Daniel Immerman has recently put forward a novel account of harm, the Worse than Nothing Account. We argue that this account faces fatal problems in cases in which an agent performs several simultaneous actions. We also argue that our criticism is considerably more powerful than another one that has recently been advanced.

What follows is a sketch of three of the main claims of How to Pool Risks across Generations: The Case for Collective Pensions (Otsuka 2023) with which my symposium commentators critically engage: namely, that (1) by efficiently pooling risks across as well as within generations, (2) collective pensions can realize a form of Rawlsian reciprocity involving fair terms of cooperation for mutual advantage, (3) through the voluntary binding agreements of individuals to join a mutual association that provides social insurance. I respond to their challenges to these claims in my replies that follow their contributions.

As the Arctic warms and growing seasons start to lengthen, governments and producers are speculating about northern “climate-driven agricultural frontiers” as a potential solution to food insecurity. One of the central ecological factors in northern spaces, however, is permafrost (perennial frozen ground), which can drive cascading environmental changes upon thaw. Considering the land requirements for expanded agriculture and the unique challenges of northern farming, national and subnational governments are grappling with and facilitating this speculative boom in different ways. Analysing agricultural land use policy instruments from the US State of Alaska and the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Russia, this paper investigates if and how permafrost factors into their legal frameworks and what impacts this has on agricultural development, conservation, and food security. Alaska and the Republic of Sakha were chosen for reasons including both having at least 100 years of agricultural history on permafrost soils, both containing extensive amounts of permafrost within their landmasses and both containing permafrost that is ice-rich. Comparing legal texts as indicative of state capacities and strategies to govern, the paper finds that the two regions diverge in how they understand and regulate permafrost, and suggests that these approaches could benefit from one another. Bringing together geoclimatic and sociocultural concerns to problematise static policy divisions, this paper gestures to a path forward wherein subnational policy can balance needs for food, environmental, and cultural security in the North.

In institutional design, public policy and for society as a whole, securing freedom of choice for individuals is important. But how much choice should we aim for? Various theorists argue that above some level more choice improves neither wellbeing nor autonomy. Worse still, psychology research seems to suggest that too much choice even makes us worse off. Such reasons suggest the Sufficiency View: increasing choice is only important up to some sufficiency level, a level that is not too far from the level enjoyed by well-off citizens in rich liberal countries today. I argue that we should reject the Sufficiency View and accept Liberal Optimism instead: expanding freedom of choice should remain an important priority even far beyond levels enjoyed in rich liberal countries today. I argue that none of the arguments given for the Sufficiency View work. Neither psychological evidence nor any broader social trends support it. If anything, they support Liberal Optimism instead. I also show why further increases are possible and desirable, and sketch some implications for debates around immigration, economic growth, markets and the value of community.

Comparative speech-act studies have found that British English directives tend to include the pragmatic marker please at about twice the rate of American English directives. Nevertheless, lexical please is often as frequent in American English corpora as in British ones – indicating that sincere directives are only part of this pragmatic marker’s story. This article reports on British and American please usage in the Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE; Davies 2013). GloWbE shows similar numbers of non-verbal please on American and British websites, but also differences in what please is used for. This contributes to a larger picture of pragmatic variation in which British English uses a more bleached and routine please, whereas American please might be more at home effecting im/politeness in contexts of greater face-threat.

This article argues that in the age of social media, the affective power of music can dare listeners to become complicit with misogyny and right-wing populism. It investigates the weaponization of dubstep in internet trolling strategies by examining the genre's relationship with a type of user-generated content called ‘Major League Gaming [MLG] Montage Parodies’. Mixing musical and audiovisual analysis with digital methods, the article considers the origins of MLG Montage Parodies and then investigates the content's development from 2011 to 2016. As a memetic timbral topic, the dubstep drop was initially deployed in MLG Montage Parodies as a form of pubescent power play to troll young male gamers. But then in 2014, it was redeployed as anti-feminist ammunition amid the toxic masculinity of #GamerGate. Finally, it was weaponized by alt-right trolls during the 2015–2016 ‘Great Meme War’ that accompanied the US Presidential Race. The closing remarks reflect on the ethical, ontological, and disciplinary implications of the research and issue a call for memetic musical literacy.

