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Women Voters documents and explains three important phenomena implicating gender, race, and immigration. The Element contributes to a better understanding of partisan candidate choice in US presidential elections. First, women are diverse and politically heterogenous, where white women are more likely to vote Republican and women of color are majority Democratic voters. Second, due to the unequal privileges and constraints associated with race, white women have greater agency to sort by partisan preference, whereas women of color have more limited choice in their partisan support. Finally, the authors emphasize compositional change in the electorate as an important explanation of electoral outcomes.
The increased international legislation emphasising children's participation agenda heightened the need for high-quality research in early childhood. Listening to young children asserts their participation, agency and voices in research, an approach commonly associated with qualitative research methods. This Element provides a novel perspective to listening to children's voices by focusing on research methods in early childhood studies that are broadly categorised as quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. Locating these research methods from a children's rights perspective, this Element is based on values that young children have the right to be involved in research irrespective of culture and context. Each section discusses how the different methodologies and approaches used in early childhood research align with the principles of children's participation and agency, as well as their right to express their views on matters that affect them. The Element concludes with a roadmap for future early childhood research and its ethical dissemination.
This Element highlights the employment within archaeology of classification methods developed in the field of chemometrics, artificial intelligence, and Bayesian statistics. These operate in both high- and low-dimensional environments and often have better results than traditional methods. The basic principles and main methods are introduced with recommendations for when to use them.
Use of partisan media is often associated with political misperceptions but little research has investigated whether partisan media can change beliefs and, if so, the mechanism through which that process occurs. This Element argues that political anger provides one key theoretical link between partisan media use and political misperceptions. Using three-wave panel survey data collected in the United States during the 2020 election, I show that people who use more partisan media are more angry and misinformed than less frequent or non-users. More importantly, consuming partisan media-particularly conservative media-can make people angrier about politics over time and this anger subsequently reduces the accuracy of political beliefs. While audiences for partisan media remain small, the findings indicate that partisan media play an important role in shaping political emotions and beliefs and offer one promising explanation for why their audiences are more likely to hold more inaccurate beliefs about politics.
Spinal infections (SIs) are rare conditions affecting the intervertebral disc, vertebral body and/or adjacent spinal tissues. The lumbar region is most commonly involved, followed by the thoracic and cervical regions. Patients present with varied, non-specific clinical features leading to diagnostic and treatment delays. Clinicians need to have a low threshold to suspect SI. In this Element, two real-life cases of patients with SIs will be presented first. Core knowledge will be reviewed next, followed by diagnostic pitfalls and clinical pearls. Finally, the 'typical' clinical workflow for a patient with SI will be presented and the various treatment options will be explored.
The success of popular webcomics (comics produced and read entirely digitally) is the greatest revolution in the comics medium of the last two decades. Webcomics exploit a socio-technical convergence between digital platforms and participatory cultures, enabling global authors to work together with global audiences to transcend established print comics structures. After defining digital comics, webcomics and webtoons, this Element presents a case study of Korean platform WEBTOON, which achieved 100 billion global page views in 2019. The study analyses data from their website, including views, subscriptions and likes, to quantify and assess whether WEBTOON's commercial and critical success is connected to its inclusion of a wider range of genres and of a more diverse author base than mainstream English-language print comics. In so doing, it performs the first Book Historical study of webcomics and webtoons. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This Element outlines the origins and evolution of an international award-winning development intervention, index-based livestock insurance (IBLI), which scaled from a small pilot project in Kenya to a design that underpins drought risk management products and policies across Africa. General insights are provided on i) the economics of poverty, risk management, and drylands development; ii) the evolving use of modern remote sensing and data science tools in development; iii) the science of scaling; and iv) the value and challenges of integrating research with operational implementation to tackle development and humanitarian challenges in some of the world's poorest regions. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Teleology is about functions, ends, and goals in nature. This Element offers a philosophical examination of these phenomena and aims to reinstate teleology as a core part of the metaphysics of science. It starts with a critical analysis of three theories of function and argues that functions ultimately depend on goals. A metaphysical investigation of goal-directedness is then undertaken. After arguing against reductive approaches to goal-directedness, the Element develops a new theory which grounds many cases of goal-directedness in the metaphysics of powers. According to this theory, teleological properties are genuine, irreducible features of the world.
