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2454 results in Cambridge Elements

Page 1 of 123

From Collective Punishment to Constraints on Authority

From Collective Punishment to Constraints on Authority
  • Rethinking the Impact of US Sanctions on Venezuela
  • Miguel Angel Santos, José Morales-Arilla, Zinedine Partipilo Cornielles
  • Published online:
    16 May 2026
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    31 May 2026
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  • This Element critically examines the claim that United States economic sanctions on Venezuela constituted 'collective punishment' of the Venezuelan population, contributing significantly to the country's economic collapse and humanitarian crisis. Through comprehensive analysis of economic, developmental, and welfare indicators from 2013 to 2023, it demonstrates that the bulk of Venezuela's economic devastation - including 52 percent of GDP losses and 98 percent of import declines - largely occurred before financial sanctions were imposed in August 2017. Key welfare indicators such as infant mortality, undernourishment, and life expectancy had deteriorated substantially by 2017 and subsequently stabilized or improved following sanctions implementation, contradicting narratives that attribute Venezuela's collapse primarily to external economic pressure. The Element provides a timeline of Venezuelan economic and political events around sanctions and a critical review of the literature on their economic effects. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
New Religious Movements in Islam

New Religious Movements in Islam
  • Mark Sedgwick
  • Published online:
    15 May 2026
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    30 June 2026
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  • New Religious Movements (NRMs) have emerged periodically from the formative period of Islam to the present day. This Element considers a representative sample, organized by chronological period and then by type. In earlier periods, particular features of Islam either encouraged or discouraged the emergence of NRMs. Modernity brought new conditions that led to new types of NRM, the focus of this Element. Initially, NRMs arose in resistance to modernity or in support of it. Then came NRMs adjusted to the age of mass modernity. The Element also examines Western NRMs of Islamic origin or coloring. All these NRMs are understood in terms of their relationship with the dominant religious community, the host society, and political authority, as well as the novelty of their beliefs and practice.
Small Probabilities and High Stakes

Small Probabilities and High Stakes
  • Christian Tarsney
  • Published online:
    15 May 2026
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    30 June 2026
  • What price should you be willing to pay for a tiny probability of an astronomically large gain, or to avoid a tiny probability of an astronomically large loss? Should you be willing to pay any finite price, if the potential gains or losses are large enough? Fanaticism says you should, while anti-fanaticism says you should not. Focusing on morally motivated decision-making, this Element explores arguments for and against both positions, ultimately defending the intermediate view that rationality permits a range of dispositions toward extreme risks, while ruling out the most comprehensive forms of both fanaticism and anti-fanaticism. The final section considers practical implications, arguing that under real-world circumstances any view satisfying a minimal principle of rationality must very often rank options by expected value, and thus sometimes give great weight to intuitively small probabilities, but that we nonetheless retain rational flexibility in sufficiently extreme cases.
Sikh Ethics

Sikh Ethics
  • Keshav Singh
  • Published online:
    15 May 2026
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    30 June 2026
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  • Like many other world religious and spiritual traditions, the Sikh tradition is philosophically rich. However, its contributions have been wholly unrepresented in Western analytic philosophy. The goal of this Element is to present a central aspect of Sikh philosophy, its ethics, by using the tools and methods of analytic philosophy to reconstruct it in a form that is understandable to Western audiences, while still accurately capturing its unique and autochthonous features. On the interpretation of Sikh ethics this Element presents, the Sikh ethical theory understands ethics in terms of truthful living – in particular, living in a way that is true to the fundamental Oneness of all existence. Features of the Sikh ethical theory discussed include its account of vice and virtue, its account of right conduct, and the philosophical relationship between ethical theory and practice. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Decolonial Disruptions in Central Asia

Decolonial Disruptions in Central Asia
  • Discussion, Practices, and Networks
  • Erica Marat, Aizada Arystanbek
  • Published online:
    15 May 2026
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    04 June 2026
  • A consequential shift is taking place in Central Asian studies today. What started as a slow rejection of the idea that the region benefited from Soviet control has turned into a decentralized, collective effort to revise the region's relationship to its colonial identity and to search for indigenous interpretations of the self. This Element explores the current decolonial disruptions in Central Asia-how the region is being redefined by its inhabitants, both in discourse and in practice. It captures the main areas of activism in memory studies, language activism, art installations, and transnational solidarity networks. Decolonial discussions are gaining traction, challenging political elites' hegemony over national identity formation. Such changes harbour the potential to profoundly alter Russia's influence in the areas it once controlled. Decolonial disruptions are reshaping how Central Asians think about their past and imagine their future.
Cognitive and Socio-Cultural Development of Religious Belief in Children

