ABSTRACT This paper deals with two cases of acquisition and construction of Van de Graaff accelerators in 1950s Latin America, at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and the University of São Paulo, respectively. A comparative approach allows us to appreciate the significance of this particular technology within scientific, cultural, commercial, and political processes. Van de Graaff accelerators appeared as an affordable technology to engage in experimental nuclear physics and to be part of the atomic age. The circumstances that motivated (...) physics communities in Brazil and Mexico to choose this specific technology took shape in close interactions with US institutions and scientists. These inter-American alliances involved precisely the main companies and groups that competed for the market of this technology around the world. These accelerators also intertwined with the building of campuses for two major Latin American universities, occupying then a singular place (physically and symbolically) within their execution. This paper engages with comparison for the common goal of going beyond frameworks and methodologies tied to the nation, while integrating the study of connections and interactions, as well as the interplay of multiple scales. (shrink)

Health equity can be defined as the absence of disadvantage to individuals and communities in health outcomes, access to health care, and quality of health care regardless of one’s race, gender, nationality, age, ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status. Health equity concerns those disparities in public health that can be traced to unequal, systemic economic, and social conditions. Despite significant improvements in the health of the overall population, health inequities in America persist. Racial and ethnic minorities continue to experience higher rates (...) of morbidity and mortality than non-minorities across a range of health issues. For example, African-American children with asthma have a seven times greater mortality rate than Non-Hispanic white children with the illness. While cancer is the second leading cause of death among all populations in the U.S., ethnic minorities are especially burdened with the disease. (shrink)

Health equity can be defined as the absence of disadvantage to individuals and communities in health outcomes, access to health care, and quality of health care regardless of one’s race, gender, nationality, age, ethnicity, religion, and socioeconomic status. Health equity concerns those disparities in public health that can be traced to unequal, systemic economic, and social conditions. Despite significant improvements in the health of the overall population, health inequities in America persist. Racial and ethnic minorities continue to experience higher rates (...) of morbidity and mortality than non-minorities across a range of health issues. For example, African-American children with asthma have a seven times greater mortality rate than Non-Hispanic white children with the illness. While cancer is the second leading cause of death among all populations in the U.S., ethnic minorities are especially burdened with the disease. (shrink)

Strategies for tackling educational inequality take many forms, though perhaps the argument most often invoked is school integration. Yet whatever the promise of integration may be, its realization continues to be hobbled by numerous difficulties. In this paper we examine what many of these difficulties are. Yet in contrast to how many empirical researchers frame these issues, we argue that while educational success in majority-minority schools will depend on a variety of material and non-material resources, the presence of (...) these resources does not require school integration; indeed sometimes the most crucial resources are easier to foster in its absence. To that end, we briefly canvass the evidence from the United States on high performing majority-minority schools serving poor and minority students. Yet because these debates are so contentious in the American context, we pivot away from the U.S. to consider a different country, the Netherlands. We invite the reader to consider an analogous case where racial injustice and educational inequality are just as serious, yet where differences in the state school system might prove instructive concerning how some majority-minority schools choose to respond to existing segregation, but more importantly how educational success can occur in the absence of integration. (shrink)

The design of democratic institutions includes a variety of barriers to protect against the tyranny of the majority, including international human rights, cultural minority rights, and multiculturalism. In the twenty-first century, majorities have re-asserted themselves, sometimes reasonably, referring to social cohesion and national identity, at other times in the form of populist movements challenging core foundations of liberal democracy. This volume intervenes in this debate by examining the legitimacy of conflicting majority and minority claims. Are majorities (...) a legal concept, holding rights and subject to limitations? How can we define a sense of nationhood that brings groups together rather than tears them apart? In this volume, world-leading experts are brought together for the first time to debate the rights of both majorities and minorities. The outcome is a fascinating exchange on one of the greatest challenges facing liberal democracies today. (shrink)

