The payments industry – the business of transferring value through public and corporate infrastructures – is undergoing rapid transformation. New business models and regulatory environments disrupt more traditional fee-based strategies, and new entrants seek to displace legacy players by leveraging new mobile platforms and new sources of data. In this increasingly diversified industry landscape, start-ups and established players are attempting to embed payment in ‘social’ experience through novel technologies of accounting for trust. This imagination of the social, however, is being (...) materialized in gated platforms for payment, accounting, and exchange. This paper explores the ambiguous politics of such experiments, specifically those, like Bitcoin or the on-demand sharing economy, that delineate an economic imaginary of ‘just us’ – a closed and closely guarded community of peers operating under the illusion that there are no mediating institutions undergirding that community. This provokes questions about the intersection of payment and publics. Payment innovators’ attenuated understanding of the social may, we suggest, evacuate the nitty-gritty of politics. (shrink)

Analyses of height variation using the 1970 UK national cohort study (12,508 children at age 10 and 5470 at age 16) found clear evidence that children of higher socioeconomic status (as measured by social class, crowding, tenure, type of accommodation, income and receipt of government financial assistance) were on average taller than children of lower socioeconomic status but there was little or no difference in average stature between children living in urban or rural areas. Significant differences in height remained for (...) most of the variables after removing the effects of father’s social class suggesting that reliance on social class perse to explain height variation is inadvisable. (shrink)

The two main ways in which disease and nutrition can influence fertility are by reducing fecundity or by extending the birth interval. Fecundity refers to reproductive ability, that is the potential to breed, as compared to fertility which denotes actual childbearing . Reduced fecundity, which is usually referred to as subfecundity, results from impairment of any of the biological aspects of reproduction, including coital inability, conceptive failure as well as pregnancy loss. Subfecundity is only one factor operating to reduce fertility; (...) other factors include those governing mate exposure and birth control. (shrink)

This volume, which is part of the Clarendon Aristotle Series, offers a clear and faithful new translation of Books II to IV of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, accompanied by an analytical commentary focusing on philosophical issues. In Books II to IV, Aristotle gives his account of virtue of character in general and of the principal virtues individually, topics of central interest both to his ethical theory and to modern ethical theorists. Consequently major themes of the commentary are connections on the one (...) hand with other relevant Aristotelian texts and on the other with modern writings, both text-related and thematic. Since the main aim of the volume is to make Aristotle's thought as accessible as possible to readers who do not know Greek, considerable care is taken to elucidate both his technical vocabulary and significant features of his Greek idiom. C. C. W. Taylor also provides systematic comparisons with other translations into English and other languages, and frequent references to other commentaries, ancient, medieval, and modern. These features make the work useful to other scholars in the field as well as to students of philosophy, both undergraduate and graduate.In view of the widespread contemporary interest in the topic of virtue, the volume should appeal to students of ethics and to any reader who is concerned to see how fundamental questions of life and conduct were approached in a culture significantly different from our own. (shrink)

This volume, which is part of the Clarendon Aristotle Series, offers a clear and faithful new translation of Books II to IV of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, accompanied by an analytical commentary focusing on philosophical issues. In Books II to IV, Aristotle gives his account of virtue of character in general and of the principal virtues individually, topics of central interest both to his ethical theory and to modern ethical theorists. Consequently major themes of the commentary are connections on the one (...) hand with other relevant Aristotelian texts and on the other with modern writings, both text-related and thematic. Since the main aim of the volume is to make Aristotle's thought as accessible as possible to readers who do not know Greek, considerable care is taken to elucidate both his technical vocabulary and significant features of his Greek idiom. C. C. W. Taylor also provides systematic comparisons with other translations into English and other languages, and frequent references to other commentaries, ancient, medieval, and modern. These features make the work useful to other scholars in the field as well as to students of philosophy, both undergraduate and graduate.In view of the widespread contemporary interest in the topic of virtue, the volume should appeal to students of ethics and to any reader who is concerned to see how fundamental questions of life and conduct were approached in a culture significantly different from our own. (shrink)

