bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
It’s Tough at the Bottom
Authors: Macdonald David W. , Newman Chris 
Published: November 2022

AbstractSelection pressures vary with age, and no matter how successful adults might be, it is vital that their offspring can also survive in order for the population to flourish. How does a cub, emerging from the sett and into our database, chart its path to maturity? It transpires that about a half of Wytham’s badger cubs may succumb, but to what? This leads us to the story of intestinal parasites, entangled with food supply and weather conditions. We go on to ask whether cubhood infection has consequences in adulthood. The answer affects body-length development and, remarkably, asymmetry in their palatal maculation. This chapter leaves the surviving cubs poised to join badger society, that very same society on whose adaptive significance the book is focused.
Apprenticeships for Badger Society
Authors: Macdonald David W. , Newman Chris 
Published: November 2022

AbstractWhat apprenticeship prepares badger cubs for membership of the society into which they were born? The answer leads us to heterochrony—individuals differing in the timing of key developmental stages. Why, as they mature, do some badgers disperse whilst others do not? Should they stay, or should they go? What affects a badger’s decision to remain in its natal group, or disperse? We explore what distinguishes a disperser from a homebody and whether there is a sex bias in the answer. We also explore whether dispersal is motivated by push from the origin group, or pull towards the new group, and whether it is easier to join some groups than others, according to from where a badger hails.
Setts, Society, and Super-groups
Authors: Macdonald David W. , Newman Chris 
Published: November 2022

AbstractAs the cohort of young for the year integrate into adult society we ask what has changed about the social composition and inter-group geometries over the 50 years of our study—how have the number and mosaic of social groups evolved as population density increased? Do Wytham’s badgers defend these contiguous ranges, or do they observe the commandment to love thy neighbour? If so, then what determines whether some neighbours are favoured more than others? We ask whether limitations on dispersal in a saturated habitat constrain the ability of burgeoning groups to fission, and if this inability to cleave at such high density leads to meta-structures linking groups spatially and socially. This leads us through the ethology of encounters—members of different groups may either fight, mate, or engage amicably. In the early 1970s Hans Kruuk’s interpretation was that the relations between neighbouring badger groups were aggressive, exclusive, and territorial, but it seems that things have since changed (later we will explore why). This leads us to the discovery of super-groups, a story partly shaped by the geology of spatial organization, and the product of the high population density that this geology and geomorphology creates. This draws our attention back to the setts (in which cubs were born in Chapter 1) and questions about who digs them and what occurs during visits between them, both within and between group ranges.
The Sum of the Parts
Authors: Macdonald David W. , Newman Chris 
Published: November 2022

AbstractWhat is the composition of badger groups, and what various relationships exist amongst their members? Are groups in Wytham egalitarian or despotic? How do the answers affect whether all badgers get an equal chance to breed, and whether (and in what form) there is a social hierarchy? The answers lead us to explore whether a skewed share of reproductive success reflects social supremacy or merely some anarchic throw of the dice. We move through sexual maturity to analyse what distinguishes reproductive stars from the reproductive flops and consider whether conventional rank exists amongst Wytham’s badgers; if it exists, does it pay any clear dividend?
Social Odours
Authors: Macdonald David W. , Newman Chris 
Published: November 2022

AbstractHow do badgers get along with one another? How do they converse, and negotiate? The answer lies in scent, and particularly in the olfactory quality of the secretion from their unique subcaudal gland, with which they mark each other and their environment. But who marks whom? Do individuals assort into net donors and net receivers of marking? In the context of the Dear Enemy phenomenon, we document through field experiments how they react to the scent of familiar group member versus neighbour or stranger. We ask whether the subcaudal scent message—its colour, volume, and chemistry—is an honest signifier of the depositor’s qualities, and investigate whether there is any trade-off where energy invested into this fatty secretion comes at a calorific cost. We demonstrate that the smell of this scent is determined by the action of bacteria fermenting it, and that this leads to group-specific odour profiles.
The Economics of Survival
Authors: Macdonald David W. , Newman Chris 
Published: November 2022

AbstractHow many badgers? How can we tell? How do we count them? These are all questions as the book transitions from considering individuals to populations. Using the minimum number alive (MNA) estimate technique, we show how Wytham’s badger population has changed over time. From an actuarial perspective and stage-class models we analyse how losses and gains amass on the population ledger; how mortality varies with age and sex. As population numbers changed, what intrinsic qualities of the individuals composing it changed, and were the badgers able to exploit fully the carrying capacity of their environment in Wytham? Then we discover that the carrying capacity changed over the study period, prompting us to ask what drove that change.
Weather
Authors: Macdonald David W. , Newman Chris 
Published: November 2022

