bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Culpable Ignorance
Authors: Zimmerman Michael J.
Published: September 2022

This chapter investigates the nature of culpable ignorance, i.e., ignorance for which one is to blame. The Argument from Ignorance holds that blameworthiness for wrongdoing committed from ignorance is to be traced to blameworthiness for the ignorance itself, and it also holds that blameworthiness for this ignorance is to be traced in turn to blameworthiness for some prior piece of behavior. This prompts an inquiry into what is involved in such tracing, what it is for a consequence of one’s behavior to be foreseeable, and whether blameworthiness for some consequence of one’s behavior can increase the degree to which one is already to blame for the behavior itself. Also addressed is the question of whether one can be blameless for acting from ignorance even if one is to blame for the ignorance from which one acts.
Recklessness
Authors: Zimmerman Michael J.
Published: September 2022

This chapter investigates the nature of recklessness and the question of whether and how it is possible to be blameworthy for reckless behavior. It endorses the common view that the chief distinction between negligence and recklessness is that, whereas the former involves risky behavior to whose riskiness one does not advert, the latter involves risky behavior of whose riskiness one is conscious. It stresses both the distinction between being conscious of taking a risk and being conscious of wrongly doing so and the distinction between risking doing harm and risking doing wrong, and it explains how the failure to take note of these distinctions undermines much recent discussion of responsibility for reckless behavior. It then moves to a consideration of various forms of motivated ignorance, including willful ignorance, and argues that, given the distinction between non-moral and moral ignorance, there is no need to treat responsibility for motivated moral ignorance differently from responsibility for moral ignorance in general.
Authority, Cooperation, and Accountability
Authors: Bazargan-Forward Saba
Published: September 2022

This book develops a novel strategy for addressing individual accountability in the context of cooperatively committed harms. For example, how should we decide a single employee’s moral accountability in a corporation that commits egregious wrongs? What about a single soldier fighting in an unjust war? Or a single participant in a lynching? We need a way to make sense of individual moral accountability in instances such as these. This book makes the case for thinking that distinct aspects of human agency, normally wrapped up in a single person, can be “distributed” practically across different people. It is argued that we “distribute” agency routinely, by forming promises, by making requests, by issuing demands, and by undertaking shared action. The resulting division of agential labor makes possible a distinctive way in which one person can be accountable for the actions of another. The first half of this book, develops this form of interpersonal accountability—which it calls “authority-based accountability”—into an approach for handling problems of individual accountability in the context of cooperative activity. The second half applies this account to war ethics, criminal law, business ethics, and institutional racism. The book aims to demonstrate that what matters morally is not just our causal contributions to wrongful cooperative activity. In addition, the purposes we confer upon one another can inculpate us as well. The result is an account that can help us make sense of individual moral accountability in a bureaucratized world.
Linguistic Communication Proper
Authors: Jary Mark
Published: September 2022

This chapter draws on both Situation Theory and Relevance Theory to develop a model of linguistic communication proper. According to this model, basic linguistic communication involves a relationship between two situation types: an utterance-situation in which a linguistic form is tokened, and another which characterises the situation that is the object of the interlocutors’ joint attention, thereby constituting the interpretation of the utterance. Communication succeeds when speaker and hearer align on the intended characterisation of that situation. This alignment is achieved by means of the speaker’s exploitation of the hearer’s attunement to a situation-theoretic constraint, an attunement grounded in considerations of relevance. At no stage in the model is any level of representation postulated that equates to a notion of what is said.
Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea
Authors: Cressy David
Published: September 2022

Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea is a work of social history examining community relationships, law, and seafaring over the long early modern period. It explores the politics of the coastline, the economy of scavenging, and the law of ‘wreck of the sea’ from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth I to the end of the reign of George II. England’s coastlines were heavily trafficked by naval and commercial shipping, but an unfortunate percentage was cast away or lost. Eighteen of England’s historical counties and eight more in Wales had coastlines where sailing ships came to grief. Wrecks were disasters for merchants and mariners, but opportunities for shore-dwellers. As the proverb said, it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good. Lords of manors, local officials, officers of the Admiralty, and coastal commoners competed for maritime cargoes and the windfall of wreckage, which they regarded as providential godsends or entitlements by right. A varied haul of commodities, wines, furnishings, and bullion came ashore, much of it claimed by the crown. The people engaged in salvaging these wrecks came to be called ‘wreckers’ and gained a reputation as violent and barbarous plunderers. Close attention to statements of witnesses and reports of survivors shows this image to be largely undeserved. Dramatic evidence from previously unexplored manuscripts reveals coastal communities in action, collaborating as well as competing as they harvested the bounty of the sea.
The Bounty of the Golden Grape
Authors: Cressy David
Published: September 2022

