bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Response to Nivolumab and Ipilimumab in Microsatellite Instability-High (MSI-H) Cervical Carcinoma with Acquired Resistance to Pembrolizumab: A Case Report and Literature Review
Authors: Gim Gahyun , Kim Yeseul , Park Yeonggyeong , Kim Min Jeong , Nam Myungwoo , Yang Woojung , Duarte Samantha E , Jung Chan Mi , Vagia Elena , Viveiros Pedro , Chae Young Kwang
Published: April 2022

As the use of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in treating a variety of cancer types has increased in recent years, so too have the number of reports on patients acquiring resistance to these therapies. Overcoming acquired resistance to immunotherapy remains an important need in the field of immuno-oncology. Herein, we present a case that suggests sequential administration of combination immunotherapy may be beneficial to advanced cervical cancer patients exhibiting acquired resistance to mono-immunotherapy. The patient’s tumor is microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H), which is an important biomarker in predicting ICI response. Results from recent interim prospective studies using combination immunotherapy (eg, nivolumab and ipilimumab) with anti-PD-1 plus anti-CTLA-4 inhibitor following progression on anti-PD-1 inhibitors (eg, nivolumab) have shown anti-tumor activity in patients with advanced melanoma and metastatic urothelial carcinoma. We also introduce retrospective studies and case reports/case series of dual checkpoint inhibition with anti-PD-1 inhibitor plus anti-CTLA-4 inhibitor after progression on prior anti-PD/PD-L1 monotherapy. To date, there has been no prospective study on the use of combined anti-PD-1 and anti-CTLA-4 therapy at the time of progression on anti-PD-1 therapy in patients with MSI-H tumors or advanced cervical cancer. In this report, we provide evidence that supports future investigations into such treatments.
Between Sisyphus’s Rock and a Warm and Fuzzy Place
Authors: Weinberg Rivka
Published: April 2022

This chapter suggests that there are three kinds of meaning: Everyday, Cosmic, and Ultimate. Everyday meaning refers to the value and significance in our everyday lives, including values such as beauty, morality, and truth, and the significance of engagement with them. Cosmic meaning refers to our meaningful role in the cosmos: to the significance and value of our cosmic niche, to the purposes of the cosmos and our place in it. Ultimate meaning is the end-regarding justifying reason, the valued end, or the point of leading a life at all. It is here argued that procreating can be a deep source of Everyday meaning, and perhaps Cosmic meaning. But nothing can provide us with Ultimate meaning. The implications this may have for procreative ethics is considered.
Desire and Meaning in Life
Authors: Arpaly Nomy
Published: April 2022

This chapter sketches a desire-based theory of meaning in life. The main thesis in question is that things that give meaning to a person’s life are things which the person desires intrinsically, even at the price of giving up considerable pleasure or taking on considerable displeasure. Such a view would encounter opposition from those who, like Susan Wolf, take meaning in life to involve not just being ‘attracted’ to something, but rather being ‘attracted’ to something which is objectively valuable. Replies are provided to this objection, taking on such examples as Wolf’s goldfish lover and Rawls’s grass counter. Finally, ways are discussed in which, given the view in question, it can be hard to find meaning in life—not only because one can’t always get what one wants, but also because one often does not know what one wants.
Suffering and Meaning in Life
Authors: Brady Michael S.
Published: April 2022

Suffering can have a devastating impact on individuals, and not least because it undermines or destroys many of those things which seem central to a meaningful life: personal relationships, autonomy, career, physical and psychological health, and other objects of admiration and esteem. This chapter acknowledges this point, but examines the ways in which suffering can have a positive relation to meaning in life. On the one hand, experiences of suffering can be made meaningful to those who suffer, if it is possible for the sufferer to take up a positive, virtuous attitude to their suffering. On the other hand, suffering can be an essential component in meaningful life all-things-considered. The first point will be explained through a consideration of Nietzsche’s views on suffering and psychological strength. The second will be supported by examining religious and secular perspectives on the importance of suffering for meaningful lives.
The Meaning of Life and Death
Authors: Luper Steven
Published: April 2022

This chapter offers an account of meaning and how it is related to welfare or well-being. Meaning and welfare are not the same thing, as some things help make life worth having without conferring meaning on it, but what gives life meaning makes it better. The account of meaning defended here is achievementism, according to which the meaning of one’s life consists in achieving the things one devotes it to. The chapter also clarifies what it is for death to have meaning. The meaning of life stands in opposition to that of death and vice versa. Other things being equal, what gives one’s life positive meaning gives one’s death negative meaning. The reverse is true as well: what gives death positive meaning gives life negative meaning.
Meaningfulness and Importance
Authors: Kahane Guy
Published: April 2022

