bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Hyperelliptic Continued Fractions and Generalized Jacobians: Minicourse Given by Umberto Zannier
Authors: Capuano Laura , Jossen Peter , Karolus Christina , Veneziano Francesco
Published: May 2020

This chapter details Umberto Zannier's minicourse on hyperelliptic continued fractions and generalized Jacobians. It begins by presenting the Pell equation, which was studied by Indian, and later by Arabic and Greek, mathematicians. The chapter then addresses two questions about continued fractions of algebraic functions. The first concerns the behavior of the solvability of the polynomial Pell equation for families of polynomials. It must be noted that these questions are related to problems of unlikely intersections in families of Jacobians of hyperelliptic curves (or generalized Jacobians). The chapter also reviews several classical definitions and results related to the continued fraction expansion of real numbers and illustrates them by examples.
Citizenship 2.0
Authors: Harpaz Yossi
Published: May 2020

This book focuses on an important yet overlooked dimension of globalization: the steady rise in the legitimacy and prevalence of dual citizenship. Demand for dual citizenship is particularly high in Latin America and Eastern Europe, where more than three million people have obtained a second citizenship from EU countries or the United States. Most citizenship seekers acquire EU citizenship by drawing on their ancestry or ethnic origin; others secure U.S. citizenship for their children by strategically planning their place of birth. Their aim is to gain a second, compensatory citizenship that would provide superior travel freedom, broader opportunities, an insurance policy, and even a status symbol. The book analyzes three cases: Israelis who acquire citizenship from European-origin countries such as Germany or Poland; Hungarian-speaking citizens of Serbia who obtain a second citizenship from Hungary (and, through it, EU citizenship); and Mexicans who give birth in the United States to secure American citizenship for their children. The book reveals the growth of instrumental attitudes toward citizenship: individuals worldwide increasingly view nationality as rank within a global hierarchy rather than as a sanctified symbol of a unique national identity.
Leading the Lingua Franca Mandate
Authors: Neeley Tsedal
Published: May 2020

This chapter follows Mikitani's thinking and leadership development with regard to the Englishnization mandate. Initially, Mikitani believed the English language mandate would succeed if employees were independent and entrepreneurial, taking full responsibility—financially and otherwise—for learning English. However, after nearly a year and a half, upon discovering that progress was dismal, he led a major shift. The chapter introduces and discusses Mikitani's promotion of the mandate during the second phase of “English only”—learning English while retaining one's native culture. It assesses how Mikitani's leadership influenced employee attitudes and English language proficiency scores. Mikitani believed that given the right conditions, such as the deliberate immersion that he was cultivating, the Japanese employees could acquire English as well.
Lessons for Top Leaders, Managers, and Employees
Authors: Neeley Tsedal
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers how the insights from book's research and other in-depth work that the author has conducted can serve as a guide for practitioners at three levels in the organization—top leaders, managers, and employees—who are seeking to better navigate shifts as they adopt practices for their organizations' lingua franca and cultural transitions. It details the factors that top leaders need to consider when assessing the appropriateness of a lingua franca and corresponding implementation tactics. Without a broader understanding of how language changes affect their workforce, and what is needed for implementation, many organizations will falter in their lingua franca mandates. The chapter also highlights how managers can practically support and accurately evaluate employees who are operating in a cross-lingua environment. Finally, it provides communication strategies for employees in their everyday interactions globally.
Introduction
Authors: Lei Ya-Wen
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter reveals that a nationwide contentious public sphere has emerged in China. It is an unruly sphere capable of generating issues and agendas not set by the Chinese state, as opposed to a sphere mostly orchestrated and constrained by said state. Over time, China's contentious public sphere has been increasingly recognized by the Chinese state as a force to be reckoned and negotiated with. Starting around 2010, official media of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), such as the People's Daily, began to warn of a threatening public sphere mediated by cell phones, the Internet, and even some unruly voices within state-controlled media. The state's awareness of these developments, however, means that one must not overstate the stability or permanence of the newly emerged contentious public sphere. Indeed, this provocative public arena has encountered serious opposition and setbacks, particularly since 2013. Seeing the rise of such a sphere as a threat to national security and an indication of ideological struggle between the West and China, the Chinese state has taken comprehensive and combative measures to contain it.
The Extreme Gone Mainstream
Authors: Miller-Idriss Cynthia
Published: May 2020

Far right politics and extremist violence are on the rise across Europe, prompting scholars and policymakers to question why extremism has become so appealing to so many people. This book examines how far right ideologies have entered mainstream German culture through commercialized products and clothing laced with extremist, anti-Semitic, racist, and nationalist coded symbols and references. Required reading for anyone concerned about the global resurgence of the far right, the book shows how these new brands desensitize consumers to extremist ideas, dehumanize victims, and are virtually indistinguishable from other popular clothing.
Trying on Extremism
Authors: Miller-Idriss Cynthia
Published: May 2020