Extraordinarily detailed depositions from 342 witnesses naming 547 individuals tell the story of the Golden Grape, a Dutch merchantman that was wrecked on Chesil Beach, Dorset, in 1641. Seven crewmen drowned, but at least twelve survived to lament their loss as ‘the people of the country by force and violence took and carried the same away’. The episode sheds light on the stresses of law and custom, duty and opportunity, as participants told their stories. Many of the themes of this book are highlighted here. The records reveal inter-village rivalries and solidarities, teamwork and enterprise, deference and cooperation, as barrels of raisins, jars of oil, bales of silk, and sacks of silver were brought ashore. There were instances of intimidation and theft, but little overt violence, no ‘barbarity’. Rather than a disordered frenzy, the evidence depicts a practiced communal effort to take what the sea offered. Salvagers treated the survivors with courtesy, worked collaboratively with neighbours, and deferred to men in authority. Identified by name, address, gender, and occupation, the wreckers were a cross-section of coastal society, exhibiting a community in action. Explaining themselves before Admiralty commissioners, most deponents acknowledged their roles at the wreck, but they gathered goods, they said, only for safe keeping until lawful authority arrived. Their veracity and memories may be doubted, but none of the villagers was punished.
Children and Youth-Focused Radio in Sierra Leone
Authors: Podder Sukanya
Published: September 2022

This chapter begins by outlining the contextual background to the Sierra Leone civil war and the intergenerational issues that underpinned it. The programming life-cycle of the partner INGO’s media and community outreach projects are analysed next. Key themes in the radio programmes are examined to highlight the role of community radio, and radio soap operas in enabling a more critical reflection on local ideas and practices. In Sierra Leone, the lack of an explicit commitment to institutionalization proved to be a serious weakness. The result was only ad hoc involvement of the national government agencies in youth focused activities; and limited transfer of project related learning to successor organizations. In chasing donor funding to ensure longevity of operational presence, there was limited reflection on how far donor strategic priorities resonated with local norms. The result was a manufactured peace, characterized by accidental institutional legacies.
Revelation in a Pluralistic World
Authors: Roy Louis
Published: September 2022

This book proposes a sound understanding of revelation in the midst of the contemporary clash of philosophic views. Although it includes much information, it does so in a dialectical fashion. Several years ago the author engaged in research about revelation with the full awareness that, because of the churches’ insistence that revelation is fully realized only in Christianity, they have progressively suffered a severe loss of status. For him, the problem is that this insistence has often remained unnuanced and simplistic, with the consequence that not only unbelievers as well as believers of other religions, but even numerous Christians no longer agree with the primacy of a truth revealed in Jesus Christ. The author’s enterprise here is an effort to elucidate this issue. The book addresses the difficulties affecting the interpretation of belief, given modernity’s concerns, and it sheds light on burning issues such as the possibility of universal truths, forms of pluralism, the role of doctrines, of testimony, and of authority. It details representations of religious experience and doctrine during the Enlightenment. It delineates the way the problem of historical knowledge has been discussed from the eighteenth century to the present, especially by Ernst Troeltsch around year 1900. It adds the views on that issue enunciated by Karl Barth, Wolfhart Pannenberg, and Paul Ricœur. It also spells out Catholic responses—traditionalist and non-traditionalist ones. It outlines ideas of revelation in non-Christian religions and it comes to grips with the possibility of revelation apart from Jesus.
Introduction
Authors: Roy Louis
Published: September 2022

Quoting Jürgen Habermas and Alasdair MacIntyre, this Introduction describes the religious/nonreligious situation of our time, marked by pluralism and indifference. It continues with the characterization of five cognitive horizons, each of which sheds light on those who raise objections to revelation. It ends with a description of all the chapters of the book. The author acknowledges that the amount of historical information about numerous thinkers can be at times overwhelming for some readers. However, by providing so much information, his aim is to help readers to take account not only of late-twentieth-century and early-twenty-first-century debates but also of other aspects of revelation ranging from the biblical times until our days. His hope is that readers will be capable of situating his position within a broad compass and thereby to remain intellectually free vis-à-vis any view about revelation, including his own.
The Problem of Historical Knowledge
Authors: Roy Louis
Published: September 2022

Beginning with the eighteenth century, a powerful factor, namely an unprecedented sense of history, played an enormous role in Europe’s shaking off its Christian identity. As the seventeenth-century reign of rationalism was weakening, a new drama was brewing, due to the emergence of historical consciousness. This phenomenon, particularly in Germany, profoundly shaped European thinking. And of course it had reverberations throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. After sketching aspects of Spinoza’s and Leibniz’s philosophies, this chapter tackles the problem of historical consciousness and knowledge as identified by Lessing, along with Kierkegaard’s reply. It analyses at length Troeltsch’s complex treatment of historicism. It details Barth’s position regarding the Word of God, and Pannenberg’s position concerning the meaning of history.
Amid the Current Clash of Views
Authors: Roy Louis
Published: September 2022

