Military spending, often a significant portion of federal budgets, can either increase or decrease inequality. It can decrease inequality by creating jobs and opportunities for advancement, or it can increase inequality by disproportionately benefiting the already well-off segments of society by diverting resources away from programs that help the less wealthy. This essay reviews various studies-covering a range of countries and time periods-that examine the “inequality-widening,” “inequality-narrowing,” and mixed effects of military spending. Overall, the preponderance of evidence supports the theory that increased military spending leads to greater inequality.

Some decades following U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1961 reference to a military-industrial complex (MIC), its cognate, the prison-industrial complex (PIC), became foundational language for understanding mass incarceration in the United States. To date, scholars have generally treated the MIC and PIC as analogous but separate structures. We argue, by contrast, that they have important interdependencies. For one, there are linkages that take the form of “seeding,” through which the military and the prison each transmit resources, practices, and personnel crossinstitutionally. For another, there is a “mimetic” relationship in which both institutions develop processes and practices in parallel, with each likely gaining legitimacy from comparable developments in the adjoining institution. These cross-pollinating and mimetic connections, sometimes inflected by and reproducing racial inequalities, accentuate troubling nondemocratic practices within both military and carceral institutions.

This essay calls on us to future-proof the study of the world’s pasts by creating a new field, ancient studies, that would replace “classics ” and “classical studies ” by drawing together scholars of ancient cultures from disciplines and area studies around the world. Our current disciplinary divisions, burdened by prejudices about race, religion, and national identity, are hindering intellectual exchange and collaboration. Approaching ancient studies from a global perspective demands the conservation of a global archive; commitment to its preservation will help restore the humanity stolen from people invaded, enslaved, exploited, erased, and ignored in past centuries and today. The vitality of the archive’s contents will enrich our care for the world in all its variety and complexity and help us imagine a better future for all our pasts-as well as for ourselves and generations to follow.

This essay examines the distortions introduced into research agendas and research design by the effort to avoid seeming “political.” The rhetorical, institutional, and disciplinary operations of the social science research enterprise worldwide serve to divert attention from questions of power and collective accountability to a focus on technical interventions, institutional risk, and individual responsibility. These practices coincide with the specific circumstances of social science research in the Middle East and North Africa-where the exercise of political power in the form of international interference, irresponsible autocracy, civil disorder and violence, and protracted economic poverty and duress is difficult to conceal-to shape research terrains and agendas, and create a particularly, and tellingly, troubled research environment.

Research ethics is an increasingly important part of social science debates. Among political scientists conducting research in the Americas, much of this discussion focuses on the ethics of experiments with human subjects. The ethical challenges identified by remena (Research Ethics in the Middle East and North Africa) scholars clearly overlap with those faced by researchers elsewhere, but they also involve unique issues specific to the mena region. Broad themes include power and authoritarianism, technocratic versus activist research, ownership of ethicality, and communicating clearly and honestly with vulnerable populations.

In the post-Cold War era, “Islamic terrorism” has taken the place of the Communist threat. The Middle East, a construct developed in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European colonialism, is the region from which this threat is said to emanate. Teaching politics of the Middle East is therefore by definition a political endeavor: even if students arrive to the classroom with very little factual knowledge about this region, they will, through media portrayals, inevitably bring a certain image of the region and its inhabitants. In this essay, I examine ways educators can promote critical, self-reflective connected decolonial thinking. I argue for the importance of a critical theoretical toolkit, drawing on anticolonial pedagogy and self-reflective praxis. Teaching in universities of the Global North to a mostly white, non—Middle Eastern student body, I encourage students to embrace self-reflexivity and develop embodied and connected feminist learning skills through self-reflective journaling.

Drawing on the essays in this volume of Dædalus, as well as remena (Research Ethics in the Middle East and North Africa) workshops and meetings over the last several years, we reflect on what constitutes responsible social inquiry. We present the context for a “call to action” for universities, foundations, and other funders, publishers, and researchers. Through procedural, professional, and political recommendations, we offer guidance to address some of the ethical dilemmas in designing, monitoring, funding, conducting, and disseminating social science research on the Middle East and North Africa-and beyond.

Abstract There are numerous popular books, magazines, blogs, and websites that provide advice or anecdotes about how best to care for children. These sources of information can drown out conclusions based on scientific consensus, negatively influencing the behavior of parents and other caregivers and impacting societal action and policies implemented to support children and families. Scientific research in child development, psychology, and neuroscience provides valuable insights into key aspects of caring for children that not only can enhance the likelihood of positive outcomes for children but can also empower parents, childcare providers, and communities with the knowledge and confidence needed to make informed decisions about their childrens upbringing. These data can also inform public policies that can increase access and reduce barriers to quality environments for all children. Here, we highlight reliable findings about biobehavioral development that can bear upon policies and practices for supporting healthy child development.

Abstract Almost all of human infants’ experience and learning takes place in the context of caregiving relationships. This essay considers how infants understand the care they receive. We begin by outlining plausible features of an “intuitive theory” of care. In this intuitive theory, caregiving has both a distinctive foundational structure and distinctive features that differentiate it from other social relationships. We then review methods and findings from research on infants’ understanding of people and social relationships. We propose that even before infants can use language, they may understand caregiving as an abstract intuitive theory with some features in common with how adults think about caregiving. In particular, infants understand care relationships as intimate, altruistic, and asymmetric. We review work that starts to shed light on this proposal, including the findings that infants distinguish between intimate relationships and merely positive ones and that they have asymmetric expectations of responses to distress in intimate relationships between large and small individuals. The proposal that infants can make these inferences has societal and political implications for how we structure caregiving in early life.

Abstract This essay compares Christian and Buddhist narratives of care in conversation with anthropological work on relationships mediated through the divine. Within these traditions, care is a divine activity in which humans participate by engaging in caregiving practices. Gods care, receive care, and elevate care to a sacred action. I argue that the act of caring, as a religious practice, calls for an existential reflection upon the boundaries of the self, and includes not only the giver and receiver of care but also other humans and the divine. Studying care in religious contexts helps us better understand the social science of care, even in secular spaces. I conclude with lessons we can learn from religious institutions to better cultivate expanded networks of care in civil society, such as infrastructure to support relationships between strangers and across generations.