Search

The article focuses on examining the moral implications of abortion by using Judith Jarvis Thomson's analogy of being tethered to a stranger to explore the legality of cutting the cord. It raises concerns about the subjectivity of moral intuitions and advocates for impartial judgment in evaluating abortion policies, suggesting that only a judge devoid of personal interests or biases could truly make fair decisions.

Hypnosis, a practice often misunderstood and surrounded by misconceptions, has a rich historical lineage dating back to ancient civilizations. Our review explores the relationship between neuroanatomy, genetics, and hypnotic susceptibility, investigating organic factors influencing an individual's responsiveness to hypnosis. This review highlights the importance of hypnosis as a high-level cognitive activity, especially in pain and anxiety management, and emphasizes the potential benefits of integrating hypnosis into healthcare practices. Recent advancements in neuroimaging have provided insights into the neurological mechanisms of hypnosis, while genetic research has expanded its applications. However, persistent misconceptions hinder its acceptance. This article offers a multidisciplinary basic exploration of hypnosis, focusing on its origins, historical development related to psychiatry, the basic neuroimaging findings mainly affecting the limbic system responsible for emotion, and genetic underpinnings. We aim to inspire clinicians, social scientists, and healthcare professionals to effectively integrate the scientific basics of hypnosis into therapeutic practice, contributing to a better understanding of its role in augmenting outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crop breeding in sub‐Saharan Africa has made considerable gains; however, postharvest and food‐related preferences have been overlooked, in addition to how these preferences vary by gender, social difference and context. This context is changing as participatory approaches using intersectional gender and place‐based methods are beginning to inform how breeding programmes make decisions. This article presents an innovative methodology to inclusively and democratically prioritise food quality traits of root, tuber and banana crops based on engagement with food systems actors and transdisciplinary collaboration. The outcome of the methodology is the Gendered Food Product Profile (GFPP) – a list of prioritised food quality characteristics – to support breeders to make more socially inclusive decisions on the methods for trait characterisation to select genotypes closer to the needs of food system actors. This article reviews application of the methodology in 14 GFPPs, presents illustrative case studies and lessons learned. Key lessons are that the transdisciplinary structure and the key role of social scientists helped avoid reductionism, supported co‐learning, and the creation of GFPPs that represented the diverse interests of food system actors, particularly women, in situ. The method partially addressed power dynamics in multidisciplinary decision making; however, effectiveness was dependent on equitable team relations and supportive institutions committed to valuing plural forms of knowledge. Actions to address power asymmetries that privilege particular types of knowledge and voices in decision making are crucial in techno‐science projects, along with opportunities for co‐learning and long‐term collaboration and a transdisciplinary structure at higher level. © 2024 The Authors. Journal of The Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document provides summaries of several doctoral dissertations in the field of economic history. The first dissertation focuses on Chinese immigration and exclusion in the United States, challenging previous assumptions and highlighting the impact of anti-Chinese laws. The second dissertation explores expanding financial participation in the early 20th century, examining employee stock ownership programs and the impact of the Liberty Loan Program during World War I. The third dissertation examines disparities in access to opportunity in the United States, particularly focusing on the intergenerational effects of anti-Black institutions. These dissertations contribute valuable data, methods, and findings to their respective fields of study. Another dissertation explores various aspects of inequality in America, focusing on racial and gender disparities in access to opportunity. Lastly, a dissertation focuses on the drivers of labor market inequalities throughout economic history, examining intergenerational mobility and the impact of the feudal system. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the issue of immigration in the United States, particularly in relation to the current presidential campaign. It highlights the challenges faced by the government in managing the influx of migrants and asylum-seekers, as well as the policy debates surrounding illegal entry. The article also presents historical perspectives on immigration, including objections to immigration and proposed remedies from over a century ago. It emphasizes the need for attention and decision-making on immigration, while acknowledging the complexity of the issue. [Extracted from the article]