Some lives are more meaningful than others. Some lives are more important than others. What is the relationship between meaning in life and importance? Because both can be described as relating to significance, the two are often conflated. But these are rather different concepts, and the meaningful and the important can easily come apart. They do, however, interact in important ways. When importance also meets the conditions for meaningfulness, it amplifies it, and importance on a large scale is a key, and perhaps the only, source of superlative meaningfulness. When contrasted with the quest for meaning, the desire for importance can seem shallow and egocentric. But the desire to make an important contribution reflects a legitimate existential concern. And, in their best form, both the desire for importance and that for meaningfulness similarly combine outward-looking and self-regarding aspects.
Paradoxes and Meaning in Life
Authors: Smilansky Saul
Published: April 2022

Paradoxes can be said to be the quintessence of philosophy, combining as they typically do the argument form and the radical challenge to the seemingly obvious. Like reflection about paradoxes, reflection about meaning in life goes back a long way in philosophy. Yet oddly, at least in the Western tradition, the two have hardly been combined, and certainly not to the extent that one could have imagined. The author of this chapter explores some widely known apparent paradoxes, together with some lesser known ones, that bear upon meaning in life, and draw out their significance for this topic. He looks at what it means to live with paradoxes, and concludes with some general reflections. It becomes apparent that a sophisticated, more fully aware view of human life, its absurdities, and its meaning cannot avoid the salience of paradoxes.
Excluded Generations in Non-Inclusive Nations: The Demographic Roots of Political Unrest in the Arab World
Authors: Fargues Philippe
Published: April 2022

This chapter offers an interpretation of the political link in Arab societies through the lens of demography. The first section shows how young generations today do not resemble those of earlier times. Rising education has raised expectations, and the reduction of fertility and postponement of childbearing have provided young adults with unprecedented individual freedom of movement. If expectations are not met by opportunities and young people have a feeling of exclusion, freedom of movement becomes a driver of emigration and rebellion. The second section of the chapter focuses on specific patterns of reproduction among Arab populations and the obstacles to building inclusive nations. On one side, the uniquely high prevalence of kinship endogamy means that marriage does not help unrelated population groups to integrate, so that blood bonds remain stronger than national bonds. On the other side, while the circulation of people is the most significant form of exchange between Arab countries, nationality laws based on exclusive jus sanguinis do not provide newcomers with pathways to full membership; and therefore, non-citizens have emerged as a category in Arab countries. Excluded generations in non-inclusive nations set the stage for prolonged political crises.
The Historical Roots of the Ecological Crisis
Authors: Kidwell Jeremy H.
Published: April 2022

This chapter analyzes the provenance and legacy of the influential article “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” published in the journal Science (White 1967). It argues that White’s analysis is significantly embedded in his late-modern scholarly context and fails to transcend some embedded prejudices, not least of which is his tendency to portray religion not as a complex lived phenomenon but rather in forms that are reduced to simple binaries. It explores the modern conceptual legacy surrounding the use of “crisis” in the interpretation of historical events and documents, particularly in relation to the environment and suggests that the concept of “crisis” comes with its own intellectual baggage and cannot be invoked as a purely neutral observation. It notes several ways that the text of the Bible resists such framings, particularly given the array of other-than-human voices that convey prophetic speech. As a metaphor, “crisis” may mobilize our attentions, but it also can obscure the more complex dynamics at work in the present moment and in biblical texts. The chapter concludes by arguing that biblical hermeneutics would be well served by dispensing with the hand-wringing over “anthropocentrism” which was a hallmark of White’s generation of scholarship and instead focusing on more complex creaturely entanglements and hybrid geographies.
Ecological Hermeneutics and Postcolonialism
Authors: Masenya Madipoane
Published: April 2022

Informed by a holistic African worldview, one basically untouched by the impacts of foreign systems such as colonialism and apartheid in the case of South Africa, how may an African-conscious biblical scholar read the Hebrew Bible, especially Psalm 23, with ecological concerns? Due to our hybridized, globalized and mostly African-unconscious contexts, engaging in an ecologically conscious African biblical hermeneutic may appear like going up a steep cliff. However, having been nurtured by an African–South African rural setting, one in which humans basically lived in community with each other and in relative mutual interdependence with nature, one may not find it impossible to read Psalm 23, African- and nature-consciously. This chapter thus reflects one African woman’s reflections on the theme of ecological hermeneutics, particularly on the postcolonial, postapartheid African–South African space.
The Ecotheology of the Song of Songs
Authors: Bernstein Ellen
Published: April 2022

