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The age-old distinction between schoolchildren and university students is fast losing its meaning. On many campuses, the infantilization of university students has become institutionalized. College administrators treat students as if [...]

ABSTRACT As Mao euphemistically remarked, revolutions are not dinner parties. Violence is to be expected when political regimes are overturned. But the violence that accompanied modern revolutions is remarkable for the fact that it targeted fellow revolutionaries almost as often as declared opponents. Why is this? In this essay, I suggest that the reason has to do with a specific feature of revolutions that abandon constitutional forms of political legitimacy. These revolutions, following the precedent of the French 'revolutionary government' (1793-94) and Marx's model of a 'revolution in permanence,' tend to base the authority of their governments on the fulfillment of revolutionary expectations. This creates a political culture in which authority derives from the power to define what these expectations are, and what 'revolution' means (much like Hobbes's sovereign had the power to set the meaning of words). But revolutionary culture does not leave room for Rawlsian pluralism. 'There can be no solution to the social problem but mine,' proclaims the revolutionary ideologue in Dostoyevsky's The Possessed, expressing the law of the Red Leviathan. Such a system does not allow for loyal opposition. Accordingly, the specter of counterrevolution always hovers above disagreements between fellow revolutionaries. The purge thus becomes the necessary method for settling ideological differences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses jurisdiction in the England during the late Middle Ages of the 14th and 15th centuries, including in Dunwich, England, jurisdictional disputes and legal rights of the burgesses. The relationship between legal authority and English communities, including in regard to the communication of authority, is discussed.

