Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "Fourth Universalist Society"

The article is devoted to the problem of the image of the artist as a prophet in connection with the work of Taras Shevchenko, due to his extraordinary influence on Ukrainian culture. The formation of this image is the result of the interaction of a number of socio-cultural factors, which are the subject of analysis in this article. First of all, it is the dependence of the Great Kobzar's self-determination on those strategies that depend on poetry and painting, the place of these spheres in contemporary society, their task of integrating creative activity into the social structure and artistic environment, the importance of skill and order. Secondly, the echo in the Shevchenko era of the ideas of the Enlightenment with their universalist claims and the emergence of a phenomenon in the Russian Empire, which was called "intelligentsia", formed against the background of cultural "literary centrism". Third is the influence of romanticism on the artist's idea of leading the process of forming a certain community, which is not associated with social inequality and formal hierarchies in society. Fourth is the dependence of the artist image – the prophet with the intertwining of Christian and pagan roots of Ukrainian culture. It is shown that the archetype of the national artist-prophet created by T. Shevchenko's successors survived situations of imitation, affirmation, rethinking, even denial. Such a diverse dialogue testifies to the urgency of Taras Shevchenko's legacy. The article shows that there is an urgent need to study the figure of Shevchenko in the context of world culture, the functioning of the model "artist – prophet" in general and in their own country. It is also important to give this problem a philosophical depth. It is necessary to comprehend the models through which they tried to attract the figure of Shevchenko to various ideologies, that is, to give it a certain "plane" and "one-dimensionality." And "one-dimensional" Taras Shevchenko is a model that is too easy to manipulate.

AbstractAlmost all participants in the debate about the ethics of accidents with self-driving cars have so far assumed moral universalism. However, universalism may be philosophically more controversial than is commonly thought, and may lead to undesirable results in terms of non-moral consequences and feasibility. There thus seems to be a need to also start considering what I refer to as the “relativistic car” — a car that is programmed under the assumption that what is morally right, wrong, good, bad, etc. is determined by the moral beliefs of one’s society or culture. My investigation of this idea involves six steps. First, I explain why and how the moral universalism/relativism debate is relevant to the issue of self-driving cars. Second, I argue that there are good reasons to consider accident algorithms that assume relativism. Third, I outline how a relativistic car would be programmed to behave. Fourth, I address what advantages such a car would have, both in terms of its non-moral consequences and feasibility. Fifth, I address the relativistic car’s disadvantages. Finally, I qualify and conclude my considerations.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the process of constructing vocational identity based on the vocational awareness and experience of early career police officers of generation MZ. This study analyzed by applying consensual qualitative research-modified(CQR-M) based on open-ended questionnaires were received from 55 generation MZ police officers up to 5 years of experience. The process of constructing vocational identity of the research participants was revealed 5 areas, 10 categories, and 33 subcategories, and the results of the study are as follows. First, the research participants longed for the police and chose their vocation for reasons such as ‘police is my dream’,‘consideration of aptitude’,‘essential part of society’. Second, after becoming police officers, the professional pride of the research participants through ‘social recognition’,‘positive feedback of gratitude for help’, and ‘joy of family’ promoted the internalization of identity, on the other hand, the professional pride gradually disappeared as they suffered emotional exhaustion from the ‘negative public opinion about police’,‘the victim of criticism of civil petitioners’,‘police universalism’, and ‘high ethical standards for the police’. Third, through job experience, the research participants made ambivalent evaluations on the unique job characteristics of police officers and the advantages and disadvantages of civil servants. They showed experience conflict with vocational identity due to difficulties in adjusting to a hierarchical organization and an uncomfortable atmosphere. Fourth, even in the process of adjustment, the research participants gained strength through ‘helper′s salvation’, and experienced the process of compromise and acceptance while realistically adjusting their vocational identities through ‘improvement of adaptability and survival strategy’. Finally, the result of reconstructing the vocational identity as a police officer is ‘happy police officers as a person’ or ‘police officers serving the people’. They were drawing an optimistic future through efforts to do their best in each context of individual life and professional role, but to take in a balance way. The significance of this study is in that it deeply analyzed the process of constructing vocational identity by applying the characteristics of the generation MZ, which has been mainly studied as a discourse, to police officers. Based on the results of the study, implications for the mutual positive development of generation MZ police officers and organizations were suggested.

