Recent Criticism Research Articles

Markups, profit shares, and cost-push-profit-led inflation

Abstract The post-pandemic surge in inflation was accompanied by a surge in the corporate share of profits. As a result, several economists and policy makers have given to it names such as “profit-led inflation” or “sellers’ inflation.” The present paper discusses the extent to which profit-led inflation, as an explanation for the recent surge in inflation, is compatible with what we know about the price-setting behavior of firms, income distribution, and inflation. We do that in juxtaposition to two recent critiques: that the increase in the profit share is the result of cyclical factors and that the increase in import prices leads to higher profit shares even under constant markups. We show that there is little evidence that the recent surge in profitability is cyclical in nature. Moreover, after outlining the Structuralist/Kaleckian theories of prices and inflation, we argue that profit-led inflation does not require an increase in the markup of the firms and is consistent with these theories. In the face of large import and other price shocks even under constant markups, firms are able to pass the burden of adjustment to real wages. Thus, the term profit-led emphasizes the distributional source and consequences of inflation. We also provide an empirical examination of the markups in the post-pandemic period using data from the Compustat database. We show that, on average, firms were able to increase or maintain their markups, although there is significant heterogeneity across sectors or the position of the firms in the distribution of markups.

Critique and its foundations: on critical realism and the Frankfurt School

ABSTRACT In this paper, I assess some recent critical realist constructive criticisms of Theodor Adorno, one of the leading thinkers of the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory. I argue that while there are similarities between Adorno’s treatment of causality and the critical realist notion of powers, these connections should not be taken to imply that Adorno’s conception of critique requires a critical realist powers ontology. I show that Bhaskar’s transcendental realism is at odds with the basic commitments of Adorno’s historical materialism. I go on to clarify such materialism and show that to Adorno, capital is the historical compulsion characteristic of modernity.

Wilkie Collins: The Complete Fiction, by Stephen Knight

Stephen Knight’s monograph, Wilkie Collins: The Complete Fiction (2023, Routledge) is a detailed study of Wilkie Collins’ life and career as a complex and accomplished author; ultimately, it presents a call for more scholarly attention and interest in his works. The study engages Collins’ complete fiction by grounding his texts in historical and biographical context. Knight offers extensive background about events, politics, anecdotes, and interactions as Collins built his writing career. Moreover, the study presents details about Collins’ life, his engagement with the publishing industry, and his interaction with other authors at the time. By this approach, the book explores Collins’ literary production considering the influence of consumption, and the criticism of his works to better understand and position him as a complex and successful author. Knight’s monograph also offers historical context and recent scholarly criticism of Collins studies. While this exploration sheds light on Collins’ development as a successful author, producer of novelty, and a political voice, the study repeats the argument that Collins’ works have not received the scholarly attention they deserve.

Solutions in search of a problem: Opening policy windows for Business Improvement Districts in the Nordic countries

Policy mobility literature invites us to consider the power-laden processes of how urban policies are exported, mimicked, and transformed in different urban contexts. However, recent critique has highlighted the need for a fuller understanding of urban policy context to understand where and when policies come to be implemented in new settings and how they are transformed. The purpose of this study is to explore understandings of urban policy context in a comparative study of policy mobility, and specifically relations between internationally packaged concepts, local pilot projects and national level actors. We develop a framework for understanding these relations in policy mobility based on case studies of BID policy development in Sweden and Denmark drawing on both Policy Mobility literature and a Multiple Streams Approach. The main finding is that local pilots play a key role in translating packaged policy concepts but also serve as ‘proof of concept’ for further institutionalization. The way these pilots are discursively situated in relation to ‘problems’ is therefore of central importance for further implementation. Furthermore, the study highlights the role of policy entrepreneurs that connect local pilots (and discursive problems) with national level actors, and political opportunities.

