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Latin America has experienced an unprecedented expansion of LGBTQ+ rights in recent decades. Although obstacles remain for LGBTQ+ citizens, countries such as Uruguay and Argentina have become world leaders in enacting LGBTQ+ rights, and public opinion has shifted dramatically towards more positive sentiments. What underlies these shifting attitudes? Drawing on both survey data and interviews, we describe multiple processes by which individuals move from prejudice and rejection to tolerance and acceptance. We show that attitude change is often slow and gradual, and that explaining these trends requires attention to both macro-level forces and individual experiences. In Latin America, a boom in international tourism created economic incentives for tolerance; broad shifts in demographics and the media landscape created openings for people to reconsider what a family looks like; and societies grappling with human rights abuses were more receptive to appeals for protecting LGBTQ+ rights as human rights.
The Great Palace of Constantinople was the heart of Byzantium for almost a thousand years, serving as both a political and architectural model for Christendom and the Islamic world. Despite its historical significance, reconstructing its layout remains challenging due to the scarce amount of archaeological evidence. This Element synthesises the historical and topographical evolution of the palace, examining its architectural typologies and the role of ritual and artistic objects in representing imperial power. It also addresses key historiographical issues, such as the identification and dating of the Peristyle of the Mosaics, as well as its role in imperial ceremonies. The research is based on textual sources, archaeology, and graphic documentation, culminating in a virtual reconstruction through 3D imaging. By integrating these methodologies, this Element aims to offer a comprehensive understanding of the Great Palace, its influence, and its role as a central stage for Byzantine ceremonial and ideological expression.
While global financial capital is abundant, it flows into corporate investments and real estate rather than climate change actions in cities. Political will and public pressure are crucial to redirecting funds. Studies of economic impacts underestimate the costs of climate disasters, especially in cities, so they undermine political commitments while understating potential climate-related returns. The shift of corporate approaches towards incorporating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) impacts offers promise for private-sector climate investments but are recently contested. Institutional barriers remain at all levels, particularly in African cities. Since the Global North controls the world's financial markets, new means of increasing funding for the Global South are needed, especially for adaptation. Innovative financial instruments and targeted use of environmental insurance tools can upgrade underdeveloped markets and align urban climate finance with ESG frameworks. These approaches, however, require climate impact data collection, programs to improve cities' and countries' creditworthiness, and trainings. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
In contrast to the drastic shifts in China's political landscape and society since 2012, taxation may appear as a comparatively mundane topic receiving limited attention. However, the relative stability in China's taxation system underscores its delicate role in maintaining a balance in state–society relations. The Element embarks on an exploration of China's intricate taxation system in the contemporary era, illuminating its origins and the profound reverberations on state–society relations. It shows that China's reliance on indirect taxation stems from the legacies of transitioning from a planned economy to a market-driven one as well as elaborate fiscal bargaining between the central and local governments. This strategy inadvertently heightens Chinese citizens' sensitivity to direct taxation and engenders the tragedy of the commons, leading to rising government debts and collusion by local governments and businesses that results in land expropriation, labor disputes, and environmental degradation.
Suffering is a theme throughout Nietzsche's writings. His views are often controversial and challenging. He explores ways of understanding suffering not as an 'objection to life', but as something that can enhance life. This Element examines Nietzsche's views on suffering from different angles: his early claim that the representation of suffering in the art form of tragedy enabled the ancient Greeks to affirm life, his analysis of cruelty as an expression of will to power, and his critique of 'the morality of compassion' which he claims would impoverish life by removing its suffering. Nietzsche views suffering as necessary for psychological growth and great human achievement. It is neither good nor bad in itself, and its value depends on who suffers and in what context. Although Nietzsche's rhetoric sometimes glorifies suffering and cruelty irresponsibly, his work advances our understanding of suffering by viewing it through different perspectives and affective attitudes.
This Element is about the relationship between the political thought of the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) and a tradition of political thinking known as republicanism that traces its roots at least to 15th century Florence and perhaps further back to Aristotle. Throughout, we will be investigating this relationship along two dimensions. First, we will be asking whether it advances our understanding of Hegel's thought to consider him to be a republican, and if so, in what way and to what extent. The point here is not to assimilate Hegel to a cause or a label, but to see whether the individual outlines of Hegel's thought might be brought into focus by adopting the lens of republicanism. Second, we will be considering whether Hegel's thought offers criticism of various other forms of republicanism and how we might evaluate that criticism.