This chapter situates the empirical base of this book within theories of culture, nationalism, iconography, and youth extremist subcultures. It begins by describing two prevailing notions of how culture “works”—one that presents culture as a coherent meaning system and the other that characterizes it as a “tool kit” of actions and strategies. The chapter also addresses theories of extremism and youth subcultures, arguing that previous research on nationalism and extremism has paid more attention to political dimensions than cultural ones. Finally, it links far right commercial symbols to recent scholarship on visual symbols, arguing that attention to the aesthetic dimensions of far right subculture is particularly overdue in light of the recent “iconic” turn in the social sciences. As the chapter points out, sociologists' ongoing attention to Marxist understanding of economic objects and their relationship to class-based exploitation has led many scholars to overlook the potential for economic objects to have constitutive power for individuals' lives, identities, sense of belonging, or—in this case—the extremist participation of consumers.
Branding Identity
Authors: Miller-Idriss Cynthia
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on the ways in which symbolic codes are manipulated and deployed in the iconography and text of clothing products. It focuses in particular on the use of codes that draw on alphanumeric combinations or on historical references. Such codes are seen not only on T-shirts and other clothing products but also on tattoos, license plates, accessories, and even giant Styrofoam letters in football stadium stands. Some alphanumeric and historical codes are co-opted from other popular youth cultural scenes and then stripped of their original cultural referents. The chapter traces the game-playing aspect of the codes, by showing how young people (and commercial companies) adapt the codes and their display in order to navigate bans of particular symbols and brands. Drawing on interview data with young Germans in and around the far right scene, it also looks both at whether and how youth understand and interpret embedded far right codes, and at how they consume the clothing and products more generally.
California Greenin'
Authors: Vogel David
Published: May 2020

Over the course of its 150-year history, California has successfully protected its scenic wilderness areas, restricted coastal oil drilling, regulated automobile emissions, preserved coastal access, improved energy efficiency, and, most recently, addressed global climate change. How has this state, more than any other, enacted so many innovative and stringent environmental regulations over such a long period of time? This book shows why the Golden State has been at the forefront in setting new environmental standards, often leading the rest of the nation. From the establishment of Yosemite, America's first protected wilderness, and the prohibition of dumping gold-mining debris in the nineteenth century to sweeping climate-change legislation in the twenty-first, the book traces California's remarkable environmental policy trajectory. It explains that this pathbreaking role developed because California had more to lose from environmental deterioration and more to gain from preserving its stunning natural geography. As a result, citizens and civic groups effectively mobilized to protect and restore their state's natural beauty and, importantly, were often backed both by business interests and by strong regulatory authorities. Business support for environmental regulation in California reveals that strict standards are not only compatible with economic growth but can also contribute to it. The book also examines areas where California has fallen short, particularly in water management and the state's dependence on automobile transportation.
Imaginary Machines
Authors: Offer Avner , Söderberg Gabriel
Published: May 2020

This chapter argues that about half of the Nobel Prize winners have engaged primarily in the building of intellectual constructs, imaginary machines, or simply ‘models’. This term should be understood as in ‘model aircraft’. Unlike model aircraft, economic models mostly remain on paper, usually in the form of mathematical equations, but mechanical analogues can be constructed. The Phillips MONIAC hydraulic computer, for instance, simulated the circular flow of money in the economy by means of coloured water in glass pipes, with valves which permitted policy choices to be simulated. Hence, the chapter shows that even economic literature is largely speculative, involving ‘an apparently inconclusive exploration of possible worlds’.
Beyond Scandinavia: Washington Consensus to Market Corruption
Authors: Offer Avner , Söderberg Gabriel
Published: May 2020

This chapter reveals that Scandinavia was but a sideshow in a larger plot in which market-liberal advocates strove to capture the command of policy worldwide with the ‘Washington Consensus’. Their doctrines are viewed here from three aspects: internal validity, empirical performance, and unintended consequences. In brief, these doctrines were inconsistent, failed repeatedly, and engulfed the public domain in a miasma of corruption, in developed countries as well as ‘emerging’ ones. The reason, the chapter argues, is that these doctrines were founded on deficient models of reality. The Nobel Prize played a part in all of this, if only a minor one.
How I See Myself Seen
Authors: Origgi Gloria
Published: May 2020

