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2525 results in Cambridge Elements

Page 1 of 127

Rethinking Political Meritocracy

Rethinking Political Meritocracy
  • An Attention-Based Approach
  • Xiao Ma
  • Published online:
    19 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
  • Political meritocracy, which selects and promotes officials based on their work performance, is an important explanation for China's rapid development. While prior studies focus on territorial leaders (kuai), less attention is given to functional department leaders (tiao), whose performance is harder to measure, attribute, or compare. This Element introduces an attention-based explanation, arguing that in China's complex bureaucratic system, marked by intricate divisions of labor and information asymmetry, capturing superiors' attention is critical for official's career advancement. Through case studies and analyses of original biographical data on functional department leaders, this Element reveals: 1) Promotion likelihood correlates with officials' ability to gain superiors' attention; 2) Not all attention-seeking behaviors align with governance goals, often fostering bureaucratic issues like formalism and over-implementation. This attention-based framework tries to reconcile debates on competence versus connections in Chinese political selection and explains both the bureaucratic system's successes and its governance challenges.
Absence in the Archives

Absence in the Archives
  • Ciara Breathnach
  • Published online:
    19 June 2026
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    09 July 2026
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  • Absence in official records can have profound implications for social memory, civil rights, restorative and transitional justice, citizenship, social welfare, and redress for historical abuse. Scholars of archivistics and early modern New World imperial contexts have uncovered the epistemological problems that archival silences pose for historical research, and I contend that absence deserves separate conceptual treatment. Archival absences, both permanent and temporary, have particular resonances for post-colonial countries, and is an ongoing threat under totalitarian regimes. Using Britain and Ireland as primary examples, this Element traces how absence took root in the domestic and subsequently the colonial archive, and how through legal mechanisms it became an accepted part of archival praxis. The aim of this Element is to raise awareness of archival absence in order to prevent more losses, particularly in the abundance of the digital age. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Nietzsche on Fate

Nietzsche on Fate
  • Robin Small
  • Published online:
    19 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
  • This Element explores Nietzsche's thinking about fate. As a doctrine, fatalism asserts that whatever happens does so necessarily. 'Fate', however, implies an overall pattern for every individual life which imposes its own necessity on the events of that life, although with some contribution from chance. Nietzsche's ideas on fate were influenced by other thinkers, notably Emerson and the ancient Stoics, whom he treats with both sympathy and exasperation. After discussing this context, the Element turns to two of Nietzsche's key themes: amor fati and 'becoming what you are'. In a striking way, each of these 'formulae' presents two contrasted elements standing in a close but tense relationship. Behind them is a conflict between the givenness of fate and our capacity to live our lives in our own way. At the same time, each promises an answer to the question: how are we to live with fate?
When Formalization Fails

When Formalization Fails
  • The Credibility of Informality in China’s Resettlement Communities
  • Zhu Qian, Chen Yang
  • Published online:
    17 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
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  • Globally, states use rural-to-urban resettlement to fuel development, yet this formal process consistently generates its own informalities. Using a comparative case study of China—contrasting its affluent coast with its poorer hinterland—this book reveals how informality not only persists after resettlement but performs essential functions, critically challenging the effectiveness of prevailing policies. Theoretically, the study leverages the innovative Credibility Thesis, applying its Formal, Actual, and Targeted (FAT) Institutional Framework and Credibility Scales and Intervention (CSI) Checklist to explain the emergence and evolution of post-resettlement informality. The findings offer powerful, empirically grounded recommendations for integrating informal realities into urban planning, with profound implications for understanding institutional credibility and the functional role of informality in development.
Contemporary Iranian Horror Cinema

Contemporary Iranian Horror Cinema
  • Max Bledstein
  • Published online:
    16 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
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  • This Element explores how twenty-first-century Iranian filmmakers have applied elements from Persian culture to the horror genre. Although horror films have not often been a part of the rich Iranian cinematic tradition due in part to censorship laws following the 1979 revolution, I argue that a small group of directors has made provocative use of the genre. The first section draws on theories of monstrosity to examine the re-contextualisation of pre-revolutionary film tropes in the work of Fereydoun Jeyrani. The second section examines how Mohammad Hossein Latifi uses the slasher to navigate debates around female university students. The third section discusses Shahram Mokri's use of single takes to facilitate horror's function as social critique. The final section examines the depiction of politics and history in the films of Mani Haghighi. The analysis reveals Iranian horror to be both a vibrant tradition and valuable for understanding the genre's global importance.
Administration and Human Rights