The Routledge Handbook of language and culture represents a comprehensive study on the inextricable relationship between language and culture. It is structured into seven parts and 33 chapters. Part 1, Overview and historical background, by Farzad Sharifian, starts with an outline of the book and a synopsis of research on language and culture. The second chapter, John Leavitt’s Linguistic relativity: precursors and transformations discusses further the historical development of the concept of linguistic relativity, identifying different schools’ of thought views on the relation between language and culture. He also tries to demystify some misrepresentations held towards Boas, Sapir, and Whorf’ theories (pp. 24-26). Chapter 3, Ethnosyntax, by Anna Gladkova provides an overview of research on ethnosyntax, starting from the theoretical basis laid by Sapir and Whorf and investigates the differences between a narrow sense of ethnosyntax, which focuses on cultural meanings of various grammatical structures and a broader sense, which emphasises the pragmatic and cultural norms’ impact on the choice of grammatical structures. John Leavitt presents in the fourth chapter, titled Ethnosemantics, a historical account of research on meaning across cultures, introducing three traditions, i.e. ‘classical’ ethnosemantics (also referred to as ethnoscience or cognitive anthropology), Boasian cultural semantics (linguistically inspired anthropology) and Neohumboldtian comparative semantics (word-field theory, or content-oriented Linguistics). In Chapter 5, Goddard underlines the fact that ethnopragmatics investigates emic (or culture-internal) approaches to the use of different speech practices across various world languages, which accounts for the fact that there exists a connection between the cultural values or norms and the speech practices peculiar to a speech community. One of the key objectives of ethnopragmatics is to investigate ‘cultural key words’, i.e. words that encapsulate culturally construed concepts. The concept of ‘linguaculture’ (or languaculture) is tackled in Risager’s Chapter 6, Linguaculture: the language–culture nexus in transnational perspective. The author makes reference to American scholars that first introduced this notion, Paul Friedrich, who looks at language and culture as a single domain in which verbal aspects of culture are mingled with semantic meanings, and Michael Agar, for whom culture resides in language while language is loaded with culture. Risager himself brought forth a new global and transnational perspective on the concept of linguaculture, i.e. the use of language (linguistic practice) is seen as flows in people’s social networks and speech communities. These flows enhance as people migrate or learn new languages, in permanent dynamics. Lidia Tanaka’s Chapter 7, Language, gender, and culture deals with research on language, gender, and culture. According to her, the language-gender relationship has been studied by researchers from various fields, including psychology, linguistics, and anthropology, who mainly consider gender as a construct that preserves inequalities in society, with the help of language, too. Tanaka lists diachronically different approaches to language and gender, focusing on three specific ones: gender stereotyped linguistic resources, semantically, pragmatically or lexically designated language features (including register) and gender-based spoken discourse strategies (talking-time imbalances or interruptions). In Chapter 8, Language, culture, and context, Istvan Kecskes delves into the relationship between language, culture, and context from a socio-cognitive perspective. The author considers culture to be a set of shared knowledge structures that encapsulate the values, norms, and customs that the members of a society have in common. According to him, both language and context are rooted in culture and carriers of it, though reflecting culture in a different way. Language encodes past experience with different contexts, whereas context reflects present experience. The author also provides relevant examples of formulaic language that demonstrate the functioning of both types of context, within the larger interplay between language, culture, and context. Sara Miller’s Chapter 9, Language, culture, and politeness reviews traditional approaches to politeness research, with particular attention given to ‘discursive approach’ to politeness. Much along the lines of the previous chapter, Miller stresses the role of context in judgements of (im)polite language, maintaining that individuals represent active agents who challenge and negotiate cultural as well as linguistic norms in actual communicative contexts. Chapter 10, Language, culture, and interaction, by Peter Eglin focuses on language, culture and interaction from the perspective of the correspondence theory of meaning. According to him, abstracting language and culture from their current uses, as if they were not interdependent would not lead to an understanding of words’ true meaning. David Kronenfeld introduces in Chapter 11, Culture and kinship language, a review of research on culture and kinship language, starting with linguistic anthropology. He explains two formal analytic definitional systems of kinship terms: the semantic (distinctions between kin categories, i.e. father vs mother) and pragmatic (interrelations between referents of kin terms, i.e. ‘nephew’ = ‘child of a sibling’). Chapter 12, Cultural semiotics, by Peeter Torop deals with the field of ‘semiotics of culture’, which may refer either to methodological instrument, to a whole array of methods or to a sub-discipline of general semiotics. In this last respect, it investigates cultures as a form of human symbolic activity, as well as a system of cultural languages (i.e. sign systems). Language, as “the preserver of the culture’s collective experience and the reflector of its creativity” represents an essential component of cultural semiotics, being a major sign system. Nigel Armstrong, in Chapter 13, Culture and translation, tackles the interrelation between language, culture, and translation, with an emphasis on the complexities entailed by translation of culturally laden aspects. In his opinion, culture has a double-sided dimension: the anthropological sense (referring to practices and traditions which characterise a community) and a narrower sense, related to artistic endeavours. However, both sides of culture permeate language at all levels. Chapter 14, Language, culture, and identity, by Sandra Schecter tackles several approaches to research on language, culture, and identity: social anthropological (the limits at play in the social construction of differences between various groups of people), sociocultural (the interplay between an individual’s various identities, which can be both externally and internally construed, in sociocultural contexts), participatory-relational (the manner in which individuals create their social–linguistic identities). Patrick McConvell, in Chapter 15, Language and culture history: the contribution of linguistic prehistory reviews research in this field where historical linguistic evidence is exploited in the reconstruction and understanding of prehistoric cultures. He makes an account of research in linguistic prehistory, with a focus on proto- and early Indo-European cultures, on several North American language families, on Africa, Australian, and Austronesian Aboriginal languages. McConvell also underlines the importance of interdisciplinary research in this area, which greatly benefits from studies in other disciplines, such as archaeology, palaeobiology, or biological genetics. Part four starts with Ning Yu’s Chapter 16, Embodiment, culture, and language, which gives an account of theory and research on the interplay between language, culture, and body, as seen from the standpoint of Cultural Linguistics. Yu presents a survey of embodiment (in embodied cognition research) from a multidisciplinary perspective, starting with the rather universalistic Conceptual Metaphor Theory. On the other hand, Cultural Linguistics has concentrated on the role played by culture in shaping embodied language, as various cultures conceptualise body and bodily experience in different ways. Chapter 17, Culture and language processing, by Crystal Robinson and Jeanette Altarriba deals with research in the field of how culture influence language processing, in particular in the case of bilingualism and emotion, alongside language and memory. Clearly, the linguistic and cultural character of each individual’s background has to be considered as a variable in research on cognition and cognitive processing. Frank Polzenhagen and Xiaoyan Xia, in Chapter 18, Language, culture, and prototypicality bring forth a survey of prototypicality across different disciplines, including cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology. According to them, linguistic prototypes play a critical part in social (re-)cognition, as they are socially diagnostic and function as linguistic identity markers. Moreover, individuals may develop ‘culturally blended concepts’ as a result of exposure to several systems of conceptual categorisation, especially in the case of L2 learning (language-contact or culture-contact situations). In Chapter 19, Colour