This paper focuses on an emergency basic income (EBI) as a tool for avoiding financial insecurity during the time of pandemic. The authors argue that paying each resident a monthly cash amount for the duration of the crisis would serve to protect them from the economic fallout.They suggest three reasons why the EBI proposal is particularly well-suited to play an important role in a comprehensive public health response to COVID-19: it offers an immediate and agile response; it prioritizes the most vulnerable in the affected population; and it promotes a solidaristic response to the pandemic crisis. To go beyond the need to shut down and restart an EBI assistance scheme each time a pandemic hits, the authors propose considering turning the program into a permanent feature.

The Federal Republic of Germany and the United States (US) have adopted different models for energy federalism. Germany allocates more authority to the federal government and the US relies on a decentralized cooperative federalism model that preserves key roles for state actors. This article explores and compares the relevance of federal legal structures for renewable energy expansion in both countries. It sets out the constitutional, statutory, and factual foundations in both Germany and the US, and explores the legal and empirical dimensions of renewable energy expansion at the federal and state levels. The article concludes by drawing several comparative lessons about the significance of federal structures for energy transition processes.

This article explores how Qin Dynasty bureaucrats attained accuracy and precision in producing and designing measuring containers. One of the salient achievements of the Qin empire was the so-called unification of measurement systems. Yet measurement systems and the technological methods employed to achieve accuracy and precision in ancient China have scarcely been explored in English-language scholarship. I will examine the material features of the containers and reconstruct the production methods with which the clay models, molds, and cores of the containers were prepared before casting. I also investigate the inscriptions on the containers to determine whether they were cast or engraved. In so doing, I supply the field of Qin history with additional solid evidence about how accuracy and precision were defined in the Qin empire.

The Metropolitan Opera premiere of Richard Wagner's Parsifal in December 1903 stirred what was arguably the first American religious controversy over an artistic event to claim national attention in the twentieth century. Although the outcome was predictable – the protests appeared only to fuel box office success – the significance lies in what this controversy reveals about the music drama's most ardent opponents and supporters at a key moment in American religious history. The 1903 Parsifal controversy unfolded in the midst of a crisis in American Protestantism, as conservative establishment Protestants defended their weakening hold on American culture, and their theologically liberal brethren viewed that same culture as both a source of spiritual inspiration and a cause for redemption. Drawing primarily upon accounts published in the New York press, nationally circulated periodicals (including strongly partisan contributions to the debate by The Musical Courier), and the writings of several prominent Protestant clergy and lay leaders, this reception study argues that the religious controversy surrounding the 1903 Parsifal production was a substantive skirmish in this American Protestant crisis, and brought forward competing interpretations of the music drama which highlighted the cultural implications of what had been, until that point, largely a theological dispute. Conservative response fastened onto elements of the drama found to be sacrilegious, while liberal response was conditioned by its kinship to the nineteenth-century phenomenon of Kunstreligion, and a broad view of redemption that extended beyond the individual soul to the artwork and the artist, and to all of culture.

Empty, abandoned or covered with vegetation – such areas were inherent to the medieval urban space, yet remain overlooked in research. Here, we describe three major types of ‘empty’ space of various origins and functions in Central European towns and suggest how these types can be investigated and interpreted through an interdisciplinary approach combining archaeological, written, pictorial and cartographical sources. We propose a simple interdisciplinary protocol to trace empty spaces in the urban context. This study will help to change our perception of medieval urban space into one that is more dynamic and heterogeneous than commonly believed.

It has been observed that a subset of dative verbs that can express causation of possession such as cwu- ‘give’, ceykongha- ‘offer’ and cikupha- ‘pay’ may be found in the double accusative frame as well as in the DAT(ive)-ACC(usative) frame in Korean. These verbs contrast with transfer of possession verbs such as kennay- ‘hand’ and phal- ‘sell’ and verbs of sending and throwing, which are found in the DAT-ACC frame only. This paper presents a meaning-based account of the limited productivity of the dative/accusative alternation in Korean dative verbs. Building on Croft et al. (2001) and Levin (2004, 2008b), I argue that the semantic classes of dative verbs form an implicational hierarchy pure caused possession > transfer of possession > caused motion, which ranks verbs in terms of the degree of the compatibility with a caused possession event type. I suggest three criteria for compatibility between verb meaning and constructional meaning and show that the analysis of verb–construction pairings proposed here, when combined with an account of variation, provides a unified explanation for verb distribution patterns observed for ditransitive constructions within and across languages and the morphosyntactic expression of recipients of dative verbs in Korean. It accounts for the limited productivity of the dative/accusative alternation in dative verbs in Korean as a consequence of choosing the cut-off point at the highest end of this hierarchy, thus explaining why only the verb class that is most compatible with the caused possession event type, i.e. pure caused possession verbs, may be used ditransitively.

