bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Division into Layers
Authors: Vidas Moulie
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the historical development of the anonymous layer, complicating the notion that the division in style and function between the stam and the traditions reflects a difference in provenance between two corpora. Instead, it argues that the Babylonian Talmud's creators produced both the anonymous layer and the cited traditions, or better, the division between them. This division is not simply a reflection of the different dating of these elements; it was, rather, constructed and imposed by the Bavli on earlier structures and sources. The chapter compares a sugya preserved in the Palestinian Talmud as well as in the Babylonian Talmud. In the earlier, Palestinian version, attributed traditions are employed both for interpretive, narrating functions and for apodictic rulings and brief exegetical comments. The Bavli reorganizes the sugya to create a distinction in function, dividing the material between two layers: a narrating, interpretive, discursive anonymous layer, and a layer of brief, non-discursive, attributed rulings.
Tradition and Vision
Authors: Vidas Moulie
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers Hekhalot literature to show that the Sar ha-Torah narrative from this corpus responds to the Talmudic academies‘ ideology of Torah study, presenting an alternative vision for Jewish culture in which retention and recitation are central rather than marginalized. It argues that this response correlates with other Hekhalot texts that recruit powerful images such as heavenly vision, transformation, and angelic liturgy to the project of memorizing and reciting the Oral Torah. It also contends that there is some evidence that the individuals whom the Babylonian Talmud marks as its opponents—the tanna'im—had a role in the shaping of Hekhalot traditions. Finally, the chapter suggests, based on the fact that the Hekhalot texts enter Jewish history as texts transmitted by Babylonian reciters, as well as on other connections between the tanna'im and Hekhalot texts, that the Babylonian reciters took active part in the shaping of Hekhalot traditions.
Reagan ’s Democratic Revolution
Authors: Smith Tony
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Ronald Reagan's commitment to the tenets of liberal democratic internationalism, and in particular his promotion of a global “democratic revolution” characterized by an apparent contradiction between activism and moderation in American foreign policy. It begins with a discussion of the Reagan administration's strategy that called for a a minimal effort on its part to realize its vision of a world order dominated by democratic governments, with emphasis on three key operational programs: “constructive engagement”; the push for antistatist, free markets abroad; and the Reagan Doctrine. The chapter then considers the role played by the Reagan administration's policies to the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and the succeeding prestige of democratic governance worldwide. It argues that the American role in the spread of democracy worldwide in the twentieth century was a necessary, but not sufficient, cause for the current strength of democratic government.
Night and Day
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: November 2017

This book examines bars not only as places for sociability, but also as windows for understanding how downtown neighborhoods in New York City like the Lower East Side, East Village, and Bowery have transformed from disinvested slums to upscaling destinations with nightlife scenes. More generally, the book investigates the role and impact of nightlife's rise in the postindustrial city by analyzing how bars have become symbols of neighborhood change, specifically gentrification, that different groups experience, interpret, and act upon in a multitude of ways. If we look beyond their brick-and-mortar buildings and the social life within them, we can see bars as part of a larger social ecosystem—an urban context of resident groups, community organizations, government agencies, politicians, consumer subcultures, and entrepreneurs—that contributes to our understanding of the nature and consequences of the massive reinvestment in the downtowns of today's cities.
Growing Nightlife Scenes
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the role of the local government in influencing economic development and diminishing civic power in city neighborhoods. It begins with an episode from a public forum on quality-of-life issues held for downtown residents. The vignette shows the open hostility that residents direct at the CEO of the New York State Liquor Authority (SLA), the government agency that they blame for the development of nightlife in the neighborhood in spite of their protests. The chapter proceeds by discussing the policies behind the growth of downtown Manhattan's nightlife scenes, especially the SLA's liquor licensing that facilitated the proliferation of bars. It shows how this policy, which represents “urban entrepreneurialism,” sparked local unrest and led neighborhood residents to organize and protest bars. Residents consider the SLA and bar owners as complicit perpetrators in the destruction of their neighborhood and sense of community, and view themselves as victims of these policies.
Weaving a Nostalgia Narrative
Authors: Ocejo Richard E.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the social reasons behind collective action against economic development. In particular, it considers how early gentrifiers construct a “nostalgia narrative” that they use to create a community ideology and a new self-identity as their neighborhood's “symbolic owners” that serve as bases for collective action. It also explores how and why neighborhood residents continue to protest bars despite recognizing their powerlessness to prevent nightlife growth and occupying a role as its victim. The chapter focuses on a longtime resident named Bob, who moved to the East Village at the start of its gentrification and who, like other early gentrifiers, stayed in their neighborhood through its rough years rely on their own past experiences and definitions of community to contest them as “theirs.” Since it draws on a past that is both imagined and personal, the residents' narrative presents its own internal contradictions while their sense of community and organized protests exclude certain groups, such as the neighborhood's existing low-income residents.
Introduction
Authors: Kelly Jamie Terence
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter first sets out the book's purpose, which is to argue that, just as in economics and law, normative democratic theory must begin to pay attention to the picture of human choice described by empirical psychology. Thus, it develops a behavioral approach to normative democratic theory. The book focuses on judgment-based theories—those that construe votes as judgments about the common good (or collective interest), rather than as individual preferences over electoral outcomes. It also focuses on framing effects, which occur when different but equivalent formulations of a problem result in substantively different decisions being made. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.
Mad Belief
Authors: Prendergast Christopher
Published: November 2017

