bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Legal and Scientific Landscapes of the Act
Authors: Shmuely Shira
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses the medical and legal landscapes of the Vivisection Act and introduces its main provisions. It begins by outlining the introduction of modern experimental physiology in Britain in the 1830s and its rise in the 1870s. From its outset, animal experimentation was confronted with public critique. The oppositional voices increased as the practice became more widespread, and were amplified by a broader suspicion toward the medical profession. The regulation of animal experimentation was also a product of developments in the legal sphere. The Vivisection Act was situated at the convergence of two trends in nineteenth-century British law—legislation on cruelty to animals and case law and the establishment of inspectorates under the Home Office as part of deeper processes of government growth and “‘professionalization’ of government.” The chapter situates the Act within the larger context of the Victorian governance and shows that the regulation of vivisection was modeled after an evolving structure that relied upon licensing and inspection. It also traces the development of the unnecessary suffering doctrine within criminal cases of cruelty to animals, a calculation weighing degrees of animal pain vis-à-vis human benefits.
The Right Forms for the Job
Authors: Shmuely Shira
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines the debates about whether the observation of animals that had been mutilated by chirurgical means should be considered a type of experiment to which the Vivisection Act did not apply. The chapter begins with a description of the state of knowledge about pain reduction in the nineteenth century, together with the social and cultural meanings of pain in Britain. As a result of Victorians' growing aversion to physical pain and the production of sedatives, anesthesia became a dominant technology that impacted animal experimentation, the perception of the morality of vivisection, and its regulation. The chapter details how Gerald Yeo, a professor of physiology at King's College, planned to examine the impact of a certain injury on dogs. He refused to get additional certification from the Home Office for experimenting on dogs without anesthesia. Yeo contended that his planned observation of the dogs was not an experiment, and therefore no additional certification was needed. The chapter also looks at the case against neurologist David Ferrier, which raised very similar issues.
Postscript
Authors: Shmuely Shira
Published: January 2024

This postscript explores contemporary debates about animal ethics that both replicate late nineteenth-century concerns and present a more nuanced picture of the role of pain in accounting for nonhuman lives. By the turn of the twenty-first century, pain was joined by claims about animals' intrinsic values or special capacities. It is too early to know how transformative the attempts are to go beyond pain in animal ethics and how—if at all—they will be translated into law. Advancing a legal vision of these questions could broaden the scope of vivisection regulation to include standards beyond the reduction of pain. Another potential consequence is a shift in the decisions as to which species to protect, or in priorities among them, according to the levels of their cognitive capacities. The postscript considers how alternative approaches to traditional utilitarian animal ethics emerged against the backdrop of decades of scientific research into animal cognition and social behavior. Ethicists and lawyers are now harnessing the fruits of these studies to make new claims for the protection of nonhuman animals. Following the lessons of the history of the Vivisection Act, one can expect the coproduction of knowledge and normative order.
Cracks in the Foundation
Authors: Reichman Daniel R.
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Santos, Brazil, describing its shoreline. In many ways, the Santos beach epitomizes a central theme in the Brazilian experience of progress. From one point of view, Brazil has been a twenty-first-century success story—a rapidly modernizing economic powerhouse blessed with incredible natural resources, top-notch infrastructure in certain sectors, and an exceptional quality of life for a wealthy minority. Yet rapid modernization has created what many Brazilians see as a facade of progress that hides an unstable foundation. There is a clear sense among Brazilians that the state has squandered an opportunity to achieve dreams of national greatness by investing in symbolic and sometimes spectacular projects that hide deep, structural problems in Brazilian society. The chapter describes that the book uses a historical ethnography of Santos to explain the contested meanings of progress in Brazil, and to make a more general argument about how anthropologists and others can define progress today.
Spectacles of Colonialism
Authors: Reichman Daniel R.
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses the bandeirantes attitude—the idea that indigenous peoples are obstacles to progress and therefore not deserving of basic human rights. The bandeirantes served as an ideology of progress and development that linked opposing viewpoints. Brazil celebrates and promotes its indigenous heritage, yet Brazilians simultaneously downplay the presence of indigenous people as active historical agents and victims of genocide. This contradiction was visible in a clash of timescapes in São Vicente, a city directly adjacent to Santos, when a controversy emerged in 2015 over a community of Guaraní who live in a beachfront state park. The Guaraní had arrived in São Vicente in 2003 to participate in a spectacular musical reenactment of the Portuguese arrival in Brazil, recreating the “first contact” between European colonists and native Brazilians from which modern Brazil was born. The dispute over their continued presence in the middle of urban Brazil illustrates the clash of timescapes described throughout this book: when indigenous people exist within the mythic timescape, performing in dramatic reenactments of history, they are outside of unfolding events and held at a distance from the ongoing struggles of social and political life; but when they occupy the historical timescape, playing an active role in actual events, their presence draws attention to the cracks in the mythic foundations of national identity.
Citizen of the World, King of All Nations
Authors: Reichman Daniel R.
Published: January 2024