Starting with the eighteenth century, a plethora of thinkers stressed the historical character of human thought. According to them, our beliefs do not result from intuitions of eternal truths. They have a history or, more precisely, they are part and parcel of episodes, of successions of events that, whenever remembered, become stories. Beliefs have been created in circumstances that account for their emergence; they are found at ascertainable dates and places. As a consequence, it is most difficult, if not practically impossible, to take meanings out of the culture in which they were embedded and to transplant them into our culture. It seems that they are unavoidably adulterated in the course of such an intellectual transit. This chapter offers contemporary views, negative and positive, on the standing and shareability of truths. To begin with, this chapter discusses the challenge that philosophical postmodernism poses to the possibility of holding universal truths, be they cross-cultural or transgenerational; afterward, it brings in a few facts that demonstrate the feasibility of dialogue between intercultural standpoints; it then defines moderate pluralism and proceeds to defend its viability; lastly, it makes a case for doctrines, authority, and a normative tradition.
Revelation, or God-Speech?
Authors: Roy Louis
Published: September 2022

This chapter covers much ground: the issue of a universal revelation, divine grace offered to all human beings, the views of two Church Fathers—Justin and Clement—on revelation, the problem of incompatibilities among religions, the recipients of inspiration and revelation, comparative theology, and the difference between God’s revelation and God’s speech. Its conclusion is that the Holy Spirit speaks in all human lives, individual and collective, whereas he reveals only in the Biblical scripture as interpreted by the Catholic Church. Having discarded the opinion that God would have been silent in non-biblical spheres, the chapter suggests one should employ the concept of God’s self-communication as a wide umbrella under which two categories fall: God’s speech and God’s revelation. Logically put: divine self-communication is the genus, and the two species are divine speech and divine revelation. On the one hand, in non-biblical environments, because of cultural limitations and sometimes of effective human resistance, divine speech manages to communicate only partial truths, namely truths coupled with errors; on the other hand, in the biblical traditions, owing to inspiration, divine revelation attains its goal of communicating a truth not obscured by errors. According to the Catholic view, objective revelation requires subjective inspiration; they are the two aspects of a single, inerrant, process.
Can We Either Absolutize or Relativize Jesus Christ?
Authors: Roy Louis
Published: September 2022

This chapter comes up with a construal of the centrality of Jesus Christ as revealer. Can he be considered the only revealer of God, or rather the medium of revelation par excellence, without excluding other mediators? Speaking of God the Father, St John of the Cross wrote, ‘In giving us his son, his only word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word – and he has no more to say.’ David Walsh stated the following about Christ: ‘He is the highest realization of mundane existence because he is the fullest manifestation of transcendent reality within the world. No fuller revelation of divine presence is possible within a human being or toward human beings.’ The chapter concludes that we should speak, not of a ‘Christocentrism’, but of a ‘Christomorphism’: not every aspect of revelation ought to be directly related to Christ, but Christ is the best model or form (morphe, in Greek). Therefore theology can focus on Jesus Christ while not neglecting other sources of Christian revelation.
Plato’s Knowledge Vocabulary And John Lyons’s Structural Semantics
Authors: Hulme Emily
Published: September 2022

It has often been thought that Plato does not distinguish carefully between epistēmē and technē and that these two terms can be used interchangeably in many contexts. An important argument in favour of this view was presented in John Lyons’s seminal and still regularly cited book, Structural Semantics: An Analysis of the Vocabulary of Plato. This paper describes and critically engages with the evidence for this view. Drawing attention to the manifestly different connotations of the terms, and especially the tight connection between teaching and technē, the paper presents an alternative picture: technē as implying epistēmē, but not vice versa.
The Phaedo’s Final Argument and The Soul’s Kinship with the Divine
Authors: Ebrey David
Published: September 2022

In the Phaedo, Socrates leads us to expect that his final argument will address the details of Cebes’ cloakmaker objection. Nonetheless, almost all commentators treat the final argument as unconnected to these details. This paper argues that close attention to Cebes’ objection, Socrates’ restatement of it, and Socrates’ final argument shows that the final argument does offer a detailed response. According to the objection, the soul suffers as it brings life to the body, which ultimately leads to its destruction. Socrates argues that, on the contrary, bringing life to the body is precisely what ensures the soul’s immortality and indestructability. Cebes’ objection targets Socrates’ so-called ‘affinity argument’. In responding to Cebes’ objection, the final argument fills in the account of the soul that Socrates put forward in the affinity argument. In doing so, it identifies one precise way in which the soul is akin to the divine.
Aristotle’s Philosophy of Geometry
Authors: Katz Emily
Published: September 2022