SummaryUsing a sample of 2090 father and son pairs, the regional variation in height, weight and body mass index with intra- and inter-generational migration within Britain was examined. Highly significant regional differences in means were found only for fathers. The overall mean height difference between regions ranged from about 2.7 cm to 3.1 cm, with the tallest fathers being found in the East & South-East region and the shortest in Wales. The variation in mean weight between regions was less significant, (...) with the difference between the heaviest region and lightest being about 3.5 kg. For BMI the highest mean was in the North and Wales and the lowest in the South-West. Intra-generational migrants were, on average, significantly taller than non-migrants for both fathers and sons, but BMI was only significant in fathers, with migrant fathers, on average, having a lower BMI. There were no significant differences in weight between geographically mobile groups for either fathers or sons. Differentiating between regional in- and out-migration revealed that in the fathers' generation in-migrants were taller, on average, in six of the nine regions. The tallest in-migrants among fathers came into the North region; the tallest out-migrants were from Yorkshire & Humberside and the shortest were from Scotland. The largest positive gain on fathers' height was in the West Midlands region and Scotland, while negative effects were found in the Yorkshire & Humberside, East Midlands and East & South-East regions. For sons in-migrants were taller in all regions except Wales, with the largest differences between in-migrants and non-migrants being in the South-East and South-West. For out-migrants, the tallest sons came from Wales, while the shortest came from the East Midlands region. The North, East Midlands, East & South-East and West Midlands regions were net gainers, while Wales and Scotland were net losers. For BMI among fathers, in-migrants were of lower BMI than non-migrants. For out-migrant fathers, the North-West and South-West regions were the only two regions showing positive values, with the largest negative values being found in the East Midlands and Yorkshire & Humberside. The net effect of migration indicated that the largest gains were in the East Midlands and Yorkshire & Humberside regions and the largest losses were in Scotland and Wales. The inter-generational migration for BMI showed that in-migrating sons into the North-West and Wales had higher BMI than sedentes, while in-migrants into Yorkshire & Humberside were lower in BMI. In all regions out-migrants had lower BMI than non-migrants. The net effect of migration revealed that six of the nine regions were net gainers, while the Yorkshire & Humberside region was a net loser. (shrink)

Data on patterns of marriage, differential fertility and mortality were collected from 211 Kotia women residing in Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh, India. Consanguineous marriages made up just over a quarter of the total, and of these, father's sister's daughter (FSD) were more common than mother's brother's daughter (MBD). The mean inbreeding coefficient for the sample (F) was 0·0172. Women in consanguineous marriages had a lower mean number of total conceptions, live births and living offspring (net fertility) than women in (...) non[hyphen]consanguineous marriages. Significant heterogeneity was found in the means of living offspring for FSD, MBD and non-consanguineous couples, but not for conceptions and live births. (shrink)

SummaryThe relationship between inter-generational social mobility of sons and daughters between 1958 and 1991 and biosocial variables, i.e. birth order, number of children in family, father's social class, region, educational attainment of child and father, educational and cognitive test scores, was studied in a large British cohort study. The data used were collected as part of the British National Child Development Study. The extent of social class mobility was determined inter-generationally and was categorized as none, upwardly mobile or downwardly mobile. (...) All of the biosocial variables were associated with social mobility when analysed separately. Multivariate analyses revealed that the most significant predictor of mobility categories in both sexes was education of the cohort member, followed by social class of the father. In both sexes mathematics score was a significant predicator, while in sons reading and non-verbal IQ scores were also important predictors. In the light of these results, it appears that social mobility in Britain takes place largely on meritocratic principles. (shrink)

SummaryUsing a sample of 2090 British father and son pairs the relationships between social and geographical intra- and inter-generational mobility were examined in relation to height, weight and body mass index. There was much more social mobility than geographical migration. Social mobility and geographical migration were not independent: socially non-mobile fathers and sons were more likely to be geographical non-migrants, and upwardly socially mobile fathers and sons were more likely to be regional migrants. Upwardly socially mobile fathers and sons were, (...) on average, taller and had a lower BMI than non-mobile and downwardly mobile fathers and sons. In general, no significant associations were found between geographical migration and height or weight. Migrating fathers had a lower BMI than sedentes, as did their sons who migrated between 1965 and 1991. There was no significant interaction that indicated that social mobility and geographical migration were acting in a simple additive way on height, weight and BMI. (shrink)

