Showing papers on "Identity (philosophy) published in 2018"

Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity

Abstract: Lilliana Mason's Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity is easily the best book on American politics I have read in years. I mean this in two important ways. First, the book tackles what may be the most pressing question in politics: Why has the American public become increasing polarized? The answer—that the increasing overlap between identities changes the way that citizens see themselves and others—provides a clear understanding of polarization. But this is not only an important book, it is a good book. Mason constructs a careful argument, grounded in social psychology, and each chapter in the book builds sequentially on the previous ones. The result is a book that is more than the sum of the parts and represents a major advance in the field. I lost count of the number of times where Mason demonstrates a point that clearly articulated some previously unintelligible hunch I had about politics. There are few books that make this type of contribution to a vital question in the way that Uncivil Agreement does. Disciplines American Politics | Political Science | Political Theory | Social Psychology and Interaction | Sociology of Culture Comments This accepted book review is published as Peterson, D.A.M. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity Lilliana Mason, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018, pp. 192. Doi: 10.1017/ S0008423919000076. Posted with permission. This book review is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/pols_pubs/61 Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity Lilliana Mason, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018, pp. 192. Review by David A.M. Peterson Lilliana Mason's Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity is easily the best book on American politics I have read in years. I mean this in two important ways. First, the book tackles what may be the most pressing question in politics: Why has the American public become increasing polarized? The answer—that the increasing overlap between identities changes the way that citizens see themselves and others—provides a clear understanding of polarization. But this is not only an important book, it is a good book. Mason constructs a careful argument, grounded in social psychology, and each chapter in the book builds sequentially on the previous ones. The result is a book that is more than the sum of the parts and represents a major advance in the field. I lost count of the number of times where Mason demonstrates a point that clearly articulated some previously unintelligible hunch I had about politics. There are few books that make this type of contribution to a vital question in the way that Uncivil Agreement does. Democrats and Republicans have always been divided, and partisanship has always played a foundational role in shaping mass political behaviour. But something in American politics has changed. The differences between the parties no longer constitute a simple divide over the policies the government should pursue; instead, the disagreements have become more affectively charged. Partisans increasingly dislike members of the other party. Many Americans don't want their children to marry outside of party, choose to forge social connections with people who share their partisanship and will even choose to suffer individual losses if it means that someone from the other party suffers more. It is largely undeniable that something about partisanship or how partisanship matters has changed in ways that create serious concerns about the future of American politics. Mason provides a compelling explanation for how we got here. Her starting place is social-identity theory, as she argues that partisanship is best understood as a social identity. A significant aspect of this idea of partisanship is how we define ourselves: our identity stems from seeing how we fit in key social groups and how others are similar or different from us. Thinking of party as a social identity also explains why partisanship is more important for shaping political behaviour than, say, simple policy preferences. If a person's identity is at stake, he or she will have strong emotional reactions to political outcomes, aside from the gains or losses one might face from a political outcome and even if the stakes are low. As long as that person's side wins, that person gains some reward. This understanding of partisanship, however, is only the starting point for Mason. Party is not the only social identity we have; our faith, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, occupation and a host of other things also shape who we are. When one of these identities is salient, it is piece of our sense of self that helps define how we interpret and react to our social world. Mason's key insight is to recognize that because of the evolution of American politics, these other identities have frequently aligned with partisanship. Now when a person's partisan identity is engaged in something, many of that person's other identities are as well. This means that the pleasure from one side winning and the pain from one side losing are both amplified by other aspects of self-identity. As more Americans have sorted into parties that match their race, ideology and faith, more also hold openly hostile attitudes about people on the other side. This is a powerful argument that helps the reader understand the growth in affective polarization. What makes the book stand out is the ways in which the evidence for the argument incrementally builds throughout the book. After outlining her nuanced theory, Mason documents the increasing partisan sorting in the United States and the power of partisanship in shaping perceptions—and also how this sorting has also expanded. One of the more interesting results is that partisans who are socially sorted have more negative emotions about members of the other party, even when accounting for differences in policy preferences. The implication is that it is the sorting into different groups, and not actual disagreements over politics, that is creating much of the animosity. In many ways, the lesson here is that all politics is identity politics. Chapter 7 is probably my favourite chapter. In this final empirical chapter, Mason convincingly shows that the effects of partisan and social sorting go beyond just our thoughts and feelings about each other. Citizens whose identities are sorted are significantly more likely to be engaged in politics. To many, higher engagement and activism are generally considered normatively positive things. Mason points out, however, that much of this highly sorted activism is intended not to achieve a specific end but to express blind support for a particular side. The result is a reinforcing cycle where activism spurs more positive feelings about the group (and negative feelings about the other side), spurring more activism. In the final chapter of the book, Mason suggests several possible ways forward. Given the chapter's title—“Can We Fix It?”—I was fearful that the chapter would consist of a single word: no. Mason is, thankfully, not that pessimistic, but her discussion of the possibilities for greater contact between the parties, for finding shared goals or for changes to the parties and leaders did not seem persuasive. That lack of persuasiveness is the only thing that is even slightly unconvincing about her argument. Uncivil Agreement is a landmark book that helps the reader understand American politics. While the focus is on the United States, the logic of the argument provides a path forward for scholars of other countries as well. It is a book that will have a lasting effect on our understanding of political behaviour. Copyright: © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2019. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423919000076. Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 September 2019