In this study, I examine the role racial minorities in the boardroom can play in reducing social injustice by promoting more equal access to mortgage credit to minority households. I develop a simple theoretical model that posits directors who are racial minorities provide the credit unions they govern with a perspective that shapes lenders’ trust of minority applicants. This trust is shaped by homophily and the tendency of individuals to prefer interactions with similar individuals. Using mortgage loan data (...) from a cross-section of credit unions in the United States from 185,446 applications, I find that credit unions where the majority of board members are minorities are less likely to reject a similarly qualified minority applicant than their counterparts. Governance by minority directors significantly reduces the effects of discrimination faced by minority applicants. The board’s effect is strongest in minority neighborhoods and where the homophily is stronger between directors and applicants. (shrink)

In this article, we engage critically with the understanding of majority-minority relations in a liberal democracy as relations of toleration. We make two main claims: first, that appeals to toleration are unable to capture the procedural problems concerning the unequal socio-political participation of minorities, and, second, that they do not offer any critical tool to establish what judgements the majority is entitled to consider valid reasons for action with respect to some minority. We suggest supplementing the (...) reference to toleration with a specific interpretation of respect for persons; all persons should be treated equally as self-legislators and as if they were opaque to our judgement as regards their agential abilities, on which their capacity for self-legislation supervenes. Minorities are disrespected in this sense whenever are treated merely as the addressees of the rules constraining the formulation and pursuit of their life-plans, rather than as their co-authors on an equal footing with the majority, and whenever their treatment in politics and society is considered as legitimately influenced by the majority's judgement of their agential abilities, either directly or by indirect inference from the evaluation of the content of their beliefs and practices. (shrink)

In this article, we engage critically with the understanding of majority‐minority relations in a liberal democracy as relations of toleration. We make two main claims: first, that appeals to toleration are unable to capture the procedural problems concerning the unequal socio‐political participation of minorities, and, second, that they do not offer any critical tool to establish what judgements the majority is entitled to consider valid reasons for action with respect to some minority. We suggest supplementing the (...) reference to toleration with a specific interpretation of respect for persons; all persons should be treated equally as self‐legislators and as if they were opaque to our judgement as regards their agential abilities, on which their capacity for self‐legislation supervenes. Minorities are disrespected in this sense whenever are treated merely as the addressees of the rules constraining the formulation and pursuit of their life‐plans, rather than as their co‐authors on an equal footing with the majority, and whenever their treatment in politics and society is considered as legitimately influenced by the majority's judgement of their agential abilities, either directly or by indirect inference from the evaluation of the content of their beliefs and practices. (shrink)

In this thirty-second annual volume in the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy's NOMOS series, entitled Majorities and Minorities, thirteen distinguished contributors consider a diverse selection of topics. Included are essays on legitimacy of the majority, the utilitarian view of majoritarianism, majorities and elections, pluralism and equality, democratic theory, and American democracy and majority rules. Of Interest to political scientists, philosophers, and legal scholars, this collection brings together a variety of viewpoints. Each author is a leading voice (...) within his or her specialized field. (shrink)

Moral philosophers of late have been examining the implications of experimental social psychology for ethics. The focus of attention has been on situationism—the thesis that we routinely underestimate the extent to which minor situational variables influence morally significant behavior. Situationism has been seen as a threat to prevailing lay and philosophical theories of character, personhood, and agency. In this paper, I outline the situationist literature and critique one of its upshots: the admonition to carefully select one’s situational contexts. Besides being (...) limited in application, this strategy accentuates an untenable person/situation dichotomy. The deeper lesson of situationism lies in highlighting the interconnectedness of all social behavior—how we are inextricably involved in the actions of others, and how minor tweaks in our own behavior can lead to major payoffs in our moral lives. Situationism is better seen as an opportunity for moral progress than a threat to individual autonomy. (shrink)