This study explored the impacts social media bring about on health communication. The impacts involved four factors: authority, privacy, evidence, and incentive appeals. They were adopted to predict virality of health messages on Sina Weibo in terms of retweeting, endorsing, and replying. A quantitative content analysis was conducted with a two-stage probability sample of 1,261 messages from 34 accounts. The results illustrated two modes Weibo users employed to process health information. The heuristic mode was used for retweeting that was sensitive to public messages, negative appeals, and nonprofessional authority. The systematic mode was used for endorsing and replying that were sensitive to private messages, positive appeals, and both professional and nonprofessional authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined sibling behavior during polyadic family conflicts (involving three or more family members) by identifying operational conflict elements (i.e., roles, topic), power strategies, effective influence of power, and social domain argumentation. Polyadic conflict sequences (n = 210) were identified in 35/39 families with two siblings (aged 4 and 6) and their parents observed at home. The dominant conflict topic, siblings' use of power and power strategy executed in relation to social domain argumentation, revealed unique qualities of conflict in the polyadic family context; effective use of power strategies to facilitate favorable outcomes differed by sibling birth order. Our account presents a nuanced view of the intricacies of polyadic family conflict, which provides unique opportunities for children's learning and socialization by siblings and parents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has long been observed that centralized social control requires some level of cooperation from the populace. Without such assistance, control agents are unable to acquire the local knowledge necessary to locate and prosecute deviants. Yet why citizens cooperate with authorities, especially in the most repressive regimes, remains a puzzle. This article develops two models of such cooperation: in the first, authorities actively use incentives to elicit denunciations from the populace, through either coercion or the promise of rewards. In the second, authorities passively gain access to local negative networks, as individuals denounce to harm others whom they dislike and to gain relative to them. Using internal variation in the early years of the Spanish Inquisition (1486 to 1502) and Romanov Russia (1613 to 1649), I demonstrate the differing effects of each model on patterns of denunciations. Paradoxically, social control is most effective when authorities provide individuals maximum freedom to direct its coercive power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Running throughout the work of Oliver O’Donovan is a discussion of the nature of authority, and its relation to reality, and to freedom. While holding fast to the maxim that authority is the correlate of freedom, O’Donovan’s understanding of authority moves, as a result of his engagement with the nature of political authority, to emphasise the idea of social mediation. This leads, in the most recent works, to a description of authority as an event in which reality is disclosed. Arguably, this formal account does not adequately distinguish the element of practical direction within authority, meaning that it may struggle to explain some ways in which we speak about authority’s presence, and its misuse. However, there may be resources for making this distinction within O’Donovan’s understanding of judgment as an act of moral discrimination with a twofold form. O’Donovan’s is an elegant and economical account of authority, promising to provide a simple analysis that encompasses the peculiarities of authority and illuminates a wide range of phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent debates on the use of technology in classrooms have highlighted the significance of regulating students’ off-task and multitasking behaviors facilitated by digital media. This paper investigates the communication practices that constitute professorial authority to manage college students’ digital distractions in classrooms. Findings from interviews with American professors illustrate how they constitute their authority through distinct communication strategies including the enactment of codified rules, strategic redirection, discursive sanctions, and deflection. Furthermore, results highlight the multiple constraints and tensions in instructor communication to manage digital distractions in everyday and routine interventions. Insights generated in this paper contribute to deepening understanding of the (re)construction of contemporary pedagogical authority in times of digital hyperconnectivity, as well as its adaptions and challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper establishes a dialogue between the later works of Wittgenstein, those of Cavell and the novels of J. M. Coetzee concerning the problem of violence, authority and the authoritative voice. By drawing on J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians and Diary of a Bad Year, the paper discusses lessons and insights on the nature of violence and the ways in which it can be accepted as "normal." The term "normalization" is used in order to show how violence and cruelty can become a "form of life" (Ludwig Wittgenstein) that develops according to its own actors, cultural practices and legitimacies (Stanley Cavell and, by implication, Richard Rorty). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In familiar accounts of power, if agent i can induce j to change their beliefs then i has power over j to induce belief change. Does that mean that all deliberation is simply a power game? This article examines two connected 'reliability conditions' that distinguish when such persuasion is coercive or manipulative: common reason and the intentions of the persuader. It considers three problems, (1) testimony, (2) authority, (3) trust, and why these do not belie the account. While the conditions are strict and perhaps no actual deliberation or persuasion fully abides by them, they constitute normative conditions for making judgements about the degree of manipulation in any deliberation. I also briefly consider the power of discourse as an activity in itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both popular and academic explanations of the stability, performance and breakdown of political order make heavy use of the concept of legitimacy. But prevalent understandings of the idea of legitimacy, while perhaps useful and appropriate ways of making sense of the political world in ordinary public discourse, cannot play the more rigorous explanatory roles with which they are tasked in the social sciences. To the extent that the concept of legitimacy appears to have some explanatory value, this is only because explanations of social and political order that appeal to legitimacy in fact conceal widely different (and often inconsistent) accounts of the mechanisms involved in the production of obedience to authority and submission to norms. It is suggested in this article that explanatory social science would be better off abandoning the coarse concept of legitimacy for more precise accounts of the operation of these mechanisms in particular contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In "Subordinating Speech," Ishani Maitra defends the claim that ordinary instances of hate speech can sometimes constitute subordination. While she accepts that subordinating speech requires authority, she argues that ordinary speakers can acquire this authority via a process of "licensing." I believe this account is interestingly mistaken, and in this paper I develop an alternative account. In particular, I take issue with what I see as the highly localized character of Maitra's account, which effectively divorces the subordinating authority of ordinary hate speech from the broader normative context, including social and pragmatic features that I claim play essential roles in subordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the constitutionality of quarantine laws and isolation orders in America in relation to public health epidemics involving diseases such as the Ebola virus, and it mentions fear and the efforts of various American state and local governments to prevent the spread of Ebola in the U.S. Communicable disease prevention laws are addressed, along with the U.S. Constitution and a government's legal authority to forcibly quarantine American citizens.