A principal interpretative difficulty for Aristotle’s philosophy of geometry is that he seems to maintain both that sensible things are not the objects of geometry and that geometrical objects are in the sensible world. In this paper I offer a philosophical defence of what I take to be Aristotle’s position. Briefly, geometrical objects are certain sensibles (e.g. skilfully produced construction drawings) just insofar as they are quantitative and continuous. A geometrical object, then, is what some scholars call a ‘kooky object’: a sensible object just insofar as it has a certain property or set of properties. I call this the ‘kooky objects interpretation’; it is a refinement of the ‘properties interpretation’ (a view I give elsewhere). I develop the view and argue that it is superior to an alternative reading—the ‘parts interpretation’. I show that the kooky objects interpretation addresses the difficulties motivating the parts interpretation while steering clear of its problems.
Technologies of International Radio Broadcasting
Authors: Clayton David
Published: September 2022

This chapter examines the technologies and infrastructures of twentieth-century international broadcasting. It argues that global scientific networks and transfers of knowledge and expertise underpinned the wireless world. It considers how these networks and connections changed over time, and how some parts of the globe were better integrated than others. Continuing this focus on hierarchy and inequalities, it also considers the impact of different levels of access to radio around the globe, and availability of the technologies required to provide entry into the wireless world. It explores how global radio production patterns changed over time, making key equipment—particularly transistor radio sets and batteries—more available in the Global South. It also suggests that historians should consider the environmental costs of international broadcasting. Case studies look at amateur short-wave radio enthusiasts—‘DX-ers’—in the 1920s and 1930s, and at the built infrastructure of Dutch international broadcasting.
Institutions, States, and International Broadcasting
Authors: Ribeiro Nelson
Published: September 2022

This chapter examines the role of states in funding, influencing, and controlling international broadcasting, and the relationships which developed between states and broadcasting institutions in different parts of the wireless world. It argues that we should not draw a false dichotomy between ‘independent’ and ‘state controlled’ international broadcasting. In reality, all broadcasters operated under some degree of state influence. The difference was one of degrees, and the focus for historians should be upon the varied mechanisms used by civil servants to control and direct international broadcasting institutions, overtly or covertly. The chapter focuses on state mechanisms for controlling international broadcasting in Nazi Germany, the USSR, Britain, and the US, and in colonial and post-colonial states in the Global South. Case studies examine British colonial broadcasting in the 1940s and Radio Free Europe after 1989.
The Soundscapes of the Wireless World
Authors: Stanton Andrea L.
Published: September 2022

The chapter explores the soundscapes created and influenced by international broadcasting. It demonstrates how sound should, more generally, be taken more seriously by historians, and factored into our writing about the past. It also relates the soundscapes of the wireless world to ideas about modernity and urbanization, paying particular attention to Cold War international broadcasting, and to radio listening in the Middle East. It considers how different contexts for listening, and different technologies of transmission and reception, had specific consequences for soundscapes. Case studies examine the role of international broadcasting in media coverage of the Costes and Bellonte Transatlantic Flight of 1930, linking France and US, and of post-war attempts to describe, measure, and overcome the jamming of international broadcasts.
The Composition of the Epitome
Authors: Kampianaki Theofili
Published: September 2022

Zonaras arranged the material of the Epitome in two different ways, as explained in this chapter. The first method is the division of the chronicle into two volumes when the narrative reached 146 bc. The reason for using this date as a point to break the narrative into two is the large chronological gap between the end of the first volume and the start of the second. The other way in which the chronicler arranged his material is thematic. There are two distinct thematic sections: the first focuses on Jewish antiquities and the second on the Roman past. A secondary distinction which emerges within the Roman section is that between pre- and post-Constantinian Roman history, which indicates that Zonaras approaches in a different way the ‘Old’ Roman Empire and the ‘New’ Empire, which had Constantinople as its capital. The Jewish section is a largely self-contained unit. The chronicler originally aimed to produce a work dedicated to Jewish antiquities, but, finding more sources as he was writing, he at some point decided to broaden the subject matter of his text and include the history of the Roman nation.
Zonaras’ Working Method and Treatment of His Sources
Authors: Kampianaki Theofili
Published: September 2022

Chapter 3 investigates Zonaras’ method of work and the manner in which he treats and adapts his sources. The foundation of his methodology is the adherence to a single source which provides him with the basic structure of his account. One of the key features of the Jewish section of the Epitome is the strong emphasis Zonaras places on the connection of his text to Flavius Josephus’ historical works. What characterizes Zonaras’ method in his presentation of pre-Constantinian Roman history is his attempt to adapt the data he collects from his Roman sources, Cassius Dio’s Roman History and Plutarch’s Lives, to make them meaningful and interesting to the Byzantine audience. His account of post-Constantinian Empire concentrates mainly on the Constantinopolitan environment. In the narrative of Byzantium, the dominant principle of Zonaras’ methodology is the attention to the portrayals of famous historical figures, mostly emperors.
Zonaras’ Keen Interest in Roman Antiquity
Authors: Kampianaki Theofili
Published: September 2022

