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The way external forces influence political and economic outcomes in developing countries is an ongoing concern of scholars and policymakers. In the 1970s and 1980s, dependency analysis was a popular way of approaching this topic, but it later fell into disrepute. This Element argues that it may be useful to revamp dependency to interpret China's new relationships with developing countries, including Latin America. Economic links with China have become important determinants of the region's development. Stallings discusses the dependency debates, reviews the way dependency operated in the US-Latin American case, and analyzes the growing Chinese presence within a dependency framework.
This Element provides a systematic defense of moral contractarianism as a distinct approach to the social contract. It elucidates, in comparison to moral conventionalism and moral contractualism, the distinct features of moral contractarianism, its scope, and conceptual and practical challenges that concern the relationship between morality and self-interest, the problems of assurance and compliance, rule-following, counterfactualism, and the nexus between morals and politics. It argues that, if appropriately conceived, moral contractarianism is conceptually coherent, empirically sound, and practically relevant, and has much to offer to contemporary moral philosophy.
How has Latin America pioneered the field of transitional justice (TJ)? Do approaches vary across the region? This Element describes Latin American innovations in trials and truth commissions, and evaluates two influential models that explain variation in TJ outcomes: the Huntingtonian and Justice Cascade approaches. It argues that scholars should complement these approaches with one that recognizes the importance of state capacity building and institutional change. To translate domestic/international political pressure and human rights norms into outcomes, states must develop 'TJ capabilities'. Not only should states be willing to pursue these highly complex policies, they must also develop competent bureaucracies.
This is an Element surveying the most important literature using game theory and evolutionary game theory to shed light on questions in the philosophy of biology. There are two branches of literature that the book focuses on. It begins with a short introduction to game theory and evolutionary game theory. It then turns to working using signaling games to explore questions related to communication, meaning, language, and reference. The second part of the book addresses prosociality - strategic behavior that contributes to the successful functioning of social groups - using the prisoner's dilemma, stag hunt, and bargaining games.
Immunology is central to contemporary biology and medicine, but it also provides novel philosophical insights. Its most significant contribution to philosophy concerns the understanding of biological individuality: what a biological individual is, what makes it unique, how its boundaries are established and what ensures its identity through time. Immunology also offers answers to some of the most interesting philosophical questions. What is the definition of life? How are bodily systems delineated? How do the mind and the body interact? In this Element, Thomas Pradeu considers the ways in which immunology can shed light on these and other important philosophical issues. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This Element focuses on three challenges of evolution to religion: teleology, human origins, and the evolution of religion itself. First, religious worldviews tend to presuppose a teleological understanding of the origins of living things, but scientists mostly understand evolution as non-teleological. Second, religious and scientific accounts of human origins do not align in a straightforward sense. Third, evolutionary explanations of religion, including religious beliefs and practices, may cast doubt on their justification. We show how these tensions arise and offer potential responses for religion. Individual religions can meet these challenges, if some of their metaphysical assumptions are adapted or abandoned.
In the twentieth century, cumulative millions of readers received books by mail from clubs like the Book-of-the-Month Club, the Book Society or Bertelsmann Club. This Element offers an introduction to book clubs as a distribution channel and cultural phenomenon, and shows that book clubs and book commerce are linked inextricably. It argues that a global perspective is necessary to understand the cultural and economic impact of book clubs in the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. It also explores central reasons for book club membership, condensing them into four succinct categories: convenience, community, concession and, most importantly, curation. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
'Ethics' was not developed as a separate branch of philosophy in Buddhist traditions until the modern period, though Buddhist philosophers have always been concerned with the moral significance of thoughts, emotions, intentions, actions, virtues, and precepts. Their most penetrating forms of moral reflection have been developed within disciplines of practice aimed at achieving freedom and peace. This Element first offers a brief overview of Buddhist thought and modern scholarly approaches to its diverse forms of moral reflection. It then explores two of the most prominent philosophers from the main strands of the Indian Buddhist tradition – Buddhaghosa and Śāntideva – in a comparative fashion.
The dream of political satire - to fearlessly speak truth to power - is not matched by its actual effects. This study explores the role of satirical communication in licensing public expression of harsh emotions defined in neuroscience as the CAD (contempt, anger, disgust) triad. The mobilisation of these emotions is a fundamental distinction between satirical and comic laughter. Phiddian pursues this argument particularly through an account of Jonathan Swift and his contemporaries. They played a crucial role in the early eighteenth century to make space in the public sphere for intemperate dissent, an essential condition of free political expression.
This Element engages with fundamental questions concerning the future trajectory of professions as a distinct occupational category and of the formal organizations, which represent, employ or host professionals. It begins with a literature review that identifies a functionalist, power and institutionalist lens for the study of professional occupations and organizations. It then reviews a series of challenges which face the contemporary professions. Finally, the Element explores contemporary developments in the worlds of professions applying three units of analysis: macro (professional occupations and their associations), meso (professional organizations) and micro (professional workers).