This chapter argues that the next stage in the bandeirantes chronotope, in which Brazil would become a “First World power,” was going to be spawned by the spectacles of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Rio Olympics. This stage of the developmentalist plot rested on the assumption that Brazil would become an economy of mass consumption rather than production, a full participant in globalized consumer capitalism. The chapter contends that soccer superstar Pelé, and the mythology around him, was mobilized in Santos as a symbol of this new globalized, consumerist Brazil. The chapter then integrates two different aspects of the Santos Pelé Museum: its material role in the transformation of Valongo, and its symbolic role in narrating a particular story of Brazil's development. As a material object, the museum was an expensive construction project and a centerpiece of the redevelopment of Valongo. As a text, the museum told the story of a triumphant Brazil in the run-up to the World Cup, using Pelé's biography as allegory.
The Shapes of Progress: Configuring Social Change in Theory
Authors: Reichman Daniel R.
Published: January 2024

This concluding chapter reviews how, in Santos, Brazil, the timescape of progress—epitomized by the bandeirantes—shapes how particular events are swept up into a mythic chronotope that defines different historical events, some of which carry completely opposite political meanings, as “progress.” From colonial encounters to coffee plantations to factories to oil wells to sewers to call centers, wildly different events, objects, and experiences have been encompassed by a single narrative plot. How and why do certain kinds of social change get demarcated as progress while others are just thought of as change? The chapter considers progress as a form of temporal poetics, in which certain events attain special meaning and are woven into mythic transformations. In a world where everything everywhere is changing, certain kinds of change need to be set apart. The chapter then assesses the implications of this book's argument for an anthropology of progress. It also addresses the concepts of pattern thinking, anthropological formalism, anti-plantation politics, and green bandeirantes.
Introduction
Authors: Scalice Joseph
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter discusses the declaration of martial law in the Philippines. According to historian Donald Berlin, the roots of martial law lay in the Philippines' long colonial experience and the first decades of independence. The chapter highlights the importance of understanding the program of Stalinism to comprehend the role played by various Communist parties. It details the culture of communist parties of the Philippines simultaneously inflected by amnesia and nostalgia. After the declaration, most activists burned the political documents in their possession, ridding themselves of the incriminating evidence, so the bulk of existing scholarship on the Communist parties of the Philippines rests on interviews conducted from the mid-1980s.
A Storm on the Horizon
Authors: Scalice Joseph
Published: January 2024

This chapter details the political landscape in Manila after World War II and the declaration of martial law. It notes the mounting social anger over the years, referencing the eruption of student strikes that eventually resulted in all the universities in the university belt having been shut down by student strikes. The student strikes were one expression of a massive growth in working class struggles in the country. The chapter explains that the 1969 election became a bloody and expensive affair after following the growing radicalization of youth, the increasingly seething levels of social outrage, and the discontent of the politically excluded layers of the elite. It cites that Ferdinand Marcos became the first reelected president in the postcolonial period.
The Writ Suspended
Authors: Scalice Joseph
Published: January 2024

The chapter covers Ferdinand Marcos' suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. It starts with the significance of the bombing of Plaza Miranda, wherein the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and Marcos blamed each other for the event but no one had been prosecuted for the crime. As he suspended the writ of habeas corpus, Marcos blamed Communist “subversives” for the bombing, and the student activists blamed Marcos. The chapter examines the evidence as to who could have planned and executed the bombing, which references the claims of CPP members that Jose Maria Sison ordered the bombing. It elaborates on how the 1971 election was staged under the lengthening shadow of dictatorship and publicly exposed the plans of the CPP.
Martial Law
Authors: Scalice Joseph
Published: January 2024

This chapter focuses on the implementation of martial law. It cites that Ferdinand Marcos restored the writ of habeas corpus after accepting his electoral defeat, however, he continued his plans for dictatorship. President Marcos announced the declaration of martial law in a nationwide broadcast, but the public had become aware of the imposition of military rule earlier in the day due to the lack of radio broadcasts and morning newspapers. The chapter then discusses Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.'s plot to seize the presidential palace by intending to seize power through an uprising led by the Communist Party of the Philippines. It notes the events that ultimately led to Aquino's assassination and the establishment of the Corazon Aquino administration.
Social and Political Activism of Students in South Vietnam
Authors: Nguyen-Marshall Van
Published: January 2024