Delusions and the Predictive Mind

ABSTRACT A growing number of studies in both the scientific and the philosophical literature have drawn on a Bayesian predictive processing framework to account for the formation of delusions. The key here is that delusions form because of disrupted prediction error signalling. Parrott’s recent critique argues that the framework is incomplete in two respects: (i) it leaves unclear why delusional hypotheses are selected over none at all, or over more plausible alternatives; and (ii) it leaves unclear how exactly it is that delusional hypotheses are generated in the first place. In this paper, we defend the framework’s explanatory power by way of showing how it can go a long way in helping disentangle these concerns. We take up each of them in turn. As for the first, our argument turns on two claims: (a) believing nothing, although possible in principle, may not be a viable procedure in the circumstances; and (b) alternative hypotheses may be rendered unavailable for selection, due to aberrant prediction errors. As for the second concern, we distinguish three ways in which delusional hypotheses may be initially acquired, all of which are based on experience broadly construed.

Modernist futures: re-reading 1922

ABSTRACT We are used to thinking of modernist works, à la Ricoeur, as ‘tales about time’, either as marking ruptures in time, or cycling back on time. In recent criticism, in what has been seen as a move beyond the historicism of the new modernist studies, there has been significant attention paid to the future in modernism, and indeed the futures of modernism. This paper will attend to how some of the key modernist texts of 1922, including Ulysses, Jacob’s Room, and the beginnings of Mrs Dalloway, address futurity in various forms (prolepsis, prophecy, speculation), and open themselves to possible futures. More than a century on from the annus mirabilis of ‘high’ modernism, what accounts for the continued ‘usefulness’ of such works as ways of thinking about and preparing for what Joyce called ‘the imprevidibility of the future’? And what are the implications for modernist studies, at this commemorative moment, of a future-oriented criticism?

How-tests for consciousness and direct neurophenomenal structuralism.

Despite recent criticism, the search for neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) is still at the core of a contemporary neuroscience of consciousness. One common aim is to distinguish merely statistical correlates from "NCCs proper", i.e., NCCs that are uniquely associated with a conscious experience and lend themselves to a metaphysical interpretation. We should then distinguish between NCCs as data and NCCs as hypotheses, where the first is just recorded data while the second goes beyond any set of recorded data. Still, such NCC-hypotheses ought to be testable. Here, I present a framework for so-called "sufficiency tests." We can distinguish four different classes of such tests, depending on whether they predict creature consciousness (which systems are conscious), state consciousness (when a system is conscious), phenomenal content (what a system is conscious of), or phenomenal character (how a system experiences). For each kind of test, I provide examples from the empirical literature. I also argue that tests for phenomenal character (How-Tests) are preferable because they bracket problematic aspects of the other kinds of tests. However, How-Tests imply a metaphysical tie between the neural and phenomenal domain that is stronger than supervenience, delivers explanations but does not close the explanatory gap, uses first-person methods to test hypotheses, and thereby relies on a form of direct neurophenomenal structuralism.

A Naturalist Taming of Supernatural Subjectivity? The Kantian and Fichtean Origins of Hegel’s Idealist Account of Cognition

Against recent naturalist critiques of Kant and interpretations of Hegel, it can be shown that Hegel’s accounts of consciousness and mind (Geist) commit him to a distinctly supernatural, post-Kantian idealist concept of subjectivity. While Kant describes this subjectivity as independent, unconditioned and self-positing, he relies on the notion of an interplay of two distinct realms — labelled the ‘natural’-phenomenal and the ‘supernatural’-noumenal — to justify it. While Fichte accepts Kant’s description of the structure of supernatural subjectivity, he rejects the two-realms-doctrine by arguing that Kant’s prioritization of the realms’ difference renders their unity unintelligible. Instead, Fichte maintains that all of reality is posited by a subjectivity that posits itself and then posits the objective world, thereby rendering the natural dependent on the supernatural. While Hegel agrees with Kant and Fichte on the supernatural properties of subjectivity, he rejects Fichte’s prioritization of supernatural subjectivity over natural objectivity and argues that both the supernatural and the natural are aspects of supernatural Geist. Although Hegel ultimately contrasts subjective Geist with objective nature, grounding both in the notion of the metaphysical idea, his idealist commitment to the supernatural subjectivity of consciousness and Geist renders his accounts of mind and cognition incompatible with recent naturalist interpretations.

