bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Introduction
Authors: Basl John
Published: March 2019

The introduction provides a characterization of the ethic of life, an ethic on which all living organisms are deserving of some level of moral concern. There are many philosophical and religious traditions which might be viewed as endorsing such an ethic. The chapter articulates how the ethic of life has been modified, clarified, and developed in the Western academic tradition and contrasts this view with other views about moral status within this tradition: anthropocentrism, sentientism, and holism. The introduction then provides an overview of the conclusions that will be defended, including that the ethic of life is mistaken and must be rejected. A summary of each chapter of the book is provided along with the sketch of the overall argument of the book. The introduction closes with a discussion of the methodology employed throughout: the method of reflective equilibrium. The chapter defends this method by contrasting it with alternative approaches to settling ethical issues.
Challenges to Biocentrism
Authors: Basl John
Published: March 2019

Chapter 2 takes up two distinct sets of challenges to biocentrism. The first concerns the relationship between moral status and normative theory. The challenge is that there is no defending the claim that nonsentient organisms have moral status without defending a particular normative theory. This chapter defends the view that questions about the bearers of moral status can be settled independently of issues of normative theory. The second challenge, the subjectivist challenge, rests on the claim that there is no satisfactory account of welfare that does not depend in some way on the bearer of welfare having cognitive capacities, that attributions of welfare to nonsentient things are illusory, derivative, etc. Here the chapter makes space for the welfare of nonsentient organisms by defending an objective-list view of welfare and using the subjectivist challenge to set conditions of adequacy for a theory of welfare for nonsentient organisms.
Police, Prosecutors, and Ping-Pong: Legal Barriers
Authors: Sundstrom Lisa McIntosh , Sperling Valerie , Sayoglu Melike
Published: March 2019

Chapter 3 focuses on the obstacles inherent in the domestic legal system itself, inhibiting women from making claims about gender discrimination in Russian police structures and courts. Here we examine both the legal obstacles and the practical barriers to bringing such cases. The law enforcement system creates incentives for police not to investigate cases that are hard to solve, such as on discrimination. In cases of domestic violence, court rulings may not produce satisfying results. Courts are reluctant to recognize gender-based employment discrimination. Sexual harassment in the workplace is not acknowledged in Russian law. Lawyers’ lack of legal training in discrimination law adds to the difficulty of proving discrimination in court.
Introduction
Authors: Foster Susan Leigh
Published: March 2019

The Introduction poses the central question of the book: how is value defined and determined in dance? In answering this question it puts forth a definition of value as a central element within human life, but one that is always determined in relation to the specific histories, contexts, and people where it actualizes. Predicated on the symbolic encoding of actions as well as objects, value is often determined through exchange in which one object, service, or event is deemed equivalent to another. The Introduction then considers the general context within which the author’s study of dance as a form of exchange developed: the neoliberal, global marketplace; the increase in service forms of labor; the desire for authenticity; and the precarity of workers. The book argues that despite its ephemerality, dance manifests a materiality that makes it available for study as a form of social exchange. Teachers and students, choreographers and dancers, and performers and viewers all exchange dance. The study considers how value is produced during these exchanges by focusing on two types of transactions: commodity and gift.
Introduction
Authors: Lyons Nathan
Published: March 2019

This introductory chapter sets up the core question of Signs in the Dust: how is cultural meaning related to natural materiality? How is culture related to nature? A brief orientation is given to the contemporary nature-culture discussion that is proceeding across the humanities and sciences. Special attention is given to Bruno Latour’s claim that modern thought is characterised by a nature/culture dichotomy—this view of Latour’s Moderns is the foil against which the theory of ‘natural culture and cultural nature’ is cast. The chapter also forecasts the argument that is made across the book and clarifies the scope of that argument.
Sign
Authors: Lyons Nathan
Published: March 2019

Part I of this book sets out a semiotic theory of human culture. This chapter uses the semiotics of John Poinsot (1589–1644, also known as John of St Thomas) to show how the whole scope of human cultural activity can be understood as at root the work of signs. Poinsot has a very wide-ranging understanding of signification, which includes natural, customary, and stipulated signs; physical and formal/psychological signs; and perceptual and communicative signs. Crucially, a single metaphysics of relations is the common basis for this whole spectrum of signs, so that natural and cultural signs count univocally as instances of signification. Poinsot’s notion of semiotic custom, in which conventional signs are ‘naturalised’ through habit to act as natural signs, is an important theme (to which chapters 5 and 6 will return in an evolutionary context). Poinsot’s semiotics illuminates the full anthropological ‘breadth’ of culture.
Word
Authors: Lyons Nathan
Published: March 2019