language, thought, and culture, Don Dedrick investigates the issue of the colour words in different languages and how these influence cognition, a question that has been addressed by researchers from various disciplines, such as anthropology, linguistics, cognitive psychology, or neuroscience. He cannot but observe the constant debate in this respect, and he argues that it is indeed difficult to reach consensus, as colour language occasionally reveals effects of language on thought and, at other times, it is impervious to such effects. Chapter 20, Language, culture, and spatial cognition, by Penelope Brown concentrates on conceptualisations of space, providing a framework for thinking about and referring to objects and events, along with more abstract notions such as time, number, or kinship. She lists three frames of reference used by languages in order to refer to spatial relations, i.e. a) an ‘absolute’ coordinate system, like north, south, east, west; b) a ‘relative’ coordinate system envisaged from the body’s standpoint; and c) an intrinsic, object-centred coordinate system. Chris Sinha and Enrique Bernárdez focus on, in Chapter 21, Space, time, and space–time: metaphors, maps, and fusions, research on linguistic and cultural concepts of time and space, starting with the seminal Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), which they denounce for failing to situate space–time mapping within the broader patterns of culture and world perspective. Sinha and Bernárdez further argue that although it is possible in all cultures for individuals to experience and discuss about events in terms of their duration and succession, the specific words and concepts they use to refer to temporal landmarks temporal and duration are most of the time language and culture specific. Chapter 22, Culture and language development, by Laura Sterponi and Paul Lai provides an account of research on the interplay between culture and language acquisition. They refer to two widely accepted perspectives in this respect: a developmental mechanism inherent in human beings and a set of particular social contexts in which children are ‘initiated’ into the cultural meaning systems. Both perspectives define culture as “both related to the psychological make-up of the individual and to the socio-historical contexts in which s/he is born and develops”. Anna Wierzbicka presents, in Chapter 23, Language and cultural scripts discusses representations of cultural norms which are encoded in language. She contends that the system of meaning interpretation developed by herself and her colleagues, i.e. Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), may easily be used to capture and convey cultural scripts. Through NSM cross-cultural experiences can be captured in a thorough manner by using a reduced number of conceptual primes which seem to exist in all languages. Chapter 24, Culture and emotional language, by Jean-Marc Dewaele brings forth the issue of the relationship between language, culture, and emotion, which has been researched by cultural and cognitive psychologists and applied linguists alike, although with some differences in focus. He considers that within this context, it is important to see differences between emotion contexts in bilinguals, since these may lead to different perceptions of the self. He infers that generally, culture revolves around the experience and communication of emotions, conveyed through linguistic expression. The fifth part starts with Chapter 25, Language and culture in sociolinguistics, by Meredith Marra, who underlines that culture is a central concept in Interactional Sociolinguistics, where language is considered as social interaction. In linguistic interaction, culture, and especially cultural differences are deemed as a cause of potential miscommunication. Mara also remarks that the paradigm change in sociolinguistics, from Interactional Sociolinguistics to social constructionism reshaped ‘culture’ into a more dynamic as well as less rigid concept. Claudia Strauss’ Chapter 26, Language and culture in cognitive anthropology deals with the relationship between human society and human thought/thinking. The author contends that cognitive anthropologists may be subdivided into two groups, i.e. ones that are concerned with the process of thinking (cognition-in-practice scholars), and the others focusing on the product of thinking or thoughts (concerned with shared cultural understandings). She goes on to explore how different approaches to cognitive anthropology have counted on units of language, i.e. lexical items and their meanings, along with larger chunks of discourse, as information, which may represent learned cultural schemata. Part VI starts with Chapter 27, Language and culture in second language learning, by Claire Kramsch, in which she makes a survey of the definition of ‘culture’ in foreign language learning and its evolution from a component of literature and the arts to a more comprehensive purport, that of culturally appropriate use of language, along with an appropriate use of sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic norms. According to her, in the postmodern era, communication is not only mere transmission of information, it represents construal and positioning of the self and of self-identity. Chapter 28, Writing across cultures: ‘culture’ in second language writing studies, by Dwight Atkinson focuses on the usefulness of culture in second-language writing (SLW). He reviews several approaches to the issue: contrastive rhetoric (dealing with the impact of first-language patterns of text organisation on writers in a second language), or even alternate notions, like‘ cosmopolitanism’, ‘critical multiculturalism’, and hybridity, as of late native culture is becoming irrelevant or at best far less significant. Ian Malcolm tackles, in Chapter 29, Language and culture in second dialect learning, the issue of ‘standard’ Englishes (e.g., Standard American English, Standard Australian English) versus minority ‘non-standard’ speakers of English. He deplores the fact that in US specialist literature, speaking the ‘non-standard’ variety of English was associated with cognitive, cultural, and linguistic insufficiency. He further refers to other specialists who have demonstrated that ‘non-standard’ varieties can be just as systematic and highly structured as the standard variety. Chapter 30, Language and culture in intercultural communication, by Hans-Georg Wolf gives an account of research in intercultural education, focusing on several paradigms, i.e. the dominant one, investigating successful functioning in intercultural encounters, the minor one, exploring intercultural understanding and the ‘deconstructionist, and or postmodernist’. He further examines different interpretations of the concepts associated with intercultural communication, including the functionalist school, the intercultural understanding approach and a third one, the most removed from culture, focusing on socio-political inequalities, fluidity, situationality, and negotiability. Andy Kirkpatrick’s Chapter 31, World Englishes and local cultures gives a synopsis of research paradigm from applied linguistics which investigates the development of Englishes around the world, through processes like indigenisation or nativisation of the language. Kirkpatrick discusses the ways in which new Englishes accommodate the culture of the very speech community which develops them, e.g. adopting lexical items to express to express culture-specific concepts. Speakers of new varieties could use pragmatic norms rooted in cultural values and norms of the specific new speech community which have not previously been associated with English. Moreover, they can use these new Englishes to write local literatures, often exploiting culturally preferred rhetorical norms. Part seven starts with Chapter 32, Cultural Linguistics, by Farzad Sharifian gives an account of the recent multidisciplinary research field of Cultural Linguistics, which explores the relationship between language and cultural cognition, particularly in the case of cultural conceptualisations. Sharifian also brings forth illustrations of how cultural conceptualisations may be linguistically encoded. The last chapter, A future agenda for research on language and culture, by Roslyn Frank provides an appraisal of Cultural Linguistics as a prospective path for research in the field of language and culture. She states that ‘Cultural Linguistics could potentially create a paradigm that “successfully melds together complementary approaches, e.g., viewing language as ‘a complex adaptive system’ and bringing to bear upon it concepts drawn from cognitive science such as ‘distributed cognition’ and ‘multi-agent dynamic systems theory’.” She further asserts that Cultural Linguistics has the potential to function as “a bridge that brings together researchers from a variety of fields, allowing them to focus on problems of mutual concern from a new perspective” and most likely unveil new issues (as well as solutions) which have not been evident so far. In conclusion, the Handbook will most certainly serve as clear and coherent guidelines for scholarly thinking and further research on language and culture, and also open up new investigative vistas in each of the areas tackled.