This study investigates the interaction between constitutional considerations and democratic context in evaluations of executive authority. An identical experiment is conducted using undergraduate and Mechanical Turk samples. A hypothetical article raising the question of executive power varies the (1) issue context, (2) expert assessment of constitutional authority, and (3) level of public support for proposed action. Measures of participants' issue preferences and level of satisfaction with President Obama are also included in the analysis. Results indicate that participants think differently about the desirability and legitimacy of proposed executive action. Constitutional considerations and satisfaction with the President weigh most heavily in assessments of the appropriateness of executive conduct. Differences observed across samples demonstrate that institutional rules have the potential to constrain the influence of political factors in assessments legitimacy, but this is not inevitably the case. Feelings about the President may be especially important where experts agree that he lacks authority to take action. This could indicate that citizens will rally behind presidents they like, and think more critically of those they do not, in times of constitutional crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the relationship between globalization and the political power of business? Much of the existing literature focuses on the ability of mobile capital to threaten exit in order to press for more business friendly rules. In this article, we refine arguments about exit options in global markets by arguing that the relative exit options available to business and other actors are neither fixed, nor exogenous consequences of some generically conceived process of globalization. Instead, they themselves are the result of struggles between actors with different interests and political opportunities. Since exit options play a crucial role in determining the relative structural power of business vis-à-vis other actors, we dub the power to shape exit options structuring power, distinguishing it from structural power, and argue that it is crucial to explaining it. We identify two channels through which actors can shape exit options - extending jurisdictional reach and reshaping the rules of other jurisdictions - and the factors that will make regulators and business more or less capable of exercising structuring power. We then use two exploratory case studies - one involving privacy regulation, the other accountancy standards - to illustrate how structuring power can work to shape exit options, and thus structural power. We conclude by considering the relationship between structuring power, structural power, and the existing literature in comparative and international political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the use of a web of concepts as an analytical tool for investigating a movement's ideology. It locates wilayat al-faqih [guardianship of the jurisprudent] in Hizballah's web of concepts and identifies how wilayat al-faqih has been defined and used throughout the organization's history. Hizballah's web has always included a mix of Islamic, quasi-Islamic, and non-Islamic concepts. Wilayat al-faqih has been a source of legitimacy and authority for Hizballah and a unifying concept within the movement. Claiming allegiance to it has resulted in material and ideological support from Iran. However, the radical change in the national context required Hizballah to re-articulate the concept upon the end of the Lebanese Civil War. The death of Khomeini and intellectual contributions by Shia scholars enabled Hizballah leaders to separate political from religious authority and to decentralize the political power of wilayat al-faqih. By modifying the concept, Hizballah leaders were able to continue their revolutionary mission in a new way and in a new context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that women can use living apart together ( LAT) for a reflexive and strategic undoing of the gendered norms of cohabitation. In this article we examine this assertion empirically, using a representative survey from Britain in 2011 and follow-up interviews. First, we find little gender differentiation in practices, expectations, or attitudes about LAT, or reasons for LAT. This does not fit in with ideas of undoing gender. Secondly, in examining how women talk about LAT in relation to gender, we distinguish three groups of 'constrained', 'strategic' and 'vulnerable' female interviewees. All valued the extra space and time that LAT could bring, many welcomed some release from traditional divisions of labour, and some were glad to escape unpleasant situations created by partnership with men. However, for the constrained and vulnerable groups LAT was second best, and any relaxation of gendered norms was seen as incidental and inconsequential to their major aim, or ideal, of the 'proper family' with cohabitation and marriage. Rather, their agency in achieving this was limited by more powerful agents, or was a reaction to perceived vulnerability. While the strategic group showed more purposeful behaviour in avoiding male authority, agency remained relational and bonded. Overall we find that women, at least in Britain, seldom use LAT to purposefully or reflexively undo gender. Equally, LAT sometimes involves a reaffirmation of gendered norms. LAT is a multi-faceted adaption to circumstances where new autonomies can at the same time incorporate old subordinations, and new arrangements can herald conventional family forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in the early eighteenth century, a bifurcated structure of authority in the Kham region of ethnographic Tibet frustrated attempts by both the Lhasa and Beijing governments to assert their unquestioned control over a myriad polities in the borderlands between Sichuan and Tibet. A tenuous accommodation of this structure persisted from the early eighteenth century until the first two decades of the twentieth century when powerful globalizing norms—territoriality and sovereignty—transformed both the understanding and expectations of territorial rule held by Qing and, later, Republican Chinese officials. Absolutist conceptions of these norms prompted an ambitious endeavour to shatter the bifurcated structure and undermine the Dalai Lama's spiritual influence on Kham society. Infrontier imperialism is used to analyse the incomplete implementation of resulting acculturative and incorporative policies, inflected by these two norms, which challenged the monasteries’ indirect influence on the lay rulers of Kham, initiating a struggle for authority that persists to this day. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the context of economic crisis, Europe has witnessed a spate of extraordinary political measures pressed by executive discretion. This article examines what emergency rule of this kind implies for the possibility of normal rule thereafter. Political decision-makers face the challenge of drawing a line under the crisis so that the unconventional measures used to handle it do not compromise the polity's norms in lasting fashion. Based on an analysis of the preconditions for plausibly making such an act of separation, I suggest the principal resources for doing so in the EU case are missing. Emergency rule will tend to blend in with normal rule, to the detriment of the political order's legitimate authority. A more dubiously grounded 'descriptive' authority may conversely be enhanced by emergency rule, as may compliance for instrumental motivations, producing a polity that is stable even if weakly legitimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this ethnographic study, I will show that students at Czech university departments employ copying strategies as part of the dominant educational practices centred on the 'replication' of authoritative knowledge. In the teaching/learning situations that we observed, teachers 'transmit' knowledge to students, who are expected to 'replicate' it in exams, which students manage by either memorization or copying; either way, students are excluded from knowledge construction. This educational configuration is re/produced not just by students and teachers but also by buildings and spaces built for frontal instruction; by projection technologies transmitting fixed knowledge; by students' community websites that enable sharing and electronic replication of lecture or crib notes; and by public policies of higher education funding or quality assurance. In conclusion, I will argue that many fundamental aspects of research on student so called 'cheating' need to be re-examined because this study demonstrates that student copying is integral to the dominant configuration in Czech higher education. This 'normality' of student copying challenges the moralist consensus of the literature, expressed in the very term 'cheating' as well as in proposals to counter student copying by instilling academic integrity in students, while ignoring complex higher education configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appeals to authority have always played a key role in the construction of social problems. Authority legitimates claims, which is why claim-makers have always sought its validation. An exploration into the historical dimension of the social construction of authority provides insight into changing foundations on which claims about social problems are made. In contrast to the Middle Ages, the modern era has found it difficult to gain consensus on the meaning of authority. This historical shift in the status of authority provides the context for contemporary competitive claims-making about social problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the developmental approach in feedback and collaboration. It mentioned the several common adult ways of \ the instrumental knowers which ask to tell them what they need to do, the socializing knowers which wanted to feel being valued and feel responsible for the feelings of others, and the self-authoring knowers which demonstrate competency.