AbstractWhat factor drove the life history decisions described in Chapter 11? Did the environment change? Were earthworms, and perhaps other foods, more available as the years passed? We use sophisticated demographic analyses to show that the answer lies with the weather. With broad relevance to wildlife generally, we spot that it is not simply trends, or extremes in weather that impact badgers, but rather the extent and frequency of variation from typical seasonal means that stress their evolved regimes. Milder winters are linked to larger cub cohorts, a relationship that pushes us to explore the underlying mechanisms and, ultimately, to ask how will badgers in Wytham and elsewhere adapt to climate change?
Weather
Authors: Macdonald David W. , Newman Chris 
Published: November 2022

AbstractMoving from the effects of weather on the population, we tease apart the demographic findings in this chapter by turning to the adaptability of individual badgers. How do the population trends we describe in the face of the weather emerge from the impacts on individuals, and how do individuals respond to those impacts? Badgers lay down fat through the autumn equinox, and how they do so is affected by weather. Remembering the influence of weather on the pursuit of earthworms, how did badger activity differ in years with contrasting weather? In counterpoint, what are the implications of exposure for thin badgers forced to forage during harsh conditions? The answers lead us to consider how badgers could cope with projected future climate change.
The Game of Life
Authors: Macdonald David W. , Newman Chris 
Published: November 2022

AbstractArmed with demographic data on Wytham’s badger population, and the pervasive influence of the weather, we turn to pace of life theory and ask how the paradigmatic badger illustrates evolutionary principles. If the evolutionary actuary is so remorseless in meting out penalties, why has it not canalized all variation to the ‘perfect’ fit? Our analyses explore how the aptitudes, and life history choices, of individuals coalesce within the functioning of badger society. This leads to a consideration of how badgers store energy to cope with periods—predictable and stochastic—of food scarcity, and whether individuals differ in how they tackle the problem of fat storage. We use sophisticated tracking technology and biochemical markers of metabolic rate to deduce badgers’ dynamic vs overall daily energy expenditure, and how this varies between strategists and with prevailing conditions. The answers lead to a discussion of the sense in which individuals, in this case individual badgers, live their lives at different speeds. Was pace of life affected by the social milieu in which a badger existed? Environmental carrying capacity becomes tangible through how relatively fat, or slim, individuals are; answers that are different between sexes and age classes.
Genetic Mate Choice—Quality Matters
Authors: Macdonald David W. , Newman Chris 
Published: November 2022

AbstractWe have described badger sociology, and the ethology of their mating—in effect most badgers in a group mate with most other badgers in a group, and plenty beyond. But what of the genetics? Ten generations of genealogical detail allow us to answer the question of which individuals win and lose in the competition for progeny. There are many surprises, and the first is that many youngsters, about half, are sired by the next-door neighbour. We know so much detail about these badgers that we can ask probing questions. For example, do badgers select for quality traits in their mates? Is there a direct relationship between each badger’s genetic traits and its fitness? Could it be that opposing evolutionary forces balance out different strategies according to annual circumstances and the extent to which the population benefited from optimal conditions? How can evident heterozygosity advantages of the father be visited upon offspring if said cub does not itself inherit that same high extent of heterozygosity? This exploration of the badger’s mating system leads us deep into genetics: was an amorous badger sniffing gustily at potential mates really eyeing up whether that mating would be major histocompatibility complex (MHC) assortative or MHC disassortative? In short, we explore how badgers tackle the question of with whom to mate, and why; the balance between optimality and opportunity.
The Early Cult
Authors: Méndez Hugo 
Published: November 2022

AbstractNear the turn of the fifth century, the church of Jerusalem integrated Stephen’s 26 December feast into its ritual life and developed a network of practices and spaces to complement the new celebration. This chapter explores these earliest expressions of Stephen’s cult in Jerusalem, highlighting how each supported Jerusalem’s claims for itself as a space. In its position on the Jerusalem calendar, the 26 December feast of Stephen formed part of a unified set of feasts celebrating the apostolic foundations of the Jerusalem church. The space selected to host the celebration, in turn, supported invented traditions of an unbroken continuity between the pre-70 ce Christian community to which Stephen ministered and the later see of Jerusalem.
The Bones
Authors: Méndez Hugo 
Published: November 2022