Abstract This article argues that, as applied to education, the Capabilities Approach pioneered by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum shares a range of philosophical commitments with the work of social realist scholars on the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’. I first trace the history of the concept of powerful knowledge and present critiques put forward by social justice scholars. I then outline the Capabilities Approach, arguing it provides a response to some of these concerns. From here I develop the connection between the two educational paradigms focusing on four areas of affinity. The first is the conceptual similarity between the ‘power’ of powerful knowledge and Nussbaum’s account of a capability. The second is their concern with the reduction of education to technical-instrumentalism, human capital, and other economically driven imperatives. The third is a shared focus on the link between knowledge, human agency, and freedom. The fourth, is a mutual rejection of relativism and embrace of a nuanced universalism. Ultimately, by drawing together these two conceptually rich approaches to the aims and purposes of education, I hope to open a space for theorizing about both capabilities and powerful knowledge that can resolve some of the problems in both. For powerful knowledge, the Capabilities Approach allows a more concrete explication of why access to disciplinary bodies of knowledge is of value to both individuals and society. On the side of the Capabilities Approach, engaging with the concept of powerful knowledge can help give a rationale for how educational knowledge fosters certain centrally important capabilities.

Pignarre's How Depression Became an Epidemic and Ehrenberg's The Exhaustion of Being Oneself: Depression and Society are two recent titles exploring the latest manifestation of a historically resonant phenomenon -- depression, nervous exhaustion, melancholia. Over the millennia, treatments and explanations have bounded. This mysterious ailment has been viewed as the call of the soul seeking self-purification; the inner wail of the child, mourning forever the loss of its own mother (primary sense of self); the sob of the woman who cannot cope with the realities of childbearing; and the nightmarish groan of the adult reliving trauma. It has been classed as the inability to grieve and the inability to stop. Yet for all the disciplinary disputes about its origins, one thing remains clear, to us, as to the Greeks, depression is as universal as society, and as specific as the human being living next door. For all the academic chatter about post-modernity and social constructions of disease, there is an eternality and specificity about the depressive condition which defies attempts at de-selving, that is to say, depersonalizing the illness. Depression, in other words, is as universal and specific as subjectivity. It is perhaps one of the primary diseases (conditions?) of self. As with depression, so with its treatments. Whatever the form of treatment, the basis remains the same: an encouragement of the sufferer towards self-care and self-medication and away from the suicidal impulse towards self-harm. The Greeks recognized the condition as a serious illness, and variously prescribed exercise, fresh air, and thoughtful conversation. In The Anatomy of Melancholy, dating from the sixteenth century, sufferer-writer Robert Burton recommended that sufferers be treated kindly, encouraged to get better and not ostracised or simply ignored. Nonetheless, the Catholic churches fought for years against relatives' protest that the will to suicide could be considered a kind of disease rather than a sin. Is this an illness from which the patient suffers, or a state of mind which is the patient's duty to try to control? This understanding is potenitially the difference between treatment and punishment, social ostracisation or community support. Should the suffering self be left alone, encouraged metaphorically or metaphysically to pull its socks up, or should it be re-integrated into social normality by gentler means, in particular through social and medical care? More specifically, is the suffering self right to seek help? These are the questions which have always faced depressives, as well as those who know and care for them, and there has in most instances been a delicate balance drawn between the need to care effectively for those in emotional pain, and the need to be seen to observe less tolerant social norms. Hence Greece has one of the lowest contemporary official records of suicide, since suicide is not tolerated by the Greek Orthodox church and to confess to a relative's suicide is to refuse them the right to be buried in sacred ground. The same can be said for the surviving taboos in UK culture against admitting to mental instability of any form, but particularly to affective disorders (the legacy of the 'stiff upper lip'). Such cultural biases suggest that depression is at some level the 'fault' of the sufferer, that they are not doing enough to self-heal, and that depression therefore demands a punitive-repressive social response. Obviously, it is excellent news that Western society has moved on from this. However, there are hidden costs. At the other end of the extreme of social acceptability, Elizabeth Wurtzel, sufferer-author of Prozac Nation makes a strong post-scriptive protest against those who are coming to represent the depressive self as socially normal, acceptable, useful even: I wanted this book to dare to be self-indulgent….[but] I can't get away from some sense that after years of trying to get people to take depression seriously -- of saying, I have a disease, I need help -- now it has gone beyond the point of recognition as a real problem to become something that appears totally trivial. (316, 302) This cultural tendency to see depression as a trivial, socially manageable adjunct to the human condition of being is, as Wurtzel puts it, a form of 'low-grade terminal anomie' (302). The facts would seem to bear out her argument. In 1994 six million Americans were on Prozac. The statistic was then shocking, but now seems strangely low. Peter Kramer's Listening to Prozac (1993) articulated a process whereby the 'Prozac culture' was and is systematically re-socialising the Westernised sense of the depressive self. As Wurtzel rightly foresaw, taking Prozac is becoming so usual it is in danger of no longer being an illness, no longer a genuine cry for help: the danger of Prozac Nation or world today is not that the problem has been ignored, but that it is too mainstream. We are in danger of no longer seeing depression (at least in its milder forms) as a serious illness needing treatment. Rather, it is just part of life, an occasional disability we encounter, rather like catching a cold. The very availability of Prozac is starting to affect sufferers' ability and willingness to face up to the fact of their illness, but also to the genuine problems facing Western society: we do not take Prozac to heal ourselves, but as a way of avoiding the difficulties of life. Wurtzel is not alone in her concern. Taking Prozac is coming to be seen as one of the latest manifestation of self-interested postmodernism, a social paradigm celebrated by medical technologists, despised by biomedical essentialists, and looked on with bemusement by almost everyone else. Faced with the vast numbers turning to Prozac, should we ignore the nay-sayers, treat them as Luddites? Certainly the suffering caused by depressive disorders is considerable, and certainly Prozac is making people happier and 'saner' than they were before. Yet the questions the nay-sayers are asking are profound ones. What is our sense of self? Is it something that can be materially altered by a drug? Can we consume a sense of ourselves, make ourselves truly happier? Should we even try? And with these questions come a sense of moral obligation. A history of Protestant Puritanism is brought to bear on the reading, as the sufferer and the doctor argue establish the existence of either a serious depression needing treatment, or the meandering complaints of a normally diseased or discomforted self. In the phenomenological diagnostic context that is the contemporary clinical encounter, it is not just questions of health but questions of self-hood, of the right to a sound sense of personal being, that are being discussed. The presenting sufferer says, I am not myself, give me something to make me better, that is more myself, and the general practitioner is left to decide whether or not to prescribe. The decision to prescribe is also a decision to accept the self-diagnosis of not-self, that is to say, not the usual self, and to enable the patient to imaginatively separate 'self' from 'pain'. And this is a difficult decision. And since it is often made on the run, as it were, that is to say in the short time averagely available for consultation (10 minutes in the British NHS), it is unsurprising that issues of self-hood, being and the personalised response to clinical depression get overlooked: and that in particular the concerns associated with the post-war phenomenon of pharmaceutical consumerism tend to get ignored. And this occurs not just in the doctor's surgery, but in the wider cultural context in which such difficult issues as 'Prozac' and 'clinical depression' are emotively and often thoughtlessly discussed. Prozac is part of cultural studies, but also the subject of media debates, scientific conferences and family arguments. In this cacophony of technologically sophisticated voices, ill-informed prejudice from outsiders and difficult professional decision-making, some of the fictions of the self which accompany our 'modern' and 'post-modern' concepts of depression are overlooked. These include the fact that contained within the fictions of pharmaceutical consumerism there is the ideal that an ideal drug exists which can be effectively targeted at a consumer, that this consumer can engage with or consume the drug in order to overcome a disease, and that although this drug affects the physiology of being it does nothing materially to alter the reality of 'self.' This should rightly lead the academic enquirer to question the inherent assumptions of a stable self, the assumption of the interpersonal right to clinical care, the assumption that in the condition of mental illness there exists the possibility of restoring the sense of self, of returning the sufferer to some semblance of a mental 'status quo': the difficulties of interpersonal subjectivity, the difficulties of knowing what is a subjective complaint and what is not -- the difficulties in fact, of self-defining oneself as a medical (mental health) patient in a consumerist era of pharmaceutical postmodernism. That is to say, the patient is called to self-diagnose, to separate the sense of a continuing self (an 'I' which is not materially altered by pharmaceutical treatment) from the temporary and contingent phenomenon of depressive pain. Issues such as self-esteem, self-love, self-care and self-motivation are therefore moved from the ontological to the physiological sphere of being, becoming a chemical-physiological condition rather than a complaint of personal identity. Issues of self become issues of body. The concerns of 'I' (Who am I? What am I doing? What am I worth? What do I need?) are transposed into a fictive third-party -- this body-brain, this being of which 'I' is made but which has its own serotonin-deficient identity, and which is of its own volition creating a sensation of I-worthlessness which needs to be dealt with without reference to first-person concerns. To self-diagnose as a depressive, concerns of body and self have to be ruthlessly separated. And this has to be done within a diagnostic and treatment context in which the contemporary problems of self -- career, family life, personal fulfillment, generalized well-being -- are inevitably the central topics of conversation, in which physical health concerns are secondary to discussion of emotive-behavioural patterns, and in which (in the British context) there is a 50% chance of being sent away undiagnosed. This means that, in ontological terms, the central decision for the would-be self-diagnoser is not, as many cultural commentators have suggested, whether to take Prozac or not. Rather, the decision is whether to accept blindly the terms of self-body separation which have characterized pharmaceutical-orientated depressive rhetoric, and therefore to accept the view that the continuing stable 'I' of 'healthy' selfhood is somehow separate from one's identity as a depressive. This enables depression to be seen unproblematically as a sickness, and therefore enables the would-be self-diagnoser to imagistically escape from the complaints of self-indulgence, lack of self-esteem, lack of self-respect, etc. As such it may be seen as a positive stage in the move towards wholeness and healing. And yet there is in this stance a sense of de-selving, of unhealthy depersonalization: a sense in which the sufferer is forced to step back from the self's experience of its own reality as a depressive sufferer. The 'self' is no longer stigmatized, but the depressive self certainly is. And this may be one of the problems with Prozac-orientated thinking. It is not that it is not good to treat depression pharmaceutically, but that in treating it so unproblematically as a biomedical entity the pharmaceutical companies and the medical establishments have failed to point out the more personal-universalist aspects of the depressive condition. It needs to be pointed out that the suffering self is not necessarily separable from the 'normal' self of pre-depressive illness. Nor is the prescription of an SSRI necessarily going to propel the sufferer backwards into a more 'normal' and 'usual' sense of self. The integration of the depressive experience into the sense of self-hood, the acceptance of the depressive identity as an aspect, albeit a problematic one, of one's personal sense of being: that may appear challenging, difficult, unsympathetic to the sufferer even but it does allow one to begin to see the self as an entity which is in some sense called to care for itself. A late Foucaltian remedy of selfhood, perhaps. References Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel. "Psychotropicana" London Review of Books. 11 July 2002: 18-19. Burton, Robert. An Anatomy of Melancholy. Chicago: Michigan State University Press, 1965. Ehrenberg, Alain. La Fatigue D'Etre Soi: Depression et Societe. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2000. Kramer, Peter. Listening to Prozac. New York: Fourth Estate, 1993. Pignarre, Philippe. Comment La Depression est devenue une Epidemie. Paris: Decouverte, 2001. Solomon, Andrew. The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression. New York: Chatto and Windus, 2001. Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Prozac Nation: Young And Depressed in America, a Memoir. London: Quartet, 1994. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Kidd, Kerry. "Called to Self-care, or to Efface Self? " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Kidd.html &gt. Chicago Style Kidd, Kerry, "Called to Self-care, or to Efface Self? " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Kidd.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Kidd, Kerry. (2002) Called to Self-care, or to Efface Self? . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Kidd.html &gt ([your date of access]).

