bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
In the Shadow of World Literature
Authors: Allan Michael
Published: January 2018

We have grown accustomed to understanding world literature as a collection of national or linguistic traditions bound together in the universality of storytelling. This book challenges this way of thinking and argues instead that the disciplinary framework of world literature, far from serving as the neutral meeting ground of national literary traditions, levels differences between scripture, poetry, and prose, and fashions textual forms into a particular pedagogical, aesthetic, and ethical practice. The book examines the shift from Qur'anic schooling to secular education in colonial Egypt and shows how an emergent literary discipline transforms the act of reading itself. The various chapters draw from debates in literary theory and anthropology to consider sites of reception that complicate the secular/religious divide—from the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and translations of the Qur'an to debates about Charles Darwin in the modern Arabic novel. Through subtle analysis of competing interpretative frames, the book reveals the ethical capacities and sensibilities literary reading requires, the conceptions of textuality and critique it institutionalizes, and the forms of subjectivity it authorizes.
Translation
Authors: Allan Michael
Published: January 2018

This chapter considers translation in terms of how a particular relationship to language is born with the decoding of the Rosetta Stone. It shows how the Rosetta Stone is transformed from an object to a text to be deciphered, decoded, and analyzed by an international network of scholars. What is discovered with the Rosetta Stone, the chapter argues, is less an object than a particular textuality based on an understanding of language as a code. It also explains how the translational ethic that points to the equivalence of Greek and hieroglyphics actually levels the political and theological distinctions between the three languages: the Greek language, the language of politics, demotic, and hieroglyphics, the language of the gods. This phenomenological leveling of languages is ultimately read in relation to the comparative gesture of world literature, which levels distinctions between literature and scripture under an emergent paradigm of modern literary reading.
Economics and the Social Meaning of Money
Authors: Morduch Jonathan
Published: January 2018

This chapter explains why nonfungibility remains “a hard sell” for traditional economists but then demonstrates how and why recognizing monetary differentiations advances our understanding of economic activity. Drawing from the US Financial Diaries project, the chapter documents the frequency of earmarking in a sample of low- and moderate-income households in five states across America. Families, the study discovered, often earmark money earned by a particular family member or generated from a particular job. Earmarking income for particular purposes generally leads to spending patterns that deviate from economic expectations based on assumptions of household-level optimization with full fungibility. The chapter argues that while behavioral economists and game theorists have developed their own explanations of such “anomalous” monetary choices, it is time to create theories along with policy interventions that recognize the power of money's social meanings.
Morals and Emotions of Money
Authors: Bandelj Nina , Boston Tyler , Elyachar Julia , Kim Julie , McBride Michael , Tufail Zaibu , Weatherall James Owen
Published: January 2018

This chapter reports findings from an interdisciplinary investigation of charitable giving. The authors studied charity contributions using a Dictator Game experimental design whereby participants are given tokens with real money value and can decide to contribute to charity or to keep the money for themselves. But to get a better sense of the role of morals and emotions, they also asked participants to explain their motivations for giving. In addition, they conducted the experiment with the same student participants at two different points in time. They found that those who contribute more to charity tend to be women, tend to evaluate themselves as less self-interested, and are more likely to have been those who gave to charity at the first point in time. The choices of particular charities are not very consistent over time but depend on participants' moral and emotional evaluations. The chapter concludes that even in abstract experimental conditions, moral judgments and emotional underpinnings are not discrete influences on how people think about and use money but are thoroughly intertwined, relationally grounded, and reinforced by practice.
From Industrial Money to Generalized Capitalization
Authors: Polillo Simone
Published: January 2018

This chapter analyzes three historically constructed categories of money: industrial money, business money, and generalized capitalization. It does so in three steps. First, it argues that there is a temporal dimension of money, oriented toward the future. It is associated with double-entry bookkeeping, a way of representing business concerns that became dominant with the rise of capitalism and that emphasizes calculability of spending. The second step in the analysis focuses on how goods turn into assets, and how the calculation of future performance becomes the primary way of assigning value to those assets. The third and final step shows that under an economic regime increasingly dominated by finance, capitalization spreads and thus becomes ritualized.
Money and Emotion
Authors: Hochschild Arlie
Published: January 2018

This chapter delves into the world of commercial surrogates' emotional labor. Using the case of surrogates outsourced from India by parents in the West, the chapter focuses on “win-lose” situations. It shows that the one-down party pays a sacrifice in emotional detachment from something of great value, such as a piece of ancestral land, a kidney, or in this case, a baby. It argues that we should count the cost of commercial exchange not simply in the value of coin but in the price it exacts in emotional detachment. The chapter thus introduces issues of power and inequality for understanding contested transactions. It is not that money necessarily taints the surrogacy exchange, but that the transaction is not among equals.
Money Talks, Plastic Money Tattles
Authors: Guseva Alya , Rona-Tas Akos
Published: January 2018

