Oswald Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West) gave expression to a pervasive feeling of cultural crisis in early twentieth-century European intellectual life. Perhaps unsurprisingly given his reactionary politics and nationalist sympathies, Spengler’s work met with a muted reception in metropolitan France. More open to his message were members of imperial France’s modest colonial intelligentsia; Spengler’s French translator was Mohand Tazerout (1893–1973), an Algerian-born World War I veteran, schoolteacher, and aspiring sociologist. This article tells the story of The Decline of the West’s initial appearance in French before exploring Tazerout’s own intellectual project, which both built on and reached beyond Spengler’s thinking. Contemporary and subsequent North African intellectuals were no less drawn to themes of cultural decline and renewal; however, the unique circumstances that pushed Tazerout to embrace Spengler’s ideas were quickly swept away in a vortex of postcolonial contention.

Over 45 years ago, William Revelle proposed a reliability measure based on the worst split-half of a test or scale, commonly known as Revelle’s beta, to assess the general factor saturation. However, to this day, there is no reliable method for computing this measure, as existing approaches are either computationally infeasible or insufficiently accurate in identifying the worst split-half. This difficulty arises because the number of candidate splits increases exponentially with the number of items. In this article, we show that computing Revelle’s beta is conceptually equivalent to divisive (“top-down”) hierarchical clustering. This insight allows us to reduce the number of candidate splits to a quadratic problem, making the computation feasible. We specify theoretical conditions under which this approach is guaranteed to recover the worst split-half. To validate the efficiency of our approach, we conduct simulation studies and analyze real-world data. Code implementations accompanying this work are available online, together with Supplementary Material.

During the past few decades, higher-education and research systems have been experiencing profound waves of reformed governance and organization resulting in a stronger emphasis on hierarchy, more well-defined boundaries between universities as organizational actors and their environments, more rigorous performance measurements at the organization level and a changed political control. Administration has been centralized and relations between academic and administrative staff have been transformed. Changes in university governance are sometimes described as a shift from collegiality to enterprise management. However, in previous studies we have found that this development could rather be described as a remixed governance. Universities are subject to mixed modes of governance related to the many tasks and missions they are expected to fulfil. Mixed modes of governance also stem from reforms based on widely held ideals of governance and organization. Much previous research has analysed the changing roles and influence of faculty and leadership that follow on these reforms. The diverse modes of governance also imply diverse roles for administration. Furthermore, with mixed modes of governance, the roles of administrators and their relations with academic faculty may vary depending on issues and situations. Based on observations of the governance mix of universities, in this article I ask: administration for what, how and by whom?

Tropical glaciers in the Cordillera Real (Bolivia) are rapidly retreating. In the early 2000s, it was predicted that many of its small glaciers (<0.5 km2) would vanish within a few decades. More than two decades after this dire prediction, we evaluate their fate using a recently published, multitemporal inventory of glaciers in the Cordillera Real. We identify 174 glaciers that disappeared between 1998 and 2024, more than five times the number previously reported. All of the glaciers that vanished were small, as predicted, and most (79.9%) were low-lying (maximum elevation <5400 m). These losses represent 30.5% of the total number of glaciers in the Cordillera Real in 1998, but their demise accounts for only 8.5% of the total area loss between 1998 and 2024. Although a majority (62.7%) of small glaciers persist to 2024, current and projected warming will likely threaten most of those that remain.

While immigration status is often arbitrarily ascribed, the moral meanings of undocumented status are central in the growing polarization and punitiveness of immigration politics in the United States. How do political actors construct the moral meanings of undocumented status and reason their preferred redresses? Existing substantialist approach’s search for a coherent list of moral traits is unable to locate the basis of such construction. Through interviews with a multiracial group of 65 Democratic and Republican activists, this paper identifies the relational meaning-making process underlying the construction of migrant morality, which I label as “Folk Durkheimian.” I find that, like Durkheim, activists believe that law exists to uphold social solidarities and therefore legal categories mark people as belonging or threatening to the social body. I further find that activists construct belonging and threat along two axes: similarity and division of labor. As both Democratic and Republican activists construct migrants as simultaneously belonging and threatening on different axes, both prefer the ambivalent redress of pathways to citizenship for a limited subset of migrants. This Folk Durkheimian understanding advances a relational and integrated framework for understanding morality, group politics, and punitive attitudes.

