Books: 'Corner stall' – Grafiati (2025)

Abstract:

Even though peeing is something we all do several times a day, it is still a taboo subject. From an early age, we are taught to master our urinary urges and to use decent words for this most necessary physiological activity. This paradox has not gone unnoticed by artists through the ages. For this Relief, Much Thanks! Peeing in Art is a journey through time and space, stopping along the way to look at many different art forms. The reader-viewer will see how peeing figures - men and women, young and old, human and angelic - have been depicted over the centuries. You will be amazed to discover how often, even in famous works of art, you can find a man quietly peeing in a corner or a putto who is 'irrigating' some grassy field. A detail you will never have seen before, but one that you will never forget when confronted with those same art works in future! Artists have portrayed pee-ers in a variety of different ways and for a variety of different reasons: serious, frivolous, humorous, to make a protest, to make a statement... Whatever their purpose, these works of art always intrigue, not least because of their secret messages and symbolic references, which sometimes can only be unravelled by an expert - like the author of this book. The extensive background information about the artists and their work also gives interesting insights into the often complex origins of the different art forms. In short, a fascinating voyage of discovery awaits you!

Abstract:

This book traces the trajectories of mothers who have lost or ceded custody to an ex-partner. The book argues that these noncustodial mothers' experiences should be understood within a greater web of gendered social institutions such as employment, education, health care, and legal systems that shapes the meanings of contemporary motherhood in the United States. If motherhood means “being there,” then noncustodial mothers, through their absence, are seen as nonmothers. They are anti-mothers to be reviled. At the very least, these mothers serve as cautionary tales. The book questions the existence of an objective method for determining custody of children and challenges the “best-interests standard” through a feminist, reproductive justice lens. The stories of noncustodial mothers that the book relates shed light on marriage and divorce, caregiving, gender violence, and family court. Unfortunately, much of the contemporary discussion of child-custody determination is dominated either by gender-neutral discussions or, at the opposite end of the spectrum, by the idea that fathers are severely disadvantaged in custody disputes. As a result, the idea that mothers always receive custody has taken on the status of common sense. If this was true, as the book's author affirms, there would be no book to write.

Abstract:

The author of this book asks us to prepare for the inevitable. Our society is going to die. What are you going to do about it? But the author also wants us to know that there's still reason for hope. In an immersive and mesmerizing discussion, this book considers what makes societies (throughout history) collapse. It points us to the historical examples of the Byzantine empire, the collapse of Somalia, the rise of Middle Eastern terrorism, the rise of drug cartels in Latin America, and the French Revolution, to explain how societal decline has common features and themes. While unveiling the past, the message to us about the present is searing. Through an assessment of past and current societies, the book offers us a new way of looking at societal growth and decline. With a broad panorama of bloody stories, unexpected historical riches, crime waves, corruption, and disasters, the reader is shown that although our society will, inevitably, die at some point, there's still a lot we can do to make it better and live a little longer. This inventive approach to an “end-of-the-world” scenario should be a warning. We're not there yet. The book concludes with a strategy of preserving and rebuilding so that we don't have to give a eulogy anytime soon.

Abstract:

This book shows that Gothic elements in Russian literature frequently expressed deep-set anxieties about the Russian imperial and national identity. The book argues that the persistent Gothic tropes in the literature of the Russian Empire enact deep historical and cultural tensions arising from Russia's idiosyncratic imperial experience. It brings together theories of empire and colonialism with close readings of canonical and less-studied literary texts as the book explores how Gothic horror arises from the threatening ambiguity of Russia's own past and present, producing the effect Sobol terms “the imperial uncanny.” Focusing on two spaces of “the imperial uncanny” — the Baltic “North”/Finland and the Ukrainian “South” — the book reconstructs a powerful discursive tradition that reveals the mechanisms of the Russian imperial imagination that are still at work today.

Abstract:

This book's author is one of contemporary Germany's leading intellectuals and artists. A key architect of the New German Cinema and a pioneer of auteur television programming, who has also written books and articles, and continues to make films. However, his reputation outside of the German-speaking world still largely rests on his films of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. This book assembles thirty of the author's essays, speeches, glossaries, and interviews, revolving around the capacity for differentiation and the need for orientation toward ways out of catastrophic modernity. The volume brings together some of the author's most fundamental statements on literature, film, pre- and post-cinematic media, and social theory, nearly all for the first time in English translation. Together, these works highlight a career-spanning commitment to unorthodox, essayistic thinking.