BackgroundCodes of conduct mainly focus on research misconduct that takes the form of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. However, at the aggregate level, lesser forms of research misbehavior may be more important due to their much higher prevalence. Little is known about what the most frequent research misbehaviors are and what their impact is if they occur.MethodsA survey was conducted among 1353 attendees of international research integrity conferences. They were asked to score 60 research misbehaviors according to their views on and (...) perceptions of the frequency of occurrence, preventability, impact on truth (validity), and impact on trust between scientists on 5-point scales. We expressed the aggregate level impact as the product of frequency scores and truth, trust and preventability scores, respectively. We ranked misbehaviors based on mean scores. Additionally, relevant demographic and professional background information was collected from participants.ResultsResponse was 17% of those who were sent the invitational email and 33% of those who opened it. The rankings suggest that selective reporting, selective citing, and flaws in quality assurance and mentoring are viewed as the major problems of modern research. The “deadly sins” of fabrication and falsification ranked highest on the impact on truth but low to moderate on aggregate level impact on truth, due to their low estimated frequency. Plagiarism is thought to be common but to have little impact on truth although it ranked high on aggregate level impact on trust.ConclusionsWe designed a comprehensive list of 60 major and minor research misbehaviors. Our respondents were much more concerned over sloppy science than about scientific fraud (FFP). In the fostering of responsible conduct of research, we recommend to develop interventions that actively discourage the high ranking misbehaviors from our study. (shrink)

The categorical logic fallacies are called formal fallacies because they are all violations of proper syllogistic form. This chapter deals with one of the common fallacies in Western philosophy, the illicit major and minor terms. The fallacies of illicit major term and illicit minor term have to do with distribution in syllogisms. The illicit process of the major term is much the same, except we would illicitly process the major term as opposed to the minor. So if we are only (...) talking about some of something, then we cannot go on to conclude something about all of that something. We cannot distribute anything in the conclusion that was not distributed in the premises. But we may not have to distribute in the conclusion whatever was distributed in the premises. (shrink)

Minority governments in parliamentary democracies are conventionally considered to be unstable and ineffective aberrations from the principle of majority rule. Through analysis of over 350 postwar governments, the author shows that minority governments are neither exceptional nor unstable but in fact a common feature of parliamentary democracies and frequently perform as well as, or better than, majority coalitions. Using the Italian and Norwegian governments as case studies, he suggests that minority governments are particularly likely to (...) form when parties anticipate competitive elections and when opposition parties are able to influence legislative decisions. As an attempt to document and explain a very common form of government in parliamentary democracies, this book will contribute significantly to the understanding of the importance of electoral competition in democratic politics. (shrink)

This is a translation of "Minor Tweaks, Major Payoffs" (2010) prepared by 黃玉娥 for the Journal of Chinese Philosophy and Culture for a special issue edited by Brian Bruya on cognitive science and early Chinese philosophy.

In his book, The Logic of Democracy, T.L. Thor son has published a chapter entitled "Majority Rule and Minority Rights". In this paper he has pointed out a controversy which has arisen between "natural rights democrats" and "majority rule democrats." In this paper I argue that elected representatives represent the majority and their rule can be called the rule of the majority so long they can protect the rights of individuals. This is why the natural (...) rights of man are more fundamental and essential than majority rule. In conclusion, I insist that neither "natural rights" nor "majority rule" can be called the elements of democracy. If the former and the latter could have been understood as the end of democracy and the means to achieve the end, respectively, then the controversy would not have arisen. (shrink)

In his book, The Logic of Democracy, T.L. Thor son has published a chapter entitled "Majority Rule and Minority Rights". In this paper he has pointed out a controversy which has arisen between "natural rights democrats" and "majority rule democrats." In this paper I argue that elected representatives represent the majority and their rule can be called the rule of the majority so long they can protect the rights of individuals. This is why the natural (...) rights of man are more fundamental and essential than majority rule. In conclusion, I insist that neither "natural rights" nor "majority rule" can be called the elements of democracy. If the former and the latter could have been understood as the end of democracy and the means to achieve the end, respectively, then the controversy would not have arisen. (shrink)

The questions of observational error and ambiguity of interpretation that have been raised in connection with the reported observation of a magnetic monopole have precipitated a situation calling for some further insight into the pairing principles of nature. A basic distinction relates to whether or not a pair is “ordered” (e.g., sexual pair) or without a priori order (e.g., mirror pair). It is shown that the polarity of electric charge is to be regarded as an example of pairing without an (...) intrinsic a priori order. It then follows that “action” also exhibits a pairing without a priori order. The relation ofPC andTC to unordered and ordered pairing is discussed, with neutral kaon pairing as a striking example of ordered pairing. The pairing of magnetic charge, if it exists, becomes an ordered pairing! (shrink)

