Daniel Rothbart - Böcker

The surprising roles of instruments and experimentation in acquiring knowledgeIn Philosophical Instruments Daniel Rothbart argues that our tools are not just neutral intermediaries between humans and the natural world, but are devices that demand new ideas about reality. Just as a hunter's new spear can change their knowledge of the environment, so can the development of modern scientific equipment alter our view of the world.Working at the intersections of science, technology, and philosophy, Rothbart examines the revolution in knowledge brought on by recent advances in scientific instruments. Full of examples from historical and contemporary science, including electron scanning microscopes, sixteenth-century philosophical instruments, and diffraction devices used by biochemical researchers, Rothbart explores the ways in which instrumentation advances a philosophical stance about an instrument's power, an experimenter's skills, and a specimen's properties. Through a close reading of engineering of instruments, he introduces a philosophy from (rather than of) design, contending that philosophical ideas are channeled from design plans to models and from model into the use of the devices.

This book examines the continuing devastation in the Darfur region of Sudan, from the perspective of a multiplicity of conflicts of distinct types.The crisis reached its peak in 2003–2004, when certain Arab militias joined forces with the Sudan armed forces in a campaign against insurgent resistance movements. Engulfed in the tumult, Darfurians experienced systematic slaughter, sexual violence, and internal displacement on a massive scale. Although the violence has waned in recent years, the fighting continues to this day. The authors cast this crisis as a complex web of four distinct, yet interlacing, conflict types: long-standing disputes between farmers and herders and between different herder communitiespolitical struggles between the local elite leaders of the resistance movements, and those between traditional leaders (elders) and younger aspiring leaderslong-standing grievances of marginalized groups against those at the national centre of powercross-border conflicts, primarily the proxy war waged between Chad and SudanThe crisis in South Sudan is also examined through the lens of conflict complementarity. This book will be of interest to students of African politics, genocide, political violence, ethnic conflict, war and conflict studies, peacebuilding and IR.

This book explores the issue of civilian devastation in modern warfare, focusing on the complex processes that effectively establish civilians’ identity in times of war.Underpinning the physicality of war’s tumult are structural forces that create landscapes of civilian vulnerability. Such forces operate in four sectors of modern warfare: nationalistic ideology, state-sponsored militaries, global media, and international institutions. Each sector promotes its own constructions of civilian identity in relation to militant combatants: constructions that prove lethal to the civilian noncombatant who lacks political power and decision-making capacity with regards to their own survival.Civilians and Modern War provides a critical overview of the plight of civilians in war, examining the political and normative underpinnings of the decisions, actions, policies, and practices of major sectors of war. The contributors seek to undermine the ‘tunnelling effect’ of the militaristic framework regarding the experiences of noncombatants. This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, ethics, conflict resolution, and IR/Security Studies.

This book examines the continuing devastation in the Darfur region of Sudan, from the perspective of a multiplicity of conflicts of distinct types.The crisis reached its peak in 2003–2004, when certain Arab militias joined forces with the Sudan armed forces in a campaign against insurgent resistance movements. Engulfed in the tumult, Darfurians experienced systematic slaughter, sexual violence, and internal displacement on a massive scale. Although the violence has waned in recent years, the fighting continues to this day. The authors cast this crisis as a complex web of four distinct, yet interlacing, conflict types: long-standing disputes between farmers and herders and between different herder communitiespolitical struggles between the local elite leaders of the resistance movements, and those between traditional leaders (elders) and younger aspiring leaderslong-standing grievances of marginalized groups against those at the national centre of powercross-border conflicts, primarily the proxy war waged between Chad and SudanThe crisis in South Sudan is also examined through the lens of conflict complementarity. This book will be of interest to students of African politics, genocide, political violence, ethnic conflict, war and conflict studies, peacebuilding and IR.

Edited by Daniel Rothbart of George Mason University in Virginia, this book is a collection of Rom Harr�'s work on modeling in science (particularly physics and psychology). In over 28 authored books and 240 articles and book chapters, Rom Harr� of Georgetown University in Washington, DC is a towering figure in philosophy, linguistics, and social psychology. He has inspired a generation of scholars, both for the ways in which his research is carried out and his profound insights. For Harr�, the stunning discoveries of research demand a kind of thinking that is found in the construction and control of models. Iconic modeling is pivotal for representing real-world structures, explaining phenomena, manipulating instruments, constructing theories, and acquiring data.This volume in the new Elsevier book series Studies in Multidisciplinarity includes major topics on the structure and function of models, the debates over scientific realism, explanation through analogical modeling, a metaphysics for physics, the rationale for experimentation, and modeling in social encounters.* A multidisciplinary work of sweeping scope about the nature of science * Revolutionary interpretation that challenges conventional wisdom about the character of scientific thinking* Profound insights about fundamental challenges to contemporary physics* Brilliant discoveries into the nature of social interaction and human identity* Presents a rational conception of methods for acquiring knowledge of remote regions of the world * Written by one of the great thinkers of our time.

