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Emerging technologies have always played an important role in armed conflict. From the crossbow to cyber capabilities, technology that could be weaponized to create an advantage over an adversary has inevitably found its way into military arsenals for use in armed conflict. The weaponization of emerging technologies, however, raises challenging legal issues with respect to the law of armed conflict. As States continue to develop and exploit new technologies, how will the law of armed conflict address the use of these technologies on the battlefield? Is existing law sufficient to regulate new technologies, such as cyber capabilities, autonomous weapons systems, and artificial intelligence? Have emerging technologies fundamentally altered the way we should understand concepts such as law-of-war precautions and the principle of distinction? How can we ensure compliance and accountability in light of technological advancement? This volume of the Lieber Studies explores these critical questions while highlighting the legal challenges - and opportunities - presented by the use of emerging technologies on the battlefield.

Intro -- Culture and Social Change -- Transforming Society Through the Power of Ideas -- A volume in Advances in Culture Psychology -- Series Editor: Jaan Valsiner, University Worcester -- CONTENTS -- 1. Introduction: Changing Times, Changing Science -- Part i: COLLECTIVE ACTION IN CONTEXT -- 2. The Psychology of Collective Action: Crowds and Change -- 3. Commentary: Collectives May Protest, But How Do Authorities Respond? -- 4. Change We Can Believe in: The Role of Social Identity, Cognitive Alternatives, and Leadership in Group Mobilization and Transformation -- 5. Commentary: Change Non-Westerners Can Believe In -- part ii: COMMUNICATING CHANGE -- 6. Metaphor and Stories in Discourse About Personal and Social Change -- 7. Commentary: The Earth, Olympus, and the Commuter Bus -- 8. Balancing Stability and Change: A Neo-Diffusionist Perspective on Cultural Dynamics of Socially Transformative Ideas -- 9. Commentary: The Meeting of Ideas: Diffusion, Dialogical Interaction, and Social Change -- 10. Scientific Controversies and the Struggle for Symbolic Power -- 11. Commentary: The Struggle for Scientific Consensus: Communicating Climate Science Around COP-15 -- part iii: SOCIETIES IN TRANSITION -- 12. Mediating Social Change in Authoritarian and Democratic States: Irony, Hybridity, and Corporate Censorship -- 13. Commentary: Subversively Funny: Critical Humor in Art -- 14. Assessing Social Change Through Social Capital: Local Leadership and Social Political Change in Bolivia -- 15. Commentary: Social Influence and Social Change: States and Strategies of Social Capital -- 16. Changing Fields, Changing Habitusus: The Field of Public Service in Post-Soviet Ukraine -- 17. Commentary: Dependent Independence: A Mechanism for Conciliating Determinism and Freedom -- 18. Conclusion: Cycles of Social Change -- Advances in Culture Psychology.

AbstractIn a list of 'desk side reminders', allegedly originating with General Colin Powell, there is one towards the end which says 'the window for changes is the first year'. It is unlikely President Obama follows these reminders, but it is nonetheless worthwhile to consider how his decisions – the decisions of the Commander in Chief of the sole remaining military superpower – impacted the application and development of international humanitarian law during the year when his window of opportunity was open.President Obama's first year in office can be defined by two words: pragmatism and commitment. His pragmatism is reflected in the decision to continue to pursue the armed conflicts against transnational terrorism, and his refusal to abandon the legal and policy positions of his predecessor that lodge that struggle squarely within an armed conflict paradigm. His commitment is reflected both in his decision to continue the armed struggle against transnational terrorism, and in the actions he has taken to demonstrate US commitment to fundamental humanitarian principles of the law, and to abandon the policy of legal exceptionalism that defined his predecessor's 'authority without obligation' interpretation of the law as it applied to this armed conflict. Any doubt about these dual pillars of his approach to transnational terrorism was eliminated when he delivered his Nobel acceptance speech. In that speech, he challenged the international community to accept the continuing need to meet the threat of transnational terrorism with military force. However, he also emphasized that maintaining the moral high ground in the conduct of hostilities – even when confronting an immoral opponent – is at the very core of the American military tradition.

Abstract  Many scholars have commented on the changing significance of farming for understanding the dynamics of social and economic change in contemporary rural America. Quantitative analyses of relationships between farming, local socioeconomic conditions, demographic trends, and policy have often relied on an indicator of "farm‐dependent" (FD) counties developed by the USDA Economic Research Service. In this article, we argue that measures of economic dependency imperfectly identify the places in the United States where farming is significant, and can paint an incomplete picture of the contemporary geographic distribution and structure of agriculture in the United States. We propose an alternative categorical indicator—agricultural importance (AI)—that provides a better direct measure of the relative size and intensity of farming across diverse U.S. counties. We compare the characteristics of FD and AI counties along a set of dimensions and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each typology.