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1941 results in Cambridge Elements

Page 6 of 98

What is the Middle East?

What is the Middle East?
  • The Theory and Practice of Regions
  • Marc Lynch
  • Published online:
    03 February 2025
    Print publication:
    20 February 2025
  • The Middle East has traditionally been understood as a world region by policy, political science, and the public. Its borders are highly ambiguous, however, and rarely explicitly justified or theorized. This Element examines how the current conception of the Middle East emerged from colonialism and the Cold War, placing it within both global politics and trends within American higher education. It demonstrates the strategic stakes of different possible definitions of the Middle East, as well as the internal political struggles to define and shape the identity of the region. It shows how unexamined assumptions about the region as a coherent and unified entity have distorted political science research by arbitrarily limiting the comparative universe of cases and foreclosing underlying politics. It argues for expanding our concept of the Middle East to better incorporate transregional connections within a broader appeal for comparative area studies.
The Rise of Mass Parties, Liberal Italy, and the Fascist Dawn (1919–1924)

The Rise of Mass Parties, Liberal Italy, and the Fascist Dawn (1919–1924)
  • Goffredo Adinolfi
  • Published online:
    03 February 2025
    Print publication:
    31 March 2025
  • Through an in-depth study of the electoral process, the aim of this Element is to analyse the political transformations that occurred in Italy from 1919 to 1924. After the takeover of the low chamber by the mass integration parties in 1919 - Popular and Socialist - concerns grew within the liberal camp. The argument of this Element is that the conservatives failed to adapt and remain competitive in a system characterised by universal suffrage, thereby paving the way for the rise of the fascists. The electoral path to power begins with the political elections of 1921, continues through the renewal of the municipal councils in 1922–23, and concludes with the elections of 1924 when Mussolini managed to take control of the low chamber. The Duce assumed the role of head of the nation, presenting a list of candidates-the Listone-that included members of the Fascist Party and the former politica elite.
Institutions and Environment in Ancient Southern East Asia (3000 BCE to 300 CE)

Institutions and Environment in Ancient Southern East Asia (3000 BCE to 300 CE)
  • Maxim Korolkov
  • Published online:
    01 February 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
    • Element
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  • Over the past decades, archaeological exploration of southern China has shattered the image of primitive indigenous people and their pristine environments. It is known, for example, that East Asia's largest settlements and hydraulic infrastructures in the third millennium BCE were located in the Yangzi valley, as were some of the most sophisticated metallurgical centers of the following millennium. If southern East Asia was not a backward periphery of the Central Plains, then what created the power asymmetry that made possible 'China's march toward the Tropics'? What did becoming 'Chinese' practically mean for the local populations south of the Yangzi? Why did some of them decide to do so, and what were the alternatives? This Element focuses on the specific ways people in southern East Asia mastered their environment through two forms of cooperation: centralized and intensive, ultimately represented by the states, and decentralized and extensive, exemplified by interaction networks.
Causation in Physics

Causation in Physics
  • Christopher Gregory Weaver
  • Published online:
    31 January 2025
    Print publication:
    27 February 2025
    • Element
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  • Causation in Physics demonstrates the importance of causation in the physical world. It details why causal mastery of natural phenomena is an important part of the effective strategies of experimental physicists. It develops three novel arguments for the viewpoint that causation is indispensable to the ontology of some of our best physical theories. All three arguments make much of the successes of experimental physics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The Dynamic Metacapabilities Framework

The Dynamic Metacapabilities Framework
  • Introducing Quantum Management and the Informational View of the Firm
  • Harold Paredes-Frigolett, Andreas Pyka
  • Published online:
    31 January 2025
    Print publication:
    20 February 2025
  • The view of dynamic capabilities in evolutionary economics as being based on capabilities comprised of routines has so far precluded their integration in evolutionary economics. This Element contributes to such integration by introducing the dynamic metacapabilities framework. Borrowing from quantum mechanics, dynamic metacapabilities assume that resources and capabilities, rather than being created ex-nihilo, result from bundles of information 'decohering ' to bundles of resources and capabilities as new information becomes available to the firm. Operationalized by a management paradigm we call 'quantum management, ' dynamic metacapabilities contribute to integrating dynamic capabilities in evolutionary economics and to resolving the ongoing debate on what dynamic capabilities are by postulating an informational view of the firm according to which firms 'evolve ' with strategy throughout a lifecycle governing the transition from dynamic 'metacapabilities ' to dynamic capabilities and onto ordinary capabilities.
The City Beautiful and the Globalization of Urban Planning