Deployment of a Blockchain-Based Self-Sovereign Identity

Abstract: Digital identity is unsolved: after many years of research there is still no trusted communication over the Internet. To provide identity within the context of mutual distrust, this paper presents a blockchain-based digital identity solution. Without depending upon a single trusted third party, the proposed solution achieves passport-level legally valid identity. This solution for making identities Self-Sovereign, builds on a generic provable claim model for which attestations of truth from third parties need to be collected. The claim model is then shown to be both blockchain structure and proof method agnostic. Four different implementations in support of these two claim model properties are shown to offer sub-second performance for claim creation and claim verification. Through the properties of Self-Sovereign Identity, legally valid status and acceptable performance, our solution is considered to be fit for adoption by the general public.

Generalization of Hermite-Hadamard Type Inequalities via Conformable Fractional Integrals

Abstract: We establish a Hermite-Hadamard type identity and several new Hermite-Hadamard type inequalities for conformable fractional integrals and present their applications to special bivariate means.

Future Directions in Research on Mathematics-Related Teacher Identity

Abstract: Mathematics education research has placed great emphasis on teacher identity, examining both pre- and in-service teachers, and within these cohorts, specialised mathematics teachers and non-specialists such as elementary teachers. Extensive research has already been done; hence, this paper discusses possible future directions for research on teacher identity in mathematics education. Among other issues, we highlight that general education research on identity has infrequently informed research on mathematics-related teacher identity. This not only limits the transfer of knowledge but also isolates mathematics education from general education research. We suggest that connecting these lines of research and their findings may not only strengthen mathematics education research and mathematics teaching and learning but also contribute to less isolation within the discipline as a whole.

Deployment of a Blockchain-Based Self-Sovereign Identity

Abstract: Digital identity is unsolved: after many years of research there is still no trusted communication over the Internet. To provide identity within the context of mutual distrust, this paper presents a blockchain-based digital identity solution. Without depending upon a single trusted third party, the proposed solution achieves passport-level legally valid identity. This solution for making identities Self-Sovereign, builds on a generic provable claim model for which attestations of truth from third parties need to be collected. The claim model is then shown to be both blockchain structure and proof method agnostic. Four different implementations in support of these two claim model properties are shown to offer sub-second performance for claim creation and claim verification. Through the properties of Self-Sovereign Identity, legally valid status and acceptable performance, our solution is considered to be fit for adoption by the general public.

Inventing Chinese Buddhas: Identity, Authority, and Liberation in Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism

Abstract: Inventing Chinese Buddhas: Identity, Authority, and Liberation in Song-Dynasty Chan Buddhism Kevin Buckelew This dissertation explores how Chan Buddhists made the unprecedented claim to a level of religious authority on par with the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and, in the process, invented what it means to be a buddha in China. This claim helped propel the Chan tradition to dominance of elite monastic Buddhism during the Song dynasty (960–1279), licensed an outpouring of Chan literature treated as equivalent to scripture, and changed the way Chinese Buddhists understood their own capacity for religious authority in relation to the historical Buddha and the Indian homeland of Buddhism. But the claim itself was fraught with complication. After all, according to canonical Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha was easily recognizable by the “marks of the great man” that adorned his body, while the same could not be said for Chan masters in the Song. What, then, distinguished Chan masters from everyone else? What authorized their elite status and granted them the authority of buddhas? According to what normative ideals did Chan aspirants pursue liberation, and by what standards did Chan masters evaluate their students to determine who was worthy of admission into an elite Chan lineage? How, in short, could one recognize a buddha in Song-dynasty China? The Chan tradition never answered this question once and for all; instead, the question broadly animated Chan rituals, institutional norms, literary practices, and visual cultures. My dissertation takes a performative approach to the analysis of Chan hagiographies, discourse records, commentarial collections, and visual materials, mobilizing the tradition’s rich archive to measure how Chan interventions in Buddhist tradition changed the landscape of elite Chinese Buddhism and participated in the epochal changes attending China’s Tang-toSong transition.