This chapter introduces the idea of reputation as a social ego, a second self that guides actions sometimes even against interests. It analyzes the functioning of the management of social self as a fundamental social and cognitive competence. All people have two egos, two selves. These parallel and distinguishable identities make up who people are and profoundly affect how they behave. One is subjectivity, consisting of proprioceptive experiences, the physical sensations registered in the body. The other is reputation, a reflection of people's selves that constitutes social identity and makes how they see themselves seen integral to self-awareness. At the beginning of the twentieth century, American sociologist Charles Horton Cooley called the second ego the “looking-glass self.” This second ego is woven over time from multiple strands, incorporating how people think others around them perceive and judge them.
Is Reputation a Means or an End?
Authors: Origgi Gloria
Published: May 2020

This chapter is devoted to the theoretical approaches to reputation developed in the different branches of social science that adopt the theory of rational choice. It answers the principal questions of whether reputation can be seen as a rational strategy or as a means to other ends or an end in itself. The chapter explores the various ways in which cultivating one's reputation, given the costs it imposes and the benefits it confers, can be a rational strategy. It examines how several most prominent social scientists approach the questions on reputation. It also treats explanations that synthesize evolutionary theory with rational-choice theory only as “theoretical models” useful for illuminating the conditions for the possibility of the emergence of a social trait, such as reputation.
“Somebody Told Me,” or How Reputations Spread
Authors: Origgi Gloria
Published: May 2020

This chapter deals with the communicative aspect of reputation. It talks about how reputation circulates and through which social and linguistic mechanisms it can be stabilized. A reputation can be ephemeral while at other times it seems set in stone. Gossip, rumors, and informational cascades contribute to the background noise that characterizes the universal human discussion of who did what to whom. The chapter examines the essentially communicative dimension of reputation, such as its existence not only in the eyes of others but within the cascade of communicated words and speeches that others share among themselves. Reputations can occasionally be consciously and successfully manipulated. But this does little to reduce the general anxiety and uncertainty stemming from an ungovernable transmission and propagation of reputations, the risks of defamation, and the difficulty of restoring a reputation once it has been blackened by rumors and gossip.
Classical Arithmetization
Authors: Stillwell John
Published: May 2020

This chapter describes how one proceeds from natural to rational numbers, then to real and complex numbers, and to continuous functions—thus arithmetizing the foundations of analysis and geometry. The definitions of integers and rational numbers show why questions about them can, in principle, be reduced to questions about natural numbers and their addition and multiplication. This is what it means to say that the natural numbers are a foundation for the integer and rational numbers. But the next steps in the arithmetization project go beyond algebra. By admitting sets of rational numbers, one can enlarge the number system to one that admits certain infinite operations, such as forming infinite sums. This is crucial to building a foundation for analysis. As such, the chapter turns to the foundations of the natural numbers themselves, the “Peano axioms,” which gives a first glimpse of the logic underlying the arithmetization project.
Classical Analysis
Authors: Stillwell John
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores the basic concepts that arise when real numbers and continuous functions are studied, particularly the limit concept and its use in proving properties of continuous functions. It gives proofs of the Bolzano–Weierstrass and Heine–Borel theorems, and the intermediate and extreme value theorems for continuous functions. Also, the chapter uses the Heine–Borel theorem to prove uniform continuity of continuous functions on closed intervals, and its consequence that any continuous function is Riemann integrable on closed intervals. In several of these proofs there is a construction by “infinite bisection,” which can be recast as an argument about binary trees. Here, the chapter uses the role of trees to construct an object—the so-called Cantor set.
Monolithic Socialism
Authors: McAdams A. James
Published: May 2020

This chapter demonstrates how those parties that came into being as a result of their leaders' long years in Moscow and their postwar dependence on the support of the Red Army's troops were at a monumental disadvantage. Importantly, their association with the Soviet Union meant that they were deprived of the national narrative; indeed, they were regarded by their populations as agents of an enemy power. Since most of the Eastern European parties fell into this category, it is no wonder that they welcomed the black-and-white simplicity of the Communist Information Bureau, or Cominform. There was a cost to this conformity, however. Their acceptance of a Stalinist, state-centered model of leadership meant that they, like their Soviet overseers, were prepared to sacrifice the motivating idea of communist party rule. Given the fact that they had few alternative sources of legitimation than state power, most paid this price, even at the cost of ignoring their national identities.
“The Monster”
Authors: Mitchell A. Wess
Published: May 2020

