Amid Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, the human rights community has understandably focused its attention on human rights violations committed by the Russian state. This has, however, left the human rights implications of the martial law Ukraine has put in place for civilians largely unexamined. This essay highlights the ways Ukraine's travel restriction on “battle-aged” civilian men has harmed three overlapping groups—civilian men, the families of the men (including women and children), and trans and nonbinary individuals—and shows that the restriction runs counter to important principles in international human rights and humanitarian law. It then considers the ethical dilemmas faced by the international human rights community in addressing such harms, and the political psychology of rights advocacy that may explain the tendency to underplay this particular set of human rights issues. Nonetheless, the essay ultimately argues that advocates should hold actors—including and perhaps especially those with which they may sympathize—accountable to the human rights standards to which they have pledged.

This article examines the causes and geographical trajectories of the globalisation of vermouth, one of the most famous Made in Italy products in the world. Of all the fortified wines, vermouth stands out for its unique history. Originally a product of Piedmont consumed mainly by the aristocracy and the emerging bourgeoisie, vermouth became the subject of a growing export trade between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, gaining credibility thanks to the prizes won at international exhibitions and the marketing strategies of the main companies in the sector (Martini & Rossi, Carpano, Gancia, Cinzano). Despite the commercial difficulties it experienced in the twentieth century as a result of protectionist measures, the effects of war, the heterogeneous policies applied to the alcoholic beverage industry and widespread imitation and counterfeiting, vermouth has managed to maintain an appeal that has made it an international icon and one of the most resilient products in the medium to long term. This is partly the result of a media representation that was capable of deeply influencing the collective imagination of consumers.

This article investigates changes in the right to social assistance – a means-tested cash support programme, regulated by the Social Services Act – for irregularised migrants over a period of four decades, 1982–2022. The article makes the case that austerity policies have hollowed out the right to support, with significant repercussions for those with irregularised residency status. In doing so, it draws on a range of empirical data to shed light on the dynamics of legal change over time and across various settings, identifying both continuities and critical turning points. The latter include shifts in national or local migration policies, and novel intersections between migration law and social law, epitomised by court judgments that have redrawn the lines of inclusion and exclusion in the sphere of rights holders. The article also highlights continuous issues concerning inconsistencies in the legal sources made used of by courts, neglect of children’s interests and needs, and an application of requirements for participation in work-related activities that disadvantage migrants and citizens alike. Ultimately, the article offers insights into how social rights can be preserved in the context of increasingly restrictive migration and social policies.

In this essay, we bridge the gap between two understandings of the power of the European Union (EU): as a normative actor, guided by ethical principles and empowered by the internal market, and as a geopolitical actor, building its own military capabilities and ready to defend its interests through deterrence and defense. In view of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, we challenge the established “values vs. interests” dichotomy and argue that defending liberal democratic values is an essential foundation of the EU's existing and potential geopolitical power. We show how, over the last decade, opting for short-term expediency and capitulating to a kind of realpolitik “regime indifference” in dealings with authoritarian regimes at home and abroad have severely weakened the EU and also diminished Ukraine's capacities to defend itself as it fights for these shared values on the battlefield. We argue that it is in the EU's strategic interest to strengthen its commitment to values-based foreign and defense policies, revive a meritocratic and credible enlargement process, and work with the United States to provide more effective military assistance to Ukraine in its fight for liberal democratic values and a rules-based European security order.

Both -ity and -ness are frequent and productive suffixes in English that fulfill the same core function: turning adjectives into nouns that denote the state or quality of whatever the adjective denotes. This well-known affix rivalry raises two core questions: 1. What determines the choice between -ity and -ness for a given base word? 2. Are the two affixes synonymous? For the first question, previous work has focused on morphological and phonological properties of the bases, but not their semantics. For question 2, the literature fails to give a convincing answer, with some studies, faced with doublets like ethnicity/ethnicness, arguing for a semantic difference, but most assuming synonymy. Using pretrained distributional vectors, I show empirically first that the semantics of the bases plays a major role in affix selection and second that the two affixes induce similar meaning shifts.