The Syrian refugee crisis has highlighted the urgent need to address the multi-dimensional challenges presented by urban refugees more effectively. In particular, a municipal approach that better coordinates the efforts of national and local authorities, with an eye to increasing local capacity and building social cohesion, is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT While authenticity has received considerable attention in the marketing literature, the factors that influence the perceived authenticity of a celebrity's 'human brand' have remained unexplored. This research fills this void by identifying the antecedents of celebrity authenticity, defined as the perception that a celebrity behaves according to his or her true self. Based on a qualitative analysis of an open-ended survey completed by 218 adults and on previous authenticity literature and attribution theory, the authors propose two antecedents of celebrity authenticity-rarity and stability-that are each composed of three sub-dimensions. Analyses of cross-sectional survey data from a sample of 428 adults provide support for the hypotheses that stability and rarity positively influence celebrity authenticity. Additionally, based on aging stability theory, the authors predict and demonstrate that the effects of rarity and stability on celebrity authenticity are moderated by age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data from a 2005 sample of 1,785 working adults in the United States, the authors examine the association between job authority and the exposure to interpersonal conflict in the workplace and potential gender and age contingencies in that association. A positive association was observed between authority and conflict, but that association was more positive among men and younger workers. Moreover, the authors rule out occupation, job sector, roleset multiplicity, and work conditions as alternative explanations for these associations. These observations have implications for theoretical views about social status variations in job authority and its link to interpersonal stress in the workplace. Keywords: job authority; interpersonal conflict; gender; age; role-set

