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Contrary to popular claims, civil society is not generally shrinking in Southeast Asia. It is transforming, resulting in important shifts in the influences that can be exerted through it. Political and ideological differences in Southeast Asia have sharpened as anti-democratic and anti-liberal social forces compete with democratic and liberal elements in civil society. These are neither contests between civil and uncivil society nor a tussle between civil society and state power. They are power struggles over relationships between civil society and the state. Explaining these struggles, the approach in this Element emphasises the historical and political economy foundations shaping conflicts, interests and coalitions that mobilise through civil society. Different ways that capitalism is organised, controlled, and developed are shown to matter for when, how and in what direction conflicts in civil society emerge and coalitions form. This argument is demonstrated through comparisons of Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand.
The distinction between the a priori and the a posteriori is an old and influential one. But both the distinction itself and the crucial notion of a priori knowledge face powerful philosophical challenges. Many philosophers worry that accepting the a priori is tantamount to accepting epistemic magic. In contrast, this Element argues that the a priori can be formulated clearly, made respectable, and used to do important epistemological work. The author's conception of the a priori and its role falls short of what some historical proponents of the notion may have hoped for, but it allows us to accept and use the notion without abandoning either naturalism or empiricism, broadly understood. This Element argues that we can accept and use the a priori without magic.
Suppose that you prefer A to B, B to C, and C to A. Your preferences violate Expected Utility Theory by being cyclic. Money-pump arguments offer a way to show that such violations are irrational. Suppose that you start with A. Then you should be willing to trade A for C and then C for B. But then, once you have B, you are offered a trade back to A for a small cost. Since you prefer A to B, you pay the small sum to trade from B to A. But now you have been turned into a money pump. You are back to the alternative you started with but with less money. This Element shows how each of the axioms of Expected Utility Theory can be defended by money-pump arguments of this kind. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
This Element examines Kant's innovative account of labour in his political philosophy and develops an intersectional analysis of Kant. By demonstrating that Kant's analysis of slavery, citizenship, and sex developed in inter-linked ways over several decades, culminating in his development of a 'trichotomy' of Right, the author shows that Kant's normative account of independence is configured through his theory of labour, and is continuous with his anthropological accounts of race and gender, providing a systemic justification for the dependency of women and non-whites embedded in his philosophy of right. By examining Kant's arguments about slavery as intertwined with his account of domestic labour, the author argues that his ultimate rejection of slavery may owe more to his changing conceptualization of labour than to his theory of race, and that his final arguments against slavery rehearse strategies for embedding intersectional patterns of domestic dependence in his account of the rightful state.
This Element uses data from the Springville Project to explore how the functions of the inherited forms invariant be (from English sources) and zero (from creolization) have transformed during the twentieth century. Originally just alternative present tense copula/auxiliary forms, both features developed into aspectual markers – invariant be to mark durativity/habituality and zero to mark nonstativity. The motivation for these innovations were both socio-cultural and linguistic. The Great Migration and its consequences provided a demographic and socio-cultural context within which linguistic innovations could develop and spread. The mismatch between form and function within the present tense copula/auxiliary system and the grammatical ambiguities that affected both invariant be and zero provided linguistic triggers for this reanalysis. When taken together, the evolution of these forms illustrates how restructured linguistic subsystems (and eventually new varieties) emerge out of the interplay between inheritance and innovation.
If God exists and is perfectly good, God tries to guide people. A twofold question then arises: How does God (try to) guide people, and to what end? Problems of divine guidance for humans, according to this volume, are real and serious, but they are manageable once we clarify the kind of God at issue. According to the volume's main thesis, if God has a perfect moral character accompanied by certain redemptive purposes for humans, the puzzling nature of divine guidance for them need not preclude the reality of such guidance. It is, this volume contends, a live option for God to guide or lead humans toward goodness, even if the leading is not fully explainable by humans. The voluntary moral attraction of cooperative humans by divine goodness is central to divine guidance, and it can illuminate the kind of evidence to be expected from God.