Traditional liberalism's blindness to cultural concerns has often come under fire, while so‐called “liberal multiculturalism” has made it its business to take a good look at the place of culture within liberal law. According to them, cultural minorities should be recognized. In my opinion, however, their proposals, in fact, almost entirely preclude the possibility that cultural minorities would receive recognition within liberal society. In what follows, I explain my view of these matters and, above all, argue for a more vital (...) understanding of cultural minorities. This will entail presenting a comprehensive view of minority rights within liberal society. (shrink)

Il y a trois défis pour la sécurité de l’Ouest. Le premier est que l’Ouest, comparé à l’Asie de l’Est, est en déclin. Dans vingt-cinq ans, la taille économique de la Chine continentale pourrait être supérieure à la taille du marché américain ; celle de l’Inde et de l’Indonesie être supérieure à la taille économique de l’Allemagne ; celle de la Corée du Sud excéder l’Angleterre ou la France ou l’Italie. Le second est la prolifération d’un savoir à doubleemploi et (...) le désastre économique de l’ex-Union Soviétique qui auront pour conséquence vraisemblable une prolifération du nucléaire. Le troisième concerne les changements de valeurs qui s’opèrent à l’Ouest et qui favorisent la formation de sociétés occidentales de moins en moins aptes à attaquer ou à se défendre. Mais la réduction du poids de l’Occident dans l’économie globale ne garantit plus que les efforts faciles l’emportent face aux défis du futur, qu’ils viennent des pouvoirs renforcés de l’Est asiatique ou des “desperados” islamiques. Ces défis ne seront vraisemblablement pas relevés au moyen de deux fausses prescriptions qui trouvent quelques faveurs en Europe Continentale. Premièrement, une grande partie de l’Europe de l’Ouest est lasse d’être confrontée à la “destruction créatrice” de ses emplois du fait de la concurrence de l’Asie de l’Est et désire ardemment le protectionnisme. Le remède protectionniste se bâtit sur un diagnostic grandement correct des problèmes occidentaux, mais il est tout de même dangereux si l’on met en perspective la morale, l’économie et la politique du pouvoir. Deuxièmement, certains Européens reconnaissent à juste titre que les grandes puissances historiques, comme la Grande- Bretagne ou la France ou l’Allemagne, n’ont plus une envergure suffisante pour être qualifiées de grandes puissances. Cependant, elles sousestiment la gravité et la vitesse du déclin de l’Occident. Une Europe définie par le noyau dur francoallemand deviendra trop étroite, avant même qu’elle ne soit établie dans cette structure. Vraisemblablement, même l’Union Européenne dans sa totalité sera trop petite avant qu’elle ne devienne une véritable communauté sur le plan sécuritaire. Au lieu de ces fausses prescriptions, cet article propose trois réponses aux dilemmes de l’Occident, ou encore trois façons de gérer le déclin de l’Occident. Premièrement, seule la coopération atlantique promet d’être une réponse efficace au dynamisme de l’Asie de l’Est et au déclin de l’Ouest. De plus, la coopération entre l’Amérique du Nord et l’Europe de l’Ouest a besoin d’être complétée par un nouvel engagement à l’égard d’une économie globale ouverte et d’une disposition à s’ajuster aux défis de celle-ci, afin de coopter l’Est asiatique dans une sphère globale de coprospérité. Cela doit vraisemblablement engendrer quelques coupes radicales dans l’Etat-providence. Deuxièmement, la prolifération nucléaire exige aussi une réponse. Il est concevable que la stratégie de défense contre la Chine soit encore plus difficile dans une vingtaine d’années qu’elle le fut contre l’Union Soviétique dans les années 1980. Mais cela ne devrait pas être une excuse pour ne pas construire des missiles de défense en réponse à ceux de l’Iran, de l’Irak, de la Lybie ou de l’Algerie. Troisièmement, les changements des valeurs en Occident semblent plus difficiles à traiter, mais ils renforcent la nécessité d’investir dans la coopération occidentale plutôt qu’uniquement européenne, la nécessité de coopter l’Asie de l’Est plutôt que de plonger dans une autre guerre froide, et la nécessité de contenir l’Etat-providence plutôt que de le développer. There are three challenges to Western security. First, compared to East Asia the West is in decline. In another twenty-five years, the economic size of Mainland China may exceed the size of the American market, India and Indonesia may exceed Germany, South Korea may exceed Britain or France or Italy. Second, the proliferation of dual use knowledge and the economic disaster in the former Soviet Union are likely to result in some nuclear proliferation. Third, value changes within the West will make Western societies ever less capable of deterrence and defense. But the reduced weight of the West in the global economy no longer guarantees that leisurely efforts succeed in meeting future challengers, whether from East Asian great powers or Islamic desperados. These challenges are unlikely to be met by two false prescriptions which enjoy some appeal in Continental Europe. First, much of Western Europe gets tired of observing the “creative destruction” of its jobs by East Asian competitors and longs for protectionism. The protectionist cure is built on a largely correct diagnosis of some Western problems, but nevertheless dangerous from an economic, moral, and power politics perspective. Second, some Europeans rightly recognize that historical great powers, like Britain or France or Germany, are no longer large enough to be great powers. But they underestimate the severity and speed of the decline of the West. A Franco- German core Europe will become too small, even before it is established. Conceivably, even the entire European Union will be too small before it becomes an effective security community. Instead of these false prescriptions this paper advocates three responses to Western dilemmas, or three modes of managing Western decline. First, only Atlantic cooperation promises to be an effective response to East Asian dynamism and Western decline. Moreover, cooperation between North America and Western Europe needs to be complemented with a renewed commitment to an open global economy and a readiness to adjust to its challenges, in order to coopt East Asia into a global co-prosperity sphere. This is likely to necessitate some radical cuts in the welfare state. Second, nuclear proliferation also needs some response. Conceivably, strategic defense is as difficult against China twenty years from now, as it was against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. But this should be no excuse for not building a missile and air defense against the likes of Iran, Iraq, Lybia, or Algeria. Third, the value changes within the West seem least tractable, but they reinforce the necessity of investing in Western rather than merely European cooperation, the necessity of coopting East Asia rather than stumbling into another Cold War, and the necessity for containing the welfare state rather than expanding it. (shrink)