AbstractThis chapter examines the pivotal moment in the emergence of devotion to Stephen in Jerusalem—namely, the invention of the martyr’s bones in 415. It argues that this so-called discovery was carefully scripted by bishop John of Jerusalem and the priest Lucian with an eye to forging a tight association between the martyr and the city of his death. Lucian’s announcement of the find, the Revelatio Sancti Stephani, casts Jerusalem as the special conduit of Stephen’s miraculous power to the world and Stephen as the city’s special patron, who still serves its local community.
More Numerous Feasts
Authors: Méndez Hugo 
Published: November 2022

AbstractThe invention of Stephen’s relics was not the climax of the city’s quest to consolidate its local claim on the martyr but the catalyst for more visible gestures, particularly in the area of ritual. Spurred by the discovery of the relics, the church of Jerusalem made a series of dramatic changes to its festal calendar. Specifically, it reconfigured its Epiphany and Easter octaves to accommodate two new celebrations in honor of Stephen. In the hands of homilists, the multiplication of these “more numerous feasts” for Stephen supported local discourses affirming a unique relationship between the Protomartyr and his native church.
Epilogue
Authors: Méndez Hugo 
Published: November 2022

AbstractAlthough the city of Jerusalem continued investing in the memory of Stephen for centuries, the martyr eventually lost his central place in the city’s imagination. The epilogue traces the causes for this turn, anchoring it in broader shifts in the late ancient cult of saints. In the mid-fifth century, Christians began affording Mary, the mother of God, a more central position among the saints. Christians also expanded their ritual calendars to include an ever-broadening number of non-martyrs, including biblical figures, ascetics, virgins, bishops, and theologians. These new competitors crowded out Stephen from his once central position in local ritual life.
Experimental Methods
Authors: Grönlund Kimmo , Herne Kaisa 
Published: November 2022

Abstract
This chapter provides the reader with the skills to assess and design experimental research on deliberation. First, it introduces the logic and methodology of experimentation and presents the different types of experiments that are used in social science research. Second, it provides an overview of experimentation on citizen deliberation, and discusses the problems related to experimentation, as well as considers the future of the method. Third, the chapter looks at the challenges of using experiments in the social sciences, and discusses the specific problems related to experiments with citizen deliberation. The chapter concludes by pondering on the future of experimentation on deliberation and reflecting on the main gaps in existing empirical research, and the kinds of methodological innovations required in the field.
Ethnography
Authors: Curato Nicole , Doerr Nicole 
Published: November 2022

AbstractThis chapter takes a close look at the role of ethnography in the study of deliberative practice. It describes ethnography as both a perspective and a toolbox. As a perspective, ethnography is a fitting methodology to fulfil critical theory’s task of rendering political power visible, particularly in its subtle and insidious forms. The ethnographic perspective is also responsive to developments in deliberative theory, such as the recognition of the role of passions, silences, and performativity in political communication. As a toolbox, ethnography offers a range of data-gathering and analytical techniques to make sense of public deliberation, while placing the positionality of the researcher at the centre of this approach. Finally, this chapter examines ethnography’s tensions with deliberative democracy’s normative commitments and draws on the authors’ extensive experience in ethnographic fieldwork to prompt reflections about the practical and ethical challenges of this approach.
Media Analysis
Authors: Maia Rousiley C. M. , Choucair Tariq 
Published: November 2022

AbstractThis chapter proposes a way to conduct media analysis in deliberative systems. It argues that systemic thinking has invited a re-conceptualization of argumentative exchange in social wholes, including a range of differentiated but interconnected spaces. A systemic approach cannot afford to ignore interfaces between deliberation in institutional forums and more mundane discussions, and, consequentially, the neighbouring field of mass media and digital communication. This chapter introduces a definition of content analysis that works towards integration with other methods—surveys, experiments, and frame analysis—to address these challenges. It examines ways of employing content analysis in (i) mass media material, by giving priority to collective processes of reason exchange; (ii) diversified online platforms; and (iii) integration of content analysis with other methods. A set of studies involving media practices is used to illustrate this proposal, and to elucidate new possibilities of empirical micro and macro analysis within the systemic approach to deliberation.
The Novel of Confinement
Authors: Davies Ben , Lupton Christina , Gormsen Schmidt Johanne 
Published: November 2022