This chapter focuses on South Vietnamese youths and their associational activities in the 1960s and 1970s. Like student organizations in the United States in the 1960s, South Vietnamese youth groups were vocal, dynamic, and dedicated to their various causes. While antiwar, left-leaning student activists were grabbing headlines, anticommunist students were also politically and socially engaged. Between these two extremes were self-identified apolitical groups that participated in social relief and community development. Despite their different political viewpoints and approaches, students were united in their enthusiasm for social involvement and their desire to shape the fate of their country. The chapter shows that the Republic of Vietnam government, foreign powers, and political groups saw young people as an important constituency that they vied to influence. Youth organizations were thus subjected to intervention, infiltration, and intimidation from these powerful groups.
SÓng ThẦn Newspaper and the “Highway of Horror” Project
Authors: Nguyen-Marshall Van
Published: January 2024

This chapter details the attack along Highway 1 (called the “Highway of Horror”) in late April and early May of 1972 and its aftermath. It focuses on the daily newspaper Sóng Thần's humanitarian endeavor to recover and bury the victims. When the newspaper's staff learned about the large number of bodies along the highway, they mobilized readers to provide proper burials for the victims. As a grassroots undertaking relying on volunteers, this project provides useful insights into South Vietnam's civil society. The chapter also explores an often overlooked spiritual and psychological impact of the war on Vietnamese society. Sóng Thần's burial project was important to the community on many levels. Giving the massacred victims a proper burial not only dignified the dead but also provided emotional, psychological, and spiritual comfort to the families and the local community.
The Fight for Rights and Freedoms in the 1970s
Authors: Nguyen-Marshall Van
Published: January 2024

This chapter assesses the social protest movements for rights and freedoms that emerged in the 1970s. It illustrates that South Vietnam's public sphere was pluralistic and robust, and its civil society was effective in ensuring that this realm of public discourse remained free and open. As a result, a high level of engagement was maintained, even though Nguyễn Văn Thiệu's government restricted the press and imposed fines, prison terms, or both on those who allegedly broke the law. Before delving into the various social movements, the chapter first provides a brief sketch of the political situation of the Second Republic, particularly the contentious period beginning with the 1971 presidential election. It could be argued that Thiệu's decision to run unopposed for a second term ignited a maelstrom of antigovernment responses, even from those on the right.
Conclusion
Authors: Nguyen-Marshall Van
Published: January 2024

This concluding chapter reviews civil society in contemporary Vietnam, suggesting that to operate in an authoritarian political environment, voluntary groups need to strategize carefully. Groups may try to collaborate with or work around state and party agencies. In many cases, groups must make alliances with other sectors within the ruling elite or leverage their connections with domestic and foreign supporters. Similarly, in the Republic of Vietnam (RVN), those voluntary groups whose goals and outlook aligned with the objectives of the government in power had the best chance of success and survival. Organizations with less favorable standing with the authorities did their best to cultivate domestic and foreign support when faced with state restriction or repression. In their maneuvering and strategizing, voluntary organizations in both historical and contemporary periods demonstrate agency, suggesting that even in challenging circumstances, civil society can be resilient, creative, and consequential.
Jealous Shrew, Judicious New Woman
Authors: Yang Shu
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses the issue of female jealousy, a staple marker of the shrew, and how it stimulated prolonged discussion on the credentials of the May Fourth new woman. Jealousy is not exclusively a women's issue. In the context of Confucian ideology, however, jealousy is coded as an inborn attribute of women. Female jealousy looms so large in shrew stories that it is often treated as the root of women's bad practices. Starting from the late imperial era, with the rise of the cult of qing and prospects for gender transformation, discourses surfaced in Chinese literature and intellectual essays shedding light on female jealousy. The chapter then considers the heightened discursive focus in the May Fourth period on rewriting standards of female morality. It looks at dramatist Ouyang Yuqian's “new woman plays” or “Nora plays,” analyzing how The Shrew (1925) and After Returning Home (1924) reinterpret jealousy in relation to new womanhood.
Epilogue
Authors: Yang Shu
Published: January 2024

This epilogue looks at the gender-based reform of the Great Leap Forward (GLF) through the lens of pola womanhood. In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the GLF campaign to boost China's agricultural and industrial capacities to allow the country to “leap” into socialism in the shortest feasible time. It gave particular attention to rural women in hopes of enlisting the largest possible workforce. Women were expected and emboldened to “leap” out of their traditional constraints to the forefront of socialist movements. Celebrated heroines in the GLF literature are strong-willed workers in public and resourceful wives capable of smoothing out domestic tensions. The theme of marital conflict, now treated with increasing literary sophistication, is more likely to facilitate than impede desirable depictions of the socialist new woman and the ideology behind her. The epilogue poses questions about the shrew's legacy, the use of female unruliness, and the status of Chinese-style feminism. It considers Li Zhun's “A Brief Biography of Li Shuangshuang” (1959), which is a milestone of GLF fiction.
Wisdom from the Edge
Authors: Stoller Paul
Published: January 2024