This article explores Nikos Skalkottas's engagement with stylistic accessibility after his return to Greece from Germany in 1933. It considers the composer's self-proclaimed efforts to establish a more accessible, tonal musical style in the context of Greek sociopolitical upheaval and the political culture of anti-fascist resistance. Centring on the period between 1947 and 1949, this shift is viewed in terms of the impact of Socialist Realism in Greece for the first time. This article excavates the promulgation of Socialist Realism in Greece amid the anti-fascist resistance and re-evaluates Skalkottas's works and his published and unpublished writings as testifying to these unique political and cultural circumstances. It focuses in particular on Skalkottas's Classical Symphony in A for wind orchestra, two harps, and lower strings composed in 1947; a major work that continues to occupy a peripheral position in existing Greek and Anglophone scholarship on the composer.

There is tension between manipulation of national identity construction and agency in the literature on ingroup identification, especially in authoritarian contexts. In China, the past is very relevant with regards to legitimacy of the Communist Party. Yet, we cannot just assume that what the state propagates is what can also be found at the bottom-up level. This article analyses social representations of history in China combining the top-down perspective of state education policies and curated historical narratives to the bottom-up perspective formed through analyzing two student surveys, collected first in 2007 and again in 2011-2012, and 11 interviews. Earlier research indicates that in most countries representations of history concentrate on negative issues and their time span is short. Chinese representations of history are divided into narratives of glory and humiliation, and respondents have a much longer perspective to national history than typical participants in international surveys. Finally, although problematic periods such as the Cultural Revolution get less coverage in political speeches and school textbooks, they are not forgotten among students. Furthermore, the view that people should have their own ideas about history and China rather than having to adopt the government promoted narrative was visible in multiple student interviews.

Who should decide what passes for disinformation in a liberal democracy? During the COVID-19 pandemic, a committee set up by the Dutch Ministry of Health was actively blocking disinformation. The committee comprised civil servants, communication experts, public health experts, and representatives of commercial online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. To a large extent, vaccine hesitancy was attributed to disinformation, defined as misinformation (or data misinterpreted) with harmful intent. In this study, the question is answered by reflecting on what is needed for us to honor public reason: reasonableness, the willingness to engage in public discourse properly, and trust in the institutions of liberal democracy.

The founding emperor of the Han envisioned the noble rank (lie hou) as a system rewarding “merit” (gong) that mainly referred to military achievements. However, the criteria for granting the noble rank changed considerably throughout the Han. This is reflected by the various categories of nobles in the Han shu tables: meritorious ministers (gongchen hou), the kings’ sons (wangzi hou), and the imperial affines and favorites (waiqi enze hou), as well as the new category of eunuch nobles (huanzhe hou) in the Eastern Han. This article argues that the Han shu tables should be read as one of the multiple narratives about the noble rank and merit during the Han rather than an objective statistical summary. Whereas the Han shu tables emphasize Gaozu’s original definition of merit, the imperial edicts granting the noble rank kept reinterpreting merit to serve the court’s contemporary needs. Recently excavated Han manuscripts provide a third way of viewing merit based on the length of service.

This article interrogates an overlooked claim made by Mario Bauzá, that the impact of Latin American musics on a fundamental change in the rhythm of twentieth-century music has been written out of history. After presenting four original analytical definitions, a corpus analysis establishes that a transition occurred from swung-quaver, compound-metre, and crotchet ‘monorhythm’ to straight-quaver polyrhythm in US popular music, culminating in early 1960s rock ’n’ roll. Focusing on Paul Anka's ‘Diana’ and the style ‘rock-a-cha-cha’, a combination of music analysis and reception history demonstrates that Afro-Latin musics were the predominant influence on the rhythmic transformation – which was erased by rock historians, influenced by three factors. This impact of Latin American music and migration is theorized in terms of cosmopolitanism. The article concludes that the impact of Latin American music on the United States is not a superficial ‘tinge’: it prompted a paradigm shift in the rhythm of twentieth-century music.

This study examines settlement evidence from south-eastern Norway during the Late Neolithic and Bronze Age, revealing unique aspects of regional architectural and social organization. Notably, smaller and uniform house sizes suggest a divergence from the monumental power displays seen in southernmost Scandinavia. The uniformity in house sizes and significant spatial distances between contemporary houses imply a social structure akin to segmentary societies with symmetrical power relations, reliant on mobility and mixed subsistence practices. Changes in settlement patterns and house sizes during the Late Bronze Age could have been the result of increased social stratification or responses to population growth. Overall, the settlement patterns and house sizes in south-eastern Norway reflect a society that, while connected to the broader Nordic Bronze Age world, developed distinct social and economic strategies. These findings highlight the importance of considering regional variations and responses to environmental and social challenges in prehistoric societies.