Traditionally, legal socialization theory and research has been dominated by a cognitive developmental approach. However, more recent work (e.g., Fagan & Tyler, 2005) has used procedural justice to explain the legal socialization process. This article presents 2 studies that expand this approach by testing a procedural justice model of legal socialization in terms of legal and nonlegal authority. In Study 1, participants completed surveys assessing the degree to which they perceived 3 authorities (police officers, parents, and teachers) as procedurally fair, the degree to which they perceived the authorities as legitimate, how cynical they were about laws, and the extent of their rule violation during the past 6 months. Across all 3 authorities, legitimacy and legal cynicism mediated the relation between procedural justice and rule violation. Study 2 examined the model with the same 3 authority types using experimental methods. Participants read 3 scenarios describing an interaction between an adolescent and an authority figure where a rule is enforced. Within each scenario, we manipulated whether the adolescent had a voice and whether the authority enforced the rule impartially. After reading each scenario, participants rated the authority's legitimacy, their cynicism toward the authority's rule, and the likelihood they would violate the rule. Again, legitimacy and rule cynicism mediated the relation between impartiality, voice, and rule violation. In addition, impartiality had a stronger effect in the parent and teacher scenarios, whereas voice had a stronger effect in the police scenario. Results are discussed in terms of expanding legal socialization to nonlegal contexts and applying legal socialization research to prevention and intervention strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including view on authority, reformed school order, and transference of leadership.

A case study is presented on the role that the editor of the Notices to Correspondents section of the weekly newspaper "London Journal" played in concocting narratives for matrimonial advertisements printed in the London, England paper from 1850 through 1862. The role that editors played in acting as the narrative authority for matrimonials is discussed. An overview of "London Journal's" readership, including their responses to the editor's matchmaking services, is provided.

Given their critical influence on society and politics, university students are one of the key target groups for authoritarian political control around the world. To further our understanding of the endurance and resilience of authoritarianism in post-Deng China, it is necessary to examine one of the Party-state's most crucial control frameworks: the institutional mechanism through which it preserves social stability in the nation's 2,358 university campuses, and maintains control over its more than 22 million college students. Drawing upon intensive field research conducted in 2011, this article attempts to map out the structures and measures deployed by the post-Deng regime to nurture political compliance and consolidate its domination of university campuses. By deciphering an essential component of the state's political control apparatus, this article aims to shed new light on the internal operations of the authoritarian system that is running China today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hannah Arendt argued that the American Revolution revealed for the first time that all regimes require a reference to an absolute, while the French Revolution revealed that not all absolutes are equal. The American Revolution took as its absolute the act of founding itself, upon which the authority of the constitution could be grounded. By contrast, the failure of the French Revolution to establish an authority stemmed from its reference to the transcendental absolute of the nation. Beginnings, for Arendt, are historically determining. How then are we to explain the present view of authority in Germany which takes as its absolute referent the Holocaust? And how does this inform our understanding of the relationship between absolutes and new foundations? We argue that the key to understanding the German case is found in the particular nature of postwar German memory politics and that authority is not statically related to positive foundations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author argues that preliminary determinations in the first phase of a U.S. class action lawsuit would not run afoul of parties' jury trial rights as of 2014, focusing on a U.S. court's apparent power to make fact determinations in regards to class certifications under Rule 23 of America's Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Liability and damages in America are mentioned, along with the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 1959 judicial authority case Beacon Theatres Inc. v. Westover.