This chapter gives a new, semiotic reading of Thomas Aquinas’ Trinitarian theology, in order to establish the theological ‘height’ of culture. Aquinas develops Augustine’s psychological analogy in explicitly semiotic terms, so that the divine Word is the sign of the Father. He confirms this also in terms of the Son as name and image. Because for Aquinas signs are a kind of relation, his semiotic analysis can be integrated with his notion of divine persons as substantial relations. Aquinas’ semiotic Trinity can be understood as an absolute ‘cultural nature’, in which the divine nature is identical with the semiosis of the persons (signified origin, expressed sign, eternal interpretation). This theological claim suggests a new vantage on the nature-culture question: all created natures possess a cultural dimension, reflecting the absolute cultural nature that is their origin.
Habit
Authors: Lyons Nathan
Published: March 2019

This chapter takes up the theory of habit developed by Félix Ravaisson (1813–1900) to consider how culture proceeds in non-human species. It argues that the biological body is the fundamental medium of meaning-making. Ravaisson takes Aristotle’s notion of habit as a second nature and extends it beyond the human polis to include the whole biological order. Habit takes the intentional ideas of organisms and embodies them in their real bodies; it is a universal power of ‘second-naturing’ that integrates matter with mind. Ravaisson’s account of habit can combine with Poinsot’s account of semiotic custom, so that the whole of organic life—its meanings and its materiality—can be understood as the locus of second-naturing. The biosemiotic Ravaissonism that emerges here makes a bold proposal: nature is not only the producer of cultures; nature is itself cultural, because its form is shaped over evolutionary time by the semiotically executed habits of organisms.
Evolution
Authors: Lyons Nathan
Published: March 2019

This chapter takes up the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis in order to empirically enrich the nature-culture theory developed thus far. It considers three themes in the EES—phenotypic plasticity, genetic accommodation, and niche construction—and uses these to argue that the agency of organisms has a nontrivial influence on the evolutionary futures of species. The upshot of this argument is that habits are heritable (though this Lamarckian theme is now to be understood in a Darwinian context). The evolutionary influence of organism agency implies a phylogenetic expression of art in nature. An evolutionary extension of Poinsot’s customary sign is also suggested here, so that nature is ‘habituated’ in its forms and ‘customised’ in its meanings by the natural art of evolution. There is, then, a cultural dimension present through the whole biological order and through all of evolutionary history.
Pattern
Authors: Lyons Nathan
Published: March 2019

This chapter uses Aquinas’ doctrine of intentions in the medium to develop a new theory of physiosemiosis (signification in inanimate nature). For Aquinas, intentionality is present not only in mental states but also in bodily senses and inanimate media such as air and water. By this means, for Aquinas, inanimate things participate to some degree in the cognitive processes that are proper to cognitive beings. Intentions in the medium can be understood in modern terms as patterns of matter and energy, which signify the physical things that caused those patterns. There is, then, a rudimentary action of semiosis in the exchange of matter and energy among inanimate things, and the semiotic patterns here give a very diminished but—extraordinary as it sounds—nonetheless true expression of the movement of signification that constitutes culture. This points to a semiotic ontology: being is sign.
Dust
Authors: Lyons Nathan
Published: March 2019

This chapter conducts a thought experiment, which compares the immaterial culture of Thomistic angels with the corporeal culture of humans to clarify the particular contribution that matter makes to cultural life. This suggests two perfections of matter. First is the ‘detour through the real’ that is enforced by matter. Whereas angels use purely intentional signs to know and communicate, corporeal creatures necessarily use material signs, which are not intentional but real. This reflects Trinitarian knowledge and expression, which proceeds through the real sign of the divine Word. Second is the process of biological generation. Whereas an individual angel sustains its own species, organisms must generate one from another within the one shared nature, and this ontological dependence and mutuality reflects the Trinitarian procession of persons within the one divine nature. These perfections of material existence mean that dust is a blessing to the sign, just as signs are a blessing to dust.
Conclusion
Authors: Lyons Nathan
Published: March 2019

This concluding chapter situates the theory of natural culture and cultural nature in relation to one of its closest philosophical alternatives, ‘soft dualism’. Soft dualism includes a range of recent philosophies that use a broadly Kantian strategy to preserve cultural phenomena from scientific reductionism. Soft dualism saves culture by insulating it from nature. The theory recommended in this book, on the other hand, saves culture by inflating nature. Therefore, instead of culture ‘transcending’ nature, it is better to say that nature is simply being itself when it is being cultural. The chapter ends with some remarks on the Incarnation, in which the divine Word becomes a sign in the dust.
The Idea of International Human Rights Law
Authors: Wheatley Steven
Published: March 2019