This chapter details the struggle with Prussia, from Frederick the Great’s first invasion of Silesia to the stalemate of the War of the Bavarian Succession (1778–79). Though a member of the German Reich and titular supplicant to the Habsburg Holy Roman emperor, Prussia possessed predatory ambitions and a military machine with which to realize them. Under Frederick II (the Great), Prussia launched a series of wars against the Habsburg lands that would span four decades and bring the Habsburg Monarchy to the brink of collapse. Though physically larger than Prussia, Austria was rarely able to defeat Frederick’s armies in the field. Instead, it used strategies of attrition, centered on terrain and time management, to draw out the contests and mobilize advantages in population, resources, and allies. First, in the period of greatest crisis (1740–48), Austria used tactics of delay to separate, wear down, and repel the numerically superior armies of Frederick and his allies. Second, from 1748 to 1763, Austria engineered allied coalitions and reorganized its field army to offset Prussian advantages and force Frederick onto the strategic defensive. Third, from 1764 to 1779, it built fortifications to deter Prussia and finally seal off the northern frontier. Together, these techniques enabled Austria to survive repeated invasions, contain the threat from Prussia, and reincorporate it into the Habsburg-led German system.
The Army’s Role
Authors: Robinson Geoffrey B.
Published: May 2020

This chapter argues that the mass killings of 1965–66 were neither inevitable nor spontaneous. It shows first how the temporal and geographic variations in the pattern of mass killing corresponded closely to the varied political postures and capacities of army commanders in a given locale, and how the army's logistical assets facilitated the killings. Next, it outlines how the army encouraged and carried out mass killings by mobilizing civilian youth groups and death squads, and encouraging them to identify, detain, and kill members of the PKI and their allies. Third, the chapter describes how the army provoked and legitimized mass killings by launching a sophisticated media and propaganda campaign that blamed the PKI for the kidnap and murder of the generals, and called for the party and its affiliates to be physically annihilated. Fourth, it shows how a variety of religious and political leaders embraced and replicated the army's polarizing and retributive language and propaganda, adding their considerable authority to the campaign of violence. Finally, it draws on this evidence to address the critical question of responsibility.
“A Gleam of Light in Asia”
Authors: Robinson Geoffrey B.
Published: May 2020

This chapter argues that in the crucial six months after the alleged coup of October 1, 1965, Western powers encouraged the army to move forcefully against the Left, facilitated widespread violence including mass killings, and helped to consolidate the political power of the army. In doing so, they helped to bring about the political and physical destruction of the PKI and its affiliates, the removal of Sukarno and his closest associates from political power, their replacement by an army elite led by General Suharto, and a seismic shift in Indonesia's foreign policy toward the West and the capitalist model it advocated. The concerted campaign by foreign powers had three principal elements. The first was a pattern of secret assurances to the army leadership of political support and noninterference in Indonesia's internal affairs. The second was a sophisticated psychological warfare campaign designed to tarnish the PKI and Sukarno, and stir up opposition to them both inside Indonesia and abroad. The third element of the campaign was a carefully calibrated program of material assistance to the army, thereby facilitating and effectively rewarding the army's campaign against the PKI and Sukarno.
The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945–1948
Authors: Leffler Melvyn P.
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers how the concept of national security evolved. It demonstrates that U.S. military officers and their civilian leaders did not think that the Kremlin was poised to engage in premeditated military aggression during the Cold War. They did not think Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin wanted to begin another war. They grasped Stalin's view of his own military vulnerabilities and intuited that he wished to avoid military conflict. Nonetheless, U.S. officials felt threatened. They felt threatened precisely because of the lessons they had learned from World War II itself and the definition of America's vital interests that waging World War II had taught them. They had learned that an adversary, or coalition of adversaries, that conquered other countries could assimilate their resources into their own military machine, wage aggressive war, and challenge America's vital interests. Although the Kremlin seemed unlikely to wage war, it nevertheless had the capacity to gain indirect leverage or control over many countries in Europe and Asia because of the political ferment, economic chaos, social strife, and revolutionary nationalist fervor that existed in the aftermath of war.
Adherence to Agreements
Authors: Leffler Melvyn P.
Published: May 2020

