This study uncovers a previously overlooked chapter in the historiography of civil disobedience: Menachem Begin’s resistance to Israeli emergency legislation between 1948 and 1954, which he argued undermined foundational democratic principles. It presents the first scholarly analysis of Begin’s resistance, contending that it constitutes a clear instance of civil disobedience, embodying its core tenets. At the heart of this historical case study lies a paradigmatic question: how can laws that erode foundational—yet abstract—democratic principles, such as the separation of powers, be effectively resisted, and can such resistance be accommodated within traditional frameworks of civil disobedience? Begin’s struggle brings these questions into sharp relief, illuminating longstanding critiques of the framework’s overly restrictive boundaries and underscoring the tension between theoretical frameworks and political reality. More broadly, the article engages central debates at the intersection of law, politics, and democratic thought. By examining the democratic convictions of a prominent right-wing leader, it contributes to historical scholarship on the role of conservative and right-wing movements in shaping democratic ideologies, while also providing a historical reference point for subsequent ideological transformations and radicalization processes within these movements. Finally, by illuminating the complexities inherent in opposing laws that erode core-yet abstract-democratic principles, this study resonates with contemporary debates on democratic backsliding, offering a historical lens through which civil disobedience has served as a principled response to such challenges.

Does Benatar’s anti-natalism – the view that it is better never to have been – imply that death is better than continued living? This is known as the pro-mortalist question, a compelling, unresolved question surrounding anti-natalist discourse. In order to answer this question, I analyse two theories about the badness of death that Benatar uses to argue against the idea that anti-natalism implies pro-mortalism. The first is that death deprives one of the good things in life. The second is that death annihilates the person. However, I argue that these theories fail to block pro-mortalism. As such, I conclude that Benatar’s anti-natalism implies pro-mortalism, suggesting that if it is better never to have been, then it is better to cease to be.

This article examines the rice distribution network of the Japanese community in Guangdong during the Japanese occupation. It emphasizes the hierarchical patterns and exploitative nature of the rationing system established by the occupation authorities. Securing food was a daily struggle for most people during the Second Sino-Japanese War, as combatants competed for resources in wartime China. In the case of the Japanese Empire, Japanese forces in each occupied area and colony negotiated for external food supplies annually while also deciding to extract more food surpluses from their jurisdictions for local consumption. Food, primarily grains, was centrally controlled and redistributed by the Japanese occupiers. The unprecedented dominance the Japanese held over food supplies benefited certain groups but was detrimental to most local populations. This article focuses on the sources of rice in occupied Guangdong and the methods by which the Japanese collected and allocated it. The inability of the occupying authority to revive the local food economy and secure additional foodstuffs for the region unintentionally severed vital urban lifelines; it also strengthened the self-interested tendencies of the occupying authorities to create exclusive food-supplying networks and rationing systems. In this case, the food demands of certain groups, mainly the Japanese in occupied Guangdong, were met at the expense of others. This article argues that self-serving calculations on the part of the Japanese, rather than mere cruelty and incompetence, should also be considered when discussing the history of occupied Guangdong.