Pierre Bourdieu is one of the most important social scientists of the twentieth century. However, the intersections between his work and geography largely remain to be investigated. This paper explores the place of spatiality in Bourdieu's models of the social world. It first offers a critical analysis of the ternary model elaborated in his article entitled "Site-Effects," in which "physical space" is theoretically central (a model that Bourdieu later seemed to retreat from). It then builds upon another triad, developed in "The Three States of Cultural Capital," to submit a model in which the three "states" can be extended to the social world at large and correspond to three modes of "crystallizationc" of social relations, which all have a spatial dimension. The generalization of the triad leads to a consistent theorization of the intrinsic spatial dimension of the social world, thus overcoming the misleading dualism between society and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has underscored the importance of scientific knowledge and highlighted the challenge for politicians: They had to rely on expert advice and still had to make decisions under uncertainty due to the lack of long-term health data. This article investigates how expert judgments and expert advice affect the choices between programs that are proposed to combat the outbreak of a viral disease by means of a between-subjects design embedded in a survey. We use the classic Asian disease experiment and extend earlier applications by varying the professional background of the experts (virologists vs. social scientists) within the experimental set-up. We use data from a university wide web-survey to show the persistence of framing effects and that the disciplinary background of the expert is not related to individual decision-making under risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the rise of identity studies and the potential limitations and consequences of focusing on cultural differences. It introduces the term "IDology" to describe the study of identities and argues that it can align with neoliberalism and consumerism. The article also discusses the complexities of identity formation and the relationship between individuals and their social context. It suggests that ethno-cultural and religious resurgences among minorities may be a response to the limitations imposed by neoliberal governance. Additionally, the article explores the emergence of ultra-politics and the securitization of migration, which contribute to civilizational polarization and the erosion of democratic deliberation. The text introduces the concept of "sub-politics," referring to non-conventional forms of politics individuals use to navigate polarizing aspects of ultra-politics. It argues that social scientists should focus on examining socio-economic, political, psychological, and spatial factors that give rise to the formation of new communities, rather than solely emphasizing cultural and religious differences. The author suggests a post-IDology thinking that magnifies similarities among individuals facing similar challenges, rather than amplifying differences. [Extracted from the article]

Anthropologist Jason De León is advocating for innovative storytelling and interdisciplinary work to raise awareness about missing migrants. Through projects like the Undocumented Migration Project and the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, De León aims to represent the scale of disappearance and highlight the dignity of migrating people. He acknowledges the challenges of getting people to care about the issue and suggests the importance of being better storytellers to engage the public. De León's work focuses on bringing marginalized individuals, including smugglers, into the conversation and exploring their subjectivities in a complex world. [Extracted from the article]

This article provides a summary of a special issue on urban encounters in the context of migration. The papers in the issue examine the experiences, creation, and theorization of encounters in diverse urban settings. The articles emphasize the role of socio-economic inequalities in shaping encounters and highlight the importance of considering factors such as space, materiality, and power dynamics. The authors call for a reevaluation of how social interactions are perceived and evaluated in diverse urban landscapes and stress the need for epistemic justice and recognition of diverse perspectives. The special issue aims to contribute to the field of migration studies and inform policy-making. [Extracted from the article]