The Song of Songs is the most ecological text of the entire biblical canon. It expresses the biblical author’s abiding love for the land and its creatures, and asserts an indelible connection between people and earth. It implies that the beauty of nature can capture the heart and ignite one’s caring for all creation. It shuns material striving and possessiveness and reimagines the world as a vibrant garden ecosystem in which alienation is redressed, and love for ones’ beloved means love for the land and its inhabitants. It affirms that the world becomes whole when people become whole. It intimates a counternarrative to anthropocentrism, the idea that the natural world revolves around humanity. In a world threatened with ecological insecurity and societal divisiveness, the Song bridges the gap between secular and sacred, and offers a vocabulary, a story, and a vision of interdependence and wholeness that all peoples can share.
John’s Gospel
Authors: Miller Susan
Published: April 2022

John’s Gospel has been traditionally regarded as a “spiritual gospel,” which is concerned with the revelation of Jesus’ identity as the Messiah and Son of God. An ecological reading of the gospel, however, highlights the close identification of Jesus with the natural world. The prologue states that the world came into being through Jesus. Jesus identifies himself with the natural world in his “I am” sayings: “I am the bread of life,” “I am the light of the world,” and “I am the true vine.” This chapter argues that Jesus’ gift of eternal life is defined in terms of the abundance of the natural world. The gifts Jesus brings are linked to his death on the cross. John’s Gospel is not only concerned with the salvation of human beings. Jesus casts out the “ruler of the world” and liberates the natural world from the power of evil.
The Bible and Ecotheology
Authors: Watts Belser Julia
Published: April 2022

Contemporary Jewish ecotheology frequently grapples with three theological challenges that emerge from traditional readings of Genesis 1: the notion of a conflict between God and nature, the tradition of human exceptionalism, and the belief that God has granted humans dominion over the natural world. Emphasizing the multivocal nature of Jewish theology, this chapter demonstrates that biblical and rabbinic sources also offer seeds of alternative ecological possibilities: a sensuous naturalism that celebrates the wonder of creation and the kinship of all life, as well as a vibrant tradition of religious practice that allows contemporary Jews to construct ecological action as a Jewish obligation. While Jewish law has often been interpreted in ways that privileged human interests over the intrinsic value of the natural world, the chapter argues that this robust concern for human life and health can and should ground a Jewish theology and ethics of environmental justice.
“Deep Calls to Deep”
Authors: Brown William P.
Published: April 2022

As a collection of sung and recited poetry, the Psalter draws heavily from the natural realm for its rich storehouse of imagery. As an anthology of various theological perspectives, the Book of Psalms hosts a lively dialogue on the value and purpose of non-human creation vis-à-vis God and humanity, which proceeds from human supremacy over creation (Psalm 8) to a distinctly non-hierarchical perspective that views humanity as merely one species among many (Psalm 104). In addition, justice for creation becomes a central concern in the Psalter (Psalms 96; 98). At the Psalter’s hymnic conclusion, this unfolding dialogue reaches its glorious conclusion with a call to universal praise that re-envisions the created order and humanity’s “dominion.”
Creation Care and the Bible
Authors: Brunner Daniel L. , Swoboda A. J.
Published: April 2022

This chapter contends that the Scriptures must play an essential role in helping Christians—particularly evangelical Christians—engage the ecological crisis. After delineating their own “evangelical” context, the authors explore the complexities around contemporary evangelical ecological hermeneutics. The greater part of the chapter revolves around a presentation of five green hermeneutical lenses or metanarratives, each of which is biblical, Christologically focused, and attentive to the current ecological context. While the lens of stewardship remains the dominant perspective, especially among more conservative evangelicals, differences around the idea of dominion call for further green alternatives. Therefore, the chapter puts forward four additional interpretive frameworks: concern for the underprivileged, a God who both creates and redeems the cosmos, the community or interconnectedness of the whole creation, and a transformed, inaugurated eschatology. Through these lenses (evangelical) Christians can embrace Scripture with a new vitality in light of ecological realities.
Re-Viewing the Book of Jeremiah
Authors: Colgan Emily
Published: April 2022

The chapter begins with a brief survey of ecological scholarship relating to the book of Jeremiah, and then provides a broad overview of ecological images found within this book. It goes on to closely examine Jer 3:1–5 using a rhetorical critical methodology with an ecological hermeneutic derived from the Earth Bible tradition. It draws a connection between the female body and the fertile land, which are both identified as being polluted and must suffer punishment for this defilement. The chapter problematizes the violent and coercive relationship between God, land, and people, before outlining an alternative ecological interpretation of these verses, which understands the land as co-equal partner with God by sharing in the creative process.
The Bible and Wildlife Conservation
Authors: Bookless Dave
Published: April 2022

