bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Narratives about Isaiah and Their Relationship with 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles
Authors: Birdsong Shelley L.
Published: October 2020

This chapter explores the narratives about King Hezekiah and the prophet Isaiah found in 2 Kgs 18–20, Isa 36–39, and 2 Chron 32. First it comments briefly on the historicity of Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah in 701 bce. Thereafter, it responds to the stalled source and redaction debate by putting forth an entirely new proposal for the development of these texts. Finally, it interprets each of the resulting prophet-king narratives in their own literary settings in order to stress how context reshapes meaning. In the book of Kings, Hezekiah is a complex character whose reign is tainted by his intertextual connections to other kings; he is part of the monarchy that ultimately failed to save its people from attack and eventual exile. In Isaiah, Hezekiah functions as a moral warning for returning exiles to maintain purity and heed the prophets. In Chronicles, Hezekiah is exalted—over and against the kings before and after him—as a divine devotee who prays faithfully and cares for God’s temple. In each book, the characters are formed around a unique theological message rather than historical veracity. Highlighting these differences undergirds the conception of the biblical text as a didactic rolling corpus that evolved over time and produced multiple meanings for each new setting. As such, it invites readers to update the narratives for their own contemporary contexts rather than simply search for historicity.
Isaiah 24–27: The So-Called Isaiah Apocalypse
Authors: Hibbard J. Todd
Published: October 2020

Isaiah 24–27 has long been recognized as a self-contained section within the larger book of Isaiah. After introducing and summarizing the content of this section, this chapter explores the numerous features and critical questions raised by this material. The issues include the customary questions of date, structure, and redaction, as well as matters raised by these chapters specifically: the identity of the unnamed city, covenant, resurrection, intertextuality, and their alleged apocalyptic character. Scholarship on all of these questions reveals an exceptionally diverse range of views given that the section comprises only four chapters. While this chapter does not seek to resolve most of these interpretive difficulties, it does argue that the designation of these chapter as the “Isaiah Apocalypse” should be dropped.
Isaiah 40–55
Authors: Heffelfinger Katie M.
Published: October 2020

This chapter traces the scholarship on Isa 40–55 in three areas of study: composition, relationship to the book as a whole, and primary message(s). It observes that redaction-critical approaches have produced a variety of proposals, and points to poetics and orality studies as areas for consideration in ongoing composition work. It highlights the central role the exilic chapters play in the whole book by looking at whole-book formation studies and the features these chapters share with the remaining chapters. The chapter suggests that poetic juxtaposition may be a useful model for considering the book’s unity. Finally, it points to the construction of an encounter with Yhwh in response to the exiles’ sense of abandonment as the primary meaning of Isa 40–55. This relational message of reconciliation and restoration of trust lessens audience resistance poetically. The comfort motif, the homecoming theme, and personification also contribute to this message.
The “Constitutional” System of Israel
Authors: Mahler Gregory
Published: October 2020

Israel’s constitutional setting and “unwritten” constitution have evolved over the years, influenced by actions of the Supreme Court of Israel and the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. Israel’s constitutional status, with its constitutional structure not formally entrenched in writing, leaves many specific principles of the constitution and their impact more uncertain in many cases than might be the case if there were a more formalized, “written” constitution, something to which Israel committed itself over seven decades ago. Structures of the constitution, including the Basic Laws, are constitutional but are not the same as having a constitution, and this situation leaves the proper role of the Supreme Court in Israel open to debate. The constitutional system has direct and clear influence over the operation of day-to-day politics and affects a wide range of political and structural factors in the Israeli political world.
The Legislative Branch in Israel
Authors: Friedberg Chen , Hazan Reuven Y.
Published: October 2020

The Knesset is the legislative body of Israel, which has been a parliamentary, unitary democracy since its foundation. It is a unicameral parliament, elected through a proportional election system that to a great extent reflects Israeli society. Because there is no written constitution, the Knesset alone delineates the three branches of government. On top of its legislative role, the Knesset also oversees the executive branch, handles political conflicts, and is in charge of decision-making. Although it is the main source of all political power in Israel and appears strong on paper, it operates under structural, legal, procedural, and historical constraints. The result is a relatively weak legislative branch in practice, in some roles more so than in others.
The Political Institutions of the Palestinian Minority in Israel
Authors: Ghanem As’ad
Published: October 2020

This chapter discusses the most prominent active partisan organizations representing the Palestinian population in Israel’s political arena. Some of these organizations act as political parties in the Israeli Knesset, while others have chosen to distance themselves from participation in parliamentary elections in order to avoid any cooperation with or legitimization for the Israeli state. The Palestinian political parties in Israel have been affected by political developments and implications resulting from the Arab–Israeli conflict and particularly the Palestinian problem, alongside Israeli national political, economic, and social developments since the creation of the state in 1948, in addition to being impacted by internal socioeconomic changes and transformations within the Palestinian community in Israel.
Democracy in Israel
Authors: Dowty Alan
Published: October 2020