International Human Rights Law has emerged as an academic subject in its own right, separate from, but still related to, International Law. This book explains the distinctive nature of the new discipline by examining the influence of the moral concept of human rights on general international law. Rather than make use of moral philosophy or political theory, the work explains the term ‘human rights’ by examining its usage in international law practice, on the understanding that words are given meaning through their use. Relying on complexity theory to make sense of the legal practice in the United Nations, the core human rights treaties, and customary international law, The Idea of International Human Rights Law shows how a moral concept of human rights emerged, and then influenced the international law doctrine and practice on human rights, a fact that explains the fragmentation of international law and the special nature of International Human Rights Law.
Knowing by Perceiving
Authors: Millar Alan
Published: March 2019

Epistemological discussions of perception usually focus on something other than knowledge. They consider how beliefs arising from perception can be justified. With the retreat from knowledge to justified belief there is a retreat from perception to the sensory experiences implicated by perception. On the most widely held approach, perception drops out of the picture other than as the usual means by which we are furnished with the experiences that are supposed to be the real source of justification—experiences that are conceived to be no different in kind from those we could have had if we had been perfectly hallucinating. In this book an alternative perspective is developed that explicates perceptual knowledge in terms of recognitional abilities, and perceptual justification in terms of perceptually known truths as to what we perceive to be so. Justified belief is regarded as belief founded on known truths. The treatment of perceptual knowledge is situated within a broader conception of epistemology and philosophical method. Attention is paid to contested conceptions of perceptual experience, to knowledge from perceived indicators, and to the standing of background presuppositions that inform our thinking. Throughout, the discussion is sensitive to ways in which key concepts figure in ordinary thinking, while being resolutely focused on what knowledge is, not just on how we think of it.
Hermes and Heracles
Authors: Larson Jennifer
Published: March 2019

The similarities between the myths of Hermes (especially as presented in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes) and certain elements of the Heracles myths are substantial enough to indicate a relationship. Specifically, the myth of the struggle for Apollo’s tripod has to do with Heracles’ progress toward acceptance as an Olympian god. The composer of the Homeric Hymn was reacting in some degree to the Heracles myth.
Hide and Go Seek
Authors: Clay Jenny Strauss
Published: March 2019

This contribution explores Hermes’ role in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the former, his benevolent qualities as guide, mediator, and psychopomp are emphasized. Many of the same features return in the latter epic, but his special relationship with the Odyssey’s hero comes to the fore, especially through their common characteristics as trickster figures and as experts at disguise, seduction, and their rhetorical skills. An examination of the god’s role, especially in the Odyssey, shows that the his characteristics, modes of action, and perhaps above all his playfulness in the Homeric Hymn are already present in Homer.
Hermes Iambicus
Authors: Capra Andrea , Nobili Cecilia
Published: March 2019

The present chapter explores the iambic role of Hermes both within and outside iambic poetry, with a focus on the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, which can be construed as the mythical pre-history of the iambic genre, and on the fragments of Hipponax, whose predilection for Hermes calls for an explanation. In both cases, Iambic Hermes emerges as a metamorphic trickster, promoting poetic and linguistic innovation with an unprecedented emphasis on the signifier. This suggests a strong continuity between iambic poetry and its “pre-history.”
Lascivus Puer
Authors: Myers Micah Young
Published: March 2019

This paper explores Ovid’s reception of hymnic traditions relating to Hermes in the Cupid–Apollo episode of Metamorphoses Book 1. Ovid’s depiction of Cupid alludes to Hermes in his quarrel with Apollo, as depicted in Alcaeus’ Hymn to Hermes and the Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Ovid’s allusions evoke the hymns’ thematic focus on theft, desire, competition, and divine prerogatives and attributes, themes that are also salient to the Metamorphoses more broadly. After exploring parallels between the Cupid–Apollo episode and the Hermes hymn tradition, I consider how Ovid, having presented a “Mercurial” Cupid, depicts an erotically motivated Mercury in subsequent episodes of Metamorphoses Books 1–2 and Fasti 5.663–92. Finally, the paper compares examples from ancient religion, art, and literature that link Eros/Cupid and Aphrodite/Venus with Hermes/Mercury, and considers ramifications of Ovid’s allusions to the Hermes hymn tradition in the Augustan context, particularly in relation to the princeps’ connections to the divine sphere.
Communicating with the Divine
Authors: Collard Hélène
Published: March 2019

Historians and archaeologists have long been interested in the Greek herm. However, several aspects of this topic can still be refined. The usual questions about these monuments bear on their origin, their signification, and their function. Many works have already addressed the question of the origin of the hermaic form, which seems rather clear today. But some uncertainties remain about the role, the signification and, in particular, about the function of herms: were they divine images, cult images of the god Hermes, or only boundary markers? By investigating iconographical evidence, this paper aims to shed new light on these questions.
Hermes as Visible in Votive Inscriptions
Authors: Wallensten Jenny
Published: March 2019