This book offers a reading of Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu through the lens of skepticism. It examines the spectacle of Proust arguing with himself, and more specifically his attempt to apply his rule to his own creation, as an argument with and against himself, in particular, his lucid refusal to take on “faith” and hence protect from “enquiry” what in other moods and enthusiasms he most cherished, namely, his own mad belief in the resurrecting, transfiguring, and redeeming powers of art. The book also considers Proust's two voices for the invocations of madness in connection with the certifiable condition of sexual jealousy. Finally, it explores the question of “truth” in the context of philosophical “skepticism” as well as the relation between sexuality and the pursuit of knowledge in the Recherche.
The Citizen of the Unknown Homeland
Authors: Prendergast Christopher
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines questions about bodies and origins, homelands and fatherlands in À la recherche du temps perdu. In Marcel Proust's novel, the important parental body is the maternal body—at once sacred and profane, place of both sanctuary and exile. We are also taken back periodically to the Recherche's original religious home, by, for example, the views of Charlus in pious mood on the subject of the Christian Church and the sacrament of the Word made flesh. Charlus spews out a set of stock themes from the history of anti-Semitism in Christian Europe. The chapter also considers the presence of churches and cathedrals in the Recherche; the cathedrals are an expression of nation and ancestry, and as national patrimony they belong to “the body-France.” The chapter concludes by suggesting that in Proust the body is where we live but not where we are at home.
Naming, Concept, and Typology
Authors: Swedberg Richard
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at the next processes in building out the theory: coming up with a name for the phenomenon one is studying; developing some concepts that will help analyze it; and developing a typology. There exist different approaches to naming in social science. One can, for example, use existing words or invent new ones. Once the stage of observation is over and the phenomenon has been named, the name often needs to be turned into a concept. Turning some phenomenon into a concept means, for one thing, to make it more rational. Finally, as part of the process of creating a full tentative theory with the help of empirical material, one may use a typology or a classification. Classifications, more than typologies, are used to bring order into the empirical material at an early stage.
Heuristics
Authors: Swedberg Richard
Published: November 2017

This chapter focuses on the importance of heuristics in theorizing. The most common interpretation of the word heuristics is that it means “discovery.” When one theorizes, it has been argued, one should not only use the individual steps to move forward but also to try to discover something new about the phenomenon one studies. The heuristic stance, or the attitude that theorizing is about discovery, is to some extent inherent in the decision to theorize in the first place. While some of the literature on heuristics is about making important discoveries along the lines of Archimedes, there also exists another and more recent branch that has a much more modest aim. This type of heuristics essentially tries to teach the average student to develop an independent approach to solving problems.
The Role of Theory
Authors: Swedberg Richard
Published: November 2017