Can Israel be both Jewish and democratic? If Jewishness is seen properly as ethnicity, Israeli democracy should be judged by the same standards as other nation-states. The Jewish community in Palestine, and later Israel, faced serious objective difficulties in democratization but drew on a traditional Jewish politics that emphasized voluntary consent and inclusion. Standard rankings of states on a democracy scale have consistently classified Israel as a democracy, if sometimes a flawed one. The relative weaknesses of this democracy, in both external and internal analysis, appear in freedom of expression, freedom of association, equality before the law, and judicial constraints on the executive. In practice, most of these problem areas are related to the Arab–Israeli conflict and the status of Israel’s Arab citizens.
“We Don’t Play”
Authors: Morgan Marcyliena
Published: October 2020

The notion that black women know of and must confront offensive assumptions about their character and identity is often an unspoken truth visible in sociolinguistic research. How we understand and view black women in ways that may be outside the purview of traditional sociolinguistic analysis, how they are viewed within their community and how they are represented in wider society is necessarily embedded in their presentation of self and especially in their language and discourse. This chapter directly engages this observation by framing African American women’s language research and analysis within black women’s social, political and cultural worlds and highlights their use of intentionality and agency to represent and at times assert black women’s importance in society. It addresses how the language and discourse of black women in particular works to reveal the politics of intersectionality, where race, class, sexuality and gender oppression interrelate for some women and may be invisible or acceptable to others.
The Gendered Muslim Subject
Authors: Durrani Mariam
Published: October 2020

Through feminist critique, this chapter attends to how gender and race are co-constitutive of the production and circulation of anti-Muslim racism/Islamophobia in three forms of U.S. public discourse: news media reports, political discourse, and popular culture. Discourse about the gendered Muslim body sustains the contemporary racialization of Muslims, playing a key role in the race- and gender-based discrimination and assault experienced by Muslim and Muslim-appearing/sounding individuals. Drawing on linguistic anthropology and critical Muslim studies, the chapter enlivens the scholarship on discursive mediatized formulations of the racialized Muslim figure by highlighting its gendered formulations.
Theorizing Linguistic Racisms from a Language Ideological Perspective
Authors: Kroskrity Paul V.
Published: October 2020

Previous scholarship has linked the promotion of racializing projects to the larger political economic contexts of nation-states and their role in (re-)producing social hierarchies. Language, in the form of language ideologies (Kroskrity 2016), linguistic forms, and discursive practices, provides a special kind of resource in such racializing projects because it contributes not only overtly but also covertly to the hierarchical production of social inequality. This study builds on prior language ideological studies of linguistic racism in the United States (e.g., Hill 2008) and demonstrates how this theoretical orientation reveals patterns of overt and covert racism that derive from speakers’ consciousness across a continuum ranging from practical consciousness (Kroskrity 1998) to critical language awareness (Alim 2010). Language ideological data, including the publications of “salvage era” academic researchers, disclose a sector on the spectrum of linguistic racisms directed specifically at indigenous people and their culture by a settler-colonial state and its citizens.
Racializing, Ethnicizing, and Diversity Discourses
Authors: Urciuoli Bonnie
Published: October 2020

In the United States, racializing, ethnicizing, and neoliberal diversity discourses construct the terms of belonging to a larger social order. All hierarchize markedness (the terms of inclusion or exclusion) but in ideologically distinct ways. Racializing discourses emphasize traits (social, psychological, linguistic) assumed to be natural and marked as a danger to the nation. Ethnicizing discourses emphasize traits marked by association with nationality or culture outside the United States but that are interpreted as contributions to the nation. Neoliberal diversity discourses emphasize traits marked by association with nationality or culture outside or marked social groups within the United States but that are also seen as contributions to a corporate order of productivity. The same people might be viewed through any of these three lenses, depending on what motivates the viewers and how that is realized through discursive elements and their linked social processes.
Growing the Grassroots: Reforming Talent Agent Legislation to Promote the Rights and Interests of Grassroots Artists
Authors: Biggers Bradfield E. A.
Published: October 2020