A substantial number of social science studies have shown a lack of conceptual clarity, inadequate understanding of the nature of the empirical research approaches, and undue preference for deduction, which have caused much confusion, created paradigmatic incommensurability, and impeded scientific advancement. This study, through conceptual review and analysis of canonical discussions of concepts and the reasoning approaches of deduction and induction and their applications in social science theorization by philosophers and social scientists, is purported to unveil the logical nature of empirical research and examine the legitimacy of the preference of deduction among social scientists. The findings note that conceptual clarity as the foundation of social science research, exchange, and replication can be achieved through interdisciplinary stress of conceptual analyses to establish universal measurements and that the primacy of deduction in social sciences needs to concede to or be balanced with induction for new knowledge, more discoveries, and scientific advancement. The study recommends that institutions and researchers of social sciences invest more in conceptual analysis and inductive research through collaboration and separate efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this essay is to present and analyse the basic assumptions of Leszek Nowak's conception of the unity of science. According to Nowak, the unity of science is manifested in the common application of the method of idealisation in scientific research. In accordance with his conception, regardless of the discipline they represent, researchers go through the same stages in building a theory. Two key ones among them are: introducing idealising assumptions into the representation and then their concretisation. In this view, idealisation is the basis of the scientific method, while other cognitive procedures complement it. Nowak's conception has particular relevance in the context of the dispute between naturalism and anti-naturalism and in the context of the continuing rift between social scientists and natural scientists. It calls into question the anti-naturalist thesis of the ontological uniqueness of social sciences and the resulting methodological consequences. I argue that Nowak's conception is a cognitively valuable contribution to the contemporary epistemology of science, but it also has weaknesses, mainly due to the limitations of applying the idealisation-concretisation scheme in research practice. For it turns out, as I point out in this essay, that many idealising assumptions are not subject to concretisation and that concretisations do not always condition an increase in the explanatory and/or predictive power of the representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do parenthood and publishing contribute to gender gaps in academic career advancement? While extensive research examines the causes of gender disparities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers, we know much less about the factors that constrain women's advancement in the social sciences. Combining detailed career‐ and administrative register data on 976 Danish social scientists in Business and Management, Economics, Political Science, Psychology, and Sociology (5703 person‐years) that obtained a PhD degree between 2000 and 2015, we estimate gender differences in attainment of senior research positions and parse out how publication outputs, parenthood and parental leave contribute to these differences. Our approach is advantageous over previous longitudinal studies in that we track the careers and publication outputs of graduates from the outset of their PhD education and match this data with time‐sensitive information on each individual's publication activities and family situation. In discrete time‐event history models, we observe a ∼24 per cent female disadvantage in advancement likelihoods within the first 7 years after PhD graduation, with gender differences increasing over the observation period. A decomposition indicates that variations in publishing, parenthood and parental leave account for ∼ 40 per cent of the gender gap in career advancement, suggesting that other factors, including recruitment disparities, asymmetries in social capital and experiences of unequal treatment at work, may also constrain women's careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the significance of descriptive sociology in the modern era, highlighting its ability to shape public discourse and engage wider audiences. The author emphasizes the need to challenge dominant modes of thinking and reclaim the critical power of sociology through rich and powerful descriptive work. Descriptive methods, with their aesthetic appeal and visual communication, can effectively convey complex ideas and mobilize broader audiences. The article cites examples, such as Thomas Piketty's work on inequality, to illustrate the impact of descriptive sociology on public discourse and policy. While the World Inequality Laboratory's website provides accessible information on global inequality trends, its causal analysis has received mixed reception. Economists and sociologists have offered new perspectives on inequality, but their causal claims have been criticized for lacking consistency and empirical evidence. Nevertheless, descriptive sociology, when purposeful and theoretically grounded, can offer fresh insights into social phenomena, even without clear causal explanations. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores the history and complexities of nationalism in Central Europe. It discusses the legacies of interethnic conflict, discrimination, and violence in the region. The text examines the development of national identity in premodern Europe and its transition into modern nationhood. It also explores the factors that contributed to the rise of nationalism in the 19th century, such as the disintegration of traditional loyalties and the desire for solidarity. The article highlights the challenges of national identity in mixed regions and the persistence of regional identities. It also discusses the historical context of violence and genocide in Central Europe, emphasizing the role of imperialism and extremist ideologies. The text concludes by discussing the relationship between nationalism and democracy in the region and the importance of understanding the historical context of nationalism in Central Europe. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses the history and impact of government secrecy in the United States. It highlights the vast amount of classified information that is stored and protected by the government, as well as the significant financial resources allocated to maintaining this secrecy. The author argues that excessive secrecy can hinder democratic accountability and proposes using data science tools to analyze declassified documents and strike a balance between national security and public access to information. However, the article also acknowledges the limitations of data science in fully addressing the problem of government secrecy, emphasizing the need for political will and collective efforts to challenge and reform the system. [Extracted from the article]