The Christian Bible, and theologies derived from it, have been accused of legitimizing the exploitation and destruction of nature. This chapter examines the textual evidence, concluding that, overall, the Bible is remarkably positive toward wildlife and encourages humanity to see wildlife as part of a theocentric moral order in which humans have responsibilities for wildlife conservation. The chapter next examines the history of Christian involvement in nature conservation, in particular the biblical inspiration of many early conservationists and animal-protectionists in Europe and North America, followed by a section looking at contemporary expressions of Christian concern for nature conservation both in writing and in practical expression. The conclusion explores possibilities for a re-engagement of faith-based conservation with the contemporary biodiversity conservation movement.
The Historical Genesis of Cognitive Science of Religion
Authors: Lawson E. Thomas
Published: April 2022

This chapter focuses on the relationship between comparative religion and the cognitive and evolutionary sciences culminating in the development of the cognitive science of religion. It discusses what problems comparative religion was trying to solve and how the cognitive science of religion addressed those problems thorough theoretical and experimental work. In particular this chapter describes and analyzes the problems that comparative religion was trying to solve within the limitations of its methods and relates these to the problems that the cognitive science of religion was focusing upon. The chapter also describes the successful emergence of the standard model of the cognitive science of religion and explains the reasons for its success. The chapter ends with a discussion of the merits and limitations of the cognitive science of religion and suggest new directions for this emerging discipline.
The Failure of Religious Systems
Authors: Turpin Hugh , Lanman Jonathan A.
Published: April 2022

This chapter describes how recent work across the social and cognitive sciences can address the question of how religious systems come to fail. It begins by discussing whether it makes scientific sense to talk about “religious systems” before outlining how the success or failure of such systems can be evaluated. A distinction is then drawn between the “mental-representational” and the “social” failure of religious systems. The contributions of the cognitive science of religion (CSR) are examined to explain the differential success of religious systems over time, such that some come to fail while others succeed. Then the relevance of CSR for explaining how and where religious systems lose influence altogether and various forms of nonreligion emerge, a process that has traditionally been called “secularization,” is outlined. The chapter closes with a case study outlining the applicability of the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion to the decline of Catholic belief, practice, and identification, as well as the rise in anti–Catholic Church social action, in early twenty-first-century Ireland.
CSR and Religious Belief: Epistemic Friends or Foes?
Authors: Van Eyghen Hans
Published: April 2022

This chapter critically discusses three epistemic arguments that draw on CSR theories. Although all arguments vary considerably, they all refer to CSR theories in at least one of their premises. A first argument argues that religious belief is epistemically tainted because of the evolutionary history of the mechanisms that produce it. A second argument argues that the mechanisms that produce religious belief do not accurately grasp truths about the world. A third argument argues that religious belief merits a positive epistemic status because it is the natural result of our proper cognitive function. The chapter argues that all three arguments either fail or do not allow strong conclusions about the rationality of religious belief.
Philosophical Foundations of Cognitive Science of Religion
Authors: Visala Aku
Published: April 2022

The cognitive science of religion is not a single theory but a loosely related family of approaches. As such, it does not have a clearly outlined “philosophical foundation” and does not necessarily require one. Nevertheless, recurring themes that could be labeled philosophical or methodological are often discussed in the literature. The aim of the chapter is to identify and analyze the recurring themes over which there is a significant consensus in the field. What distinguishes CSR from traditional interpretative and sociological approaches is its insistence on seeking explanations of religion from the science of human cognition. Some features of religion can be explained by invoking the workings of individual cognitive systems. The chapter will also discuss how CSR understands reduction, pluralism, and interdisciplinary relationships. Finally, it will highlight a recent development in that could be helpful for CSR: the new mechanistic philosophy of science.
Ghostly Relationships
Authors: Barrett Justin L.
Published: April 2022

Over time, more psychologists have become contributors to the cognitive science of religion (CSR), but when are they doing CSR and when are they doing psychology of religion? Does it matter? This chapter sketches contemporary scientific reflections on notions of death and the afterlife to illustrate the subtle differences between CSR and the psychology of religion. The two kindred scientific approaches overlap considerably, but giving attention to their central differences will assist scholars in finding complementarity, thereby improving both schools of inquiry and their contributions to each other. After developing this thesis, the chapter describes the organization and flow of The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Science of Religion as a whole. It begins with general theoretical and methodological foundations, and then considers specific applications of CSR to substantive topics, such as beliefs in gods, sacred texts, sacred objects, and ritualized behaviors, before turning to how these domains of cultural expression are sometimes joined (or not) into religious systems. The handbook ends with comparisons between CSR and two other neighboring approaches (evolutionary studies of religion and neuroscience of religion) and, finally, considers the implications of CSR for philosophy of religion, religious education, and theology.
Gods: Cognition, Culture, and Ecology
Authors: Purzycki Benjamin Grant
Published: April 2022