The music of grassroots artists is no longer confined to dive bars and late-night rotations on college radio. Today, the digitalization of the contemporary music industry provides grassroots artists with unprecedented access to a global music ecosystem. Nevertheless, talent agency statutes drafted in a pre-Internet music industry impede grassroots artists from reaping the benefits of modern technologies. Due to the inflexibility of these statutes, grassroots artists become lost in a music industry oversaturated with content because their advisors are prohibited from providing meaningful support. This chapter proposes legislators include “grassroots exceptions” in state-level talent agency statutes that would conditionally allow advisors of grassroots artists to procure certain types of employment. These exceptions would allow grassroots artists to efficiently participate in emerging music markets, as well as ensure that these statutes purporting to protect artists are equally promoting the interests of all artists.
Consequentialism and Partiality
Authors: Jeske Diane
Published: October 2020

Consequentialism has often been criticized for its inability to accommodate the partiality toward intimates that most people regard as not only morally permissible but as morally required. Consequentialists have responded to this objection by attempting to show, in various ways, that such partiality can, in some sense, be justified by their theory. While the classical utilitarians such as Mill and Sidgwick claimed that adherence to rules of thumb advising partial behavior is a good strategy for maximizing value, in recent years, Peter Railton has defended what is known as indirect consequentialism. According to the indirect consequentialist, consequentialism is to be understood as a criterion of right action, not as a decision procedure for agents to employ in their practical reasoning. Thus, according to Railton and others, a good consequentialist agent will often act and be motivated in the partial manner supposedly advocated by common sense. I argue that consequentialist moves such as those taken by Railton et al. are misguided, because the real issue is not how much partial behavior a moral theory is able to justify but, rather, the way in which it justifies that partial behavior.
Consequentialism and Promises
Authors: Liberman Alida
Published: October 2020

I explore the debate about whether consequentialist theories can adequately accommodate the moral force of promissory obligation. I outline a straightforward act consequentialist account grounded in the value of satisfying expectations, and I raise and assess three objections to this account: that it counterintuitively predicts that certain promises should be broken when common-sense morality insists that they should be kept, that the account is circular, and Michael Cholbi’s argument that this account problematically implies that promise-making is frequently obligatory. I then discuss alternative act consequentialist accounts, including Philip Pettit’s suggestion that promise-keeping is an intrinsic good and Michael Smith’s agent-relative account. I outline Brad Hooker’s rule consequentialist account of promissory obligation and raise a challenge for it. I conclude that appeals to intuitions about cases will not settle the dispute, and that consequentialists and their critics must instead engage in substantive debate about the nature and stringency of promissory obligation.
Consequentialism, Virtue, and Character
Authors: Driver Julia L.
Published: October 2020

This essay argues that consequentialist theories can both accommodate virtue evaluation, and, indeed, the most plausible versions must do so, and that consequentialist theories can also be structured as forms of virtue ethics. Different strategies available to the consequentialist are presented and criticized, including indirect strategies which argue that the right action is the action that the virtuous person would perform. The best way for the consequentialist to approach virtue is as another form of moral evaluation understood in consequentialist terms which is distinct from consequentialist act evaluation; that is, evaluating action is only one part of an overarching consequentialist account of moral evaluation, and the theory can also be applied to dispositions, motives, intentions, etc.
The Love–Hate Relationship between Feminism and Consequentialism
Authors: Brennan Samantha
Published: October 2020

The early utilitarians were strong champions for the equal treatment of women, yet contemporary feminists are some of consequentialism’s biggest critics. Arguing from a more generous account of what counts as consequentialist moral reasoning, this chapter identifies feminist criticisms of consequentialism and sees whether, and to what extent, feminism and consequentialism can be reconciled. It argues that a feminist version of consequentialism is possible and, regardless, that all feminist moral theories contain significant consequentialist elements which it would be a mistake to ignore. Finally, it suggests that all feminist approaches to ethics ought to accord some role to consequences and results, and therefore ought to contribute to debates and discussions within consequentialist ethics.
Consequentialism and Nonhuman Animals
Authors: John Tyler M. , Sebo Jeff
Published: October 2020

Consequentialism is thought to be in significant conflict with animal rights theory because it does not regard activities such as confinement, killing, and exploitation as in principle morally wrong. Proponents of the “Logic of the Larder” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly pro-exploitation stance, permitting us to eat farmed animals with positive well-being to ensure future such animals exist. Proponents of the “Logic of the Logger” argue that consequentialism results in an implausibly anti-conservationist stance, permitting us to exterminate wild animals with negative well-being to ensure future such animals do not exist. We argue that this conflict is overstated. Once we have properly accounted for indirect effects, such as the role that our policies play in shaping moral attitudes and behavior and the importance of accepting policies that are robust against deviation, we can see that consequentialism may converge with animal rights theory significantly, even if not entirely.
Actualism, Possibilism, and the Nature of Consequentialism
Authors: Cohen Yishai , Timmerman Travis
Published: October 2020