This Element explains Nietzsche's ethics in his late works, from 1886 onwards. The first three sections explain the basics of his ethical theory – its context and presuppositions, its scope and its central tension. The next three sections explore Nietzsche's goals in writing a history of Christian morality (On the Genealogy of Morality), the content of that history, and whether he achieves his goals. The last two sections take a broader look, respectively, at Nietzsche's wider philosophy in light of his ethics and at the prospects for a Nietzschean ethics after Nietzsche.
Moral theories can be distinguished not only by the answers they give but also by the questions they ask. Utilitarianism's central commitment is to the promotion of well-being, impartially considered. This commitment shapes utilitarianism in a number of ways. If scarce resources should be directed where they will best promote well-being, and if theoretical attention is a scarce resource, then moral theorists should focus on topics that are most important to the future promotion of well-being. A theme of this Element is that, as times change, the priorities (both practical and theoretical) of utilitarianism also change. Questions that were once theoretical curiosities move centre stage. And themes from earlier utilitarians that have become unfashionable may come to the fore again. Utilitarianism is a living tradition, not an abstract set of timeless principles or a purely historical artefact.
This Element looks at adaptations of bestselling works of popular fiction to cinema, television, stage, radio, video games and other media platforms. It focuses on 'transmedia storytelling', building its case studies around the genre of modern fantasy: because the elaborate storyworlds produced by writers like J. R. R. Tolkien, J. K. Rowling and George R. R. Martin have readily lent themselves to adaptations across various media platforms. This has also made it possible for media entertainment corporations to invest in them over the long term, enabling the development of franchises through which their storyworlds are presented and marketed in new ways to new audiences.
Tracking initial ocean (de)oxygenation is critical to better constrain the coevolution of life and environment. Development of thallium isotopes has provided evidence to track the global manganese oxide burial which responds to early (de)oxygenation for short-term climate events. Modern oxic seawater thallium isotope values are recorded in organic-rich sediments deposited below an anoxic water column. An expansion of reducing conditions decrease manganese oxide burial and shifts the seawater thallium isotope composition more positive. Recent work documents that thallium isotopes are perturbed prior to carbon isotope excursions, suggesting ocean deoxygenation is a precursor for increased organic carbon burial. This Element provides an introduction to the application of thallium isotopes, case studies, and future directions.
In this book, we consider three questions. What are ecological models? How are they tested? How do ecological models inform environmental policy and politics? Through several case studies, we see how these representations which idealize and abstract can be used to explain and predict complicated ecological systems. Additionally, we see how they bear on environmental policy and politics.
Despite publishing endeavours such as the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series in the 1970s and Fantasy Masterworks in the early 2000s, the canon of modern fantasy is still very much in flux. This Element examines four key questions raised by the prospect of a fantasy canon: the way in which canon and genre influence each other; the overwhelming presence of Tolkien in any discussion of the classics of fantasy; the multi-media and transmedia nature of the field; and the push for a more inclusive and diverse canon.
Global policy making is taking shape in a wide range of public sector activities managed by transnational policy communities. Public policy scholars have long recognised the impact of globalisation on the industrialised knowledge economies of OECD states, as well as on social and economic policy challenges faced by developing and transition states. But the focus has been on domestic politics and policy. Today, policy studies literature is building new concepts of 'transnational public-private partnership', 'trans-governmentalism' and 'science diplomacy' to account for rapid growth of global policy networks and informal international organisations delivering public goods and services. This Element goes beyond traditional texts which focus on public policy as an activity of states to outline how global policy making has driven many global and regional transformations over the past quarter-century. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
'Microfoundations' has become prominent in the discourse of management scholars. But what is it and how does it matter? This Element provides a characterization of microfoundations based on classical work on the methodology of social science and documents and discusses its manifestations in management research over the last one and a half decades. It also covers the relation of microfoundations to multilevel research, criticisms of microfoundations, and empirical research strategies for microfoundations.
In this Element and its accompanying second Element, A Practical Introduction to Regression Discontinuity Designs: Extensions, Matias Cattaneo, Nicolás Idrobo, and Rocıìo Titiunik provide an accessible and practical guide for the analysis and interpretation of regression discontinuity (RD) designs that encourages the use of a common set of practices and facilitates the accumulation of RD-based empirical evidence. In this Element, the authors discuss the foundations of the canonical Sharp RD design, which has the following features: (i) the score is continuously distributed and has only one dimension, (ii) there is only one cutoff, and (iii) compliance with the treatment assignment is perfect. In the second Element, the authors discuss practical and conceptual extensions to this basic RD setup.
This Element traces the varied and magical history of Christmas publications for children. The Christmas book market has played an important role in the growth of children's literature, from well-loved classics to more ephemeral annuals and gift books. Starting with the eighteenth century and continuing to recent sales successes and picturebooks, Christmas Books for Children investigates continuities and new trends in this hugely significant part of the children's book market.