Sacred Children, Taboo Tradeoffs, and Distorted Discourses

This Article brings together three literatures—bioethics, psychological research on taboo tradeoffs, and family law—to reveal pervasive distortions in current family law scholarship and judicial reasoning. Empirical work in bioethics shows that child welfare occupies a unique moral sphere. People routinely resist making tradeoffs between spheres. Just as sacrificing adult lives for money is taboo, so too is sacrificing child welfare for adult welfare. When faced with the prospect of these tradeoffs, people engage in a predictable set of avoidance and moral mitigation strategies. Across five case studies, this Article shows how child welfare has talismanic qualities which, even in the rarified world of the legal academy, ward off any open discussion of competing interests and powerfully distort scholarly arguments. The problems are worse in the context of elected officials. No legislator can plausibly say: “Of course I’m harming these children, but look at all the offsetting benefits to adults!” Recognizing the taboo nature of trading off child welfare is critical to fully understanding recent critiques of empirics within family law and has sobering implications for the budding movement toward evidence-based policymaking.

Literary Theory for LLMs

Recent criticism of large language models (LLM) and generative AI have focused on the way that these applications are little more than Stochostic Parrots' technological devices that generate seemingly intelligible statements but do not know and cannot understand a word of what they say. If the terms of these evaluations sound familiar, they should. They are rooted in foundational concepts regarding language and technology that have been definitive of Western systems of knowing since the time of Plato. The current crop of critical correctives and well-intended LLM hype-reduction efforts reproduce—or one might be tempted to say "parrot" this ancient wisdom. And it works, precisely because it just sounds like good common sense. But that's the problem. This presentation takes aim at this largely unquestioned theoretical framework, identifies its inherent limitations and inabilities to accurately understanding the opportunities and challenges of LLMs, and conclude by providing a more robust method for responding to and taking responsibility for these technological innovations.

Is cancel culture coming to Himalayan Studies? Remarks on a recent critique of the life and work of Mary Shepherd Slusser

Is cancel culture coming to Himalayan Studies? Remarks on a recent critique of the life and work of Mary Shepherd Slusser

Margaret More Roper: A Survey of Her Writings

As a contribution to the forthcoming 500th anniversary of the publication of Margaret Roper (née More)’s A Devout Treatise (1524-2024), the purpose of this article is to make a survey of her written production (public and private), including those works that were preserved as well as those others that were written but have been lost. The trial and death of Thomas More necessarily resulted in the loss of documents and writings, not only by More but by his daughter too. Sixteenth-century biographies of Thomas More are the main source of information about his daughter Margaret (1505-1544) and her written production. These early biographers were clearly concerned with the promotion of the figure of More, but they did not let pass the opportunity to ponder and testify to the scholarly excellence of his eldest daughter. This is particularly the case of Nicholas Harpsfield (1557) and, more especially, Thomas Stapleton (1588). Cresacre More’s biography of More (Douai, 1631), even though in general terms it offers no original information, has also been used in this study. Another important corpus of information is the epistolary writings of Margaret and her father, as well as of Erasmus. Various other documents subject to recent literary criticism are also consulted.

Contextualizing, Clarifying, and Defending the Doctrine of Double Effect

In recent years, a number of authors – such as Kershnar and Kelly, Steinhoff, and Scanlon – have criticized the doctrine of double effect (DDE) as incoherent, lacking an underlying rationale, or leading to counterintuitive conclusions. These critiques, however, rest on a failure to understand the DDE’s broader theoretical context and presuppositions. This paper aims to clarify and advance the debate regarding the DDE by, first, outlining a contemporary version of the broader normative theory (i.e. the Aristotelian-Thomistic natural law tradition) within which the DDE finds its proper context, and explaining the rationale for the DDE within this context; second, clarifying the DDE’s proportionality condition to avoid common misinterpretations; and, third, showing how the DDE, when properly formulated and understood within the appropriate theoretical context, can withstand the recent criticisms that have been raised against it.