The actualism/possibilism debate in ethics is about whether counterfactuals of freedom concerning what an agent would freely do if she were in certain circumstances even partly determine that agent’s obligations. This debate arose from an argument against the coherence of utilitarianism in the deontic logic literature. In this chapter, we first trace the historical origins of this debate and then examine actualism, possibilism, and securitism through the lens of consequentialism. After examining their respective benefits and drawbacks, we argue that, contrary to what has been assumed, actualism and securitism both succumb to the so-called nonratifiability problem. In making this argument, we develop this problem in detail and argue that it’s a much more serious problem than has been appreciated. We conclude by arguing that an alternative view, hybridism, is independently the most plausible position and best fits with the nature of consequentialism, partly in light of avoiding the nonratifiability problem.
Relativized Rankings
Authors: Hammerton Matthew
Published: October 2020

In traditional consequentialism the good is position-neutral. A single evaluative ranking of states of affairs is correct for everyone, everywhere regardless of their positions. Recently, position-relative forms of consequentialism have been developed. These allow for the correct rankings of states to depend on connections that hold between the state being evaluated and the position of the evaluator. For example, perhaps being an agent who acts in a certain state requires me to rank that state differently from someone else who lacks this connection. In this chapter several different kinds of position-relative rankings related to agents, times, physical locations, and possible worlds are explored. Arguments for and against adopting a position-relative axiology are examined, and it is suggested that position-relative consequentialism is a promising moral theory that has been underestimated.
Consequentialism and Action Guidingness
Authors: Jackson Frank
Published: October 2020

Consequentialism says that consequences settle what ought to be done. What does this imply for how we should decide, on some given occasion, what ought to be done in the light of our beliefs about the consequences of the actions available to us, our options? We explore the issues generated by the fact that typically there is substantial uncertainty about the consequences of the actions we need to choose between—we perforce must rely on the subjective probabilities of the possible outcomes of those actions. We distinguish objective “oughts” from expective “oughts” and note the complications that arise with compound actions—actions that have actions as parts.
The Apartheid Project
Authors: Sparks Stephen
Published: October 2020

This chapter provides a wide-ranging overview of the extant historical literature and latest research on Apartheid South Africa. After assessing the contributions of scholars to debates about the origins and purposes of apartheid, the chapter focuses analytical attention on the paradoxical nature and legacies of the apartheid state. At the heart of the chapter is a concern with how the racially delimited political economy bequeathed by apartheid has shaped an increasingly dysfunctional post-apartheid order.
Patterns of Social Inclusion and Exclusion Among Youth Living in Stigmatized Neighborhoods
Authors: Espíndola Ferrer Fabiana
Published: October 2020

This chapter is an ethnographic case study of the social integration trajectories of youth living in two stigmatized and poor neighborhoods in Montevideo. It explains the linkages between residential segregation and social inclusion and exclusion patterns in unequal urban neighborhoods. Most empirical neighborhood research on the effects of residential segregation in contexts of high poverty and extreme stigmatization have focused on its negative effects. However, the real mechanisms and mediations influencing the so-called neighborhood effects of residential segregation are still not well understood. Scholars have yet to isolate specific neighborhood effects and their contribution to processes of social inclusion and exclusion. Focusing on the biographical experiences of youth in marginalized neighborhoods, this ethnography demonstrates the relevance of social mediations that modulate both positive and negative residential segregation effects.
Social Violence and Privilege
Authors: Lungo Rodríguez Irene
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines various strategies deployed by El Salvador’s upper middle classes to contend with social violence and also addresses their role in configuring their nation’s persistent social inequalities. Specifically, it analyzes the way in which practices and representations associated with these strategies for dealing with violence contribute to creating a social distance between the upper middle class and the lower classes. El Salvador is characterized by persistent and profound inequality, and high levels of social violence and poverty. The approach considers the sociocultural practices associated with the reproduction of social inequalities.
The Sociology of Inequality in Latin America
Authors: Mora-Salas Minor
Published: October 2020

The study of social inequality has been one of the main topics of Latin American sociology since the second half of the twentieth century. It is possible to organize the academic trajectory of this field into three periods. During the first developmental phase, the research was inspired by comprehensive theoretical frameworks such as modernization theory, dependency theory, and structuralist-development theory; the historical-structural approach constituted the hegemonic analytical model. In a second period, the sociological approach was relegated to the background as the study of poverty and income distribution came to the fore. This shift owed as much to major economic and social changes that the region experienced as to the waning of the historical-structural paradigm. Finally, the sociological approach has gained renewed prominence in light of the changes that have occurred in the region at the end of the past century and the first two decades of the present one. During this period, Latin American sociology of inequality becomes more multifaceted and its theoretical approaches more complex as it incorporates new analytical perspectives to problematize the persistence and reconstitution of social inequality patterns in the region.
An Indigenous Māori Perspective of Rangatahi Personhood
Authors: Ormond Adreanne , Kidman Joanna , Tomlins Jahnke Huia
Published: October 2020