All populations on the planet have some belief in spiritual agents. From the perspective of the cognitive sciences of religion, gods are cultural representations (i.e., shared, socially transmitted data) that are made possible, informed, and constrained by noncultural cognitive systems. In keeping with this view, this chapter first assesses the relationship between statistically universal aspects of gods and these aspects’ corollary cognitive systems. It then addresses how environmental inputs also contribute to our conceptions of deities and points to ways in which the cognitive science of religion (CSR) can contribute to a more ecologically minded approach to understanding religious systems.
Explaining and Solving Practical Problems Supernaturally
Authors: Watson-Jones Rachel E. , Legare Cristine H.
Published: April 2022

Why are we motivated to explain events and treat problems by appealing to supernatural agents or powers? We propose that supernatural beliefs and behaviors make the world seem more meaningful, understandable, and predictable. People use supernatural explanations to understand and interpret the events in their lives. They engage in supernatural behaviors such as rituals to assert control, solve problems, and ward off future adverse events. We describe the psychology underlying supernatural beliefs and behaviors and review evidence that they increase perceptions of control, reduce anxiety, and promote well-being.
Mortuary Practices
Authors: White Claire
Published: April 2022

Rituals surrounding the treatment and disposal of fellow humans are recurrent features of human culture. Many practices are time-consuming, expensive, elaborate, and even dangerous. Why then do people perform mortuary rituals? Anthropological and sociological researchers have long asserted that mortuary rituals confer tangible benefits to the social group. Importantly, these benefits exceed their costs, which helps to explain why people engage in such practices. Recent research from a variety of evolutionary and cognitive sciences provides fresh insight into the functions of mortuary practices. This chapter draws upon systematic cross-cultural comparisons to demonstrate that mortuary practices share core features that are not amenable to parochial explanations. Mortuary rituals are highly regulated, functionally opaque, and elaborate sets of behaviors that result in close and prolonged contact with the deceased and the social group. Based on research findings from adjacent social science disciplines, the chapter proposes that mortuary rituals aid in solving adaptive problems following the death of a group member.
Rank-Discounting as a Resolution to a Dilemma in Population Ethics
Authors: Asheim Geir B. , Zuber Stéphane
Published: April 2022

When evaluating well‐being streams in an anonymous manner, one faces a dilemma between, on the one hand, assigning dictatorship to a single worst‐off individual and thus succumbing to a tyranny of non‐aggregation and, on the other hand, assigning dictatorship to (unboundedly) many better‐off individuals and thus succumbing to a tyranny of aggregation. This can be shown to correspond to a population‐ethical dilemma in the variable population setting between, on the one hand, a reverse repugnant conclusion by preferring a very small population with high well‐being and, on the other hand, a repugnant or very sadistic conclusion. The repugnant conclusion is to prefer a sufficiently large population with lives barely worth living to a population with good lives. The very sadistic conclusion is not to prefer a sufficiently large population with lives worth living to a population with terrible lives. The dilemma can be resolved by relaxing replication invariance and thus allowing that evaluation in the fixed population setting might change with population size even though the relative distribution of well‐being over individuals remains unchanged. Rank‐dependent criteria, for example the rank‐discounted critical‐level generalized utilitarian (RDCLU) social welfare order, are evaluation criteria that resolve this dilemma but fail replication invariance. In this chapter, we recall the normative basis for the RDCLU social welfare order and provide conditions under which rank‐dependent criteria are the only way out of the dilemma. Furthermore, we discuss properties of such criteria, including the following interesting perspective of the relaxation of replication‐invariance: it becomes important to associate with the notion of total population not the people that are alive at any one time, but the people that will ever live. This perspective might have important implications for the conclusions that follow from population ethics.
Getting Personal
Authors: Rabinowicz Wlodek
Published: April 2022

According to the Intuition of Neutrality, there is a range of well-being levels such that adding people with lives at these levels doesn’t make the world either better or worse. As lives in the neutral range can be good for those who live them, this intuition is in conflict with one of the main tenets of welfarism; it creates a disparity between what is good for a person and what is impersonally good. Adding a person with a good life needn’t make the world better. An earlier article, “Broome and the Intuition of Neutrality” (Rabinowicz 2009) suggested but did not elaborate a reinterpretation of the neutral range that would remove the problematic disparity. On this reinterpretation, a life at a level within the neutral range is not merely impersonally neutral; it is also neutral in its personal value: neither better nor worse for its owner than non-existence. Nevertheless, among such personally neutral lives, some might still be personally better or worse than others, provided that they are incommensurable in their personal value with non-existence. The present chapter explores some of the implications of this “personalization” of the Intuition of Neutrality. In particular, it discusses its worrisome implications for neutral-range utilitarianism.
Person-Affecting Utilitarianism
Authors: Bader Ralf M.
Published: April 2022