This chapter looks at the role of theory in theorizing. Knowing theory, in order to be good at theorizing in social science, is not the same as having a knowledge of the history of social theory. It is true that it is helpful to have some of the skills of an intellectual historian when one tries to figure out what a concept means, why a theory looks the way it does today, and similar issues. However, this is not the kind of knowledge that one basically needs to have in order to be good at theorizing. The two types of knowledge that are needed in order to theorize well are knowledge of the basics of social theory and knowledge of a number of concepts, mechanisms, and theories.
Summary and More
Authors: Swedberg Richard
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter summarizes the general approach to theorizing in this book. This approach may be referred to as creative theorizing. What first and foremost characterizes it is the argument that a distinct space must be assigned to theorizing in the research process. This goes for the prestudy as well as the main study. A second distinctive feature of creative theorizing is that it represents a deliberate attempt to shift the main focus from theory to theorizing. A third distinctive feature is that theorizing draws on a number of different types of thinking, feeling, and going about things that are currently mainly studied in cognitive science. The chapter then argues that theorizing is not something that can be done only by exceptionally gifted individuals, but something that anyone can learn how to do.
Indeterminacies in Wage and Asset Price Expectations
Authors: Phelps Edmund S.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines indeterminacies in wage and asset price expectations. It first considers what it argues are fatal flaws in Keynesian economics, comparing crude Keynesianism with a crude natural rate of unemployment. It then introduces a structuralist model of employment and economic growth that better illuminates the long slump without inflation in the United States. In a structuralist model, nonmonetary forces operate through structural channels to impact the path of employment and its medium-term level (as well as its long-term level). Asset prices, such as housing prices, are expressed in real terms. The chapter describes how structuralist models approaches issues relating to asset prices and wages and concludes by explaining how to think about expectation formation in modern economies—economies of the sort that became the lifetime subject of Frank H. Knight, John Maynard Keynes, and F. A. Hayek.
Stabilization Policies and Economic Growth
Authors: Aghion Philippe , Kharroubi Enisse
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the effect of the cyclical pattern of fiscal and monetary policies on economic growth. Economists generally see no connection between the way stabilization policies are implemented and the average speed at which the affected economy grows. If anything, growth theories tend to highlight the importance of stable and consistent policies as exemplified by recommendations to run prudent fiscal and monetary policies through balanced fiscal accounts or moderate inflation. Yet the view that policy recommendations to foster long-term growth should stop at calls for prudent fiscal and monetary policies has recently been challenged. Drawing on cross-industry, cross-country panel data regressions, this chapter explores the effect of fiscal policy countercyclicality and monetary policy countercyclicality. It shows that industries with greater financial constraints tend to grow faster in countries with more stabilizing fiscal or monetary policies.
Swings and the Rules-Discretion Balance
Authors: Taylor John B.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines two major swings in the balance between rules and the discretion of policymakers in U.S. economic policymaking in the past four decades: one in favor of rules and the other in favor of discretion. Evidence of the swing away from discretion is seen in actual fiscal policy and in the wide consensus among economists against the use of discretionary countercyclical fiscal policy in the 1980s and 1990s. The swing back toward discretion is found in the recent large discretionary fiscal stimulus packages and in deviations of monetary policy from the simple rules that described policy well in the 1980s and 1990s. Before elucidating the causes and effects of these swings, the chapter considers the economic and political rationale for policy rules. It suggests that the swing toward rules improved macroeconomic performance while the swing back toward discretion worsened it.
Introduction
Authors: Beckwith Christopher I.
Published: November 2017

This book investigates how the recursive argument method, the actual medieval “scientific method,” was transmitted along with the college to medieval Western Europe from Classical Arabic civilization, and how the Muslims of Central Asia had earlier adopted both from Buddhist Central Asian civilization. It analyzes the recursive argument method and gives examples showing its formation and development at each stage and in each of the relevant languages. This chapter considers the recursive argument method and related issues, especially the colleges, in the context of the full scientific culture that developed in medieval Western Europe in connection with the transmission of these two cultural elements.
The Recursive Argument Method of Medieval Science
Authors: Beckwith Christopher I.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the recursive argument method of medieval science. The distinctive argument method used in scientific literature from the High Middle Ages to the Enlightenment was the “scientific method” until the scientific revolution. It is traditionally known in earlier scholarly literature as the “scholastic method” or quaestiones disputatae “disputed questions” method. Unfortunately, because of increasing scholarly confusion about the origins and meaning of the traditional term “scholastic method,” and even of the term quaestiones disputatae, it has been necessary to adopt a purely descriptive term, namely recursive argument method, also called recursive method or recursive argument. Many medieval scholars who wrote works using the recursive argument method also wrote treatises. The chapter compares the recursive argument with the treatise and dialogue argument structures and considers diffrent types of formal recursion.
Islamization in Classical Arabic Central Asia
Authors: Beckwith Christopher I.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines Islamization in Classical Arabic Central Asia. The Arab Empire founded by the prophet Muhammad expanded rapidly, defeating the Byzantine Empire and capturing Syria (637) and Egypt (640). At the same time, the Arabs defeated the Sasanid Persian Empire (637) and raced across Persia into Central Asia. Within a very short time, early Arab Islamic culture came into direct, intimate contact with several major civilized areas, including the Graeco-Roman-influenced cultures of the Levant and North Africa, Persian culture, and the Buddhist cultures of Central Asia. From them the Muslims adopted various cultural elements. This chapter considers when, where, and how the Muslims acquired the recursive argument method and the Islamic college or madrasa. It shows that the recursive argument method is used in Arabic works by the Central Asian scientist and philosopher Avicenna.
The Problem of Human Rights
Authors: Hafner-Burton Emilie M.
Published: November 2017

