bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Introduction: Destabilizing Gender
Authors: Salenius Sirpa 
Published: April 2023

Abstract“What is gender, how is it produced and reproduced, what are its possibilities?” asks gender theorist Judith Butler in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1999). This chapter examines the arbitrary nature of gender, the ways in which it has been, and is constructed, often tied to such concepts as biological sex, sexuality, masculinities, and femininities. Japan as a global trendsetter, with its flourishing popular culture, seems fertile ground for exploring gender as it provides various contexts and case studies for exploring gender-coding or expressing and experimenting with cross-gender identification. The chapters that follow are briefly introduced here, pointing out the ways in which they can be read to challenge conventional assumptions associated not only with gender but also with masculinities, femininities, sexuality, and normativity. Taking examples from Japanese popular culture, the chapters generate new transnational conversations about gender that move beyond any national or geographic specificity.
“I’ll Create My Own Precedents”: Female Rakugo Performers on Tokyo’s Yose Stages
Authors: Stark Sarah 
Published: April 2023

AbstractRakugois a Japanese stage art originating in the seventeenth century, and was initially popular with the lower classes. For the majority of its history,rakugostories have been performed by men for (mostly) male audiences. The misogynistic and/or male-centered characters of the stories are not the only obstacle female performers are faced with; they also have to confront the male-centered community and audience expectations. With few senior female master-performers, there is a lack of role models and younger female performers have to find strategies regarding their portfolio, voice production, stage appearance and modification of stories. This chapter looks at the history of female performers and explores the current state on Tokyo’srakugostage also providing a valuable analysis of one of the few Japanese stage arts which allows women to perform on its main stages.
Not Quite There: Nike’s Diversity and Inclusion Agenda and Japan’s Readiness
Authors: Itatsu Yuko 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThis chapter analyzes recent ads created by Japanese sports brands celebrating female empowerment, with a focus on ads by Nike Japan. Most of these ads, which can be found on YouTube, illustrate a nuanced maneuver on the part of Nike Japan as they heed Nike headquarter’s diversity strategy but simultaneously try to calibrate its social message to be more acceptable to the general Japanese public. The chapter argues that in this effort to cater to Japanese society, Nike Japan’s message has become increasingly conservative in tone and ironically less geared to advancing the diversity and inclusion agenda. A comparison with other domestic competitors is made to highlight Nike’s portrayal of female athletes.
Creating the Body Beautiful Cosplay: Crossdressing, Cosplay, and Hyper Femininity/Hyper Masculinity
Authors: King Emerald L. 
Published: April 2023