This chapter is concerned with person-affecting views in population ethics which require the betterness ordering of populations to consist in betterness facts for the members of the populations and thereby require the evaluation of distributions to be reducible to facts about personal good. The first part argues that impersonal versions of utilitarianism involve an objectionable axiology precisely because they are incompatible with a person-affecting view. In particular, the problem is that they do not take personal good seriously, since they do not attribute ethical significance to it, but instead (at best) only consider it to be ethically relevant. As a result, they end up subordinating and sacrificing personal good for the sake of impersonal good and thereby treat persons as mere containers of impersonal good, which gives rise to particularly troubling implications in the case of variable-population comparisons. The second part evaluates the prospects for person-affecting versions of utilitarianism. It will be argued that person-affecting total utilitarianism presupposes comparativism, that is, that existence and non-existence are comparable in terms of personal good, and as such involves various problematic metaphysical commitments. Accordingly, same-number person-affecting utilitarianism turns out to be the only version of utilitarianism that neither has objectionable axiological implications nor requires problematic metaphysical commitments.
Gender, Ideology, and Nationalism in Chinese Children’s Cinema
Authors: Huang Yuhan
Published: April 2022

This chapter discusses the representation of gender, ideology, and nation in children’s films and films about children in mainland China. By observing thematic and narrative connections between films from different historical periods, it identifies three recurring cultural archetypes, which have numerous variations: the orphan, the revolutionary child-hero, and the anti-hero, analysing the construction and deconstruction of notable archetypes of children characters in their political and historical context, and showing how discourses of nationalism and socialism are established. Additionally, the chapter observes how girl protagonists fall in and out of popularity in Chinese children’s cinema, making visible an underlying power relationship that always subsumes women’s liberation and advancement under the national discourse. By examining the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and social class in these cinematic archetypes, the chapter traces a complicated process of cultural imagination of children and childhood.
Migrant Children and the “Space between” in the Films of Angelopoulos
Authors: Hemelryk Donald Stephanie
Published: April 2022

Childhood is a category of difference within sameness, a form of being that is intrinsic to all human life, and yet is simultaneously unavailable to adult humans. In the context of global migrations, childhood occupies an even more ethereal space of belonging and exclusion. This chapter advances Donald’s earlier work on Angelopoulos and the example of many other scholars working on the great auteur. His death in 2011 notwithstanding, Angelopoulos’ work still resonates with ongoing twenty-first-century historical conditions; the chapter explores that resonance, particularly in relation to his achievements representing the experience of migration and childhood. The child migrant’s journey through actual and imaginary borders—of innocence and knowledge, security, and alienation—epitomizes the transience of childhood itself, within which there must always be accumulation of understanding and preparation for survival among adults. The chapter argues that through Angelopoulos’ use of what French cinematography terms l’intervalle, or “space between,” he visualizes both the negative impact of migration on the collective (generally, the family) and, simultaneously, the ways in which children attempt to reformulate mores of belonging to contingent units of identity and emotional comfort.
How Children Learn to “Read” Movies
Authors: Bazalgette Cary
Published: April 2022

This chapter argues that children’s very early engagements with these media need to be recognized as vital learning processes that play a significant role in their developing cultural and social lives. From the 1980s onwards, the opportunities for this learning have been transformed by the advent of video and later technologies. Evidence from research, as well as from a range of scholars of early years, neuroscience, and film theory is deployed in reframing the stereotypical image of a child passively watching and rewatching films on TV, DVD, and online: presenting instead an account of intense, self-directed learning. Focusing in particular on two-year-olds, this chapter demonstrates that even at this age, it is possible to infer their learning from their emotional and physical responses to films and from their choices about what and how to watch.
Disney’s Musical Landscapes
Authors: Batchelder Daniel
Published: April 2022

This chapter traces the early aesthetic development of music-image relationships in the animated films of the Walt Disney Studio. While practical concerns largely informed Disney’s initial approaches to integrating sound and animation, the resulting cartoons yielded unique artistic effects. In these films, the constant coordination of images and sounds appears to be organized according to principles of music, including meter, form, and phrasing. Disney creatively mobilized these unique diegetic spaces in its first sound productions. Beginning with the parallel Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony series of short-subject cartoons and eventually culminating in feature-length productions such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi, Disney’s so-called Golden Age productions collectively signalled the emergence of a new mode of presentation: the animated musical.
Introduction: Coming to Terms with Children’s Film
Authors: Brown Noel
Published: April 2022