On one hand, Islamic banking and finance is an aspiration to radically transform banks and the financial system to conform with interpretations of Islamic ethics and morals. On the other hand, such high aspirations patently conflict with the existing global, US$3.6 trillion market dominated by profit‐oriented private banks. These aspirations also potentially conflict with the technical details of how financial products are constructed to be "Shariah compliant." How do Islamic financial practitioners reconcile their vision of the Islamic good society with the products and processes observed at work? One such theological tool and cultural concept is to interpret Islamic financial products as relying on hiyal, a legal stratagem used to provide remedies and alleviate predicaments, to provide an escape from the unlawful to the lawful. This essay summarizes how thinkers in Malaysia are developing the concept of hiyal either to critique or to promote Islamic finance. As a contribution to anthropological and postcolonial theorizing, the essay concludes by exploring how the concept of hiyal can help us understand contrivances, conspiracies, cons, and stratagems. This theoretical tool kit can assist social scientists in exploring the gap between people's economic behaviors and their aspirations for what a good economy should look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian Dayé's new book, Experts, Social Scientists, and Techniques of Prognosis in Cold War America (2020), recounts the development of a set of techniques of expertise developed in the United States during the Cold War, and (ostensively) enabling policy makers to make decisions based on likely social, political, and military developments. The techniques and approaches were, in hindsight, shocking in their ambition, their arrogance, and even their sloppiness. The account helps us to understand how scientific findings and expert "opinion" came to be conflated in post-war America, and may be part of the explanation of why scientific authority no longer equates to public authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generative AI that can produce realistic text, images, and other human-like outputs is currently transforming many different industries. Yet it is not yet known how such tools might influence social science research. I argue Generative AI has the potential to improve survey research, online experiments, automated content analyses, agent-based models, and other techniques commonly used to study human behavior. In the second section of this article, I discuss the many limitations of Generative AI. I examine how bias in the data used to train these tools can negatively impact social science research--as well as a range of other challenges related to ethics, replication, environmental impact, and the proliferation of low-quality research. I conclude by arguing that social scientists can address many of these limitations by creating open-source infrastructure for research on human behavior. Such infrastructure is not only necessary to ensure broad access to high-quality research tools, I argue, but also because the progress of AI will require deeper understanding of the social forces that guide human behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The text explores the treatise "Liber de tribus ordinibus" and its relationship to other works on music theory. It suggests that the treatise may have functioned as an independent work or as part of a larger collection called "tres libelli." The authorship of the treatise is attributed to Johannes de Muris, a medieval music theorist. The text provides insights into the content and significance of the treatise, as well as its influence on other works. It also discusses the classification of intervals and the similarities between the treatise and other works on music theory. [Extracted from the article]

The Research Handbook on the Belt and Road Initiative, edited by Joseph Chinyong Liow, Hong Liu, and Gong Xue, provides a comprehensive examination of China's multitrillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The collection features 37 chapters written by 45 contributors with diverse disciplinary backgrounds, covering countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa. The book explores the intersection of BRI infrastructure projects with local political economies and global power dynamics, highlighting the opportunities, risks, and challenges associated with the initiative. It also examines the unique characteristics of the BRI, such as its integration of Chinese and Western development paradigms. The collection offers valuable empirical evidence and frameworks for analysis, making it a useful resource for researchers, policymakers, and professionals interested in the BRI. [Extracted from the article]

This document is a collection of abstracts from various articles in the Journal of Planning Literature. The articles cover a range of topics including planning history, hydromorphological information in historical maps, mapping in conservative media's climate change denial, computational cartographic recognition, more-than-state ontologies of territory, life-course trajectories in local spatial contexts, co-creation in adaptive spatial planning, dissonant memory landscapes in infrastructure development, postdigital territoriality, complexity and responsibility in planning, planning education, and more. Each abstract provides a brief overview of the article's content and key findings. [Extracted from the article]

Investing in cryptocurrency has become more popular among Americans. Despite this, politicians and social scientists know almost nothing about the politics of cryptocurrency in the American public. By analyzing an original, nationally representative survey of 2500 American respondents, we create the first robust profile of the personalities, demographics, and political attitudes of cryptocurrency owners. We show that Americans who report hardship from inflation are more likely to own cryptocurrency, suggesting that when inflation is high, Americans may be more likely to use cryptocurrency as a medium of exchange and store of value. Americans who favor lower government spending and are more inclined toward conspiratorial thinking are also more likely to own cryptocurrency. Finally, there is a personality to cryptocurrency owners, with those open to new experiences more likely to own it and the conscientious less likely to own it. Our results have implications for how the American public may use cryptocurrency going forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the intellectual history of Western civilization, highlighting key figures and events that have shaped the modern world. It explores contrasting philosophies such as Plato's emphasis on form and matter and Aristotle's focus on natural observation. The influence of Christianity, particularly in separating spiritual and political realms, is also discussed. The text delves into major historical conflicts, including the tension between Church and State supremacy in the Middle Ages, the impact of Germanic tribes on Western culture, the Scientific Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, the transition from Aristotelian to modern philosophy, the founding of America by Anglo-Protestants, and the Enlightenment Project's belief in a science of the social world. The article concludes by examining the role of the contemporary state and the differing views on limited government and big government. [Extracted from the article]