Written corrective feedback and the language curriculum: Theory, research, curricular issues, and the researcher-teacher interface

Feedback plays an important role in the L2 learning process, as evidenced by several meta-analyses on both oral (e.g., Li, 2010) and written (e.g., Kang & Han, 2015) corrective feedback. In the written corrective feedback (WCF) strand, when viewed from a writing-to-learn perspective (Manchón, 2011), there has been a recent two-pronged critique that addresses 1) the general product-oriented approach and 2) the failure to situate research designs within the authentic instructed SLA or ISLA setting (Leow, 2020) that, in turn, is situated within a language curriculum (e.g., Leow, 2019a). The call for a theoretically-driven ISLA and curricular approach to the WCF strand of research is quite logical given that WCF not only takes place in the instructed setting but is crucially aligned with the writing component of the curriculum. This curricular approach also holds the potential for research in WCF to address the researcher-teacher interface that continues to reveal a gap between ISLA researchers and classroom teachers. To this end, this article probes deeper into the curricular approach to WCF research by 1) first reporting on the two theoretical underpinnings that directly address the WCF process, 2) addressing the potential conflation of the two types of writing curricula in language departments, 3) discussing considerations required of a curricular approach to WCF research, 4) providing an example of a process-oriented ISLA applied study that falls within a curricular approach to WCF research, and 5) addressing the gap of the researcher-teacher interface including collaborative steps taken to involve teachers in WCF studies.

Asymmetric impact of microfinance on economic growth: Evidence from Bosnia and Herzegovina

This study explores the correlation between microfinance loans (MFL) and economic growth in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia). It utilizes the non-linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) method to examine cointegration and short-run dynamics by analyzing quarterly data spanning from 2010 to 2022. The findings underscore the link between MFL shocks and long-term economic growth. The study unveils the unique effects of both positive and negative MFL shocks on growth, suggesting a non-linear relationship between microfinance loans and economic growth in Bosnia. However, the study concludes that the impact of MFL on Bosnia's GDP is adverse. Short-term fluctuations in MFL show no substantial influence on Bosnian economic growth. The coefficient of the error correction model is both negative and significant indicating the stability of the long-term relationship. This implies a rapid correction, with 46.4 % of the previous quarter's imbalance rectified within the current quarter. While our results are based on a single country, they align with recent criticisms of microfinance practices. Furthermore, our study offers a novel approach as it represents the first examination of the asymmetric relationship between MFL and GDP in Bosnia, providing valuable policy recommendations.

Sustainability and Net Zero climate agreements – a transatlantic antitrust perspective

The climate crisis requires a transition to a Net Zero economy. Such a transition is possible only through concerted public and private action. While a number of financial institutions and insurance companies had agreed to align their activities with Net Zero targets, reconsidering support for new coal and fossil fuel projects, these initiatives have come under attack from political groups in the US, who have labelled such agreements ‘collective boycotts’. Such accusations feed a collective action problem, and thus hinder private sector cooperation. This article discusses the background to Net Zero Agreements, and the recent antitrust criticisms, under US, EU and UK antitrust law and precedent. Net Zero Agreements can alleviate market failures, resolve collective action problems, and improve consumer welfare by lowering the potentially huge costs to consumers of an unmitigated climate crisis. Under a rule of reason, antitrust authorities and courts in the US, EU, and UK can and should give room for private sector cooperation between companies pursuing an effective transition to a clean economy, where these agreements correct market failures and resolve collective action problems.