Abstract:

What does it mean to deeply love a home place that haunts us still? From Mark Twain to Grant Wood to Garrison Keillor, regionalists from the Gilded Age to the Digital Age have explored the American Gothic and the homegrown fatalism that flourish in many of the nation's most far-flung and forgotten places. This book introduces us to a cast of real-life Midwestern characters grappling with the Gothic in their own lives, from promising young professionals debating the perennial “Should I stay or should I go” dilemma, to recent émigrés and entrepreneurs seeking personal reinvention, to faithful boosters determined to keep their communities alive despite the odds. The book considers the many ways a region's abiding spirit shapes the ethos of a land and its people, offering portraits of others who, like the author, are determined to live out the unique promise and predicament of the Gothic.

Abstract:

This book, the first book-length study of pioneering and prolific filmmakers Ted and Leo Wharton, offers a fascinating account of the dynamic early film industry. As the book demonstrates, the Wharton brothers were behind some of the most profitable and influential productions of the era, including The Exploits of Elaine and The Mysteries of Myra, which starred such popular performers as Pearl White, Irene Castle, Francis X. Bushman, and Lionel Barrymore. Working from the independent film studio they established in Ithaca, New York, Ted and Leo turned their adopted town into “Hollywood on Cayuga.” By interweaving contemporary events and incorporating technological and scientific innovations, the Whartons expanded the possibilities of the popular serial motion picture and defined many of its conventions. A number of the sensational techniques and character types they introduced are still being employed by directors and producers a century later.

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This book examines the effects of antisedition law on the overlapping public spheres of India and Britain under empire. After 1857, the British government began censoring the press in India, culminating in 1870 with the passage of Section 124a, a law that used the term “disaffection” to target the emotional tenor of writing deemed threatening to imperial rule. As a result, the book shows, Indian journalists adopted modes of writing that appeared to mimic properly British styles of prose even as they wrote against empire. The book argues that Section 124a, which is still used to quell political dissent in present-day India, both irrevocably shaped conversations and critiques in the colonial public sphere and continues to influence anticolonialism and postcolonial relationships between the state and the public. The book draws out the coercive and emotional subtexts of law, literature, and cultural relationships, demonstrating how the criminalization of political alienation and dissent has shaped literary form and the political imagination.

Abstract:

When people cannot find good work, can they still find good lives? By investigating this question in the context of South Africa, where only 43 percent of adults are employed, this book invites readers to examine their own assumptions about how work and the good life do or do not coincide. The book challenges the widespread premise that hard-work determines success by tracing the titular “laziness myth,” a persistent narrative that disguises the systems and structures that produce inequalities while blaming unemployment and other social ills on the so-called laziness of particular class, racial, and ethnic groups. The book offers evidence of the laziness myth's harsh consequences, as well as insights into how to challenge it with other South African narratives of a good life. In contexts as diverse as rapping in a library, manufacturing leather shoes, weed-whacking neighbors' yards, negotiating marriage plans, and sharing water taps, the people described in the book will stimulate discussion on creative possibilities for seeking the good life in and out of employment, in South Africa and elsewhere.

Abstract:

Frustrated with the flood of news articles and opinion pieces that were skeptical of minority students' “imagined” campus microaggressions, the author of this book set out to provide a detailed account of how racial-ethnic identity structures Black and Latinx students' college transition experiences. Tracking a cohort of more than five hundred Black and Latinx students since they enrolled at five historically white colleges and universities in the fall of 2013, the book finds that these students were not asking to be protected from new ideas. Instead, they relished exposure to new ideas, wanted to be intellectually challenged, and wanted to grow. However, the book argues, they were asking for access to counterspaces—safe spaces that enable radical growth. They wanted counterspaces where they could go beyond basic conversations about whether racism and discrimination still exist. They wanted time in counterspaces with likeminded others where they could simultaneously validate and challenge stereotypical representations of their marginalized identities and develop new counter narratives of those identities. This critique of how universities have responded to the challenges these students face offers a way forward that goes beyond making diversity statements to taking diversity actions.

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Are colleges and universities in a period of unprecedented disruption? Is a bachelor's degree still worth the investment? What, exactly, is higher education good for? This book challenges the rhetoric of America's so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university—in states from California to Maine—the book engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation's founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good? Tracking changes in the prevailing social ethos between the late eighteenth and early twenty-first centuries, the book illustrates the ways in which civic-mindedness, practicality, commercialism, and affluence influenced higher education's dedication to the public good. Each ethos, long a part of American history and tradition, came to predominate over the others during one of the four chronological periods examined in the book, informing the character of institutional debates and telling the definitive story of its time. The book demonstrates how two hundred years of political, economic, and social change prompted transformation among colleges and universities—including the establishment of entirely new kinds of institutions—and refashioned higher education in the United States over time in essential and often vibrant ways.