Much mainstream political philosophy assumes that states have a broad right to decide who is granted entry and membership into their political community. On this conventional view, admission of migrants and refugees is understood as mostly a matter of general humanitarian duty or voluntary beneficence rather than as a specific obligation of justice. Through an analysis of climate-related migration from Central America's Dry Corridor to the United States, I argue that many such migrants may in fact be owed admission as reparation for injustice, and that the character of this injustice raises broader challenges for the conventional view.

As part of the “Solar Geoengineering: Ethics, Governance, and International Politics” roundtable, this essay examines dilemmas arising in exploring nonideal scenarios of solar geoengineering deployment. Model-based knowledge about solar geoengineering tells us little about possible climatic responses to malicious, self-interested, or competing deployments, and even less about political or cultural responses outside of the climate system. The essay argues that policy for governing solar geoengineering in a world of multiple states and uneven power relations requires a broader base for solar geoengineering knowledge, beyond that offered by modeling, and a better understanding of nonideal scenarios, especially those motivated by logics beyond reducing climate impacts. It highlights the interests of military and security actors in such knowledge, and the potential for it to facilitate securitization and further reduce the prospect of multilateral collaborative governance of geoengineering in the public interest. The essay concludes that further research can be ethically justified but must be comprehensively governed.

In Morality by Degrees, Alastair Norcross presents contextualist accounts of good and right acts as well as harm and free will. All of his analyses compare what is assessed with “the appropriate alternative,” which is supposed to vary with context. This paper clarifies Norcross's approach, distinguishes it from previous versions of moral contextualism and contrastivism, and reveals difficulties in adequately specifying the context and the appropriate alternative. It also shows how these difficulties can be avoided by moving from contextualism to a kind of contrastivism that does not claim that any alternative is or is not appropriate or relevant.

Anthony D. Smith, in one of his earlier, less debated, works – Nationalism in the 20th Century (1979) – examines phases of nationalism in the modern era, suggesting that nationalism has taken various forms before and during the 20th century. He argues that nationalism’s adaptability is at the core of its persistence, adapting to changing situations such as fascism and communism. As a result of this adaptability, nationalism still flourishes today. This article applies Smith’s theory to explore the interplay between cultural and material factors in the evolution of nationalism in Ireland. It identifies five ideological phases – revolutionary nationalist, protectionist, liberalising, neoliberal, and ecological – to which nationalism has adapted, and within which nationalism has influenced various aspects of Irish society. These phases are situated within a broader ideological and material context, analysing obliquely the Irish language (a core element of Irish nationalism), and related to changing processes of individualization.

Russia's war against Ukraine has had devastating human consequences and destabilizing geopolitical effects. This roundtable takes up three critical debates in connection with the conflict: Ukraine's potential accession to the European Union; the role of Ukrainian nationalism in advancing democratization; and the degree of human rights accountability, not just for Russia, but also for Ukraine. In addition to challenging conventional wisdom on each of these issues, the contributors to this roundtable make a second, critically important intervention. Each essay explores the problem of concealed political and normative commitments within much of the research on Russia's war against Ukraine by unearthing biases intrinsic to particular conceptualizations. The collection also questions the perceived separation between “interests” and “values” that permeates policy analysis. This roundtable further draws attention to the ethical problems that scholars and policymakers bring to policy debates through the occlusion of their preexisting political commitments. It argues for greater transparency around and awareness of the ways in which values, not just evidence, inform research findings and policy positions.