This article addresses an emerging phenomenon in which Brazilian popular musicians have begun to depart from popular song (canção popular) in favour of free improvisation in response to rising authoritarianism. As a case study, I examine the creative project Carta Branca, which brings together popular and experimental musicians from styles such as MPB and hip-hop to perform freely improvised concerts. Following a consideration of the history of Brazilian canção popular, the article discusses how contemporary popular musicians engage in free improvisation as an alternative means of musical critique. I contend that their actions constitute evidence of a broader ‘post-canção’ moment, with the potential to facilitate more flexible and collective ways of responding to Brazil's reactionary moment. The article further discusses how the musicians’ improvisational turn fosters a renewed engagement with a form of cultural improvisation tied to understandings of national identity and being in the world specific to Brazil.

When the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) came to power, one million mainland Chinese were forcibly displaced to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek's regime. Today, this event is still largely considered as a relocation of government or a military withdrawal operation instead of a massive population movement. Contrary to popular belief, many of the displaced mainlanders were not Nationalist elites. Most were common soldiers, petty civil servants, and war refugees from different walks of life. Based on newspapers, magazines, surveys, declassified official documents produced in 1950s Taiwan and contemporary oral history, this article uncovers the complicated relationship between the regime in exile and the people in exile. It argues that the interdependency between the two, in particular between the migrant state and the socially atomized lower class migrants, was formed gradually over a decade due to two main factors: wartime displacement and the need to face an unfriendly local population together.

‘Communities’ – whether local, regional, or transnational – can provide an essential force in the protection of our global underwater cultural heritage (UCH). As an issue of low political concern, with its protection vulnerable to externalities and compliance weaknesses, UCH forms an ideal test case for exploring governance solutions without reliance on the state. It is also an area where communities are increasingly integrated within governance models. This article examines the theoretical justification for reducing reliance on top-down laws to protect natural and cultural heritage, exploring Ostromian arguments for greater community self- and co-regulation. Using this theoretical framework, it highlights numerous advantages of community-oriented governance in the management of a complex global concern, such as UCH protection, and underscores the role and importance of the appropriate design of meta-regulation in steering communities towards wider public objectives. The article also identifies where communities or ‘networks’ have provided important additional protection for UCH, and discusses further policy mechanisms – such as community buy-in, incentivization, and self-regulation – which could help to facilitate community-led governance in the future.

The authors of this article consider the relationship in European prehistory between the procurement of high-quality stones (for axeheads, daggers, and other tools) on the one hand, and the early mining, crafting, and deposition of copper on the other. The data consist of radiocarbon dates for the exploitation of stone quarries, flint mines, and copper mines, and of information regarding the frequency through time of jade axeheads and copper artefacts. By adopting a broad perspective, spanning much of central-western Europe from 5500 to 2000 bc, they identify a general pattern in which the circulation of the first copper artefacts was associated with a decline in specialized stone quarrying. The latter re-emerged in certain regions when copper use decreased, before declining more permanently in the Bell Beaker phase, once copper became more generally available. Regional variations reflect the degrees of connectivity among overlapping copper exchange networks. The patterns revealed are in keeping with previous understandings, refine them through quantification and demonstrate their cyclical nature, with additional reference to likely local demographic trajectories.

In 1927, the Nationalist government launched an ambitious project to transform Nanjing into a modern capital. During this reconstruction process, private lands were seized in the name of public interest for the construction of public works. In the face of opposition from affected landowners, Nationalist leaders shifted the emphasis from ‘public interest’ (gonggong liyi) to ‘public obligation’ (shimin zeren), stressing the duty of urban residents to support capital reconstruction and stigmatizing opponents as anti-development. This article examines compulsory land expropriation in Nationalist China and shows how the government turned discourses of public interest and public obligation into modern land laws.

