damaging Copyright Damages
Authors: Carrier Michael A.
Published: May 2009

This chapter analyzes the issue of the danger posed by statutory damages. It begins with an overview of the law of statutory damages. It then examines Congress's intent, describing the purposes of assuring adequate compensation and deterring infringement. It discusses two cases that demonstrate the perils posed by bond requirements and the application of statutory damages in the context of indirect infringement. The chapter concludes with a proposal to prohibit the application of statutory damages to secondary infringers. Such a recommendation would increase radical, disruptive innovation.
Better Patents: A Post-Grant Opposition Procedure
Authors: Carrier Michael A.
Published: May 2009

This chapter begins by detailing difficulties with the application process at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) that explain the issuance of invalid patents. It then shows why this problem is not effectively addressed by other means (litigation and reexamination). It demonstrates the benefits of a post-grant opposition system that would allow any party to challenge a patent after it is issued. They system would provide a quicker and cheaper determination of validity than litigation, and would target the most valuable patents. It would allow the PTO to access important information held by competitors. It would reduce uncertainty, thereby encouraging investment and commercialization. It would also reduce the number of invalid patents and it would benefit antitrust law.
Less Dangerous Patents: A Framework for Relief
Authors: Carrier Michael A.
Published: May 2009

This chapter begins by describing the problems posed by courts automatically granting injunctive relief in patent infringement cases. It discusses nonpracticing entities (often referred to as “trolls”). It summarizes the Supreme Court's decision in eBay v. MercExchange and examines the post-eBay landscape, synthesizing the cases and offering a framework that provides guidance to courts in determining the form of relief in patent infringement cases. The framework considers factors such as competition between the patentee and the infringer, the relationship between the patented technology and the defendant's product causing a willful infringement of the patent, and the effect of injunctive relief on the public.
Innovation Markets: Saving Lives and Money in the Pharmaceutical Industry
Authors: Carrier Michael A.
Published: May 2009

This chapter begins by defining innovation markets, which are markets for research and development (R&D). It then sets forth the critiques that have been leveled against the markets. It proposes a new five-part test for the antitrust enforcement agencies—the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and FTC—to apply to innovation markets. The test improves the current analysis by replacing the seemingly ad hoc approach with a comprehensive framework based on the Merger Guidelines. It also breaks new ground in considering not just the number of firms in research and development but also their respective stages of U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review. The chapter provides background on preclinical studies as well as clinical trials. It concludes by presenting the results of five case studies from the past two decades—four mergers that the FTC challenged and one that it did not.
Supporting Standard-Setting Organizations
Authors: Carrier Michael A.
Published: May 2009

A standard is a common platform that allows products to work together. This chapter begins by describing the various types of standard-setting. It then offers a brief history of antitrust treatment of standard-setting organizations (SSOs). It sets forth the anticompetitive concerns of standard-setting, including the harm posed by buyer power known as monopsony. It compares these concerns to the significant procompetitive benefits that SSOs and their IP rules offer. It concludes by calling for Rule-of-Reason analysis for SSOs.
Introduction
Authors: Carrier Michael A.
Published: May 2009

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of the meaning of the term “innovation.” It briefly describes the laws affecting innovation, namely the intellectual property laws and antitrust laws, and the conflict between them. It then offers an overview of the ten proposals introduced in the book and shows the global application of the book.
Introduction
Authors: Olson Liesl
Published: May 2009

This chapter explores a paradox: how does a writer replicate what is overlooked, if the nature of literary representation is to look closely at its subject? The chapter argues that literary modernism’s stylistic innovations were driven by this question. An overview is then offered of theories of everyday life (Lefebvre and others) to argue for a more specific definition of ordinariness in relation to literary modernism. The ordinary is defined as 1) an affect of disinterest or boredom; 2) a genre of objects and events; 3) a style. The chapter then examines literary modernism’s emphasis on the everyday in connection to 19th-century modes of realism, especially the novel. It concludes with a discussion of the everyday in the context of the unprecedented violence of 20th-century wars.
Joyce and the Realism of the Ordinary
Authors: Olson Liesl
Published: May 2009

