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This Element first reviews the limitations of the concepts of problems in childhood. It proposes a universal, comprehensive, and longitudinal conceptual framework of problems in childhood, their differential context, and their cyclical effects. Based on the linkages identified in the children's problems, they are divided into three levels, primary, secondary, and tertiary. The Element then reviews the concepts and the limitations of the prevalent service delivery approaches of child welfare, protection, and justice, because of which these services have not helped to break the cycle of problems in childhood. The Element identifies the rights-based comprehensive, preventive, and systemic approach for child welfare, at primary, secondary and tertiary prevention levels, in order to break this cycle of problems. Finally, the Element goes into details of the tertiary prevention level integrated service delivery for children facing socio-legal problems.
Nitrogen is an essential nutrient for life, and its sources and cycling have varied over earth history. Stable isotope ratios of nitrogen compounds (expressed as δ15N, in ‰) are preserved in the sedimentary record and track these changes, providing important insights into associated biogeochemical feedbacks. Here we review the use of nitrogen stable isotope geochemistry in unravelling the evolution of the global N cycle in deep time. We highlight difficulties with preservation, unambiguous interpretations, and local versus global effects. We end with several case studies illustrating how depositional and stratigraphic context is crucial in reliably interpreting δ15N records in ancient marine sediments, both in ancient anoxic (Archean) and more recent well oxygenated (Phanerozoic) environments.
This Element draws on the concept of ecosystems to investigate selected Beckett works across different media which present worlds where the human does not occupy a privileged place in the order of creation: rather Beckett's human figures are trapped in a regulated system in which they have little agency. Readers, listeners or viewers are complicit in the operation of techniques of observation inherent to the system, but also reminded of the vulnerability of those subjected to it. Beckett's work offers new paradigms and practices which reposition the human in relation to space, time and species.
Biologists often study living systems in light of their having evolved, of their being the products of various processes of heredity, adaptation, ancestry, and so on. In their investigations, then, biologists think comparatively: they situate lineages into models of those evolutionary processes, comparing their targets with ancestral relatives and with analogous evolutionary outcomes. This element characterizes this mode of investigation - 'comparative thinking' - and puts it to work in understanding why biological science takes the shape it does. Importantly, comparative thinking is local: what we can do with knowledge of a lineage is limited by the evolutionary processes into which it fits. In light of this analysis, the Element examines the experimental study of animal cognition, and macroevolutionary investigation of the 'shape of life', demonstrating the importance of comparative thinking in understanding both the power and limitations of biological knowledge.
The quantification of morphology through time is a vital tool in elucidating macroevolutionary patterns. Studies of disparity require intense effort but can provide insights beyond those gained using other methodologies. Over the last several decades, studies of disparity have proliferated, often using echinoderms as a model organism. Echinoderms have been used to study the methodology of disparity analyses and potential biases as well as documenting the morphological patterns observed in clades through time. Combining morphological studies with phylogenetic analyses or other disparate data sets allows for the testing of detailed and far-reaching evolutionary hypotheses.
Assaults on democracy are increasingly coming from the actions of duly elected governments, rather than coups. Backsliding examines the processes through which elected rulers weaken checks on executive power, curtail political and civil liberties, and undermine the integrity of the electoral system. Drawing on detailed case studies, including the United States and countries in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Africa, the book focuses on three, inter-related causal mechanisms: the pernicious effects of polarization; realignments of party systems that enable elected autocrats to gain legislative power; and the incremental nature of derogations, which divides oppositions and keeps them off balance. A concluding chapter looks at the international context of backsliding and the role of new technologies in these processes. An online appendix provides detailed accounts of backsliding in 16 countries, which can be found at www.cambridge.org/backsliding.
Psychologies of women and gender have developed - both institutionally and intellectually - within distinct social, cultural, historical, and political contexts. In many cases, feminism has played an important role in catalyzing disciplinary engagements with gender and culture as categories of analysis and sites of theorizing rather than solely as variables defining groups to be compared. The intersections of gender, feminism, history, and culture are explored with reference to psychology, first in the United States, and then across three other national contexts. This exploration reveals the similarities and tensions between and among the approaches to studying culture and the approaches to studying gender, that psychologists have employed. It also reveals the historically - and culturally - contingent nature of psychologies of women and gender, and, by extension, of gender itself.