Surnames were obtained for the second half of the 20th century from civil and religious marriage registers on fifteen Provençal-Italian and five Italian villages of Cuneo Province, Italy. To insert in the analysis an outward comparison, surnames from two Italian villages of Turin Province, one parish of Turin, one village of Alessandria Province and one village of Asti Province were also collected. Ethnicity does not seem to be the main factor affecting the present genetic structure of the Provençal-Italians. They are (...) an open community, and evidence the end of the genetic isolation of the alpine populations. (shrink)

Bringing between two covers the most influential and accessible articles on Plato's Republic, this collection illuminates what is widely held to be the most important work of Western philosophy and political theory. It will be valuable not only to philosophers, but to political theorists, historians, classicists, literary scholars, and interested general readers.

The population of Campobasso Province shows a level of inbreeding that is distinct from most Italian rural populations, regardless of their geographic location (Fr=0·0040; Fn=0·0102; Ft=0·0142). The genetic structure of the ItalianGreeks of Reggio Calabria Province is similar to other Italians of Campobasso Province (Fr=0·0041; Fn=0·0127; Ft=0·0168). The Italian–Greeks of Lecce Province show random mating, and their inbreeding is in fact very low (Fr=0·0038; Fn=0·0024; Ft=0·0062).

Analyses of the height variation of 16-year-old members of the British National Child Development Study revealed a number of biological and social variables which associated with stature. After multiple regression analyses only eight variables, namely social class, family size, tenure , crowding status, number of children sleeping in the bed, region of the country, sex of child, and pubic hair rating, remained significant. The total variation explained by these biosocial variables was 37·5%.

Surnames of grandparents were collected from children in the primary schools of the AlbanianItalian and Greek–Italian villages of southern Italy and Sicily. The coefficients of relationships by isonymy show almost no relationship with ethnicity. Ethnolinguistic minorities of southern Italy and Sicily are geographically subdivided into two main clusters: the first cluster comprises the Albanian, Croat and Greek communities of the Adriatic area; and the second cluster comprises the Albanian and Greek communities of the Ionian, Thirrenian and Sicilian areas.

One of the paradoxes of the physical sciences is that as our knowledge has progressed, more and more diverse physical phenomena can be explained in terms of fewer underlying laws, or principles. In Hidden Unity, eminent physicist John Taylor puts many of these findings into historical perspective and documents how progress is made when unexpected, hidden unities are uncovered between apparently unrelated physical phenomena. Taylor cites examples from the ancient Greeks to the present day, such as the unity of celestial (...) and terrestrial dynamics (17th century), the unity of heat within the rest of dynamics (18th century), the unity of electricity, magnetism, and light (19th century), the unity of space and time and the unification of nuclear forces with electromagnetism (20th century). Without relying on mathematical detail, Taylor's emphasis is on fundamental physics, like particle physics and cosmology. Balancing what is understood with the unestablished theories and still unanswered questions, Taylor takes readers on a fascinating ongoing journey. John C. Taylor is Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge. A student of Nobel laureate Abdus Salam, Taylor's research career has spanned the era of developments in elementary particle physics since the 1950s. He taught theoretical physics at Imperial College, London, and at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and he has lectured worldwide. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. (shrink)

In the fall of 2005, Mark C. Taylor, the controversial public intellectual and widely respected scholar, suddenly fell critically ill. For two days a team of forty doctors, many of whom thought he would not live, fought to save him. Taylor would eventually recover, but only to face a new threat: surgery for cancer. "These experiences have changed me in ways I am still struggling to understand," Taylor writes in this absorbing memoir. "After the past year, I am persuaded that (...) I have done enough fieldwork to write a book that combines philosophical and theological reflection with autobiographical narrative. Writing is not only possible but actually seems necessary." _Field Notes from Elsewhere_ is Taylor's unforgettable, inverted journey from death to life. Each of his memoir's fifty-two chapters and accompanying photographs recounts a morning-to-evening experience with sickness and convalescence, mingling humor and hope with a deep exploration of human frailty and, conversely, resilience. When we confront the end of life, Taylor explains, the axis of the lived world shifts, and everything must be reevaluated. As Taylor sorts through his remembrances, much that once seemed familiar becomes strange, paradoxical, and contradictory. He reads his experience with and against ghosts from his past, recasting the meaning of mortality, sacrifice, solitude, and abandonment, along with a host of other issues, in light of modern ways of dying. "You never come back from elsewhere," Taylor concludes, "because elsewhere always comes back with you.". (shrink)