Paradoxes, contrary propositions that are not contestable separately but that are inconsistent when conjoined, constitute a pervasive feature of contemporary organizational life. When contradictory elements are constituted as equally important in day-to-day work, organizational actors frequently experience acute tensions in engaging with these contradictions. This Element discusses the presence of paradoxes in the life of organizations, introduces the reader to the notion of paradox in theory and practice, and distinguishes paradox and adjacent conceptualizations such as trade-off, dilemma, dialectics, ambiguity, etc. This Element also covers what triggers paradoxes and how they come into being whereby the Element distinguishes latent and salient paradoxes and how salient paradoxes are managed. This Element discusses key methodological challenges and possibilities of studying, teaching, and applying paradoxes and concludes by considering some future research questions left unexplored in the field.
This Element selectively examines a range of ideas and arguments drawn from the philosophical traditions of South and East Asia, focusing on those that are especially relevant to the philosophy of religion. The Element introduces key debates about the self and the nature of reality that unite the otherwise highly diverse philosophies of Indian and Chinese Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. The emphasis of this Element is analytical rather than historical. Key issues are explained in a clear, precise, accessible manner, and with a view to their contemporary relevance to ongoing philosophical debates.
The author is a drummer with experience in a variety of musical genres and contexts, with emphasis on rock and related styles. This auto ethnographic Element presents the author's philosophy of playing drum kit. The text explains how playing drum kit matters to this musician and may resonate with others to whom making music matters in similar ways. The Element contains audio files of music in which the author plays drum kit in the ensemble settings described. There are photos of the author's drums and of him drumming. Based on June Boyce-Tillman's non-religious model of holistic spirituality and Tim Ingold's notion of correspondences, the author describes how playing drum kit enables him to experience transcendence – the magical nexus at which Materials, Construction, Values/Culture and Expression meet. Each of these domains, and the magic derived from their combination, is illustrated through examples of the author's live and recorded musical collaborations.
The typical vision of the Middle Ages western popular culture represents to its global audience is deeply Eurocentric. The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones imagined entire medievalist worlds, but we see only a fraction of them through the stories and travels of the characters. Organised around the theme of mobility, this Element seeks to deconstruct the Eurocentric orientations of western popular medievalisms which typically position Europe as either the whole world or the centre of it, by making them visible and offering alternative perspectives. How does popular culture represent medievalist worlds as global-connected by the movement of people and objects? How do imagined mobilities allow us to create counterstories that resist Eurocentric norms? This study represents the start of what will hopefully be a fruitful and inclusive conversation of what the Middle Ages did, and should, look like.
Carbon markets – both emission trading systems and baseline and credit systems – are an increasingly common policy instrument being introduced to address climate change mitigation. However, their design is crucial to ensure that they deliver cost-effective emission reductions while maintaining environmental integrity. This Element puts together a comprehensive, principle-based overview of the risks and abuses to environmental integrity and cost effectiveness that have emerged for carbon markets at all jurisdictional levels around the world, provides concrete examples, and offers effective policy and governance solutions to overcome such risks. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The question of what Wittgenstein meant by 'forms of life' has attracted a great deal of attention in the literature, yet it is an expression that Wittgenstein himself employs on only a relatively small number of occasions, and that he does not explicitly define. This Element gives a description of this concept that also explains Wittgenstein's reluctance to say much about it. A short historical introduction examines the origins and uses of the term in Wittgenstein's time. The Element then presents a survey of Wittgenstein's employment of it, and an overview of the literature. Finally, the Element offers a methodological reading of this notion, interpreting it as a conceptual tool in Wittgenstein's wider inquiries into the workings of our language.
The music of Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frederic Handel and Domenico Scarlatti received more performances, publications and appreciation in Britain between 1750–1850 than in any other country during this era. The compositions of these three seminal baroque composers were heard in the numerous public and private concerts that proliferated at this time; edited, arranged and published for professionals and amateurs; written about by scholars and journalists; and used as teaching pieces and in pedagogical treatises. This Element examines the reception of their music during this dynamic period in British musical history, and places the discussion within the context of the artistic, cultural, economic, and political factors that stimulated such passionate interest in 'ancient music.' It also offers a vivid picture of the aesthetic concerns of those musicians and audiences involved with this repertoire, providing insights that help us better understand our own encounters with music of the past.