Taishū engeki—Entertainment for the Masses? What do a highway robber, a samurai, and a geisha have in common? They are all played by the same actor, often at the same time, in an incredible flurry of costume change, in a contemporary form of Japanese theatre called taishū engeki. Taishū engeki, translated as vaudeville, literally, “theatre for the masses”, would be better described as a parallel world of fantasy, glitter, and manga-esque beautiful men wearing elaborate wigs and even more elaborate kimonos, who dance and gracefully sway their hips to portray women, and simultaneously do their best to seduce the overwhelmingly female audience. Taishū engeki represents an escape into a world of romances enacted through dance, of tragic love stories that somehow end well when the main character reappears in the second act as a brilliant dragon-slaying god, and of literal dances with dragons. One performance by dance troupe Gekidan Kokoro included onna-gata buyō (traditional Japanese dance performed by a man playing the part of a woman), a play about brotherly love and devotion where the glamorous actor from the first part was a not too bright young boy (depicted with snot running down his nose), more crossdressing and dancing, a few shamisen songs, a totally unexpected breakdancing piece, and a collaboration with Iwami Kagura—a famous group from Shimane who performs sacred dances in association with various Shinto rituals. Despite being able to combine theatrical skills with dance and acrobatic feats, taishū engeki is seen as a minor theatrical genre, often included in the category of folk arts (Kurata 42), or “low art” intended merely for fun and entertainment” (Endo 151). Although the name would indicate that is addresses a wider audience (which may have been the case decades ago, when cheap entertainment was not so readily available as it is today), taishū engeki caters to a specific category of people. The performers are organised in small itinerant troupes who spend about one month in a specific location, putting on two shows daily—one starting at noon, and one in the evening. In most cases, the show has two parts: one is a play, followed by a free program of dancing, acrobatic features, and even playing instruments such as drums or shamisen. The audience itself consists of two categories: the local people, living in the vicinity of the small theatres where performances are held, and who might attend each new show two or three times, and the fans, who follow their favourite actor from place to place to the limit of their time and financial resources. When it comes to performing arts, Japan’s most famous form of theatre is definitely kabuki: a performative genre highly appreciated by the Japanese and whose extravagant costumes and make-up, as well as exaggerated gestures eliminate some of the language barriers and make it (at least to a certain degree) comprehensible to non-Japanese speakers. Besides kabuki, noh (a highly ritualised form of theatre characterised by its use of masks) and bunraku (puppet theatre) are most often mentioned together, popular both within and outside the borders of Japan as entertainment and objects of scholarly research. As a scholar of Japanese studies, I had learned about these three categories in my first year as an undergraduate student, but it took me over ten years in Japan to discover taishū engeki, something that Robert Schneider and Nathan Schneider (256) ironically call “a weed in Japan’s exquisite garden of classical theatre and a living fossil in the detritus of Asian modernity”. Is taishū engeki really a fossil or a weed accidentally left on the stage of classical theatre? Its faithful fans would beg to differ, and so would the accomplishments of some troupes, who are entirely self-sufficient, renting the venues where they perform and travelling with their own light and sound systems, as well as hundreds of exquisite costumes and wigs. To give just an example, Aotsuki Shinya, the leader of Gekidan Kokoro, told me that he possesses more than two hundred wigs, and mid-September this year will attempt to perform 120 different dances, with different costumes, during the three days that will celebrate his birthday. In contrast with noh or kabuki, where each gesture is highly stylised and must be performed in a pre-defined order, in a set context, taishū engeki is flexible: plays are based on known stories, but the plot is overly simplified, so that the audience can focus on the main characters and the way they perform more than on the storyline, and the second act is actually the main attraction of the show, when the actors can showcase their special skills to the delight of the audience. Kabuki developed in the seventeenth century, and it was aimed at the “common people”, while “the true professionals, the performers of the [noh] and the kyōgen [comedy], began to retreat behind the curtain of refinement” (Tsubaki 4). In the twenty-first century, noh has become more of a mixture of performance and ritual, appreciated by a small number of specialists, and often staged to accompany religious manifestations. Kabuki, on the other hand, has taken its place as the most valued theatrical art, with fans and aficionados vying for the best seats (whose prices can go up to 30,000 Japanese yen, and yet are hard to procure), but taishū engeki shows no signs that it might ever reach that level of popularity. In 1995 Marilyn Ivy saw it as a “discourse of the vanishing”, an art that might disappear as, while “it appears to carry on an unarguably Japanese knowledge” (239), it has failed to create a “boom” or a vast audience. While novelty is part of the performance, it seems to somehow be not new enough, not entrancing enough. The actors are talented, creative, and versatile, but they do not attain the fame level of their kabuki counterparts. Despite all these, as an anthropologist, I could not help but wonder why taishū engeki has not attracted more scholarly interest. The studies on this topic, both in Japanese and English, are far less numerous than those on butoh, for example, “a post-modern dance genre” which has been the focus of both practical and theoretical interest on the part of Japanese studies specialists. To give just an example, in his book on Japanese theatre, Benito Ortolani has a subchapter on butoh, but does not even mention taishū engeki. Prince(ss) Charming My first encounters with taishū engeki were due to a class project—I had started teaching a class on theatre as ritual performance, and wanted my students to have a first-hand experience. The project was a success: students who had shown no enthusiasm at all when reading the syllabus were mesmerised once the performance had begun, to the level that they had attended shows by themselves, and even started following the actors on various social networks. Taishū engeki surpasses all expectations of a first-time viewer. It follows a canon, just like kabuki, but that canon is audience-oriented, so without having ever been part of that audience, it is difficult to imagine what will happen on stage. As mentioned above, each performance has two parts: the first one is a play, whose content changes during the one-month performance, usually based on historical events familiar to the audience, but not restricted to that, an intermission during which the leader of the troupe greets the audience, talks about the schedule for the remainder of the month, and promotes the merchandise available for sale (T-shirts, fans, boxes of sweets), followed by a free-style show where the performers are free to display their best skills. Photography is not allowed during the first part—and this may be due to the fact that most troupe leaders create their own plays using the vast available materials, and are reluctant to share that with other troupes—but is encouraged during the second part. Video taking is forbidden at all times. Crossdressing is a significant part of the performance, with men playing the part of women who are attractive to other women, and women playing the part of men who also attract women. The actresses, however, never become the star of the troupe. Just like in the case of Takarazuka Theatre, where the otoko yaku (women playing the male roles) receive significantly more appreciation than the female counterparts, the heavily made-up male actors of taishū engeki represent the dreamy ideal of their dedicated fans. Each performing group is centered around one male actor who is representative of the troupe—usually the leader or the leader’s son, and who gathers a dedicated fan base composed of women (most of whom are middle-aged or older). These women try to attend as many shows as they can, literally showering their favourite actor with money. The few available studies on taishū engeki tended to focus on two major aspects: crossdressing (mostly of the onnagata—men playing women—type) and on the money the actors receive while on stage. Fig. 1: An actor on the Gofukuza Stage (Osaka) displaying money gifts, 13 June 2018. Schneider and Schneider, for example, looked into how gender is performed, and what rules are applied when performing gender. Their conclusion? There are no clear rules, as “taishū engeki plays with gender, but it also quite simply plays gender” (262). My own interest was not in the actual gender performed, but in the most pervasive and permanent element of all taishū engeki performances: seduction. Those who go to see these shows may do so for mere amusement—and their expectations are never disappointed, as the costumes are complex and flamboyant, and the performers are skilled dancers, but those who go faithfully do so due to their admiration for a certain actor. The first act (the historical play) is a convention where the star appears slightly more human—less make-up, sometimes performing the role of a man—always strong and masculine, which is quite an artistic feat seeing that even in the role of a man, the actors will wear specific make-up and false eyelashes. The Takarazuka Revue, an all-female group founded in 1914, has a large and consistent fan base made-up almost entirely of women who fall in love with the actress playing the main male roles—a phenomenon explained by the desire to temporarily live in a fantasy world. The difference between the Takarazuka actresses and the taishū engeki actors is that the former do