The chapter presents a corpus of votive inscriptions to Hermes. Who dedicated to the god, for what reasons, and to which gods was he associated? It comments on chronological and geographical aspects and proceeds to discuss some themes visible in the collected material. First, it examines why women are not frequent among worshippers visible in votive inscriptions, in contrast to Hermes’ frequent female company in myth and cult, second, how Hermes appears as the protector of magistrates, often in the company of Aphrodite, and third, the significance of the denomination New Hermes.
EU Health Law & Policy
Authors: de Ruijter Anniek
Published: March 2019

This book describes the expansion of EU power in health care and public health and analyses the implications of this expansion on EU health values and rights. The main conclusion of the book is that the EU is de facto balancing fundamental rights and values relating to health, implicitly taking on obligations for safeguarding fundamental rights in the field of health and affecting individuals’ rights sometimes without an explicit legal competence to do so. This brings to light instances where EU health policy has implications for fundamental rights and values without the possibility to challenge the exercise of power of the EU in human health. This begs the question of whether subsidiarity is still the most relevant legal principle for the division of powers and tasks among the Member States, particularly when EU policy and law involves the politically sensitive areas of health care and public health. This question draws out the parameter for continuing the debate on the role of the European Union in promoting its own values and the wellbeing of its peoples, in light of its ever-growing role in human health issues.
Responding to Applicants’ Claims of Inadequate Defence
Authors: Hoyle Carolyn , Sato Mai
Published: March 2019

This chapter examines the Criminal Cases Review Commission's response to applicants' claims of inadequate defence or breaches of procedural rules by their legal representative at trial. It first considers the Commission's response to ‘typical’ applications, where the applicant accuses his/her defence solicitor or counsel of procedural irregularities or incompetence, before presenting a case study that illustrates how the Commission handles a particular category of wrongful conviction cases: refugees and asylum seekers who entered the UK illegally. These cases highlight the potential for a more reciprocal relationship between the Commission and its ‘decision field’ and ‘surround’, and most adopted a clear legal decision frame. The chapter also discusses the challenges in responding to claims of legal incompetence and concludes with an analysis of the Commission's proactive responses to inadequate defence and legal representation.
Working Cooperatively with Other Criminal Justice Institutions
Authors: Hoyle Carolyn , Sato Mai
Published: March 2019

This chapter examines how the Criminal Cases Review Commission works with two members of the criminal justice system in conducting investigations: the police and the Court of Appeal. It analyses a variety of cases, including those rare cases where the Commission uses its powers — under section 19 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995 — to appoint an investigating officer to carry out enquiries to assist in the exercise of any of its functions. The chapter shows how the Commission deals with the investigating officer in section 19 cases and how it incorporates the results of the investigation into its decision on whether or not to refer a case back to the Court. It also explores the Commission's decision frames when it manages a section 19 investigation and when it works for the Court on section 15 investigations. Finally, it looks at section 15 investigations that involved alleged jury bias or misconduct.
The Making of a Super-Magnate
Authors: Patterson Robert B.
Published: March 2019

This chapter is a study of the sources, locations, and uses of the lands which made Earl Robert a super-magnate in England and lord of a barony which stretched from western Lower Normandy across England to South Wales. In Normandy, his marriage made him lord of Torigni-sur-Vire, Évrecy, and Creully well as prévôt of Caen. Robert’s English honor of Gloucester was the greatest source of his wealth. His demesne was concentrated in six Severn Valley and southwestern counties and notable for its urban holdings such as at Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Burford, London, and especially Bristol, the most valuable and militarily secure. In South Wales Robert was lord of the honor of Glamorgan and its dependency, the lordship of Gwynllŵg. Glamorgan gave the earl the jurisdictional rights of a Marcher lord.
Seeing the Unseen
Authors: McLeish Tom
Published: March 2019

The first mode of imagination—the visual—is shared by art and science. The chapter starts with an account of the history of visual perception, working though the ancient theory of ‘extramission’, because it sheds light on the role of the mind’s active projection of visual impressions on the world in the interpretation of incoming images. The commonality of scientific and artistic visual imagination is partially to be found in mappings between spaces of three to two dimensions, exemplified perfectly by astronomy, and the work of medieval painter Giotto. Comparisons of the creative process in a recent astrophysical discovery are made with a contemporary artist (Graeme Willson) and through a detailed study of a lesser-known work by Monet.
Correspondence of Means and Ends Bias
Authors: Abrahms Max
Published: March 2019

