Livres sur le sujet « Levels of Causality and Responsibility »

The actualization of environmental problems makes it necessary to study them in connection with the financial and economic aspects of the modern company. The main content of the monograph is formed by the conceptual, theoretical and methodological aspects of the analysis of corporate financial policy, studied in conjunction with the study of the factors of environmental responsibility of the company. The necessity of revision is analyzed and the directions of improvement of the methodological apparatus for the formation and implementation of financial policy in new conditions are determined. Particular attention is paid to the empirical analysis of indicators of environmental responsibility and environmental efficiency at different organizational levels. The results obtained are valuable in order to improve corporate practices for managing environmental responsibility factors and improving the financial efficiency of companies. For a wide range of readers, including researchers, practitioners, postgraduates, applicants and students studying in the areas of "Economics", "Finance and Credit", "Management".

The monograph presents new research results on key aspects of the university's reputation management. Theoretical approaches to the study of reputation and reputational responsibility, reputation capital and reputational risks of a higher educational institution within the framework of reputation management are highlighted, an assessment of the state and problems of the university's reputation management development is given. Recommendations for improving the effectiveness of reputation management in Russian universities are proposed: the development of a reputation management system, including the university's reputation responsibility system and technologies for its formation, methods of managing reputation capital and reputational risks of the university. It is of interest to university leaders of various levels of management, university teaching staff, as well as for anyone who studies the problem under consideration. In addition, it will be useful for students of higher educational institutions studying in the areas of training "Management" and "Personnel Management".

The monograph scientifically substantiates and formulates the conceptual provisions of the formation of a corporate mechanism for managing the socio-economic development of enterprises in the agricultural sector of the economy. Within the framework of the concept, the main directions of development of management consulting are defined; a mechanism for the formation and disclosure of information on the social responsibility of enterprises is developed; a system of control support for social activities is proposed. The book is intended for researchers, practicing accountants, managers of various levels, heads of agricultural enterprises, teachers, doctoral students, postgraduates and undergraduates, students of centers and advanced training courses.

The textbook extensively covers the most pressing issues of antimonopoly and tariff regulation. The basics of antimonopoly and tariff regulation are outlined, the main activities of the Federal Antimonopoly Service as a state regulator, its functions, powers and responsibilities in the implementation of state antimonopoly control and tariff policy, as well as issues of sectoral tariff regulation and control over economic concentration are considered. Separate chapters are devoted to: types of unfair advertising and measures of responsibility for its placement; control of procurement activities. Various approaches to assessing the prospects for the development of corporations in a competitive environment are presented, for example, PPP, which, on the one hand, acts as a development tool, and on the other — as an object of antimonopoly regulation. The essence of the antimonopoly compliance method, which is used to prevent regulatory risks, is disclosed. Meets the requirements of the federal state educational standards of higher education of the latest generation. For students studying in the areas of training "Management" and "Jurisprudence" (bachelor's and master's levels), studying issues of competition, antimonopoly control and tariff policy from the point of view of management in these areas.

The petitions received and the letters sent by the Papal Chancery during the Late Middle Ages attest to the recognition of disability at the highest levels of the medieval Church. These documents acknowledge the existence of physical and/or mental impairments, with the papacy issuing dispensations allowing some supplicants to adapt their clerical missions according to their abilities. A disease, impairment, or old age could prevent both secular and regular clerics from fulfilling the duties of their divine office. Such conditions can, thus, be understood as forms of disability. In these cases, the Papal Chancery bore the responsibility for determining if disabled people were suitable to serve as clerics, with all the rights and duties of divine services. Whilst some petitioners were allowed to enter the clergy, or – in the case of currently serving churchmen – to stay more or less active in their work, others were compelled to resign their position and leave the clergy entirely. Petitions and papal letters lie at intersection of authorized, institutional policy and practical sources chronicling the lived experiences of disabled people in the Middle Ages. As such, they constitute an excellent analytical laboratory in which to study medieval disability in its relation to the papacy as an institution, alongside the impact of official ecclesiastical judgments on disabled lives.

Chapter 2 defines injustice itself and argues that political responsibility requires taking on injustice itself. Injustice itself entails complex causality, power inequalities, normalization, and the social epistemologies of injustice. Complex causality means that taking responsibility for injustice itself cannot require that we first understand how we are connected to an injustice and all of the factors contributing to it. Relatively powerful actors can exploit power inequalities causing domination, economic or physical exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, violence, and oppression. Normalization is when social, economic, and political habits can render the consequence of these so familiar that their unjustness is invisible. Even when these consequences are observed, social epistemologies can function like normalization at the cognitive level—creating shared understandings of how to interpret those consequences such that they are not assessed as matters of injustice. These points are illustrated drawing on research on gender, environment, and climate change in addition to the garment industry.

Causality plays a central role in the way people structure the world; we constantly seek causal explanations for our observations. But what does it even mean that an event C “actually caused” event E? The problem of defining actual causation goes beyond mere philosophical speculation. For example, in many legal arguments, it is precisely what needs to be established in order to determine responsibility. The philosophy literature has been struggling with the problem of defining causality since Hume. In this book, Joseph Halpern explores actual causality, and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. The goal is to arrive at a definition of causality that matches our natural language usage and is helpful, for example, to a jury deciding a legal case, a programmer looking for the line of code that cause some software to fail, or an economist trying to determine whether austerity caused a subsequent depression. Halpern applies and expands an approach to causality that he and Judea Pearl developed, based on structural equations. He carefully formulates a definition of causality, and building on this, defines degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. He concludes by discussing how these ideas can be applied to such practical problems as accountability and program verification.

The purpose of this article is to provide a brief overview of the development of corporate social and environmental reporting practice since it first began to achieve some degree of prominence on an international scale in the 1970s, before offering a critical evaluation of the state of current practice. This article focuses on the contribution of present day reporting, and associated assurance, initiatives made towards enhancing the transparency of corporate social and environmental impact, together with delivering enhanced levels of accountability to organizational stakeholders. A large part of this article draws on research in social and environmental accounting within the field of interdisciplinary accounting research. This research field has a thirty-five-year history and has developed in parallel with certain streams of corporate social responsibility research in the management literature. For example, social and environmental accounting research embraces both normative concerns with fulfilling obligations and duties to the wider society.