AbstractIn dressing up and performing cosplay (costume play), practitioners will often change their appearance using wigs, makeup, layered shoes, and fantastic costumes. Increasingly, cosplay practitioners of all genders will use various means to alter the way their bodies look, adding curves or muscles with padding and binding or tucking away unwanted bulges. In addition to scholarly sources, this chapter will also make use of the commentary on gender, race, and body type posted by cosplay practitioners on public, global social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter in order to understand what constitutes the “perfect” or ideal cosplay body—if, indeed, such a thing exists. Rather than asking why these cosplayers dress up as their favorite characters from popular culture, the focus here will be on examining the ways in which cosplayers create their costumes. While many cosplay practitioners buy or commission their garments from online stores, the focus here is on cosplayers who create their own costumes for the purpose of taking part in competitions. This chapter will explore how cosplay practitioners sculpt the body beautiful cosplay and what the challenges may be in portraying in 2D superheroes and magical girls in a 2.5D or 3D reality.
“Do or Die”: Creating a Culture of Philanthropy
Authors: Raddon Mary-Beth 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThis chapter examines fundraisers’ aspirations to introduce a “culture of philanthropy,” which was a moral and political vision of widespread giving and major philanthropy as vehicles for generosity, democracy, and social transformation. Although fundraisers held a range of political identities from social democratic to conservative, they defined the culture of philanthropy through neoliberal discourses of individualism, personal responsibility, competitiveness, entrepreneurship, devolution of government, and low taxation, and against a welfarist programme of progressive taxation and state-funded services.
Living for Philanthropy: Fundraising as a Vocation
Authors: Raddon Mary-Beth 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThis chapter explores the meaning fundraisers give to their work. For the first wave of Canadian fundraising executives and consultants, fundraising was not merely a job or career but a vocation. Many wished to make their mark by raising money for worthy causes and contributing to a caring capitalism, an economic system that combines investor profit and social responsibility. The most donor-centric of fundraisers also found a calling to spiritually enrich major donors. Only 1 fundraiser of the 50 I interviewed fashioned a vocation that supported political action of social movement organizations. The political subjectivity of this singular fundraiser and her uneasy relationship to her profession illustrates how the neoliberal rationality of this period, though pervasive, was not universal.
A Generosity Gap? Comparisons with the United States
Authors: Raddon Mary-Beth 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThis chapter examines changes in Canadian discourse on the relative generosity of Canadians and Americans. In the welfare era, public generosity through tax-funded programmes was a source of national pride, as Canadians boasted higher levels of collective provisioning for health, education, social welfare, and the arts compared to the United States. In the late 1990s, Canadians began to be reminded that we fall below the U.S. on measures of private generosity. Whereas at one time, the political left referred to Canada’s “social advantage” over the U.S., now the political right pointed to a “generosity gap” based on Canada’s lower rates and levels of charitable giving.
Introduction: Understanding Migration Controls in Europe
Authors: Finotelli Claudia , Ponzo Irene 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThis chapter challenges the idea of migration controls as the mere outcome of rational planning and state efficacy. Instead, it argues that migration controls respond to an imperative deeply embedded in the dynamic interplay of internal structural constraints, different geopolitics and economic priorities, and ever-changing internal contexts. Therefore, migration control policies should be viewed as a process where nation-states have to deal with different types of public and private interests, established routines and compelling public expectations. This prevents framing migration control policies in Western countries in terms of divergence and ‘‘efficacy gaps’’, as occurs in the case of Southern European countries, which are still considered to be immigration latecomers, less able to deal with the challenge of unwanted migration flows in comparison to Northern and even Eastern European countries. In this regard, the chapter illustrates the persisting opposition between Northern and Southern Europe in the public debate over migration from the 1970s to the most recent developments, and in its last section explains how each book chapter contributes to unravelling the actual functioning of migration controls beyond nationally based state typologies, and to overcoming the idea of a neatly divided and clustered European migration panorama.
Seasonal Workers in Agriculture: The Cases of Spain and The Netherlands in Times of Covid-19
Authors: Doomernik Jeroen , Garcés-Mascareñas Blanca , Güell Berta 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThis chapter revisits the debate on the South-North divide on migration regimes by comparing the cases of Spain and the Netherlands with regard to migrant seasonal workers in agriculture, with a particular attention to their situation before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. Starting from Pastore’s (Comp Migr Stud 2(4):385–415, 2014) concept of the governance of Migrant Labour Supply (MLS), we consider to what extent Spain and the Netherlands are as different as expected. Based on the research conducted for the EC funded H2020 project ADMIGOV, we conclude that differences are not as relevant. Indeed, in both cases seasonal labour demands were covered initially by recently arrived immigrants, in a later stage by immigrants already in the country and in the last years also by Eastern European workers that can go back and forth without the constraints imposed by international borders. In both cases, we see convergence towards a major de-regulation of the sector, particularly due to the increasing use of temp agencies. The conclusions address the role of the state (and the different actors involved) in the governance of MLS in agriculture and whether the Covid-19 pandemic has brought significant structural changes in this field.
Welcome Culture and Bureaucratic Ambiguity: Germany’s Complex Asylum Regime
Authors: Thränhardt Dietrich 
Published: April 2023