Abstract:

Over nearly two decades during which they have each been conducting fieldwork in the Arabian Peninsula, the authors have regularly encountered exoticizing and exceptionalist discourses about the region and its people, political systems, and prevalent cultural practices. These persistent encounters became the springboard for the book, a reflection on conducting fieldwork within a “field” that is marked by such representations. The book's focus is on deconstructing the exceptionalist representations that circulate about the Arabian Peninsula. It analyzes what exceptionalism does, how it is used by various people, and how it helps shape power relations in the societies studied. The book proposes ways that this analysis of exceptionalism provides tools for rethinking the concepts that have become commonplace, structuring narratives and analytical frameworks within fieldwork in and on the Arabian Peninsula. It asks: What would not only Middle East studies, but studies of postcolonial societies and global capitalism in other parts of the world look like if the Arabian Peninsula was central, rather than peripheral or exceptional, to ongoing sociohistorical processes and representational practices? The book explores how the exceptionalizing discourses that permeate Arabian Peninsula studies spring from colonialist discourses still operative in anthropology and sociology more generally, and suggest that de-exceptionalizing the region within their disciplines can offer opportunities for decolonized knowledge production.

Abstract:

In the late nineteenth century, as much of the world adopted some variant of the gold standard, China remained the most populous country still using silver. Yet China had no unified national currency; there was not one monetary standard but many. Silver coins circulated alongside chunks of silver and every transaction became an “encounter of wits.” This book focuses on how officials, policy makers, bankers, merchants, academics, and journalists in China and around the world answered a simple question: how should China change its monetary system? Far from a narrow, technical issue, Chinese monetary reform is a dramatic story full of political revolutions, economic depressions, chance, and contingency. As different governments in China attempted to create a unified monetary standard in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the United States, England, and Japan tried to shape the direction of Chinese monetary reform for their own benefit. This book argues convincingly that the silver era in world history ended owing to the interaction of imperial competition in East Asia and the state-building projects of different governments in China. When the Nationalist government of China went off the silver standard in 1935, it marked a key moment not just in Chinese history but in world history.

Abstract:

This book explores the reactions of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse to Martin Heidegger prior to their dismissal of him once he turned to the Nazi party in 1933. The book provides a fascinating glimpse of the three future giants of twentieth-century social criticism when they were still looking for their philosophical voices. By reconstructing their overlooked debates with Heidegger and Heideggerians, the book argues that Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse saw Heidegger's 1927 magnum opus, Being and Time, as a serious effort to make philosophy relevant for life again and as the most provocative challenge to their nascent materialist diagnoses of the discontents of European modernity. Our knowledge of Adorno's “Frankfurt discussion” with “Frankfurt Heideggerians” remains anecdotal, even though it led to a proto-version of Dialectic of Enlightenment's idea of the entwinement of myth and reason. Similarly, Horkheimer's enthusiasm over Heidegger's legendary post-World War I lectures and criticism of Being and Time have escaped attention almost entirely. And Marcuse's intriguing debate with Heidegger over Hegel and the origin of the problematic of “being and time” has remained uncharted until now. Reading these debates as fruitful intellectual encounters rather than hostile confrontations, the book offers scholars of critical theory a new, thought-provoking perspective on the emergence of the Frankfurt School as a rejoinder to Heidegger's philosophical revolution.

Abstract:

This book is an ethnographic examination of video game production. The developers that were researched for almost three years in a medium-sized studio in the United States loved making video games that millions play. Only some, however, can enjoy this dream job, which can be precarious and alienating for many others. That is, the passion of a predominantly white-male labor force relies on material inequalities involving the sacrificial labor of their families, unacknowledged work of precarious testers, and thousands of racialized and gendered workers in the Global South. The book explores the politics of doing what one loves. In the context of work, passion and love imply freedom, participation, and choice, but in fact they accelerate self-exploitation and can impose emotional toxicity on other workers by forcing them to work endless hours. The book argues that such ludic discourses in the game industry disguise the racialized and gendered inequalities on which a profitable transnational industry thrives. Within capitalism, work is not just an economic matter, and the political nature of employment and love can still be undemocratic even when based on mutual consent. As the book demonstrates, rather than considering work simply as a matter of economics based on trade-offs in the workplace, we should consider the question of work and love as one of democracy rooted in politics.