This introductory chapter begins by establishing the overarching objectives of the handbook. It goes on to explore the thorny question of how children’s film may be conceptualized, outlining a number of possible critical approaches to the topic, and arguing in favour of understanding children’s films both in terms of their shared textual features and the contextual processes through which they are marketed, disseminated, and received by audiences. The chapter then presents a very brief historical overview of international children’s cinema to set the scene for the subsequent chapters in the volume. It concludes with an outline of the book’s structure and methodological approach, synopses of each chapter, and a consideration of the volume’s position in the developing field of scholarship on children’s film.
Danny Kaye as Children’s Film Star
Authors: Babington Bruce
Published: April 2022

One of the major “comedian comics” of the 1940s and 1950s, Danny Kaye is indelibly associated with children, through both his role as a UNICEF Special Ambassador (1954–1987) for Children and the child-friendly comedy of his films. This chapter begins by surveying aspects of that comedy, Kaye’s comic persona, and its appeal to children, with emphasis on his secondary career as a recording artist (which from the early 1950s was particularly aimed at child audiences). Though in some ways an untypical Kaye film, Hans Christian Andersen (dir. Charles Vidor, prod. Samuel Goldwyn, 1952), is central to Kaye’s career and charisma, especially in his scenes with children, who were seen as the original audience for Andersen’s stories. The chapter concludes with an in-depth discussion of the film as both a children’s narrative built around the storyteller’s relationship with children and a parallel adult melodrama centred on the hero’s impossible passion for the ballerina Doro.
Children’s Film and the Problematic “Happy Ending”
Authors: Brown Noel
Published: April 2022

In the popular consciousness, children’s films and happy endings are regarded as virtually synonymous. With close analysis of a wide range of international films, this chapter explores the theoretical underpinnings of the happy ending and argues in favour of greater ambiguity in the genre of children’s cinema than the term implies. It begins by examining the narrational properties of the happy ending and how narrative style in children’s cinema is constructed to incorporate happy endings. It then discusses how the concept applies to a number of children’s films across a broad historical period, from the “utopian” endings of films such as The Wizard of Oz to more ambivalent productions from countries such as the United States, Britain, Australia, and Kenya.
“Gazanevshchina”
Authors: Smola Klavdia
Published: April 2022

This chapter is dedicated to one of the most peculiar phenomena of the Leningrad underground: “Gazanevshchina,” or “Gaza-Nevskii culture,” which was triggered by two officially approved exhibitions in 1974–1975. Contrary to the expectations of the authorities, the exhibitions attracted broad public interest. Although the Gazanevshchina movement declined shortly after the two events, it brought about a meaningful moment of public recognition of the unofficial art against the backdrop of the system’s violence. This chapter explores the political and cultural context in which the Gaza-Nevskii movement came to life, as well as its influence on the subsequent development of the late Soviet underground. It also shows how a long period of apartment exhibitions and occasional vernissages in cultural centers and research institutes paved the way for the breakthrough of Gazanevshchina.
Superdiversity through the Lens of Brexit
Authors: Neal Sarah , Cochrane Allan
Published: April 2022

In the context of a turn to defensive nationalism in a number of countries, this chapter examines the ways in which superdiversity can be understood in relation to the United Kingdom’s 2016 referendum vote on its membership in the European Union (EU). The outcome of the referendum was a decision to leave the EU (generally labeled “Brexit”), a political event that has been widely interpreted as an articulation of English nationalism. It has driven a particularly intense period of social and cultural polarization of the United Kingdom, sharpening divisions, racialization processes, and antimigrant hostilities. While there has been much attention and focus on understanding why the Leave EU campaign was successful, less attention has been paid to interrogating the Remain vote. The political geographies of Remain often overlapped with geographies of superdiversity, and London in particular, and other more ethnically diverse areas, tended to vote for the United Kingdom to stay in the EU. Taking this relationship as a starting point, the chapter confirms the extent to which the Brexit project, as a form of defensive English nationalism, is unsettled and challenged by the lived experience of superdiversity, which suggests the prospect of a counternarrative that highlights the possibility of a politics of hope.
Superdiversity in Highly Regulated Global Cities
Authors: Kathiravelu Laavanya
Published: April 2022

This chapter examines the analytical productivity of superdiversity as a perspective in conversation with issues of nationalism, citizenship, and immigration from an empirical perspective that draws primarily from studies of (im)migration in highly globalized city-states with intensely regulated migration regimes. In relation to concepts of “intersectionality” and immigrant integration, it asks how superdiversity helps to interrogate key empirical and political questions of migration-led stratification and boundary-making. In doing so, the chapter suggests that superdiversity as a frame prompts scholars to be better primed to uncover complex intersections of difference that cannot be encompassed by traditional binaries of Black–White, citizen–foreigner, or majority–minority. This chapter shows how the superdiversity lens disrupts assumptions made by a Eurocentric migration paradigm that is less suited for understanding empirical social realities in contexts in contemporary Asia. However, the chapter follows others in highlighting that a superdiversity framework is less useful in speaking to issues of domination and entrenched structural racism.
Emotion Kinds, Motivation, and Irrational Explanation
Authors: D’Arms Justin
Published: April 2022