This chapter examines James Joyce’s depiction of ordinary experience, beginning with his youthful hero-worship of Henrik Ibsen. Inspired by Ibsen’s poetics of the everyday, Joyce’s early writings attempt to represent life “as we see it before our eyes,” as evinced by the fragments known as “Epiphanies” and extended in later writings even as Joyce leaves his theory of epiphany behind. Epiphanies are linked with a desire to aestheticize experience, one of Stephen Dedalus’s dominant tendencies, but this desire is dangerous largely because it extracts the individual from a context of community and civic commitment. Alternatively, the depiction of banal, daily routines in Ulysses demonstrates how Joyce’s everyday does not evade historical conditions. Ulysses is also attentive to the limitations of the everyday, acknowledging the inability to trace and catalogue every fact of an individual’s life. The lists in Ulysses aim to record the variety of ordinary things that flood experience, while gleefully acknowledging realism’s defeat. The list introduces a more modest ordinary style than the epiphany: the equality of the list works against the desire to read and interpret particular moments (in a life and in a novel) as more or less important.
Wallace Stevens’s Commonplace
Authors: Olson Liesl
Published: May 2009

This chapter explores Wallace Stevens’ theory of the “commonplace,” a word he starts using in the mid-1930s. The “commonplace” initially refers to contemporary events, but it also takes on a sense of local concerns—the patterns of work, the changes in the weather, or the best place to buy bread and fruit. Stevens’ theory of the commonplace deeply registers his awareness of the politics of his times, even as his poetry may not seem as politically engaged as the work of some of his contemporaries (Auden or other 1930s poets). Ultimately the particularity of the commonplace is less important for Stevens than the approach to the commonplace. The chapter looks closely at “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven” to illuminate this approach: a circular, meditative style that never pins down the elusive subject. Stevens’ affirmation of the commonplace is distinctly linked with his interpretation of pragmatist principles. The chapter concludes by considering how Stevens’ concept of language is affected by his understanding of the commonplace: while other modernist writers were preoccupied with ordinary experience and how best to represent it, what makes Stevens unique is how he dwells on language as a satisfying, pleasing medium despite what he accepts as language’s limitations.
The Legacy of Cajal in Mexico
Authors: Díaz José Luis
Published: May 2009

Many Mexican neuroscientists consider themselves to some extent to be descendants or at least beneficiaries of the School of Santiago Ramón y Cajal. This chapter outlines the genealogy linking them to this great Spanish master not only scientifically, but culturally, linguistically, and philosophically—beyond a strictly academic affiliation to one that is social and political in nature.
Quantitative Electroencephalography in the Normal and Abnormal Developing Human Brain
Authors: Harmony Thalía , Alba Alfonso , Marroquín José Luis , Fernández-Bouzas Antonio , Avecilla Gloria , Ricardo-Garcell Josefina , Santiago-Rodríguez Efraín , Otero Gloria , Porras-Kattz Eneida , Fernández Thalía
Published: May 2009

Electroencephalographic (EEG) waves recorded from the scalp are integrated excitatory and inhibitory postsynaptic potentials of neuronal membranes. They reflect extracellular currents caused by synchronized neural activity within the local brain volume. This chapter gives an overview of the normal and abnormal development of the EEG during the first year after birth. The power and synchrony of background EEG oscillations provide important information in relation to normal and abnormal brain development. Gamma activity increases during the first year of age in normal infants more than in infants with leukomalacia, which may be related to cognitive development. The study of auditory- and speech-induced EEG oscillations may be useful for the early evaluation of infants at risk of language disorders.
Degeneration in Canine Brain Aging
Authors: Head Elizabeth
Published: May 2009

This chapter discusses some of the neurobiological characteristics of the aging dog brain. Aged canines develop signs of neuronal, white matter, and vascular degeneration as observed in human brain aging. Cortical atrophy, white matter degeneration, cerebrovascular dysfunction, and neuron loss may be due to progressive Aβ, tau phosphorylation, and oxidative damage accumulation. Neurodegeneration in the canine brain may form the basis for observations of cognitive decline in multiple domains, including learning and memory.
Developmental Profile of Newly Generated Granule Cells in the Adult Rodent Dentate Gyrus
Authors: Ribak Charles E. , Perez Zachary D. , Shapiro Lee A.
Published: May 2009

This chapter focuses on the newly generated dentate granule cells in the adult rodent and describes the developmental profile of their dendrites and axons. Topics covered include progenitor cell types in the adult dentate gyrus, dendritic growth of newly generated granule cells in adult rats, spatiotemporal profile of dendritic outgrowth, synapses on the apical dendrites of newly generated granule cells in the adult, and axonal growth of newly generated granule cells in adult rats.
Neural Codes for Perceptual Decisions
Authors: Romo Ranulfo , Hernández Adrián , Lemus Luis , Luna Rogelio , Zainos Antonio , Nácher Verónica , Alvarez Manuel , Vázquez Yuriria , Cordero Silvia , Camarillo Liliana
Published: May 2009