Administration and Human Rights
  • Jessica Kritz, Benjamin Mason Meier
  • Published online:
    16 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
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Youth and Earth Politics

Youth and Earth Politics
  • From Misconceptions to Potential for Synergy
  • Amandine Orsini
  • Published online:
    15 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
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  • Youth, defined as individuals between 16 and 35 in global politics, have a key role to play in Earth politics: they are a numerical majority among the world population; they are situated in countries that are more vulnerable to environmental changes; they will be implementing the environmental agenda. Despite their key importance, youth have been associated with a number of misconceptions about their political role in international environmental negotiations. This Element identifies and explains five misconceptions one by one, to go beyond and suggest new ways to engage with youth for greater sustainability. The research presented builds on more than 200 interviews and observations conducted with youth at international climate, biodiversity and sustainable development negotiations. While youth are perceived as politically apathetic, inexperienced, forthcoming, elitist or narcissistic, understanding their very identities enables to suggest synergies for stronger, knowledge-relevant, actual, inclusive and intersectional political action.
Kierkegaard’s View of Love

Kierkegaard’s View of Love
  • Sharon Krishek
  • Published online:
    15 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
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  • The themes of love and loving are often, albeit not always explicitly, present in Kierkegaard's works. It is only his 1847 Works of Love, however, in which the topic serves as a central focus of inquiry. And while at first glance, this text may seem alien to Kierkegaard's poetic existentialism, revolving as it does around the commandment 'You Shall Love Your Neighbour as Yourself' rather than the drama of human existence and the mysteries of the human heart, the thesis that emerges is entirely existential: the capacity for loving is inherent to our very existence as humans. Focussing on Works of Love supported by a few short detours through other texts of Kierkegaard, this Element explores Kierkegaard's view of love as ultimately construing loving as a way of life.
Translation in State Governance

Translation in State Governance
  • A Chinese Perspective
  • Dongsheng Ren, Lin Jiao, Sanjun Sun
  • Published online:
    15 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
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  • Translation plays a consequential role in how states govern, manage multilingual affairs, and project influence, yet this role is rarely examined through a comparative, state-centred framework. This Element introduces the State Translation Programme (STP) to analyse translation as state-organised action. Comparing China with Japan, Türkiye, the United States, South Korea, Canada, and Poland, it identifies three strategic modes: Architects build national capacity and identity, Influencers project soft power and shape external narratives, and Administrators manage internal coordination and multilingual governance. China stands out in comparative perspective in seeking to combine all three modes, a pattern this Element terms 'sovereign maximalism'. Tracing these governance functions from imperial dynasties to the contemporary People's Republic, the Element offers a framework for comparative analysis across translation studies and political science.
Innateness in Mind

Innateness in Mind
  • Peter Carruthers
  • Published online:
    15 June 2026
    Print publication:
    09 July 2026
  • This Element focuses on contemporary forms of nativism (belief in innateness), which mostly concern the existence of domain-specific learning mechanisms with innate structure and content. After sketching some innate capacities that are widely believed to be shared with other animals, the Element thereafter discusses a number of (alleged) distinctively-human ones. One concerns a faculty of language, another our capacity for representing the mental states of others (and derivatively, ourselves). It then turns to discuss some proposed innate adaptations that support culture. These include a number of learning biases, as well as affective learning mechanisms that enable swift acquisition of cultural values. The final two sections then discuss 'tribal psychology.' This may include an innate disposition to stereotype social groups as well as innate 'tribal' motivations (both positive and negative). The over-arching thesis of the Element is that human nature might best be thought of as culture-enabling nature.
Autism Spectrum Disorder in Childhood

Autism Spectrum Disorder in Childhood
  • Kyle Sterrett, Hillary Schiltz, Katherine Byrne, Catherine Lord
  • Published online:
    15 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
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  • This Element provides a broad overview of autism spectrum disorder from early childhood through adolescence. The Element reviews high-impact areas of research relevant to young children, including the shifting diagnostic conceptualizations of autism, current best practices related to screening and diagnosis, our understanding of factors that increase the likelihood of receiving an autism diagnosis, the overlap between autism and other co-occurring conditions, and related contemporary approaches to supports and interventions for young children. The discussion of these topics addresses measurement of outcomes, reproducibility, and methodological rigor. By focusing on these methodological gaps and progress, future directions for research in each of these areas is highlighted.
The Ethical and the Religious