This book examines whether more international legal instruments and procedures would be helpful while probing the actions that states can take in tandem to the large and increasingly elaborate international human rights legal system. It combines research in anthropology, criminology, economics, history, law, political science, psychology, and sociology with practical insight from the people in the field who are engaged in human rights promotion. Its goal is to develop a strategy for stewardship that could help make human rights more of a reality. Part I of the book considers what is known about why people (notably leaders of governments and their envoys) commit human rights abuses. Part II deals with the international human rights legal system that has emerged over the last six decades. Part III explores what governments themselves are doing to advance human rights abroad.
Contexts
Authors: Hafner-Burton Emilie M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the contexts that lead to abuse—that is, the various settings that allow or even encourage human rights abuses. In particular, it discusses six factors that are most strongly connected with abuse and thus are most relevant to the study of human rights: pervasive conflict and cultures of violence, such as full-blown civil war; illiberalism; political dissent; poverty and inequality; intolerance and dehumanization; and crime and abuse systems. These circumstances help explain why human rights violations are so often an insidious, system-level problem—a group of collective or interrelated actions that form a complex structure. Although contextual factors do not directly cause people to commit human rights crimes, they create situations and perceptions that allow people to believe that abuses will get them what they want at a price they are willing to pay.
Scholarly Perspectives
Authors: Hafner-Burton Emilie M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter reviews scholarly research on international human rights law, focusing on systematic studies that are based on historical statistics and carried out by social scientists. The systematic, scholarly study of international human rights law can be grouped into two main categories. First are studies on the process of international law, such as on how judges in human rights tribunals make decisions. Second are studies that look for relationships between the presence of law (and laws of different types) and actual changes in human behavior. The chapter concentrates on the second category of research and highlights its main weaknesses. It also discusses some of the findings of statistical research regarding civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights. Finally, it examines the mechanisms of influence of the international human rights legal system.
Practitioner Perspectives
Authors: Hafner-Burton Emilie M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the experiences of practitioners who work inside and around the international human rights legal system. Those insider views—many of them from lawyers who have one foot in academia and another in the practical efforts of nongovernmental organizations and international legal bodies—point to many similar findings. They see a system in which legal obligations and membership have expanded much faster than the capacity to yield practical improvements in human rights. According to many of these practitioners, the legal system has been extremely successful at declaring universal values, yet has fallen quite short in practical implementation. The chapter discusses some good news regarding the impact of international treaties and legal customs on constitutions, national law, and domestic politics, as well as some barriers to a more effective human rights legal system; for example, insider politics and underused or ineffective complaints mechanisms.
System Reform
Authors: Hafner-Burton Emilie M.
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers areas where reforms could make the international human rights legal system more effective and influential. In particular, it examines just what kinds of reforms are achievable in the real world along with their likely impact. Four types of reform are discussed. First are notions about how the broader public might become more aware that the system exists, and also more fully engaged with human rights legal procedures at home and internationally. Second are reforms aimed at streamlining the human rights legal system. Third is the professionalization of the system, especially the United Nations treaty bodies and Secretariat. Fourth is investing in credibility and legitimacy. The chapter concludes by outlining strategies that could increase the success of reform efforts and highlighting the limits of reform.
The epidemic in a closed population
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the case of an epidemic in a closed population. “Closed” means that demographic turnover, emigration, and immigration are not considered. The following questions may be asked: Does this cause an epidemic? If so, at what rate does the number of infected hosts increase during the rise of the epidemic? What proportion of the population will ultimately have experienced infection? We assume that we are dealing with microparasites, which are characterized by the fact that a single infection triggers an autonomous process in the host. We further assume that this process results in either death or lifelong immunity, so that no individual can be infected twice. In order to answer these questions, we first have to formulate assumptions about transmission. It is then helpful to follow a three-step procedure: model the contact process; model the mixing of susceptible and infective (i.e., infectious) individuals; and specify the probability that a contact between an infective and a susceptible actually leads to transmission.
Stochastic modeling: The impact of chance
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