The only extant complete Ekottarikāgama, viz. Zengyi ahan jing 增壹阿含經 T125, has presented modern scholarship with significant challenges. This study departs from the assumption, demonstrated in prior work, that the extant collection is due to *Dharmanandin and Zhu Fonian (and not Saṅghadeva, as wrongly held by tradition and the Taishō). The study first systematically reviews and coordinates prior scholarship on a number of possible anomalous features of T125, such as possible Mahāyāna-ish elements, Sarvāstivādin elements, merged discourses, and material found only late in Pāli and other mainstream canonical parallels. We show that these anomalies are not evenly distributed, but cluster in certain patches of the collection. The second part of the study then presents new, internal (stylistic) evidence that shows that these anomalies tend to be correlated with evidence that associates some discourses in the collection with Zhu Fonian's style in original works, and with later texts. On this basis, we argue that the collection underwent modification after the death of Dao'an 道安 in 385, and suggest, more speculatively, that some of these modifications likely stemmed from the hand of Zhu Fonian.

Through an analysis of the Italian context, this article illustrates how censoring attitudes shaped the modern meaning of pornography between the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the years of the Great War. The difference between the ideas of pornography and obscenity is pointed out through a concise examination of censorship archive documents from the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, the State of the Church, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, followed by an overview about how sexuality was intended by Italian sexologists and moralist intellectuals during the period of nation-building following the unification of 1861. In their writings, pornography is described as a source of corruption, especially for young people, and a social threat to be stopped. From 1891 onwards, mobilisations and struggles against pornography were organised by associations and politicians: these activities and debates, which led to the demand for specific legislation to address this phenomenon, are here reconstructed through newspaper articles and archive documents until the Great War period, when the use of the word pornography became even wider, as well as the debates around it and its social meaning.

This paper analyses the period following the annexation of Veneto to the Kingdom of Italy in 1866 from the standpoint of forest history. Recent historiography has demonstrated that the development of scientific forestry was a crucial factor in the state-building process. Post-unification Veneto provides an opportunity to explore these dynamics from a decentralised perspective, focusing on two critical aspects, relevant in Italy as in many other countries at that time: (a) the administration's attempts to study and manage forest resources, and (b) the forest conflicts arising from economic and institutional transformations in rural areas.

This article analyses the political determinants of antipoverty policy in Italy between 1948 and 2022, providing a long-term analysis of the Italian minimum income scheme. We look for an explanation of that evolution drawing on three theoretical perspectives: veto players, gradual institutional change, and party competition. Our methodology is process tracing which involves the examination of ‘diagnostic’ pieces of evidence for our broad political-historical analysis. We argue that the so called ‘neglect’ phase until 1992 can be explained by the veto players theory, the period after 1992 by gradual institutional change, whereas the final introduction of a minimum income scheme in 2018 is the result of competitive dynamics. The main lesson is that a case study analysis of the politics of anti-poverty policy offers fresh insights into a major challenge in capitalist systems, combating rising poverty trends.

The deaths in the Antarctic of Captains Robert Falcon Scott and Lawrence “Titus” Oates are the most examined in almost all exploration. However, one object, until today unknown, gives a clue to the real story of the last three days of the Terra Nova expedition leaders. This is the sextant that Captain Scott had with him throughout his career until his death, passed from Kathleen Scott to Peter Scott and thence to its current owner. The sextant, its history and the meaning of the relic are set out before the public for the first time.

The role that Roma communities played in the Resistance during the Second World War is a little-known part of history, especially in Italy. Through consideration of their involvement, we can highlight the complexity of the Resistance, and recognise Roma communities as an integral part of Italian society. Roma involvement in the Resistance had distinctive characteristics compared to that of the gagi (non-Roma), particularly in how they viewed it not only as a fight against fascism, but also it as a means of honouring the mulé (the dead). However, only a handful of Roma partisans are recorded in the Ricompart archive, which contains documentation relating to those who participated in Resistance activities. To trace history, personal testimony, in addition to secondary historiography, is key. Roma communities share a rich oral tradition, which forms the basis of a significant part of this article, and which offers an account of civil resistance and armed action both within partisan groups and as part of small formations based on ethnicity. This piece examines the reasons why the Roma partisans who fought and died in the Resistance did not receive full public recognition, a form of historical amnesia of the postwar period rooted in the absence of a cultural ‘defascistisation’ whereby fascist-style racism permeated the Republic.