This chapter argues that money in its recent digital, immaterial incarnation has acquired a so-called new sociability. In contrast to cash, any transaction involving plastic money always leaves a permanent trace, entangling its issuer and users in a relationship, no matter how small or one-off the transaction. If money talks, plastic money tattles, and this has far-reaching implications for actors at both macro and micro (household) levels. The chapter discusses the theoretical implications of immateriality and re-embedding delivered by plastic money. It then turns to a set of empirical examples to illustrate how plastic money enhances the ability of nation-states to govern and control their citizen-cardholders, focusing on the cases of Russia and China. It discusses plastic cards' potential effects on domestic economies, suggesting that the new sociability of plastic money could be informative (or revealing) not only to states and card lenders, but also to spouses and parents.
Blockchains Are a Diamond’s Best Friend
Authors: Maurer Bill
Published: January 2018

This chapter discusses Bitcoin and its underlying technology. Specifically, it addresses how new uses of that technology shed light on money as money of account. This bolsters the arguments of alternative monetary theorists like Geoffrey Ingham and Randall Wray, which were often seen in opposition to the Zelizer view. Both Zelizer and alternative monetary theorists agreed on the paucity of the mainstream economists' take on money as a neutral medium of exchange. Zelizer highlighted its social variegation. Ingham highlighted money of account, the “means of accounting for value.” Such accounting is always linked to the state's ability to demand taxes paid in its own token and the systems of claims and counterclaims in credit-money that ultimately relied on states' and banks' promises to pay. Whatever social variegation may exist, Ingham argued, would still be determined by and denominated in money of account. The chapter asks whether developments like Bitcoin and other forays into new payment services more generally have the potential to open up these relations between states and banks with regard to money.
Introduction
Authors: Rosenboim Or
Published: January 2018

This book examines the emergence of globalism in visions of world order in Britain and the United States during the period 1939–1950. It considers the proposals advanced by American, British, and émigré intellectuals for ordering the post-war world, in which they envisaged competing schemes of global orders motivated by concerns for the future of democracy, the prospects of liberty and diversity, and the decline of the imperial system. It also explores the competing meanings of the global as a political space in mid-century thought, and how the idea of political space provides a helpful connection between the concrete geopolitics of international relations and the abstract notion of order. This chapter provides an overview of the book’s main themes, including the notion of “democratic federalism,” the problem of empires and their position in a new global order, and the interrelationships among Catholicism, pluralism, and global democracy.
The End of Imperial Federalism?
Authors: Rosenboim Or
Published: January 2018

This chapter explores the notion of “democratic federalism” by drawing on the story of the British organization known as Federal Union. In particular, it considers how the political legacy of empire slowly lost its centrality in the federal debate and gave way to a new federalist approach based on social and economic justice. After providing a historical background on Federal Union and its attempts to elucidate its goals and, especially, the meaning of democracy in a federal context, the chapter examines the visions of democratic federalism promoted by Lionel Curtis and Clarence Streit. It then looks at the growing resistance to the imperial model of organizing the global political space and concludes by highlighting the limits of Federal Union’s approach to the European colonies and their future within the new federal system.
Federal Democracy for Welfare
Authors: Rosenboim Or
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines how democratic federalism evolved as an idea aimed at global socioeconomic transformation by focusing on the debate at Federal Union, which sought to overcome the legacy of empire by emphasizing the economic and social emancipatory function of the democratic federation. It discusses the rise of a new idea of democratic federalism that shifted from a constitutional structure to safeguard the declining British Empire to a regional scheme for socioeconomic change. This transition was shaped in debates among its members, notably Lionel Robbins, Barbara Wootton, and Friedrich A. Hayek. The chapter first considers Robbins’ economic federal thought in the late 1930s before exploring the rise of “welfare” as a key feature in the economic federalism of Wootton. It also analyzes Hayek’s argument that federalism was the best guarantee of democracy, along with his debate with Wootton.
Is Access to Food a Public Good?
Authors: Baics Gergely
Published: January 2018

This chapter provides a new account of the political economy of the public market system of provisioning, exploring how the common good of citizens' access to food was forged out of the conflicting and converging interests, rights, and responsibilities of the three constituent parties involved: residents, market vendors, and city officials. It then discusses the process of market deregulation, exploring how and why citizens' access to food was gradually pushed from the public to the private domain through the expansion of informal retail from the 1830s, followed by the market laws' repeal in 1843. Further, it details the shifting ground of public and private goods, outlining the fiscal connections between the liberalization of New York's formerly tightly regulated food economy and the city's huge investments in the Croton Waterworks.
The Landscape of Municipal Food Access
Authors: Baics Gergely
Published: January 2018