The article "Geodigest" provides a summary of various geological events and discoveries. It discusses the A23a iceberg in the South Atlantic Ocean, the discovery of a new species of aetosaur called Garzapelta muelleri, and the rejection of a proposal to declare an Anthropocene epoch. It also mentions recent earthquakes in New York City and Taiwan, highlighting improvements in building structures and emergency response. The article then focuses on important discoveries in Antarctica, including foot bones from extinct terror birds and tracks made by these birds in Argentina. It also discusses a study on lithification in artificial ground and the proposal of a new rock name, plastistone, for sedimentary rocks containing waste plastics. Lastly, the article explores the role of tectonism in the diversification of mammals during the Late Cretaceous. [Extracted from the article]

This paper considers the value of a design-led methodological approach, adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic to facilitate online interviews with young people (aged 15–17) who had been involved in crime and violence in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. The development of an original digital workshop and set of exercises (referred to as a tool) using interactive methods engaged criminalised youths online and gathered qualitative data regarding their experiences of crime and violence. The research demonstrated how principles of design can be used to empower participants, overcome communication barriers, obtain rich data through online methods, and move away from a traditional 'interview' experience, creating a safer space for more genuine accounts and narratives. Thus, this paper suggests that researchers of youth crime and violence, and social scientists more broadly, may wish to consider how adopting design-led methodologies can allow places and spaces for participants' narratives to develop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Theatre & Medicine" by Stanton B. Garner Jr. and "Symptoms of the Self: Tuberculosis and the Making of the Modern Stage" by Roberta Barker are two books that explore the intersection of illness and performance. Garner's book examines the historical relationship between theatre and medicine, focusing on the somatic body and the discourses, technologies, practices, and institutions that have described and treated it. Barker's book specifically looks at tuberculosis and its portrayal on the stage, analyzing the social and medical meanings of the disease and its dramatic enactments. Both books provide valuable insights into the connections between theatre and medicine and would be useful for researchers in the field. [Extracted from the article]

This presidential address uses an autoethnographic approach to social problems to give the audience an opportunity to reflect upon the ways in which social problems exist, morph, wane, and return. Looking back over the social problems we have encountered over our lives as individuals and as social scientists, how might we work not only to identify but solve problems? Social problems are difficult to solve, since problems change with the times as well as with the social, political, and economic climate. The past is the present and the present is the past. The fact that the same problems reemerge time and time again shows they are significant enough to require not only our attention but also potential solutions. We should prepare our students to identify those problems that are most compelling and persistent, encouraging them and ourselves to apply a confluence of sociology, social work, economics, political science, urban studies, history in a search for solutions. We must move from the sidelines to participate not only in the study of society and its social problems but in finding solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Any scientific career is a mix of planning and stochastic events, often with a fair share of the latter. I illustrate this by the evolution of my own career. Ecosystem studies of food webs under the impact of eutrophication (Master), and carbon cycling in DOC (Dissolved Organic Carbon)-rich lakes (PhD) led me to elemental ratios in organisms and the establishment of ecological stoichiometry. The role of phosphorus (P) in cellular processes again led to research on the evolution and regulation of genome size. As climate came higher on the agenda, it was time to apply the basic research on the C-cycle and climate in a wider context. As natural scientists, we should also engage in even wider contexts, and I have enjoyed discussions and co-operation with philosophers, psychologist, and social scientists. This helps seeing our own work in context. We should also reflect on why we do science. I have always felt that science should also add purpose to life by giving something back to society, and I have devoted much time to outreach, public talks, debates, and writing popular science books. It takes some time, but it is also rewarding and important—perhaps even more so than yet another paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a review of the memoir "Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood: Coming of Age in the Sixties" by John D'Emilio. The reviewer, Esther Newton, highlights the importance of memoirs from the pioneering generation of gender and sexuality scholars, such as D'Emilio, who is a retired historian of gender and sexuality studies. The memoir explores D'Emilio's life as a boy and young man before his groundbreaking work in the field of lesbian and gay studies. It delves into his experiences growing up in a large, working-class Italian Catholic family and his journey towards accepting his sexuality. The review praises D'Emilio's accessible writing style and the impact of his work on the transformation of the LGBTQ+ community within academia. [Extracted from the article]