There exists a large scientific literature on black holes, including many excellent textbooks of various levels of difficulty. However, most of these prefer physical intuition to mathematical rigour. The object of this book is to fill this gap and present a detailed, mathematically oriented, extended introduction to the subject. The first part of the book starts with a presentation, in Chapter 1, of some basic facts about Lorentzian manifolds. Chapter 2 develops those elements of Lorentzian causality theory which are key to the understanding of black-hole spacetimes. We present some applications of the causality theory in Chapter 3, as relevant for the study of black holes. Chapter 4, which opens the second part of the book, constitutes an introduction to the theory of black holes, including a review of experimental evidence, a presentation of the basic notions, and a study of the flagship black holes: the Schwarzschild, Reissner–Nordström, Kerr, and Majumdar–Papapetrou solutions of the Einstein, or Einstein–Maxwell, equations. Chapter 5 presents some further important solutions: the Kerr–Newman–(anti-)de Sitter black holes, the Emperan–Reall black rings, the Kaluza–Klein solutions of Rasheed, and the Birmingham family of metrics. Chapters 6 and 7 present the construction of conformal and projective diagrams, which play a key role in understanding the global structure of spacetimes obtained by piecing together metrics which, initially, are expressed in local coordinates. Chapter 8 presents an overview of known dynamical black-hole solutions of the vacuum Einstein equations.

This chapter sets the scene of the book and provides a rationale for why research should be done. It begins with a definition of research and continues with a brief historical overview of medical research. The pivotal role of research in everyday medical practice is explained. The key databases containing published peer-reviewed articles related to clinical medicine and healthcare are detailed. The three major goals of research (description, explanation and prediction) are outlined. This chapter further focuses on the principles of the scientific method, its characteristics and main steps. Several classifications of the types of research are also presented. Bradford-Hill's proposed criteria for causality are also outlined. The hierarchy of research evidence and the corresponding levels of recommendations are also presented.

Several models of interdisciplinarity exist in law, justice, and criminology. In law, knowledge integration is by hybridization with other disciplines (e.g., law and sociology); each contextualizes the framework of rules and procedures. Interdisciplinarity challenges law’s effective practice and complicates its penchant for logical simplicity. Criminology’s engagement with interdisciplinarity is grounded in multidisciplinary explanations of crime, integrative attempts to produce comprehensive analytical explanatory frameworks, and attempts to transcend the limits of organized disciplinary knowledge production. Criminology’s thirty-year dalliance with interdisciplinarity raises questions of whether disciplines embody interdisciplinarity, and what precisely should be integrated: concepts, propositions, or theories that address different levels of analysis (e.g., micro-meso-macro). Questions are raised about how integration should occur, in what sequence, and with what effects on causality. Many of these issues are illustrated in Robert Agnew’s Toward a Unified Criminology. Transdisciplinary approaches question what counts as knowledge and focus on multiple “knowledge formations.”

The chapter considers the relevance of the law on crimes against humanity to explanations of how armed groups are bound by international human rights law. Exploring the two-tiered nature of crimes against humanity, it shows that responsibility for crimes against humanity exists at two levels: the level of the individual perpetrator (individual criminal responsibility) and the level of the entity behind the perpetrator (a civil responsibility). From this starting point, the chapter analyses what the case law on crimes against humanity can tell us about whether and when armed groups can commit crimes against humanity. The chapter ends by exploring the connection between crimes against humanity and human rights law in a normative sense, examining what a conclusion that armed groups can commit crimes against humanity demonstrates about their obligations under human rights law.

How do voters use elections as mechanisms of accountability in the multi-level systems in France, Germany, and Spain? The extent to which the voters attribute blame or credit for economic outcomes to the government at any one level depends on whether the voter believes that the government at that level plays an important role in shaping the economy. Also examined are voter opinions about corruption in government across all three levels. This is an issue that should affect voter satisfaction with, and trust in, their democratic institutions. In spite of the difficulties faced by voters in attributing responsibility, they do manage to vote in ways consistent with their evaluations of government performance at different levels.

This chapter begins by providing a brief overview of the divestment movement and the carbon bubble. It then argues that in order to avoid grave, substantial, and unnecessary harm, there is a collective moral responsibility to transition away from fossil fuels in line with the Paris Agreement’s targets of keeping global warming well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels with the aspiration of holding warming to 1.5°C. It uses that argument as the basis for the following three distinct but reinforcing moral arguments in favor of divesting from fossil fuels: (1) investing in fossil fuels contributes to grave, substantial, and unnecessary harm and injustice; (2) divesting from fossil fuels helps fulfill our moral responsibility to promote climate action; and (3) investing in fossil fuels morally tarnishes those who do so by making them complicit in the injustices of the fossil fuel industry. The chapter begins by providing a brief overview of the divestment movement and the carbon bubble.

Decentralization in water management authority has shifted decision-making to the local level and expanded participation to include a wider set of actors. The result is a politics of water that is more variable than in the past, across space and over time, reflecting the diversity of local values and local water resources. Fragmentation of policy responsibility offers potential for more environmental and financial sustainability in the long term, but in the short term it requires management agencies and stakeholders to find ways to interact effectively. How we design our local institutions, and the incentives that higher levels of government provide for directing local decisions, will help determine whether the new approach produces a more sustainable and resilient water future.

In this final chapter, our focus is on assessing the impact of MSIs on institutional fields. A table of impacts is introduced based on the level of shared responsibility that partners assume and the scope of the problem addressed. Impacts can also be assessed by examining changes in the level or type of institutionalization within the field. Three dimensions are proposed to make this assessment: changes in levels of signification (meaning), legitimation (routines, practices, and rules) and domination (power) within the field. Building on this, four distinct configurations of field level conditions (uncontested, volatile, fragmented, and quiescent) and four pathways for moving among these field configurations are identified of which collaboration is one. Several cases are used to illustrate these institutional configurations and pathways of institutional change.