The Ethical and the Religious
  • Roe Fremstedal
  • Published online:
    15 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
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  • This Element discusses the relation between the ethical and religious as key concepts in Kierkegaard's works. Instead of viewing the ethical and religious mainly as different stages on life's way, it identifies different connections between ethical and religious considerations, reasons, and values. By discussing Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac in Fear and Trembling, it argues that – despite appearances – religion does not undermine but rather supports moral constraints. However, Kierkegaard is clear that our moral requirements exceed our natural capabilities, something that makes divine assistance morally necessary. Thus, religious belief seems supported by moral reasons. Still, we often recognize moral truth without seeing the metaphysical and theological implications of morality. Therefore, moral agents need not be religious believers, although morality nevertheless has metaphysical and theological implications if Kierkegaard is correct. Specifically, Kierkegaard seems to combine realism regarding value with the view that some moral requirements are divinely commanded.
Contextualising Teacher Education Curricula in the Arab Gulf States

Contextualising Teacher Education Curricula in the Arab Gulf States
  • Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
  • Published online:
    15 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
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  • This Element advocates the Majlis Curriculum as a culturally responsible framework for teacher education in Arabia. Rather than treating culture as a supplementary means of transmitting local values or reducing it to language instruction, the Element conceptualizes culture as an epistemic and pedagogical foundation for teacher training. It extends the Arab-Islamic tripartite model of Tarbiya, Ta'lim, and Ta'dib by introducing Al-Ra'y as a fourth component of deliberative reasoning. The Majlis is theorized as an educational space that cultivates deliberation and civic responsibility in conversation with the liberal arts. This Element, therefore, positions culturally responsible pedagogy as a precondition for culturally responsive teaching. Intercultural engagement requires identifying and activating local epistemologies that align with the aims of liberal arts. The Element offers a contextual approach that preserves cultural continuity and enables teachers in Arabia to engage with international educational discourses. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Looking Trustworthy

Looking Trustworthy
  • Portraits and Textual Poses of Humanist Translators in the Renaissance
  • Andrea Rizzi
  • Published online:
    15 June 2026
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    31 July 2026
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  • In this Element I investigate how Renaissance humanist translators used the printed page to construct a trustworthy persona and persuade readers of their translations' value. These portraits did more than decorate books – they shaped the public identity of translators, lent credibility to their work, and positioned them within broader networks of cultural authority. As the early modern book trade expanded, portraits became key instruments in establishing recognisability – what we might now call a 'brand' – that reassured readers and patrons alike. By revealing how trustworthiness was deliberately performed and circulated in print, this Element reframes the role of translators in Renaissance culture and offers new insights into the social and symbolic economies of early modern trust.
Mar Menor

Mar Menor
  • Histories from the Critical Zone
  • Juan Manuel Zaragoza Bernal
  • Published online:
    15 June 2026
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    09 July 2026
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  • The Mar Menor, Europe's largest saltwater coastal lagoon, was long sustained by high salinity and low-nutrient waters that supported remarkable biodiversity. Since the late twentieth century, however, intensive tourism, industrial agriculture linked to the Tagus–Segura water transfer, and legacy mining pollution have driven accelerating ecological degradation. The eutrophication crisis of 2016 and the mass anoxic events of 2019 and 2021, which caused extensive marine die-offs, marked a profound ecological and political rupture. In response, a civic movement led by Teresa Vicente achieved an unprecedented outcome in 2022: the lagoon was granted legal personality, becoming the first ecosystem in Europe to obtain such status. This Element examines the social, legal, and scientific transformations surrounding this case and argues that recognising the lagoon as a subject opens new possibilities for rethinking human–nature relations and imagining more-than-human political communities grounded in ecological justice.
ASL Signbank