The subject of Chapter 5 is Zonaras’ prodigious interest in the Roman origins of Byzantium. His great attention to the Roman past can be seen as part of a broader upsurge of interest in Roman antiquities during that period. The practical reality of the situation in the Constantinople of his time, when a large number of Latin-speaking peoples passed through or resided in the capital, may also have fuelled a renewed interest in Roman antiquity and stimulated Zonaras to emphasize the Roman antecedents of the Empire. Unlike the majority of Byzantine chroniclers, Zonaras was keen on talking in detail about Republican Rome in order to fulfil his own authorial agenda. He aims to demonstrate the evolution of the Roman government over time and stress the institutional continuity between contemporary Byzantium and Rome. He is also very careful in the language he uses to make these changes in the constitution of the Roman state clear to his readers.
Intellectual Networks and Intended Readers
Authors: Kampianaki Theofili
Published: September 2022

Chapter 6 focuses on the circumstances in which Zonaras found himself on the island of St Glykeria, where he composed the Epitome. The writer was part of a network of intellectuals who provided him with reading material and to whom he distributed his own pieces. His circle consisted of those with whom he had become acquainted when he was still a layman: educated individuals who attended the theatra, and persons of the same profession as him, namely lawyers and bureaucrats. A small number of monks who had some knowledge of the writings of the Church Fathers may be added to this circle. This group also constituted the audience for which Zonaras was originally writing. He consciously opted to use middlebrow, mildly archaizing Greek, aiming at addressing his chronicle not only to a small number of very erudite scholars but also to a more numerous group of relatively learned readers.
Readers’ Responses and the Reception of the Epitome
Authors: Kampianaki Theofili
Published: September 2022

Chapter 7 follows up from Chapter 6, which concluded with the argument that the Epitome was intended to be read by a relatively cultivated audience. This chapter concentrates on the recipients of the Epitome themselves, and explores how they viewed, responded to, and made use of Zonaras’ chronicle. The first section of the chapter examines the different ways in which writers who were approximate contemporaries to Zonaras, and also later writers, employed his text. Next comes an analysis of the large number of manuscripts in which the Epitome or shorter sections of it survive. The third part of this chapter deals with scribal practices and the marginalia that can be found in a select group of codices, and the fourth with two significant texts, one in prose and one in verse, which both comment on the contents and style of the Epitome. The final section focuses on the two medieval translations of Zonaras’ chronicle into Old Church Slavonic and Aragonese. Taking into account all the evidence, the chapter concludes by outlining the reasons why the Epitome was very popular among Byzantine readers and why it was seen by foreign scholars as interesting to translate.
Overall Conclusions
Authors: Kampianaki Theofili
Published: September 2022

This chapter presents some broader conclusions about Zonaras and the overall character of his historical account. Zonaras was versatile as an author, composing texts in various literary genres. The contemporary historical context impacted, directly or indirectly, on various aspects of the Epitome: Zonaras’ political and social ideas; the choice of his source material; and the emphasis on particular subjects. It is explained that the Epitome is as a ‘hybrid composition’ for two reasons, because it combines elements of two different yet interconnected literary traditions: chronicle writing and historiography, and because it combines two distinct historical accounts: one dedicated to Jewish history or, from the Byzantines’ perspective, early Christian history and one to the Roman past. The unique character of Zonaras’ text made the work stand out and helped to endear the text to readers in Byzantium and beyond.
The Japanese Economy
Authors: Flath David
Published: September 2022

This book is for anyone broadly interested in Japan, for it is impossible to fully understand Japan without learning what basic economics has to say about it, which is much. To know Japan—or any country for that matter—is more than an ability to recite a litany of facts about its history, geography, institutions, and culture. Disciplined thinking is needed to organize the disparate facts into a coherent system that can be grasped whole. Modern economics is the academic discipline underlying this book. The book uses economics and explains it, but without presuming the reader has any prior knowledge of it. It starts with Japan’s economic history since the late sixteenth century through the twentieth century. It then addresses contemporary topics in Japan’s economy, beginning with ones that require an economy-wide perspective—economic growth and the business cycle, exchange rates, and the balance of trade. The discussion then moves on to sectors of the economy: the public sector, industry and trade, the financial system, the labor market, and more. The chapters can be read in any order, but four threads run through all the chapters and link them: Japan’s economic growth and development, Japan’s integration with the world economy, government policies and their effects, and peculiar economic institutions and practices.
Saving
Authors: Flath David
Published: September 2022