Death generates different levels of grief in people, most often linked to our relationship with the individual and our social cultural upbringing. As paediatric palliative care professionals dealing with the family, we are looked towards by other health-care professionals and society to help deal with the bereavement and its associated grief. It is important to recognize that it is not our sole responsibility. This chapter approaches grief through the models of bereavement theory, in order to provide a deeper understanding of this stage. It examines bereavement issues experienced by the chronically ill child, as well as those experienced by siblings, parents, and the community around the dying child. Attention is also given to managing bereavement, with advice provided on how the multidisciplinary team can help parents during the grieving process.

This chapter examines youth civic engagement in the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region. It first considers the context of young people's civic engagement in Brazil, citing how a series of events in the country's recent history aroused unprecedented levels of political participation. It then considers the demographics of youth activists in Rio, the activities and organizations they are involved in, and their motivations for engagement. It also discusses issues important to youth activists, along with their responsibilities, social awareness, and political ideas; what they perceive as costs to civic engagement, including the fear of violence and the time that activism takes up; and their various other concerns such as the poor state of education in the country and the rights of political participation. The chapter concludes with an assessment of Rio youth's views on responsibility.

With the unanimous endorsement of the responsibility to protect (R2P) heads of state and government recognized that sovereignty entails responsibilities of the state to its people as relates to the protection from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Since the endorsement of R2P at the United Nations, progress has occurred at an unprecedented speed at the normative and operational levels with the past ten years also serving to identify challenges for the prevention of and response to atrocities. The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has been the central forum for R2P’s normative development, and a growing actor within the UN system for its implementation. This chapter assesses the UNGA’s interaction with R2P, reflecting on how this body has contributed to the conceptual advancement and operationalization of the principle as well as discussing the challenges that have arisen within this forum.

Germany had already made major reforms to social policy before the Great Recession. It had moved away from the traditional corporatist breadwinner welfare state model towards greater individual responsibility (private pensions and workfarist reforms, with sharp benefit cuts), and much more extensive support for childcare. Social investment and training measures have been much strengthened. These measures, carried out within a general framework of austerity and retrenchment, had increased employment, although the expansion in work since the early 2000s was mainly in low-skilled precarious jobs. The country weathered the recession successfully. New pressures are from the deepening divisions between those advantaged by the new regime (highly skilled middle-class people in secure jobs) and outsiders in an increasingly dualized labour market. Very high levels of immigration have led to further tensions. Germany has successfully transformed its welfare state, but faces further challenges from the social and political consequences of those reforms.

This is a book about how popes were selected in early modern Italy. But more importantly, it is a book about the problems selection by election created for the cardinals and other early modern Italians. The cardinals, who were the papacy’s exclusive electors, undertook the solemn duty of choosing a new pope on average every eight years. This was a unique procedure for choosing an absolute monarch and brought with it great responsibility. This book, the first major study of early modern papal elections in English, explores how the cardinals discharged this responsibility between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries and how their attempts to reconcile their conflicting priorities reshaped the papacy. The papacy’s use of elections to decide who should hold its highest office has been—indeed, still is—amongst its most distinct characteristics. This study uses elections to analyzing the nature of the papacy’s constitution. Different chapters explain why the cardinals chose the popes they did; why papal politics in this period were unusually fluid, and how the clerical elite who populated curial office used the papacy for rent-seeking and familial advancement. The book’s overall thesis is that the papal office’s elective nature was crucial to the papacy’s wider history: many of its wider outcomes are either directly or indirectly attributable to it. The book thus simultaneously presents a history of the papacy through the medium of conclaves and is a detailed case study of cause and effect, played out at the highest levels of the Counter-Reformation Catholic Church.

Prejudiced beliefs may certainly seem like defective beliefs. But in what sense defective? No doubt, many of them will be false. Some will also be harmful. But many philosophers further argue that prejudiced belief is defective also in the sense that it could only arise from distinctive kinds of epistemic irrationality: we could acquire or retain our prejudiced beliefs only by culpably violating our epistemic responsibilities. Moreover, it is assumed that we are morally responsible for the harms that our prejudiced beliefs cause only because, in forming these beliefs in the first place, we are violating our epistemic responsibilities. This book argues that these common convictions are false and misguided. It shows in detail that there can be plenty of epistemically justified pathways to prejudiced belief. Moreover, it argues that it is a mistake to lean on the concept of epistemic responsibility to give content to ethical responsibilities. In particular, this would unreasonably burden victims of prejudice with having to show that their victimizers were in a position to know better. Accordingly, this book develops an account of moral responsibility for harm which does not depend on finding grounds for epistemic blame. In support of this view, the book offers a number of examples and case studies at individual, collective, and institutional levels of decision making. Additionally, it develops a systematic platform for “non-ideal epistemology” which would apply also to a wide range of other socio-epistemic phenomena of current concern, such as fake news, conspiracy theories, science scepticism, and more.

Critical Service Learning Toolkit offers a strengths-based, interdisciplinary approach to promoting social competence while enhancing emotional and academic skill development. Designed as a user-friendly guide to carrying out successful CSL projects, this Toolkit provides practitioners with step-by-step assistance in planning, implementing, and evaluating Critical Service Learning (CSL) projects in elementary and high schools. CSL trains youth to become active and conscientious citizens through engagement and leadership experiences that meet real needs in the community. This approach is unique in that it places the youth/student at the center of the process. Prioritizing social and emotional learning (SEL) and school engagement, CSL changes the role of the school-based, counseling professional into that of a facilitator who encourages skill-building, reflection, and civic engagement. Cultivating self-awareness, social-consciousness, and critical-thinking skills, brainstorming and community web mapping activities serve as the cornerstone of CSL and allow youth to become comfortable articulating concerns about their communities. By extending learning beyond the classroom and into the community, CSL enhances what is taught throughout the school curriculum, at all levels, and fosters a sense of civic responsibility and social agency.