This chapter shows why terrorism is a losing political tactic. In theory, terrorism serves as a political communication strategy by amplifying the demands of the perpetrators. In reality, terrorism fails because it’s awful at conveying the political goals of the perpetrators. The author explains why terrorism malfunctions as a communication tool with a newfound cognitive heuristic called the Correspondence of Means and Ends bias. Evidence for this bias is revealed in both an experiment embedded in a survey and detailed case studies. Rebels who engage in terrorism will thus struggle to amplify their political demands, lowering the odds of concessions.
Cultivating Task Cohesion
Authors: Abrahms Max
Published: March 2019

The key for militant leaders is to cultivate in the ranks what’s known in management as task cohesion. Task cohesion is the degree to which group members act together to accomplish a common goal. This chapter offers what might seem like obvious advice for rebels to cultivate task cohesion in the ranks. But this initial step is crucial and inconsistently applied by leaders to restrain members from jeopardizing the cause with terrorism. Task cohesion in militant groups begins with educating the rank-and-file about their political ends and the optimal means to achieve them. As this chapter shows, education is necessary, though insufficient, for leaders to prevent subordinates from attacking civilians and sinking the cause.
The Benefits of Centralizing
Authors: Abrahms Max
Published: March 2019

The main argument in this book is that moderation pays for militant groups. The first part of the book revealed Rule #1 for the leaders—the folly of attacking civilians. The second part of the book develops Rule #2—to build the organization in a way that can restrain lower-level members from harming civilians. The last chapter explained why centralization can promote task cohesion in the ranks. Structuring the organization in this way helps leaders to communicate their tactical instructions, discipline wayward members, and vet out potential terrorists. This chapter demonstrates more scientifically the extent to which centralization indeed prevents members from shooting the cause in the foot.
Denial of Principal Intent
Authors: Abrahms Max
Published: March 2019

The previous chapter showed that smart leaders take public relations seriously by denying organizational involvement in civilian attacks. What should leaders do when the culpability of the organization is undeniable? The key, then, isn’t denying organizational involvement but DPI or Denial of Principal Intent. With DPI, the leader acknowledges his organization committed the terrorist attack, but denies that it reflects his intentions or the mission of the group more generally. The field of communication identifies several ways for people to restore their image after an offense has been committed either by them or in their name. This chapter describes the most relevant accounts and how militant leaders can apply them to distance their organization from the reputational fallout of terrorism.
The Grammar of Expressivity
Authors: Gutzmann Daniel
Published: March 2019

While the expressive function of natural language has received much attention in recent years, the role grammar plays in the interpretation of expressive items has mainly been neglected in the semantic and pragmatic literature. On the other hand, while there have been syntactic studies of some expressive phenomena they do not explicitly connect to recent developments in semantics. This book bridges this gap, showing that semantics and pragmatics alone cannot capture all grammatical particularities of expressive items and that expressivity has strong syntactic reflexes that interact with the semantic interpretation and account for the mismatches between the syntax and semantics of these phenomena. The main thesis he argues for—the hypothesis of expressive syntax—is that expressivity is a syntactic feature, on a par with other established syntactic features like tense or gender. Evidence for this claim is drawn from three detailed case studies of expressive phenomena: expressive adjectives, expressive intensifiers, and expressive vocatives. These expressions exhibit some puzzling properties and by developing an account of them employing minimalist approaches to syntactic features and agreement, the author shows that expressivity, as a syntactic feature, can partake in agreement operations, trigger movement, and syntactically be selected for. This not only provides indirect evidence for the hypothesis of expressive syntax and extends the usefulness of operations on syntactic features operation beyond their traditional domains, but also highlights the hidden role grammar may play for phenomena that are often considered to be solely semantic in nature.
Expressive vocatives
Authors: Gutzmann Daniel
Published: March 2019

This chapter develops a syntactic and semantic analysis of German expressive vocatives (eVocs), which consists of a second person pronoun and an expressive nominal part. It documents the special properties of eVocs and identifies three structural subtypes (autonomous, parenthetical, integrated). It is shown that none of the previous semantic analysis of vocatives can deal with eVocs. This chapter develops a new semantic approach according to which integrated eVocs are the most basic ones, consisting of a pronoun and expressive modification. Parenthetical and autonomous eVocs are then extensions of the integrated version, just adding an activational vocative function and an exclamational component respectively. Furthermore, it is argued that syntactically, eVocs consist of a D-element—the pronoun—which has to select for an expressive complement. The upshot of this chapter for the hypothesis of expressive syntax is that expressivity as a syntactic feature can be selected for by other expressions.
The Einstein field equations
Authors: Carlip Steven
Published: March 2019