Chapter 1 argued that that the justification for the municipal market system was to sustain the public good of citizens' access to food. This chapter focuses on the extent to which the corresponding market infrastructure succeeded in fulfilling this political mandate. The analysis therefore shifts the discussion from the realm of political economy to evaluating the public markets' performance on the ground. In evaluating the public market system, the chapter pursues supply side and spatial analyses. Did New Yorkers gain access to adequate quantities of food supplies? Were all neighborhoods well provisioned, or were some areas unfairly burdened by too taxing a distance? And did the model muster effective means to sustain food quality? At the center of the inquiry is the geographic mandate of the public market system, which determined its success in meeting socially agreed-upon and politically mediated provisioning standards.
Withdraw the Bungling Hand of Government
Authors: Baics Gergely
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the geography of food access under the new free-market regime. It maps the retail food economy in relation to the city's land-use environment and broader commercial geography, while also situating food access within its local neighborhood context. In general, the analysis reveals the development of a novel, highly fragmented, and differentiated provisioning landscape, whereby residential location increasingly defined one's options of food access. At the end, the narrative returns to Catharine Market in the mid-nineteenth century, finding the public market's status as the economic, social, and cultural hub of its area compromised by the emerging retail corridor of Catharine Street as the new center of consumption and public space in the neighborhood.
Introduction
Authors: Parrish Susan Scott
Published: January 2018

This introductory chapter discusses the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. It argues that although historians have uncovered the details of what caused the flood to unfold the way it did, less work has been done to explain how, what was arguably the most publicly consuming environmental catastrophe of the twentieth century in the United States, assumed public meaning. The chapter then sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore how this disaster took on form and meaning as it was nationally and internationally represented across multiple media platforms, both while the flood moved inexorably southward and, subsequently, over the next two decades. The book begins by looking at the social and environmental causes of the disaster, and by briefly describing the sociological certitudes of the 1920s into which it broke. It then investigates how this disaster went public, and made publics, as it was mediated through newspapers, radio, blues songs, and theater benefits. Finally, it looks at how the flood comprises an important chapter in the history of literary modernism.
Far More Dangerous Times
Authors: Nucho Joanne Randa
Published: January 2018

This concluding chapter begins by summarizing the arguments in the preceding chapters. It then attempts to contextualize the present discourse about the Shi'a versus Sunni conflict within the region in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. It describes a “new sectarianism,” characterized by state actors, particularly in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, who “make decisions on the basis of a sectarian assessment of politics,” whereby Iran is presented as a Shi'a rival. The fact that these same state actors are opposed to Sunni Islamist groups makes it clear that the mobilization of sectarian rhetoric is, at least in some instances, a cynical tactic of scapegoating.
Introduction
Authors: Nucho Joanne Randa
Published: January 2018

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. This book reexamines sectarianism as a process, as opposed to an essentialized or primordial identity, through a focus on the urban infrastructures and services provided and managed, in part, by institutions affiliated with sectarian parties and religious organizations, as well as municipalities and transnational organizations. It builds on the careful work of scholars who situate the production of sectarianism in Lebanon as a modern social and political phenomenon that is dynamic and processual. The remainder of the chapter discusses the “roots” of sectarianism from the Ottoman Empire to the French mandate, Armenians in Lebanon, the making of an Armenian public sphere in Bourj Hammoud, and the civil war of 1975–90 and its aftermath.
Germaine de Staël
Authors: Fontana Biancamaria
Published: January 2018

Germaine de Staël (1766–1817) is perhaps best known today as a novelist, literary critic, and outspoken and independent thinker. Yet she was also a prominent figure in politics during the French Revolution. This book sheds new light on this often overlooked aspect of Staël's life and work, bringing vividly to life her unique experience as a political actor in a world where women had no place. The banker's daughter who became one of Europe's best-connected intellectuals, Staël was an exceptionally talented woman who achieved a degree of public influence to which not even her wealth and privilege would normally have entitled her. During the Revolution, when the lives of so many around her were destroyed, she succeeded in carving out a unique path for herself and making her views heard, first by the powerful men around her, later by the European public at large. The book provides the first in-depth look at her substantial output of writings on the theory and practice of the exercise of power, setting in sharp relief the dimension of Staël's life that she cared most about—politics. She was fascinated by the nature of public opinion, and believed that viable political regimes were founded on public trust and popular consensus. The book shows how Staël's ideas were shaped by the remarkable times in which she lived, and argues that it is only through a consideration of her political insights that we can fully understand Staël's legacy and its enduring relevance for us today.
A Passion for Politics
Authors: Fontana Biancamaria
Published: January 2018