Abstract:

This book explores urban public life through the microcosm of the Chengdu teahouse. Like most public spaces, the teahouse was and still is an enduring symbol of Chinese popular culture, stemming back centuries and prevailing through political transformations, modernization, and globalization. The time period covered begins basically with the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949-50, goes through the end of the Cultural Revolution and into the post-Mao reform era. We see clearly that the role and importance of the teahouse changed abruptly, going from severe constriction in its operations to a time when public spaces flourished unrestricted. During the Mao era, the state achieved tight control over society generally, and it was able to penetrate to the very core of society in order to control almost all its resources. Thus, the spaces usually available for sociality and for the natural development of social activities were sharply limited. The post-Mao economic reforms were a turning point in public life because everyday life was dominated by sweeping “open-market” economic reforms that were structured within a unique type of socialist political system, and to a significant degree public life moved away from state control. This book can enhance our understanding of public life and political culture in Chengdu under the Communist state, with its political needs and agendas; from there we may reflect on the situation of other Chinese cities.

Abstract:

This book is a study of the politics and practices of managing national minority identifications, rights, and communities in the Soviet Union and the personal and political consequences of such efforts. Titular nationalities that had republics named after them in the USSR were comparatively privileged within the boundaries of “their” republics, but they still often chafed both at Moscow's influence over republican affairs and at broader Russian hegemony across the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, members of nontitular communities frequently complained that nationalist republican leaders sought to build titular nations on the back of minority assimilation and erasure. Drawing on extensive research conducted in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Dagestan, Georgia, and Moscow, the book argues that Soviet nationality policies produced recursive, nested relationships between majority and minority nationalisms and national identifications in the USSR. The book pays particular attention to how these asymmetries of power played out in minority communities, following them from Azerbaijan to Georgia, Dagestan, and Iran in pursuit of the national ideas, identifications, and histories that were layered across internal and international borders. What mechanisms supported cultural development and minority identifications in communities subjected to assimilationist politics? How did separatist movements coalesce among nontitular minority activists? And how does this historicization help us to understand the tenuous space occupied by minorities in nationalizing states across contemporary Eurasia? Ranging from the early days of Soviet power to post-Soviet ethnic conflicts, the book explains how Soviet-era experiences and policies continue to shape interethnic relationships and expectations today.

Abstract:

More than fifty years after the civil rights movement, there are still glaring racial inequities all across the United States. This book explains why this is so, as it reveals the hidden strategy behind systemic racism. The book details how the driving force behind the public policies that continue to devastate communities of color across the United States is a small group of ultra-wealthy individuals who profit mightily from racial inequality. The book carefully dissects the cruel and deeply harmful policies within the education, criminal justice, and immigration systems to discover their origins and why they persist. It uncovers billions of dollars in aligned investments by Bill Gates, Charles Koch, Mark Zuckerberg, and a handful of other billionaires that are dismantling public school systems across the United States. The book exposes how the greed of prominent US corporations and Wall Street banks was instrumental in creating the world's largest prison population and extreme anti-immigrant policies. It also demonstrates how these “racism profiteers” prevent flagrant injustices from being addressed by pitting white communities against communities of color, obscuring the fact that the struggles faced by white people are deeply connected with those faced by people of color. The book is an invaluable road map for all those who recognize that the key to unlocking the United States' full potential is for more people of all races and ethnicities to prioritize racial justice.

Abstract:

This book explores Italy's remaking in light of the loss of a wide range of territorial possessions—colonies, protectorates, and provinces—in Africa and the Balkans, the repatriation of Italian nationals from those territories, and the integration of these “national refugees” into a country devastated by war and overwhelmed by foreign displaced persons from Eastern Europe. Post-World War II Italy served as an important laboratory, in which categories differentiating foreign refugees (who had crossed national boundaries) from national refugees (those who presumably did not) were debated, refined, and consolidated. Such distinctions resonated far beyond that particular historical moment, informing legal frameworks that remain in place today. Offering an alternative genealogy of the postwar international refugee regime, the book focuses on the consequences of one of its key omissions: the ineligibility from international refugee status of those migrants who became classified as national refugees. The presence of displaced persons also posed the complex question of who belonged, culturally and legally, in an Italy that was territorially and politically reconfigured by decolonization. The process of demarcating types of refugees thus represented a critical moment for Italy, one that endorsed an ethnic conception of identity that citizenship laws made explicit. Such an understanding of identity remains salient, as Italians still invoke language and race as bases of belonging in the face of mass immigration and ongoing refugee emergencies. The book's analysis of the postwar international refugee regime and Italian decolonization illuminates the study of human rights history, humanitarianism, postwar reconstruction, fascism and its aftermaths, and modern Italian history.