Operating Outside of Empire: Trading Citizenship in the Atlantic World, 1783-1815

Abstract: Operating Outside of Empire: Trading Citizenship in the Atlantic World, 1783-1815, looks at markets and ships as spaces for negotiation between merchants and the state. The dissertation follows the experiences of former British colonists in America who won independence and then immediately tried to find a way to get back into the British empire. For American merchants, such as Nicholas Low, William Constable, and Thomas Handasyd Perkins, the inconsistently-governed Caribbean provided an entry point to the greater British Atlantic and the markets of the empire. These merchants won access by exploiting the opportunities offered by environmental catastrophes, slave rebellions and trade wars. The dissertation approaches the trade in identity through five chapters that trace the connections formed between transatlantic merchants and their relationship to an increasingly intrusive and powerful state apparatus. By taking citizenship and belonging in a new direction, the dissertation looks at the ways in which commerce reshaped nationality and challenged what it meant to be a citizen in the Atlantic World. Before the idea of the nation was fully formed, merchants, statesmen, and philosophers offered an alternative conception of belonging and nationality that was much more fluid and malleable. By focusing on information as a valuable commodity, the dissertation shows how letters filled with rumors and gossip sustained an economy without the official support of a government monopoly and even in opposition to the Royal Navy. It was through their discussions of demand and opportunity that merchants participated in debates about the nature of commerce, the loyalty of the citizen, and the role of the state in regulating national identity and international trade. Operating Outside of Empire: Trading Citizenship in the Atlantic World, 1783-1815

Quantitative Measurements of Polymer Hydrophobicity Based on Functional Group Identity and Oligomer Length

Abstract: A combined experimental and computational investigation revealed a hydrophobicity trend for oxygen-containing functional groups commonly encountered in monomers and polymers. Based on solvatochroma...

Differentially Private Identity and Equivalence Testing of Discrete Distributions

Abstract: We study the fundamental problems of identity and equivalence testing over a discrete population from random samples. Our goal is to develop efficient testers while guaranteeing differential privacy to the individuals of the population. We provide sample-efficient differentially private testers for these problems. Our theoretical results significantly improve over the best known algorithms for identity testing, and are the first results for private equivalence testing. The conceptual message of our work is that there exist private hypothesis testers that are nearly as sample-efficient as their non-private counterparts. We perform an experimental evaluation of our algorithms on synthetic data. Our experiments illustrate that our private testers achieve small type I and type II errors with sample size sublinear in the domain size of the underlying distributions.

Strauss and the City: The Reception of Richard Strauss’s Salome, Elektra, and Der Rosenkavalier within New York City, 1907–1934

Abstract: Strauss and the City: The Reception of Richard Strauss’s Salome, Elektra, and Der Rosenkavalier within New York City, 1907–1934 by Christopher G. Ogburn Adviser: Chadwick Jenkins New York City at the beginning of the twentieth century was growing into its status as one of the world’s great cultural centers. At the same time, across the Atlantic, Richard Strauss was emerging as Germany’s preeminent composer. The city and Strauss, although seemingly unrelated, were more intertwined than it would at first appear. This study examines this connection through a reception history of Strauss’s Salome, Elektra, and Der Rosenkavalier in the city, beginning in 1907 with the New York City premiere of Salome and concluding in 1934 when the opera returned to the Metropolitan’s stage. The reception of Strauss in the city provides a unique vantage point to observe the critical reactions to Strauss by his contemporaries. Removed from Europe, New York City’s critics occupied an important distance from their European compatriots, which provided them with a distinct perspective. Along the way, I also utilize the music of Germany’s most prominent opera composer to examine the German American community, who used music to foster a sense of communal identity. This study focuses on opera, rather than the popular theater, to explore both internal and external attitudes towards German Americans as a cultural and ethnic group. My ultimate goal is threefold: to

The Greater Germanic Reich: Education, Nazification, and the Creation of a New Dutch Identity in the Nazi-Occupied Netherlands