This chapter discusses Japanese saving. It defines saving and how it is measured, describes the trajectory of Japanese national saving from 1885 to 2018, and explores economic theories of saving and how they apply to Japan. The national saving rate of Japan in the postwar period was among the highest in the world, the cause of Japan’s persistent trade surpluses and a contributor to the rapid accumulation of physical capital in Japan in the 1950s and 1960s that was the driver of its rapid growth. The chapter notes that spikes and dips in the national saving rate coincide with historic events like the indemnity following the 1895 Sino-Japanese war, the 1923 Tokyo earthquake, and 2008 Lehman shock. It explains the two major theories of household saving which are the life-cycle model which emphasizes saving for retirement and the Ricardian model which points to the bequest motive. In an economy such as that of Japan with a developed financial system and ample financial intermediation, life-cycle saving is reflected in societal saving. When those who are young and working and saving for retirement are more numerous or more prosperous than those who have already retired and are dissaving, the national saving rate will be high. Japan’s high postwar national saving rate and fall in national saving rate in the current century are consistent with this prediction. In short, the life-cycle model well explains the broad trajectory followed by Japan’s national saving rate. It leaves little for the Ricardian theory to explain.
Macroeconomy
Authors: Flath David
Published: September 2022

This chapter is about Japan’s business cycles and monetary and fiscal policies. It describes the diffusion index the Cabinet office uses to identify business cycle turning points and presents estimates of the GDP gaps during recessions. After noting how aggregate demand depends on the supply and demand for money based on the quantity theory and the Keynesian model, it goes on to explain how the BOJ uses interest on reserves, Lombard-type lending, forward guidance, quantitative easing, qualitative easing, and yield curve control to control the money supply and influence aggregate demand. It addresses aggregate supply, explaining why the unemployment rate is lower in Japan than in other countries and less sensitive to the business cycle. It describes the causes of the fourteen recessions Japan has experienced since 1956, and the policy responses to each. It describes the BOJ mistaken response to the stagflation caused by the first oil shock, the coordination of monetary policy with the US and other countries under the Plaza accord and Louvre agreement that was a root cause of Japan’s bubble economy, and the contractionary monetary policy that caused the Heisei recession and led Japan into a liquidity trap with zero interest rates and difficulties in conducting monetary policy. Those difficulties persisted and complicated Japan’s efforts to respond to the Lehman shock. Fiscal policy has only added to Japan’s ballooning government debt. Raising the expected inflation rate and returning interest rates to positive levels in which monetary policy can again be effective remains elusive.
Public Economy, Part 1
Authors: Flath David
Published: September 2022

This is the first of two chapters describing the scope and funding of Japan’s public sector. This one discusses Japanese government expenditures. It begins by documenting the goods and services not only provided by the Japanese government but produced by it. These are mostly the labor services of the government employees, including the lean but efficient bureaucracy, a high-status cadre motivated by prospects of amakudari upon leaving government service. Attention is then turned to the aspects of politics and voting that affect Japan’s overall scale of government spending: that Japan is a parliamentary democracy long dominated by a single political party, with a unitary and centralized system of government in which rural prefectures are overrepresented. Given all this, public choice considerations favor disproportionate provision of government services per person in the rural prefectures. In Japan as elsewhere, much but not all government spending is devoted to the provision of public goods—goods like national defense that are non-congested and indivisible. Advantages and disadvantages of government provision as opposed to private provision of public goods are described. Also, the tension that arises among allies in the provision of mutual defense which is a public good shared by both are discussed with reference to the Japan–US alliance. The chapter ends with discussion of the main categories of Japanese government spending—defense, social security, health insurance, and education.
Public Economy, Part 2
Authors: Flath David
Published: September 2022

This chapter takes up all aspects of Japanese taxes, including Japanese government debt which amounts to the shifting of taxes through time. The first part discusses the structure of taxes from the Meiji period through the first half of the twentieth century, which resembled that of developing countries of today. It then describes the current tax system of Japan which evolved from the tax system adopted in 1950 under the American occupation. It comprises personal and corporate income taxes, consumption and excise taxes, wage taxes, inheritance taxes and customs duties. The discussion then turns toward tax incidence and tax shifting, tax burden, and excess burden. Assuming that all taxes are shifted onto labor, it suggests that Japan’s total tax revenue of 30% of GDP imposes an excess burden of about 2% of GDP. Tax reform aimed at broadening the tax base and lowering the marginal tax rates, would lower the excess burden. The final part of the chapter is devoted to Japanese government debt. First is the question of how to measure it. The correct measure is net debt, which subtracts from gross debt the government debt held within the government itself including the BOJ. The trajectory of government debt that is consonant with minimum excess tax burden, given the stream of government spending, entails tax smoothing. Given this logic, one should ask whether taxes are too low, not whether government debt is too high. Japanese taxes are almost high enough to be judged sustainable.
Finance
Authors: Flath David
Published: September 2022