The Einstein field equations are the fundamental equations of general relativity. After a brief qualitative discussion of geodesic deviation and Newtonian gravity, this chapter derives the field equations from the Einstein-Hilbert action. The chapter contains a derivation of Noether’s theorem and the consequent conservation laws, and a brief discussion of generalizations of the Einstein-Hilbert action.
The weak field approximation
Authors: Carlip Steven
Published: March 2019

The Einstein field equations are a complicated set of coupled partial differential equations, which are usually too complicated to find exact solutions. This chapter introduces a simple approximation for weak fields. It discusses the lowest order solution, which gives back Newtonian gravity, and the next order, which includes “gravitomagnetic” or “frame-dragging” effects. The chapter briefly discusses higher order approximations, expansions around a curved background, and the evidence that gravitational energy itself gravitates. It concludes with a brief description of an alternative derivation of the Einstein field equations, starting from flat spacetime and “bootstrapping” the gravitational self-interaction.
A-Series/B-Series Compatibilism
Authors: Ludlow Peter
Published: March 2019

The preceding chapters made the case that perspectival contents are indispensible for accounts of human action, emotion, perception, normative behavior, computation, and information, and that they cannot be eliminated or replaced by aperspectival contents. One idea that has been widely held (and previously held by the author) is the idea that tensism is not compatible with the B-series conception of time. This chapter argues that competing accounts of tense—the A-series and the B-series—are in fact compatible. One can wed perspectival temporal contents to an aperspectival picture of the world without creating fatal philosophical puzzles. The solution, it is argued, is to deploy resources from the dynamic lexicon and understand that perspectival contents are not to be confused with their modes of expression.
Conclusion
Authors: Ludlow Peter
Published: March 2019

This concluding chapter summarizes the key ideas of the book—that perspectival contents are ubiquitous and run through our accounts of human action, emotion, normativity, computation, and information, and furthermore that communication across diverse perspectival positions is not only possible but routinely accomplished thanks to our ability to dynamically track modes of expression across perspectival positions. It is at least possible that there will be additional perspectival positions will afford interperspectival contents of their own—contents that do not exhaust what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes, but nonetheless make it possible for people to share their thoughts and attitudes with us, should we choose to listen.
An Equal Burden
Authors: Meyer Jessica
Published: March 2019

An Equal Burden forms the first scholarly study of the Army Medical Services in the First World War to focus on the roles and experiences of the men of the ranks of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC). These men, through their work as stretcher-bearers and orderlies, provided a range of labour, both physical and emotional, in aid of the sick and wounded. They were not professional medical caregivers, yet were called upon to provide medical care, however rudimentary; they served in uniform, under military discipline, yet were forbidden, as non-combatants, from carrying weapons. Their service as men in wartime was thus unique. Structured both chronologically and thematically, this study examines the work that RAMC rankers undertook and its importance to the running of the chain of medical evacuation. It additionally explores the gendered status of these men within the medical, military, and cultural hierarchies of a society engaged in total war, locating their service within the context of that of doctors, female nurses, and combatant servicemen. Through close readings of official documents, personal papers, and cultural representations, both verbal and visual, it argues that the ranks of the RAMC formed a space in which non-commissioned servicemen, through their many roles, defined and redefined medical caregiving as men’s work in wartime.
Carrying, Cleaning, Caring
Authors: Meyer Jessica
Published: March 2019

This chapter outlines the chain of evacuation along the line of communication which formed the remit of the work of the Royal Army Medical Corps throughout the war. Using official publications and personal narratives, both contemporaneous and retrospective, it explores the diverse spaces in which men from the ranks of the Corps undertook their caring roles. In doing so, it identifies these roles as centring on the work of carrying, cleaning, and caring. By focusing on the work of these men, it nuances understandings of gendered relationships within these spaces, between nurses and medical rankers, doctors and medical rankers, and carers of both sexes and their patients. By examining the work of medical rankers in terms of both physical and emotional labour, it further expands readings of the range of labour associated with appropriate masculine service in wartime.
Discretion Rather Than Rules
Authors: Rommerskirchen Charlotte
Published: March 2019

Solutions to free riding, whether stability or growth free riding, are thought to be found in the provision of incentives. Yet the empirical findings of this chapter suggest that domestic fiscal rules, such as debt brakes, did not impact on the fiscal policy responses to the Great Recession. Similarly, EU-level agreements (the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and the newly created European Economic Recovery Plan (EERP)) did not impact on fiscal policy choices. First, the majority of domestic fiscal rules were equipped with exceptionality clauses. As a result, they did not impose stern constraints on fiscal policy in hard times. Second, the EERP and SGP were meaningless for fiscal policy outcomes; member states adopted stimulus programs as they saw fit with little concern for EU-level agreements or EU-wide aims for stability and growth.
On Evidence in Philosophy
Authors: Lycan William G.
Published: March 2019