not aim to seduce, but to invite the audience into a dream world, while the latter’s goal is to fully entrance. Regardless of the gender they play, the taishū engeki stars create erotic characters, just like their kabuki precursors, where, as Samuel L. Leiter (212) puts it, “eros remained primary”. Dressed in kimonos of intricate patterns that go far outside the lines of tradition, and are representative of the creative spirit of the performer, using make-up which completely transforms their physiognomies through the heavy use of eyeliner, glitter, false eyelashes, and wearing exquisite wigs, the actors invite the audience into a dream world where the Fairy Godmother gave the best dress to the prince, not the princess. For hundreds if not thousands of years, the folktales focussed around the image of a beautiful prince, the kalos kagathos hero (beautiful and virtuous, the ancient Greek ideal) who takes the maiden from distress and into a happily ever after. Taishū engeki heroes switch perspectives: it is not Prince Charming, but Princess Charming, an utterly beautiful creature who enchants the female audience by being the impossible. Princess Charming represents an embodiment of the best possible features—beauty, glamour, grace, sex appeal, elegance—and none of the negative ones—lack of manners, roughness, insensitivity. Moreover, Princess Charming is accessible. For a mere 2,000 yen, anybody can spend three hours in her company, and shaking her hand starts at a similarly low price—2,000 or 3,000 yen for a trinket bought during the intermission, to hand over as a gift during the performance. Fig. 2: Aotsuki Shinya as a romantic lady in a flowing kimono, Gofukuza, 9 July 2022. Dressed as females, the actors move their bodies with the grace of a geisha, bat their eyelashes, smile coquettishly, and even wink at the audience. As males, they are either abandoned lovers who drown their sorrows in drink, or fierce warriors dancing with masks and swords. In all circumstances, they present exaggerated feminine or masculine ideals, with the difference that femininity is emphasised through the overuse of garments and accessories, while masculinity will almost always involve a certain degree of nakedness: chest, arms, legs. The reasons are both practical (showing various naked body parts would destroy the dreamy feminine beauty wrapped up in layers of cloth and glitter), and symbolic: femininity is mysterious and fragile, and thus cannot easily be revealed, while masculinity must re-assert its strength and vitality. The body presented on stage is more of an artistic act than the performance itself, because it is there that most of the actor’s talent is poured. Creating a persona means borrowing from the “traditional” Japanese culture which includes geisha, courtesans, heavy wigs, and heavily embroidered kimonos, as well as the contemporary manga and cosplay culture. With exaggerated eyes and hairstyles as the central features of the head, the characters moving in front of the audience seem to have directly descended from (or drawn the viewers into, “Take On Me” style) the pages of a fantasy manga. An interview with Aotsuki Shinya (stage name), leader and star of the Kokoro (“Heart”) troupe conducted on 15 June 2022, did not offer any insightful glimpses into the metamorphosis process. While acknowledging that he cannot present his true self on stage, thus using make-up to become Aotsuki Shinya, the actor did not admit to any conscious attempt of becoming attractive. In his own words, all their efforts are for the benefit of the audience, directed towards helping them have fun. “Tanoshii”, “fun” seemed to be a key concept when staging a new performance, and the reasoning behind that is easy to follow. Unlike the more elevated kabuki, a taishū engeki theatre is a small cosy place where the audience can interact quite freely with the performers, who do not shy away from showing momentarily glimpses of the face behind the mask: forgetting a line and admitting to it, laughing at a joke said by another actor, kneeling prettily to receive gifts from their fans. Rather than gender fluid, the bodies in taishū engeki are genderless because they are not, nor do they claim to be, real. An actor on the traditional stage is a photography, or, if the setting includes fantastic elements, a painting of an imaginable universe. An actor on the taishū engeki stage turns their body into a manga drawing: something that does not exist in real life, but it is highly desirable. Kabuki actors staged eroticism by impersonating women; taishū engeki actors play with desire becoming in turns both Cinderella and the Prince. Figs. 3 & 4: Aotsuki Shinya as a fantastic character (fig. 3) and as the god Susano-wo slaying the dragon (fig. 4). “Fantasy, Sweet Fantasy” Analysing the loyalty that Takarazuka actresses inspire into their fans, Makiko Yamanashi interprets it as something that goes beyond (dreams of) physical love or mere escapism, and sees it as the desire to belong to an ideal community of women—friends, sisters, mothers. While not wrong, this approach seems to gloss over the real erotic feelings and the longing for something not of this world which are most definitely present among performative arts (be they kabuki, revue, vaudeville, butoh, modern theatre) aficionados. The men performed by the Takarazuka actresses do not exist in real life, and just as in the case of taishū engeki actors, make-up plays a crucial role. Lorie Brau even mentions an incident where an American director hired to stage a production of “West Side Story” required the actresses playing male roles to give up their false eyelashes—a change that did not last after the director left (86). The taishū engeki actors are warriors who bring back to life the god Izanagi, the creator of Japan, who fought an army of underworld monsters, while wearing eyeliner, eyelashes, and sparkling make-up. They are completely unrecognisable without make-up, and yet changing their appearance takes approximately ten minutes, much less than it would take a drag queen to turn from ordinary man into glamorous woman (at least forty minutes). I am not mentioning here the drag queens by chance—the two types of performances are similar enough that they lead to collaborations. On 10 June 2022, the troupe Kokoro performed at the Gofukuza Theatre in Umeda in the company of five drag queens well known on the Osaka stage: Feminina, Rulu Daisy, Madame Cocco, Ozu, and Il Rosa. One characteristic of drag performances is that they are actor-centred: they are not about the storyline, but about the performer’s creation—“channeling your inner femininity, fusing it with the male, and creating something otherworldly” (Hastings). The noticeable difference between drag and taishū engeki is that drag is actor-oriented, while taishū engeki is audience-oriented. Drag queens interact with the audiences and entertain, but the focus is internal, towards freeing something that had been developing within. Taishū engeki actors do choose their characters, of course, and have individual preferences, but this is secondary to their goal of captivating the audiences. Both categories of performers learn to re-invent their bodies, to re-create them on stage; however, in one case we witness an individual metamorphosis from real life to theatrical persona, and in the other we have one individual who can shapeshift into whatever character might work better magic on the people in front of him. Drag is about freedom while taishū engeki is about seduction. Fig. 5: Il Rosa and two actors of the Shin troupe, Gofukuza, 10 June 2022 Taishū engeki may not be kabuki: it is not celebrated by the media or the researchers, and many people in contemporary Japanese society see it as an inferior form of entertainment. Considering the low price of the tickets and the fact that shows are seldom sold out, one might worry about its future. Nevertheless, a visit to the backstage of Gofukuza during the month when Shin was performing revealed a large room full of costumes, and another one full of wig boxes—more than two hundred, according to Aotsuki Shinya. The Shin troupe was founded five years ago, so everything was still new and shiny—a sign that the genre will not disappear any time in the near future. The same visit, when I could interact with the actors in their day-to-day attires, using their regular voices, and standing near the costumes and wigs like exhibits in a museum, made one more thing acutely clear: the fact that their performances are a fantasy world. More of a fantasy world than a kabuki performance (to remain consistent with the comparison), where the setting is clearly a setting, separate from the audience. The blurred lines between stage and audience, between performance and flirting of the taishū engeki create a tangible fantasy, where one can not only fall in love with the Prince(ss) Charming, but maybe even take them to a ball. References Brau, Lorie. “The Women’s Theater of Takarazuka”. TDR 34.4 (Winter 1990): 79-95. Endo, Yukihide. “Reconsidering the Traveling Theater of Today’s Japan: An Interdisciplinary Approach to a Stigmatized Form of Japanese Theater.” Athens Journal of Humanities and Arts 2.3. Hastings, Magnus. Why Drag? Hong Kong: Chronicle Books, 2016. Ivy, Marilyn. Discourses of the Vanishing. Modernity Phantasm Japan. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995. Kurata, Ryosuke. “Taishū Engeki as a Show Business: Exploring the Segmentation of Customers.” Mathesis Universalis 17.2. Leiter, Samuel L. “From Gay to Gei: The Onnagata and the Creation of Kabuki’s Female Characters.” In A Kabuki Reader: History and Performance, ed. Samuel L. Leitner. New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2002. 211-229. Ortolani, Benito. The Japanese Theatre. From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism. New Jersey: Princeton UP, 1995. Schneider, Robert, and Nathan Schneider. “A Dive and a Dance with Kabuki Vaudeville: Taishū Engeki Comes Back!” New Theater Quarterly 36.3 (2020). 29 July 2020 <https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-theatre-quarterly/article/abs/dive-and-a-dance-with-kabuki-vaudeville-taishu-engeki-comes-back/BB72486E86C79B70730B6F2DB5EC0FF8>. Yamanashi, Makiko. A History of the Takarazuka Revue Since 1914: Modernity, Girls’ Culture, Japan Pop. Leiden: Global Oriental, 2012.

