Longtermists such as William MacAskill maintain that if we are concerned about human well-being and the longterm future, we should embrace continued technological advancement and development, and that, indeed, one of the most significant threats to longterm human well-being and the well-being of other sentient creatures is technological stagnation – remaining at roughly the present technological level. This paper argues that we should be much more skeptical regarding claims that link continued technological development with positive contributions to well-being. We should take seriously that even if technological development has contributed significantly to improvements in well-being in the past, that we may reach or have already reached a point at which future technological development no longer does so, and that, in that event, thinking about longterm ethical concerns actually recommends developing the capability to slow down, stop, or even roll back (some) technological development.

Many claim that there is an important relationship between consciousness and welfare. Call this general view phenomenalism. One way of fleshing out phenomenalism is to hold that consciousness is what makes one the type of entity that can be noninstrumentally better or worse off in the first place. Consciousness is at least a necessary condition on welfare subjecthood. A different account holds that even if consciousness is not necessary for welfare subjecthood, conscious welfare subjects have a greater welfare capacity. We argue that the most likely source of support for either version of phenomenalism – hedonism about welfare goods and bads – provides no support at all. Along the way, we discuss an alternative view of welfare subjectivity and welfare capacity that does not appeal to consciousness but only to mentality, a view we call mentalism.

In Employment Division v. Smith (1990), the U.S. Supreme Court held that neutral and generally applicable laws would no longer receive strict scrutiny review. Many feared that Smith had severely truncated the protection of the First Amendment Free Exercise Clause. Three years later, however, in a controversial Santerian slaughtering case, Douglas Laycock persuaded a unanimous Supreme Court in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah to highlight an important limitation on the Smith neutrality standard. Both “masked as well as overt” government hostility, targeting, or discrimination against religion are constitutionally “suspect,” Lukumi made clear. Recent Supreme Court free exercise cases have emphasized this limitation. Over the past decade, the European Court of Human Rights and the Court of Justice of the European Union are replaying the same story that played out in the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1980s and 1990s and have gradually weakened their religious freedom provisions into a guarantee of government neutrality alone. In their most recent cases, these pan-European high courts have upheld blatantly discriminatory regulations of Muslim and Jewish ritual slaughtering, favoring animal welfare over religious freedom. These courts need to take a lesson from Laycock’s argument in Lukumi that neutrality requires states not to take sides for or against religion and not to uphold laws that have the mere pretense of neutrality while targeting the core practices of religious minorities.

This article analyzes variation in and metalinguistic commentary surrounding the primary stressed vowel of the place-name ‘Chicago’. Sociolinguistic interview data with fifty-six lifelong Chicagoans from two adjacent neighborhoods reveal both social variation and apparent time evolution in the phonetic manifestation and phonemic patterning of the CHICAGO vowel. Contrastive metalinguistic ideologies substantiate this variation, as different speakers map ‘authentic’ versus ‘inauthentic’ Chicagoness to opposite phonemic variants. While previous work on place-names proposed linkages between place identity and linguistic material that can articulate stances toward geographic areas, we document inverted semiotic mappings among residents who otherwise share the same positive orientation to their neighborhood. We draw upon locally constructed chronotopes to account for the inverse polarization characterizing the CHICAGO vowel. We ultimately argue for dynamic conceptions of place-based linguistic features that attend more closely to the ideologically productive nature of local identity. (Authenticity, place, race, sociolinguistic variation, differentiation, chronotope)

Egalitarianism and prioritarianism are competing views about the ethics of distribution. Both views have wide scopes of concern. But, writing in this journal, Michael Otsuka has discovered a case that seems to show an interesting asymmetry between the limits of egalitarian and prioritarian concern. In that case, intuitively one outcome is better than another (in a respect relevant to the ethics of distribution); prioritarianism can recover that intuitive judgment; but egalitarianism seems unable to recover it. I show, however, that egalitarianism can recover the intuitive judgment in question on a well-motivated basis. That result is of interest because it shows the possibility and prima facie plausibility of a version of egalitarianism with a surprisingly wide scope of concern – one according to which it matters that some are worse off than those who (merely) could have existed.

This article examines the hybrid network structure of the global sustainability governance system, focusing on the evolving relationships between private transnational regulators (PTRs) and intergovernmental organizations (IOs). We argue that a defining feature of this structure is the mutual dependence between PTRs and IOs: PTRs invoke public international law instruments (PILIs) – and, by extension, the authority of the IOs behind them – to bolster their own authority and to enhance the normative force of the standards they promulgate. IOs rely on PTRs to disseminate their norms within corporate settings, thereby strengthening their compliance capacities. This interdependence carries significant synergistic potential. We examine the grounding relationship between PTRs and PILIs/IOs through extensive network analysis based on a specially curated dataset comprising 55 PTRs, 393 private standards, 261 PILIs (including treaties, conventions, and declarations), and 41 IOs. Citation patterns within this network support our thesis. We also offer tentative evidence regarding the second prong of our model and outline directions for future research. Finally, we assess the vulnerabilities of this interdependent structure, highlighting the fragility of the global sustainability legal order in the face of rising nationalism and anti-multilateralist pressures.