This book describes what anthropologists can do to contribute to the social and cultural changes that shape a social future of wellbeing and viability. The book shows how anthropologists can develop sensuously described ethnographic narratives to communicate powerfully their insights to a wide range of audiences. These insights are filled with wisdom about how respect for nature is central to the future of humankind. The book demonstrates how the ethnographic evocation of space and place, the honing of dialogue, and the crafting of character depict the drama of social life, and borrows techniques from film, poetry, and fiction to expand the appeal of anthropological knowledge and heighten its ability to connect the public to the idiosyncrasies of people and locale. Ultimately, the book underscores the importance of recognizing and applying indigenous wisdom to the social problems that threaten the future.
Introduction
Authors: Darr Asaf
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the extent to which the ethnonational and interreligious conflict between Palestinian Arabs and Jews within Israel infiltrate the workplace and impact workplace relations. Palestinian Arabs who reside in the occupied territories have no citizenship rights, and live either under Israeli, Palestinian Authority, or Hamas rule. Although most Jewish and Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel live in separate towns and villages, or separate neighborhoods of large cities such as Haifa and Jerusalem, they do meet at work. Their encounters provide opportunities to examine the complex and dynamic manifestations of the ongoing, often violent, political struggle in the context of Israeli work organizations. The chapter looks at studies of ethnically mixed workplaces in war-torn regions. It explains that the book is based on two waves of field studies conducted between 2008 and 2018. The first wave, in 2011–12, was sponsored by the Israel Science Foundation, and consisted of a field study of mixed medical teams composed of nurses, nursing assistants, and physicians in two Israeli health facilities. The second wave of interviews, launched in late 2016 and sponsored and administratively managed by the Israel Democracy Institute, included sixty-one interviews in three sectors of the Israeli economy: production, medical, and high tech.
The Grassroots Coping Strategy of Split Ascription
Authors: Darr Asaf
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses the main coping strategy employed by members of minority groups for dealing with the tensions that the broader Palestinian–Israeli conflict introduces into the workplace. This strategy can be termed “split ascription,” which refers to the conceptual separation that members of minority groups create between their direct work environment, composed of personal social ties with team members, and the structural elements of the employing organization, including hiring and promotion procedures and decisions. Members of both minority and majority groups depict their direct work environment as politically neutral and generally describe personal work ties between Jewish and Palestinian-Arab workers as positive, collegial, or neutral. By contrast, minority group members often regard structural elements of the employing organization as prejudiced and even racist. The recourse of minority group members to split ascription demonstrates the importance of examining the intersubjective views of workers in diverse work teams, along with their perceptions of structural and interactional elements, in order to fully comprehend interethnic workplace relations in war-torn regions. Understanding the grassroots strategy of split ascription in terms of a unified coping strategy also points to a possible critique of existing theoretical approaches to the study of interethnic workplace relations.
Language Use as a Symbolic Arena for Ethnonational Display
Authors: Darr Asaf
Published: January 2024

This chapter assesses how, in war-torn countries, the use of different languages at work sometimes becomes a point of contestation between rival ethnonational groups. Israel provides a vivid illustration of this situation, and the chapter portrays how the use of Arabic and Russian at work manifests the identity of the minority group and can become a source of tension, particularly during politically charged periods. Hebrew constitutes the hegemonic common ground for members of minority ethnonational groups, and both Palestinian Arabs and Russian immigrants typically have a good command of Hebrew and are expected to speak Hebrew in the presence of members of other ethnic groups. The chapter then illustrates how, in each of the three research contexts, local norms have emerged for managing language use within ethnically mixed work teams. It also analyzes the daily management of these norms and the tension caused by their perceived violation.
Populism and Property Destruction, 1790–1890
Authors: Scribner Campbell F.
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the interrelation between populism and property destruction. It cites the inevitability of school buildings being caught up in political conflict since their maintenance depends on local taxation. Thus, damage to schools often translated into a political act or a response to perceived violations of the social compact. The chapter explains the changing public perception of destructive protests and their legitimacy. It highlights that populist vigilantism played a significant role in American life from the colonial period to the early twentieth century before detailing the populist roots of school vandalism. Moreover, physical destruction became unnecessary for the maintenance of majority rights as its perpetrators struggled to claim the mantle of public virtue.
Modern Education and its Discontents, 1890–1930
Authors: Scribner Campbell F.
Published: January 2024