Why do civilians suffer most during times of violent conflict? Why are civilian fatalities as much as eight times higher, calculated globally for current conflicts, than military fatalities? In Why They Die, Daniel Rothbart and Karina V. Korostelina address these questions through a systematic study of civilian devastation in violent conflicts. Pushing aside the simplistic definition of war as a guns-and-blood battle between two militant groups, the authors investigate the identity politics underlying conflicts of many types. During a conflict, all those on the opposite side are perceived as the enemy, with little distinction between soldiers and civilians. As a result, random atrocities and systematic violence against civilian populations become acceptable.Rothbart and Korostelina devote the first half of the book to case studies: deportation of the Crimean Tatars from the Ukraine, genocide in Rwanda, the Lebanon War, and the war in Iraq. With the second half, they present new methodological tools for understanding different types of violent conflict and discuss the implications of these tools for conflict resolution.

Identity, Morality, and Threat offers a critical examination of the social psychological processes that generate outgroup devaluation and ingroup glorification as the source of conflict. Dr. Daniel Rothbart and Dr. Karina Korostelina bring together essays analyzing the causal relationship between escalating violence and opposing images of the Self and Other. The essays confront the practice of demonizing the Other as a justification for violent conflict and the conditions that enable these distorted images to shape future decisions. The authors provide insight into the possibilities for transforming threat-narratives into collaboration-narratives, and for changing past opposition into mutual understanding. Identity, Morality, and Threat is a strong contribution to the study of identity-based conflict and psychological defenses.

This book explores the issue of civilian devastation in modern warfare, focusing on the complex processes that effectively establish civilians’ identity in times of war.Underpinning the physicality of war’s tumult are structural forces that create landscapes of civilian vulnerability. Such forces operate in four sectors of modern warfare: nationalistic ideology, state-sponsored militaries, global media, and international institutions. Each sector promotes its own constructions of civilian identity in relation to militant combatants: constructions that prove lethal to the civilian noncombatant who lacks political power and decision-making capacity with regards to their own survival.Civilians and Modern War provides a critical overview of the plight of civilians in war, examining the political and normative underpinnings of the decisions, actions, policies, and practices of major sectors of war. The contributors seek to undermine the ‘tunnelling effect’ of the militaristic framework regarding the experiences of noncombatants. This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, ethics, conflict resolution, and IR/Security Studies.

This book offers a detailed study of the psycho-politics of governmental manipulation, in which a vulnerable population is disciplined by contorting their sense of self-worth.In many conflict settings, a nation’s government exerts its dominance over a marginalized population group through laws, policies and practices that foster stark inequality. This book shows how such domination comes in the form of systems of humiliation orchestrated by governmental forces. This thesis draws upon recent findings in social psychology, conflict analysis, and political sociology, with case studies of governmental directives, verdicts, policies, decisions and norms that, when enforced, foster debasement, disgrace or denigration. One case centers on the US immigration laws that target vulnerable population groups, while another focuses on the ethnic discrimination of the central government of Sudan against the Sudanese Africans. The book’s conclusion focuses on compassion-motivated practices that represent a counter-force to government-sponsored strategies of systemic humiliation. These are practices for building peace by professionals and non-professionals as a positive response to protracted violence. This book will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, sociology, psychology, ethics, philosophy and international relations.

This book offers a detailed study of the psycho-politics of governmental manipulation, in which a vulnerable population is disciplined by contorting their sense of self-worth.In many conflict settings, a nation’s government exerts its dominance over a marginalized population group through laws, policies and practices that foster stark inequality. This book shows how such domination comes in the form of systems of humiliation orchestrated by governmental forces. This thesis draws upon recent findings in social psychology, conflict analysis, and political sociology, with case studies of governmental directives, verdicts, policies, decisions and norms that, when enforced, foster debasement, disgrace or denigration. One case centers on the US immigration laws that target vulnerable population groups, while another focuses on the ethnic discrimination of the central government of Sudan against the Sudanese Africans. The book’s conclusion focuses on compassion-motivated practices that represent a counter-force to government-sponsored strategies of systemic humiliation. These are practices for building peace by professionals and non-professionals as a positive response to protracted violence. This book will be of much interest to students of peace and conflict studies, sociology, psychology, ethics, philosophy and international relations.

This volume explores contemporary social conflict, focusing on a sort of violence that rarely receives coverage in the evening news. This violence occurs when powerful institutions seek to manipulate the thoughts of marginalized people—manufacturing their feelings and fostering a sense of inferiority—for the purpose of disciplinary control.