Kerr and Godfrey-Smith argue that two mathematically equivalent, alternative formal representations drawn from population genetics, the contextualist and collectivist formalisms, may be equally good for quantifying the dynamics of some natural systems, despite important differences between the formalisms. I draw on constraints on causal representation from Woodward (Making things happen, Oxford University Press, New York, 2003) and Eberhardt and Scheines (Philos Sci 74(5):981–995, 2006) to argue that one or the other formalism will be superior for arbitrary natural systems in which (...) individuals form different types of groups. (shrink)

Volume 19, Issue 7, July 2019, Page 64-65.

Musical systems develop associations over time between aspects of musical form and concepts from outside of the music. Experienced listeners internalize these connotations, such that the formal elements bring to mind their extra-musical meanings. An example of musical form-meaning mapping is the association that Western listeners have between the major and minor modes and happiness and sadness, respectively. We revisit the emotional semantics of musical mode in a study of 44 American participants (musicians and non-musicians) who each evaluated the relatedness (...) of 96 melody-word pairs. Among the tonal melodies, we manipulated mode (major and minor) and timbre (clarinet and flute) while systematically controlling for other musical factors including pitch register and melodic contour. Similarly, among the English words, we manipulated word affect (happy and sad) while systematically controlling for other lexical factors including frequency and word length. Results demonstrated that participants provided a higher proportion of related responses for major melodies paired with happy words and minor melodies paired with sad words than for the reverse pairings. This interaction between mode and word affect was highly significant for both musicians and non-musicians, albeit with a larger effect for the former group. Further interactions with timbre suggested that while both clarinet and flute conveyed happiness when in the major mode, the clarinet was somewhat more successful than the flute at conveying sadness in the minor mode. Debriefing questionnaires suggested that the majority of the participants, including all of the non-musicians, had no awareness of the major-minor manipulation, and instead directed their attention to register and contour. We argue that the affective character of the major and minor modes is but one example of form-meaning mapping in music, and suggest further exploration of the roles of timbre, register, and contour in conveying musical emotions. (shrink)