This introductory chapter provides an account of Germaine de Staël's approach to politics that brings out the independence and originality of her contribution. Its main focus is the evolution of her views in the years 1789 to 1800, when she had the opportunity to take part (albeit intermittently) in French political life, and to set forth projects and strategies connected with it. The chapter touches only on Staël's best-known—and more widely studied—fictional and literary works, though naturally these do also have some political relevance. It has been suggested that the protracted exile into which she was forced during the empire was at the origin of Staël's major literary achievements, as it provided her with both the opportunity and the incentive to develop her true potential as a writer.
Interpreting the Opinion of the Majority of the Nation (1789–91)
Authors: Fontana Biancamaria
Published: January 2018

This chapter illustrates how, on her return to Paris, Germaine de Staël had found an unstable situation, marked by growing unrest in the provinces and by increasingly volatile, ever-shifting political allegiances. She had also rapidly become the object of vicious attacks in the press, emanating principally from royalist circles. The chapter cites Staël's article, which appeared in the Journal des indépendants, and explores how it reflects the preoccupations that dominated this particular phase in her public engagement: the ambition to persuade the scattered constitutional monarchists to pursue a single, coherent policy; the aspiration to see the same divided, quarrelsome factions turn into something resembling an organized party; the search for a credible leadership; and expressing the position of the moderate majority in the assembly.
Back to the Future
Authors: Fontana Biancamaria
Published: January 2018

This chapter discusses how Staël's analysis of the role of factions in the Revolution is better understood in the light of the final section of the Considerations, dedicated to England. Like her favorite Anglophile writers, Staël praised England's commercial achievements; its constitution; and its tradition of individual liberty, freedom of the press, and religious toleration. But what interested her above all was the functioning of English parliamentarianism and the nation's party system. All along she manifested great admiration for the Whig Party and its leaders: an admiration that was not affected by the pro-Bonapartist stand of Charles Fox's entourage, nor by the crippling divisions that wrecked the party during the French wars.
Germaine de Staël and Modern Politics
Authors: Fontana Biancamaria
Published: January 2018

This concluding chapter explains how Staël belonged, by education and by intellectual choice, to the party of those who preferred to think of change and reform in some continuity with the past. She thought there were limits to what the magic of speed and novelty could achieve, limits inscribed within the very identity of modern commercial society: the bonds dictated by public credit and international markets, those set by the rules of limited government, and the constraints created by the emerging aspirations of European peoples to decide their own destiny. However, the Revolution had shown her only too clearly how very wide the gap was between what the laws of progress dictated, on the one hand, and, on the other, what sheer political will could achieve.
The Origins of the Scandinavian Kingdoms
Authors: Bagge Sverre
Published: January 2018

This chapter focuses on the origins of the Scandinavian kingdoms, beginning with a discussion of early Scandinavian society. The history of Scandinavia goes back to the first settlements which date to the end of the last glacial age around 10,000 BC. Already during the last centuries BC, a largely homogenous agricultural zone had developed in Denmark, southern Sweden, the coastal regions of Norway, and southern and western Finland. The rest of Scandinavia was dominated by low-intensive agriculture, hunting and gathering, or pastoral nomadism. After citing examples that point to some continuity in the nature of Scandinavian society before and after the rise of the kingdoms and the introduction of Christianity, the chapter considers Scandinavia's greater involvement in Christian Europe through the Viking expeditions. It also examines the division of Scandinavia into three kingdoms, along with their foreign policy until around 1300.
State Formation, Social Change, and the Division of Power
Authors: Bagge Sverre
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines state formation, social change, and the division of power in the Scandinavian kingdoms, focusing in particular on the degree of bureaucratization in general and the extent to which it increased the power of the central government. It first considers social stratification in the High Middle Ages before discussing sources of royal and ecclesiastical revenues such as taxes, fines, and tolls, as well as the income of the Church. It also looks at major changes in the character and importance of Scandinavian trade and how the growth in trade increased town populations and led to the foundation of new towns. Finally, it explains how the division of power in contemporary society—at least at the central level—becomes a question of the relationship between the monarchy, the Church, and the secular aristocracy.
Literature
Authors: Bagge Sverre
Published: January 2018

