Saving Bulgaria's Jews: an analysis of social identity and the mobilisation of social solidarity

This paper investigates the arguments used in public documents to mobilise Bulgarians against the deportation of Jews in World War II. We focus on the key documents relating to the first wave of mobilisation in 1940–1941 as provided by Todorov in The Fragility of Goodness ( 2001 ). We demonstrate that these documents are based on three types of argument. The first, category inclusion, treats the Jews as part of a common ingroup rather than as constituting a separate outgroup. The second, category norms, proposes that help for those under attack is a core aspect of ingroup identity. The third, category interest, suggests that the ingroup will be harmed if Jews are persecuted. In each case, the predominant category on which arguments are based is national identity (i.e. ‘we Bulgarians …’). This analysis is used to validate and extend a social identity of model of helping. The theoretical and practical implications of such an approach are considered in the discussion. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the last Jews in Iraq and Iraqi national identity: a look at two recent Iraqi novels

After 2003, Iraqi literature, particularly the novel, rediscovered the now extinct Jewish community in Iraq. The Jews were the first major community in Iraq to be completely erased. Writing about the Jews served to underline the pluralism of Iraqi society in the past and to admonish against a similar fate awaiting other small communities in Iraq today. This article will focus on two recent Iraqi novels, written by two of Iraq’s prominent novelists, in which Jews are at the centre of the narratives: ‘Ali Badr’s “Haris al-Tabagh” (The Guardian of the Tobacco Shop), 2008 and Khdair al-Zaydi’s “Atlas ‘Azran al-Baghdadi” (‘Azran al-Baghdadi’s Atlas), 2015a. These are not only ordinary Jews, they are the last Jews of Iraq and Baghdad. As such, I will argue, they are doomed by the writers to serve as symbols for something exceeding their lives (and deaths) as individuals or Jews. The novels thus are more about Iraqi national identity after 2003 than about the last Jews. By choosing “the last of the Jews” as a protagonist the authors signal a pessimistic end to the illusion of sustaining a version of a pluralistic and accommodating Iraqi national identity.     

Perceptions of dual identity and separate groups among secular and religious Israeli Jews

The authors examined the effects of perceptions of dual identity and separate groups on tendencies to handle intergroup conflict through problem solving and contention. Among secular Israeli Jews, regression analyses revealed a significant interaction between perceptions of dual identity and perceptions of separate groups: Only under high perception of dual identity was the perception of separate groups associated with contention. Among religious Israeli Jews, problem solving and contention were unrelated to either dual identity or to perceptions of separate groups. The results are discussed in terms of the common ingroup identity model (S. L. Gaertner, M. C. Rust, J. F. Dovidio, B. A. Bachman, & P. A. Anastasio, 1994) and in the context of the conflict between religious and secular Jews in Israel.     

You promised you'd change: How incremental and entity theorists react to a romantic partner's promised change attempts

Research from multiple domains suggests that individuals benefit from having other people in their lives who endorse an incremental mindset, believing in humans' capacity to change and improve through effort. We hypothesize, however, that people high in incrementalism may have unrealistic expectations about the ease of change, leading them to become frustrated with others who promise change (change-strivers) but achieve only partial success. In a longitudinal study, change-strivers made promises of change to their romantic partners and attempted to keep those promises over two weeks. Romantic partners who were higher in incrementalism were initially more optimistic that change-strivers would successfully change, but subsequently more distrustful toward change-strivers whose change attempts failed. Furthermore, partners high in incrementalism were more likely to attribute failure to the change-striver's lack of effort, rather than to the difficulty of the behaviors. The findings highlight circumstances when incremental mindsets may have costs in relationships.     

On the Structure of Twentieth-Century Philosophy

Abstract: It makes sense to ask from time to time where we are in the philosophical discussion. This article reviews the debate in the twentieth century. Michael Friedman has recently argued that the split between Continental and analytic philosophy is due to the inability, because of war, to carry forward a genuine debate begun by Heidegger and Carnap around the time of Heidegger's public controversy with Cassirer at Davos in 1929. I, however, argue that there was not even the beginning of a genuine debate between Heidegger and Carnap. I argue further that the split between analytic and Continental philosophy originated earlier, in the analytic attack on idealism at the beginning of the century. And finally I argue that the differences among analytic philosophy, Continental philosophy, and pragmatism, the third main current of twentieth‐century philosophy, can be traced to differing reactions to Kant.     

The Protestant Reformation in the Low Countries: Developments in Twentieth-Century Historiography

Abstract

The twentieth-century historiography of the Protestant Reformation in the Netherlands (1520-1620) reflects four major shifts in approach: from a partisan or compartmentalized to a neutral and from a chiefly theological to an integrated approach, from a national to an international perspective, and from a focus on the national to one on the local and regional level. Moreover, the increasing multidisciplinarity within the field has resulted in a broadening of the range of sources and a discussion on the academic position of church history. These shifts mirror contemporary socio-cultural changes, such as depillarization, ecumenism, and internationalization. The concept developed by Juliaan Woltjer (1962) of a large and heterogenuous middle group of ‘Protestantizing’ Catholics between small groups of fervent Protestants and conservative Catholics caused a watershed in the research. These moderate Catholics proved a significant factor in local politics, depending on the extent to which they were loyal to the church leaders or allowed themselves to be driven into the arms of the Protestants by the unbending authorities. Woltjer initiated ongoing research into the interaction between church and state and into the fundamental multiformity and the ‘fourth stream’ in the Dutch Reformation: the amalgam of spiritualist objectors to institutionalized religiosity.     

Characterizing variation in the functional connectome: promise and pitfalls

The functional MRI (fMRI) community has zealously embraced resting state or intrinsic functional connectivity approaches to mapping brain organization. Having demonstrated their utility for charting the large-scale functional architecture of the brain, the field is now leveraging task-independent methods for the investigation of phenotypic variation and the identification of biomarkers for clinical conditions. Enthusiasm aside, questions regarding the significance and validity of intrinsic brain phenomena remain. Here, we discuss these challenges and outline current developments that, in moving the field toward discovery science, permit a shift from cartography toward a mechanistic understanding of the neural bases of variation in cognition, emotion and behavior.