Cognitive and Socio-Cultural Development of Religious Belief in Children
  • Emily Rachel Reed Burdett
  • Published online:
    15 May 2026
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    30 June 2026
  • Our knowledge of how children come to understand God and engage in religion has changed dramatically in the past century. This Element describes research from the past few decades of how children use both cognitive tools and socio-cultural experience to understand supernatural concepts and will argue that future work needs to examine the complexity and diversity of religious cognition. It begins with a historical overview (Section 1), followed by four different approaches that propose how children develop a concept of God (Section 2). Early studies on the development of God concepts are examined (Section 3), along with children's views of other divine attributes (Section 4), and other key aspects of children's understanding of religion (Section 5). Then, Section 6 examines how the content and context of religious concepts impact religious cognition. The Element concludes with recent work on socio-cultural input (Section 7) and recommendations for future directions (Section 8).
Emerging Questions in AI Welfare

Emerging Questions in AI Welfare
  • Geoff Keeling, Winnie Street
  • Published online:
    12 May 2026
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    31 December 2026
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  • This Element investigates whether artificial intelligence (AI) systems could ever be welfare subjects. Some people argue that AIs could plausibly have or soon have features such as consciousness, agency and the capacity for social relationships, which could provide a basis for AI welfare. These arguments have massive significance for the societal conversation on AI, raising profound ethical and political questions about what if anything we owe to these new technologies. The authors here provide the philosophical groundwork for a scientific, philosophical and ultimately democratic inquiry into the potential for AI welfare, addressing key questions that cut across different arguments: what welfare is, how to interpret behavioural evidence of AI welfare, what kinds of entities might qualify as candidate AI welfare subjects, the potential grounds for welfare in AI and the practical ethical challenges that arise from our uncertainty. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Bribery as a Third Path to Power?

Bribery as a Third Path to Power?
  • Political Selection in China Beyond Performance and Patronage
  • Jiangnan Zhu
  • Published online:
    12 May 2026
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    04 June 2026
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  • While bribery has been extensively studied, the dynamics of personnel corruption in the public sector, often known as 'buying and selling of government offices,' remain underexplored. This form of corruption involves leaders' accepting or soliciting bribes from subordinates to influence recruitment, appointment, and promotion decisions, significantly impacting political selection and governance quality. This Element employs a dual perspective – corruption and elite mobility – to analyze the distribution of office-selling across the Chinese administrative matrix and its various forms and implications. Using two novel self-compiled datasets, it proposes a tripartite framework of performance, patronage, and purchase to reimagine political selection in China, highlighting the coexistence of multiple governance models: a meritocratic state prioritizing competence, a clientelist state emphasizing loyalty, and an investment state bound by money. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Surveillance Noir

Surveillance Noir
  • Being Watched in Twenty-First-Century Film and Literature
  • David Riddle Watson
  • Published online:
    11 May 2026
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    04 June 2026
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  • In the preface to Feminist Surveillance, Mark Andrejevic argues: 'if in the physical environment the pressing issue of the next several decades is likely to be the dramatic transformation of the global climate, in the social realm, the main issue will be the shifting surveillance climate.' This Element outlines this emerging climate by articulating a subgenre that may be termed 'Surveillance Noir.' Surveillance Noir traces the effects of living in a world where individuals are judged through their data, which is continually and often invisibly collected, interpreted, and redistributed throughout a network. This installment examines these effects by exploring the relationship between contemporary fiction – including The Candy House, Against a Loveless World and Shadow Ticket – and developments in international politics. Specifically, it considers the impact of surveillance regimes on the bodies of women and minority groups, as well as the broader threat that surveillance technologies pose to individual agency.
Monotheism and the Trinity

Monotheism and the Trinity
  • Eric Yang
  • Published online:
    11 May 2026
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    04 June 2026
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  • The doctrine of the Trinity is a central dogma within traditional Christianity, yet claiming that there are three divine persons appears to threaten adherence to monotheism. This Element begins by presenting a logical problem for the doctrine of the Trinity, followed by a survey of extant solutions to it as well as some criticisms to these solutions. Based on some insights concerning the historical context surrounding the development and formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, this Element proposes a solution whereby the doctrinal claims have minimal content such that a contradiction cannot be derived from them. Rather than dismissing other solutions, this Element adopts a particular framework for understanding theological models, proposing that the models used in these solutions be repurposed in such a way that multiple models help us better grasp and appreciate the target (viz., God or the doctrine of the Trinity).
Psychological Network Analyses and Directed Acyclic Graphs Tutorial for Developmental and Educational Science