AbstractDuring the 2014–2017 asylum crisis, millions of Germans welcomed and assisted incoming refugees, and local governments accommodated them. However, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) was unable to keep up with processing the asylum requests, leading to a large backlog. BAMF has since been upgraded, but asylum procedures are still protracted and inefficient, like in other European countries. Efficient counselling based on the Swiss model has been tested and rejected. The courts overturn a high percentage of BAMF decisions, with lawyers and volunteers assisting rejected asylum seekers. BAMF hampers integration with its slow asylum processing, yet on the other hand provides integration courses. After a long wait, most refugees stay, find work, learn the language, and become part of the social fabric. In 2022, the EU Temporary Protection Directive removed almost all bureaucratic hurdles for Ukrainian war refugees, and allowed civil society to host and help them all over the EU, creating a new welcome regime for Ukrainians beside the incoherent, complex, and dysfunctional asylum regime.
Concluding Remarks: Towards a New Conceptualisation of Similarities and Differences in European Migration Controls
Authors: Finotelli Claudia , Ponzo Irene 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThe main objective of this book has been to understand migration controls beyond national models and dichotomies that juxtapose “efficient” versus “inefficient” state policies. Specifically, this volume contributes to dispute some consolidated ideas about using the North-South divide as the main lens to interpret how European countries respond to common imperatives of control on the entry and residence of immigrants. In doing so, we argue that migration control policies and their results can be conceived of as a product of overlapping processes of convergence and divergence, driven by changing external contexts, different geopolitical and economic interests, and varying national constraints, all of which are engaged by a wide range of social actors.In the first part of this chapter, we focus on convergence dynamics by illustrating the increasing similarities between Northern and Southern European countries. Then, we point out some key drivers of this convergence. Drawing on previous chapters, we find this convergence appears mainly related to shifts in external constraints in the form of increasingly similar migration inflows and Europeanisation processes.The second part of the chapter focuses on divergence, addressing the relevance of nation-states’ geopolitical and economic interests in the European migration system and their institutional and structural constraints as crucial determinants of the logics and practices of migration control.
The Genealogy of the External Dimension of the Spanish Immigration Regime: When a Bricolage National Policy Becomes a Driver of Europeanisation
Authors: Gabrielli Lorenzo 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThis chapter will examine the genealogy of practices, logics and organisational strategies strongly linked to multilevel policy framework that fostered the development of the Spanish migration regime’s external dimension. The analysis focuses on the changing relations between Spain and the EU associated with the policymaking on externalisation of immigration policy in order to better understand influences, policy diffusion and circulation between these two political actors.The evolution of the Spanish regime is segmented into three different periods, characterised by specific internal dynamics and by specific interactions with the EU. First, a focus on the period of “top-down Europeanisation” (1985–1999) where the EU asserted a dominant influence that impacted Spanish immigration policy, pushed by the conditionality of the Spanish accession to the EU, and later to the Schengen Area. Second, the chapter analyses how Spain progressed from a passive receiver of European norms and standards to become an active player in European policy-making, fostering changes and new developments in the EU immigration regime, initiating a more horizontal Europeanisation beginning in the 2000s. Third, through the development of the external dimension of Spanish immigration policy, Spain became a model and inspiration for migration policies implemented at the EU level in the 2010s, marking a bottom-up Europeanisation. In each of these phases, Spain utilised Europeanisation in a functional way to pursuit its own interests, signalling how the external dimension of its immigration regime influenced the development and the implementation of that of the EU.
“Selecting by Origin” Revisited: On the Particularistic Turn of German Labour Migration Policy
Authors: Schneider Jan , Kolb Holger 
Published: April 2023

AbstractFollowing a decade in which German labour migration policy has developed towards a universalistic regime that applied similar conditions towards most third country nationals applying for admission, we observe a slow but steady return of ethnic selectivity and particularistic features in this area. Although human capital remains a centrepiece of the bundle of regulations and institutional settings which govern the process of selecting labour migrants, the factor of the respective country of origin of applicants has regained importance over the last few years. This Chapter explores a number of deviations from a legal framework, which in principle is universalist and claims to put merits, certificates and employers’ demand first. We demonstrate, however, that starting conditions for obtaining a work visa turn out to be unequal, as they positively discriminate particular nationalities. This prominence of ethnic origin in migrant admission policies vis-à-vis third countries is a rather recent phenomenon in Germany, but something which could be observed in other EU countries – not least in Southern EU Member States – already for some years. These observations tend to counter the proverbial North-South divide, suggesting rather unexpected policy convergences within the EU.
Propositional Proof Skeletons
Authors: Reeves Joseph E. , Kiesl-Reiter Benjamin , Heule Marijn J. H. 
Published: April 2023

AbstractModern SAT solvers produce proofs of unsatisfiability to justify the correctness of their results. These proofs, which are usually represented in the well-known DRAT format, can often become huge, requiring multiple gigabytes of disk storage. We present a technique for semantic proof compression that selects a subset of important clauses from a proof and stores them as a so-called proof skeleton. This proof skeleton can later be used to efficiently reconstruct a full proof by exploiting parallelism. We implemented our approach on top of the award-winning SAT solver CaDiCaL and the proof checker DRAT-trim. In an experimental evaluation, we demonstrate that we can compress proofs into skeletons that are 100 to 5, 000 times smaller than the original proofs. For almost all problems, proof reconstruction using a skeleton improves the solving time on a single core, and is around five times faster when using 24 cores.
A Practitioner’s Guide to MDP Model Checking Algorithms
Authors: Hartmanns Arnd , Junges Sebastian , Quatmann Tim , Weininger Maximilian 
Published: April 2023