Contemporary Issues in Financial Reporting, Auditing and Corporate Governance offers theoretical and empirical background on three fundamental areas of accounting, namely financial reporting, auditing and corporate governance.This book is written in a clear and reader-friendly manner to create readers interest in the central issues of discussion. The uniqueness of this book is in its extensive coverage of national and internationally-oriented issues of financial reporting, auditing and corporate governance. This book is ideal for accounting and business related courses at upper undergraduate and post-graduate levels. With its broad coverage, the book should also be of interest to academicians, professionals, corporate managers, regulatory bodies and researchers.The articles written in this book are: Corporate Social Responsibility and Post-Crisis StrategyEmployee Stock Options Popularity of Financial Ratios in the Annual ReportsThe Relationship between Pension Funds and Dividend PayoutDoes Audit Firm Merger Add Value to Its Clients? Co-operation between Internal and External Auditors: From the Perspective of Internal Auditors in Malaysian Local Authorities Auditor Choice: Events and TheoriesThe Global Audit Expectation Gap: Within and between Muslim CountriesOwnership Holdings: Selected Malaysian Family Businesses Ethnic Diversity in Malaysian Initial Public OfferingsCEO Succession in Malaysian PLCs: Does Firm Characteristic Make a Difference?A Framework of Good Governance: Lessons for the Inland Revenue Board Malaysia.

This book provides a longitudinal perspective on change and continuity in voluntary action in recent decades in the UK. Drawing on more than 30 years of different quantitative and qualitative data, its longitudinal, mixed-methods approach offers insights into recent and contemporary British voluntary action. The book deploys a range of quantitative data sources on individual behaviour, both cross-sectional and longitudinal, to analyse aggregate trends in individual engagement in both formal and informal volunteering, in the level and frequency of engagement, the types of activities that volunteers carry out, their responses to questions concerning their motivation and the rewards they obtain from volunteering. These analyses are complemented, and given much greater depth, by the use of qualitative data from individuals who volunteer for the Mass Observation Project, through which they provide free-form written testimony about their daily lives. Tracking a subset of these individuals over time provides unique and novel insights into behaviour, motivation, and lifetime engagement. This source is also highly informative of individuals’ understandings of, and particularly their attitudes towards, voluntary action, and the balance between public and private responsibility for the provision of public services. The findings lead us to caution against any simplistic suggestions that levels of voluntary action can be increased significantly without policies that work with the grain of individuals’ everyday lives.

In the 1980s, health was a marginal issue on the international political agenda, and it barely figured into donor states’ foreign aid allocation. Within a generation, health had developed a robust set of governance structures that drove significant global political action, incorporated a wide range of actors, and received increasing levels of funding. What explains this dramatic change over such a short period of time? Drawing on the English School of international relations theory, this book argues that global health has emerged as a secondary institution within international society. Rather than being a side issue, global health now occupies an important role. Addressing global health issues—financially, organizationally, and politically—is part of how actors demonstrate their willingness and ability to help realize their moral responsibility and obligation to others. In this way, it demonstrates how global health governance has emerged, grown, and persisted—even in the face of global economic challenges and inadequate responses to particular health crises. The argument also shows how English School conceptions of international society would benefit from expanding their analytical gaze to address international economic issues and incorporate non-state actors. The book begins by building a case for using the English School to understand the role of global health governance before looking at global health governance’s place in international society through case studies about the growth of development assistance for health, the international response to the Ebola outbreak, and China’s role within the global health governance framework.

This book concerns the nature and basis for the fundamental ethical relation between human beings. Beginning from the fundamental example of trust, it is argued that this relation arises from our interdependence and mutual vulnerability, which then gives us power over the lives of other people. It claimed that in this situation, there arises a demand to care for the other person. This demand is characterized as silent, radical, one-sided, and unfulfillable, as it cannot be satisfied by just doing what the other asks; requires us to act unselfishly; is non-reciprocal; and should not be experienced as a demand. As a result, the demand is distinguished from ordinary social norms, which lack these characteristics, though it is argued that there is a relation between these two levels, as legitimate social norms should ‘refract’ the ethical demand. It is also argued that in order to make sense of a demand of this sort, we must see ‘life as a gift’, rather than treating ourselves as the sovereign grounds for our own existence. In understanding the ethical demand in this way, it is suggested, we can make sense of Jesus’s proclamation to love our neighbour in purely human terms, though at the same time we may have to go beyond a scientific picture which operates with a clear distinction between fact and values, and treats determinism as a basis for rejecting moral responsibility.

In Portugal, global politics tend to dominate climate change communication. Policy-oriented news stories prevail, being very much influenced by international events, dynamics, and actors, especially European ones, whereas national politicians and officials tend to be given less space. Climate change is thus mainly (re)presented as a global issue, distant from local realities, in spite of the vulnerabilities that the country faces. National policy makers tend to adopt a technocratic discourse that comes across as “rational” and fairly optimistic, with little contestation by environmental groups or others. A “green economy” discourse has prevailed in the media, with investment on renewable energy being depicted as the way to both stimulating the economy and addressing climate change. Scientific knowledge tends to be represented as consensual and national scientists tend to avoid dramatization. Although public opinion surveys have shown that the population considers climate change a serious problem and skepticism regarding its anthropogenic causes is low, surveys have also revealed high levels of ignorance and self-evaluated lack of information. In spite of a traditionally weak environmental movement and lack of public engagement, the population has shown a consistent sense of collective responsibility to tackle climate change. The economic and financial crisis up until the mid-2010s considerably affected the already fragile media system and turned political and public attention to economy-related topics. News coverage of climate change, in all its complexity, has been constrained by a lack of specialized reporters and increased dependency on the pro-activity of news sources.

There are two driving questions informing this book. The first is where does our moral life come from? The presupposition is that considering morality broadly is inadequate. Instead, different aspects need to be teased apart. It is not sufficient to assume that different virtues are bolted onto a vicious animality, red in tooth and claw. Nature and culture have interlaced histories. By weaving in evolutionary theories and debates on the evolution of compassion, justice, and wisdom, the book shows a richer account of who we are as moral agents. The second driving question concerns our relationships with animals. There is dissatisfaction with animal rights frameworks and an argument instead for a more complex community-based multispecies approach. Hence, rather than extending rights, a more radical approach is a holistic multispecies framework for moral action. This need not weaken individual responsibility. The intention is not to develop a manual of practice, but rather to build towards an alternative philosophically informed approach to theological ethics, including animal ethics. The theological thread weaving through this account is wisdom. Wisdom has many different levels, and in the broadest sense is connected with the flow of life understood in its interconnectedness and sociality. It is profoundly theological and practical. In naming the project the evolution of wisdom a statement is being made about where wisdom may have come from and its future orientation. But justice, compassion, and conscience are not far behind, especially in so far as they are relevant to both individual decision-making and institutions.

