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'Why is there something rather than nothing?' is a question that is arguably as old as philosophy itself. Nevertheless, despite the fact that it is of perennial philosophical, scientific, and religious interest, it receives less attention than many other classic questions in philosophy. And despite continued fascination with 'the Question', and its status as one of the great intellectual mysteries, there are few academic book-length discussions of the subject. This book serves as the definitive guide to the Question. It includes a discussion of the proper interpretation of the Question, whether it can be expected to have an answer, an overview of the major answers which have been proposed, and, most significantly, a new and innovative explanation for why there is something rather than nothing.
Across history, lotteries were used in political selection to combat corruption, ideological polarization, and inequity in access to governance. Today, democracy seems to be facing similar challenges – are lotteries a potential solution? This Element responds to recent calls to incorporate lotteries in democracy, by analyzing historical cases of their use. We focus on the rationale behind and benefits of lotteries – to prevent elite capture, equalize access to power, and improve deliberation – and then the details of their implementation. Drawing on academic research, our chapters analyze the use of lottery-based selection in pre-modern Greece and medieval Florence, and present original micro-level empirical data on lottery-based selection in the construction of the 1848 Danish constitution and in parliaments in 19th century Europe. We conclude with a discussion of how these analyses inform the use of lotteries in modern day governance. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Popular music and football rank among the most globally widespread and culturally significant practices in contemporary society. While neither defines the other, their intersections reveal a rich site of musical interaction. This Element investigates how and why popular music and football interact within the context of elite-level national league matches. Grounded in observations from several European case matches over the past decade, the Element examines these interactions as they unfold in stadium environments, focusing on three primary modes: intra-type music interactions, inter-type music interactions, and music–match interactions. In doing so, it engages with one of the most pervasive, multi-layered, and contested arenas for the distribution and significance of popular music in everyday life. Particular attention is given to emotionally charged, identity-infused mega-performances by musical amateurs – many of whom may be otherwise musically inactive and overlooked but embrace the stadium as a space for emotional release and collective expression.
What was fiction in the Roman world – and how did ancient readers learn to make sense of it? This book redefines ancient fiction not as a genre but as a sociocultural practice, governed by the institutions of Greco-Roman education. Drawing on modern fiction theory, it uncovers how fables, epic, and rhetorical training cultivated “fiction competence” in readers from childhood through advanced studies. But it also reveals how the ancient novels – including Greek romance, fictional biography, and the fragmentary novels – subverted the very rules of fiction pedagogy they inherited. Through incisive close readings of a wide array of canonical and paraliterary texts, this book reframes the classical curriculum as the engine of literary imagination in antiquity. For classicists, literary theorists, and anyone interested in ancient education, it offers a provocative reassessment of fiction's place in cultural history – and of how readers learned to believe, disbelieve, and decode narrative meaning.
There is a widespread assumption that both ethnicity itself and ethnic conflict, are inevitable. Yet, we know very little about how ethnic identifications function in bureaucratic terms in Africa. The stakes of this problem are rapidly escalating in moves to digital identification and population knowledge systems. Focusing on Kenya, this study provides an urgently needed exploration of where ethnic classifications have come from, and where they might go. Through genealogies of tools of ethnic identification – maps, censuses, ID cards and legal categories for minorities and marginalised communities – Samantha Balaton-Chrimes challenges conventional understandings of classifications as legible. Instead, she shows them to be uncertain and vague in useful ways, opening up new modes of imagining how bureaucracy can be used to advance pluralism. Knowing Ethnicity holds important insights for policymakers and scholars of difference and governmentality in postcolonial societies, as well as African and ethnic politics.