Abstract
Chapter 3 offers an analysis of texts that speak about domestic work and parenting under confined conditions, a setting that many readers experienced during lockdown, and because of which they struggled to read. Focusing on the Danish novel, Olga Ravn’s Mit arbejde (My Work, 2020), this chapter analyses the way that fiction can reflect the situation of the carer who experiences time as circular and non-progressive. The first line of interest in this chapter is in what it means for texts to promote this confounding of progress, particularly in the name of care. That same sense of non-progressive or ‘stuck’ temporality resonates differently with the more documentary aspects of autofiction about parenting. Second, the chapter is interested in the related question of why readers have turned to novels of this kind during a period in which their own domestic duties were so heavy. The overall aim in this chapter is to show that these novels about the struggles of parenting do more than simply represent the domestic settings in which they were written and consumed. As fictions mirroring life during the pandemic, they suggest the sense in which writing and reading remain extraneous to the events represented in language. While they describe the repetitive temporality of being at home with small children, the reception of these fictions evidences the way narrative and sequence get made, even out of the materials of domestic time.
Reading the Romance
Authors: Davies Ben , Lupton Christina , Gormsen Schmidt Johanne 
Published: November 2022

Abstract
Lockdown and the pandemic often put love and intimacy to the test, with partners separated, large families stuck at home together 24/7, and dating much more difficult to arrange. This chapter explores these complexities—intimacy, romance, love—through a reading of Sally Rooney’s Normal People and a survey of romance reading more generally. As a young person deprived of institutional life or a member of a couple starved for new input, the lockdown reader became acutely open to this brand of intimacy. Scenes of entanglement between individuals with limited opportunities for social interaction and group belonging, both those represented in romance and those inherent in the solitary consumption of a book, reflect and potentially redeem these isolating conditions. In this constellation, reading about romance doubles down on what reading tends to be anyway: a thing done bande à part, yet productive of its own feeling of intimacy. This makes sense of what readers themselves told us about novels by Austen and Gabaldon, Tolstoy and Rooney, all of which were pleasurable hinges between the solitude of 2020 and the promise of finding true love; between the desire for meaningful connection, and the reality of a certain kind of solitude that comes baked into the experience of a well-savoured literary romance. Reading validates aloneness, opening up the solitary reader to expectations of romantic intimacy more easily than of friendship. For this reason, the reading of romance has chimed with the deprivations of lockdown in ways that other forms of narrative consumption haven’t.
Troubling Late Modernism
Authors: Battersby Doug 
Published: November 2022

AbstractTroubling Late Modernism: Ethics, Feeling, and the Novel Form charts how modernist techniques for depicting characters’ thoughts, feelings, and desires have been perversely reinvented by some of the most influential and innovative writers of the postwar period. Chapters on Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, Toni Morrison, John Banville, J. M. Coetzee, and Eimear McBride reveal how these writers at once extend and exploit modernist forms of narration to cultivate disquieting affective attachments between readers and protagonists compelled by violent or exploitative sexual desires. By interrogating the expressive power and ethical liabilities of modes of writing that give us intimate access to characters’ inner lives, late modernism poses fundamental philosophical questions about emotion and its inextricability from knowledge and ethical deliberation. Whilst other historians of the novel have characterized late modernism’s formal innovations as ethically and politically edifying, Troubling Late Modernism highlights their more disquieting potential for lending sympathy and profundity to sentiments deemed inadmissible in our everyday lives. Charting late modernism’s characteristic fusion of aesthetic difficulty and emotional and ethical provocation demands an approach attuned to the experience of reading these disturbingly erotic narratives. In dialogue with recent debates about critical method, Troubling Late Modernism presents a new way of closely reading prose fiction that brings together the lessons of formalism and affect theory.
Modernist Liabilities
Authors: Battersby Doug 
Published: November 2022

AbstractThe primary aim of the introduction is to elaborate on the implications of reading Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Beckett, Toni Morrison, John Banville, J. M. Coetzee, and Eimear McBride as specifically late modernist writers and outline how the book modifies our understanding of the history of the novel in the postwar period. In contrast with approaches influenced by the new modernist studies that conceive modernism as encompassing all formally self-conscious cultural responses to modernity, the introduction argues that it is necessary to provisionally reanimate an earlier, formalist conception of modernist fiction as a revolution in narrative technique in order to chart the profound effect of this literary-historical narrative on late modernist writers. The secondary aim of the chapter is to introduce the practice of affective formalism the book argues for in relation to affect theory, the history of close reading, and recent proposals for new methods, such as the new formalism, surface reading, and postcritique. Central to this practice is the importance of explicitly attending to the interplay between descriptions of a character’s experience and the thoughts and feelings that experiential descriptions invite from readers. Such an approach is necessary to capture the reticulation of epistemic, affective, and ethical uncertainty that is the hallmark of late modernist aesthetics.