This paper considers the on-going production of bureaucracies for environmental governance in developing countries and the ways in which donor engagement is reshaped through localised bureaucratic dynamics. In Laos, World Bank conditions associated with the Nam Theun 2 hydropower project saw the establishment of the Watershed Management and Protection Authority (WMPA). I examine internal dynamics at the WMPA headquarters in Nakai District, including formal institutions for forest management, informal institutions for recognising local authority and wealth redistribution and the personal aspirations of WMPA officials. In doing so, this piece contributes to current discussions about donor-driven institutional change, practices of state-making and the local “technocrats” who are personally confronted by the complex intersections of donor conditionality and state authority. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In The Silent Minaret, South African-born writer Ishtiyaq Shukri links apartheid-era obsessions with classifying and immobilizing people with the anxieties of the post-9/11 world, where nations in the geopolitical West similarly attempt to categorize and restrict threatening 'dark bodies.' Through connections between the trajectory and scholarly journey of Shukri's protagonist, Issa, I examine the relationship between educating the public to be on the alert for signals that mark certain people as 'threatening others,' the subsequent responses of suspicion, fear, and terror, and the consequences to the bearers of such marks as they are subjected to constant surveillance. Shukri's 'disappeared' narrator, who educates and politicizes his friends in absentia, raises questions that are especially pertinent in light of recent revelations about the National Security Agency's ability to routinely reach into individuals' private information. Issa's disappearance gives him a location of agency; paradoxically, it also highlights the authority and power of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To gain occupational legitimacy, workers depend on claims of accuracy. How are these claims assessed? Organizations judge competence and effectiveness using metrics, which can be massaged. Using a case study of operational meteorology, the author examines the organizational and self-presentational politics whereby meteorologists verify their predictions. Forecasts of future events are central to occupational work in operational meteorology. However, assessing what really happened 'on the ground' is not unproblematic. So, meteorologists and their employers construct measures for assessments, even though these assessments are social and organizational routines. Verification statistics are signals whereby local offices are judged on effectiveness, and as a result, workers develop strategies to increase their verification scores. The author examines the production of verification at three local offices of the National Weather Service using ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews. Similar strategies operate when workers are judged in accountability systems, leading to forms of organizational impression management to demonstrate competence. Keywords: science; meteorology; verification; truth; sociology of knowledge

At the same time many religious organizations are apparently becoming more internally secularized, other non-religious organizations appear to be going through a countervailing process of 'sacralization ' (Demerath). This study explores this development through a case study of a state university hospital that attempted to created a more 'holistic ' corporate culture. Extending research on the declining scope of religious authority (Chaves) and professional systems (Abbott), this study suggests that secular settings may be fertile ground for craft versions of religious authority to develop. Implications of the latter during an age when authority structures and caring tasks in general are being downsized and devolved are discussed.

The pursuit of global democratic governance cannot be confined to global institutions; national state institutions and nation-based citizens need to be part of this project. In this lecture, I want [...]

The article discusses Renaissance cartography of the 16th century, including mapmakers' focus on depicting what was deemed to be the reality of nature in world maps. The authority that 16th century maps carried, including in regard to their accuracy and cartographers' efforts in imitating nature in their maps, is discussed. The influence that the ancient geographer Ptolemy had on 16th century cartography, including the influence of his book "Geography," is also discussed.

The article discusses women's authority, knowledge, and knowledge transmission, with a focus on women in Spain. Topics discussed include 20th century women healers of Montsia, Spain, groups of wise women who practiced home remedies in the 15th to 17th centuries in Catalonia, Spain, and the trade of turpentine making in the Catalan Pyrenees in the 19th to 20th centuries.

The article discusses several reportedly right and wrong ways to reform the New Jersey Constitution's gubernatorial absence provision as of 2014, focusing on political power, state constitutional law in New Jersey, and the apparent removal of a New Jersey governor's legal authority when he or she is absent from the state. A New Jersey appellate court's ruling in the 1943 case In re An Act Concerning Alcoholic Beverages, which deals with the concept of effective absence, is examined.