This chapter defines a stochastic counterpart to the homogeneous deterministic epidemic model introduced in Chapter 1. The model considers a homogeneous community of individuals that mix uniformly, meaning that there is no social structure in the community. The word “mix” is used in the sense of engaging in a type of contact that may possibly lead to transmission; what mixing is will therefore depend on characteristics of the infectious agent and the host. The randomness in the model stems from the latency and infectious periods being random (i.e., typically different for different individuals), and also from the contact process: infectious contacts of infected individuals occur randomly in time and with randomly selected individuals in a finite population. The chapter highlights two special cases, called the “general” epidemic and the Reed–Frost epidemic in the literature.
The basic reproduction number
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

The basic reproduction number (or ratio) R₀ is arguably the most important quantity in infectious disease epidemiology. It is among the quantities most urgently estimated for infectious diseases in outbreak situations, and its value provides insight when designing control interventions for established infections. From a theoretical point of view R₀ plays a vital role in the analysis of, and consequent insight from, infectious disease models. There is hardly a paper on dynamic epidemiological models in the literature where R₀ does not play a role. R₀ is defined as the average number of new cases of an infection caused by one typical infected individual, in a population consisting of susceptibles only. This chapter shows how R₀ can be characterized mathematically and provides detailed examples of its calculation in terms of parameters of epidemiological models, culminating in a set of algorithms (or “recipes”) for the calculation for compartmental epidemic systems.
Elaborations for Part I
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

Chapters 5, 13 and 14 presented methods for making inference about. infectious diseases from available data. This is of course one of the main motivations for modeling: learning about important features, such as R, the initial growth rate, potential outbreak sizes and what effect different control measures might have in the context of specific infections. The models considered in these chapters have all been simple enough to obtain more or less explicit estimates. of just a few relevant parameters. In more complicated and parameter-rich models, and/or when analyzing large data sets, it is usually impossible to estimate key model parameters explicitly. In such situations there are (at least) two ways to proceed. One uses Bayesian statistical inference by means of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods (MCMC), and the other uses large scale simulations along with numerical optimization to fit parameters to data. This chapter mainly describes Bayesian inference using MCMC and only briefly some large simulation methods.
Elaborations for Part III
Authors: Diekmann Odo , Heesterbeek Hans , Britton Tom
Published: November 2017

This chapter discusses the case of an epidemic in a closed population. Closed means that demographic turnover, emigration, and immigration are not considered. The following questions may be asked: Does this cause an epidemic? If so, at what rate does the number of infected hosts increase during the rise of the epidemic? What proportion of the population will ultimately have experienced infection? We assume that we are dealing with microparasites, which are characterized by the fact that a single infection triggers an autonomous process in the host. We further assume that this process results in either death or lifelong immunity, so that no individual can be infected twice. In order to answer these questions, we first have to formulate assumptions about transmission. It is then helpful to follow a three-step procedure: model the contact process; model the mixing of susceptible and infective (i.e., infectious) individuals; and specify the probability that a contact between an infective and a susceptible actually leads to transmission.
Confucianism as a World Religion
Authors: Sun Anna
Published: November 2017

Is Confucianism a religion? If so, why do most Chinese think it isn't? This book traces the birth and growth of the idea of Confucianism as a world religion. The book begins at Oxford, in the late nineteenth century, when Friedrich Max Müller and James Legge classified Confucianism as a world religion in the new discourse of “world religions” and the emerging discipline of comparative religion. The book shows how that decisive moment continues to influence the understanding of Confucianism in the contemporary world, not only in the West but also in China, where the politics of Confucianism has become important to the present regime in a time of transition. Contested histories of Confucianism are vital signs of social and political change. The book also examines the revival of Confucianism in contemporary China and the social significance of the ritual practice of Confucian temples. While the Chinese government turns to Confucianism to justify its political agenda, Confucian activists have started a movement to turn Confucianism into a religion. Confucianism as a world religion might have begun as a scholarly construction, but are we witnessing its transformation into a social and political reality? With historical analysis, extensive research, and thoughtful reflection, this book will engage all those interested in religion and global politics at the beginning of the Chinese century.
Four Controversies over the Religious Nature of Confucianism
Authors: Sun Anna
Published: November 2017