The chapter explores the many varieties of liberal thinking that have developed over time, often in parallel. Those include theories of liberty, individualism, and autonomy alongside notions of community, progress, and welfare, some of which intersect, and all involving different degrees of state intervention or restraint. Constitutionalism, entrepreneurship, individual development as epitomized by Mill, and cultural pluralism are identified as four separate tendencies that both co-exist and clash within the liberal tradition. Their institutional manifestations oscillate between a welfare state and a market society, and between universalistic and particularistic practices. American liberalism in particular emerged as rights-based, but was also prone to criticism that policies undertaken in its name fell short of its own principles, deviating from the ethical and utopian desiderata of Rawls’ philosophical liberalism. Importantly, liberalism has also been surrounded by pretenders eager to exploit its mantle rather than commit to its substance.

This chapter identifies four paths that lead—from different angles—to the same main gap in past research: the lack of consideration given to the general tendency of transnational human activity to agglomerate within world regions and the missing sociological discussion of why this clustering happens and what it implies. The first path leads to this gap from below—that is, emanating from the nation-state society and the transnational activity that occurs when its borders are crossed. The second path comes from above—that is, from systems- and institutions-centered takes on “world-system,” “world polity,” or “world society.” Meanwhile, the third path comes from Europe, where sociologists have conceptualized regional integration via cross-border interaction. Finally, the fourth path comes from political science, where there is both an old tradition of comparative-universalist integration research and a new subdiscipline that revived this tradition. The chapter argues that this strand may, even though it focuses predominantly on institutionalized political integration, serve as a beacon for a sociological equivalent, a Comparative Sociology of Regional Integration.

This chapter concentrates on the Book of Judges (Sefer shoftim) as the fourteenth and final book of the Mishneh torah, as well as the last four-book division of laws governing behaviour among human beings. It includes five sections of the Book of Judges: Laws of the Sanhedrin, Laws of Testimony, Laws of the Rebellious Elders, Laws of Mourning, and Laws of Kings and their Wars. It also discusses the sections of the Book of Judges sections that deal with questions of how to order civil society and administer justice. The chapter analyzes the final segments of the Book of Judges, which deal with matters that had not been considered part of halakhah before Maimonides. It examines the reasons why Maimonides included the last two chapters in the Book of Judges, such as Maimonides' desire for symmetry between the beginning of the Mishneh torah and its end.