Brāhmaṇas occupied a unique position in the history of South Asia, leaving inerasable imprints on its social and cultural fabrics. We tend to take their presence and authority in the society for granted. However, they and their actions were embedded in the historical context of particular space and time, in which diverse power relations existed among social groups with different economic and cultural backgrounds. What should be studied is a process in which they established their presence and authority. The present study aims at discussing this process and its implications in the context of the regional history of Bengal from the fifth to the thirteenth century AD. What transpires from the discussion is the process in which brāhmaṇas acquired a clearer identity as a peculiar social group, constructed networks by migration and the establishment of Brahmanical centres, and established their authority through the connection with kingship at the court and the extension of their influence in rural society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Globalisation and the development of fast transport and communications have multiplied transnational situations that States, at times, appear ill equipped to handle. Private actors, taking advantage of these new opportunities to claim their authority, are now key actors in the production of transnational law. Since their place in the production process does not have legal grounds, this paper intends to 'transnationalise' the legitimacy discourse by comparing its fundamental criteria to the claim to authority of a particular group of private actors-the aviation experts-during the elaboration of the Cape Town Convention. This article challenges this expertise-based legitimation process which, despite being grounded on the ability of private actors to develop effective solutions, reveals a limited output and input legitimacy. Finally, the article suggests that the EU is well placed to carry out a legitimacy test to block the reception of undemocratic claims to authority made by influential private actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of the ancient philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras by Renaissance mathematicians in relation to the cultural significance of mathematics. Topics include the relation of mathematics to philosophy in 16th-century France, the creation of an elite intellectual culture during the early modern era, and the reception of Pythagoras as an authoritative figure.

Using the 1957–2011 data from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, I integrate the gender relations theory, a life course perspective, and a biosocial stress perspective to explore the effect of women's job authority in 1975 (at age 36) and 1993 (at age 54) on breast cancer incidence up to 2011. Findings indicate that women with the authority to hire, fire, and influence others' pay had a significantly higher risk of a breast cancer diagnosis over the next thirty years compared to housewives and employed women with no job authority. Because job authority conferred the highest risk of breast cancer for women who also spent more hours dealing with people at work in 1975, I suggest that the assertion of job authority by women in the 1970 s involved stressful interpersonal experiences, such as social isolation and negative social interactions, that may have increased the risk of breast cancer via prolonged dysregulation of the glucocorticoid system and exposure of breast tissue to the adverse effects of chronically elevated cortisol. This study contributes to sociology by emphasizing gendered biosocial pathways through which women's occupational experiences become embodied and drive forward physiological repercussions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines the conflict that ensued when the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures (a New York City-based organization that opposed any form of legal film censorship) entered the debate over Virginia's state film censor board. Virginia's engagement with film censorship emerged out of its history and politics, particularly in regard to race relations. Elite white Virginians lived in fear both of federal intervention (with the specter of Reconstruction not far behind them) and of a local usurpation of political power by black Virginians. The National Board of Review (NBR) was largely ignorant of this situation, which worked against their goals and ability to cultivate reliable allies. In the 1910s and 1920s, film raised issues about authorities – locally based and oriented versus nationally oriented authority, private authority and municipal, state, and/or federal authority. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A scholarly debate is emerging on how recent regional trends in Latin America and South America have impacted the meanings and practices of sovereignty. This debate pits two groups engaged in regionalist analysis against each other: the optimists and the skeptics. Optimists argue that recent changes in regionalism are having a transformative impact on sovereignty. Skeptics acknowledge that changes in regionalism have occurred, but that they have been accompanied by persistent and traditional sovereignty meanings and practices. The article employs a tripartite conception of sovereignty regime—sovereign, space, and authority—to sketch the parameters of the debate. Given the recent origins of ALBA, CELAC, and UNASUR, as well as the post-hegemonic regionalism which they reflect and promote, this debate can only be resolved through ambitious qualitative empirical research, especially in South America, the regional experience upon which many of the contending claims are made. Such a research agenda on the regionalism-sovereignty nexus has both significant theoretical and practical implications for understanding Latin America's and South America's unique regional, institutional, and sovereignty patterns, as well as the limits and possibilities for regional governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]