This chapter presents the four major controversies in the past five centuries regarding the nature of Confucianism as a religion. The first is the Chinese Rites and Term Controversy, which involved Jesuit missionaries in China. The second is the so-called Term Controversy, which involved missionaries in China as well as scholars in the newly emerging intellectual discipline, “comparative religion.” The third is the Confucianity Movement (kongjiao yundong), which was a failed movement to make Confucianity into China's state religion. The fourth is the latest debate over the religious nature of Confucianism, the so-called Confucianism as a Religion Controversy, which took place in China between 2000 and 2004.
The Making of a World Religion
Authors: Sun Anna
Published: November 2017

This chapter analyzes the connection between the making of Confucianism as a religion and the emergence of comparative religion as a discipline, based primarily on extensive archival research conducted in the Max Müller Archive at Bodleian Library in Oxford, the British India Office Archive at the British Library, and the Archive at the Oxford University Press. It shows that by allying himself with Max Müller and the emerging discipline, professor James Legge moved the controversy over the religious nature of Confucianism from the small circle of missionaries in China to a new arena. Through innovative boundary work, Müller and Legge helped establish a legitimate intellectual field to promote the discourse of world religions of which Confucianism was an essential part.
To Become a Confucian
Authors: Sun Anna
Published: November 2017

This chapter offers a new conceptual framework for addressing the empirical question of who the Confucians are in China. It suggests a three-tier definition that considers Confucian religious ritual practice along with ancestral worship, as well as Confucian spiritual exercise and social rituals. First, Confucianism is seen as one of the major world religions today, both in the popular imagination and in academic work. Second, the definition of religion is produced by a consensus between communities of practitioners and scholars, and it is a historical product rather than an ahistorical, normative concept. Finally, because of the nonstatic nature of both the definition of religion and the ideas associated with Confucianism, it is entirely plausible for Confucianism to be understood as a religion by both practitioners and scholars in a given social and historical context.
The Contemporary Revival and Reinvention of Confucian Ritual Practices
Authors: Sun Anna
Published: November 2017

This chapter evaluates interviews and participant observations in various Confucian temples throughout China, suggesting that there is a noteworthy reinvention of religious ritual practices in Confucian temple settings, as well as a revival of Confucian social rituals in today's China. The Confucian temple life in Taiwan provides a good comparison case, both echoing many of the practices seen in Mainland China and proposing possible future directions that Confucian temple life in Mainland China might take. Related fieldwork includes visits to non-Confucian temples in which Confucius is also venerated, both in Mainland China and Taiwan. The chapter shows how this revival process is by no means uniform but is shaped by differences in local religious history, regional economic development, and the historical status of the temples.
Democratic Reason
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: November 2017

Individual decision making can often be wrong due to misinformation, impulses, or biases. Collective decision making, on the other hand, can be surprisingly accurate. This book demonstrates that the very factors behind the superiority of collective decision making add up to a strong case for democracy. The book shows that the processes and procedures of democratic decision making form a cognitive system that ensures that decisions taken by the many are more likely to be right than decisions taken by the few. Democracy as a form of government is therefore valuable not only because it is legitimate and just, but also because it is smart. The book considers how the argument plays out with respect to two main mechanisms of democratic politics: inclusive deliberation and majority rule. In deliberative settings, the truth-tracking properties of deliberation are enhanced more by inclusiveness than by individual competence. The book explores this idea in the contexts of representative democracy and the selection of representatives. It also discusses several models for the “wisdom of crowds” channeled by majority rule, examining the trade-offs between inclusiveness and individual competence in voting. When inclusive deliberation and majority rule are combined, they beat less inclusive methods, in which one person or a small group decides. The book thus establishes the superiority of democracy as a way of making decisions for the common good.
Democracy as the Rule of the Dumb Many?
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: November 2017

This chapter illustrates the deeply entrenched prejudice of political philosophers, including some democratic theorists, against “the rule of the dumb many.” It offers a critical literature survey showing how most traditional approaches to democracy either deny or circumvent the question of the people's competence to rule, with the exception of a tiny but growing literature on “epistemic democracy.” In fact, with the exception of the latter, the question of the cognitive competence of average citizens and the related question of the performance of democratic institutions either raises profound skepticism or is avoided altogether in contemporary democratic theory, both positive and normative. As a result, many theories and justifications of democracy tend to be competence insensitive, either denying that citizens' political incompetence is a problem or circumventing what they do see as a problem through an “elitist” definition of democracy as rule by the elected enlightened.
Second Mechanism of Democratic Reason: Majority Rule
Authors: Landemore Hélène
Published: November 2017