This book critiques the expectation embodied in American public policy today that families will privately provide the resources and circumstances they and their members need through the market and without the help of government. This expectation, it argues, is eroding the well-being of American families across the economic spectrum. Free-market family policy, it asserts, is undermining the promise of the American Dream, which envisions a social order that helps all people reach their full potential and that supports the opportunity for all to lead rich, fulfilling lives. Without thriving families, children can’t reach their full promise; nor can most adults live happy lives without strong family ties. Despite this, under free-market family policy, market forces are decimating the well-being of families. Part I demonstrates how the rising economic inequality and insecurity of the past several decades are making it increasingly difficult for family members to reconcile work and family, are destabilizing marriages and cohabiting relationships among poor and working-class adults, and are making it impossible for families at all income levels to secure for their children the circumstances they need to flourish. Part II shows that, for much of our nation’s history, government’s responsibility to buffer families from market forces was considered a key part of the social contract. It is only in recent decades that free-market family policy has supplanted this social contract. Part III considers how the United States can construct an economy that supports families and truly enables them to thrive.

Historic discussions of climate often suggested that it caused societies to have certain qualities. In the 19th-century, imperial representations of the world environment frequently “determined” the fate of peoples and places, a practice that has frequently been used to explain the largest patterns of political rivalry and the fates of empires and their struggles for dominance in world politics. In the 21st century, climate change has mostly reversed the causal logic in the reasoning about human–nature relationships and their geographies. The new thinking suggests that human decisions, at least those made by the rich and powerful with respect to the forms of energy that are used to power the global economy, are influencing future climate changes. Humans are now shaping the environment on a global scale, not the other way around. Despite the widespread acceptance of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate-change action, numerous arguments about who should act and how they should do so to deal with climate change shape international negotiations. Differing viewpoints are in part a matter of geographical location and whether an economy is dependent on fossil-fuels revenue or subject to increasingly severe storms, droughts, or rising sea levels. These differences have made climate negotiations very difficult in the last couple of decades. Partly in response to these differences, the Paris Agreement devolves primary responsibility for climate policy to individual states rather than establish any other geopolitical arrangement. Apart from the outright denial that humanity is a factor in climate change, arguments about whether climate change causes conflict and how security policies should engage climate change also partly shape contemporary geopolitical agendas. Despite climate-change deniers, in the Trump administration in particular, in the aftermath of the Paris Agreement, climate change is understood increasingly as part of a planetary transformation that has been set in motion by industrial activity and the rise of a global fossil-fuel-powered economy. But this is about more than just climate change. The larger earth-system science discussion of transformation, which can be encapsulated in the use of the term “Anthropocene” for the new geological circumstances of the biosphere, is starting to shape the geopolitics of climate change just as new political actors are beginning to have an influence on climate politics.

Approaches towards the formal learning of piano playing with respect to musicianship is one that demands the understanding of musical concepts and their applications. Consequently, it requires the boldness to immerse oneself in performance situations while trusting one’s instincts. One needs only to cultivate an amazing ear and a good understanding of music theory to break down progressions “quickly”. Like an alchemist, one would have to pick their creative impulses from their musical toolbox, simultaneously compelling their fingers to coordinate with the brain and the music present to generate “pleasant sounds”. My exploration leading to what will be considered Keyboard Musicianship did not begin in a formal setting. Rather it was the consolidation of my involvement in playing the organ at home, Sunday school, boarding school at Presec-Legon, and playing at weekly gospel band performances off-campus and other social settings that crystalized approaches that can be formally structured. In fact, I did not then consider this lifestyle of musical interpretation worthy of academic inclusivity until I graduated from the national academy of music and was taken on the staff as an instructor in September, 1986. Apparently, what I did that seemed effortless was a special area that was integral to holistic music development. The late Dr. Robert Manford, the then director of the Academy, assigned me to teach Rudiments and Theory of Music to first year students, Keyboard Musicianship to final year students, and to continue giving Piano Accompaniment to students – just as I have been voluntarily doing to help students. The challenge was simply this; there was no official textbook or guide to use in teaching keyboard musicianship then and I was to help guide especially non-piano majors for practical exams in musicianship. What an enterprise! The good news though was that exemplifying functionalism in keyboard, organ, piano, etc. has been my survival activity off campus particularly in church and social settings.Having reflected thoroughly and prayerfully, it dawned on me that piano literacy repertoires were crafted differently than my assignments in Musicianship. Piano literacy repertoires of western music were abundant on campus but applied musicianship demanded a different approach. Playing a sonata, sonatina, mazurka, and waltzes at different proficiency levels was different from punching chords in R&B, Ballard style, Reggae, Highlife or even Hymn playing. However, there are approaches that can link them and also interpretations that can categorize them in other applicable dimensions. A “Retrospective Introspection” demanded that I confront myself constructively with two questions: 1. WHAT MUSICAL ACTIVITIES have I already enjoyed myself in that WARRANT or deserve this challenging assignment? 2. WHAT MUSICAL NOURISHMENT do l believe enriched my artistry that was so observable and Measurable? The answers were shocking! They were: 1. My weekend sojourn from Winneba to Accra to play for churches, brass bands, gospel bands and teaching of Choirs – which often left me penniless. 2. Volunteering to render piano accompaniment to any Voice Major student on campus since my very first year. 3. Applying a principle, I learnt from my father – TRANSFER OF LEARNING – I exported the functionalism of my off-campus musical activities to compliment my formal/academic work. 4. The improvisational influences of Rev. Stevenson Alfred Williams (gospel jazz pianist), Bessa Simmons (band director & keyboardist) and at Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, Mr. Ray Ellis “Afro Piano Jazz Fusion Highlife” The trust and support from lecturers and students in the academy injected an overwhelming and high sense of responsibility in me which nevertheless, guided me to observe structures of other established course outlines and apply myself with respect to approaches that were deemed relevant. Thus, it is in this light that I selected specific concepts worth exploring to validate the functionalism of what my assignment required. Initially, hymn structures, chords I, IV, V and short highlife chordal progressions inverted here and there were considered. Basic reading of notes and intense audiation were injected even as I developed technical exercises to help with the dexterity of stiff fingers. I conclude this preface by stating that, this “Instructional guide/manual” is actually a developmental workbook. I have deliberately juxtaposed simple original piano pieces with musicianship approaches. The blend is to equip learners to develop music literacy and performance proficiencies. The process is expected to compel the learner to immerse/initiate themselves into basic keyboard musicianship. While it is a basic book, I expect it to be a solid foundation for those who commit to it. Many of my former and present students have been requesting for a sort of guide to aid their teaching or refresh their memories. Though not exhaustive, the selections presented here are a response to a long-awaited workbook. I have used most of them not only in Winneba, but also at the Callanwolde Fine Arts Center (Atlanta) and the Piano Lab (Accra). I found myself teaching the same course in the 2009 – 2013 academic year in the Music Department of the University of Education, Winneba when Prof C.W.K Merekeu was Head of Department. My observation is that we still have a lot of work to do in bridging academia and industry. This implies that musicianship must be considered as the bloodline of musicality not only in theory but in practice. I have added simplified versions of my old course outlines as a guide for anyone interested in learning. Finally, I contend that Keyboard Musicianship is a craft and will require of the learner a consistent discipline and respect for: 1. The art of listening 2. Skill acquisition/proficient dexterity 3. Ability to interpret via extemporization and delivery/showmanship. For learners who desire to challenge themselves in intermediate and advanced piano, I recommend my book, “African Pianism. (A contribution to Africology)”