This article questions the extent to which interpretation explains literature, arguing that interpretation and explanation are not the same thing. It first engages with recent critical discussions of method and explanation in literary studies, finding that they are not much about method at all. It then offers a methodological framework that goes beyond various "method wars" over "critique" and "postcritique," and toward ways of explaining literature that are not reducible to matters of interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Short texts generated by individuals in online environments can provide social and behavioral scientists with rich insights into these individuals' internal states. Trained manual coders can reliably interpret expressions of such internal states in text. However, manual coding imposes restrictions on the number of texts that can be analyzed, limiting our ability to extract insights from large-scale textual data. We evaluate the performance of several automatic text analysis methods in approximating trained human coders' evaluations across four coding tasks encompassing expressions of motives, norms, emotions, and stances. Our findings suggest that commonly used dictionaries, although performing well in identifying infrequent categories, generate false positives too frequently compared to other methods. We show that large language models trained on manually coded data yield the highest performance across all case studies. However, there are also instances where simpler methods show almost equal performance. Additionally, we evaluate the effectiveness of cutting-edge generative language models like GPT-4 in coding texts for internal states with the help of short instructions (so-called zero-shot classification). While promising, these models fall short of the performance of models trained on manually analyzed data. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of various models and explore the trade-offs between model complexity and performance in different applications. Our work informs social and behavioral scientists of the challenges associated with text mining of large textual datasets, while providing best-practice recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"The Economics of the Middle East: A Comparative Approach" by James E. Rauch is a book that examines the political and economic structure of twenty-one Arab countries, Iran, and Turkey. It focuses on various aspects such as human development, income inequality, gender gaps, environmental challenges, government spending, and political economy. The book provides policy recommendations to promote socioeconomic development in the region. It is a valuable resource for researchers interested in understanding the social, political, and economic dynamics of the Middle East and North Africa. [Extracted from the article]

The article titled "Commentary on Kvangraven and Styve, 'The Hierarchies of Global Finance'" by Caroline E. Schuster provides a positive review of the paper written by Ingrid Harold Kvangraven and Maria Dyveke Styve. The paper focuses on the concept of "international financial subordination" and its impact on developing economies. The authors argue for a more robust understanding of finance from a global perspective, emphasizing the importance of power dynamics and social relations. However, the reviewer raises questions about the disciplinary division of labor in knowledge production and suggests the need for a critical political economy perspective. Overall, the article invites readers to engage in cross-disciplinary dialogue and challenges conventional assumptions about global finance. [Extracted from the article]

"Crisis, Inequalities and Poverty" by Francesco Schettino and Fabio Clementi is a book that explores the relationship between capitalist accumulation, crises, inequalities, and poverty. The authors argue that overproduction crises lead to two institutional tendencies: financialization and large monetary injections. These tendencies contribute to the exacerbation of inequalities and poverty. The book also discusses the measurement of inequality and suggests that the absolute Gini index is a more reliable measure than the relative Gini index. The authors conclude by considering the potential for a radical transformation of the mode of production due to the contradictions found in contemporary capitalism. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the emergence of psychotherapy as a historical subject in its own right. It highlights the efforts of historians to study psychotherapy as a distinct discipline and explores the challenges and complexities involved in defining and understanding psychotherapy. The article reviews a two-volume critical history of psychotherapy by Renato Foschi and Marco Innamorati, which aims to provide a comprehensive and nuanced account of the development of psychotherapeutic practices. The authors employ primary sources to tell the stories of various psychotherapists and their systems, while also incorporating secondary sources to frame their narratives. The article acknowledges the dense and unwieldy nature of the subject matter and suggests that the volumes could have benefited from better organization and signposting. Overall, the article recognizes the importance and value of Foschi and Innamorati's work in establishing a programmatic basis for the study of the history of psychotherapy. [Extracted from the article]