Why do historians so often talk about objectivity, empathy, and fair-mindedness? What roles do such personal qualities play in historical studies? And why does it make sense to call them virtues rather than skills or habits? Historians' Virtues is the first publication to explore these questions in some depth. With case studies from across the centuries, the Element identifies major discontinuities in how and why historians talked about the marks of a good scholar. At the same time, it draws attention to long-term legacies that last until today. Virtues were, and are, invoked in debates over the historian's task. They reveal how historians position themselves vis-à-vis political regimes, religious traditions, or neoliberal university systems. More importantly, they show that historical study not only requires knowledge and technical skills, but also makes demands on the character of its practitioners. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Blockchains have become increasingly important for organizing contemporary economic and social activities. This Element offers a deeper understanding of blockchains to both management scholars and practitioners, with an emphasis on blockchains' strategic implications for fundamental issues in organizing. It provides a critical examination of the core themes, theoretical lenses, and methodologies used in blockchain research in business and management scholarship. Furthermore, it offers an in-depth discussion of why and how blockchains offer a new way of organizing, providing profound implications for three major issues of strategic organization: contracting, trust, and organizational design. It also discusses several limitations of the technology in its current stage of development. Finally, this Element points to the implication of blockchains on both scholarly research and business practice.
This Element is an attempt to contribute to the extant literature on boards and corporate governance by exploring in detail the active involvement of the board in the purpose and strategy of the corporation in order to cope with a complex and uncertain environment.
Why is an understanding of political competition essential for the study of public economics and public policy generally? How can political competition be described and understood, and how does it differ from its strictly economic counterpart? What are the implications of the fact that policy proposals in a democracy must always pass a political test? What are the strengths and weaknesses of electoral competition as a mechanism for the allocation of economic resources? Why are tax structures in democratic polities so complicated, and what implications follow from this for normative views about good policy choice? How can the intensity of political competition be measured, why and how does it vary in mature democracies, and what are the consequences? This Element considers how answers to these questions can be approached, while also illustrating some of the interesting theoretical and empirical work that has been done on them.
This Element offers an overview of some of the most important debates in philosophy and physics around the topics of emergence and reduction and proposes a compatibilist view of emergence and reduction. In particular, it suggests that specific notions of emergence, which the author calls 'few-many emergence' and 'coarse-grained emergence', are compatible with 'intertheoretic reduction'. Some further issues that will be addressed concern the comparison between parts-whole emergence and few-many emergence, the emergence of effective (-field) theories, the use of infinite limits, the notion of intertheoretic reduction and the explanation of universal and cooperative behavior. Although the focus will be principally on classical phase transitions and other examples from condensed matter physics, the main aim is to draw some general conclusions on the topics of emergence and reduction that can help us understand a variety of case-studies ranging from high-energy physics to astrophysics.
With their widespread use in the Global South, mobile phones are attracting growing interest from international aid actors and local authorities alike, who are positioning mobile technology as a growth driver and a solution to many social problems. Initiated by giants of the digital industry, these policies are reviving old questions about technological development, the relationship between the market sector and States, and the role of technology in the inequalities between the Global North and Global South. Through a multi-sited ethnography on maternal care in Ghana and India, this Element provides a first-hand look at initiatives that promise to improve poor women's health in the Global South through the use of mobile phones; a field known as Mobile Health or mHealth. Attentive to the way in which these technical objects modify power relations at both international and local levels, this Element also discusses how mHealth transforms care practices and healthcare.
Monotheism (tawḥīd)-as attested to by the cosmos, known through reason, explicated in revelation, and exemplified by the lives of the righteous-forms the core of the Islamic worldview. A conviction in this unadulterated monotheism unifies Muslims across time and place; it is found in the core profession of faith (the shahāda) and is reinforced by thousands of Qur'anic verses and prophetic teachings. Drawing on the Qur'anic discourse, sayings of the Prophet Muḥammad, and select theological works, this Element provides a concise and accessible introduction to the most fundamental concept in Islamic thought. The work explains the nature and attributes of God and examines how tawḥīd informs conceptions of truth, morality, piety, and virtue.