Abstract This final chapter sums up and sets out what we think can be done to provide people more adequate shelter against financial poverty, using the poverty levers discussed in this book: out-of-work and in-work minimum income protection packages. Throughout this book, we have identified and discussed a range of policy instruments that can be deployed to make sure people have an adequate minimum in financial resources. These include minimum wages and other forms of wage regulation, child benefits, tax credits, social assistance top-ups, and other allowances. If well-designed, these instruments can complement and reinforce each other. We have demonstrated that there is substantial variation in the levels and design of minimum income protection provided to people in advanced welfare states. Although optimal policy mixes cannot be readily defined—economic context, budget constraints, and other country-specific factors matter—our results reveal four vital steps towards improving minimum income adequacy. First, raise wage floors. Second, have universal child benefits as a first layer of direct income support. Third, have a legally anchored, adequate, accessible social safety net. Fourth, have more mildly targeted income supplements for lower income households, whether working or not. In short, we advocate a multi-instrumental and multi-layered approach and a redistributive approach that builds on the principle of targeting within universalism. We have at times compared this to a richly layered lasagne to contrast it to the silver bullet approaches advocated by others.

In the eighteenth century, the principle of a moral universalism in time of war triumphed: war was fought on the moral ground as well as on the battlefield. This chapter argues that the language of humanitarian patriotism encapsulates the tensions within the discourse that aimed to make war more ‘civilized’ by treating the enemy ‘humanely’. The chapter demonstrates the political, moral, and practical ambiguities that were entailed by the act of bringing relief to enemies in wartime. Public discussion revolved around the ‘just’ treatment of alien enemies in captivity. The study of philanthropic campaigns for improving the treatment of prisoners of war and the sending of missionaries into prisons demonstrate the particularity of the prisoner of war, as an enemy and a fellow human being.

Abstract All European countries have experienced a rise in the number of lone mothers and several analyses have pointed to their exposed position in the society (Lewis 1997; Bradshaw et al. 1996). The crucial dilemma of the lone mother is her situation as a sole caregiver and a sole breadwinner. Variations in welfare state regimes may lead to significant divergence in the employment possibilities and income poverty of lone mothers in Europe. The classification of four types of welfare regimes would point to the universalistic regime, with high level of cash benefit, as a regime that offers lone mothers protection against poverty.

Fernández de Alba’s chapter presents a synthesis of cosmopolitanism and nationalism by examining the works of Virgilio Piñera and Wifredo Lam, two cosmopolitans sui generis, who participated in the construction of a national Cuban culture. Cosmopolitanism and nationalism are often presented either as an absolute form of universality or as an uncompromising localism, when, in reality, both terms are dynamic cultural categories. In defiance of a homogeneous view of Cuban culture that accentuated the Creole experience of the late colonial period, Piñera and Lam fought against the establishment of a national identity that would elevate a single racial and ethnic heritage over all others. In doing so, the author argues, both writers contributed to a cosmopolitan view on national identity, one based on a wider sense of cultural citizenship. Furthermore, they devoted themselves to creating a national culture that could be cosmopolitan in form while fundamentally rooted in Cuban society and history.

“Misfitting in America” offers an analysis of The Man Who Laughs that suggests the film’s importance in four key areas: (1) as a transitional piece between silent cinema and the talkies, (2) as the last instalment of the Universal super productions, (3) as a thematic precursor to Universal’s famous horror cycle, and (4) as one of the most complete Hollywood attempts to adopt and co-opt German filmmaking practices and personnel. Moreover, this chapter focuses on the star of The Man Who Laughs, Conrad Veidt, as representative of an exilic body. Analysing Veidt’s physicality, performance, makeup, and costuming as Gwynplaine, this contribution looks at the corporeal inscription of the character’s permanent disfiguration, which underpins Gwynplaine’s understanding of himself and his peripheral position in society. With its intrinsic linking of disfigurement and dislocation in an endless cycle where one leads seamlessly into the other, the film becomes a way to understand how Hollywood studios situated their European émigré stars in the years following World War I.

This chapter examines the history of Buddhism and key texts alongside developments in Lankan history to try to define the nature of of the society of Buddha and to trace some of the strands defining the relationship between the Buddhist movement and political governance through the centuries. In seeking to seek to map the institutionalization of the Buddhist order and the resultant political powers this process created in Lanka, the chapter asks whether early Buddhism outlined and effected an alternative power arrangement to existing modes prevalent at the time. Finally, through detailed analysis, the chapter concludes that the evolution of the self-understanding of the Saṅgha in Lanka went through four major phases: 1. From the Pāli Tripiṭaka teaching to the Mahāvaṃsic outlook (from 300 BCE to 500 CE), 2. from monastic worldview (Lokottara) to social worldview (Laukika) (500 CE to 1700), 3. from a universalistic, open outlook to an ethnic and caste orientation, (1700–1900), and finally 4. from being supporters of political groups and policies to direct political engagement (1900–2010).

The aim of the contribution is to highlight intercultural awareness of German students, who have studied at Czech universities to get a degree. Measurement of intercultural sensitivity has been realized by means of four dimensions, elaborated by organizational psychologists Geert Hofstede and Fons von Trompenaars: power distance, particularism versus universalism, collectivism versus individualism and uncertainty avoidance. The first dimension power distance measured the perspective of German students at Czech universities on social hierarchies and to which degree that are convinced of the fact, that unequal distribution of power in society is accepted by those people, who are at the lower end of the hierarchy. The measurement of the second dimension particularism versus universalism has shown whether German students at Czech universities believe that each circumstance and each relationship dictate the rule or whether specific circumstances and personal relationships, instead of universal values, give them autonomy to make their own decisions. The third dimension collectivism and individualism measured what German students at Czech universities think about wellbeing of group or attaining personal goals. The fourth dimension high uncertainty avoidance measured what is the assessment of German students at Czech universities of uncertainty, ambiguity and risk-taking and whether they prefer 'unknown' to rules and regulations.

The paper aims to present an ensemble of new theoretical frameworks that would allow historiographies of architecture and urban design to take into consideration the question of migration as a gendered process. Unauthorised immigration has emerged as a generalised fact in all Western economies in the post-Second World War era. In such a context, mobility and migration are constituting elements of urban society. Taking as a starting point the fact that domesticity is a construction of the nineteenth century, the main objective of this paper is to shed light on how migration challenges the concepts of user, domesticity and citizenship. Migrant incorporation triggers processes of place-making which open up new social and conceptual spaces in the city. Over the last four decades, there is a changing paradigm in migration studies. This shift is related to the fact that migration studies are gradually paying more and more attention to the gender composition of the migration streams. This trend of studying conjointly gender and migration phenomena becomes more and more dominant. Special attention is paid to methods of gender and migration scholarship that draw on social sci¬ence approaches, treating gender as an institutional part of migration studies and establishing legitimacy for gender in migration studies. The paper reflects upon the implications of establishing methods based on the endeavour to merge migration studies, urban studies and gender studies for the perception of the concepts of placemaking, displacement and domesticity, on the one hand, and for how the mobility from city to city is understood within the contemporary transnational context, on the other hand. Particular emphasis is placed on the relationship between the migration processes and social sustainability. Additionally, the paper examines the role of new media technologies in rethinking the dynamics of migration. It also analyses how we could shape strategies of using urban scale digital twins and big data for decision-making in urban planning that are able to challenge digital universalism.