Yugoslavia’s military internationalism was one of the most practical expressions of the country’s policy of nonalignment. Beginning with Algeria in the 1950s until its demise in the 1990s, Yugoslavia was an ardent supporter of liberation movements and revolutionary governments in Africa and Asia. This article argues that Yugoslav military internationalism was at the heart of Yugoslavia’s efforts to reshape the post-1945 global order and represented an extension of Yugoslav revolution abroad. Military aid was an expression of personal identification of Yugoslavia’s “greatest generation” with decolonization struggle. However, Yugoslav military aid to other countries went beyond a single foreign policy issue. Yugoslav military internationalism touched upon many other issues that included problems related to finances, economic development, the acquisition and transfer of military technology, relations with the superpowers, national security, ideology and politics, and prestige and status in global affairs. By the end of the 1970s, with the departure of the World War II generation and the looming economic crisis, Yugoslav military involvement in the Global South became increasingly driven by economic reasons. Former Yugoslav republics, after a short hiatus in the 1990s during the wars for Yugoslavia’s succession, are still present in the arms trade in the Global South.

This article addresses the normative potential of the principle of sustainability to integrate the rules, principles, and procedures of international law applicable in the Arctic, so that Arctic international law can be posited more holistically and systematically. The holistic and integrative approach towards international law is particularly called for in the context of the Arctic, as the inextricable interconnectedness between its changing natural environments, its societal particularities, and its economic and industrial potential is the fundamental characteristic of the Arctic. In line with the purpose of the special issue, this article takes up a harder case of sustainability, in addressing Arctic mineral resource development. This article posits the principle of sustainability as a principle with an integrative function operating behind the primary norms relating to resource development at the international law level. In response to the claim of fragmented nature of the law at issue, this article calls for an academic examination into the normative function of the sustainability principle to forge the relevant and evolving norms applicable in the specific context of the Arctic mineral resource development towards an integral, coherent whole. This aim will be pursued using the analytical methodology employed by the International Law Commission’s (ILC) work on the “fragmentation of international law” (2006) and the “principle of integration” as identified by the International Law Association’s (ILA) work on the international law relating to sustainable development (2002–12). Finally, as an initial attempt to articulate the legal reasoning for such integration, this article examines the legal institution of environmental impact assessment (EIA) as a tool to present a holistic view of the international law on Arctic mineral resource development.

The last two decades have witnessed a dramatic rise in dissertations, theses, and other academic publications exploring hip-hop music, while college courses on hip-hop history have become commonplace. The growing prominence of hip-hop music in our curricular and research agendas, however, does not necessarily make the study of music at colleges and universities more inclusive. In fact, the increasing attention musicologists and music theorists are paying to rap paradoxically threatens to shore up the value of whiteness in the discipline. This contribution addresses the problem by seeking answers to three interrelated questions: (1) What can the incorporation of hip-hop teach us about the challenges of ‘diversity' in music departments primarily devoted to the study and performance of Western classical music? (2) Does the work of non-Black scholars who write about music made by Black bodies contribute to the freeing of those bodies, or merely represent yet another way that they are consumed by white supremacy? (3) How can popular music studies help to overcome ongoing racial inequality within schools and departments of music? The arrival of hip-hop in music departments represents an opportunity to move in bold new directions. If we want to create a more just future for musicology and music theory, then the study of hip-hop in these fields will need to be accompanied by efforts to introduce forms of ‘significant difference’ that transform our respective disciplines as well as the institutions within which we work.

In the foreword to the first issue of Popular Music and Society, published in 1971, Ray B. Browne wrote that, ‘until very recently … academics, with a few notable exceptions, were by and large indifferent to the role of popular music in their world’; he then recounted a rejection he had received from an academic journal, whose editor had written that, ‘although this might be interesting, we both had to admit that popular songs really had no academic significance’. Today, exactly fifty years later, the position of popular music studies within the academy is far removed from Browne's experience: there are multiple academic journals and scholarly press book series devoted solely to popular music, scholars regularly present papers on popular music topics at academic conferences, and departments across colleges and universities offer an increasingly wide variety of popular music courses. Popular music has even become a viable area of interest within music scholarship.

This contribution reflects on the historical and present condition of the academic field of popular music studies' relationship to the non-academic public, particularly within the context of increased institutional demands for scholarly ‘public engagement'. I begin by discussing various reasons why a continued, sustained engagement with non-academic voices and communities should remain a central priority of popular music studies. I then move to a discussion of certain vantage points and modes of expertise that popular music scholars can offer to broader musical publics, particularly as relating to the political economy of commercial music media and urgent necessities of historical archiving and preservation. In closing, I argue that a renewed commitment to ‘public engagement' also offers a more robust engagement with our field’s own history, and might serve as a way of honouring its intellectual pioneers, many of whom did foundational work well outside the traditional boundaries of the academy.