This article examines the relevance of a theory of the multinational state for the evaluation of claims for self-determination and secession. Considerations of ?ethnocultural justice? imply that the recognition of the multinational character of a state ? or the granting of some of the minority nations' demands ? is a matter of justice. If these requirements are not met, secession could be justified. Indeed, if secession needs a just cause (as it has been argued), a failure to build a (...) truly multinational arrangement can be a valid reason for a minority nation to secede. An approach like the one proposed would also contribute to the resolution of some of the key problems of the three main theories of secession and their appeals to nationalism, choice and remedial rights. (shrink)

Raphael Cohen-Almagor’s Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism offers a different way of approaching multiculturalism from the systematic theoretical treatments that anchor the literature. While strongly committed to liberal democratic values, it presents not so much a theory or moral argument justifying minority or majority cultural rights as a set of values and principles for adjudicating controversial cases and oft-heard arguments against multicultural accommodation. After noting distinctive features of the approach, I discuss three areas of tension in the analysis. First, between (...) its appeals to Rawlsian justice and state neutrality and its support of state multiculturalism. Second, between its stated theoretical principles and its adjudication of some cases. Third, regarding how we think about a state’s entanglement with culture and, specifically, whether that should be in terms of an incomplete liberal neutrality, liberal perfectionism, or liberal nationalism. I suggest that as helpful as Cohen-Almagor’s liberal-democratic guidelines are, there remain some contextual factors which are no less important in justly responding to the pointy end of multiculturalism. (shrink)

The relations between the majority and minorities in a democracy have been standardly viewed as the main subject matter of toleration: the majority should refrain from using its dominant position to interfere with some minorities’ practices or beliefs despite its dislike or disapproval of such practices or beliefs. Can the idea of toleration provide us with the necessary resources to understand and respond to the problems arising out of majority/minorities relations in a democracy? We reply in the (...) negative and make two main claims: first, that resorting to toleration is not enough to make sense of the problems deriving from the unequal participation of minorities in society, and, second, that it risks sanctioning the asymmetric relation between the majority and minorities informed by the negative judgement of the former towards some belief or practice of the latter. We suggest resorting instead to the idea of equal opacity respect for persons: all persons should be treated equally as moral agents, in accordance with their equally possessing the capacity for self-legislation, and as if they were opaque to our judgement for all those properties of theirs which exceed moral agency. Looking at the majority/minorities relations through such a lens enables us to understand (and appropriately respond to) what is problematic in such relations: the majority often fails to treat minorities as moral agents by failing to take their voices into account on an equal footing, by seeing them merely as recipients of certain provisions affecting them rather than their authors, and by considering them as legitimately exposed to the majority’s (negative) judgment. The purchase of our argument is illustrated by reference to two minorities whose treatment is paradigmatic of the problematic nature of majority/minorities relations across Europe: Muslims and Roma. (shrink)

Present study sheds more light on the conceptualization of citizenship and civic engagement among majority and minority youth. In order to understand the meanings of citizenship, fourteen focus groups were conducted with young people aged 16–26, with both civically engaged and disengaged young ethnic Czechs, Roma, and Ukrainians. Results suggest that young people understand the citizenship as having multiple dimensions (legal and personal, and in terms of rights and responsibilities) and civic engagement as being focused on various aspects. (...) The way people described their position within society was influenced by the social background and mirrored in the views on full citizenship. (shrink)