This book offers an epistemology of philosophy itself, a partial method for philosophical inquiry. The epistemology features three ultimate sources of justified philosophical belief. First, common sense, in a carefully restricted sense of the term—the sorts of contingent propositions Moore defended against idealists and skeptics. Second, the deliverances of well confirmed science. Third, and more fundamentally, intuitions about cases, in a carefully specified sense of that term. Chapters 1–4 expound a version of Moore’s method and apply it to each of several issues. The version is shown to resist all the standard objections to Moore; most of them do not even apply. Chapters 5 and 6 argue that philosophical method is far less powerful than most have taken it to be. In particular, deductive argument can accomplish very little, and hardly ever is an opposing position refuted except by common sense or by science. Chapters 7 and 8 defend the evidential status of intuitions and the Goodmanian method of reflective equilibrium; it is argued that philosophy always and everywhere depends on them. The method is then set within a more general explanatory-coherentist epistemology, which is shown to resist standard forms of skepticism. In sum, this book advocates a picture of philosophy as a very wide explanatory reflective equilibrium incorporating common sense, science, and our firmest intuitions on any topic—and nothing more, not ever.
Main questions in the study of copulas
Authors: Arche María J. , Fábregas Antonio , Marín Rafael
Published: March 2019

This chapter identifies the main empirical facts that a grammar of copulas should capture (their categorical nature, the different constructions they are part of) and examines how the theoretical analyses existing to date and those advanced in this volume fare with respect to them. It is shown that copulas, given their frontier-like categorical nature and uttermost diversity in forms and behavior across languages and structures, are a privileged ground to explore essential theoretical issues of the functional domain of language. The wealth of new data from unrelated languages brought to light in this volume enables the elicitation of unknown descriptions, proving previous accounts insufficient. Likewise, this compilation allows the reader to appraise theoretical analyses of formal mechanisms that affect language in general (e.g. agreement), exceeding the scope of copulas themselves.
Transformation and Transition Research: An Introduction
Authors: Merkel Wolfgang , Kollmorgen Raj , Wagener Hans-Jürgen
Published: March 2019

Social institutions and governmental regimes are systems of action structured by values and norms. Within these systems, self-conscious actors communicate with each other using different material and symbolic resources. The systems develop and change in response to new knowledge, altered allocations of resources, and changes in values and institutions. ‘Transformation’ analyses radical systemic change from the intentional policy point of view while ‘transition’ describes the historical path along which such change is taking place. The pragmatic design of positive institutions, which is at the basis of the concept of transformation, is historically a rather recent phenomenon. Although these concepts gained prominence only with the great turnaround of 1989/90, they have a prehistory in social theory (Marx, Menger, Weber, Schumpeter, and Polanyi, for instance) and in historical development (the French and the Russian revolutions, Meiji Restoration, post-Civil War United States, for instance). Transformation research thus has at its disposal a wide field of cases and analytic levels.
Transition Approaches
Authors: Brückner Julian
Published: March 2019

Actor-centred transition research is closely connected with the onset of the third wave of democracy in the mid-1970s. It challenges earlier attempts by structuralist and functionalist theories that sought to identify universal requisites of democratic rule based on the experience of established Western democracies. Regime transitions are always open-ended and different phases of successful democratization processes are not necessarily shaped by the same actors and conditions. In this chapter two main strands of the actor-centred transition paradigm are presented. Descriptive empirical transition approaches reduce complexity by subsuming frequent actor constellations under a limited number of ideal-typical modes of transition. Rational choice approaches, in turn, translate those same actor constellations into a sequence of strategic situations that predict the outcome of liberalization and democratization processes, assuming utility-maximizing behaviour on the part of relevant elites. Finally, the requirements of democratic regime consolidation that ensures persistence are discussed.
Development Economics and Transformation Studies
Authors: Dunn MalColm H. , Ganahl Joseph P.
Published: March 2019

This chapter addresses the issue of whether development economics has made a significant contribution to transformation studies. It gives an overview of the major debates in development economics and reveals two basic theoretical positions. A market-oriented theory that accords only a subordinate role to the state, and a statist model that regards the state as the central actor in the process of development, continue to dominate the debate in development economics even today. These two sides, however, are not so fundamentally opposed that they could be mistaken for being involved in a debate over which economic system is most effective in terms of raising living standards in developing countries. Socialist or even communist positions have never attained any real significance within development economics. In this respect development economics has not contributed much to transformation studies, if transformation is understood as a fundamental shift from a market-driven capitalist system to a non-capitalist economy.
Approaches to Transformation in Economics
Authors: Kolev Stefan , Zweynert Joachim
Published: March 2019