This chapter tackles the discontents within modern education. It starts with the battle of educational policy and parents' rights. During the Progressive Era in the mid-twentieth century, public education became the means to cope with all sorts of social changes, such as the wave of foreign and domestic migration. However, by the end of the Progressive Era, populist attacks on schools began to wane and procedural maneuvers overtook collective violence in school politics, a byproduct of the state's newfound ability to monopolize force and manage social unrest. The chapter looks into the notion of vandalism as childhood resentment and resistance.
Desks And Nostalgia
Authors: Scribner Campbell F.
Published: January 2024

This chapter explains desks as a symbol of nostalgia. Desks have been ubiquitous in American schools since the mid-nineteenth century. By the 1920s, desks had become fixtures in the public mind, mainstays of museums and antique stores, where they derived a sort of totemic power from the figures carved into them. Thus, desks became the symbol of either national innocence or an obnoxious brand of conservative politics. The chapter cites that the conceptual foundations of nostalgia aim to achieve more generative forms of educational conservatism. Moreover, nostalgia grounds a collective sense in people of who they are and what they value.
Walls and the Taboo
Authors: Scribner Campbell F.
Published: January 2024

This chapter covers the implications of vandalism on walls, such as taboos. It highlights the role of latrinalia in children's maturation, which also correlates to the mindset of the children doing the reading and writing. The concept of latrinalia or bathroom graffiti triggers the phenomenon as a product of subconscious drives and power structures, which then overlooks the relationship between bathroom writing and conscious selfhood. Bathrooms heighten self-consciousness, offering children opportunities for growth and wholeness that remain unavailable anywhere else at school. The chapter considers the recent interpretation of bathroom walls as spaces of resistance and group identity as school bathrooms become heterotopias, which are value-laden spaces associated with age or gender segregation and taboo activities.
Windows and Euphoria
Authors: Scribner Campbell F.
Published: January 2024

This chapter correlates the symbol of windows to the notion of euphoria. Glass windows are an important artifact in the history of education, a design element crucial to children's well-being but equally vulnerable to their depredation. Additionally, a constructive view of children's play characterizes a movement toward reason and maturity, and the development of physical dexterity, mimicry of adult behavior, or some form of experimentation. Meanwhile, window smashing epitomizes the difficulty of inducting children into civilized society. The chapter suggests that windows should be seen as necessary investments in children's humanity instead of metaphors for children's perfectibility, depravity, and social fragility.
Shards
Authors: Scribner Campbell F.
Published: January 2024

This chapter features shards of the historical sublime of vandalism in different locations in America. It suggests that vandalism may be antihistorical in its haunting recurrence. Shards of history create space for a sort of unsettling sublimity that provides further understanding of the discussion of resistance and emotion. The chapter showcases some shards from the perspective of discontented parents and rebellious youths. It details some narratives of vandalism from different American cities and times, such as ninth-grade boys wrecking nine school buses in North Carolina in 1995 or Sharon Brewster's sentencing for setting the Lincoln Public Schools headquarters on fire.
Reflections on Unruliness and Education
Authors: Scribner Campbell F.
Published: January 2024

This chapter considers vandalism as a reflection of unruliness and education. Critics characterize the behavior as a violent rejection that inhibits learning and tears down moral authority. The chapter highlights that vandalism should be considered as an ongoing discussion about the moral conditions of schools. It explains the importance of children's long-term development while also trusting children that they can learn to do the right thing regardless of the temptation to crack down on vandalism. The chapter cites that the concept of vandalism is born of struggle suffused with feelings while also grasping toward the unknown and rejecting limits and reasons.
The Limits of Autobiography
Authors: Gilmore Leigh
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter considers the limits of autobiography. For many writers, autobiography's domain of first-person particularities and peculiarities offers an opportunity to describe their lives and their thoughts about it. The chapter explains that autobiography seemed to constrain self-representation through its almost legalistic definition of truth-telling, anxiety about invention, and its preference for the literal and verifiable. Thus, criticism of autobiography is often political especially when writers gain the opportunity to promote themselves as representative subjects. The chapter also looks into the importance of attention to specific formulations of trauma and to the range of settings in which they emerge.
Henry More’s Compound Enthusiast
Authors: Miller William Cook
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines the characterization of prophecy that emerged from the thinking of Henry More, the Compound Enthusiast: a conception combining a rational True Enthusiast and a body-besotted False Enthusiast in one literary effect. The chapter traces the emergence of this Compound Enthusiast in More's early lyrics and Spenserian epic writings, its philosophical maturation in his polemical exchanges with Thomas Vaughan, and its eventual importance for his late theological emphasis on the Incarnation of Christ. The chapter then looks at Psychozoia (1642); An Antidote against Atheism (1653); Enthusiasmus triumphatus (1656); and An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660). More's Compound Enthusiast displayed a remarkable conceptual integrity throughout his career even as changing circumstances and publishing pressures encouraged him to develop and elaborate this character in various directions. More than any other author, he deepened and individuated the Enthusiast and launched it into the English-speaking world.
Prophecy and the Big Allegory
Authors: Miller William Cook
Published: January 2024