This chapter argues that majority rule is a useful complement of inclusive deliberation, not just because majority rule is more efficient timewise, but because it has distinct epistemic properties of its own. It also stresses that majority rule is best designed for collective prediction—that is, the identification of the best options out of those selected during the deliberative phase. Of all the competing alternatives (rule of one or rule of the few), majority rule maximizes the chances of predicting the right answer among the proposed options. The chapter considers several accounts of the epistemic properties of majority rule, including the Condorcet Jury Theorem, the Miracle of Aggregation, and a more fine-grained model based on cognitive diversity.
Looking for Rights in All the Wrong Places
Authors: Zackin Emily
Published: November 2017

This book examines the nature and political origins of America's positive constitutional rights. It is widely assumed that constitutional rights in the United States protect people from government alone, not to mandate that government to protect them from other sorts of dangers. In other words, America is often believed to be exceptional in its lack of positive rights and its exclusive devotion to negative ones. The book challenges this conventional wisdom about the nature of America's constitutional rights by focusing on three political movements: the campaign for education rights, the movement for positive labor rights, and the push for constitutional rights to environmental protection during the 1960s and 1970s. Together, these cases demonstrate that rights movements in the United States have used state constitutions for reasons that have been largely overlooked by theories of constitutional politics.
Defining Positive Rights
Authors: Zackin Emily
Published: November 2017

This chapter provides a definition of rights and describes the distinction between the categories of positive and negative rights. It first examines the rights movements' campaigns to add education, labor, and environmental rights to state constitutions before discussing the controversy surrounding the positive–negative distinction. It defines positive rights as those that require government intervention in order to protect people from threats that are not directly or solely governmental. In contrast, negative rights are those that require government to restrain itself in order to protect people from threats that stem directly from an overbearing and intrusive state. The chapter suggests that state constitutions and the politics that have surrounded them demonstrate the importance of positive rights as an enduring feature of the U.S. constitutional tradition.
Why Write New Rights?
Authors: Zackin Emily
Published: November 2017

This chapter considers the variety of political calculations that drove activists, organizations, and social movements to pursue the creation of positive rights. It first explains the classic idea of constitutions as constraints before discussing the main assumptions of entrenchment theories. It then considers the distinctions among the concepts of entrenchment, judicialization, and constitutional development. It also offers additional accounts of constitutional development and highlights several unique features of constitutional law, other than its (widely recognized) capacity to entrench established policies by allowing courts to protect them. The chapter contends that we should view state constitutions' responsiveness to social change as a feature that allows us to expand the existing understanding of constitutional development.
Workers’ Rights
Authors: Zackin Emily
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines the campaigns to add labor rights to state constitutions. The quintessential arguments about America's exceptional liberalism and its uniquely negative-rights culture have focused on the labor movement, which Louis Hartz has argued was a participant in—rather than a rival of—the dominant economic and ideological regime. The chapter first considers the labor provisions of state constitutions before discussing the ways that labor leaders and organizations influenced the drafting of new constitutions and amendments to existing constitutions. It then explains how labor rights were created not only to overturn particular court decisions, but also to preempt possible litigation. It also shows how labor organizations used constitutional rights to dictate state legislatures what they had to do while simultaneously telling courts what they could not do. The chapter demonstrates that, even in the area of labor regulation, Americans have successfully pursued the creation of positive rights.
Conclusion
Authors: Zackin Emily
Published: November 2017

This concluding chapter clarifies that the book has refuted the claim that positive rights are outside the American constitutional tradition by investigating the various campaigns to add education and labor rights as well as rights to environmental protection to state constitutions. By including state constitutions in our view of American constitutionalism, many successful movements for positive constitutional rights become immediately apparent. The campaigns for positive rights have varied across states and over time, but each has worked for a more expansive government, one intended to protect people from threats other than a tyrannical state, and often from the dangers associated with unfettered capitalism. This chapter examines the exclusionary and racist side of the movements that championed positive rights and highlights the many, mutually influential connections between constitutional development at the state and federal levels.
Setting the Trap
Authors: Maurer Noel
Published: November 2017

This chapter reviews the development of an informal American empire in the circum-Caribbean. Formal imperialism was off the table once it became clear that Congress could not be trusted to support investor interests in colonized territories, but the property rights of Americans continued to come under threat from a combination of feckless foreign governments and political instability. Under pressure from a coalition of direct investors in tropical enterprises and creditors to Latin American governments, Theodore Roosevelt used instability in the Dominican Republic to proclaim a de facto intervention sphere within which the U.S. would exercise an international police power in cases of “chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society.” The chapter shows how markets reacted to Roosevelt's declarations, factoring in American protection.
Banana Republicanism
Authors: Maurer Noel
Published: November 2017