Population Age Structure and the Vulnerability of States to Coups d’État

Abstract This essay responds to recent critiques of the U.S. State Department’s inconsistent application of congressionally mandated foreign-aid restrictions following several successful coups d’état in countries receiving USAID foreign assistance. This demographic analysis, which conforms to an age-structural modeling and forecasting protocol that was originally developed for U.S. strategic intelligence efforts, finds: (1.) a disproportionately high level of coup vulnerability (the probability of experiencing a successful coup) among youthful countries (median age equal to or less than 25.5 years), particularly among states in the early-youthful segment of this phase (median age equal to or less than 20.5 years); and (2.) a dramatic one-time decline in coup vulnerability among all phases of the age-structural transition following the end of the Cold War. This essay’s two-decade forecast of an expected gradual decline in coups is consistent with the slow and halting pace of age-structural change that is currently projected by the 2022 revision of the UN Population Division’s medium scenario for countries along the equatorial midriff of Africa, and in parts of the Middle East and southcentral Asia. These findings support an alternative criticism – not of the U.S. State Department’s reluctance to restrict foreign assistance to coup perpetrators, but of currently mandated restrictions that neglect to exempt USAID programs known to advance the age-structural transition (i.e. those that extend girls’ educational attainment, improve access to family planning and other reproductive health services, or expand women’s autonomy and rights).

Extractive Labor: A Lethal Legacy of Racialized Colonial Rule

How and why does colonial domination kill off the very labor it depends on? While settler colonial studies provide one of the only theorizations of the systemic elimination of populations, they see it as antithetical to labor exploitation, and thus cannot answer this question. I therefore build on recent critiques of settler colonial studies to develop the concept of racialized extractive labor regimes: race marking labor as disposable, as realizing value through expending workers’ lives. I then articulate these dynamics through a comparison of the highly divergent cases of early colonialism in Peru and what is now the United States, first across initial settlement and then as they shifted to racialization decades later. While settler colonial studies emphasize land acquisition as colonialism’s defining feature, my comparison reveals that elites’ drive for indelible inequality actually shapes colonial projects. And in order to maintain their vaunted positions, elites ultimately construct racialized extractive labor regimes that predicate their domination on the regularized elimination of racialized Others. This analysis therein provides new insights into the elitist nature of colonialism and the logics of elimination and racialization through which it runs.

UK Net Zero policy design and deep uncertainty – The need for an alternative approach

The majority of global emissions scenarios compatible with holding global warming to less than 2 °C depend on the large-scale use of Greenhouse Gas Removal (GGR) technologies. Recent critiques have highlighted the concerns of building long-term climate policy on such speculative technological scenarios emerging from orthodox modelling approaches – including integrated assessment modelling prominently assessed by the IPCC. Through a stakeholder consultation process with the UK modelling and policy community, we critically examine the integration of GGR technologies into UK Net Zero scenarios and the decision-making philosophy underlying the use of orthodox modelling to inform UK climate policy. We identify a number of features of orthodox modelling approaches which are unable to manage the pervasive extent of deep uncertainty in possible UK climate and energy futures. We further argue that a more fundamental issue lies in the way that the models are used by UK climate policy makers: that the handling of uncertainties which pervade the integration of GGR into Net Zero policy are resulting in substantial distortions in net-zero policy design and associated decision-making. Drawing on the principles of decision-making under deep uncertainty techniques, exemplified by Robust Decision Making, we recommend an alternative approach that explicitly embraces uncertainty, multiple values and diversity among stakeholders and viewpoints, and in which modelling exists in an iterative exchange with policy development rather than separate from it. We advocate that such an approach would provide more relevant and robust information to near-term policymaking and enable an inclusive societal dialogue about the appropriate role of GGR within UK climate policy.

Emilia Pardo Bazán, folletinista and ‘noveladora moral’: La dama joven and Mujer

This article seeks to understand how Emilia Pardo Bazán engaged with and utilized two iterations of creative writing - the folletín and the didactic novel - repudiated by her male peers in Spain's Restoration literary scene. It does so by engaging closely with La dama joven through publication history and close reading of the novella itself. It does likewise with the later novella, Mujer, while situating the discussion with a broad field of recent criticism on both the period and Pardo Bazán herself.