This chapter is about the financial system of Japan. It begins by detailing the different categories of financial intermediary in Japan and then describing the different types of financial instruments traded in Japan’s money markets and capital markets and in euromarkets (xenomarkets), taking note of the many amalgamations of the 1990s and sweeping changes in regulations culminating in the 2001 “Big Bang.” Until the 1980s, those regulations amounted to the cartelization of Japan’s commercial banks. The 1980s opening of euromarkets to Japanese corporations seeking funds forced banks to compete and led to an unraveling of the regulations that had until then cartelized their industry. As the bank profits eroded, their lending grew reckless, which led to the severe financial crisis of the 1990s, all of which the chapter fully explains. Despite the turmoil of the 1990s, banks have retained their dominance of Japanese financial intermediation. The chapter describes the main bank system, in which most Japanese corporations have each developed a special relationship with a particular bank that is its largest creditor and often also a shareholder. The advantages of bank shareholding in the companies to which they are lending are explained. The Modigliani–Miller theorem, the core idea in thinking about how corporations acquire funds, is invoked as an essential frame of reference in considering the main bank system. The chapter closes with a discussion of corporate governance in Japan which is also much affected by the bank dominance of financial intermediation.
Marketing
Authors: Flath David
Published: September 2022

Japan’s distribution sector exhibits some peculiarities that this chapter explores and explains—ubiquity of small stores, convoluted wholesale channels, and myriad contractual arrangements by which manufacturers constrain the independent retailers and wholesalers who handle their products. The chapter begins by presenting data on the numbers of retail stores per person in Japan compared to other countries, and changes since the 1950s in Japan’s numbers of stores, employment in retailing and wholesaling, and numbers of stores of differing formats. It goes on to detail the regulation of large stores in Japan and its effects, arguing that the fundamental forces behind Japan’s relative ubiquity of stores are rooted in geography and economics, not regulation. The second part of the chapter describes many specific instances of vertical restraints in Japan. It explains that the common motivations for these customer restrictions, price stipulations, exclusive dealing, and the like are to improve the incentives of downstream distributors to promote products, inform customers about products, or maintain the quality of products.
Labor
Authors: Flath David
Published: September 2022

This chapter explores topics related to the Japanese employment system, which famously embodies lifetime employment, seniority-based wages, and enterprise unions, and which seems not to have afforded equal opportunities for women. It first describes the data on average tenure of employment of men and women in Japan and estimates of the effect of tenure on wages in Japan, which show that lifetime employment and seniority-based wages indeed characterize the terms of employment enjoyed by a large fraction of the male employees of large companies in Japan. It then goes on to describe the two theories that identify the economic rationale for such practices, the company-specific-skills theory and agency theory, and discusses the evidence supporting each theory; the theories are not mutually exclusive. The chapter then turns attention to enterprise unions in Japan, documenting their declining membership, and explaining the economic rationales behind their existence and strike behavior. The last part of the chapter is devoted to the experiences of women in the Japanese labor market. Exit from the labor force during the years of child rearing is a common thread that runs through the many ways in which Japanese women’s educational and labor market choices differ from men’s. The gender gap in wages and employment opportunities in Japan is deeply embedded in the system of educating, hiring, training, and motivating workers that evolved in Japan over the last hundred years, supported by a web of mutually reinforcing laws, regulations, and social norms.
Aftermaths
Authors: Colla Marcus
Published: September 2022

This chapter is concerned with the Prussian legacy in East Germany in the immediate post-war decades. It charts how the inescapable presence of the Prussian past helped produce collisions of incompatible and often incoherent historical narratives which frustrated the SED’s efforts to generate a credible legitimising backstory for the geopolitical accident that was the German Democratic Republic. After outlining the development in the GDR of new theoretical and historiographical frameworks for comprehending Prussian history, the chapter closely analyses a series of case studies of Prussian architecture demolished or preserved by the SED, including the Berlin Schloss, the Potsdam City Palace, and the Potsdam Garnisonkirche. It concludes that, while Prussia may have been taboo in the politics of history of post-war East Germany, it was in fact far from forgotten.
Life after Exile
Authors: Smith Frederick E.
Published: September 2022

This chapter focuses upon the ambiguous legacy of flight for Henrician and Edwardian émigrés after their return home during the reign of Mary I. These émigrés used the fact that they had endured the difficulties of displacement rather than compromise their faith as a mark of spiritual distinction that set them apart from their compatriots. However, at the same time, their unlawful flight from the realm opened them up to suspicions of political treachery and ‘foreignness’. Such suspicions were first articulated by Protestants, but they came to be shared by at least some English Catholics, and they continued to hang over the heads of former émigrés following their Marian repatriation. In this way, this chapter alerts us to the possibility of considerably more friction within the Marian Church hierarchy than is usually acknowledged.
Elizabethan Legacies
Authors: Smith Frederick E.
Published: September 2022

