[Review of] Juan F. Perea, ed. Immigrants Out!: The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States

Immigrants Out! offers a response to nativist sentiment in the contemporary discussion of immigration policy. Individually, each chapter in this edited volume charts the development of contemporary nativist sentiment, while identifying the themes that have nurtured nativism historically. Some important relationships are identified between issue oriented politics and more general theses that emerge from nativist thought. For instance, in several passages English-only laws are described as a small, although highly symbolic, component of a broader ideology based on separatism and isolationism. Similarly, proposals to place restrictions on social welfare benefits for immigrants are linked to the more general curtailment of human rights. Moreover, the current trend toward heightened restrictions on immigration and naturalization is paralleled with restrictive immigration policies of the past

[Review of] Bruce E. Johansen, (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Native American Economic History

The Encyclopedia of Native American Economic History offers a unique perspective on economic development in North America, primarily because it constantly reminds the reader of the fundamental contradictions that this process has entailed. A view of economic processes fundamentally different from orthodox scholarly analysis emerges in many of the volume\u27s entries. In total a picture of economic activity is projected that links consumption, cultural conflict, social and ecological reproduction, and the transformation of group identity. This volume takes exploratory steps toward the development of alternative explanations of economic growth and change in society, particularly as these processes relate to the meaning of race and ethnicity. The book\u27s strongest sections are those that offer a multi-faceted view of the overlapping effects of political, social, and economic institutions on Native American groups. The volume includes several entries of this kind dealing with topics such as the legal status of Native American lands, agricultural development, environmental degradation, and the manner in which Native American groups have organized cultural and economic life historically

Defining 'Speech': Subtraction, Addition, and Division

In free speech theory ‘speech’ has to be defined as a special term of art. I argue that much free speech discourse comes with a tacit commitment to a ‘Subtractive Approach’ to defining speech. As an initial default, all communicative acts are assumed to qualify as speech, before exceptions are made to ‘subtract’ those acts that don’t warrant the special legal protections owed to ‘speech’. I examine how different versions of the Subtractive Approach operate, and criticise them in terms of their ability to yield a substantive definition of speech which covers all and only those forms of communicative action that – so our arguments for free speech indicate – really do merit special legal protection. In exploring alternative definitional approaches, I argue that what ultimately compromises definitional adequacy in this arena is a theoretical commitment to the significance of a single unified class of privileged communicative acts. I then propose an approach to free speech theory that eschews this theoretical commitment

Super Soldiers and Technological Asymmetry

In this chapter I argue that emerging soldier enhancement technologies have the potential to transform the ethical character of the relationship between combatants, in conflicts between ‘Superpower’ militaries, with the ability to deploy such technologies, and technologically disadvantaged ‘Underdog’ militaries. The reasons for this relate to Paul Kahn’s claims about the paradox of riskless warfare. When an Underdog poses no threat to a Superpower, the standard just war theoretic justifications for the Superpower’s combatants using lethal violence against their opponents breaks down. Therefore, Kahn argues, combatants in that position must approach their opponents in an ethical guise relevantly similar to ‘policing’. I argue that the kind of disparities in risk and threat between opposing combatants that Kahn’s analysis posits, don’t obtain in the context of face-to-face combat, in the way they would need to in order to support his ethical conclusions about policing. But then I argue that soldier enhancement technologies have the potential to change this, in a way that reactivates the force of those conclusions

Moral Renegades

This piece is a side-by-side review of two books: Strangers Drowning, by Larissa MacFarquhar, and Doing Good Better, by William MacAskill. Both books are concerned with the question of whether we should try to live as morally good a life as possible. MacAskill thinks the answer is 'yes', and his book is an overview of how the Effective Altruist movement approaches the problem of how to achieve a morally optimal life. MacFarquhar's book is a more descriptive account of the lives of people who aim to live in a morally optimal way. Her discussion is nuanced, and somewhat ambivalent about the merits of this aim. My review brings out some commonalities and differences between the two books, and critically digests the arguments on offer

The novels of Maurice Gee (1962-1994) : Gee's New Zealand : in the throes of entropy : a thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University

This inquiry explores the dualistic aspects of Maurice Gee's novels, particularly with reference to Prowlers and Going West. I will be highlighting the juxtaposition of opposing characters (the observers and the doers), and the opposition of mind and body - of idealism and empiricism - as developed in these two novels. I will also be investigating how Gee's novels explore the dynamics of human relationships, accounting for the recurrent themes of language, fear, death, love and madness, as they appear in his oeuvre. Chapter three explores how Gee's fiction deals with the difficulties of writing an objective account of someone's life. All these areas of investigation reveal an overall view that Gee's New Zealand society has gradually shifted towards a state of chaos and uncertainty within the last one hundred years. In chapter one I will explore the images and events, as depicted in Gee's autobiographical essay "Beginnings," that have shaped his creative imagination. I will show how they have been transformed, or re-worked, in his fiction, as well as how and why they stress the importance of imagination. I will be arguing how, through his characters, Gee continues to exorcise the traumas, conflicts and confusions of his own past, as well as demonstrating the didactic functions given to this process by his subjecting his main characters to similar experiences. I will show how Gee investigates the negative effects of a puritan heritage, and ultimately, how it can be damaging to the growing and developing adolescent psyche, causing confusion, and distorting one's perception of the real, particularly in the way it is expressed in the novel In My Father's Den. I will show how Gee's abhorrence of 'bureaucratic and institutional repression' is expressed in The Big Season, and the 'O' trilogy - at the level of community, - and in the two novels, The Special Flower and Games of Choice - at the level of family. More specifically, I will show how the narratives emphasize the need for the individual to break away from these constricting forces in order to find his own shape, and achieve a firm sense of personal identity. I will inquire into the ways in which Gee explores the idea of 'the mixed nature of the human condition' in the 'O' trilogy, and will commence a discussion of how this theme is developed in Prowlers and Going West, which will be expanded in the remaining two chapters. I will discuss how the sense of feeling 'special,' and of being in possession of 'special knowledge', can create the illusion of feeling privileged, but also how this can be seen as a burden, and how it can generate a sense of 'isolation,' thereby alienating the individual from the outside world. I will show how Gee's vision of the world can be interpreted as dualistic

Codimensions of root valuation strata

This paper defines and studies a stratification of the adjoint quotient of the Lie algebra of a reductive group over a Laurent power series field. The stratification arises naturally in the context of affine Springer fibers

Dehumanization: its Operations and its Origins

Gail Murrow and Richard Murrow offer a novel account of dehumanization, by synthesizing data which suggest that where subject S has a dehumanized view of group G, S‘s neural mechanisms of empathy show a dampened response to the suffering of members of G, and S‘s judgments about the humanity of members of G are largely non-conscious. Here I examine Murrow and Murrow‘s suggestions about how identity-based hate speech bears responsibility for dehumanization in the first place. I identify a distinction between (i) accounts of the nature of the harm effected by identity prejudice, and (ii) accounts of how hate speech contributes to the harms of identity prejudice. I then explain why Murrow and Murrow‘s proposal is more aptly construed as an account of type (i), and explain why accounts of this type, even if they‘re plausible and evidentially well-supported, have limited implications in relation to justifications for anti-hate speech law