This concluding chapter describes how the Enthusiast organized the representation of what can be called the big allegory behind local early modern conflicts. This big allegory manifested both externally and internally. The external narrative placed the Satanic enemy outside of the circle of those favored by God. The internal narrative psychologized this same dynamic, interpreting prophetic conflict as a means of clarifying the inner structure of the soul, which was understood to consist of both good and evil tendencies. The external dynamic typified the Mere Enthusiast strategy. The internal resulted in the Compound Enthusiast strategy and its successor, the Universal Enthusiast, both of which, albeit in different ways, internalized the struggle between prophets in order to assert overall prophetic authority. These external and internal prophetic dramas worked together intimately. On one hand, the external drama of enthusiasm connected the distinction between true and false prophets to other differences in power and perceived status: differences of creed, class, race, and gender. On the other, the internal drama aligned these distinctions with a complex inner map consisting of superior and subordinated parts of the soul. Together, these figurations and mappings shaped aspects of intellectual and material culture that many today would likely consider much bigger and more important than prophecy.
Why Good Neighborhoods?
Authors: Mallach Alan , Swanstrom Todd
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines what makes and threatens a good neighborhood. In American society, good urban and suburban neighborhood plays an important role in providing settings that allow reconciliation and balance of individuality and community. Initially, a good neighborhood is determined by the people who live there, especially people with social and economic conditions who need and want different things from their neighborhood. The social relations nurtured by twenty-first-century neighborhoods are far less all-encompassing than in previous generations as people's social networks become more digital through the internet and social media platforms. Thus, good neighborhoods promote diversity and tolerance without undermining group cohesion or solidarity. The chapter explains how the economy, spatial inequality, and technology played a role in the decline of good neighborhoods.
A Dynamic Systems Approach to Understanding Neighborhood Change
Authors: Mallach Alan , Swanstrom Todd
Published: January 2024

This chapter tackles a dynamic systems approach to understanding neighborhood change. It explains that American society and the suburbs are living in a complex age of simultaneous urban revival and decline. While some neighborhoods may be colonized by millennials, larger numbers of neighborhoods are losing ground and becoming areas of concentrated poverty. The chapter cites the four basic principles of context, history, interdisciplinary, and dynamic systems that capture the complexities of neighborhood change. It presents a figure showcasing a model of neighborhood change that includes the key concepts of exogenous change, social actors, and political forces, social forces, and economic forces.
The Rise of the American Urban Neighborhood, 1860–1950
Authors: Mallach Alan , Swanstrom Todd
Published: January 2024

This chapter focuses on the rise of the American urban neighborhood from 1860 to 1950. The neighborhood played a central role in the daily lives of most Americans and America's self-identification as a pluralist society. The neighborhoods that had emerged in American cities were overcrowded and segregated racially, ethnically, and religiously. Black people were relegated to the worst areas with few opportunities for good jobs within the mainstream economy. However, in the second half of the twentieth century, the centrality of neighborhoods and their role in American society became increasingly contested as the conditions that led to the emergence of America's urban neighborhoods changed beyond recognition.
The American Urban Neighborhood under Siege, 1950–1990
Authors: Mallach Alan , Swanstrom Todd
Published: January 2024