Nationalism: Past as Prologue began as a single volume being compiled by Ad Akande, a scholar from South Africa, who proposed it to me as co-author about two years ago. The original idea was to examine how the damaging roots of nationalism have been corroding political systems around the world, and creating dangerous obstacles for necessary international cooperation. Since I (Bruce E. Johansen) has written profusely about climate change (global warming, a.k.a. infrared forcing), I suggested a concerted effort in that direction. This is a worldwide existential threat that affects every living thing on Earth. It often compounds upon itself, so delays in reducing emissions of fossil fuels are shortening the amount of time remaining to eliminate the use of fossil fuels to preserve a livable planet. Nationalism often impedes solutions to this problem (among many others), as nations place their singular needs above the common good. Our initial proposal got around, and abstracts on many subjects arrived. Within a few weeks, we had enough good material for a 100,000-word book. The book then fattened to two moderate volumes and then to four two very hefty tomes. We tried several different titles as good submissions swelled. We also discovered that our best contributors were experts in their fields, which ranged the world. We settled on three stand-alone books:” 1/ nationalism and racial justice. Our first volume grew as the growth of Black Lives Matter following the brutal killing of George Floyd ignited protests over police brutality and other issues during 2020, following the police assassination of Floyd in Minneapolis. It is estimated that more people took part in protests of police brutality during the summer of 2020 than any other series of marches in United States history. This includes upheavals during the 1960s over racial issues and against the war in Southeast Asia (notably Vietnam). We choose a volume on racism because it is one of nationalism’s main motive forces. This volume provides a worldwide array of work on nationalism’s growth in various countries, usually by authors residing in them, or in the United States with ethnic ties to the nation being examined, often recent immigrants to the United States from them. Our roster of contributors comprises a small United Nations of insightful, well-written research and commentary from Indonesia, New Zealand, Australia, China, India, South Africa, France, Portugal, Estonia, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Kazakhstan, Georgia, and the United States. Volume 2 (this one) describes and analyzes nationalism, by country, around the world, except for the United States; and 3/material directly related to President Donald Trump, and the United States. The first volume is under consideration at the Texas A & M University Press. The other two are under contract to Nova Science Publishers (which includes social sciences). These three volumes may be used individually or as a set. Environmental material is taken up in appropriate places in each of the three books. * * * * * What became the United States of America has been strongly nationalist since the English of present-day Massachusetts and Jamestown first hit North America’s eastern shores. The country propelled itself across North America with the self-serving ideology of “manifest destiny” for four centuries before Donald Trump came along. Anyone who believes that a Trumpian affection for deportation of “illegals” is a new thing ought to take a look at immigration and deportation statistics in Adam Goodman’s The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Deporting Immigrants (Princeton University Press, 2020). Between 1920 and 2018, the United States deported 56.3 million people, compared with 51.7 million who were granted legal immigration status during the same dates. Nearly nine of ten deportees were Mexican (Nolan, 2020, 83). This kind of nationalism, has become an assassin of democracy as well as an impediment to solving global problems. Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times (2019:A-25): that “In their 2018 book, How Democracies Die, the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt documented how this process has played out in many countries, from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, to Recep Erdogan’s Turkey, to Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Add to these India’s Narendra Modi, China’s Xi Jinping, and the United States’ Donald Trump, among others. Bit by bit, the guardrails of democracy have been torn down, as institutions meant to serve the public became tools of ruling parties and self-serving ideologies, weaponized to punish and intimidate opposition parties’ opponents. On paper, these countries are still democracies; in practice, they have become one-party regimes….And it’s happening here [the United States] as we speak. If you are not worried about the future of American democracy, you aren’t paying attention” (Krugmam, 2019, A-25). We are reminded continuously that the late Carl Sagan, one of our most insightful scientific public intellectuals, had an interesting theory about highly developed civilizations. Given the number of stars and planets that must exist in the vast reaches of the universe, he said, there must be other highly developed and organized forms of life. Distance may keep us from making physical contact, but Sagan said that another reason we may never be on speaking terms with another intelligent race is (judging from our own example) could be their penchant for destroying themselves in relatively short order after reaching technological complexity. This book’s chapters, introduction, and conclusion examine the worldwide rise of partisan nationalism and the damage it has wrought on the worldwide pursuit of solutions for issues requiring worldwide scope, such scientific co-operation public health and others, mixing analysis of both. We use both historical description and analysis. This analysis concludes with a description of why we must avoid the isolating nature of nationalism that isolates people and encourages separation if we are to deal with issues of world-wide concern, and to maintain a sustainable, survivable Earth, placing the dominant political movement of our time against the Earth’s existential crises. Our contributors, all experts in their fields, each have assumed responsibility for a country, or two if they are related. This work entwines themes of worldwide concern with the political growth of nationalism because leaders with such a worldview are disinclined to co-operate internationally at a time when nations must find ways to solve common problems, such as the climate crisis. Inability to cooperate at this stage may doom everyone, eventually, to an overheated, stormy future plagued by droughts and deluges portending shortages of food and other essential commodities, meanwhile destroying large coastal urban areas because of rising sea levels. Future historians may look back at our time and wonder why as well as how our world succumbed to isolating nationalism at a time when time was so short for cooperative intervention which is crucial for survival of a