The principles of stratigraphic paleobiology can be readily applied to the nonmarine fossil record. Consistent spatial and temporal patterns of accommodation and sedimentation in sedimentary basins are an important control on stratigraphic architecture. Temperature and precipitation covary with elevation, causing significant variation in community composition, and changes in base level cause elevation to undergo predictable changes. These principles lead to eight sets of hypotheses about the nonmarine fossil record. Three relate to long-term and cyclical patterns in the preservation of major fossil groups and their taphonomy, as well as the occurrence of fossil concentrations. The remaining hypotheses relate to the widespread occurrence of elevation-correlated gradients in community composition, long-term and cyclical trends in these communities, and the stratigraphic position of abrupt changes in community composition. Testing of these hypotheses makes the stratigraphic paleobiology of nonmarine systems a promising area of investigation.
Unity of science was once a very popular idea among both philosophers and scientists. But it has fallen out of fashion, largely because of its association with reductionism and the challenge from multiple realisation. Pluralism and the disunity of science are the new norm, and higher-level natural kinds and special science laws are considered to have an important role in scientific practice. What kind of reductionism does multiple realisability challenge? What does it take to reduce one phenomenon to another? How do we determine which kinds are natural? What is the ontological basis of unity? In this Element, Tuomas Tahko examines these questions from a contemporary perspective, after a historical overview. The upshot is that there is still value in the idea of a unity of science. We can combine a modest sense of unity with pluralism and give an ontological analysis of unity in terms of natural kind monism. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Natural language generation (NLG) is the process wherein computers produce output in readable human languages. Such output takes many forms, including news articles, sports reports, prose fiction, and poetry. These computer-generated texts are often indistinguishable from human-written texts, and they are increasingly prevalent. NLG is here, and it is everywhere. However, readers are often unaware that what they are reading has been computer-generated. This Element considers how NLG conforms to and confronts traditional understandings of authorship and what it means to be a reader. It argues that conventional conceptions of authorship, as well as of reader responsibility, change in instances of NLG. What is the social value of a computer-generated text? What does NLG mean for modern writing, publishing, and reading practices? Can an NLG system be considered an author? This Element explores such question, while presenting a theoretical basis for future studies.
This study of Plato's Phaedo promotes better understanding of its arguments for the soul's immortality by showing how Plato intended them, not as proofs, but as properly dialectical arguments functioning in accordance with the method of hypothesis. Unlike the argument for the soul's immortality in the Phaedrus, which does seem intended as a proof, the Phaedo arguments are proceeding toward the first principles that could serve as the basis for a proof - the most important being an account of the soul's own essential nature. This study attends to the substantial progress the Phaedo makes toward such an account. It also considers Socrates' epistemic situation in the dialogue and the problem of whether his confidence in the face of death is misplaced if his arguments have not been proofs before considering how the concluding myth draws together several of the dialogue's main themes.
Although nineteenth-century legislation had tried to ensure a precise separation between genre and institution for Parisian music in the theatre, it had inadvertently laid out a field on which the politics of genre could be played out as agents and actors of all types deployed various forms of artistic power. During the Second Empire, from 1854 until 1870, the state took over day-to-day control of the Opéra in ways that were without precedent. Every element of the Opéra's activity was subjugated to the exigency of Empire; the selection or artists, works and more general questions of artistic policy were handed over to politicians. The Opéra effectively became a branch of government. The result was a stagnation of the Opéra's repertory, and beneficiaries were the composers of larger-scale works for competing organisations: the Opéra Comique and the Théâtre Lyrique.
Wiradjuri woman, Anita Heiss, is arguably one of the first Aboriginal Australian authors of popular fiction. A focus on the political characterises her chick lit; and her identity as an author is both supplemented and complemented by her roles as an academic, activist and public intellectual. Heiss has discussed genre as a means of targeting audiences that may be less engaged with Indigenous affairs, and positions her novels as educative but not didactic. Her readership is constituted by committed readers of romance and chick lit as well as politically engaged readers that are attracted to Heiss' dual authorial persona; and, both groups bring radically distinct expectations to bear on these texts. Through analysis of online reviews and surveys conducted with users of the book reviewing website Goodreads, I complicate the understanding of genre as a cogent interpretative frame, and deploy this discussion to explore the social significance of Heiss' literature.