This chapter looks into the American urban neighborhood amidst World War II. The 1950s marked the onset of what came to be known as “the urban crisis” when white families began to leave cities in large numbers soon after the war. The chapter explains that White flight and suburbanization were simultaneously about race and not race, which references the significance of the rules imposed by the Federal Housing Administration and the Veterans Administration. The chapter looks into the role of the federal government in the destruction of urban neighborhoods. Even though federal funds were slashed under the Reagan regime, community development corporations continued to be established, and the new neighborhood strategy framework involved the key concepts of networked nonprofitization, privatization, and devolution.
The Polarization of the American Neighborhood, 1990–2020
Authors: Mallach Alan , Swanstrom Todd
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the polarization of the American neighborhood. Although racism remained a powerful barrier, African Americans were far more dispersed across cities and metropolitan areas than before. Moreover, the economic underpinnings of America's cities were radically different from those of the 1950s. The growth of the new urban economy was paralleled by another shift called the march of the millennials as millennial migration was driven by people seeking the diverse mixed-use environments that were emerging in downtowns and gentrifying neighborhoods. The chapter then covers the ride of gentrification and the impact of the foreclosure crisis, the Great Recession, and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Neighborhoods in an Era of Demographic Change and Economic Restructuring
Authors: Mallach Alan , Swanstrom Todd
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines the larger demographic, economic, and social changes that have affected neighborhoods since the end of World War II. It explains the role that segmentation plays in driving neighborhood dynamics, especially in understanding underlying demographic, social, and economic factors. The changes in American society triggered a neighborhood change around cultures, ideologies, and technologies. However, the changes presented new challenges for building or maintaining good neighborhoods that can serve as wellsprings of economic mobility and social cohesion. The chapter looks into the rise of the millennials and the decline of the traditional family before considering the significance of race, ethnicity, and immigration within urban neighborhoods.
The Continuing yet Changing Significance of Race
Authors: Mallach Alan , Swanstrom Todd
Published: January 2024

This chapter provides an overview of the pervasive but changing role of race within American society. Unlike any other divide in American society, the persistence and pervasiveness of race across history make it a constant in neighborhood life. While race as a caste system was a constant in American society, how race plays out on the ground in neighborhoods varied significantly across different historical periods and places. The chapter looks into how white people and Black people used their agency while recognizing the pressures and threats to neighborhoods posed by the continued presence of structural racism in American society. Moreover, new patterns of neighborhood racial diversity have built-in limitations.
Deconstructing Gentrification
Authors: Mallach Alan , Swanstrom Todd
Published: January 2024

This chapter explores the key concepts surrounding gentrification and its deconstruction. It discusses gentrification as a form of neighborhood change, an economic phenomenon, and a social phenomenon. Even though gentrification affected far fewer American neighborhoods elsewhere than many believe, it has come to play a dominant role in the neighborhood conversation while obscuring more important trends moving neighborhoods. The opposition to gentrification primarily revolved around the issue of displacement of longtime residents by more affluent newcomers. The chapter elaborates on the power imbalance underlying gentrification, especially for people in urban Black neighborhoods. It mentions the alternative for gentrification, which is evolving the neighborhoods into having greater household diversity in terms of age and household characteristics.
Biblical Inversion and the Ends of Christianity
Authors: Cook Jonathan A.
Published: January 2024

This chapter discusses the presence of Christian symbolism in Herman Melville's short story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (1853). It demonstrates that many of the acknowledged and unrecognized allusions to the Bible found in the story are ironically inverted so as to call into question the biblical teachings on charity to which many of them refer. In keeping with Melville's skeptical mind-set throughout the 1850s and beyond, “Bartleby” ostensibly faults the narrator for not living up to his tepid Christian faith through his ultimate failure to exercise a life-saving charity toward his troublesome employee. However, it also implicitly demonstrates the impossibility of adhering to New Testament ethical standards within a newly urbanized industrial economy based on rationalized self-interest. By the same token, the character of Bartleby subversively embodies the Christian ideal of ascetic withdrawal from the world, demonstrating the absurdist and potentially suicidal consequences of such an ideal. This reading of “Bartleby” shows how Melville's story ironically—and often comically—critiques the Protestant culture of his era by revealing that the central doctrines of Christianity promoting social responsibility and nonmaterial values are cultural relics in a world of competitive individualism and a rapidly developing market economy.
Conversion, Infatuation, Resurrection
Authors: Cook Jonathan A.
Published: January 2024

This chapter examines Herman Melville's “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo! Or, The Crowing of the Noble Cock Beneventano,” which was published in the December 1853 Harper's New Monthly Magazine. The story tells of the narrator's dealings with an enigmatic individual (and employee) who unexpectedly dies at the end of the story, along with his whole family; in this case, the individual is possessed of a mysteriously redemptive rooster whose symbolic significance has eluded critical consensus. In keeping with Melville's obsessive exploration in much of his fiction in the 1850s of the apparent obsolescence of Christian doctrine and belief in mid-nineteenth-century America, the chapter argues that “Cocka-Doodle-Doo!” is a modern parable satirically critiquing the allegedly redemptive powers of Christian faith in which the narrator's mock conversion is shown to be an act of supreme Pauline folly. Thus, the spiritual “awakening” performed by the rooster—in keeping with the ongoing religious revivals of the era—brings about not spiritual renewal but only death for the owner of the rooster, his family, and finally the magnificent bird itself. As a subversive commentary on the largely Protestant faith of antebellum America, the story ultimately implies that the Pauline fable of the resurrection of the spirit is equivalent to the fairy tale of a magical rooster's crowing forth a mysterious message of spiritual empowerment.
Memorializing the Dead in Battle-Pieces
Authors: Cook Jonathan A.
Published: January 2024