Personhood is complex and characterized by what Avery Gordon describes as an abundant contradictory subjectivity, apportioned by power, race, class, and gender and suspended in temporal and spatial dimensions of the forgotten past, fragmented present, and possible and impossible imagination of the future. Drawing on Gordon’s interpretation, we explore how personhood for young Māori from the nation of Rongomaiwāhine of Aotearoa New Zealand is shaped by a subjectivity informed by a Māori ontological relationality. This discussion is based on research conducted in the Māori community by Māori researchers. They used cultural ontology to engage with the sociohistorical realities of Māori cultural providence and poverty, and colonial oppression and Indigenous resilience. From these complex and multiple realities this essay will explore how young Māori render meaning from their ancestral landscape, community, and the wider world in ways that shape their particular personhood.
Religious Legitimacy and Long-Run Economic Growth in the Middle East
Authors: Rubin Jared
Published: October 2020

This chapter explores the role that religious legitimacy played in the long-run economic fortunes of various Middle Eastern states. It first lays out a theory of political legitimacy which argues that a society’s laws and policies will be reflective of the bargain made between rulers and those who can provide legitimacy and coercion. To the extent that religious legitimacy is effective, religious authorities will therefore have some seat at the political bargaining table and policies will be reflective of their desires. Since Islam has been an effective source of political legitimacy for much of its history, most political equilibria in Muslim states have involved its use to some degree. This theory is then applied to medieval and early modern (primarily Ottoman) Middle Eastern history to help explain the economic divergence with northwestern Europe. The chapter concludes by highlighting how this theory complements recent theories put forth by Timur Kuran, Lisa Blaydes and Eric Chaney, and Ahmet Kuru.
Islamist Organizations and the Provision of Social Services
Authors: Brooke Steven Thomas
Published: October 2020

For decades, Islamist groups’ provision of social services, such as schooling, medical care, welfare provision, and childrearing, has been a key feature of life and politics in the Islamic world. But despite their ubiquity, this phenomenon largely eluded sustained investigation and theorizing. This has recently changed as a variety of scholars have made increasingly detailed interventions into the question of nonstate social service provision by Islamist actors. This chapter reviews this literature and uses cases from across the Islamic world to conceptualize Islamist social service provision, theorize its causes, and isolate its effects. In the process, it highlights how research into Islamist social service provision can contribute to broader research agendas, including the political economy of authoritarian regimes and the role of religion in comparative political behavior.
Repressive Religious Regulation and Political Mobilization in Central Asia
Authors: Gamza Dustin , Jones Pauline
Published: October 2020

What is the relationship between state repression of religion and political mobilization in Muslim-majority states? Does religious repression increase the likelihood that Muslims will support acts of rebellion against the state? This chapter contends that the effect of repression on attitudes toward political mobilization is conditional on both the degree of enforcement and the type of religious practice that is being targeted. When enforcement is high and the repressive regulation being enforced targets communal (rather than individualistic) religious practices, Muslims expect state persecution of their religious community to increase, and that this persecution will extract a much greater toll. They are thus more willing to support taking political action against the state in order to protect their community from this perceived harm. The chapter tests this argument with two novel survey experiments conducted in Kyrgyzstan in 2019. It finds that the degree of enforcement has a significant effect on attitudes toward political mobilization, but this effect is negative (reducing support) rather than positive (increasing support). The chapter also finds that repression targeting communal practices has a stronger effect on attitudes toward political mobilization than repression targeting individualistic practices, but again, these effects are negative. The chapter’s findings suggest that the fear of collective punishment increases as the degree of enforcement increases, particularly when it comes to repression targeting communal practices. Thus, while Muslims are motivated to protect their community from harm, it may be that the certainty of financial and physical harm outweighs the expectation of increasing religious persecution.
A Puzzling Anomaly
Authors: Charland Louis C.
Published: October 2020

Any ethical inquiry into addiction research is faced with the preliminary challenge that the term “addiction” is itself a matter of scientific and ethical controversy. Accordingly, the chapter begins with a brief history of the term “addiction.” The chapter then turns to ethical issues surrounding consent and decision-making capacity viewed from the perspective of the current opioid epidemic. One concern is the neglect of the cyclical nature of addiction and the implications of this for the validity of current psychometric instruments used to evaluate decision-making capacity in addiction. Another is the apparent discrepancy—possibly an ethical double standard—in the manner in which society and addiction researchers view the mental capacity and vulnerability of individuals who suffer from severe addiction. On the whole, the main ethical concern of the chapter is the puzzling lack of clinical research on decision-making capacity in research on addiction.
Technology and Time
Authors: Wajcman Judy
Published: October 2020