The City Beautiful and the Globalization of Urban Planning
  • Ian Morley
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • During the past one hundred or so years, urbanists have composed grand narratives regarding the development of urban design and the international dissemination of planning models. Yet, building upon this historiography, whilst the transnational dimension of modern city planning has centred itself upon the diffusion of the British garden city, far less attention has been put upon the global reach of the American City Beautiful. Owing to the ethnocentricity of American planning history literature, thus, the chronicle of the City Beautiful has anchored itself, literally and figuratively, to the North American continent. Yet, in truth, grand American-inspired plans were implemented throughout the world; indeed, they were carried out long after the City Beautiful's popularity had waned in North America, and they were executed under a variety of cultural and political conditions.
Gauge Theory and the Geometrisation of Physics

Gauge Theory and the Geometrisation of Physics
  • Henrique De Andrade Gomes
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • This Element is broadly about the geometrization of physics, but mostly it is about gauge theories. Gauge theories lie at the heart of modern physics: in particular, they constitute the Standard Model of particle physics. At its simplest, the idea of gauge is that nature is best described using a descriptively redundant language; the different descriptions are said to be related by a gauge symmetry. The over-arching question this Element aims to answer is: why is descriptive redundancy fruitful for physics? I will provide three inter-related answers to the question: ``Why gauge theory?'', that is: why introduce redundancies in our models of nature in the first place? The first is pragmatic, or methodological; the second is based on geometrical considerations, and the third is broadly relational.
Probability and Inductive Logic

Probability and Inductive Logic
  • Antony Eagle
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • Reasoning from inconclusive evidence, or 'induction', is central to science and any applications we make of it. For that reason alone it demands the attention of philosophers of science. This element explores the prospects of using probability theory to provide an inductive logic: a framework for representing evidential support. Constraints on the ideal evaluation of hypotheses suggest that the overall standing of a hypothesis is represented by its probability in light of the total evidence, and incremental support, or confirmation, indicated by the hypothesis having a higher probability conditional on some evidence than it does unconditionally. This proposal is shown to have the capacity to reconstruct many canons of the scientific method and inductive inference. Along the way, significant objections are discussed, such as the challenge of inductive scepticism, and the objection that the probabilistic approach makes evidential support arbitrary.
Self and Body in Early East Asian Thought

Self and Body in Early East Asian Thought
  • Mark Edward Lewis
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • This Element examines evolving methods of cultivating the embodied self, including healing diseases and creating a superior person, in late Warring States and early imperial East Asia. It analyses many topics, including the textualization of bodily regimens and therapies, their systematization, their dissemination among different (and sometimes rival) social groups, and the diversity of traditions – religious, pharmacological, nourishing of life – that contested and combined to form a hegemonic medical practice. These topics in turn feature several issues: models of the body, regimens of cultivating and extending vitality, models of disease, and therapies for these ailments. All these ideas will be refined and extended through comparison with early Western medical traditions.
Emigration States

Emigration States
  • Migration-Development Policymaking in the Asia-Pacific
  • Matt Withers
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • Guestworker migration has become an increasingly prominent feature within the economic landscape of the Asia-Pacific. Longstanding regional disparities have underscored the emergence of fragile remittance economies where a structural reliance on labour-export has offered an unsustainable 'fix' for stubborn developmental challenges. Combining political-economic and Foucauldian frames of analysis, this Element reconciles the macroeconomic contradictions of remittance economies with the political logics bound up in emigration policymaking, contending that new modalities of governance have emerged in the transition from developmental to emigration states. Comparing the policy histories of four diverse remittance economies in the region – Myanmar, the Philippines, Samoa, and Sri Lanka – it frames emigration policies as complex, inward-facing interventions that simultaneously promote and constrain mobility to address counterpoised economic and political pressures. Important variations are explored though the example of gendered migration bans, whereby emigration states have situated women's bodies as sites for resolving contextually specific social tensions accompanying labour-export.
Historiographic Reasoning