There is a continuous tradition of historical writing from the Middle Ages to the present day in all three of the Scandinavian kingdoms, as well as in Iceland, though admittedly it began later (not until the early fourteenth century) in Sweden than in the other countries. The works dating from the Middle Ages have already been discussed. Those of the Early Modern Period are of interest as evidence of learning and for an understanding of how “history” was viewed at the time, and also because they contain a number of documents from the Middle Ages whose originals have been lost. However, the beginning of modern scholarly historical writing is usually dated to the early nineteenth century, in Scandinavia as in the rest of Europe. The professionalization of history, which started in Germany, quickly spread to Scandinavia. Throughout Europe, this professionalization was related to a national revival that typically placed great emphasis on a nation’s medieval past....
Looking for Home: The Elusive Right to Family Life
Authors: Bhabha Jacqueline
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines how legal and social structure affects the exercise of family life, noting that the right to family life is a crucial bedrock of a just migration policy. It first provides an overview of attachment and belonging as key components of childhood, arguing that delays and other, more enduring legal obstacles to reunion unsettle the bedrock of family life on which children are meant to be raised. It then considers the difficulties facing refugee families and immigrants who leave home to improve their economic prospects, along with the different hurdles to family reunification for children left behind by immigrant parents. It also discusses children's right to family reunion, European human rights law, and children's reunification with parents in the United States. The chapter concludes by looking at smuggling as a means of family reunification.
Staying Home: The Elusive Benefits of Child Citizenship
Authors: Bhabha Jacqueline
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the dilemmas confronting citizen children whose parents are refused permission to reside in the children's home country and who thus face “constructive deportation” from their own country. It begins with two contrasting immigration stories, both concerning families of U.S. citizen children and noncitizen mothers who must make the choice between family separation and exile from their family home. It then explains the importance of citizenship as a social fact and as the legal correlate of territorial belonging, along with the primacy of nondeportability as an incident of citizenship. It also considers the political and legal attack, in the United States and elsewhere, on the citizenship rights of children, and birthright citizenship in particular. The chapter goes on to compare European and American approaches to child citizenship and highlights the ambivalent legal framework in the United States regarding the rights of citizen children.
David and Goliath: Children’s Unequal Battle for Refugee Protection
Authors: Bhabha Jacqueline
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the obstacles faced by children in their quest for refugee protection, asking why the commonsense expectation that child asylum seekers would be treated generously—indeed more generously than adults—does not materialize in practice. After providing an overview of the situation of children living in refugee camps as well as the hardships they encounter after they manage to leave or avoid refugee camps to seek asylum in developed states, the chapter considers the perilous journeys that child refugees have to endure as well as the legal challenge surrounding the scope of asylum protection for children. It also discusses the three different forms of child persecution and how child asylum seekers are affected by extreme brutality and persecution within gangs.
Twin Peaks
Authors: Colander David , Kupers Roland
Published: January 2018

This chapter provides an overview of the book’s main themes. It discusses the notion of a complexity frame, which is a fundamentally different policy frame provided by complexity science. The central policy choice in a complexity frame is not the market or the government. The goal of policy in the complexity frame is not to choose one or the other. Instead, policy is seen as affecting a complex evolving system that cannot be controlled. But while it cannot be controlled, it can be influenced, and policymakers have to continually think how to work with evolutionary pressures, and try to guide those pressures toward desirable ends. Within the complexity frame, top-down control actions are a last resort. Their use suggests that you have failed in your previous attempts to get the ecostructure right.
The Complexity Policy Frame
Authors: Colander David , Kupers Roland
Published: January 2018

This chapter spells out the complexity policy frame in more detail. It begins with a brief introduction to complexity science, since it is the basis for the policy frame itself. It then outlines the complexity policy frame that sees the entire social system as a complex evolving system, and spells out a role for government within that frame. While this new frame agrees that the system cannot be controlled, it does accept that government policy is crucial for the system to work and sees government as playing a role in the system’s evolution. One aspect of policy involves attempting to make that role better—people, through government, and in partnership with private institutions, help influence the evolution of the economy in ways that they believe will be positive. This is a much more difficult policy role for government than any envisioned by the standard policy model, which sees government as outside of the system correcting for market failures.
Complexity
Authors: Colander David , Kupers Roland
Published: January 2018