Abstract: During the German occupation of the Netherlands during the Second World War, the Nazi occupiers attempted to use education as one part of their larger project to create a new, Germanic identity in the Netherlands. This effort was supported by the highest echelons of the German leadership in the Netherlands and the leadership of the Dutch Education Department. Together, the Nazis and their Dutch helpers began a series of changes to Dutch education aimed at bringing Dutch youth closer to the German Reich, with the ultimate aim of divorcing the Dutch from their previous, independent national identity and winning them over to the Germanic ideal. This effort involved many different initiatives. In an effort to completely reorganize the Dutch educational establishment along more Germanic lines, the occupiers and their Dutch helpers attempted to gain control over private, confessional education and to reorganize public education through the lengthening of compulsory attendance requirements and the introduction of an eighth year of primary education. Moreover, the occupiers attempted to introduce new subjects, such as physical education, and increase the emphasis on other subjects, including historical instruction and German language instruction. Finally, the German occupiers also attempted to both foster the development of German International Schools in the Netherlands as well as to create new educational institutions (the NIVO and the Reichsschulen) designed to give instruction in an explicitly völkisch, Germanic sense, both of which aimed at educating the leaders of the future Greater Germanic Reich. These two institutions would also serve as models for the education of ordinary Dutch students in Dutch institutions. The efforts of the Nazi occupiers were a failure, as their efforts were resisted by the majority of Netherlanders and the changes instituted during the occupation were mostly reversed

Identity and its protection as the aim and purpose of international human rights law: The case of (inter)sex identity and its protection

Abstract: ................................................................................................................................... I ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................. III TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................................. IV TABLES OF CONVENTIONS AND CASES ..................................................................................... VIII LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................. X INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 1 INTERSEX PEOPLE THROUGH HISTORY .................................................................................................... 3 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TOPIC ................................................................................................................ 8 INTERSEX AND THE WORLD OF SEX DIVERSITY ......................................................................................... 9 METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................................................. 11 THESIS STRUCTURE .......................................................................................................................... 14 CHAPTER 1: NARRATIVITY AND THE BECOMING OF (INTER)SEX ................................................ 17 1.1 BECOMING A REVEALED NOT A DETERMINATIVE FIXED IDENTITY .................................................... 21 1.2 NARRATIVITY OF BECOMING ..................................................................................................... 24 1.3 HORIZONS OF NARRATIVE BECOMING ........................................................................................ 29 1.3.1 Situating One’s Horizon – Vertical or Horizontal ..................................................... 32 1.3.2 The Vertical Horizon................................................................................................. 34 1.3.3 Horizontal Horizon ................................................................................................... 49 1.3.4 Horizons of Becoming .............................................................................................. 60 1.4 TWO BECOMINGS OF (INTER)SEX .............................................................................................. 61 1.4.1 Sex Horizons and Culture ....................................................................................... 63 1.4.2 Diversity of (Inter)Sex Becoming .............................................................................. 66 1.4.3 The Becoming of a Linear Sex (Status) as Male or Female ...................................... 75 1.5 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 84 CHAPTER 2: MOVING FROM PERSONAL TO MORAL IDENTITY .................................................. 89 2.1 PROBLEMATIC OF IDENTITY ...................................................................................................... 92 2.1.1 Two Identities – Idem and Ipse Identities ................................................................ 92 2.1.2 The Problematic: Identicality Replacing Mediatory Identity ..................................101 2.1.3 Vulnerability and the Problematic of Identity ........................................................103 2.2 CAPABILITIES AND THE PARADOX OF AUTONOMY .......................................................................104 2.2.1 Capable Being ........................................................................................................105

From reformed barbarian to “saint-king”: literary portrayals of King Malcolm III Canmore (r. 1058-93) in Scottish historical narratives, c. 1100- 1449

Abstract: From reformed barbarian to “saint-king”: literary portrayals of King Malcolm III Canmore (r. 1058-93) in Scottish historical narratives, c. 11001449 Marian Toledo Candelaria Advisor: University of Guelph, 2018 Professor Elizabeth Ewan This dissertation examines the historiographical evolution of the literary portrayal of King Malcolm III Canmore (r. 1058-93) in the main historical narratives produced in Scotland between c. 1100 and 1449. The study considers how fundamental King Malcolm’s portrayal was to new and developing notions of Scottish kingship, sovereignty and identity, focusing on the underlying political developments that caused his portrayal to be manipulated and amended during the central and late medieval periods. It examines how King Malcolm went from being considered a barbaric king of Scots reformed by the influence of his second wife, Saint Margaret of Scotland (d. 1093), to the Scottish prince exiled in England by Macbeth (r. 1040-1057/8). It identifies three key developmental stages in the portrayal of King Malcolm and ties their development to contemporary political and dynastic circumstances. King Malcolm’s portrayal evolved because of a need to assert the sovereignty of the Scottish crown in light of internal threats to dynastic hegemony and external threats against regnal independence. After the Scottish Wars of Independence of the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, historians were greatly focused on the manner in which Malcolm obtained his throne in order to assert the kingdom’s independence. Lastly, Malcolm was constantly refashioned in Scottish historical narratives to reflect changing notions of kingship and identity in the medieval period in Scotland.