Abstract:

Early nineteenth-century studies demonstrated, on the basis of clinical, experimental, and anatomical evidence, that a motor pathway, the corticospinal or pyramidal tract, passes from a specific area of the cortex, the precentral motor cortex, to the brainstem and spinal cord. The motor cortex can be seen as a topographic map of the movable body parts, and damage to the cortex or pathways produces correspondingly localized paralysis. However, there are a great many other pathways that link other areas of the cortex to parts of the brain active in the control of movements. These still play a puzzling role in the standard model where the control of movements focuses on cortical contributions to voluntary movements by the corticospinal pathways.

Abstract:

Brain tumors are a leading cause for new-onset seizures in adults, and many patients still present with seizures as their first manifestation of a tumor. Although at one time electroencephalography (EEG) was important for diagnosing brain tumors and other space-occupying lesions, this is now more commonly done using imaging studies, such as computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. However, clinical neurophysiology still is important in managing these patients. This can include the use of electrocorticography during testing to identify the seizure onset zone and eloquent cortex during resection surgeries, application of evoked potentials in assessing the location of sensorimotor cortex or the extent of tumor involvement, and the application of magnetoencephalography for both magnetic source imaging (e.g., in localizing spike-generating zones) and functional mapping. These topics will be discussed in this chapter.

Abstract:

If discourse, emotion, criticism, culture all intersect with the concept of ideology and claim it for their own, can politics still declare a prior vested interest in ideology? Can ‘ideology’ still be employed as shorthand for political ideology? This ‘Conclusion: why politics can't do without ideology’ makes the case for its core role in political ideology. Why is ideology central to the domain of politics? Four features make it central: its typical forms in which ideologies are presented; its influential kinds of political thought; its instances of imaginative creativity; and the necessity that ideologies need to be communicable.

Abstract:

This chapter looks more closely at some of the subcortical motor centres that play a peripheral or an auxiliary role in the standard view: primarily the basal ganglia, the cerebellum, and the superior colliculus; also several brainstem centres. These all play a significant role in motor control and between them receive inputs from the majority of cortical areas. The colliculus serves as an example of a centre that in mammals is often dominated by the cortex. The cortical action may be direct or may involve a strong inhibitory pathway through the basal ganglia. The standard view assigns even quite simple actions to the motor cortex, although comparable actions can be controlled in our vertebrate ancestors by the midbrain tectum which corresponds to the mammalian superior and inferior colliculi. The interactive view has information about movements going to most parts of the cortex, and has all cortical areas contributing to motor control through phylogenetically old centres. For most cortical areas, we must still learn how their motor outputs influence our actions.

Abstract:

Core Logic avoids the Lewis First Paradox, even though it contains ∨-Introduction, and a form of ∨-Elimination that permits core proof of Disjunctive Syllogism. The reason for this is that the method of cut-elimination will unearth the fact that the newly combined premises form an inconsistent set. A new formal-semantical relation of logical consequence, according to which B is not a consequence of A,¬A, is available as an alternative to the conventionally defined relation of logical consequence. Nevertheless we can make do with the conventional definition, and still show that (Classical) Core Logic is adequate unto it. Although Core Logic eschews unrestricted Cut, nevertheless (i) Core Logic is adequate for all intuitionistic mathematical deduction; (ii) Classical Core Logic is adequate for all classical mathematical deduction; and (iii) Core Logic is adequate for all the deduction involved in the empirical testing of scientific theories.

Abstract:

In early epistemology, philosophers set standards on how to reason and on what counts as knowledge. These normative standards still form a core of work in contemporary epistemology, but much objectively excellent reasoning still doesn’t meet these epistemological standards, and sometimes these standards lead reasoning astray. Improving decisions about health and happiness may require developing even better reasoning strategies than are now available through contemporary epistemology. One naturalistic theory of good reasoning—Strategic Reliabilism—holds that excellent reasoning efficiently allocates cognitive resources to robustly reliable reasoning strategies, all applied to significant problems. This contrasts with the traditional normative theories in epistemology that drew their inspiration from intuitions.