This chapter focuses on Stephen Wolfram, an early advocate of the importance of complexity science. He founded the Journal of Complex Systems back in 1987, and saw the transformational aspect of computer analysis long before it was generally understood. But his ego and his disdain for standard scientific conventions kept him and the complexity science he favored outside the mainstream scientific establishment that discourages such grandiose claims. In 2002, his self-published book A New Kind of Science was seen by the scientific community as the delusions of a former wunderkind. It is argued that Wolfram’s book represents the insights of a brilliant visionary about “a new tool of science”—computational tools that earlier scientists could hardly have imagined. These computational tools provide not only new tools for analysis, but also a new vision of how to frame thinking about complex processes. It is the blending of the computational tools and the vision that makes up complexity science.
Nudging toward a Complexity Policy Frame
Authors: Colander David , Kupers Roland
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the interface of complexity with the policy sphere of economics. Economic policy thinking is slowly changing, just as theoretical and statistical thinking in economics is changing. The chapter discusses developments in economic policy thinking that are incorporating complexity ideas. It argues that accepting complexity means that the standard policy model of economists is just one of many models out there, and the acceptance of the complexity frame will lead to the development of many more competing models. However, despite complexity’s advances into microeconomic policy, complexity ideas have made little headway in macroeconomics, where they should be making the largest impact.
Implementing Influence Policy
Authors: Colander David , Kupers Roland
Published: January 2018

This chapter first discusses the goals of complexity policy and how consideration of those goals is different than in the standard policy frame. It then discusses the way in which complexity models and tools can be and have been used. It argues that the goals of society are not compatible with the assumptions underlying the GDP maximization goal. To the degree that they aren’t, the exclusive focus on GDP is not a reasonable shortcut. The complexity policy frame does not change any of those issues; but it does encourage policy makers to think of goals first, and models second, and thereby make it less likely that they will be mislead by the shortcut.
Laissez-Faire Activism
Authors: Colander David , Kupers Roland
Published: January 2018

This chapter reconsiders the structure and governance issues of corporations and enterprises more generally as a concrete example of how a complexity approach changes the way we think about policy. It shows how a small change in the ecostructure, especially when applied at the formative embryonic stage of emerging institutions, can fundamentally change society from the bottom up, without massive state intervention. It argues that over time in some important sectors of the economy where social goals are important, existing for-profit and nonprofit enterprises can be replaced by socially friendly for-benefit enterprises, which are designed to allow social goals to be achieved in a sustainable way from the bottom up. The goal of the policy being advocated is to encourage the development of an institutional environment that is friendly to bottom-up policy solutions so that new socially focused enterprises can emerge and develop.
Getting the Ecostructure of Government Right
Authors: Colander David , Kupers Roland
Published: January 2018

In the complexity frame, governmental policy is best thought of as operating in ecostructure space where institutions are designed. Its goal is to foster the creation of an ecostructure space that encourages creativity and bottom-up initiatives that create the institutions within which incentives are created and goals are formalized. The goal in the complexity frame is not to foster any specific ecostructure, but to let the ecostructure emerge, adapt, and evolve, and that includes changing government itself. This chapter discusses alternative forms of government, and how if one is going to use top-down policies, the structure of government institutions might be changed to better achieve the desired results.
The Lost Agenda
Authors: Colander David , Kupers Roland
Published: January 2018

This book has discussed new techniques and methods to address the societal challenges we face. These new approaches change the way policy is framed. The book is an attempt to provide a new compass for policy discussions. This chapter discusses why the complexity frame matters; the evaporation of the optimism that existed in the twentieth century about our ability to deal with major societal challenges; the need for the government to create an ecostructure conducive to allow people the institutional space to self-organize in new ways to solve social problems; and how the complexity policy frame encourages individuals on all sides to be civil.
Plato on Divination and Nondiscursive Knowing
Authors: Struck Peter T.
Published: January 2018

This chapter attempts to lay out a general sense of how divination functions in Plato's work. It focuses not on how seriously Plato takes divination, but rather on how he takes it. Irrespective of any endorsement he may have hinted at toward the idea of knowledge arriving via traditional divinatory pathways, in what particular ways does he talk about it? The analysis proceeds from a sense that Plato uses divination as an authoritative piece of his cultural context, to specify with greater precision his own ideas about ways of knowing; and as he is doing this, he helps us understand the nature of divination, as it is understood in his time. In general in his corpus, it is argued that Plato treats divination (in a rainbow of tones from irony to seriousness) as being based on a claim about a particular form of cognition, one marked especially for being nondiscursive.
Posidonius and Other Stoics on Extra-Sensory Knowledge
Authors: Struck Peter T.
Published: January 2018

This chapter suggestes that Stoic conceptions of divinatory knowing promote the idea that the cosmos itself is a single unified animal. This notion is somewhat familiar, given the parallel conception in the Timaeus, a text that the Stoics use to build some of their own core views, but it will require a substantial amount of unpacking to see all the ways it is pertinent to the Stoics' thinking on divination. When approaching the topic, their main unit of analysis is no longer the discrete individual human being, with this or that hidden process humming away, but rather the cosmos as a whole, which has its own internal activities that result in surplus knowledge for the human individuals embedded in it. In the Stoic view, the human creature amounts to a tiny corpuscle moving about inside a vast intelligent creature. Human sentience is embedded in the sentience of the larger whole, and in some circumstances the lines between the two are not meaningfully distinct.
What Anyone Would Do, Here
Authors: Rosenblum Nancy L.
Published: January 2018