This chapter draws together the arguments developed throughout the book and considers their longer-term significance for our understandings of English Catholicism and the broader European Counter-Reformation. It explores the ways in which the Henrician and Edwardian emigration set important precedents for the experiences, responses and challenges faced by Elizabethan Catholics, precedents which ranged from the purely practical, to the devotional, doctrinal and definitional. This chapter also explores the posthumous legacy of Henrician and Edwardian émigrés amongst Catholic reformers elsewhere throughout western Europe, underlining the extent to which the reform programme they had attempted to implement in Marian England subsequently shaped European ideas about Catholic reform. In this way, it not only reinforces the core argument of this book—that, from the very beginning of the Reformation, English Catholicism was a religion shaped, defined and sustained by the mobility of people between England, the wider British Isles and the continent—but also underlines the extent to which English Catholicism and the broader European Counter-Reformation were not just connected, but interdependent.
Sustainability of Food Production and Livelihoods
Authors: Narang Harpreet Kaur
Published: September 2022

Ensuring food security for the future generations is akin to the issue of inclusive and sustainable development. It is a sound ecological base and a conducive public policy, that will ensure potential livelihood security. This part of the book addresses the issue by investigating the quality of ecological base in the state and the direction of public policy in achieving the objective of sustainability.
Public Policy for Food Security in Punjab
Authors: Narang Harpreet Kaur
Published: September 2022

The eighth chapter addresses the public policy pursued in India, to tackle the problem of hunger and malnutrition. The problem of food insecurity needs a multipronged approach covering all the dimensions—availability, access, absorption, and sustainability—with a focus on inclusive growth; employment generation; women’s empowerment; provision of education, health, sanitation, drinking, water and hygiene; direct nutritional interventions for the more vulnerable sections of the population. After presenting an understanding of the importance, features, new developments, and shortcomings of the PDS and the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013, the chapter looks at wide-ranging government programmes that directly or indirectly affect food security in the state.
General Introduction
Authors: Kirichenko Alexander
Published: September 2022

The General Introduction begins by arguing that one of the main functions of Greek mythology consisted in translating the political geography of Greece into narrative terms—into a network of crisscrossing storylines that imposed order on what would otherwise be a cognitively unwieldy territory. It proceeds to theorize what the book’s title describes as “the ideal.” Focusing on the Iliad, the chapter demonstrates that one cannot perform an intentional action unless one pictures an ideal reality in which that action has already been performed and that the ability to construct ideal realities is crucial for the functioning of such pre-literary instruments of intentionality as weapons, rituals, and spoken language. It concludes by drawing an analogy between the modus operandi of these instruments of intentionality and the ideal realities that, in Greek literature, function as matrices for collective intentional actions and which, therefore, endow the imaginary geography of the Greek world with a sense of purposeful structure.
Introduction
Authors: Kirichenko Alexander
Published: September 2022

The introduction to Part I outlines the basic principles of the spatial pragmatics of epinician poetry (the unattainable ideal of heroic excellence that it offers as a common object of emulation to the aristocratic elites of the geographically dispersed Greek world) and formulates the hypothesis, to be tested in Chapters 1 and 2, that a similar spatial pragmatics may have been responsible for shaping not only the plots of the Homeric poems but also Hesiod’s notion of poetic language as a transmitter of transcendental truths.
Conclusion
Authors: Kirichenko Alexander
Published: September 2022

After giving a brief summary of the two previous chapters, this Conclusion draws attention to the curious fact that, while anticipating the “logocentric” tendency of much of Western philosophy, Hesiod’s notion of poetic language as a transmitter of transcendental truths can in fact be perceived as a contingent product of competition between poetry and an inherently competitive aristocratic culture.
Introduction
Authors: Kirichenko Alexander
Published: September 2022

The Introduction to Part II draws an analogy between the conceptual structures of the Homeric heroic ideal and the ideology of Athenian autochthony: just as Achilles’ indexical essentialism emerges in the Iliad to be synonymous with the ideal of unfailing intentionality, so the Athenian citizens’ postulated identity with their native soil, too, forms the basis of their self-perception as a polity superior to all other Greek states. The Introduction further explains that the goal of Chapters 3 and 4 consists in establishing a link between the ideology of Athenian exceptionalism and what can be termed as Plato’s “ideal state of philosophy.”
Conclusion
Authors: Kirichenko Alexander
Published: September 2022

Focusing on Menander and Epicurus, this Conclusion briefly points to some of the remarkable changes that the idealized images of Athens—an autochthonous city and a paradigmatic site of philosophy—underwent in the Hellenistic period.