Across the social sciences and humanities there is a strong resurgence of interest in the impact of digital technology on the contemporary experience of time. The widespread belief is that ubiquitous connectivity technologies are causing a time-pressure epidemic, speeding up everyday life. This chapter will bring a much needed sociological perspective to bear on digital temporalities. Having situated claims about the acceleration society in a historical context, the chapter critiques technologically determinist accounts. By contrast, science and technology studies conceptualize time as fundamentally sociotechnical or sociomaterial. The chapter then explores how the experience of time is structured by institutions, such as work and family, and varies across social cleavages such as gender and class. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Silicon Valley’s culture of optimization, which feeds the obsession with time control, efficiency, and speed.
Manifestations and Arguments
Authors: Zumbansen Peer
Published: October 2020

While the term “legal pluralism’ literally denotes a plurality of legal orders, it is their plurality of and the distinguishing features between them, which continues to make the subject matter a very charged and hotly debated one. Seen through the lens of legal sociology and anthropology, the plurality of coexisting, normative orders appears, above all, as a matter of description, as a fact of social ordering. Meanwhile, as some of these normative systems are being claimed as being “law,” while others are associated with nonlegal forms of social order, such as customary, traditional, or indigenous norms as well as, perhaps, sector-specific rules of professional or industry conduct, the categories used to draw the lines between legal and nonlegal norms become in themselves highly contentious. The chapter argues that to neglect the fundamental distinction between legal pluralism as “manifestation” and as “argument” perpetuates a troubling inability on the part of positivist and analytical legal theory to engage with law’s inherent instability. Especially at a time, where the actors, norms, and processes that together constitute and shape emerging transnational regulatory regimes are located and operating both within and beyond the state as the purportedly singularly competent authority of law creation and enforcement, the deconstruction of “legal pluralism” as “nonlaw” and threat to the state can serve as the foundation for a new, critical legal theory.
Theorizing Justice under Conditions of Global Legal Pluralism
Authors: Muñiz-Fraticelli Víctor M.
Published: October 2020

There are distinct challenges to the construction of a theory of justice, in both the national and transnational sphere, under conditions of global legal pluralism. Pluralism shapes theories of global and domestic justice not so much by proposing new normative principles but by challenging prevailing methodological assumptions. Taking John Rawls’s theory of justice as a case study, this chapter illustrates how global legal pluralism complicates Rawls’s idealization of a well-ordered society as requiring the full and effective compliance of citizens with a shared and public conception of justice. Ultimately, the most important way in which global legal pluralism contributes to normative moral theory is by calling into question the ideal that the subject of justice can ever be fixed, that a political society can ever be bounded, or that there is a set of principles or a court of appeal that can order, with some degree of finality, the conflicting jurisdictional claims that bear on moral persons.
Legal Pluralism and the Problem of Evil
Authors: von Daniels Detlef
Published: October 2020

This chapter argues that the problem of evil is a way to reflect upon three underlying problems that pertain to legal pluralism as a critical, self-reflective theory. First, legal pluralism is prone to be absorbed by its “saved subjects.” Second, there is no theoretical space outside or above political contestation. Third, the legal pluralist herself potentially exerts influence on the observed through her observations. By analyzing the debate between Eugen Ehrlich and Hans Kelsen, the chapter demonstrates how these three issues accompany the development of the debate on legal pluralism and how the problem of evil emerges as its underlying enigma.
Conflicts of Laws Unbounded
Authors: Muir Watt Horatia
Published: October 2020

This chapter attempts to bring the specific insights of the discipline of the conflict of laws to some of the most significant issues that challenge contemporary legal theory in its attempts to integrate the radical changes wrought by globalization in the normative landscape beyond the nation-state. These changes have brought complex interactions of conflicting norms and social systems to the center stage of jurisprudence. This means that the conflict of laws has a plausible vocation to contribute significantly to a “global legal paradigm,” that is, a conceptual structure adapted to unfamiliar practices, forms, and “modes of legal consciousness.” Conversely, private international legal thinking has all to gain from attention to the other legal disciplines that have preceded it in the effort to “go global.” Thus, it needs to undergo a general conceptual overhauling in order to capture law’s novel foundations and features. In this respect, it calls for an adjustment of its epistemological and methodological tools to its transformed environment. It must revisit the terms of the debate about legitimacy of political authority and reconsider the values that constitute its normative horizon. From this perspective, This chapter aims to further the efforts already undertaken by various strands of legal pluralism, as an alternative form of “lateral coordination” in global law, toward the crafting of a “jurisprudence across borders.” Societal constitutionalism, which has explicitly made the connection between transnational regime-collision and the conflict of laws, provides a particularly promising avenue for unbounding the latter, which might then emerge as a form of decentered, reflexive coordination of global legal interactions.
Indigenous Rights and Intrastate Multijuridicalism
Authors: Newman Dwight
Published: October 2020