This chapter considers neighbors as enforcers. Neighbors surveil, instruct, monitor, correct, and reproach, and become indignant when those living nearby have not learned the lay of the land, or rudely map their own way. Neighbors enforcing familiar, comfortable ways of doing things differ from speaking out in response to a singular offense. These are the kinds of neighbors who harbor a broad set of expectations for appropriate conduct, and who judge that those who do not conform require correction or exclusion. The chapter explores the moral psychology of neighbors incensed (and fearful), and identifies two moral taproots of the warrant for minding one another's business in the spirit of reproach and with the aim of repair.
Live and Let Live
Authors: Rosenblum Nancy L.
Published: January 2018

This chapter looks at how, in mistrust-creating situations where chronic conditions of disorder, mayhem, and organized violence befoul encounters among neighbors, the democracy of everyday life is tested more severely. Privacy—understood first and simply as protecting oneself from intrusive authorities and from one another—is the felt necessity that makes live and let live a moral imperative. Live and let live enjoins reticence—refusing to broadcast or report what one knows when revelation would have potentially disturbing, even life-altering consequences for his/her neighbors. Live and let live also encourages a characteristic demeanor and form of conduct signaling recognition of mutual vulnerability. Live and let live is the essential “safety net” element of the democracy of everyday life.
Killing
Authors: Rosenblum Nancy L.
Published: January 2018

This chapter analyzes the ugly face of the democracy of everyday life aborted. Killing neighbors is the outer tail, the far reach of derangement, and the convergence of murder and home is a unique horror. Lynching is the homegrown American case of neighbors killing neighbors. Victims often knew the people who mutilated and killed them; murderers knew their victims. Lynching was a public spectacle, or in any case, a public secret: these “feasts of blood” were “owned by all the town.” Still, neighbors were not all implicated in the same way in this intimate violence. They may be unable to arrest terrorization and killing but they can carry on in the interstices of horror and warn, aid, comfort, protest, and protect.
Introduction
Authors: Ihnat Kati
Published: January 2018

This book examines the development of the Marian cult in Anglo-Norman England, a period covering the years 1066–1154, focusing on the underlying desire and considerable effort toward increasing devotion to the Virgin Mary. It shows how Mary's saintly identity was shaped as two sides of one coin: she was the all-merciful mother but also the resistant opponent of the Jews. It explores the connection between the different manifestations of Marian devotion: how liturgy shaped theology, and how theology justified liturgy; how literature was inspired by liturgical practice and went on to inspire people to perform the liturgy in particular ways; and how the performance of veneration to Mary as mother of mercy was reinforced through various means in different media. The book highlights the introduction of Jews into diverse sources designed for the exaltation of Mary as a key way in which monks developed her cult.
Praising Mary
Authors: Ihnat Kati
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the monastic means of addressing Mary in prayer and song in order to highlight the active contribution made by monks in the Anglo-Norman sphere to her devotion as mother of mercy. It begins with a discussion of the various feasts that were celebrated in England in honor of Mary, including the feast of the Purification and the Byzantine feasts of Mary's Conception and Presentation in the Temple. It then considers how devotion to Mary was manifested in the liturgy through masses and offices that both replaced and supplemented the regular hours of the day. It also looks at how the liturgical celebration of Mary as a saint became supplemented in the twelfth century by new forms of prayer. Finally, it explains how the unbelief of Jews was exploited to emphasize the folly of refusing the virgin birth and Mary's redemptive role in the history of salvation.
Understanding Mary
Authors: Ihnat Kati
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the role played by theology in providing justification for devotion to Mary, with particular emphasis on a series of bold treatises that set out elaborate arguments to demonstrate that Mary was distinct and far superior to all other human beings. It first considers how renewed interest in the problem of the Incarnation became a crucial basis for the impulse in twelfth-century theology to reconsider Mary's place in Christian history before discussing Eadmer's De conceptione sanctae Mariae, a treatise composed circa 1125 that provides one of the principal testimonies for the controversy that surrounded the Immaculate Conception. It also explores questions regarding the doctrine of Mary's bodily Assumption, along with the debate that places Mary at the center of the issue of conversion.
Conclusion
Authors: Ihnat Kati
Published: January 2018