Abstract:

This article examines ritual ordeals that inspire terror regardless of the participants' preexisting beliefs. In such traditions, the relationship between belief and emotion is more or less the converse of that entailed by fears of supernatural punishment. Fear is a major part of the psychological processes that give rise to the gradual formation of mystical knowledge. Focusing on terrifying rituals has the advantage of picking out a generalizable feature of religion—not a feature of all religions, to be sure, but a “mode of religiosity” that is probably as ancient as our species and is still found in every corner of the globe. Given the shocking nature of the rituals in question, it is not unreasonable to refer to these practices as “rites of terror.” Two strategies, broadly speaking, have been developed in an attempt to understand the nature and origins of rites of terror. The first strategy is sociological in orientation, while the second is a psychological one. This article also discusses the rituals, memories, and motivations associated with rites of terror.

Abstract:

Recent discoveries of megadroughts, severe periods of drought lasting decades or centuries, during the course of the Holocene have revolutionized our understanding of modern climate history. Through advances in paleoclimatology, researchers have identified these periods of climate change by analyzing high-resolution proxy data derived from lake sediment cores, marine cores, glacial cores, speleothem cores, and tree rings. Evidence that megadroughts occurred with frequency and abruptly over the last 12,000 years, a timespan long assumed to be stable compared to earlier glacial periods, has also altered our understanding of societies’ trajectories. The fact that severe, multi-decadal or century-scale droughts coincided with societal collapses well known to archaeologists has challenged established multi-causal analyses of these events. Megadroughts, impossible to predict and impossible to withstand, may have caused political collapse, regional abandonment, and habitat tracking to still-productive regions. The nine megadrought and societal collapse events presented in this volume extend from the foraging-to-agriculture transition at the dawn of the Holocene in West Asia to the fifteenth-century AD collapse of the Khmer Empire in Angkor (Cambodia). Inevitably, this collection of essays also raises challenges to causal analyses of societal collapse and for future paleoclimatic and archaeological research.

Abstract:

This chapter confronts the neo-Darwinian core tenet of blind variation, or random mutation, with classical and recent models of genetic assimilation. We first argue that all the mechanisms proposed so far rely on blind genetic variation fueling natural selection. Then, we examine a new hypothetical mechanism of genetic assimilation, relying on nonblind genetic variation. Yet, we show that such a model still relies on blind variation of some sort to explain adaptation. Last, we discuss the very meaning of the tenet of blind variation. We propose a formal characterization of the tenet and argue that it should not be understood solely as an empirical claim, but also as a core explanatory principle.

Abstract:

For many years, historical writing about the Jewish experience in modern western and central Europe was guided by emancipation and assimilation. Historians focused either on the transformations of Jewish society that accompanied the achievement or on the response this engendered in society at large. While this is still for the most part true, there has been a substantial broadening and deepening of the definitions, contours, and content of these concepts. This article provides an overarching framework looking at the core issues of identity, the minority perspective, the still-regnant emancipation paradigm, the Jewish Question, and the east-west divide. Such issues pertain to the search for the modern. In other words, the many and various ways in which European Jews became modern is now a staple of historical discourse and can be said to characterize the historiography in this field.

Abstract:

Changes in social cognition are increasingly recognized as core illness features in the personality disorders with a broad impact on social functioning. Despite the significant disability caused by social cognitive dysfunction, treatments for this symptom dimension tailored to the specific deficits of a disorder are still missing. This chapter characterizes the different domains of social cognitive processing and describes different approaches and instruments for measuring impairments. It provides a short overview of the evidence demonstrating changes in social cognition in schizotypal personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and antisocial and avoidant personality disorder, as well as the neurobiology of social cognition. During the recent past the number of studies addressing this topic increased tremendously. Nevertheless, research in this area is still young and requires approaches that study these functions while emphasizing the social context and associate deficits observed in experimental paradigms with interpersonal dysfunction during every-day life.

Abstract:

‘Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science.’ For more than a century the Holmes stories have held a strange, almost inexplicable grip on the popular imagination. They are intimately associated with late Victorian and Edwardian society, yet curiously timeless in their appeal. The characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, together with their housekeeper Mrs Hudson and their address at 221B Baker Street are as familiar today as when they made their first appearance in the late 1880s. The stories have been endlessly interpreted, adapted, and modernized, but still it is to Arthur Conan Doyle's originals that we return. This new selection of some of the best of them is designed to give readers a full sense of their world: the brooding fog of London, ruined heirs in creaking mansions, and hidden crimes in the farthest–flung corners of the British Empire. The stories take Holmes's career from its early days to its close, and include the book–length Sign of the Four. Barry McCrea's introduction investigates the currents that lie beneath their surface.