The complexities of black hair care provide a useful point of entry to the problem of theorizing, experiencing, judging, and pursuing bodily beauty in racialized contexts. This chapter aims to catalogue and clarify some of the philosophical questions that arise from the negrophobic somatic aesthetics. It provides answers to the most pressing questions, questions that demand the attention not just of aestheticians and ethicists, but also of students of natural science and the philosophy of existence. The chapter focuses on cases (...) that emerge from Afro‐US life‐worlds. Richard Shusterman's determination to contest the centuries‐long denigration of the body that infects western philosophy and culture leads him to employ the Greek term soma to name his approach, which he defines as the study of the experience and use of one's body as a locus of sensory‐aesthetic appreciation and creative self‐fashioning. (shrink)

This chapter begins with a narration of a slave ship's arrival from the Dutch Gold Coast, today's Ghana, to a South American seaport, Suriname, with about 40 blacks. The uprooted Africans used what was at hand, both culturally and materially, to cobble together the beginnings of an African American culture. It appears that these cultures are not so much born as assembled. This introductory chapter attempts to answer four preliminary questions: to paraphrase cultural theorist and sociologist Stuart Hall: what is (...) the black in black aesthetics; in the same spirit: what is the aesthetic in black aesthetics; what good is a philosophy of black aesthetics; and why discuss any of this in terms of assembly. The idea of assembling black aesthetics presupposes that there is a responsible way of appealing to racial blackness. The chapter also indicates the content available in other chapters of the book. (shrink)

Black political actors across the ideological and organizational spectrum have routinely used expressive culture to do their work and advance their causes. However, the proper relationship between cultural and political work has remained controversial, with different views becoming ascendant in different traditions and communities, and at different times within the same traditions and communities. This chapter addresses some questions register in the black aesthetic tradition. It explores W. E. B. Du Bois's iconic arguments about art and propaganda by translating the (...) arguments into the language of more or less mainstream Anglophone academic philosophy. Political questions about matters other than autonomy come to mind when one studies black aesthetics. Notions like authenticity, solidarity, identity, ownership, and memory loom large in this tradition, and each has its own web of connections to questions of power, justice, citizenship, and freedom. (shrink)

White men pretending to be black men by blackening their faces and performing, on stage, the peculiar antics that constituted their vision of blackness. This chapter explores how black people sustain themselves under conditions of racial terror, exclusion, and oppression. Eric Lott's point goes beyond shaming and repudiation, though, to suggest that minstrelsy is more, and more interesting, than a garden variety expression of racism. The men who donned blackface did so in an attempt to work out their own identities (...) as Americans, and some chose blackness as a vehicle for this because of a genuine, if paternalistic and complicated, respect for black culture. The point of the work has been to assemble black aesthetics as an object of philosophical study, using the resources, broadly speaking, of analysis, pragmatism, and genealogical cultural criticism and social theory. (shrink)

The author's fascination with Me'Shell NdegeOcello's Leviticus: Faggot, is turned into an investigation in this chapter involving three basic questions. The first question interrogates the common thought that there is such a thing as black music, and asks what this music is, and what constitutes its blackness. The second question asks what this blackness is supposed to mean for music, by interrogating the familiar thought of Leopold Senghor: that blackness is somehow bound up with rhythm. The third question deals with (...) the way music's rhythms move us. Taking up Peter Kivy's questions in relation to rhythmic music is helpful, as it helps close the gap between the how‐possible and the how‐wondrous, and locate the point at which the preoccupations of analytical aesthetics overlap with the concerns of critical race aesthetics. The key to both moves lies in Kivy's argument against what he calls “the stimulus theory” of musical enjoyment. (shrink)