This chapter illustrates how republican administrations after 1920 continued the intervention policy, even though Warren Harding openly campaigned against it in his 1920 presidential run. It shows how Harding tried and failed to extricate the United States from the interventions and receiverships in Central America, the Caribbean, and Liberia. Calvin Coolidge succeeded Harding after his death in 1923, and the Coolidge administration was equally ambivalent. Nevertheless, Coolidge failed to resist pressure to intervene on behalf of U.S. investors. By 1927, he would publicly state that there is a distinct and binding obligation on the part of self-respecting governments to afford protection to the persons and property of their citizens, wherever they may be.
The Empire Trap and the Cold War
Authors: Maurer Noel
Published: November 2017

This chapter analyzes how the empire trap continued to drive policy in the context of the worldwide contest with the Soviet Union. The Cold War had two opposing effects on the empire trap. On one hand, it raised the strategic cost of intervention. American pressure on a foreign government, if unsuccessful, could push that country into the Soviet bloc. On the other hand, the advent of the Cold War also raised the domestic costs of acquiescing to foreign nationalizations. Private interests rapidly learned that the fear of communist expansion made it easier to manipulate intelligence and mobilize public and congressional opinion. The Kennedy administration tried to ignore Third World expropriations, only to have Congress mandate the imposition of crushing sanctions in the event.
The Success of the Empire Trap
Authors: Maurer Noel
Published: November 2017

This chapter examines how American pressure obtained fair compensation for the vast majority of natural resource investors. There was one other difference between the Cold War-era empire and its pre-Depression predecessor: in the second empire, the United States essentially gave up trying to directly alter the domestic institutions of foreign countries. There would be massive aid programs, and American advisers would become omnipresent in places like South Vietnam, but once the occupation governments were withdrawn there would be no more “fiscal receiverships” or occupations—save for a few brief months in the Dominican Republic and mere days in Grenada and Panama. Where the United States did take a more active role, it had little to do with the protection of American property rights and more to do with the containment of Communist expansion.
Introduction and Statement of Main Results
Authors: Yuan Xinyi , Zhang Shou-Wu , Zhang Wei
Published: November 2017

This chapter states the main result of this book regarding Shimura curves and abelian varieties as well as the main idea of the proof of a complete Gross–Zagier formula on quaternionic Shimura curves over totally real fields. It begins with a discussion of the original formula proved by Benedict Gross and Don Zagier, which relates the Néeron–Tate heights of Heegner points on X⁰(N) to the central derivatives of some Rankin–Selberg L-functions under the Heegner condition. In particular, it considers the Gross–Zagier formula on modular curves and abelian varieties parametrized by Shimura curves. It then decribes CM points and the Waldspurger formula before concluding with an outline of our proof, along with the notation and terminology.
On Gnosis and the Imaginary of the Modern/Colonial World System
Authors: Mignolo Walter D.
Published: November 2017

This introductory chapter aims to move subjugated knowledge to the limits of the colonial difference where subjugated become subaltern knowledges in the structure of coloniality of power. It conceives subaltern knowledges in tandem with Occidentalism as the overarching imaginary of the modern/colonial world system: Occidentalism is the visible face in the building of the modern world, whereas subaltern knowledges are its darker side, the colonial side of modernity. This very notion of subaltern knowledges makes visible the colonial difference between anthropologists in the First World “studying” the Third World and “anthropologians” in the Third World reflecting on their own geohistorical and colonial conditions.
Globalization, Mundialización: Civilizing Processes and the Relocation of Languages and Knowledges
Authors: Mignolo Walter D.
Published: November 2017

This chapter identifies some of the instances in which the denial of the denial of coevalness materializes itself by redressing and implementing long-lasting forces, sensibilities, and rationalities repressed by the one-sided ideology of the “civilizing mission/process,” and its complicity in the subalternization of knowledges and cultural production throughout the planet. Remapping new world order implies remapping cultures of scholarship and the scholarly loci of enunciation from where the world has been mapped. The crisis of “area studies” is the crisis of old borders, be they nation borders or civilization borders. It is also the crisis of the distinction between hegemonic (discipline-based knowledges) and subaltern (area-based knowledges), as if discipline-based knowledges are geographically disincorporated.