Abstract:

This article describes the ways in which transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be a means of studying consciousness by interfering with the physical occurrences of the brain. The focus of this article is aspects of consciousness, i.e. being aware or unaware, and their cerebral basis. TMS has been used to demonstrate regional cortical functional specialization. The reasons for the effects caused by TMS are still not fully known. Further work must be done in order to address this problem. TMS can briefly impose (or disrupt) rhythmic discharge in the underlying cortex and some of these rhythms are thought to be important for selective attention and awareness. TMS can disrupt activity in underlying brain tissue with millisecond precision but thus far it is usually used in isolation. When combined with event-related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging its usefulness will expand.

Abstract:

Core Indicators 2019: Health Trends in the Americas starts with a demographic overview of the Americas to demonstrate how the Region has changed over 25 years. These key demographic indicators provide valuable context to better understand the population’s characteristics and their impact on health. Brief narratives accompany the graphics to highlight important information. The second section, Trends in Health, 1995–2019, presents trend data for health indicators of interest within the topics of life expectancy, mortality, communicable and noncommunicable diseases, and risk factors. This section highlights remarkable strides in improving the population’s health within the Americas, while at the same time observing that there is still much more work ahead to ensure equitable health across the Region. The third section contains the traditional Core Indicators Data Tables updated each year for the past 25 years. The information in these tables reflects the data obtained from the 2019 round of data collection, reported from countries and territories, and UN Inter-Agency estimates. Table footnotes and notes in the appendixes provide the source and the years covered for the corresponding data. Core indicators data is always available online on the PLISA platform at www.paho.org/data/index.php/en/indicators.html.

Abstract:

A core tenet of the emerging field of research in living machines is that biological entities that live and act—organisms—have much in common with certain kinds of man-made entities—machines—that can display autonomous behaviour. But underlying this parallel, which is made even more persuasive by observing the life-like behaviour of many of the artifacts described in this book, are a host of critical, and still only partially answered questions. Perhaps the most fundamental of these is “what is life?” This section of the Handbook of Living Machines delves into this core question, exploring some of the most fundamental properties of living systems, such as their capacity to self-organize, to evolve, to grow, to metabolize, to self-repair, and to reproduce. This introduction provides a brief discussion about the nature of life, seen from a systems perspective, followed by summaries of each of the contributed chapters in this section.

Abstract:

This chapter demonstrates the centrality of the humanities to the core of law school pedagogy today. At the same time, by focusing on two areas within the humanities—literature and history—it tries to show how disciplines still matter, both as engines and impediments. Examining the shifting passions that bind law, literature, and history to each other, it foregrounds the dynamic quality of disciplinary relations as the attraction of fields for each other waxes and wanes. This dynamism itself advances the possibilities for new births of knowledge. Although unstable and of unknown fate, the love triangle of law, literature, and history continues to spawn fertile offspring.

Abstract:

Chapter 1 sets out the aims of the book, and introduces the core topics of models in historical linguistics, and the role of quantitative vs. qualitative methods in historical linguistics. The importance of use of both quantitative and qualitative models simultaneously is discussed. The chapter also introduces the ‘chasm’ metaphor for the current situation in historical linguistics, where quantitative methods are still confined to a minority of researchers in the field, but a methodological ‘chasm’ seems to separate them from the majority. A meta study of current research in historical linguistics is presented to substantiate this claim. The meta study shows that, compared to the leading general linguistics journal, historical linguistics is lagging behind in adopting quantitative research methods.

Abstract:

Chapter 4 explores the negotiating landscape that faces those who would reform the international governance regime. It shows the post World War II dispersion of economic power and the turbulence in the global IT sector that requires new forms of market leadership. It also considers who must be present at the negotiating table and why. We explore whether, as governance preferences among key countries widens, a “credible club,” a core group of reasonably like-minded countries with sufficient influence to alter the world market, still exists to initiate meaningful governance reform? The answer is yes. Chapter 4 also explains why technocratic efficiency and political reality require that “civil society” play a larger role in any governance strategy.

Abstract:

There is a core question about universals, which perplexed ancient and medieval thinkers, and still exercises philosophers today. Some things in the world are the same, not by being numerically identical but by being the same in some respect. Is it enough simply to suppose that there are these particular things which are the same in these respects, or is there some additional entity, besides the particular things—a universal—in respect of which they are the same? ‘Universals (Avicenna and Abelard)’ considers the problem of universals in antiquity; early medieval realism; the views of Avicenna and Abelard on universals; Duns Scotus, who transformed Avicenna’s solution; and the nominalism of William of Ockham.