An identity of symmetry for the degenerate Frobenius-Euler Polynomials

Abstract: Abstract In this paper, we prove an identity of symmetry for the higher-order degenerate Frobenius-Euler polynomials and derive the recurrence relations and multiplication theorem type result for the degenerate Frobenius-Euler polynomials.

‘War and Peace’ at the 1980 Moscow and 2014 Sochi Olympics: The Role of Hard and Soft Power in Russian Identity

Abstract: Russia’s (and the USSR’s) use of sports mega-events (SMEs) makes this BRICS country (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) not only an outlier among emerging states, but also amon...

Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality by Gloria Anzaldúa (review)

Abstract: an otherwise nonracial Cuban national imaginary underscoring, in turn, dilemmas of Cuban race and national citizenship in the neoliberal era” (27). Chapter 6 further develops this point in view of the waning support of hip hop by the state, giving way to public and media debates from black intellectuals aligned with hip hop and independent strategies by rappers to articulate and perform blackness on the island, or depart to the diaspora.

Citizenship in Africa: The Law of Belonging

Abstract: Bronwen Manby takes us through her new book Citizenship in Africa: The Law of Belonging. In an important contribution to the literature on statehood, citizenship and identity in Africa, this piece highlights the importance of formal legal frameworks and contests over citizenship in determining who belongs.

Money after Blockchain: Gold, Decentralised Politics and the New Libertarianism

Abstract: Blockchain technologies are central to what has been described as a new ‘smart social contract’. With blockchain, individual cryptographic identity becomes the basis for new forms of money ...

Middle power identities of Australia and South Korea : comparing the Kevin Rudd/Julia Gillard and Lee Myung-bak administrations

Abstract: This paper explores the middle power identities of Australia and South Korea during the Kevin Rudd/Julia Gillard (2007–2013) and Lee Myung-bak (2008–2013) administrations. Considering the problems in the existing position, behaviour, impact and identity-based definitions of middle powers, examining how self-identified middle powers have constructed such an identity would offer useful insights into the middle power concept. Relying on a framework that captures an identity's content and contestation, this paper argues that while Australia and South Korea have assumed a middle power identity, their visualisations of this identity are slightly different. Australia has understood its middle power identity in both economic and security terms, whereas South Korea appears to have connected such an identity more with the economic dimension. These differences affect how they envision their respective middle power roles in international affairs.

The Reign of Amannote-erike: Analyses of Identity and Kingship

Abstract: ........................................................................................................................................ i Dedication ................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... iii Table of

Santiago de la Nación Guachichil: law and the re-emergence of a disappeared identity in eighteenth-century San Luis Potosí

Abstract: After half a century of Spanish colonial presence in San Luis Potosi, the local Guachichil population vanished from all historical documentation. It resurfaced in the early eighteenth centu...

A case of mistaken identity

Abstract: Paragangliomas (PG) are rare tumors of the autonomic nervous system. Their origin takes part in the neural crest cells, which produce neuropeptides and catecholamines [1]. In 1050% of cases, they are hereditary, beginning at younger ages. In 80-90% of abdominal PG and 5-10% of head and neck PG, catecholamine production can cause arterial hypertension, headache, palpitations, anxiety and weight loss [1,2]. The diagnosis is usually made by conventional imaging (CT, MRI, scintigraphy). A biopsy cannot distinguish benign from malignant tumors (<10%), which can be diagnosed in the presence of distant metastasis [3]. On the other hand, biopsy of these lesions might be dangerous, with the possibility of causing a life threatening event [4]. The most sensitive and specific pre-operatory diagnostic test is the determination of plasma and urine metanephrines [5]. Histological examination showing polygonal cells with finely granular eosinophilic cytoplasm, oval nuclei and positivity for neuroendocrine markers such as cromogranine A, neuron-specific enolase, synaptophysin and insulin-like growth factor II are specific for paragangliomas and are not present in hepatocellular tumors [6]. The treatment for non-metastatic disease involves surgical resection [5]. It is also recommended that these patients must be tested for succinate dehydrogenase mutations.