Historiographic Reasoning
  • Aviezer Tucker
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • Historiographic reasoning from evidentiary inputs is sui generis. Historiography is neither empirical, nor self-knowledge, nor a genre of fiction or ideology. Historiographic reasoning is irreducible to general scientific or social science reasoning. The book applies Bayesian insights to explicate historiographic reasoning as probable. It distinguishes epistemic transmission of knowledge from evidence from the generation of detailed historiographic knowledge from multiple coherent and independent evidentiary inputs in three modular stages. A history of historiographic reasoning since the late 18th century demonstrates that there was a historiographic scientific revolution across the historical sciences in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The underdetermination of historiography by the evidence, counterfactual historiographic reasoning, and false reasoning and other fallacies are further explained and discussed in terms of the probabilistic relations between the evidence and historiography.
Opinion Pooling

Opinion Pooling
  • Lee Elkin, Richard Pettigrew
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
    • Element
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  • Disagreement is a common feature of a social world. For various reasons, however, we sometimes need to resolve a disagreement into a single set of opinions. This can be achieved by pooling the opinions of individuals that make up the group. In this Element, we provide an opinionated survey on some ways of pooling opinions: linear pooling, multiplicative pooling (including geometric), and pooling through imprecise probabilities. While we give significant attention to the axiomatic approach in evaluating pooling strategies, we also evaluate them in terms of the epistemic and practical goals they might meet. In doing so, we connect opinion pooling to some philosophical problems in social epistemology and the philosophy of action, illuminating different perspectives one might take when figuring out how to pool opinions for a given purpose. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Mathematical Notations

Mathematical Notations
  • Dirk Schlimm
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • This Element lays the foundation, introduces a framework, and sketches the program for a systematic study of mathematical notations. It is written for everyone who is curious about the world of symbols that surrounds us, in particular researchers and students in philosophy, history, cognitive science, and mathematics education. The main characteristics of mathematical notations are introduced and discussed in relation to the intended subject matter, the language in which the notations are verbalized, the cognitive resources needed for learning and understanding them, the tasks that they are used for, their material basis, and the historical context in which they are situated. Specific criteria for the design and assessment of notations are discussed, as well as ontological, epistemological, and methodological questions that arise from the study of mathematical notations and of their use in mathematical practice.
Constructing Experience

Constructing Experience
  • Expectation and Attention in Perception
  • Jason Clarke
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • This Element examines the influence of expectation and attention on conscious perception. It explores the debate on whether attention is necessary for conscious perception by presenting empirical evidence from studies on inattentional blindness, change blindness, and the attentional blink. While the evidence strongly suggests that attention is necessary for conscious perception, other research has shown that expectation can shape perception, sometimes leading to illusory experiences where predicted stimuli are perceived despite their absence. This phenomenon, termed 'expectation awareness', suggests that attention may not be necessary for all conscious experiences. These findings are explored within the predictive processing framework, where the brain is characterized as a prediction engine, continuously updating its internal models to minimize prediction errors. Integrating findings from psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, this Element provides a predictive processing model of how attention and expectation construct perceptual reality. It also discusses clinical and theoretical implications and suggests future research.
Bayesian Models of the Mind

Bayesian Models of the Mind
  • Michael Rescorla
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • Bayesian decision theory is a mathematical framework that models reasoning and decision-making under uncertain conditions. The Bayesian paradigm originated as a theory of how people should operate, not a theory of how they actually operate. Nevertheless, cognitive scientists increasingly use it to describe the actual workings of the human mind. Over the past few decades, cognitive science has produced impressive Bayesian models of mental activity. The models postulate that certain mental processes conform, or approximately conform, to Bayesian norms. Bayesian models offered within cognitive science have illuminated numerous mental phenomena, such as perception, motor control, and navigation. This Element provides a self-contained introduction to the foundations of Bayesian cognitive science. It then explores what we can learn about the mind from Bayesian models offered by cognitive scientists.
On Believing and Being Convinced