One of the proofs expressing certain knowledge in fiqh method is ijma. There are hardly any scholars who do not accept that ijma is evidence. It is reported that the first person who objected to this was Mu'tazilî İbrahim en-Nazam. The group that does not accept it as a sect are the scholars who belong to the Imamiyya. It is possible to say that mujtahid scholars have been unanimous since the first period mujtahids on the fact that ijmā is evidence, (...) with a few exceptions. Although there is no significant disagreement about the fact that ijma is evidence, the scholars differed on the details of ijma's types, conditions, proofs, and the number of people who would agree on ijma. One of the issues discussed by the scholars of the methodology is the effect of ijmaa when one or more people oppose the majority of the mujtahids. While some of the methodists think that the opposition of the minority against the alliance of the majority will not harm the ijma, the majority of them argue that all mujtahids must be of the same opinion in order for the ijma to be formed. Basically, it can be said that these two approaches argue with each other, but there are also proceduralists who deal with the issue differently. Some scholars take into account the attitude of the majority towards them in an issue opposed by one or a few people. According to these scholars, if the majority does not oppose the opinion of the minority, then ijma cannot be mentioned. Because this shows that the majority also respect the opposing view. If the majority does not respect or even oppose the opinion of the minority, then the consensus of the majority becomes ijma. The arguments generally used in these discussions are the same. Usulists defend their theses based on the opposing views of some of the Companions, especially Ibn Abbas. Those who do not see the opposition of the minority as an obstacle to ijma, argue that although one or more of the Companions had dissenting views, as in the example of Ibn Abbas on riba and mut'a, the consensus of the other Companions is the ijma of the scholars. Likewise, those who argue that this is an obstacle to ijma, as well as Ibn 'Abbas's opposition to the opinion of the populace on awl, was an obstacle to the formation of ijma on an issue agreed by the other Companions. This study deals with the discussions and the arguments used by the parties. However, firstly, the information value and conditions of ijma, which is thought to be closely related to these discussions, are briefly presented. In the study, the explanations of the scholars of different sects, who were not content with the works of a certain school, were examined and tried to be evaluated. As a result, it should be noted that it is the prevailing view that the opposition of the minority against the majority will prevent the formation of ijma, based on the conditions put forward in order for ijma to be conclusive evidence. However, it has come to the conclusion that whether the opposing view of the minority is taken into account by other scholars is effective in the formation of ijma. (shrink)

We identify a novel ‘cultural red king effect’ that, in many cases, results in stable arrangements which are to the detriment of minority groups. In particular, we show inequalities disadvantaging minority groups can naturally arise under an adaptive process when minority and majority members must routinely determine how to divide resources amongst themselves. We contend that these results show how inequalities disadvantaging minorities can likely arise by dint of their relative size and need not be a (...) result of either explicit nor implicit prejudices, nor due to intrinsic differences between minority and majority members. (shrink)

Deleuze and Guattari develop a notion of “minor literature” in their short book on Kafka, and the opposition major/minor has been used with varying degrees of success by critics working in a range of disciplines including architectural theory. Teasing out the potentially subversive implications of the major/minor opposition requires reading it in relation to other binarisms developed by Deleuze and Guattari in those same years, e.g., state/nomadic science, striated/smooth space, optic/haptic, as well as Guattari’s useful concept “machinic heterogenesis.” Then, one (...) ends up with a minor architecture concerned with partially subversive practices rather than with structure per se. A building’s minor status is figured through its deployment in and production of a space that is a technological, social and political pattern as well as a line of flight. This paper reads minor architecture by examining the minor house built by Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond and those currently being assembled by the Mad Housers in Atlanta, Georgia. (shrink)

The existing literature on political and civic participation has tended to neglect individuals’ judgements about the effectiveness of specific forms of participation, focusing instead on the role of internal, external and collective efficacy in driving levels of participation. The present study examined young people’s judgements of the effectiveness of specific forms of conventional, non-conventional and civic participation and the reasons which are given for these judgements. Fourteen focus groups were conducted with English, Bangladeshi and Congolese young people aged between 16 (...) and 26 years old living in Greater London. The findings revealed differences in judgements of the effectiveness of action across ethnic groups, and differences in the specific reasons that are given for judgements of effectiveness as a function of ethnicity, gender and age. It is argued that greater attention needs to be paid to subgroups formed by the intersection of ethnicity, gender and age in order to understand young people’s participatory attitudes and behaviours. (shrink)