The circumpolar Arctic region has undergone a major geopolitical transformation because of two external forces altering regional security: climate change and increasing great power competition, notably due to the Russian war against Ukraine. Underscored by the de facto suspension of pan-Arctic cooperation after Russia’s expanded invasion in February 2022, the circumpolar Arctic has fragmented into two distinct blocs: the Russian Federation and the Arctic 7 (A7) group of allied democracies. These blocs are informed not just by different security policies between Russia and its polar neighbours but by differing Arctic security public opinion among their populations. Drawing on an original dataset of 164 polls and surveys from all eight Arctic states taken between 2007 and 2024, we outline sub-regional patterns in security public opinion that demonstrate different attitudes between Russia and the A7 with respect to the two defining issues in Arctic regional security: climate change and great power competition between Russia, China, and USA. We find that climate change is universally considered the most serious security issue in the Arctic; Russia is widely seen as a threat to other Arctic states; China is not seen as a major threat nor as particularly relevant to Arctic security; and USA is strongly supported in all Arctic states but Russia. We also conclude that sub-regional analysis may offer clearer insights into Arctic security public opinion than pan-Arctic analyses.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Portugal launched armed campaigns to subdue its African colonies, following the example of neighbouring powers. The Ovambo peoples of southern Angola mounted strong resistance to Portuguese encroachment. Lisbon’s anxieties were compounded by the German presence in South West Africa. In late 1914, the Ovambo seized upon the Portuguese military defeat by German forces to lead an unprecedented uprising. Portugal retaliated in mid-1915 with a large-scale campaign that employed systematic terror. These tactics caused a famine that killed tens of thousands and arguably constituted genocide. This article examines the 1915 campaign in southern Angola, focusing on the devastating impact of Portuguese repression. It reflects on the links between colonialism, violence, and genocide, and considers the political reverberations of this violence in metropolitan Portugal.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, 3000–8000 Africans and African descendants from Brazil relocated to the Bight of Benin and developed a very successful settlement system in what is today Benin, Ghana, Nigeria, and Togo. Kangni Alem’s Les Enfants du Brésil (2017) and Florent Couao-Zotti’s Les Fantômes du Brésil (2006) portray these Brazilian returnee communities, also known as Aguda, who wielded considerable economic and political power. The analysis mobilizes Christin Hess’s concept of reverse diaspora to reveal the complexity of returnee identity and the ambiguous notion of home. Both novels mediate the diasporic returnee experience using specific writing strategies, such as diversity of narrative voices, intertextuality, and a nonlinear structure. Moreover, Alem and Couao-Zotti infuse their novels with historical and ethnological elements that are transformed by literature through what Alem calls “material imagination.” This approach showcases the power of fiction to recover history and reconstruct collective narratives.

In From the Wreck (2017), Australian author and environmentalist Jane Rawson imagines that her great-great-grandfather George Hills, one of the survivors of the shipwreck of the SS Admella, is rescued by a more-than-human shapeshifting being, who subsequently destabilizes his identity as a settler living in colonial South Australia. In this essay, I argue for the importance of bringing together speculative histories, the New Weird, and critical ocean studies, whose intersections are embodied in the more-than-human being as a character in Rawson’s novel. I suggest that this constitutes an important critical tool for interrogating the ways in which we remember settler colonial history in Australia, especially a history that is depicted as independent of the environment and one that marginalizes the relationship between the human and the more-than-human. In this way, I demonstrate how the New Oceanic Weird as a genre can highlight reciprocity on an individual and a collective level to emphasize the entangled and reciprocal histories between the human and the more-than-human alongside those of settler colonialism and environmental destruction.

While M. NourbeSe Philip is often regarded as a black-feminist language poet, her concern about place is equally significant and deserves more critical attention. This essay reads Philip as an Afro-Caribbean poet of place and ponders the geographical implications of her abstract, black-feminism-inspired poetry. Specifically, I focus on her reasoning about “center” and how it engenders formal or verbal matrices in her poems. For Philip, “center” denotes not only the metropole dominating the periphery, but also a place of sufficient being, wholeness, and self-becoming. The second sense of “center” marks the telos of her poetics of place, which, I argue, consists in prevalent and ambiguous uses of the preposition “in” in works like She Tries and Zong!. Center entails an inwardness in response to colonialism-begotten displacement, and Philip’s choreography of “in” affords possibilities for conceptualizing the “placedness” of the Caribbean as well as blackness and black femininity in place.

Worldviews can serve as a resource or an obstacle when navigating intellectual and existential challenges encountered in life. My objective in this article is to identify and analyse the various ways in which people’s worldviews can shift, break down, evolve, or be strengthened by their life experiences. The proposed model of worldview formation identifies five outcomes that an encounter with what I refer to as existentially significant life events can have: worldview compartmentalisation, integration, revision, conversion, and confirmation. I will explain the content and function of these categories, provide concrete examples, and discuss their rationality.

This article examines case studies and anecdotal narratives in which murderers used poisoned food as a weapon, and government officials used their epistemic authority to solve these crimes and bring the perpetrators to justice. Drawn from Zheng Ke’s 鄭克 (fl. 1124–1149) legal compendium Tortoise and Mirror for Judging Cases (Zheyu guijian 折獄龜鑑) and Hong Mai’s 洪邁 (1123–1202) anecdote collection Record of the Listener (Yijian zhi 夷堅志), these narratives reflected the violent threat that poisoners posed to the preservation of gender, familial, social, and political hierarchies. In the Mirror’s legal realm, astute officials used abductive reasoning to expose poisoning plots, thereby restoring the moral fabric of society; in Hong Mai’s Record poisoners are punished by imperial judges as well as by retributive mechanisms of cosmic justice. These six selected case narratives illustrate the permeability of the boundaries that divide the conceptual categories of food, medicine, and poison, and the connections amongst medical, legal, and socio-moral systems of knowledge.