On Believing and Being Convinced
  • Paul Silva Jr.
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • Our doxastic states are our belief-like states, and these include outright doxastic states and degreed doxastic states. The former include believing that p, having the opinion that p, thinking that p, being sure that p, being certain that p, and doubting that p. The latter include degrees of confidence, credences, and perhaps some phenomenal states. But we also have conviction (being convinced simpliciter that p) and degrees of conviction (being more or less convinced that p). This Element shows: how and why all of the outright doxastic states mentioned above can be reduced to conviction thresholds; what degrees of conviction fundamentally are (degreed reliance-dispositions); why degrees of conviction are not credences; when suspending a belief is compatible with continuing to believe; and the surprising extent to which Kant endorsed the theory of conviction that emerges in this Element.
Lowcountry Conjure Magic

Lowcountry Conjure Magic
  • Historical Archaeology on a Plantation Slave Quarter
  • Sharon K. Moses
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • Cat Island, South Carolina, was once the location of slave trade activities, including capture of Native Americans for export and the rise of plantations in the Lowcountry for indigo and rice production, from the sixteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries. This Element examines the Hume Plantation Slave Street Project led by the author, and archaeological evidence for hoodoo magic and ritual practices involving “white magic” spells used for protection and treatments for illness and injury, and, alternately, for 'black magic,' in spells used to exact harm or to kill. This Element is intended as a contribution to the collective knowledge about hoodoo magic practices in the Lowcountry, centered on the Hume Plantation grounds during this period of American history. It is an attempt to examine how attitudes and practices may have changed over time and concludes with a look at select contemporary hoodoo activities conducted in local cemeteries.
Sustaining Development in Small Islands

Sustaining Development in Small Islands
  • Climate Change, Geopolitical Security, and the Permissive Liberal Order
  • Matthew Louis Bishop, Rachid Bouhia, Salā George Carter, Jack Corbett, Courtney Lindsay, Michelle Scobie, Emily Wilkinson
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
    • Element
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  • The viability of small island developing states (SIDS) is threatened by three distinct processes – a backlash against globalisation; rising geopolitical competition between powers; and accelerating climate change – which are pulling at the threads binding the liberal international order together. We suggest that this order has been kinder to SIDS than is often acknowledged because its underpinning norms – sovereign equality, non-interference, and right to development – are inherently permissive and thus provide SIDS with choices rather than imperatives. Their leaders should fight for the continuation and enhancement of that order rather than be seduced by alternatives. We provide a rationale for and examples of policies to achieve this, including reforms to the way ODA is measured, debt restructured, climate finance allocated, and global governance organised. These enhancements represent the most plausible pathway for SIDS in a period of significant global upheaval. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Africa in Urban History

Africa in Urban History
  • Ambe J. Njoh
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
  • This Element in Global Urban History seeks to promote understanding of the urban history of Africa. It does so by undertaking four main tasks. Firstly, it employs race, ethnicity, class, and conflict theory as conceptual frameworks to analyze the spatial structures, social, and political-economic dynamics of African cities from global, comparative, and transnational perspectives. Secondly, it proposes a new typology of the continent's cities. Thirdly, it identifies and draws into focus an important but oft-ignored part of Africa's urban history, namely Indigenous cities. It focuses more intensely on the few that still exist to date. Fourthly, it employs conflict, functional, and symbolic interactionist theories as well as elements of the race ideology to explain the articulation of racism, ethnicity, and classism in the continent's urban space. This is done mainly but not exclusively from historical perspectives.
TransGenre

TransGenre
  • Aaron Hammes
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    06 February 2025
  • TransGenre is a reconsideration of genre theory in long-form fiction through transgender minor literature in the US and Canada. Using four genre sites (the road novel, the mourning novel, the chosen family novel, and the archival novel), this Element considers how the minoritized becomes the minoritarian through deterritorializing generic conventions in fiction to its own ends. In so doing, TransGenre proposes narrative reading practices as strategies of the minor to subvert, transgress, and reappropriate the novel's genealogy and radical future prospects. A range of fiction published in the last decade is deployed as largely self-theorizing, generating its own epistemological, thematic, and formal innovations and possibilities, revealing cisheteronormative underpinnings of generic categories and turning them in on themselves.

Page 6 of 98