This book has explored how miracles, liturgy, and theology all combined in the Marian cult to give Mary unprecedented significance while emphasizing the opposition of the Jews. As much as she was shaped as the mother of mercy and queen of heaven, Mary was understood to be the bane of the Jews, tirelessly seeking their conversion and punishment. In the former role, Mary was the source of salvation. Jews became useful witnesses to her soteriological powers, demonstrating that even her most obstinate enemies could be overcome in the end. As a result, Mary emerged all the more powerful from her battle with the unbelieving Jews. Because Jews were part of the Marian miracle story in Christian theology and narrative, the growth of her cult drew Jews into the limelight. This concluding chapter considers the implications of the tendency to see Jews as willfully violent toward Mary and her followers.
The Flamen and Flaminica Dialis
Authors: DiLuzio Meghan J.
Published: January 2018

This chapter shows that the flamen and flaminica Dialis served the gods together as priest and priestess of Jupiter. Until fairly recently, however, modern scholars have either denied or heavily qualified the official priestly status of the flaminica Dialis, describing her instead as the Roman equivalent of the pastor's wife. This analogy is inappropriate in light of the ancient evidence for her status and religious activities. The chapter then reconstructs the flaminica's ritual activities and establishes a new framework for understanding them. The ancient evidence, though often intractable, demonstrates that the flaminica Dialis was a religious official in her own right with her own role, both in separate rituals that she was responsible for independently and in rituals that she shared with her husband, the flamen.
Salian Virgins, Sacerdotes, and Ministrae
Authors: DiLuzio Meghan J.
Published: January 2018

This chapter looks at sacerdotes (priestesses), particularly those associated with the public cults of Mars, Fortuna Muliebris, Bona Dea, Liber, Magna Mater, and Ceres. It also discusses the female support personnel. Without these women, many of whom were libertae (freedwomen) and servae publicae (public slaves), the ritual system would have ground to a halt. As a group, these priestesses and cultic assistants further complicate traditional accounts of Roman “priesthood” and confirm that women were involved in official religious service at nearly every level. Of all the priestesses under consideration in this chapter, the enigmatic saliae virgins (Salian Virgins) may be the most intriguing. The chapter analyzes how these priestesses dressed, where they sacrificed, and with whom they were associated in the ritual sphere.
The Vestal Virgins
Authors: DiLuzio Meghan J.
Published: January 2018

This chapter focuses on the Vestal Virgins. The six Vestal Virgins belonged to the pontifical college (collegium pontificum), the largest and one of Rome's most prestigious religious orders. Chosen for their role between the ages of six and ten, they were committed to serve the cult of Vesta for a minimum of thirty years. They were synonymous with the continued welfare of the city and inseparable from the Roman's view of themselves. In addition to guaranteeing Rome's future, the Vestal priesthood was cherished as one of the most ancient religious institutions in the city. The chapter then considers the social profile of prospective priestesses and explains how they were chosen for their extraordinary role in Roman society. It also outlines their legal status, which set them apart from ordinary Romans, and the privileges they were granted in exchange for their service to the state.
The Costume of the Vestal Virgins
Authors: DiLuzio Meghan J.
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the Vestal costume. Like the dress of a respectable matrona, the costume of a Vestal rendered visible her social status and moral probity. The full Vestal regalia included the seni crines (six-tressed) hairstyle, a headdress composed of the infula and vittae (woolen bands), a veil known as the suffibulum, a palla (mantle), the soft shoes of a priestess, and a long tunica (tunic). Through a detailed analysis of the Vestal costume, the chapter analyzes how its constituent parts worked together to define and represent a Vestal's position as a public priestess and ideal virgin. These two facets of her identity were inextricably linked and absolutely central to her role in Roman society. A Vestal's virginity guaranteed her ritual purity and her ability to secure the inviolability of the city. In addition to these vital ritual and symbolic functions, her absolute castilas provided a template of feminine virtue after which other women could model their behavior.
Conclusion
Authors: DiLuzio Meghan J.
Published: January 2018

This concluding chapter argues that priestly service offered women opportunities for leadership, prestige, and even, on occasion, authority, all in the name of maintaining the pax deorum—Rome's relationship with her gods. Some priestesses served cults that were restricted to women, but many men and women served the gods together. This principle applied at the level of household, local, and citywide cult. The saliae virgines demonstrate that cooperation between the genders was not limited to husbands and wives. In fact, in his symbolic picture of Rome's permanence and his own poetic immortality, Horace links the pontifex and the Vestal, and he positions both on the Capitol. In cults operating within the public sphere, women were neither marginal nor incidental. Rather, they served as indispensable participants in a fundamentally cooperative endeavor.