This chapter uses a highly simplified sensory discrimination task to show that the comparison between stored and ongoing sensory information takes place in a distributed fashion. There is also a continuum between sensory- and motor-related activities. Neurons from areas central to the S1 cortex do not simply wait for a signal encoding decision; rather, they participate at every step of its generation by combining working memory and sensory inputs. This process is carried out by two complementary neuronal responses. This dual representation is found in all areas central to the S1 cortex examined in this task, and might serve to compute optimally the entire perceptual process of the task. This coding scheme has also been found in some cortices of monkeys performing tasks that require behavioral decisions based on a comparison operation.
Human Neural Stem Cell–Mediated Repair of the Contused Spinal Cord: Timing the Microenvironment
Authors: Cummings Brian J. , Hooshmand Mitra J. , Salazar Desirée L. , Anderson Aileen J.
Published: May 2009

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a debilitating and devastating condition that affects approximately 11,000 new people in the United States each year. Understanding of the pathophysiology and potential points of therapeutic intervention for human SCI has been shaped strongly by the results of studies performed in laboratory animals. This chapter discusses multiple targets for therapeutic interventions focusing on cell transplantation approaches, discusses the application of multiple cells types in SCI models, and considers how cell-intrinsic properties as well as exogenous factors in the host microenvironment may influence the ability of various cell populations to survive, differentiate, and promote locomotor recovery following SCI. Studies conducted on transplanting human central nervous system-derived neural stem cells (HuCNS-SCs) at selected time points along the acute to chronic continuum are described, demonstrating that, depending on timing, HuCNS-SCs have the ability to promote locomotor recovery and that the microenvironment influences cell fate.
Spinal Cord Injury Pathology Differs with Injury Type, Age, and Exercise
Authors: Siegenthaler Monica M. , Keirstead Hans S.
Published: May 2009

This chapter shows that type of injury, age at time of injury, and physical activity may dictate differing therapies for the treatment of spinal cord injury (SCI). Current therapies aimed at ameliorating demyelination following SCI may not be suitable for laceration SCI. In contrast, contusion SCI may benefit greatly from therapies targeting demyelination. However, therapies aimed at remyelinating axons may be complicated by age-associated loss in neuroprotection and regeneration. These age-associated deficits may be negated or attenuated in patients with a history of chronic exercise, or may be attenuated with proper rehabilitation and/or mimicry of the molecular microenvironment produced by physical activity.
Love and Desire in the Cinema
Authors: Grodal Torben
Published: May 2009

This chapter analyzes the evolutionary causes for the fascination with romantic films and why more men than women watch pornographic films, using film examples throughout. It argues that romantic films and pair-bonding are not social-ideological constructions but constructions based on innate dispositions. It discusses the neurological support for romantic love and the evolutionary reasons for romantic bonds: to provide resources for the “too early” born and slowly maturing human infants. It further discusses how the male fascination with pornography is based on biological structures much older than the c.2 million years of romantic pair-bonding and how, therefore, mainstream pornography focuses on anonymous and strongly promiscuous relations. The chapter discusses how films often portray conflicts between romantic love and other concerns; for instance, how films noir often portray “fatal” conflicts between romantic love, promiscuous desire, and the desire for money. The chapter also discusses how many romantic films focus on the conflict between partner choice and exclusive partner commitment. The chapter finally discusses how romantic love plays and has played different roles in different cultural contexts, so that romantic love in film and literature has sometimes been linked to emancipation, and sometimes used for opposite purposes.
Screaming Lambs and Lusty Wolves
Authors: Grodal Torben
Published: May 2009

This chapter contrasts different approaches to the question of the relationship between morality and the viewer’s simulation of emotions in film and uses The Silence of the Lambs as a test case for discussion. It discusses how some layers of morality are based on innate dispositions reflecting hunter-gatherer life conditions, whereas others are based on cultural moral norms that reflect more recent types of life in large social groups, and it assesses how different films or even different sections of the same film appeal to different moral norms and switch between norms. The chapter further discusses sociological evidence that morality is context-dependent and that viewers—contrary to claims by some, such as Noel Carroll—therefore can be influenced by a given film context to enjoy films that are different from their normal professed morality. The chapter also discusses why a neurocognitive approach has many similarities to a Freudian approach—for instance, in pointing out the importance of unconscious and eventually repressed thoughts and emotions—as well as many strong differences.
Sadness, Melodrama, and Rituals of Loss and Death
Authors: Grodal Torben
Published: May 2009