ASL Signbank
  • Julie A. Hochgesang
  • Published online:
    15 June 2026
    Print publication:
    31 July 2026
  • Language documentation of the American Sign Language (ASL) communities is essential to preserve and share our language use and interaction, something we cherish. Yet there is no conventionalized written system that can be used, instead we've been using video. Currently these videos are mostly not accessible in a way we can search the contents for language expressions. The ASL Signbank, an empirical-based resource-driven database, labels ASL use in transcripts time-aligned to ASL videos along with a set of annotation conventions to make the data machine-readable. ASL Signbank is a cloud-based annotation tool built over twenty years from the models of extant signbanks and their organizing principles. To create a database requires many choices and ongoing labor which is detailed in this Element - from what ASL Signbank is to why it exists and how to use it. This Element is also a reflection on these choices.
Cultural Memory in the Hebrew Bible

Cultural Memory in the Hebrew Bible
  • Genesis to Kings
  • Ronald Hendel
  • Published online:
    12 June 2026
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    09 July 2026
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  • The relationship between the biblical representations of the past and the history of the second and early first millennia BCE is best comprehended by the concept of cultural memory. This volume investigates the dynamics of cultural memory in the Hebrew Bible, with case studies on the ancestors, the Exodus, the conquest, and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The texts create a monumental past by a mixture of memory, forgetting, revision, and re-actualization, motivated in various measures by religion, politics, the landscape, ethnic relationships, and cultural self-fashioning. The archaeology of the Levant illuminates the complicated pathways between history and biblical memory.
Wittgenstein on Belief Formation

Wittgenstein on Belief Formation
  • Nuno Venturinha
  • Published online:
    12 June 2026
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    09 July 2026
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  • This Element traces the development of Wittgenstein's views on belief formation throughout the different phases of his philosophy. Section 1 concentrates on the Tractarian period, where the sparse references to belief consist primarily of reactions to Russell. The logical purism of the early Wittgenstein led him to reject psychological stances such as those found in Russell's epistemological works. Section 2 explores Wittgenstein's 'middle' period, focusing on his evolving views on belief formation, influenced by his shift to viewing language as a social practice. It addresses key texts, including The Big Typescript and 'Cause and Effect', and links the psychological mechanisms of belief to Wittgenstein's later grammatical investigations in an analysis that extends to his reflections on mathematics and religion. Section 3 reconstructs the intellectual trajectory that would culminate in On Certainty, tracing the influence of Moore and Newman on the range of belief-forming processes Wittgenstein examines in his final writings.
Perceptions of Danger

Perceptions of Danger
  • How Risk Assessments Underpin Attitudes on Crime and Intimate Partner Violence
  • Helen Rabello Kras
  • Published online:
    12 June 2026
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    09 July 2026
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  • This Element explores how citizens understand general crime and violence against women, especially intimate partner violence (IPV). Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, this Element makes the case that cognitive heuristics and risk assessments, in particular, shape the way people see crime versus IPV. The central argument is that cognitive heuristics that generate risk perceptions help us understand why the public worries excessively about crime, with important political consequences, while downplaying IPV. This fosters distinct attitudes toward IPV and general crime. Accordingly, this Element sheds light on why victim-blaming is so prevalent in the context of IPV. Using original survey experiments from Brazil and Mexico, the study shows that respondents attribute more responsibility for prevention to the victim for IPV than for general crimes, display optimism bias with acquaintance victimization, and approve different types of policy remedies to deal with general crime and IPV.
How Settlers Shaped Eastern Europe and Scandinavia

How Settlers Shaped Eastern Europe and Scandinavia
  • Economic Development, Regime Change, and State Formation, 800–1800
  • Jonathan Stavnskær Doucette
  • Published online:
    11 June 2026
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    09 July 2026
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  • This Element argues that settlers from Western Europe shaped European state formation and transformed the political and economic fate of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia between 800 and 1800. While existing work on European colonization focuses on overseas settlers, and studies of Europe's development tend to concentrate on the continent's western regions, the Element highlights a significant internal wave of settlement from Western to Eastern and Northern Europe. Beginning around 1100 and tapering off after 1400, this settler movement spurred economic development and the spread of local self-government across Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Settlers also provided institutional templates that local rulers adapted in their efforts to build states. These rulers were increasingly compelled to bargain with politically autonomous and large cities. Over time, the emergence of new states in Eastern Europe intensified geopolitical competition across the continent.

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