This chapter examines the rising assertion that Indigenous rights imply a necessary multijuridicalism within states that contain Indigenous peoples. Those who put this assertion call for the recognition of Indigenous legal systems alongside dominant state legal systems. One basis for these claims is found in Article 5 of the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which states that “Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions…” Considered against backgrounds of colonial encounters between European imperial powers and Indigenous peoples, there are no doubt strong normative arguments for moves toward reopening space for Indigenous legal traditions. At the same time, however, such moves raise complex questions of jurisprudential theory that warrant close analysis. This chapter engages in some of that analysis in the context of various theories of legal pluralism.
State Legal Pluralism and Religious Courts
Authors: Neo Jaclyn L.
Published: October 2020

In a seminal 1986 article, John Griffiths argues that state legal pluralism, as opposed to state/nonstate legal pluralism, is “weak” legal pluralism. State legal pluralism refers to the coexistence of and interaction of distinctive legal systems which are nonetheless administered by the state; that is, the coexistence of state-state laws or official-official laws. It is juxtaposed against “strong” legal pluralism, which involves the coexistence within a social group of legal orders which do not belong to a single “system.” It has been argued that state legal pluralism is “weak” because it ultimately adheres to the basic ideology of legal centralism. This suggests that state legal pluralism is ultimately controlled by the dynamics of unification and subordination. This chapter suggests that the reality may be far more complex. While institutions such as religious courts operate within the context of state legal pluralism and could indeed be co-opted into the state system, once they are formalized as state bodies, they attain normative and institutional resources to operate according to norms that are not always and not exhaustively derived from state law. Furthermore, empirically speaking, even where conceived as functioning within a setup of legal uniformity under the state, religious courts can retain and even develop their own social logic, such that the relationship between the two forums becomes more fluid and contingent. Accordingly, there is good reason to examine and theorize state legal pluralism more deeply. This chapter uses the context of plurinational courts, involving religious and nonreligious courts, to show how institutions within state legal pluralism are able to resist the legal centralist impetus of monism, statism, and positivism. Indeed, it is argued that, contrary to what is sometimes assumed, such state religious courts can and do operate “semi-autonomously.” Lastly, having provided a (hopefully) credible defense for stronger engagement with state legal pluralism, the chapter examines two jurisdictional schemes to manage jurisdictional overlap.
The Belhar Confession
Authors: Vosloo Robert
Published: October 2020

The Belhar Confession of 1986 arose in a very specific historical context, and the genesis of this confession should be understood in the light of the injustices and divisions associated with South Africa’s colonial and apartheid past. Yet the Belhar Confession is about more than apartheid, and as such it is a confession that is not merely part of some Reformed churches’ historical past, but in many ways it is still may be part of the future agenda of Reformed churches in the struggle to embody unity, reconciliation and justice in our world today, in obedience to the confession of Jesus Christ as Lord.
The Doctrine of God
Authors: Sonderegger Katherine
Published: October 2020

The Reformed doctrine of God has bequeathed to the church catholic a God who is truly Lord, a majestic sovereign who rides in the ancient heavens. He exercises his own good pleasure eternally, affirming and attesting and delighting in his own perfect goodness; and he turns toward his creatures in that perfect goodness to enact his justice and his mercy. Utterly self-sufficient, gloriously free, this God seals the covenant with creatures through the blood of his Son, and is content to dwell with them. He does not leave himself without witnesses, for the whole cosmos speaks his name. For this reason, the God whom the Reformed worship and adore, is in fullness and in truth, humanity’s chief end, its glory and its delight forever.
The Divine Decree
Authors: Nimmo Paul T.
Published: October 2020

This chapter explores the doctrine of the divine decree in Reformed theology, with specific attention to the tradition’s teaching on election and reprobation. It begins by considering the shape of the doctrine in general, noting some of the doctrine’s more controversial possibilities. It proceeds to focus on the way in which the early Reformed tradition understood the decree in both its positive and negative aspects, drawing variously on the texts of early Reformed writers and confessions and the works of Reformed orthodoxy. It then turns to the work of two more recent figures who have advanced significant revisions of the classical Reformed doctrine—Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth. It concludes with a concise series of recommendations in respect of ongoing reflection on this doctrine.
Reformed Ethics
Authors: Ziegler Philip G.
Published: October 2020