sustainable earth. Pride in language and culture is salubrious to individuals’ sense of history and identity. Excess nationalism that prevents international co-operation on harmful worldwide maladies is quite another. As Pope Francis has pointed out: For all of our connectivity due to expansion of social media, ability to communicate can breed contempt as well as mutual trust. “For all our hyper-connectivity,” said Francis, “We witnessed a fragmentation that made it more difficult to resolve problems that affect us all” (Horowitz, 2020, A-12). The pope’s encyclical, titled “Brothers All,” also said: “The forces of myopic, extremist, resentful, and aggressive nationalism are on the rise.” The pope’s document also advocates support for migrants, as well as resistance to nationalist and tribal populism. Francis broadened his critique to the role of market capitalism, as well as nationalism has failed the peoples of the world when they need co-operation and solidarity in the face of the world-wide corona virus pandemic. Humankind needs to unite into “a new sense of the human family [Fratelli Tutti, “Brothers All”], that rejects war at all costs” (Pope, 2020, 6-A). Our journey takes us first to Russia, with the able eye and honed expertise of Richard D. Anderson, Jr. who teaches as UCLA and publishes on the subject of his chapter: “Putin, Russian identity, and Russia’s conduct at home and abroad.” Readers should find Dr. Anderson’s analysis fascinating because Vladimir Putin, the singular leader of Russian foreign and domestic policy these days (and perhaps for the rest of his life, given how malleable Russia’s Constitution has become) may be a short man physically, but has high ambitions. One of these involves restoring the old Russian (and Soviet) empire, which would involve re-subjugating a number of nations that broke off as the old order dissolved about 30 years ago. President (shall we say czar?) Putin also has international ambitions, notably by destabilizing the United States, where election meddling has become a specialty. The sight of Putin and U.S. president Donald Trump, two very rich men (Putin $70-$200 billion; Trump $2.5 billion), nuzzling in friendship would probably set Thomas Jefferson and Vladimir Lenin spinning in their graves. The road of history can take some unanticipated twists and turns. Consider Poland, from which we have an expert native analysis in chapter 2, Bartosz Hlebowicz, who is a Polish anthropologist and journalist. His piece is titled “Lawless and Unjust: How to Quickly Make Your Own Country a Puppet State Run by a Group of Hoodlums – the Hopeless Case of Poland (2015–2020).” When I visited Poland to teach and lecture twice between 2006 and 2008, most people seemed to be walking on air induced by freedom to conduct their own affairs to an unusual degree for a state usually squeezed between nationalists in Germany and Russia. What did the Poles then do in a couple of decades? Read Hlebowicz’ chapter and decide. It certainly isn’t soft-bellied liberalism. In Chapter 3, with Bruce E. Johansen, we visit China’s western provinces, the lands of Tibet as well as the Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region, who would most assuredly resent being characterized as being possessed by the Chinese of the Han to the east. As a student of Native American history, I had never before thought of the Tibetans and Uighurs as Native peoples struggling against the Independence-minded peoples of a land that is called an adjunct of China on most of our maps. The random act of sitting next to a young woman on an Air India flight out of Hyderabad, bound for New Delhi taught me that the Tibetans had something to share with the Lakota, the Iroquois, and hundreds of other Native American states and nations in North America. Active resistance to Chinese rule lasted into the mid-nineteenth century, and continues today in a subversive manner, even in song, as I learned in 2018 when I acted as a foreign adjudicator on a Ph.D. dissertation by a Tibetan student at the University of Madras (in what is now in a city called Chennai), in southwestern India on resistance in song during Tibet’s recent history. Tibet is one of very few places on Earth where a young dissident can get shot to death for singing a song that troubles China’s Quest for Lebensraum. The situation in Xinjiang region, where close to a million Muslims have been interned in “reeducation” camps surrounded with brick walls and barbed wire. They sing, too. Come with us and hear the music. Back to Europe now, in Chapter 4, to Portugal and Spain, we find a break in the general pattern of nationalism. Portugal has been more progressive governmentally than most. Spain varies from a liberal majority to military coups, a pattern which has been exported to Latin America. A situation such as this can make use of the term “populism” problematic, because general usage in our time usually ties the word into a right-wing connotative straightjacket. “Populism” can be used to describe progressive (left-wing) insurgencies as well. José Pinto, who is native to Portugal and also researches and writes in Spanish as well as English, in “Populism in Portugal and Spain: a Real Neighbourhood?” provides insight into these historical paradoxes. Hungary shares some historical inclinations with Poland (above). Both emerged from Soviet dominance in an air of developing freedom and multicultural diversity after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then, gradually at first, right wing-forces began to tighten up, stripping structures supporting popular freedom, from the courts, mass media, and other institutions. In Chapter 5, Bernard Tamas, in “From Youth Movement to Right-Liberal Wing Authoritarianism: The Rise of Fidesz and the Decline of Hungarian Democracy” puts the renewed growth of political and social repression into a context of worldwide nationalism. Tamas, an associate professor of political science at Valdosta State University, has been a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University and a Fulbright scholar at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. His books include From Dissident to Party Politics: The Struggle for Democracy in Post-Communist Hungary (2007). Bear in mind that not everyone shares Orbán’s vision of what will make this nation great, again. On graffiti-covered walls in Budapest, Runes (traditional Hungarian script) has been found that read “Orbán is a motherfucker” (Mikanowski, 2019, 58). Also in Europe, in Chapter 6, Professor Ronan Le Coadic, of the University of Rennes, Rennes, France, in “Is There a Revival of French Nationalism?” Stating this title in the form of a question is quite appropriate because France’s nationalistic shift has built and ebbed several times during the last few decades. For a time after 2000, it came close to assuming the role of a substantial minority, only to ebb after that. In 2017, the candidate of the National Front reached the second round of the French presidential election. This was the second time this nationalist party reached the second round of the presidential election in the history of the Fifth Republic. In 2002, however, Jean-Marie