Psychological Network Analyses and Directed Acyclic Graphs Tutorial for Developmental and Educational Science
  • Xin Tang, Jindong Zhang, Yuyang Zhang, Hye Rin Lee
  • Published online:
    11 May 2026
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    04 June 2026
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  • Psychological network analysis (PNA) has emerged as a powerful tool for understanding the complex interplay of constructs in developmental and educational sciences. Unlike traditional models that assume relationships among variables arise from latent factors, PNA conceptualizes them as dynamic systems of interacting components. This tutorial introduces PNA's theoretical foundations, key concepts (e.g., nodes, edges, network structures), and its methodological applications using cross-sectional, longitudinal, intensive, and cohort data. Through step-by-step guidance and real-world examples, we illustrate how PNA can capture developmental changes, reveal causal structures using directed acyclic graphs, and support developmental and educational research. Special emphasis is given to practical implementation using R, including network estimation, accuracy testing, and visualization. By equipping researchers with the necessary tools to construct and interpret psychological networks, this Element provides a comprehensive framework for leveraging PNA to explore the multifaceted relationships shaping learning, motivation, and social-emotional development.
St. Ephrem the Syrian on Beatitude and the Afterlife

St. Ephrem the Syrian on Beatitude and the Afterlife
  • Andrew J. Hayes
  • Published online:
    11 May 2026
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    04 June 2026
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  • The poetry of Ephrem the Syrian abounds with vivid symbols for the conclusion of salvation history, which forms a path leading from Paradise back to God. His transfiguring glory-light nourishes and enriches the blessed. Those in Gehenna behold the same goal, yet due to self-inflicted inner blindness, they experience it in opposite fashion. Ephrem's eschatology takes shape along the relation between creator and creature rather than along the contrast between particular and universal outcomes. This Element argues that freedom's capacity for transformative growth in relation to God, even post mortem, establishes Ephrem's coherent epektatic account of blessedness, rooted in the quasi-infinite character of human desire despite the finitude of human effort. Freedom's inherent uncertainty makes the salvation of all unknowable. Ephrem refuses to collapse definitively the polarity between creator and creature. Yet a person's freedom remains capable, with divine assistance, of repentance and growth even in Gehenna.
Middlemen in Search Equilibrium

Middlemen in Search Equilibrium
  • A Survey
  • Grace Xun Gong, Ziqi Qiao, Randall Wright
  • Published online:
    09 May 2026
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    30 June 2026
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  • Surveys the literature on middlemen (i.e., intermediation in exchange) reviewing, extending and consolidating key developments in the field. This is important because intermediated trade is common in reality but absent in standard general equilibrium theory. The authors focus on research using search theory. In various models, agents may act as middlemen when they are good at search, bargaining, recognizing quality, storing inventories, using credit, etc. The theory applies to markets for goods, inputs or assets. The authors discuss versions with indivisible or divisible goods, fixed or endogenous participation, stationary and dynamic equilibria, and some implications for efficiency and volatility.
Shadows of Integrity in Public Administration

Shadows of Integrity in Public Administration
  • Survey Experiments on Ethics and Corruption
  • Luis Garrido-Vergara
  • Published online:
    08 May 2026
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    04 June 2026
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  • Corruption is a complex phenomenon that challenges ethics and integrity in public administration. Over the past decade, increased societal monitoring – particularly through the media and civil society organizations – has brought corruption back to the forefront of public concern and political debate. Since most state bureaucracies are formally grounded in a Weberian ethos of meritocracy, competition, and discipline, this raises fundamental questions: What causes corruption in the public sector, and what factors shape the likelihood that a public servant will engage in corrupt or unethical behaviour? This Element addresses these questions by advancing survey experiments as a central methodological approach for studying corruption in public administration. By reviewing existing experimental research and outlining research protocols for the design and analysis of survey experiments, this Element aims to contribute methodologically and substantively to the study of corruption and integrity in the public sector.
The Advent of Iron

The Advent of Iron
  • Robert Downes
  • Published online:
    08 May 2026
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    04 June 2026
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  • Before the latter half of the 2nd millennium BCE, smelted iron was virtually unknown in the Near East. Yet by the turn of the millennium iron had already begun to displace copper alloys across the region. This Element will explore the extent to which this phenomenon may have arisen as a consequence of technological developments within preceding traditions for the extraction of copper from its ores. It presents a new approach incorporating a reappraisal of current knowledge with a series of integrated experiments to reveal the frequency of iron extraction during the copper smelting practices of the Late Bronze Age Near East. Armed with these insights the author seeks to address how iron metallurgy may have developed from existing extractive traditions and the implications this has for our wider understanding of technological change within past cultures.
Growing up with Artificial Intelligence

