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Recently, childfree people have been foregrounded in mainstream media. More than seven percent of Western women choose to remain childfree and this figure is increasing. Being childfree challenges the ‘procreation imperative’ residing at the center of our hetero-normative understandings, occupying an uneasy position in relation to—simultaneously—traditional academic ideologies and prevalent social norms. After all, as Adi Avivi recognizes, if a woman is not a mother, the patriarchal social order is in danger. This collection engages with these (mis)perceptions about childfree people: in media representations, demographics, historical documents, and both psychological and philosophical models. Foundational pieces from established experts on the childfree choice--Rhonny Dam, Laurie Lisle, Christopher Clausen, and Berenice Fisher--appear alongside both activist manifestos and original scholarly work, comprehensively brought together. Academics and activists in various disciplines and movements also riff on the childfree life: its implications, its challenges, its conversations, and its agency—all in relation to its inevitability in the 21st century. Childfree across the Disciplines unequivocally takes a stance supporting the subversive potential of the childfree choice, allowing readers to understand childfreedom as a sense of continuing potential in who—or what—a person can become.

This article considers the notion of trauma in relation to more-than-human species and in the context of the environmental catastrophes of the Anthropocene Age. The claim is that other species have long experienced suffering and trauma at the hands of human beings and that this will only increase as the effects of climate change worsen. The argument begins by briefly exploring the meanings of trauma before applying this concept to other-than-human species. From here it is argued that the Abrahamic scriptures, along with Western political philosophies and theologies, have served as apparatuses for producing and maintaining an ontological rift between human beings and other species. This ontological rift leads to the exclusion of other species from political questions of human dwelling, which, in turn, provides the “ethical” legitimation of the instrumental and callous exploitation of other species for human desires and needs, resulting in their suffering and trauma. In concluding, the notion of inoperative pastoral care is discussed as a counter to the ontological rift, inviting more empathic, compassionate, and inclusive relations with more-than-human species.

Abstract This introductory article to Democratic Theory's special issue on the marginalized democracies of the world begins by presenting the lexical method for understanding democracy. It is argued that the lexical method is better than the normative and analytical methods at finding democracies in the world. The argument then turns to demonstrating, mainly through computational research conducted within the Google Books catalog, that an empirically demonstrable imbalance exists between the democracies mentioned in the literature. The remainder of the argument is given to explaining the value of working to correct this imbalance, which comes in at least three guises: (1) studying marginalized democracies can increase our options for alternative democratic actions and democratic innovations; (2) it leads to a conservation and public outreach project, which is epitomized in an “encyclopedia of the democracies”; and (3) it advocates for a decolonization of democracies’ definitions and practices and decentering academic democratic theory.

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