This chapter charts a middle road between traditional and revisionist scholars on the Cold War and highlights how ambiguities and uncertainties influenced the behavior of both Washington and Moscow. It reveals that the Yalta agreements were vague, purposefully so, because Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill were seeking to pave over their differences, sustain the wartime alliance, and establish a framework for postwar cooperation. Once victory was assured, the impulse to cooperate waned as new circumstances and new fears intensified mutual distrust and catalyzed unilateral moves to insure security. These actions were coupled with harsh condemnations of one another's treachery. Yet neither the Americans nor the Russians really wanted to antagonize the potential rival; they wanted to seize upon ambiguities in the wartime agreements to enhance their respective notions of security. By engaging in rhetorical overkill, leaders in both capitals made compromise and accommodation more difficult. Few Americans, however, understood how their own rhetoric, charges, and actions contributed to the collapse of the wartime alliance.
Dreams of Freedom, Temptations of Power
Authors: Leffler Melvyn P.
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers the end of the Cold War as well as its implications for the September 11 attacks in 2001, roughly a decade after the Cold War ended. While studying the Cold War, the chapter illustrates how memory and values as well as fear and power shaped the behavior of human agents. Throughout that struggle, the divergent lessons of World War II pulsated through policymaking circles in Moscow and Washington. Now, in the aftermath of 9/11, governments around the world drew upon the lessons they had learned from their divergent national experiences as those experiences had become embedded in their respective national memories. For policymakers in Washington, memories of the Cold War and dreams of human freedom tempted the use of excessive power with tragic consequences. Memory, culture, and values played a key role in shaping the evolution of U.S. national security policy.
Utopias of One
Authors: Kotin Joshua
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter briefly sets out the book's claims on utopian writing. The first claim is that the texts examined in this book create perfect worlds. The overarching claim is related: the texts being examine create perfect worlds by refusing or failing to present models of perfect worlds. Here, the chapter argues that efficacy and divisiveness go hand in hand. For the writers discussed in the following chapters, the dissolution of community is the first step toward establishing an alternative to community. A writer responds to the failure of utopia—America in the aftermath of Reconstruction, the Soviet Union in the 1930s, the world under neoliberalism—by devising their own utopian project. The project is precarious. It risks solipsism at one extreme and mere critique at the other. Ultimately, its effects are asymmetrical and highly improbable: a perfect world that cannot be replicated or shared.
W.E.B. Du Bois’s Hermeticism
Authors: Kotin Joshua
Published: May 2020

This chapter concerns W. E. B. Du Bois's utopianism during the last fifteen years of his life, after his final break with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The chapter tracks his increasing commitment to Soviet communism and examines the difficulty and efficacy of his Autobiography (1962, 1968). It asks how Du Bois's utopianism led, finally, to a utopia of one. In the book, Du Bois does more than document the development of his thinking about race and politics, and prefigure the “philosophy of Black Power”—he attempts to radically transform his life. Autobiography is fundamentally different from Du Bois's earlier autobiographies. Indeed, the book addresses the future—an American public (black and white) finally ready to hear the truth about liberalism and communism.
Back in Time: The Bildungsroman and the Source of Moral Agency
Authors: Rosenthal Jesse
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on the Bildungsroman, studying the philosophical and literary significance of the novel of development. Through readings of Margaret Oliphant's Miss Marjoribanks (1866), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, and John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, it suggests that the ethical foundations of the concept of Bildung—and in particular the idea of sensus communis (common sense)—made form in the Bildungsroman, lay the groundwork for one's own understanding of what makes a novel count as an object of study. The operating principle in the narrative structure of the Bildungsroman is the discovery that one is already a member of a community, and that one's decisions can be understood as stemming from that community. Proper cultivation means the development of a character that can understand and respond to the pre-existing, yet unconscious, shared consensus: the sensus communis. This sort of reciprocity between individual and community is actually a better description of how moral intuition worked, at its more refined levels, than references to physical sensation.
The Large Novel and the Law of Large Numbers: Daniel Deronda and the Counterintuitive
Authors: Rosenthal Jesse
Published: May 2020

This chapter assesses the counterintuitive: the ending that “feels wrong,” or that does not work out as it seems it should. Certainly, this could mean many things, from a poorly constructed novel to the pedagogy implied by naturalist accident. The form of the counterintuitive that structures much of George Eliot's Daniel Deronda (1876), however, and which enacts the novel's stern moral lesson, develops from Eliot's more social concerns. Eliot, throughout her writing career, worked with an idea of narrative intuition, and formal morality, connected with the model consisting of a working out of the identity between an individual and the larger group. In Deronda, though, with its consistent concentration on ideas of probability and statistical significance, one sees a conceptual shift in Eliot's thinking about the relation of the one and the many. In short: though the larger workings of human interaction indicate that a certain state of affairs shall certainly come about at the largest levels, this offers no indication of how or when this might resolve in the individual case.
Prologue
Authors: Gomez Michael A.
Published: May 2020