This Element provides an overview of FinTech branches and analyzes the associated institutional forces and economic incentives, offering new insights for optimal regulation. First, it establishes a fundamental tension between addressing existing financial inefficiencies and introducing new economic distortions. Second, it demonstrates that today's innovators have evolved from pursuing incremental change through conventional Fin-Tech applications to AI × crypto as the fastest-growing segment. The convergence of previously siloed areas is creating an open-source infrastructure that reduces entry costs and enables more radical innovation, further amplifying change. Yet this transformation introduces legal uncertainty and risks related to liability, cybercrime, taxation, and adjudication. Through case studies across domains, the Element shows that familiar economic tradeoffs persist, suggesting opportunities for boundary-spanning regulation. It offers regulatory solutions, including RegTech frameworks, compliance-incentivizing mechanisms, collaborative governance models, proactive enforcement of mischaracterizations, and alternative legal analogies for AI × crypto.
This Element brings together historical sources and contemporary experiences to explore the interplay between singing, sociality, body, and meaning in the English landscape over the past century. It explores the connections between air and song and between singing and movement, through the context of the early twentieth century open-air recreation movement. This is supplemented by recent literature on singing and wellbeing, and the experiences of a contemporary walking choir captured via interviews in the field. The authors argue that outdoor singing has been part of co-constructed soundscapes of the modern English leisure landscape, and ask what this meant for those who participated in collective open-air singing and rambling. They explore how open-air singing connected with conceptions of the countryside, with a sense of fellow-feeling, and how this might have both reified and challenged normative ways of being in landscapes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The threat of an impending global water crisis has proliferated across water governance literature in the recent decades. However, defining the nature of this global water crisis remains a challenge, as a plethora of problems fall under this term. Simultaneously, contemporary waterscapes are hard to navigate due to the interconnected and wicked nature of water issues. Thus, to unravel this complex picture, it is fundamental to be reflexive about how water problems are identified, defined, and addressed. Conducting a systematic literature review and applying a constant comparison method, this Element identifies nine key human-water problématiques. Additionally, the analysis traces co-occurrences between diverse problématiques and their conceptual sub-clusters. Based on exhaustive literature, a reflection on the complex issue of 'what solutions?' is elaborated. Lastly, contributions to the ontological question of what a water problem is are offered, indicating a transition beyond an understanding of water issues as solely tangible.
This Element explores the formal and conceptual foundations of phase space formulations of classical and quantum mechanics. It provides an overview of the core mathematical and physical content of Hamiltonian mechanics, stochastic phase space mechanics, contact Hamiltonian mechanics, and open and closed quantum mechanics on phase space. The formal material is unified via three interpretative themes relating to structured possibility spaces, Liouville's theorem and its failure, and the classical and quantum notions of open and closed systems. This Element book is intended for researchers and graduate students in the philosophy and foundations of physics with an interest in the conceptual foundations of physical theory.
This Element examines how archaeology can contribute to the investigation of ancient wealth disparities, using the Jōmon and Yayoi periods in Japan as a case study. It analyzes 1,150 pit dwellings from 29 archaeological sites in southern Kantō, dating from the Late Jōmon to the end of the Yayoi period (ca. 2540 BC–AD 250). Household wealth is estimated through pit dwelling floor area, with Gini coefficients calculated for each site. Results show relatively low inequality in the Late Jōmon, a slight decline in the Middle Yayoi, and a marked rise in the Late Yayoi period. Notably, average floor area decreased in the Late Yayoi period. These patterns raise broader questions about how wealth disparities were shaped by communal norms, settlement organization, the rise of agriculture, and expanding trade networks involving iron tools. This research underscores archaeology's unique ability to illuminate long-term economic transformations.
This Element presents an alternative approach to critical heritage studies by attending to forgotten or transformed cultural, historical ideas of heritage. It focuses on the Chinese term guji (古迹 ancient traces or vestiges), perceived today as the same as the modern concept of cultural heritage. After a macroanalysis of how guji is understood differently in contemporary and historical China, it comes to cultural-historical discourse analysis of guji recorded in the local gazetteers of Quzhou from the 1500s to the 1920s, revealing its way of categorization as boundary negotiation, and cultural modes of meaning-making and remembering, either with or without physical remains or a verifiable site. After a holistic view of this Chinese discourse as reflected in a particular guji, it concludes with a philosophical lens to highlight the alternative existence of heritage in the word guji and the uses of heritage as the uses of language.