Dickens and the Gothic provides a critical focus on representations of social and psychological entrapment which demonstrates how Dickens employs the Gothic to evaluate how institutions and formations of history impinge on the individual. An analysis of these forms of Gothic entrapment reveals how these institutions and representations of public and personal history function Gothically in Dickens, because they hold back other, putatively reformist, ambitions. To be trapped in an institution such as a prison, or by the machinations of a law court, or haunted by history, or to be haunted by ghosts, represent forms of Gothic entrapment which this study examines both psychologically and sociologically.
This Element posits that questions are the heart of leadership. Leaders ask hard questions that spark creative solutions and new understandings. Asking by itself isn't enough - leaders must also help find answers and turn them into effective action. But the leader's work begins with questions. This Element surveys the main traditions of leadership thought; considers the nature of the group and its questions; explores how culture and bureaucracy serve to provide stable answers to the group's questions; and explores how leaders offers disruptive answers, especially in times of change and crisis. It uses the lens of questions to consider two parallel American lives, President Abraham Lincoln and General Robert E. Lee.
This Element addresses the following three questions: can Global English unequivocally be framed as a 'killer' language for learning LOTEs (languages other than English)? If so, under what premises? (Section 1); what are the rationales and justifications for learning LOTE in the age of Global English? (Section 2); and what are the pedagogical and policy implications for learning LOTE in the age of Global English? What can we learn from current (best and less good) practice? (Section 3). Attempts to engage learners in learning a variety of languages – rather than just English – often fail to achieve desired results, both in Anglophone and non-Anglophone contexts. Can English be blamed? What can policymakers and educators do to address the crisis? This Element proposes a new matrix of rationales for language learning, advocating an interconnected, socially embedded justification for language learning. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Efforts to promote creativity often centre on encouraging people to engage in 'design thinking', 'systems thinking' and 'entrepreneurial thinking'. These different approaches are most often defined, taught and applied in mutual isolation, which has obscured what distinguishes them from each other, what they have in common and how they might be combined. These three approaches are also most often described in isolation from the approaches that characterize other disciplines, all of which are relevant to how problems are identified, framed and solved. These other approaches include 'computational thinking', 'engineering thinking', 'scientific thinking', 'evolutionary thinking', 'mathematical thinking', 'statistical thinking', 'geographical thinking', 'historical thinking', 'anthropological thinking' and many more. Examining these approaches as a set allows each of them to be better understood, and also reveals the connections and contrasts between them. Such comparisons provide the foundation for a more coordinated project to represent how different disciplinary approaches contribute to creative work.
While the political undercurrent of the American Gothic has been firmly established, few scholars have surveyed the genre's ambivalent relationship to democracy. The American Gothic routinely undercuts centralised authority by exposing the dark underbelly of the status quo; at the same time, the American Gothic tends to reflect a widespread mistrust of the masses. American readers are too afraid of democracy – and not yet fearful enough. This concise Element theorises the democratic and anti-democratic elements of the American Gothic by surveying the conflicted imaginaries of the genre's mainstays, including Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, and Stephen King.
Despite their long publishing history, anthologies have received little scholarly attention. However, they play an important role in collecting, and reflecting upon, voices and identities that have all-to-often been on the fringes of publishing. This Element explores the sociocultural functions of anthologies in relation to discussions around exclusion/inclusion in the publishing industry. Focusing on YA anthologies, using a case study of A Change Is Gonna Come anthology (2017), this Element argues that the form and function of anthologies allows them to respond to and represent changing ideas of socially-marginalised identities. In A Change Is Gonna Come, this medium also affords Black and Brown authors a platform and community for introspection and the development of both individual and collective identities. Beyond merely introducing writings by socially-marginalised groups, this Element contends that YA anthologies embody a form of literary activism, fostering community-building and offering a means to circumvent obstacles prevalent in publishing.