This prologue provides an overview of the history of early and medieval West Africa. During this period, the rise of Islam, the relationship of women to political power, the growth and influence of the domestically enslaved, and the invention and evolution of empire were all unfolding. In contrast to notions of an early Africa timeless and unchanging in its social and cultural categories and conventions, here was a western Savannah and Sahel that from the third/ninth through the tenth/sixteenth centuries witnessed political innovation as well as the evolution of such mutually constitutive categories as race, slavery, ethnicity, caste, and gendered notions of power. By the period's end, these categories assume significations not unlike their more contemporary connotations. All of these transformations were engaged with the apparatus of the state and its progression from the city-state to the empire. The transition consistently featured minimalist notions of governance replicated by successive dynasties, providing a continuity of structure as a mechanism of legitimization. Replication had its limits, however, and would ultimately prove inadequate in addressing unforeseen challenges.
The Kingdoms of Ghana: Reform along the Senegal River
Authors: Gomez Michael A.
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on Ghana. The rise, fall, and rise again of Ghana is a study of why mutually beneficial commercial and political relations between Muslim and non-Muslim rulers and merchants were disrupted by the spread of reform Islam, and how the region was radically altered as a consequence. Divergent models of negotiating cultural difference lost their competition with a withering, less tolerant Islam, signaling a shift in the region's principal occupation from trafficking in gold to human beings, as well as the rise of a discourse on the relationship between phenotypic expression and “civilizational” achievement, a forerunner to concepts of “race.” West Africa's renowned reform movements beginning in the twelfth/eighteenth century were therefore fully anticipated by similar ideas and developments in early Ghana and the Senegal valley. The chapter then traces the origins of Ghana. Early Ghana experienced a long existence and efflorescence, both as an independent kingdom from 300 CE to the end of the fifth/eleventh century, and as a reform Muslim state until the first third of the seventh/ thirteenth, after which it lingered on in tributary form for another two hundred years.
The Meanings of Sunjata and the Dawn of Imperial Mali
Authors: Gomez Michael A.
Published: May 2020

This chapter assesses the narrative of the rise of imperial Mali and the life of its founder, Sunjata. Sunjata and Mali's origins are at the center of an involved discussion of sources and method. As such, a layering of testimony is critical to uncovering Mali's imperial transformation, and more important than whether it was completed under Sunjata is the subsequent deployment of his person and period as vehicles of authentication. Perhaps the most poignant example of this is Sunjata's exile, for which issues of historicity fade in comparison with its purpose as a charter for central and provincial power. Similarly, the conquest of the Susu, though highly probable, also establishes the basis for Mali's enduring regional claims. The oral traditions also contain key insights into early Mali's relationship to Islam, evincing a careful balancing act between ancestral and Islamic principles and forces.
Intrigue, Islam, and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa
Authors: Gomez Michael A.
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores the writings of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, which provide a glimpse into a post-Mansā Mūsā Mali in initial decline. Suffering from invidious comparison with his brother, Sulaymān's reign is yet remarkable in including an episode featuring a demoted wife, Qāsā, challenging for the leadership of his vast empire. It is also with Sulaymān that the pivot to North Africa begins. However, relations between the regions are less than transparent, an opacity reflecting ambiguity that would lead to misunderstanding and, eventually, open conflict. Though waning as a regional power, Mali was highly successful in achieving a paradigm in which Islam and polity worked in close cooperation. This intimate association of culture and statecraft would completely transform the politics of the region for centuries to come. Critical to this new model of West African statecraft were efforts to reimagine and situate the region within the larger Muslim context.
Of Fitnas and Fratricide: The Nadir of Imperial Songhay
Authors: Gomez Michael A.
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines Songhay's twenty-year nadir, which was first and foremost a time of myopia relative to the expansive, internationalist age of Askia Muḥammad that preceded it, its parochialism a function of an unprecedented rivalrous spirit invested in sanguinary practice distinctive in both elevation and scope, reaching the most privileged while encompassing a broad expanse of social formations. A collective royal neurosis of the most toxic variety enveloped Songhay's elite, as a result of which many sons, and even daughters, of amīr al-mu'minīn were cut down by blood relatives, and precisely for that reason. Because intimacies necessarily attended these intrafamilial conflicts, the level of intrigue must have been extraordinary, aided by privileged slaves who stepped into breaches left by the serial elimination of their masters, advantaged by administrative experience combined with their nonthreatening, liminal status. In Songhay, the process was led by eunuchs, who leveraged their skills in both their own interests as well as those of their patrons, becoming indispensable. As a result, royal slaves and the royal women they served became a powerful component of the “people of Songhay.” The growth of the servile estate, in turn, was enabled by an apparent surge in slaving, swelling not only the ranks of the dispossessed but constituting the principal “commodity” for which mounts could be imported into the empire, stimulating further slaving.
Making War on the Saints
Authors: Stanley Brian
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on France and the Soviet Union. France and the Soviet Union constitute the two most prominent European examples of a concerted campaign by twentieth-century states to reduce or even eliminate the social influence and political role of Christianity, especially as represented by the national church. In the further reaches of the Soviet Empire in Eastern and central Europe, Communist Party aims were similar, though in some countries—such as Poland—their implementation was highly problematic. Although obviously differing in the extent of their antagonism to religion itself, the two case studies reveal the capacity of the modern state, if it so chooses, to marginalize Christianity from the mainstream of public life and destroy much of the institutional and economic infrastructure of historic national churches. Yet both examples equally suggest that such measures of “official” secularization turned out to be comparatively impotent in subverting popular Christian belief and practice.
Migrant Churches
Authors: Stanley Brian
Published: May 2020