This Element examines how the changing economic basis of parliamentary elections in nineteenth century England and Wales contributed to the development of modern parties and elections. Even after the 1832 Reform Act expanded the British electorate, elections in many constituencies went uncontested, party labels were nominal, and candidates spent large sums treating and bribing voters. By the end of the century, however, almost every constituency was contested, candidates stood as representatives of national parties, and campaigns were fought on the basis of policies. We show how industrialization, the spread of literacy, and the rise of cheap newspapers, encouraged candidates to enter and contest constituencies. The increased expense that came from fighting frequent elections in larger constituencies induced co-partisan candidates to form slates. This imparted a uniform partisan character to parliamentary elections that facilitated the emergence of programmatic political parties.
Ce anomalies track changes in oxygen availability due to the anomalous redox-sensitivity of Ce compared with the other rare earth elements. The proxy systematics have been calibrated experimentally as well as in modern anoxic water bodies. Ce anomalies are unique because they track intermediate manganous conditions, rather than fully anoxic conditions. In addition, they are sensitive to local–regional redox conditions, and can be analysed in chemical sediments such as carbonate rocks. This makes them especially useful as a tool to track local oxygen distribution in shallow shelf environments, where biodiversity is highest. This review focusses on the systematics of the Ce anomaly proxy, the preservation and extraction of the signal in sedimentary rocks, and the potential applications of the proxy.
This Element describes for the first time the database of peer review reports at PLOS ONE, the largest scientific journal in the world, to which the authors had unique access. Specifically, this Element presents the background contexts and histories of peer review, the data-handling sensitivities of this type of research, the typical properties of reports in the journal to which the authors had access, a taxonomy of the reports, and their sentiment arcs. This unique work thereby yields a compelling and unprecedented set of insights into the evolving state of peer review in the twenty-first century, at a crucial political moment for the transformation of science. It also, though, presents a study in radicalism and the ways in which PLOS's vision for science can be said to have effected change in the ultra-conservative contemporary university. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Institutions are failing in many areas of contemporary politics, not least of which concerns climate change. However, remedying such problems is not straightforward. Pursuing institutional improvement is an intensely political process, playing out over extended timeframes, and intricately tied to existing setups. Such activities are open-ended, and outcomes are often provisional and indeterminate. The question of institutional improvement, therefore, centers on understanding how institutions are (re)made within complex settings. This Element develops an original analytical foundation for studying institutional remaking and its political dynamics. It explains how institutional remaking can be observed and provides a typology comprising five areas of institutional production involved in institutional remaking (Novelty, Uptake, Dismantling, Stability, Interplay). This opens up a new research agenda on the politics of responding to institutional breakdown, and brings sustainability scholarship into closer dialogue with scholarship on processes of institutional change and development. Also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The recognition of the profound impact of corporations on the economies and societies of all countries of the world has focused attention on the growing importance of corporate governance. There is an ongoing diversity of corporate governance systems, based on historical cultural and institutional differences that involve different approaches to the values and objectives of business activity. Sound corporate governance is universally recognised as essential to market integrity and efficiency, providing a vital underpinning for financial stability and economic growth. As the adequacy of the existing dominant paradigms of corporate governance are increasingly challenged, the search for coherent new paradigms is a vital task for corporate governance in the future.
Latin America is currently caught in a middle-quality institutional trap, combining flawed democracies and low-to-medium capacity States. Yet, contrary to conventional wisdom, the sequence of development - Latin America has democratized before building capable States - does not explain the region's quandary. States can make democracy, but so too can democracy make States. Thus, the starting point of political developments is less important than whether the State-democracy relationship is a virtuous cycle, triggering causal mechanisms that reinforce each other. However, the State-democracy interaction generates a virtuous cycle only under certain macroconditions. In Latin America, the State-democracy interaction has not generated a virtuous cycle: problems regarding the State prevent full democratization and problems of democracy prevent the development of state capacity. Moreover, multiple macroconditions provide a foundation for this distinctive pattern of State-democracy interaction. The suboptimal political equilibrium in contemporary Latin America is a robust one.
Studies into religion and violence often put religion first. René Girard started with violence in his book Violence and the Sacred and used the Durkheimian term 'sacred' as its correlate in his study of early religions. During the unfolding of his theory, he more and more distinguished the sacred from saintliness to address the break that the biblical revelation represented in comparison to early religions. This distinction between the sacred and saintliness resembles Henri Bergson's complementing Emile Durkheim's identification of the sacred and society with a dynamic religion that relies on individual mystics. Girard's distinction also relates to the insights of thinkers like Jacques Maritain, Simone Weil, and Emmanuel Levinas. This element explores some of Girard's main features of saintliness. Girard pleaded for the transformation of the sacred into holy, not their separation.