This chapter assesses Herman Melville's Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866). This volume commemorates the Union struggle and ultimate victory while also highlighting the Civil War's unfolding as a national tragedy involving an unprecedented degree of death and destruction. Once a long-neglected part of Melville's oeuvre, his Civil War poetry, with its varied forms, techniques, attitudes, and implications, has begun to be appreciated by an increasing number of critics. In addition to his poetic evocations of important battles in a variety of theaters, events on the home front, and other “aspects” of the war, the poems in Battle-Pieces assume the task of memorializing the dead either in the person of important officers or of common soldiers. In keeping with the innovative and experimental approach he took to his new vocation of poet, the memorial poems in Battle-Pieces run a gamut of elegies, requiems, epitaphs, dirges, and other recognized poetic or liturgical forms of mourning and commemoration, the most commonly used being the pastoral elegy, in which nature offers consolatory compensation for the poet's grief. Among the poems of Battle-Pieces, Melville varied his techniques of memorialization while situating them within a blend of Christian and classical traditions.
Introduction
Authors: Cossen William S.
Published: January 2024

This introductory chapter looks into the catholic work of nation-building. It explains how Catholics worked in the years following the Civil War to entrench their claim to belonging in the American nation. Despite their conflicts with Protestants, Catholic missionaries, bishops, and laypeople active in the Western missions sought to leverage power over federal bureaus and over Native Americans, who were frequently their Catholic coreligionists. Amidst the twentieth century, Catholics built on a decades-long intellectual foundation that portrayed Catholicism as an eminently American denomination and Protestantism as a promoter of religious intolerance. The chapter notes that scholars of the antebellum period investigated relations between Catholics and Protestants.
Catholic Gatekeepers
Authors: Cossen William S.
Published: January 2024

This chapter covers how many prominent Catholics attached their religious community to the period's prevailing theories of white racial superiority. It discusses the changes wrought in the United States by urbanization, industrialization, mass immigration, and laissez-faire capitalism in the Gilded Age. The long-standing contests for power between Protestants, Catholics and other supposed outsider groups were at the center of the making of American nationalism. The chapter explains the complexity of assimilation as people question the very foundations of the communities of Americans. It references Catholicism with beliefs prevailing among many middle- and upper-class, white Americans and the Progressive theories of scientific racism and nationalism.
Conclusion
Authors: Cossen William S.
Published: January 2024

This chapter reviews how Catholicism played host to strongly contested internal battles between modernists and traditionalists during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. It explains that the conflict established the US Catholic Church and its influence on the social and political life in the country. Catholics also offered spirited attempts to define themselves as insiders, claiming the right to stand at the helm of the American nation and re-create the nation. The chapter clarifies the historiography that assumes Protestants as the American mainstream. It mentions that Harold Frederic's Damnation of Theron Ware illustrates the disruption to Protestant power represented by Catholics in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
Moscow's Heavy Shadow
Authors: Scarborough Isaac McKean
Published: January 2024

This book tells the story of the collapse of the USSR from the perspective of the many millions of Soviet citizens who experienced it as a period of abjection and violence. Mikhail Gorbachev and the leaders of the USSR saw the years of reform preceding the collapse as opportunities for rebuilding (perestroika), rejuvenation, and openness (glasnost). For those in provincial cities across the Soviet Union, however, these reforms led to rapid change, economic collapse, and violence. Focusing on Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the book describes how this city experienced skyrocketing unemployment, a depleted budget, and streets filled with angry young men unable to support their families. Tajikistan was left without financial or military resources, unable and unprepared to stand against the wave of populist politicians of all stripes who took advantage of the economic collapse and social discontent to try to gain power. By May 1992, political conflict became violent and bloody and engulfed the whole of Tajikistan in war. The book tells the story of how this war came to be, and how it was grounded in the reform and collapse of the Soviet economy that came before.
The Harsh Reckoning of February 1990
Authors: Scarborough Isaac McKean
Published: January 2024

This chapter details the series of demonstrations and riots that rocked the Tajik capital in February 1990. The demonstrations quickly grew out of hand, nearly overthrowing the government of the Tajik SSR and requiring martial law to restore order. The protests also challenged all sorts of conceptions about Tajikistan as a peaceful and reliable outpost of Soviet calm away from the travails of Moscow's politicking. After the February events and their investigations, Dushanbe and the rest of Tajikistan seemed to return to their prior state of normalcy. However, the February events brought to the fore the underlying struggles in late-Soviet Tajik society, such as rival politicians and people who benefitted from perestroika.