This Element offers a theoretically informed examination of the manner in which religion, especially alternative and emergent religious and spiritual movements, is managed by law and legal mechanisms in the authoritarian theocracy of Iran. It highlights how these phenomena have been affected by the intersection of law, politics, and Shiʿi theology in recent Iranian history. The growing interest of Iranian citizens in new religious movements and spiritual currents, fostered by the cultural diffusion of Western writings and ideas, is described. The development of religious diversity in Iran and a corresponding loss of commitment toward some Islamic doctrines and practices are of considerable concern to both the Iranian religious and political establishments. This has led to social control efforts over any religious and spiritual movement differing from the regime's view of Islam. Those efforts, supported in large part by Western anticult ideas, culminated in the passage of a piece of stringent legislation in 2021. The Element closes with applications of theorizing from the sociology of law and of religion.
The history of modern war has focused on destruction; however, practices of saving lives and rebuilding societies have received far less scrutiny. The world wars reconfigured geopolitics on a sacred-secular spectrum dominated by the USA and the USSR. In these events, the motivations of humanitarian actors are disputed as either secular or religious, evoking approval or censure. Although modern global humanitarianism emerged during the world wars, it is often studied in a Euro-centric framework that does not engage the conflicts' globality. The effects of humanitarianism during the Second World War look toward the post-1945 era with not enough reflection on the pre-1945 history of humanitarianism. Thus, what is needed is a critical history beyond moralizing, bringing synchronic and diachronic expansion to study questions of continuity and change. A global history of religious humanitarianism during both world wars places faith-based humanitarianism on a spectrum of belief and unbelief.
This Element considers the concept of performance diagrams and shows their historical, epistemic and aesthetic functions in theatre and dance. In three sections, the author surveys the architectural model of theatre by Vitruvius, the woodcut of Marlow's Doctor Faustus, Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne-Atlas, the spells and drawings of Antonin Artaud, the performance Paradise Now (the Living Theatre) and the choreography I am 1984 (Barbara Matijević). Demonstrating that diagrams can be applied to multiply dramaturgical trajectories, the text reviews their relevance for performance-making, analysis and documentation. The author argues that diagrams provide new tools for theory, practice and archiving, while at the same time enabling reflection on the intersections between poetics and politics. Focusing on the potentiality of diagrams to cut through representation and dichotomies, this Element affirms the visual, corporeal and spatial dimensions of performance-making. In doing so, it elucidates the significance of diagrammatic thinking for performance studies.
Clean Break Theatre Company is a women-only theatre company that grew out of a prisoner-led drama workshop that took place between 1977–1979 in HMP Askham Grange. In addition to its considerable impact on criminalised women and public understandings of the socio-political impact of their experiences, Clean Break has had a significant but under-acknowledged impact on contemporary British theatre. We examine three areas of Clean Break's theatre making history and organisational practices: its origin stories; its education and engagement work; and how the company's performance practices have, across five decades, 'then' and 'now', adapted to directly intervene in carceral society. By highlighting Clean Break's distinct activist theatre making processes and practices, the book makes explicit the genealogical connections of the company's past work and its impacts on contemporary feminist theatre practices.
This Element examines why women makers from equity-owed communities (Indigenous, of colour, Deaf, disabled, trans and non-binary communities among others) choose to work with Shakespeare and his contemporaries at a moment in time when theatres around the world are striving toward equity, inclusion, diversity, and decolonization. It details and explores these creators' processes to learn from them about how to transform plays we know all too well as patriarchy-affirming, ableist, and often racist into vehicles for community storytelling and models for radically inclusive and difference-centred ways of making.
The rise of entheogenic religion – that is, religions that involve the use of psychoactive drugs – has captured the attention of scholars and journalists. These studies tend to advance the interests of practitioners who advocate for the legitimacy of entheogens and of entheogenic religion more broadly. This Element breaks with these approaches as it offers a historical and critical analysis of entheogenic communities. It examines the production of entheogenic groups in the United States and considers the historical factors that have contributed to the rise in psychedelics more broadly. It also explores legal considerations and the impact of the law as a curator of entheogenic communities. This Element recognizes that these communities – like all imagined communities – are culturally conditioned, socially constructed, and historically contingent. By exploring these contingencies, we learn more about the broader sociocultural, historical, and economic frameworks that underlie the burgeoning association of psychoactive substances and religion.