AbstractModel checking undiscounted reachability and expected-reward properties on Markov decision processes (MDPs) is key for the verification of systems that act under uncertainty. Popular algorithms are policy iteration and variants of value iteration; in tool competitions, most participants rely on the latter. These algorithms generally need worst-case exponential time. However, the problem can equally be formulated as a linear program, solvable in polynomial time. In this paper, we give a detailed overview of today’s state-of-the-art algorithms for MDP model checking with a focus on performance and correctness. We highlight their fundamental differences, and describe various optimizations and implementation variants. We experimentally compare floating-point and exact-arithmetic implementations of all algorithms on three benchmark sets using two probabilistic model checkers. Our results show that (optimistic) value iteration is a sensible default, but other algorithms are preferable in specific settings. This paper thereby provides a guide for MDP verification practitioners—tool builders and users alike.
Efficient Loop Conditions for Bounded Model Checking Hyperproperties
Authors: Hsu Tzu-Han , Sánchez César , Sheinvald Sarai , Bonakdarpour Borzoo 
Published: April 2023

AbstractBounded model checking (BMC) is an effective technique for hunting bugs by incrementally exploring the state space of a system. To reason about infinite traces through a finite structure and to ultimately obtain completeness, BMC incorporates loop conditions that revisit previously observed states. This paper focuses on developing loop conditions for BMC of – a temporal logic for hyperproperties that allows expressing important policies for security and consistency in concurrent systems, etc. Loop conditions for are more complicated than for , as different traces may loop inconsistently in unrelated moments. Existing BMC approaches for only considered linear unrollings without any looping capability, which precludes both finding small infinite traces and obtaining a complete technique. We investigate loop conditions for BMC, for formulas that contain up to one quantifier alternation. We first present a general complete automata-based technique which is based on bounds of maximum unrollings. Then, we introduce alternative simulation-based algorithms that allow exploiting short loops effectively, generating SAT queries whose satisfiability guarantees the outcome of the original model checking problem. We also report empirical evaluation of the prototype implementation of our BMC techniques using .
Reconciling Preemption Bounding with DPOR
Authors: Marmanis Iason , Kokologiannakis Michalis , Vafeiadis Viktor 
Published: April 2023

AbstractThere are two major techniques for scaling up stateless model checking: dynamic partial order reduction (DPOR), which only explores executions that differ in the ordering of racy accesses, and preemption bounding, which only explores executions containing up to k preemptions (preemptive context-switches).Combining these two techniques is challenging because DPOR-equivalent executions often contain a different number of preemptions, making it incorrect to cut explorations that exceed the preemption bound. To restore completeness, prior work has weakened the DPOR algorithm, which often results in the exploration of many redundant executions.We propose an alternative approach. Starting from an optimal DPOR algorithm, we achieve completeness by allowing some slack on the preemption-bound of the explored executions. We prove that the required slack does not exceed the number of threads of the program (minus two), and that this upper limit is tight.
Feature Necessity & Relevancy in ML Classifier Explanations
Authors: Huang Xuanxiang , Cooper Martin C. , Morgado Antonio , Planes Jordi , Marques-Silva Joao 
Published: April 2023

AbstractGiven a machine learning (ML) model and a prediction, explanations can be defined as sets of features which are sufficient for the prediction. In some applications, and besides asking for an explanation, it is also critical to understand whether sensitive features can occur in some explanation, or whether a non-interesting feature must occur in all explanations. This paper starts by relating such queries respectively with the problems of relevancy and necessity in logic-based abduction. The paper then proves membership and hardness results for several families of ML classifiers. Afterwards the paper proposes concrete algorithms for two classes of classifiers. The experimental results confirm the scalability of the proposed algorithms.
Gaussian Gabor frames, Seshadri constants and generalized Buser–Sarnak invariants
Authors: Luef Franz , Wang Xu 
Published: April 2023

AbstractWe investigate the frame set of regular multivariate Gaussian Gabor frames using methods from Kähler geometry such as Hörmander’s $${\overline{\partial }}$$

∂
¯

-$$L^2$$

L
2

estimate with singular weight, Demailly’s Calabi–Yau method for Kähler currents and a Kähler-variant generalization of the symplectic embedding theorem of McDuff–Polterovich for ellipsoids. Our approach is based on the well-known link between sets of interpolation for the Bargmann-Fock space and the frame set of multivariate Gaussian Gabor frames. We state sufficient conditions in terms of a certain extremal type Seshadri constant of the complex torus associated to a lattice to be a set of interpolation for the Bargmann-Fock space, and give also a condition in terms of the generalized Buser-Sarnak invariant of the lattice. In particular, we obtain an effective Gaussian Gabor frame criterion in terms of the covolume for almost all lattices, which is the first general covolume criterion in multivariate Gaussian Gabor frame theory. The recent Berndtsson–Lempert method and the Ohsawa–Takegoshi extension theorem also allow us to give explicit estimates for the frame bounds in terms of certain Robin constant. In the one-dimensional case we obtain a sharp estimate of the Robin constant using Faltings’ theta metric formula for the Arakelov Green functions.