Can feelings of loneliness and depression be adaptive for adolescents? Yes, suggests the Evolutionary Theory of Loneliness: initially, loneliness activates depressive responses for self-preservation. In turn, these feelings prepare adolescents for reaffiliation, thereby reducing loneliness (H1a: short-term balancing feedback loop). If this fails, loneliness and depressive symptoms may become long-term traits that exacerbate each other over time (H1b: long-term reinforcing feedback loop). Therefore, the short-term balancing feedback loop between loneliness and depressive symptoms may buffer against their long-term increases (H2: across-timescale influence). We tested these hypotheses in Dutch adolescents (Mage_Wave1 = 12.9, SDage_Wave1 = 0.7, 53% female) using six-wave, half-yearly panel data (N = 774; 2017–2021) and 7-day, 1.5-hourly experience sampling data (nsubsample = 84; mid-2021). Residual dynamic structural equation modeling revealed reinforcing feedback loops at both short-term (1.5-hourly) and long-term (half-yearly), supporting H1b but not H1a. Bayesian latent change score modeling supported H2: Adolescents who felt more depressed an hour after heightened loneliness showed smaller half-yearly increases in trait loneliness. However, this buffering effect was not predicted by the hourly depressed-to-loneliness relation, nor did either hourly relations predict half-yearly changes in depressive symptoms. Our findings suggest that feeling depressed shortly after loneliness may protect adolescents from long-term loneliness.

Diet is key for a healthy lifestyle, yet evidence on how diet quality affects body composition and cardiometabolic health during pregnancy is insufficient. The aims of this study were to examine associations of diet quality (Swedish Healthy Eating Index (SHEI)) with body composition, cardiometabolic health in early and late pregnancy (gestational weeks 14 and 37) and gestational weight gain (GWG). This observational study used cross-sectional and prospective data from the HealthyMoms trial at two timepoints: early (n 302) and late pregnancy (n 134). Exposure was diet quality (SHEI) assessed through online 24 h recalls, and outcomes included body composition (body fatness, BMI, fat mass index (FMI)), cardiometabolic health (homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), metabolic syndrome (MetS) score, glycaemia) and GWG. Linear regression was used to investigate associations between SHEI and outcomes. In the cross-sectional analyses, higher SHEI was associated with lower body fatness, BMI, FMI and MetS score in early pregnancy (all B ≤ −0·14, all P ≤ 0·02). Similar results were seen in late pregnancy, with the addition of an association with HOMA-IR (all B ≤ −0·20, all P ≤ 0·008). Prospectively, higher SHEI in early pregnancy was associated with lower body fatness, BMI, FMI, glycaemia, HOMA-IR and MetS score in late pregnancy (all B ≤ −0·09, all P ≤ 0·01). There were no statistically significant associations of change in SHEI with GWG or other outcomes (P ≥ 0·09). In conclusion, a healthy diet, especially in early pregnancy, seems beneficial for body composition and cardiometabolic health. Focusing on key dietary advice, as captured by SHEI, may be advantageous and feasible within maternity care.

A cosmopolis may be understood as a durable, cross–regional cultural–political order in which a prestigious bridge language provides the central anchor and the shared medium for knowledge, cultural authority and institutional practice across multilingual settings. In this article I hypothesise that, in the early 21st century, English in international employ is beginning to occupy a socio–cultural position comparable in certain respects to that of the pre‑modern formations associated with Sanskrit, Latin and Classical Arabic. To examine this possibility, I begin with a deliberately broad, first‑pass identification of the most salient cosmopolis features, limiting the analysis to the characteristic profile of the prestige bridge language that underwrites each cosmopolis. I then consider whether a comparable profile plausibly holds for global modern English, drawing on existing research on its global role. The results are preliminary, but they suggest that this perspective may offer a useful analytical lens for investigating English in its present sociolinguistic position, and that it merits more systematic follow‑up work.