This chapter surveys some theories of emotion, and the debate over whether emotions are natural kinds or are constructed through our classifications of them. It argues that the case against such kinds is incomplete and that the constructionist approach to emotions is problematic. It defends a motivational approach to emotion kinds, which predicts and explains various familiar patterns of irrational behaviour better than rival theories.
Social Construction, Revelation, and Moral Psychology
Authors: Mallon Ron
Published: April 2022

One sort of social constructionist explanation of human categories or human behaviours emphasizes their social, cultural, and structural determinants by emphasizing the causal or constitutive role of human agents, mental states, decisions, cultures, institutions, or practices. One apparent point of such explanations is to show that the relevant category or behaviour is a product of human culture or human decision as opposed to some other putatively ‘natural’ fact. But if they are simply explanations that identify some sorts of causes or constituents rather than others, then why should constructionist explanations play a recurring role in, say, anti-racist or feminist theorizing? In this chapter, I reconstruct an account of how constructionist revelation is supposed to work, and how it might connect to projects of social transformation, by connecting it to substantive claims about human moral psychology and about the character of moral agency. My argument begins with the claim that constructionist explanations causally influence the attribution of agency and, via those attributions, the activation of reactive attitudes. If this is correct, then constructionist explanation could serve as a causal intervention in the social world by promoting social regulation of constructed phenomena. But whether social change by constructionist revelation is morally permissible or morally desirable remains a further question. I therefore go on to explore and argue for the possibility that constructionist revelation aims to reveal that genuine agency obtains, or even to produce the conditions of such agency.
Moral Intuitions and Moral Nativism
Authors: Mikhail John
Published: April 2022

Moral nativism is a theory which holds that significant elements of moral psychology are innate. This chapter first summarizes the intuitive turn in moral psychology and explains its significance for moral nativism. Drawing on an analogy to language, the chapter then outlines two principal arguments for moral nativism: the argument for moral grammar and the argument from the poverty of the stimulus. After making some clarifications and correcting some popular misconceptions, the chapter reviews some of the most significant research supporting moral nativism, including studies of compassion, empathy, and altruistic motivation in humans and other primates; the intuitive jurisprudence of young children; the emergence of moral cognition in human infants and toddlers; the neurocognitive foundations of moral judgment; and human moral universals. The chapter concludes by locating moral nativism within a broader historical and scientific context, including ancient philosophy, Enlightenment rationalism, evolutionary theory, and the modern cognitive science of innate knowledge in various domains.
Moral Learning and Moral Representations
Authors: Nichols Shaun
Published: April 2022

People make moral judgments that seem to be guided by complex representations of rules formed over abstract categories like harm, intention, and knowledge. This chapter explores learning-theoretic accounts of such judgments. Value-based accounts try to explain moral judgments with an austere set of resources based on reinforcement learning. Rule-based accounts maintain that moral judgments really are guided by complex representations of rules. Since rule-based accounts appeal to complex representations, one possibility is that these representations are to some extent innately specified. An alternative, sketched in this chapter, is that statistical learning can explain the acquisition of these complex representations.
Methods, Models, and the Evolution of Moral Psychology
Authors: O’Connor Cailin
Published: April 2022

Why are we good? Why are we bad? Questions regarding the evolution of morality have spurred an astoundingly large interdisciplinary literature. Some significant subset of this body of work addresses questions regarding our moral psychology: how did humans evolve the psychological properties which underpin our systems of ethics and morality? In this chapter I do three things. First, I discuss some methodological issues, and defend particularly effective methods for addressing many research questions in this area. Second, I give an in-depth example, describing how an explanation can be given for the evolution of guilt—one of the core moral emotions—using the methods advocated here. Last, I lay out which sorts of strategic scenarios generally are the ones that our moral psychology evolved to ‘solve’, and thus which models are the most useful in further exploring this evolution.
The Limits of Neuroscience for Ethics
Authors: Roskies Adina L.
Published: April 2022

Ethics is concerned with the normative or prescriptive, and science with the descriptive. These differences are illustrative of the famous gap between ‘ought’ and ‘is’. Given these differences in scope and subject matter, one might wonder what, if anything, science may have to offer ethics. Here I focus on the brain sciences, and looking at several case studies in both normative ethics and metaethics, I argue that the gap between the normative and descriptive is unbridgeable, but that despite this, neuroscience has much to contribute to ethical thought. The way in which it most clearly contributes is by providing descriptive premises to normative arguments.