I present a new ontological argument that rests on two evaluative theses, both inspired by Anselm’s Proslogion 2. First, for any F and Q, it is no better for there to be an F, given Q, than it is for there to be something perfect. Second, it is better for there to be something perfect if there is such a thing than if there isn’t. It follows that there is something perfect. I examine these premises, consider some parodies, and suggest possible atheistic replies.

This paper reviews research from the field of language teaching into post observation feedback i.e. the discussion that takes place after an observer has watched a pre-service or in-service teacher’s lesson. Post observation feedback is discussed with reference to four main themes: (1) perceptions of feedback; (2) reflection; (3) relationships (with two sub-themes of identity and facework); and (4) observer training. This review indicates that while the fields of language teaching and applied linguistics are leading research into post observation feedback, there remains important and interesting avenues for future research, which are discussed in this paper.

In settings of deep poverty and inequality, implementing policies that balance urgent needs with long-term development is crucial. What strategies are used to build public support for long-term oriented policies? Evidence shows that both left- and right-wing governments have played a role in the expansion of social policy. This article explores the context and meanings that governments with different ideologies assign to distributive policies, focusing on how these policies are communicated. In particular, I argue that ideology significantly shapes the framing presidents use when discussing and announcing social policies. Left-leaning governments emphasize social inclusion while right-leaning governments stress the productivity-enhancing aspects of these policies. Using text analysis techniques, including à la carte embeddings (ALC) this study analyzes presidential communications from Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile. The findings show how ideology drives communication strategies, revealing that in more polarized societies, presidents distinguish themselves more consistently through how they construct and communicate these policies.

States are increasingly resorting to international cooperative agreements to deter migrants and refugees from irregularly arriving at their borders. Although scholars have shown how these cooperative deterrence policies are undermining important refugee and human rights protections, making migration journeys more dangerous, and securitizing and criminalizing people on the move, what has not been adequately examined is how these cooperative arrangements can bring about normative changes that produce indifference to the suffering of refugees and migrants. This article examines the psychosocial dynamics of cooperative deterrence policies to show how the social processes of authorization, routinization, evasion of responsibility, and dehumanization weaken moral restraints and opportunities for moral contemplation. Governments are using these social processes to implement, legitimize, and promote harmful policies; evade legal responsibility; and obscure the moral implications of their policies. This article sheds new light on the psychosocial effects of cooperative deterrence, the dark side of international cooperation, and the role that indifference plays in maintaining and legitimizing migration deterrence polices.

This article proposes a reframing of the ethics of human intelligence collection (HUMINT). Intelligence officers (IOs) engaged in HUMINT routinely transgress ordinary ethical norms: to serve their nation-state, they lie, manipulate, deceive, and instrumentalize others not only in professional settings (“doing HUMINT”) but also in private life (“living HUMINT”). The currently dominant framework for HUMINT ethics, derived from the just war tradition, does not adequately address key challenges—particularly at the individual level. I therefore argue for a reframing grounded in the lived experience of HUMINT, aimed at real dilemmas faced by conscientious IOs. The proposal has two components: first, expanding the space for individual moral responsibility across all levels of intelligence decision-making; and second, emphasizing peace as a minimal common telos to guide ethical deliberation by both IOs and their agencies. The reframing, I conclude, can enhance the efficiency and accountability of intelligence agencies while providing IOs with a more robust framework to guide their actions.

The consensus on the need to regulate artificial intelligence is clear, but the how remains elusive. Private regulation, as proposed by the tech industry itself, and state regulation, as embodied in the recent EU Artificial Intelligence Act, are two common forms of governance. We advance a third option that has received very little attention to date: professional regulation. Professional regulation is modeled after hybrid public-private regulatory structures found in medicine, such as those put forth by the American Medical Association. Such governance schemes develop both technical and ethical standards, shaping professional training, continuing knowledge, and conduct. We contend that it is the most practical means of ensuring the development of human-centered AI in an era of rapid technological change and intensely opposing views of what regulation ought to do. This article places the responsibility of acting ethically on the group that knows the technology best and can anticipate its effects: AI developers. But unlike other voluntary standards, professional regulation articulates and enforces standards to certify individuals. Professional licensing is an alternative that provides public protections based on privately developed standards that ensure the safety of AI prior to their release.