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is diagnosed more often in males than females. Recently, this gap has narrowed, a development often framed as overcoming gender bias. This framing rests on two problematic assumptions: (1) more equal diagnostic rates approximate truth and (2) there is such a truth in the first place. Assumption (1) is questionable because male populations are set as standard but potentially reflect overdiagnosis. Assumption (2) presumes ADHD to be a stable, discrete disease entity, which is epistemically and ontologically problematic. I argue that understanding (gender) bias here should focus on deviations from best practices and deliberative norms rather than a relation to truth.

This article introduces the Database on South America’s Transnational Human Rights Violations. We describe this dataset, which provides rich descriptive statistics on 805 victims of transnational repression between 1969 and 1981. We show how it complements the existing literature on transnational repression by focusing on a historical instance of collaboration among South America’s dictatorships that jointly silenced hundreds of dissidents living in exile abroad during their reigns of terror. This new data generates novel conclusions that help better understand the complex dynamics of transnational repression and Operation Condor in the region while also providing useful insights for contemporary instances of transnational repression. The most original empirical takeaways from our dataset include the following: (1) Uruguayans are the largest victim group by nationality; (2) political activists constitute the majority of the victims by affiliation; and (3) clandestine renditions of the victims occurred in a quarter of the recorded cases.

This study investigates the dynamic, time-varying associations between multiple socio-ecological stressors and internalizing symptoms among Mexican-origin youth from low-income immigrant families. Grounded in a socioecological framework and employing time-varying effect modeling (TVEM), we examine how stressors at the interpersonal, family, and neighborhood levels differentially influence anxiety and depressive symptoms across early adolescence (ages 11–13), middle adolescence (ages 14–17), and late adolescence/emerging adulthood (ages 18–20). Participants included 604 Mexican-origin adolescents (54% female) from low-income immigrant families, assessed across three waves spanning nine years. Five distinct stressors were identified: discrimination, foreigner stress, economic stress, language brokering stress, and neighborhood violence/non-safety. Results from TVEM analyses revealed that the impact of discrimination on internalizing symptoms was more pronounced during early and middle adolescence, while foreigner stress became increasingly more pronounced in late adolescence/emerging adulthood. Economic hardship and language brokering stress consistently predicted internalizing symptoms across all developmental periods, whereas neighborhood violence/non-safety exerted the greatest influence during early adolescence. These findings underscore the importance of considering how stressor type and developmental timing intersect to shape mental health outcomes. Moreover, the results suggest that identifying sensitive windows for specific socio-ecological stressors can inform the optimal timing of tailored, developmentally sensitive interventions to mitigate their adverse effects.

In Mumbai, the live slaughter of meat by Muslim butchers is an intergenerational caste practice and a source of livelihood and labour, supplying ritually slaughtered halal meat for Muslims, and fresh quality meat for others in the city. Yet in the neoliberal Hindu Nationalist imagination, the very sights, smells, and sounds of butchering are a sign of Muslim abjection, a source of disgust to be eradicated from the “world-class” Hindu city. Muslim butchers are further subject to an intra-Muslim caste politics of disdain, in which their contact with blood is thought to render them impure (na-pak) and untrustworthy. At butcher stores and meat markets, economic development, urban sanitation, and ritual ideologies recruit the senses into a politics of disgust and disdain. These affects are reflexively embodied in ways that reveal the intimate relation between individualising forms of Islamic piety, Muslim infrastructural marginalisation, and the making of a sanitised neoliberal Hindu city.

How should legal theory address populist governance? This article assesses recent efforts to align populist legal theory with H.L.A. Hart’s positivism, particularly the claim that populists embrace a democratic version of the rule of recognition. It argues instead that the alliance is deceptive: Populists selectively rely on Hart, given that both endorse a static legal theory. It presents two arguments in support. The first, negative argument shows that populist aspirations to immediate popular sovereignty are at odds with Hartian grounds of legal authority. The second, positive argument draws on Hans Kelsen’s distinction between static and dynamic legal orders to reveal their deeper structural similarity: Populism and Hartian positivists likewise minimize official discretion and conceptualize law as a conduit for external political decisions. Clarifying this affinity exposes the risks of static legal theories in legitimating populist distortions and underscores the normative urgency of a dynamic understanding of legal order.