Le Pen had only obtained 17.79% of the votes, while fifteen years later his daughter, Marine Le Pen, almost doubled her father's record, reaching 33.90% of the votes cast. Moreover, in the 2019 European elections, re-named Rassemblement National obtained the largest number of votes of all French political formations and can therefore boast of being "the leading party in France.” The brutality of oppressive nationalism may be expressed in personal relationships, such as child abuse. While Indonesia and Aotearoa [the Maoris’ name for New Zealand] hold very different ranks in the United Nations Human Development Programme assessments, where Indonesia is classified as a medium development country and Aotearoa New Zealand as a very high development country. In Chapter 7, “Domestic Violence Against Women in Indonesia and Aotearoa New Zealand: Making Sense of Differences and Similarities” co-authors, in Chapter 8, Mandy Morgan and Dr. Elli N. Hayati, from New Zealand and Indonesia respectively, found that despite their socio-economic differences, one in three women in each country experience physical or sexual intimate partner violence over their lifetime. In this chapter ther authors aim to deepen understandings of domestic violence through discussion of the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of theit countries to address domestic violence alongside studies of women’s attitudes to gender norms and experiences of intimate partner violence. One of the most surprising and upsetting scholarly journeys that a North American student may take involves Adolf Hitler’s comments on oppression of American Indians and Blacks as he imagined the construction of the Nazi state, a genesis of nationalism that is all but unknown in the United States of America, traced in this volume (Chapter 8) by co-editor Johansen. Beginning in Mein Kampf, during the 1920s, Hitler explicitly used the westward expansion of the United States across North America as a model and justification for Nazi conquest and anticipated colonization by Germans of what the Nazis called the “wild East” – the Slavic nations of Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, and Russia, most of which were under control of the Soviet Union. The Volga River (in Russia) was styled by Hitler as the Germans’ Mississippi, and covered wagons were readied for the German “manifest destiny” of imprisoning, eradicating, and replacing peoples the Nazis deemed inferior, all with direct references to events in North America during the previous century. At the same time, with no sense of contradiction, the Nazis partook of a long-standing German romanticism of Native Americans. One of Goebbels’ less propitious schemes was to confer honorary Aryan status on Native American tribes, in the hope that they would rise up against their oppressors. U.S. racial attitudes were “evidence [to the Nazis] that America was evolving in the right direction, despite its specious rhetoric about equality.” Ming Xie, originally from Beijing, in the People’s Republic of China, in Chapter 9, “News Coverage and Public Perceptions of the Social Credit System in China,” writes that The State Council of China in 2014 announced “that a nationwide social credit system would be established” in China. “Under this system, individuals, private companies, social organizations, and governmental agencies are assigned a score which will be calculated based on their trustworthiness and daily actions such as transaction history, professional conduct, obedience to law, corruption, tax evasion, and academic plagiarism.” The “nationalism” in this case is that of the state over the individual. China has 1.4 billion people; this system takes their measure for the purpose of state control. Once fully operational, control will be more subtle. People who are subject to it, through modern technology (most often smart phones) will prompt many people to self-censor. Orwell, modernized, might write: “Your smart phone is watching you.” Ming Xie holds two Ph.Ds, one in Public Administration from University of Nebraska at Omaha and another in Cultural Anthropology from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, where she also worked for more than 10 years at a national think tank in the same institution. While there she summarized news from non-Chinese sources for senior members of the Chinese Communist Party. Ming is presently an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, West Texas A&M University. In Chapter 10, analyzing native peoples and nationhood, Barbara Alice Mann, Professor of Honours at the University of Toledo, in “Divide, et Impera: The Self-Genocide Game” details ways in which European-American invaders deprive the conquered of their sense of nationhood as part of a subjugation system that amounts to genocide, rubbing out their languages and cultures -- and ultimately forcing the native peoples to assimilate on their own, for survival in a culture that is foreign to them. Mann is one of Native American Studies’ most acute critics of conquests’ contradictions, and an author who retrieves Native history with a powerful sense of voice and purpose, having authored roughly a dozen books and numerous book chapters, among many other works, who has traveled around the world lecturing and publishing on many subjects. Nalanda Roy and S. Mae Pedron in Chapter 11, “Understanding the Face of Humanity: The Rohingya Genocide.” describe one of the largest forced migrations in the history of the human race, the removal of 700,000 to 800,000 Muslims from Buddhist Myanmar to Bangladesh, which itself is already one of the most crowded and impoverished nations on Earth. With about 150 million people packed into an area the size of Nebraska and Iowa (population less than a tenth that of Bangladesh, a country that is losing land steadily to rising sea levels and erosion of the Ganges river delta. The Rohingyas’ refugee camp has been squeezed onto a gigantic, eroding, muddy slope that contains nearly no vegetation. However, Bangladesh is majority Muslim, so while the Rohingya may starve, they won’t be shot to death by marauding armies. Both authors of this exquisite (and excruciating) account teach at Georgia Southern University in Savannah, Georgia, Roy as an associate professor of International Studies and Asian politics, and Pedron as a graduate student; Roy originally hails from very eastern India, close to both Myanmar and Bangladesh, so he has special insight into the context of one of the most brutal genocides of our time, or any other. This is our case describing the problems that nationalism has and will pose for the sustainability of the Earth as our little blue-and-green orb becomes more crowded over time. The old ways, in which national arguments often end in devastating wars, are obsolete, given that the Earth and all the people, plants, and other animals that it sustains are faced with the existential threat of a climate crisis that within two centuries, more or less, will flood large parts of coastal cities, and endanger many species of plants and animals. To survive, we must listen to the Earth, and observe her travails, because they are increasingly our own.