This chapter assesses how migratory trajectories in the twentieth century became channels of transmission of southern or eastern styles of Christianity to urban locations in the northern and western hemispheres, so that Latino/a, Chinese, Korean, and—rather later—African churches became for the first time highly visible elements enriching the tapestry of Christian life in North America and Europe. Some of these transmitted Christianities were very ancient—such as the Assyrian Church of the East. Other varieties of migrant Christianity were of much more recent origin. Those that have attracted most contemporary scholarly interest were Pentecostal in character. These include the older black Pentecostal churches that were established in Britain in the decade or so after the arrival in Britain in June of 1948 of the Empire Windrush, the first immigrant ship that transported 492 settlers from Jamaica. From the 1980s onwards, on both sides of the Atlantic, they also included African neo-Pentecostal churches, mostly of Nigerian or Ghanaian provenance. The rapid growth of West African neo-Pentecostal churches in European and American cities since the 1980s has been the subject of a host of recent sociological studies concerned to elucidate the leading role of these churches in the fashioning and sustaining of corporate identities within African migrant communities.
Empire
Authors: Cameron Averil
Published: May 2020

This chapter assesses whether Byzantium was an empire. The characteristics of empires, once they have come into existence by the conquest of territory and established a unified central administrative system, have been expressed by one scholar as consisting of their capacity to administer and exploit diversity; the existence of a transportation system designed to serve the imperial center militarily and economically and of systems of communication allowing administration of the subject areas from the center; the assertion of a monopoly of force within their territories; and an “imperial project” that imposed some type of unity throughout the system. One might add to this list the existence of a legal framework. Byzantium had all of these, even though it grew out of an earlier imperial system, and its territorial extent varied greatly over time. It also demonstrated a remarkable determination to maintain itself, through the continuity of imperial office and ideology, sustained by a learned culture, access to which the emperors themselves sought to control. It maintained this symbolic continuity even in the face of the constant instability of the throne itself. The chapter then addresses how the consideration of Byzantium as an empire has been complicated by the model of a “Byzantine commonwealth,” put forward by Dimitri Obolensky in his well-known book published with that title in 1971.
Hellenism
Authors: Cameron Averil
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores the persistent idea of Byzantium as a repository of Christianized Hellenism. The interpretation of Byzantium is especially fraught for Greek scholars. One of the most contentious aspects of this problem is the question of historical continuity, especially as it has been posed in relation to the modern Greek state. The idea of Constantinople/Istanbul as the capital of a modern Greek state may seem counterintuitive today. The “great idea” also conflates two conceptions of Byzantium: as the seat of Orthodoxy and as an imperial power. Yet Byzantium still occupies a privileged place in the consciousness of many Greeks. Nor is it surprising—given the role of Greek as the language of government and culture throughout the history of Byzantium, the dependence of its educational system on classical Greek literature and rhetoric, and the ambivalence of Byzantine attitudes to ancient Greek philosophy—to find that “Hellenism” is as fraught a concept within Byzantine studies as the Byzantine tradition is to Greeks today.
The Realms of Gold
Authors: Cameron Averil
Published: May 2020

This chapter focuses on Byzantine art and architecture. Not all Byzantine art was a luxury art. However, the lasting appeal of its use of gold, silver, enamel, and precious stones is evident from the choice of objects in blockbuster exhibitions and in the admiring reactions of their visitors. The latter represent a response to Byzantine art and architecture that also found expression among the Byzantines themselves, who composed many lengthy and detailed literary descriptions of art works or buildings. Light and color, as well as gold and glitter, are key features in these works, and light is the dominant feature in the description of the newly built Justinianic Hagia Sophia by Procopius of Caesarea—when Byzantines described marble, what they emphasized was its sheen and brilliance. Moreover, a high proportion of surviving Byzantine art is religious. This does not mean that the Byzantines were all religious themselves; rather, it reveals something about patronage and how art was commissioned.
The Very Model of Orthodoxy?
Authors: Cameron Averil
Published: May 2020