Tarifit is an Amazigh language spoken in northern Morocco. This Element provides an overview of some aspects of the phonetics of this under-studied language, focusing on patterns of variation and ongoing sound changes. An acoustic analysis of productions by native speakers is provided, comparing clear and fast speaking styles, focusing on the phonetic realization of vowels in Tarifit: three full vowels /a, i, and u/, and variation in the realization of schwa. The analysis reveals phonetically vowelless words in Tarifit: vowelless productions are a rare, but are allowable variants of some words (especially those containing multiple voiceless obstruents). Another ongoing sound change is explored: post-vocalic /r/ deletion. We find higher rates of r-dropping by female speakers. A perception study investigating native speakers' discrimination of words is presented. This Element discusses what the findings have for models of phonetic variation, individual differences in language production, and sound change theory.
This Element argues for the benefits of integrating the perspectives of a new historiography of paleontology in the training of upcoming paleontologists and in the paleontological community's culture more broadly. Wrestling with the complex legacy of its past, the paleontological community is facing the need to reappreciate its history to address issues of accessibility and equity affecting the field, such as gender gap, parachute science, and specimen repatriation. The ability of the paleontological community to address these issues depends partly on the nature of its engagement with the past in which they find their source. This Element provides a conceptual toolkit to help with the interpretation of the unprecedented position in which the paleontological community finds itself regarding its past. It also introduces historiographical resources and provides some suggestions to foster collaboration between paleontology and the history of paleontology.
Origen believed that God's providence makes good use of everything, including the actions of wicked demons, which serve to discipline sinners and test the righteous. This Element, which focuses on the disciplinary function of demons, will show that Origen's position was the synthesis and development of a long Jewish and early Christian tradition — a fact not recognized in most scholarship. Disciplinary demons were an important part of Origen's theodicy. According to him, the suffering sinners experience is not the direct action of supposed divine anger, but the wicked attack of demons that is directed (but not caused) by God. Origen's belief that even rebel demons do not escape from fulfilling the divine purpose avoids dualism. This contradicts the frequently expressed view that early Christian intellectuals (particularly Origen) overemphasized Satan's autonomy and endangered the supremacy of God.
This Element presents a framework for analyzing the complexities of contracting, how these vary across circumstances, the ways contract managers can address challenges, and the skills of contract managers. The framework is grounded on central concepts. Market frictions are underlying imperfections that cause common contracting problems; contract management activities are the tasks and procedures that contract managers perform to prepare and execute the purchase; and skills are the ability to perform contract management activities that identify and mitigate frictions. These concepts are interdependent – market frictions can influence the efficacy of contract management activities, activities may reduce or increase the presence of frictions, and skills may influence both the choice and effectiveness of activities in addressing contracting challenges. Omitting any of these components is likely to result in misleading accounts of the root causes and potential solutions to contracting challenges.
In recent years a group of influential authoritarian states has emerged that fall between the ranks of great powers and small states. These authoritarian middle-powers – such as Turkey and the United Arab Emirates – exert considerable influence, particularly in their region. Yet this development has been overlooked in favor of a focus on superpowers, especially China and Russia. We therefore lack a framework for understanding their behavior and impact. This Element offers the first comprehensive analysis of how non-democratic middle-powers engage abroad. Drawing on case studies of states and regions, it shows how the combination of authoritarian politics and mid-level status leads to distinctive foreign policies. In particular, these approaches erode global democratic norms and institutions through a combination of hard power tempered by hedging and legitimation strategies. In this way, authoritarian middle-powers are helping to unravel the liberal rules-based order. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This Element traces the origins and earliest manifestations of gender bias in the English language. The analysis is based on a corpus of Old English prose texts, written between the ninth and the eleventh centuries. The results are interpreted in the historical, cultural and literary context of Anglo-Saxon England and early medieval Europe. The investigation shows a significant difference in the way women and men are presented in Old English texts, with the former clearly associated with family life, portrayed in the context of their physical appearance, marriage and childbearing, rarely involved in meaningful activities and presented as possessions of their male relatives. Situating the linguistic representations of women in the context of Christianity, the Element demonstrates that late Old English can be seen as a vehicle of language bias that will establish male domination for centuries to come. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This Element explores the transformative impact of integrating service design principles into public management and administration, championing a user-centred approach and co-design methodology. By reviewing existing literature, the authors define the scope and applications of service design within public administration and present three empirical studies to evaluate its implementation in public services. These studies reveal a trend towards embracing co-design and digital technologies, advancing a citizen-centred strategy for public service design. This approach prioritizes value creation and responsiveness, highlighting the importance of involving users and providers in the development of services that meet changing needs and promote inclusion. Combining theoretical insights with practical solutions, the Element offers a comprehensive framework for public management research. It highlights the need for ongoing engagement and integration of user experiences, presenting an effective strategy to navigate the complexities of public service design. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.