Within the wider field of ethical reflection and moral theology, Reformed ethics is tasked with understanding and orienting human action theologically by formative reference to the fundamental description of moral reality provided by Reformed doctrine. The essential features of this moral reality can helpfully be displayed and coordinated around the themes of belonging, gratitude, law, and holiness. Consideration of these themes helps to bring out what is distinctive in a Reformed theological ethic in the midst of much that is evidently also held in common with the wider Christian tradition. As this chapter looks to demonstrate, the history of Reformed theological ethics testifies to the fundamental and abiding conviction on the part of Reformed believers and theologians that reformatio doctrinae is intrinsically bound with and finds it term in serious and joyful reformatio vitae.
Arrows in Flight
Authors: Ingman Heather
Published: October 2020

This chapter explores why the three twentieth-century writers who arguably did most to establish the short story as the quintessential Irish literary form—Frank O’Connor, Seán O’Faoláin, and Mary Lavin—fell short in the novel form. All three writers excelled in the shorter format, devoting meticulous care to their craft and revising and reshaping their stories many times, sometimes even after publication. Furthermore, O’Connor and O’Faoláin wrote influential critical studies of the modern short story, and Lavin was a perceptive arbiter of its aesthetic value and potential. As novelists, however, all three published works that, in the view of critics and also the writers themselves, were failures. The chapter critically examines the reasons that underpin such judgements.
The Irish Novelist as Critic and Anthologist
Authors: Patten Eve
Published: October 2020

This chapter analyses the ways in which Irish novelists have positioned themselves, through their fiction and their critical writings, in relation to Irish traditions of the novel and the short story. It examines a strategic scepticism towards the national novel tradition by looking to a key decade, the 1990s, when a much-celebrated pre-millennial Irish fiction evolved an internal critical commentary on its own fragility, one arguably influenced by postcolonial theorizing on the long-term failure of Irish realism. The chapter proceeds to show how the same decade witnessed the positive consolidation of an Irish fictional lineage through influential literary anthologies compiled by Dermot Bolger and Colm Tóibín respectively. It finds that both collections foreground the strength of the Irish novel in the late twentieth century, while also showing how the genre remained beset by the political pressures of the national context and a problematic Irish literary inheritance.
Post-Millennial Irish Fiction
Authors: Cahill Susan
Published: October 2020

This chapter explores the ways in which Irish fiction has engaged with some of the defining developments in the Republic of Ireland since the turn of the millennium. It charts the experimentations in form and content that define much of Ireland’s recent fiction, as well as the ways in which writers refine and revisit the traditions of the Irish novel. In addition to tracing changes and continuities in the work of established authors such as Anne Enright, Sebastian Barry, and Colm Tóibín, the chapter examines the formal and thematic choices of the newer generation that has come to prominence since 2000. The analysis finds that a unifying feature of this body of fiction is a prevalent desire by novelists to cultivate a sense of empathetic understanding and humane connection with others as a means of countering the moral indifference and isolationist perspectives of neoliberal ideologies and policies.
The Business of Psychotherapy in Private Practice
Authors: Brandon Anna R.
Published: October 2020

The business of private practice requires navigating ethical professionalism alongside personal needs and values. Advertising, marketing, self-promotion, and the setting/collecting of fees can pose angst by challenging the altruistic values that likely influenced the choice of psychotherapy as a profession. In addition, the majority of marketing in today’s society is through the use of social media (SM), itself a vehicle of information that poses risk to ethical principles affecting therapist and patient. Outside of SM, more traditional methods of growing a psychotherapy practice such as advertisements in printed materials, personal visits to community professionals to increase referrals, and speaking engagements still involve a level of self-promotion that may bring discomfort to the therapist. Further, the exchange of money impacts the client–psychotherapist relationship; with this in mind, direct communication about fees may be a difficult conversation for clinicians to initiate. This chapter reviews position statements by professional associations and highlights gray areas for values-based consideration.
Engagement
Authors: Schofield Benedict
Published: October 2020

The idea of literary ‘engagement’, first introduced to a wider public by Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1940s, is perhaps the most important twentieth-century contribution to our evolving understanding of authorship. The question of how authors should position themselves vis-à-vis the human conflicts of their day remains as pertinent as ever. In this chapter, Benedict Schofield analyses how two contemporary novelists—Robert Menasse and Ali Smith—have found distinctively twenty-first-century forms of literary engagement, transforming themselves into what Schofield calls ‘cultural statespeople’. The works of Menasse and Smith cement their creators’ demands that they be taken seriously as literary authors, rather than as celebrities or even generic public intellectuals. Yet, both are deeply cognizant of the extra-literary factors that contribute to their popular appeal and use these to agitate for the strengthening and transformation of the European Union.