Growing up with Artificial Intelligence
  • Implications for Child Development
  • Ying Xu, Kunlei He
  • Published online:
    07 May 2026
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    30 June 2026
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  • Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming an integral part of children's lives, ranging from voice assistants and social robots to AI-generated storybooks. As children increasingly interact with these technologies, it is essential to consider their implications for developmental outcomes. This Element examines these implications across three interconnected domains: interaction, perception, and learning. A recurring theme across these domains is that children's engagement with AI both mirrors and diverges from their engagement with humans, positioning AI as a distinct yet potentially complementary source of experience, enrichment, and knowledge. Ultimately, the Element advances a framework for understanding the complex interplay among technology, children, and the social contexts that shape their development. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Technology and Connected Language Learning Across Time and Space

Technology and Connected Language Learning Across Time and Space
  • Chun Lai
  • Published online:
    07 May 2026
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    04 June 2026
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  • Language is integral to human doing, being, becoming and belonging, and its acquisition is naturally distributed in and across activity spaces over time. Different learning experiences form 'a dialectical unity', where one brings the others into existence, and the capacities fostered in one inform and transform those in the others. Thus, connected learning across time and space is fundamental to the coherence, relevance, and meaningfulness of language learning, yet is not given sufficient attention in second language education. Connected learning is particularly relevant in the GenAI era where learner-driven lifelong and lifewide learning is much emphasized. This Element hence conceptualizes the framework of connected language learning with technology, and discusses how the framework could be operationalized and implemented in teaching and learning. It further foregrounds four concepts in this learning framework – agential literacy, interest development, self-regulation support, and identity intervention – and charts out an agenda for research.
Degrees of Academic Librarians

Degrees of Academic Librarians
  • The Case for Capacious Credentialing
  • Bryn Geffert
  • Published online:
    07 May 2026
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    28 May 2026
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  • It is difficult to name a question more contentious than the question of credentialing for academic librarians. This Element attempts three things. First, to understand how today's US research libraries approach credentialing and hiring. Which assumptions, practices, and arguments for those practices do they make? The study evaluates those practices and rationale both quantitatively-How many people adopt which positions and practices based on which assumptions?-and qualitatively-How compelling are the arguments for their respective positions? The qualitative element feeds into this essay's second effort: to argue, based on evidence offered, that more traditional and restrictive practices hamper and hobble the profession. The third section-derived from follow-up interviews with deans at libraries with liberalized credentialing and hiring practices-chronicles and draws lessons from libraries at the forefront of reform, and then offers advice to libraries examining their own hiring practices. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Small Groups as the Engines of Cultural Evolution

Small Groups as the Engines of Cultural Evolution
  • Nina Witoszek
  • Published online:
    06 May 2026
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    28 May 2026
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  • This Element explores the evolutionary role of small groups as key actors in shaping human adaptability, resilience, and societal development. Drawing on cultural evolutionary theory and interdisciplinary scholarship, it illuminates the world-making and transformative capacities of small groups as primary agents of cooperative communication, cultural innovation, and transmission. Through historical and contemporary case studies from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, it examines how small groups function both as catalysts for moral imagination, cooperation, and democratic renewal, and as drivers of destructive ideologies and social disintegration. The study also reassesses the relevance of evolutionary insights for addressing the major crises of the twenty-first century. By critically engaging with foundational thinkers and ongoing debates on democratic and institutional innovation, this Element offers insights for scholars, policymakers, and civic actors committed to empowering communities and countering authoritarian regression.
Psychology of Religion, Spirituality, and the Thriving Family

Psychology of Religion, Spirituality, and the Thriving Family
  • Gina M. Brelsford, Jennifer S. Ripley
  • Published online:
    05 May 2026
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    28 May 2026
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  • Religion and spirituality in the family is a burgeoning field of inquiry. This Element begins by providing basic definitions, theoretical underpinnings, and common assessments of religion and spirituality (R/S) within the family. The authors also examine individuals' religious and spiritual (R/S) landscapes in relation to family functioning, and then consider positive psychology dimensions such as gratitude, humility, compassion, and forgiveness within the context of family members' religiousness and spirituality. Finally, interventions focused on R/S in the family unit and children's medical complications in relation to R/S factors and familial functioning are discussed. Conclusions include recommendations for future research and clinical practice to support families via an R/S lens.

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