This chapter starts with a narration from the film Far From Heaven, where a white man at a party being held at Connecticut, claims that there are no Negroes in the city, disregarding even the presence of blacks who are serving drinks. It shows that the tradition of reflecting on black invisibility provides the resources for identifying and working through a particular kind of problem case. The cases are the race‐specific casting decisions in film and theatre, exemplified by the controversy (...) over the casting of Zoe Saldana in the Nina Simone biopic. The chapter argues that many central features of black racialization can be thought of as forms of invisibility, and related to persistent disregard for black presence, personhood, perspectives, and plurality. The problems of black invisibility and visuality are woven into the issues of politics and authenticity, ambivalence and appropriation, bodies and beauty, and the like. (shrink)

The tight connection between racial identities and roots has been called into question in recent years. The tensions between roots and routes and between authenticity and instability frame one of the central problem‐spaces in the black aesthetic tradition. In light of the role that appeals to authenticity have played in the tradition, and in light of the complications that come with those appeals, the following questions emerge: what kind of work can appeals to authenticity appropriately do; are they grounds for (...) criticism, as Lorraine Hansberry seems to think; or are they something else. This chapter addresses these questions by considering some cases such as: Sidney Kasfir's account of Germans in Yorubaland, and designs involving kente cloth. It explains at least five grades of authenticity discourse, all with their roots in the Greek word for principal or genuine (authentikós). (shrink)

The Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—have bequeathed to the world a rich religious and cultural heritage which has been enormously influential through the centuries up to the present. While this is easily evident in the modern practices of these monotheisms, it is also profoundly present in the development of their diverse intellectual traditions with theological and philosophical insights and analyses seeking to understand and explain the nature of the presence of the divine to human beings. The present collection of essays (...) by a wide array of North American scholars provides a dozen studies of language, discourse, debate, and reasoning with a focus on theological and philosophical issues central to these three traditions that commonly call Abraham their human and/or spiritual father. Collectively these essays represent a dialogue among those who work at crossroads of theology, philosophy, history, language, and religion. Their dialogue adds to the growing library of works that seek to highlight collaboration and common ground between these religious and philosophical traditions. The dialogue is multi-directional, taking place within various religions and philosophical perspectives, as well as between religion, theology, and philosophy. It is also multi-purpose in that it seeks to transcend the mere theoretical, and to reveal the concrete; the thinkers, philosophers, and theologians discussed in these essays were deeply concerned with mutual understanding and peaceful co-existence, a goal that has become even more desirable in this post-9/11 world. (shrink)

Originally published in 1933, in partnership with the Institute of Actuaries Students' Society, this book was written to provide actuarial students with an introduction to the operations of friendly societies. The text is highly accessible, avoiding references to external sources in favour of a more interconnected account of the subject. A concise bibliography is also included. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the history of friendly societies.

Was W. E. B. Du Bois a pragmatist? Does it matter? This essay argues that reading Du Bois as a pragmatist highlights aspects of his work and life that might otherwise go unnoticed, while also highlighting aspects of pragmatism that often go unappreciated. In addition, this double revelation may help restore to us some important resources for dealing with current social problems.

Philosophy written in Arabic and in the Islamic world represents one of the great traditions of Western philosophy. Inspired by Greek philosophical works and the indigenous ideas of Islamic theology, Arabic philosophers from the ninth century onwards put forward ideas of great philosophical and historical importance. This collection of essays, by some of the leading scholars in Arabic philosophy, provides an introduction to the field by way of chapters devoted to individual thinkers or groups, especially during the 'classical' period from (...) the ninth to the twelfth centuries. It also includes chapters on areas of philosophical inquiry across the tradition, such as ethics and metaphysics. Finally, it includes chapters on later Islamic thought, and on the connections between Arabic philosophy and Greek, Jewish, and Latin philosophy. The volume also includes a useful bibliography and a chronology of the most important Arabic thinkers. (shrink)

Paul C. Taylor provides an accessible guide to a well-travelled but still-mysterious area of the contemporary social landscape. The result is the first philosophical introduction to the field of race theory and to a non-biological and situational notion of race. Provides the first philosophical introduction to the field of race theory. Outlines the main features and implications of race-thinking; asks questions such as: What is race-thinking? Don’t we know better than to talk about race now? Are there any races? What (...) is it like to have a racial identity? Engages with the ideas of such important figures as Linda Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, W.E.B. Du Bois, Howard Winant, and Naomi Zack. Explores the enduring significance of race in relation to culture, personal relationships and social justice. (shrink)