Abstract:

Some time ago, Bryant (1997) remarked, ‘Piaget and Vygotsky set the scene for much of the work that has been done over the last twenty years or so on children’s mathematical understanding.’ (p. 142.) Today, Piaget and Vygotsky’s conceptual and empirical frameworks still define principal contours of contemporary work on cognitive development. In introducing this section on culture, language, and number with chapters by Okamoto, Towse, Nunez and Marghetis, and Sturman, I situate the authors’ contributions in relation to Vygotsky’s and Piaget’s seminal writings and some contemporary strands of empirical and conceptual inquiry. I am particularly attentive to the way the authors extend ideas that were core to Piaget’s and Vygotsky’s writings.

Abstract:

This chapter takes the assertive community treatment (ACT) model of community outreach as a starting point and examines what can and what cannot be varied and still achieve good results. ACT has a special place in community outreach as it was the first model of care confirmed by research, and controversy has raged about the need, or otherwise, for ‘model fidelity’. The chapter identifies the core ingredients—small caseloads, in vivo psychosocial treatments, mainstreaming, flexibility, 24/7 availability—and examines the evidence for and against them. It pays particular attention to the roles of support workers and the medical member of the team. Later developments such as flexible assertive outreach (FACT) are also described.

Abstract:

The right to cast a vote in democratic elections stands at the core of people’s political rights. However, for citizens residing abroad the issue is less straightforward. Should people that have made a choice to live in another country still have voting rights in their country of origin? If so, should the state be responsible for facilitating their vote from abroad—or should citizens simply have the option of returning to exercise their right? Countries embarking on introducing out-of-country voting (OCV) may benefit from the experiences made in countries where voting from abroad is available. This report presents practical examples from different countries and highlights key issues to be considered before introducing out-of-country voting measures.

Abstract:

In this chapter, the author summarizes the properties of the Solar System, and how these were uncovered. Over centuries, the arrangement and properties of the Solar System were determined. The distinctions between the terrestrial planets, the gas and ice giants, and their various moons are discussed. Whereas humans have walked only on the Moon, probes have visited all the planets and several moons, asteroids, and comets; samples have been returned to Earth only from our moon, a comet, and from interplanetary dust. For Earth and Moon, seismographs probed their interior, whereas for other planets insights come from spacecraft and meteorites. We learned that elements separated between planet cores and mantels because larger bodies in the Solar System were once liquid, and many still are. How water ended up where it is presents a complex puzzle. Will the characteristics of our Solar System hold true for planetary systems in general?

Abstract:

There is a core metaphysical claim shared by all deflationists: truth is not a genuine, substantive property. But anyone who denies that truth is a genuine property must still make sense of our pervasive truth talk. In addressing questions about the meaning and function of ‘true’, deflationists engage in a linguistic or semantic project, a project that typically goes hand-in-hand with a deflationary account of the concept of truth. A thoroughgoing deflationary account of truth will go beyond the negative metaphysical claim about truth and the positive linguistic account of the word ‘true’: it will also maintain that the concept of truth is a ‘thin’ concept that bears no substantive conceptual connections to other concepts to which it is traditionally tied.

Abstract:

This chapter begins by considering what made the late Roman state distinctive from the early Empire, exploring the political developments of the later third century, in particular the military, administrative, and economic reforms undertaken by the tetrarchs. It then explores the presentation of the war between the tetrarchy and the British Empire of Carausius and Allectus (286‒96), taking as its core sources Pan. Lat. X, XI, and VIII. These speeches are unique in the panegyrical corpus, in that two of them (X and XI) were delivered while the usurpation they describe was still under way, the third (VIII) after it was defeated. In this chapter, we see how the British Empire was ‘othered’ as piratical and barbarian, and how conflict with it helped to create the distinctive ideology of the tetrarchy.

Abstract:

The incidence of localized renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has increased due to the widespread use of abdominal imaging, often for unrelated conditions. Despite improved understanding of the natural history of slow growth in many tumours and the impact of ageing and co-morbidities on patient survival, RCC is still the most lethal of genitourinary cancers and surgery remains the mainstay of treatment. Localized RCC is defined as stages T1-2 N0 M0. The relatively safe needle core biopsy is increasingly used, especially for small renal masses (SRMs), as we now know that up to 30% are benign and that RCC subtypes differ in biology and behaviour. Radical nephrectomy, either performed by open or laparoscopic technique, is indicated for stage T2 tumours or when partial nephrectomy (PN) is not believed to be feasible.