Focusing on the history of economics, this chapter provides an overview of important theoretical contributions to understanding the processes of transformation. The central claim is that if economists want to regain their ability to theoretically grasp processes of transformation, they have to overcome the idea that the capitalist reality of a distinguishable economic system of society exists at all places and times. Processes of transformation are exactly about the emergence of a (permeable) border between the political and the economic game, about periods when the economic system with its distinguishable logic comes into existence. If economists want to understand these processes, they have to look not at changes of economic relations alone but to focus specifically on the interplay between political and economic factors.
Political Steering Approach
Authors: Beyer Jürgen
Published: March 2019

This chapter discusses the political steering approach, which is one of the ‘second-generation’ theories within the scholarship on societal transformations. The approach has taken inspiration from the actor-centred steering theory developed in the German-speaking world and political science research on governance mechanisms. It has enriched our knowledge of transition processes in several ways. It made clear on the one hand that some of the voiced theoretical scepticism about the possibility to control and govern fundamental change was partly based on false initial assumptions. On the other hand, the review of the debate on political steering demonstrates that transformational success often had a paradoxical character, as—though based on reforms—it cannot be considered without restriction as a result of targeted policies.
Combining Theoretical Approaches
Authors: Kollmorgen Raj , Merkel Wolfgang
Published: March 2019

What theoretical paradigms, approaches, and research designs are best suited for adequately explaining (disruptive) system change is a question that has been pondered by many scholars in the field of transformation research. The span of theories on offer ranges from systems theories through structuralist or institutionalist approaches to actor and action theories. Although some scholars still insist that a single paradigm can adequately describe and explain all the essential aspects of social transformation, theoretical pluralism is now accepted by the vast majority of researchers. The real challenge accordingly lies in clarifying mutual connections between paradigms and theoretical approaches, and, more specifically, in establishing and operationalizing the combination of theories in research on social, economic, and political change. Facing such a situation, this chapter outlines the landscape of transformation theories in the social sciences before presenting a proposal on theory combination linking systems and action in a political science theory of transformation.
Postcolonial Transformations in Africa in the Twentieth Century
Authors: Schmidt Siegmar
Published: March 2019

This chapter examines Africa’s transformation process, in which colonialism and postcolonialism are considered to be of prime importance in view of the fact that Africans fell victim to the transatlantic slave trade. The second chain of the African disaster was initiated due to the political and economic conquest by European imperialists. African societies, including their traditional authorities, were often degraded to simply tools, a state of affairs which was due to the different types of colonial administration. The new and independent states were mostly ill-prepared for democratically and economically stable systems. In the course of the following thirty years nearly all countries became hotchpotches of autocracies and consequently any measures of development were bound to fail. Rather surprisingly, various stages of democratization processes still began to be formed in the 1990s. In the long term, systems were caught in a grey zone between autocracy and democracy. Currently, between eight or nine countries are considered to be true democracies. Still quite ambivalent, however, is the current economic situation, because on the one hand exploiting raw materials certainly meant strong growth rates above the population rate, but on the other hand resources turn out to be a curse of massive corruption or even cruel civil wars.
Economy
Authors: Wagener Hans-Jürgen
Published: March 2019

In this chapter, transformation of the economic system is analysed with the example of post-socialist transition. This is obviously not confined to the imperative trinity of ‘liberalization, privatization, and stabilization’, however important it may have been. The transformation of the economic order, i.e., of the framework of formal institutions, is a deliberate political process that may be intended from below, but has to be initiated from above in the form of legal acts and administrative measures. The transformation of the economic system is described much less precisely and encompasses, in addition to the constitutive order, the individual structures in all their specificities as well as the attitudes and behaviours of the economic agents. The final outcome differs markedly between individual countries due to historical legacies and actual policies.
Constitution-Building
Authors: Lorenz Astrid
Published: March 2019

Constitution-building refers to the process of negotiation and adoption of a secular order of the community that claims primacy over all other law and which contains the most important rules, procedures, and principles that regulate the establishment, organization, and exercise of state power as well as the relationship between state, society, and the individual. This chapter describes key assumptions of different strands of theory concerning constitution-building. While there are many diverging hypotheses, a consensus exists in political science that constitution-building is a result of power and norm conflicts as well as experiences in a social community. The chapter also gives an empirical overview of constitution-building (background, venues, time, etc.) worldwide. The practice is marked by institutional path dependencies, elites, and ostensible conflict resolution. It often contradicts theoretical expectations or seems to be more influenced by factors other than those on which theory focuses.