This chapter analyzes why tragic films are successful and prestigious although they evoke sadness and grief, whereas fitness-enhancing activities in general evoke pleasure. First, it focus on general brain mechanisms by which superior goals temporarily modify reactions of unpleasure to support coping in the service of goals, as in action and adventure films. Second, it argues that such general mechanisms cannot explain films with negative endings. It argues that viewer preferences for such stories may be explained as adaptations created during the evolutionary process. Third, it argues that there are two adaptive mechanisms at play: a general mechanism that makes negative events fascinating to support information about negative events (enhancing learning), and a cluster of more specific adaptations that support bonding—pair-bonding, male bonding, and tribal bonding—based on rituals of mourning. Rituals of mourning are often linked to scenes that elicit awe and submission to some higher power (fate or divine forces); the chapter discusses the biological-evolutionary underpinnings of such emotions and behaviors and analyzes Saving Private Ryan, The Last of the Mohicans, Hero, Pan’s Labyrinth, and others, in this light.
Introduction to Part II
Authors: Grodal Torben
Published: May 2009

The introduction to Part II discusses how knowledge of the brain’s processing of information provides crucial insight into central phenomena in visual aesthetics, especially in film aesthetics, and provides a general theory of film aesthetics. Central is the description of what the author calls the PECMA flow, an abbreviation for perception, emotion, cognition, and motor action, which describes the normal flow of information in real life and when watching film. The chapter analyzes how different types of film input may focus the film experience on different steps/brain regions: abstract film is focused on visual cortex processes, lyrical films on processes in the temporal and parietal cortices, and narrative films on frontal parts of the brain. The chapter analyses how and why these different foci provide different aesthetic experiences. The chapter also discusses how cultural and individual factors may influence and modify the innate biological factors.
Stories for Eyes, Ears, and Muscles
Authors: Grodal Torben
Published: May 2009

The chapter discusses how storytelling represents an innate mental capacity to synthesize an agency’s perceptual input, its emotions, and its output in terms of action. Insight into the architecture of the embodied brain and the PECMA flow clarifies how to understand the psychological function of stories and storytelling. The chapter further describes the way that different media—language and oral storytelling, drama, written stories, film, and video games—use different aspects of the mental “storytelling” that characterizes our ordinary experience of daily life and its actions, and it describes the historical development in narrative techniques of representation in different media. It uses this narrative theory to redefine the story-discourse dichotomy, and to argue that film narratives are typically experienced as taking place in a kind of presence, and also discusses the relation between narratives and playing games vital for interactive media. Finally, it discusses the relationship between storytelling interactivity and linearity and shows that there are a number of psychological and motivational reasons that nonlinear storytelling is difficult, and that many so-called nonlinear formats consist in fact of sets of linear stories.
Conclusion
Authors: Grodal Torben
Published: May 2009

This chapter contains an overview of the central findings of the book and provides additional perspectives on bioculturalism and the dynamic interaction between biology and culture. It summarizes how concrete embodiment and brain architecture, including the PECMA flow, molds central features of films, and discusses the interaction between universal forms controlled by deep-seated dispositions and the unlimited number of possible cultural variations made possible by innate dispositions. It discusses how and why films are made not only to provide pleasure, but also to activate hazard precaution and support bonding, as in sad melodramas and comic fictions, just as fictions are part of mechanisms that enhance insights into possible scenarios, vital for existential flexibility. It equally discusses why love for unique configurations in the individual films must be counterbalanced with a dedication to reductionism and to understanding what is universal in films.
Guodian
Authors: Holloway Kenneth
Published: May 2009

The Guodian manuscripts were buried with the teacher of the heir apparent to the Chu throne. The tomb was closed around 300 BCE shortly before one of the most significant period-defining events in ancient history, the Qin conquest of China. Unseen for two millennia, before their discovery in October 1993, these manuscripts challenge many assumptions about Chinese religion, philosophy, and Confucianism. Guodian texts are interested in unity, but this is not surprising from a time when many were becoming concerned that the First Emperor would soon succeed in his campaign of conquest. What is surprising is that in this time of crisis, unity could continue to be described as achievable only through individual empowerment. In the Guodian, the most important function of government is to assist in the harmonization of state and family relations. It sees the relationship between these two entities—the family and the collection of families that ultimately constitute the state—as being inherently problematic; they are conflicting social groupings. The Guodian posits an interesting solution: state and family disharmony can be overcome by developing a hybrid government that employs both meritocratic and aristocratic methods. The latter emphasize rulership that is based on the family and humanity; the former emphasize meritocratic methods that promote the good of the state and righteousness. This new understanding illuminates central issues of government, religion, and philosophy in early China that were overlooked prior to the discovery of Guodian.
Introduction
Authors: Kenneth W. Holloway
Published: May 2009