Criminal Law Perspectives: From Principles to Practice provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to criminal law for undergraduate and postgraduate students. It takes a comparative approach to the law, focusing on New South Wales, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and the Commonwealth Criminal Code, as well as the South Australian jurisdiction. Now in its second edition, Criminal Law Perspectives maintains its logical structure and clear explanations of complex concepts. It has been updated to include major developments in the law, including affirmative consent reforms, the criminalisation of coercive control and industrial manslaughter offences. Comprehensive jurisdictional extracts and relevant case examples are used to illustrate key principles of criminal law explored throughout the book. Students are encouraged to reflect and develop their problem-solving skills by engaging with the various features in each chapter, including review questions, case questions, hints and tips, and long-form end-of-chapter problem questions.
The Romantic-era witch was a remarkably flexible symbol of political and social disorder. The then-recent seventeenth-century witch hunts had already revealed deep anxieties about the subversive potential of women, and the witches who stalk the pages of Gothic poetry and prose or glare menacingly from works of art by Henry Fuseli and William Blake embody revolutionary anger and the possibility of radical social transformation. Despite the fears surrounding such figures, however, the Romantic period also saw witchcraft open up in conceptually new ways, enabling writers and artists to envision alternative means of interacting in the world that were not predicated on the subordination of women and other marginalized groups. Here, Orianne Smith embarks on an interdisciplinary reimagining of witchcraft, women's writing, religion, and social reform, providing original insights on the history of witchcraft and its influence on public discourse, literature and art.
Moving beyond familiar narratives of abolition, Xia Shi introduces the contentious public presence of concubines in Republican China. Drawing on a rich variety of historical sources, Shi highlights the shifting social and educational backgrounds of concubines, showing how some served as public companions of elite men in China and on the international stage from the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth century. Shi also demonstrates how concubines' membership in progressive women's institutions was fiercely contested by China's early feminists, keen to liberate women from oppression, but uneasy about associating with women with such degraded social status. Bringing the largely forgotten stories of these women's lives to light, Shi argues for recognition of the pioneering roles concubines played as social wives and their impact on the development of gender politics and on the changing relationship between the domestic and the public for women during a transformative period of modern Chinese history.
Every day, judges determine vital questions about 'addiction', 'drugs', and the rights of those who use them. Despite the law's crucial role in handling drug 'problems', and in shaping drug practices, effects and outcomes, drug scholars have often overlooked case law. In a rapidly changing drug policy landscape, how is the law managing drug effects and harms, stigma, addiction, agency and responsibility? Why do we regulate drugs? Are drug offenders responsible for their actions? Is drug use a disability? Is drug treatment a human right? Do drugs cause harm? And might drug law itself be harmful? Authors in this volume take a variety of approaches to these questions and more. Drawing on critical theory, all consider new ways of thinking about 'drug problems'. This vital new collection enables a deeper, critical understanding of how the law 'works' to shape knowledge about, as well as 'judge', drug use and its effects.
This Element aims to provide evidence-based, research-informed applications of translanguaging pedagogies across various multilingual classroom contexts. By offering both theoretical implications and specific examples of translanguaging in action, the Element aims to help educators to implement translanguaging pedagogy that challenges monolingual norms in educational institutions. The Element also explores new theoretical notions derived from translanguaging, such as translanguaging sub-spaces, transpositioning, transknowledging, transmodalities, transculturing, transbordering, transsemiotising, and transprogramming. Additionally, it critically examines various methodological approaches for researching translanguaging in classroom settings, proposing a combination of Multimodal Conversation Analysis and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis to capture the complexity of classroom translanguaging practices. This Element concludes by asserting that adopting a translanguaging perspective is an ethical and pedagogical imperative, providing the essential theoretical and methodological frameworks for creating equitable, inclusive, and transformative multilingual learning environments.
This Element examines Tian Qinxin (1969– ), one of the most prominent theatre directors in contemporary China, and her significant contribution to the development of mainstream Chinese theatre in the 21st century. Since her debut productions in the late 1990s, Tian has cultivated a distinctive directorial style, marked by a syncretic fusion of Western and traditional Chinese theatrical elements. While she has worked across a variety of genres, her primary focus has been on stage adaptations. Adaptation is not only a defining feature of her theatrical practice but also a central aspect of her professional life, where shifting political and cultural contexts necessitate her “performance” of various expressions of both femininity and masculinity. Tian's remarkable adaptability enables her to skillfully navigate the evolving landscape of Chinese theatre, the demands of state cultural policy, and the requirements of the commercial theatre sector.