This chapter examines whether Byzantium was an “Orthodox society.” Orthodoxy in Byzantium was always vaunted but also always contested. The constant performance of Orthodoxy took many forms: they included imperial ceremonial, liturgical repetition and display, visual representation, public debates, formal anathemas and recantations, declarations of deposition, and the public reading of documents. Yet the actual evidence for the various councils that supported or condemned religious images shows clearly that in Byzantium as elsewhere ecclesiastics changed sides, negotiated their positions, and adapted their views. In many areas under Byzantine rule a practical multiculturalism prevailed, especially where populations had moved or political control fluctuated, and this too is part of the story of Byzantine religion. Yet the very word “orthodoxy” means correct belief, and the articulation of correct doctrine remained a central issue throughout Byzantine history. Indeed, rules and prescriptions characterized Byzantine Orthodoxy.
“Our Debt to Lamb”
Authors: Russell David
Published: May 2020

This chapter considers Charles Lamb's deviation from eighteenth-century social and literary conventions. It reads together Lamb's tactful persona of Elia with his fellow essayists and contemporaneous debates about social change. Here, tact is a product of the modern city: never before had so many different people lived in such close proximity to one another, in a situation that required new forms of relating to difference and a reform of established, absolutist systems of status evaluation. Lamb's essays resist coercive claims to truth, keep meaning on the move, and preserve desire and possibility within social relations. Elia's language makes use of the possibilities of the essay form in order to provide the conditions for a phenomenology of tactful relation, a virtual reality, or what Lamb calls “illusion:” the cultivation of a neutral and impersonal space existing between people.
Relief Work
Authors: Russell David
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores the work of Walter Pater. It shows that he wanted more from life. His essays raise the question of what this more might be, and where it might come from. They ask how we might become both more at home in and more penetrable by the vivid world. In an early essay, “Diaphaneitè” (1864), Pater rather mysteriously proposed: “He who is ever looking for the breaking of a light he knows not whence about him, notes with a strange heedfulness the faintest paleness in the sky.” All of Pater's subjects seem engaged in this strangely heedful notation, as if on the lookout for a particular quality of life. “The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit” says Pater, glossing a statement by Novalis, “is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation.” Pater's writing thus speculates at the boundary point of a “quickened sense of life.”
The African Americanization of Victorian Literature
Authors: Hack Daniel
Published: May 2020

This introductory chapter demonstrates how nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century African American literature and print culture used Victorian literature to conduct acts of “African Americanization.” Here, close engagement with Victorian literature represented no mere capitulation to existing constraints, but instead constituted a deliberate political strategy and means of artistic expression. The chapter shows that this practice did not impede or undercut the development of a distinctive African American literary culture and tradition, but on the contrary contributed directly to its development. It did so through the very repetition of African Americanizing engagements, repetition that grew increasingly self-conscious and self-referential, as writers and editors built on, responded to, and positioned themselves in relation to prior instances. Victorian literature's role as an important archive for the production of African American literature and print culture, the chapter also argues, makes African American literature and print culture an important archive for the study of Victorian literature.
Cultural Transmission and Transgression: Pauline Hopkins
Authors: Hack Daniel
Published: May 2020

This chapter explores a recurrent feature of Pauline Hopkins's compositional practice—the unacknowledged borrowing from other texts, which is at times verbatim or with minimal reworking, at other times containing more extensive reimagining. Here, the chapter focuses on the geopolitics of this practice than in its morality—or more precisely, in how this practice enters into the geopolitics of Hopkins's work, and in particular into her attitude toward Britain and her relations with Victorian literature. From this perspective, as significant as the anglophilia that informs Hopkins's use of Mary Hartwell Catherwood's The White Islander is the fact that this novel itself is not British: Catherwood was an American writer who spent her life in the Midwest, and The White Islander was published in New York. As this suggests, the archive from which Hopkins draws is not itself exclusively or particularly British. The chapter also shows, however, the Britishness of certain texts, as well as their depiction of Englishness or Britishness, can play a significant role in their selection and treatment by Hopkins.
The Citational Soul of Black Folk: W.E.B. Du Bois
Authors: Hack Daniel
Published: May 2020

This chapter turns to W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk and its deployment of nineteenth-century British literature. Du Bois himself tends to attract the adjective “Victorian” as a descriptor—of his intellectual formation, his prose style, his aesthetic, his morality—with greater frequency than virtually any other figure in the African American literary and intellectual tradition. The chapter shows that critics have been too quick to generalize about the presence of nineteenth-century British literature in Souls. They have rarely asked why Du Bois selected the specific authors, texts, and passages he cites or how these citations contribute to and intervene in a tradition of African American citation and intertextuality. Addressing these questions not only nuances our understanding of Du Bois's rhetorical strategy but also leads us to reconsider a seemingly settled question in the scholarship on Souls: the role Du Bois assigns culture in the fight for racial equality.