Focusing on case studies of Shrewsbury, Chester, York, Coventry, and Bristol, this article analyzes how the concept of the “historic town” emerged in the first half of the nineteenth century. Traditionally a town’s historic identity had been understood in a legal and institutional sense. By the end of the eighteenth century, however, the use of the term “ancient” or “historic” to describe a town had become less a claim to long-standing privileges and traditional importance than an indication of a particular appearance and atmosphere, redolent of an era that was increasingly referred to as “the olden time.” A historic town offered the promise of a certain kind of historical experience and ambience that could be strategically exploited in order to attract visitors, and their custom, in greater numbers. The “invention” of the historic town was most obviously a response to the rapid changes consequent upon urbanization. But we need also to consider other factors, including changing attitudes toward the past and the broader consumption of history; developments in architectural history, particularly a new appreciation for the vernacular domestic architecture of the early modern period; and the rise of domestic tourism, facilitated by the advent of railway travel. Finally, the invention of the historic town is also a story about the early origins of heritage and the emergence of a preservationist ethos.

At the turn of the sixteenth century, the city of Bruges, a considerable trading centre in the County of Flanders, witnessed a noticeable increase in rape prosecutions. Drawing on final judgments by the city magistrates, many of whom imposed the death penalty, this article examines how these prosecutions were shaped by broader concerns for social order and urban prosperity. It argues that deep-rooted anxieties about disorder and deviance among both civic authorities and the wider community fostered a more standardized policy towards sexual violence. This, in turn, enables the reconstruction of the late medieval ‘criminal-rapist’: an outsider associated with brutal and dishonourable violence, deemed particularly intolerable in ‘a city of high repute’.

This article examines how efforts to improve maternal and perinatal health among Britain’s South Asian population served to uphold medical hierarchies and construct post-imperial racial formations. It uses the “Asian Mother and Baby Campaign” (AMBC) to assess state responses to health inequity. The AMBC was set up in 1984 by the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) in conjunction with the Save the Children Fund (SCF). By using the Department of Health and SCF archives, as well as original oral history interviews, this article shows that while the AMBC was designed to make healthcare more accessible, its attempt to “medically integrate” South Asian women helped to pathologize them and place them under medical surveillance. As the testimonies of healthcare professionals, users of the campaign, and women’s health activists show, the AMBC’s vision for healthcare reform was tied to racialized and class-based discourses around citizenship and belonging. This article thus interrogates what campaigns like the AMBC tell us about healthcare spaces and how they recalibrated imperial racial formations in order to manage and maintain racial difference in Britain. It argues that the AMBC created knowledge systems that were oftentimes at odds with community-based expertise. The campaign ultimately shaped South Asian women’s experiences of maternity care, as well as the national dialogue on race and notions of welfare state inclusivity. By focusing on British South Asian women’s healthcare in this way, this article makes a critical contribution to scholarship on race, health citizenship, and the limitations of multicultural ideals in late twentieth-century Britain.

This study of Manchester conservatoire training during and immediately after the Great War is an outcome of the research project ‘Making Music in Manchester’, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and was a collaboration between the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) and community partners, Manchester Central Library and the Hallé Concerts Society. It focuses on musical life and training at the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM) to consider the extent to which the war made a difference to musical life at the College. The first part of this study examines the RMCM in the years leading up to the Great War, starting with the celebrations in the region to mark the twenty-first anniversary of the College in 1914 and examining the typical repertoire in the College’s public performances. Part two focuses on the impact of war on student numbers, gender balance, instruments played and any changes in repertoire. It discusses the conundrum of performing Wagner, on which perspectives differed sharply between Paris and Manchester. The final section examines the impact the temporary presence of ex-service students – who had been given Government grants to study music – had on the ecology of the RMCM and its mission to serve the North of England.

Costa Rica has been one of the most stable democracies in Latin America since 1953. However, the 2022 election gave rise to a populist leadership combining confrontational tactics, attacks on institutions, and pressure on press freedom. While previous studies document democratic backsliding across Latin America, Costa Rica’s case remains understudied. This article proposes the concept of “democracy under strain,” a condition distinct from backsliding, in which systematic executive pressure on democratic conditions coexists with institutional resilience. Drawing on Bermeo’s (2016) framework, I operationalize this concept through three indicators: decline of press freedom, institutional delegitimization, and decreasing citizen support for democracy. Using a mixed-methods strategy and combining Latin American Public Opinion Proyect survey data, press freedom indexes, and journalistic reports, the evidence shows that institutions remain formally intact and citizen disapproval of anti-press aggression is high, yet pressure is sustained and without historical precedent.

States have agreed to pursue ambitious environmental goals such as limiting the rise in global average temperature, halting the loss of biodiversity, protecting the oceans, curbing land degradation, and preventing pollution. In implementing these common objectives, some states take measures that have extraterritorial effects. These impacts sometimes lead to criticism from affected countries, which feel that their interests are being violated or neglected. This article analyzes the potential extraterritorial effects of the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) and assesses the complaints lodged by Indonesia against it. It will use the development of the EUDR as a case study to learn about the issues arising from environmental measures with extraterritorial effects designed to implement internationally agreed environmental objectives. It will also attempt to draw some general conclusions on how states can unilaterally advance these goals while respecting the legitimate interests of third countries.