This chapter introduces the problem of recently excavated texts from Guodian being seen as nothing more than new ways to support old ideas about the glorious Chinese tradition. Sources of this problem are discussed first. Next is an overview of ways that this methodology skews our understanding of lost manuscripts. In particular, the evidence found in tombs is significantly different from the Han dynasty notion of Confucianism and Daoism as balkanized schools. Two texts from Guodian are highlighted: “The Five Aspects of Conduct” (“Wuxing Pian”) and the Laozi, or Dao De Jing. The last part of the introduction provides an overview of subsequent chapters.
Guodian and Traditional Views of China
Authors: Kenneth W. Holloway
Published: May 2009

This chapter begins by contrasting the binary logic of the Guodian text “The Five Aspects of Conduct” with the Analects of Confucius and the Mencius. This properly situates the Guodian texts as a new set of ideas that relate to but are separate from our former understanding of the tradition. The chapter continues with a critical overview of scholarship that is interested in connecting “The Five Aspects of Conduct” to transmitted texts. These scholars argue that “The Five Aspects of Conduct” was written by Confucius’s grandson Zisi. The theory of Zisi authorship is rooted in a single line of a single polemical passage of the Xunzi, which is vague and unsubstantial.
Attaining Unity in Guodian Texts
Authors: Kenneth W. Holloway
Published: May 2009

This chapter further considers the issue of interpersonal connectedness in the excavated version of the Laozi (Daode Jing) and “The Five Aspects of Conduct.” Both of these texts emphasize realizing a unity composed of binary opposites. Similar to the famous opposites of yin and yang, these texts emphasize harmonizing two sides without being judgmental as would be the case with good or evil. Unity is important to Guodian religion, since it involves a faith in the moral system that connects us. This issue of unity will also be shown to be central to other Guodian texts, including “Tang Yu zhidao” and “Taiyi shengshui.” Finding four texts that share a consistent concern for unity will provide a starting point for future research on early Chinese religion and philosophy.
Harmonizing Aristocracy and Meritocracy
Authors: Kenneth W. Holloway
Published: May 2009

This chapter discusses the social implications of unity in Guodian texts. It also discusses the application of unity to the question of royal succession by arguing that “Tang Yu zhidao” and “The Five Aspects of Conduct” similarly value a unity based on a hybrid composed of humanity and righteousness. Balancing humanity and righteousness entails unifying two competing centers of moral authority, the central government and the family (lineage group). The categories employed by the Guodian texts are comprehensive, so they pertain to more than simply the occasional selection of a sovereign. The balancing of humanity and righteousness will be shown to represent a religiously based political philosophy that is articulated with great clarity in Guodian.
Piety and Politics
Authors: Liow Joseph Chiyong
Published: May 2009

This book challenges conventional wisdom by arguing that tectonic movements and subterranean shifts that underscore the gradual politicization of Islam and the rise of an Islamism in political and popular discourse based on conservatism and orthodoxy have long been at work in Malaysia, despite popular media representations of Malaysia as the epitome of moderate, progressive Islamic governance. While the opposition Islamist party is widely regarded as the main Islamist player in the drama, the book suggests that the ruling regime has proven equally strident in its Islamist predilections, at times to the extent that there is little differentiating the two. The net result of this “Islamization race” has been the increasing alienation of Malaysia’s non-Muslim population from mainstream politics that has increasingly come to be defined with decidedly Islamist referents. The book also explores two previously underexplored dimensions of Muslim politics in Malaysia. First, it investigates the role of Islamic civil society movements in negotiating and redefining the parameters of Islamism. This dimension has greater salience today given that Islamic civil society movements and coalitions have located themselves at the forefront of major debates over religious freedoms, civil liberties, constitutional rights, the sanctity of shari’a, and the nature and manifestation of the Islamic state. Second, it investigates Islamism as expressed in “netizen politics.” Both these dynamics underscore the rise of Muslim conservatism in Malaysia in general, and constitute major challenges to our traditional understanding of the nature of politics and political compromise in the country.
The Malaysian State and the Bureaucratization of Islam
Authors: Liow Joseph Chinyong
Published: May 2009

This chapter investigates at closer analytical quarters the phenomenon of Islamization in Malaysia and the creation of institutions of Islamic governance by the UMNO-led Malaysian government in a process that can aptly be described as the “bureaucratization” of Islam. This process is important, for it effectively put in place the levers of Islamist governance in Malaysia, eventually facilitating the “Islamic state” proclamations by some of UMNO’s senior leaders. The chapter also identifies and discusses in greater detail two prevailing contradictions that arose out of this move to bureaucratize Islam, the first between federal and state administrations, and the second between civil and religious law.