Thomism is a philosophical and theological body of ideas which arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274). It holds that there are enduring philosophical questions about reality, knowledge and value; that Thomism offers an ever-relevant set of answers to these; and that these answers constitute an integrated philosophical system. With periodic revivals, Thomism has exerted influence over philosophical and theological thinkers for many centuries. In this volume, leading specialists in Aquinas's thought revisit Thomism and assess how it is viewed today. They analyse its key features and show how it can speak to modern concerns not only in philosophy and theology, but also in contemporary science, biology and political theory. The volume will appeal to scholars and graduate students in philosophy, theology and related disciplines, and to all who are interested in the continuing power and development of Thomism.
Past climate fluctuations significantly shaped human ways of life. This Element reconstructs the Southern Levant climate (ca. 1300–300 BCE) using high-resolution, well-dated paleoclimate records. Results show a 150-year arid phase ending the Late Bronze Age, likely driving the collapse of eastern Mediterranean complex societies. The Iron Age I saw a return to humid climate conditions, fostering highland settlement expansion and supporting the rise of the biblical kingdoms. This was one of the region's most profound cycles of collapse and revival. During Iron Age II, climate conditions were moderate, similar to today. The Achaemenid period began with brief aridity, followed by renewed humidity. Pollen evidence, along with additional data such as charcoal remains, was employed to trace environmental changes, including variations in the composition of natural vegetation. Human impacts on the environment were also identified, including fruit tree cultivation, deforestation, overgrazing, the introduction of new plant species, and landscape terracing.
Drawing on decades of expertise alongside a large dataset of assessment results, this book offers an integrated, lifespan perspective on dyslexia and its lasting effects. It reframes dyslexia as an information processing difficulty, with working memory weakness at its core, leading to cognitive overload in learning, work, and everyday life. Aimed at individuals with dyslexia as well as educators, coaches, counsellors, and career advisors, the authors provide practical, evidence-based recommendations for managing associated challenges with a particular focus on strategy development and the use of assistive technology. Bridging neuroscience, cognitive psychology and educational psychology, the text promotes scientific understanding of dyslexia in all its manifestations.
Between 1914 and 1918, American children were mobilized to support the war effort through youth organizations such as the American Junior Red Cross and the United States School Garden Army. Operating across local, state, and federal levels-and often using schools as their primary platform, these organizations pursued multiple agendas, including fostering loyalty, altruism, and patriotism. While some viewed this movement as an effort to cultivate humanitarian values from an early age, others seized the opportunity presented by the European war to promote a broader sense of American identity and foster a stronger sense of belonging among the diverse ethnic, cultural, and linguistic groups that populated the United States. Blending social, cultural, and political history, Emmanuel Destenay sheds light on the unparalleled contribution American children made through World War I to protect the nation, and analyzes why adults campaigned tirelessly for children's hearts, minds, and energies during wartime.
Across the early modern Atlantic world, there were commodities just as valuable as sugar, tobacco or cotton: news and information. However, crossing an ocean beset by wars, pirates and bad weather made transoceanic communications irregular at best, posing significant challenges to the weekly European news cycle. With infrequent access to information, publishers had to navigate between speculation and confirmation, printing everything they could without losing credibility or customers. Michiel van Groesen explores this 'culture of anticipation' across the Atlantic world in Spain, Portugal, France, the Low Countries and England and also in the urban information centres of Renaissance Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. He argues that news from the Atlantic world underpinned all transatlantic exchanges, giving newspapers their rightful place in Atlantic history, and the Atlantic world its place in the history of news.