bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Other Side of Empire
Authors: Devereux Andrew W.
Published: January 2021

Via rigorous study of the legal arguments that Spain developed to justify its acts of war and conquest, this book illuminates Spain's expansionary ventures in the Mediterranean in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The book proposes and explores an important yet hitherto unstudied connection between the different rationales that Spanish jurists and theologians developed in the Mediterranean and in the Americas. It describes the ways in which Spaniards conceived of these two theatres of imperial ambition as complementary parts of a whole. At precisely the moment that Spain was establishing its first colonies in the Caribbean, the Crown directed a series of Old World conquests that encompassed the Kingdom of Naples, Navarre, and a string of presidios along the coast of North Africa. Projected conquests in the eastern Mediterranean never took place, but the Crown seriously contemplated assaults on Egypt, Greece, Turkey, and Palestine. The book elucidates the relationship between the legal doctrines on which Spain based its expansionary claims in the Old World and the New. It vastly expands our understanding of the ways in which Spaniards, at the dawn of the early modern era, thought about religious and ethnic difference, and how this informed political thought on just war and empire. While focusing on imperial projects in the Mediterranean, the book simultaneously presents a novel contextual background for understanding the origins of European colonialism in the Americas.
The Mediterranean in the Spanish Imaginary During the Age of Exploration
Authors: Devereux Andrew W.
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores the ways that late medieval Spaniards thought about the Mediterranean and the lands surrounding its shores. The chapter mentions the geographers' belief that the three constituent parts of the earth, namely Asia, Africa, and Europe, met in the Mediterranean and that the lordship of the world could only be attained through control of the inner sea. It also points out that the early expansion of primitive Christianity suggest that the Mediterranean possessed a latent religious unity. Aware of the history of the early Church in North Africa and western Asia, jurists devised arguments to the effect that Christian conquests in those regions were in fact acts of recuperation or defense. It then describes the nuances of fifteenth-century Spaniards' perspectives on Mediterranean space by demonstrating that the proximate western Mediterranean was familiar and known, while the more distant eastern Mediterranean was more exotic and often depicted as the site of fabulous wonders.
The Christian Commonwealth Besieged
Authors: Devereux Andrew W.
Published: January 2021

This chapter traces three developments that created the rhetorical strategies that fifteenth-century Catholic rulers employed in order to represent their political projects. It narrates the Papal Schism and the fifteenth-century conciliar movement that stimulated a questioning of the spiritual authority of the papacy. In response, many fifteenth-century European political theorists expressed the desirability of Christian union through the articulation of a conception of the respublica christiana that carried political and religious valences. With regard to the sense of spiritual crisis, the chapter analyzes how several Western Europeans interpreted the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 as an existential threat. It reviews how the three developments created an environment in which the religiopolitical vocabulary of Christian universalism carried tremendous weight.
The Turk Within
Authors: Devereux Andrew W.
Published: January 2021

This chapter examines the rhetoric and methods of legitimation employed during the Franco-Spanish wars for control of Italy from 1494 to 1516 and in the Franco-Spanish dispute over Navarre. The chapter explores how France and Spain transformed the struggles into holy wars fought for the defense and preservation of the respublica christiana. In the circumstances where both disputants were Catholic monarchies, the chapter also looks into the arguments that justify war against a fellow Christian power that were imbued with the legal force and legitimacy of a war for the expansion of the faith. It traces the origins and evolution of conflict, focusing on the ways both French and Spanish adherents sought to establish the struggle as a just and holy war. The chapter ends by analyzing the processes whereby two related conflicts between the houses of Trastámara and Valois were transformed into holy wars waged in defense of the Church and of Christendom.
Conclusion
Authors: Devereux Andrew W.
Published: January 2021

This chapter explains that in the study of empire in the Old World, the Spanish political thought on just war, conquest, and the treatment of newly subject people developed a crucible in which Mediterranean dynastic rivalries were paramount. It assesses the circumstances of conquests in geographies ranging from the wooded Pyrenees to the bustling port of Naples to the arid hinterlands of Tripoli, where the legal and moral arguments undergirding the rise of the early modern empires were forged. It also analyzes different circumstances of the Atlantic world that shows the inevitable continuities linking Mediterranean imperium to its Atlantic successor and demonstrates the incommensurability of Mediterranean dynamics with those of the Gentile-inhabited Atlantic. The chapter sheds light on aspects of Spanish history that have been neglected for centuries. It is not intended only to signify merely a “recovery” of Spain's Mediterranean interests and aspirations during the early sixteenth century, but as stimulant for research and dialogue on the legal and moral arguments surrounding just war, conquest, and empire in a variety of settings.
Hemipteran Pests: Suborder Homoptera
Authors: Vittum Patricia J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter assesses several kinds of insects in the suborder Homoptera which are turfgrass pests. These include the greenbug (an aphid), two-lined spittlebug, several species of mealybugs, and several scales. Mealybugs and scales are in the superfamily of scales, Coccoidea. Mealybugs occur worldwide and are widely distributed throughout the United States. Immature mealybugs are called “crawlers,” and may move from where they hatched. Adult female mealybugs are wingless and resemble the immatures in shape. Males resemble tiny gnats, with a single pair of wings and three pairs of red, simple eyes. The life cycles of most turf-inhabiting species of mealybugs are not well understood. The chapter then looks at the Rhodegrass mealybug, buffalograss mealybugs, and the ground pearl.
Lepidopteran Pests: Family Crambidae (Formerly Pyralidae), Subfamily Crambinae
Authors: Vittum Patricia J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter addresses sod webworms, which refers to a large number of grass-infesting moths and larvae of the family Crambidae (formerly Pyralidae), subfamily Crambinae. Adults are often called lawn moths because of their habitat or snout moths because of the prominent labial palpi that extend in front of the head. Most of the turfgrass-infesting species originally were placed in the genus Crambus, which is distributed practically worldwide. About 100 species are recognized in North America. The six most important sod webworm species in the eastern temperate regions of the United States include the bluegrass webworm; the striped sod webworm; the silver-striped webworm; the larger sod webworm; the corn root webworm; and the subterranean webworm, also known as the cranberry girdler. Sod webworms restrict their feeding, with rare exceptions, to plants of the family Gramineae, and turfgrasses serve as ideal host plants. The chapter then considers tropical-region sod webworms.
Lepidopteran Pests: Family Hesperiidae
Authors: Vittum Patricia J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores the fiery skipper, which belongs to the order Lepidoptera, family Hesperiidae, subfamily Hesperiinae. Members of this family, called skippers, were named for their fast, erratic flights. Members of the subfamily are known as tawny skippers, and their larvae are chiefly grass feeders. In Hawai'i, the fiery skipper is considered the third or fourth most serious lepidopterous pest of turfgrass but has the potential of being the most serious pest during the warmest period of the year. It is considered one of the five most injurious lepidopterous pests attacking lawns in California. Fiery skipper is found in several southern states, but turfgrass damage by the fiery skipper has been reported only in California and Hawai'i.
Coleopteran Pests: Family Scarabaeidae
Authors: Vittum Patricia J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter studies Coleopteran pests. The larvae of turfgrass-infesting species of the family Scarabaeidae constitute a large complex whose members (white grubs) are similar in general appearance, in habits, and in the turfgrass damage they cause. At least 10 species of scarabs, belonging to five subfamilies, are pests of turfgrass in the United States. The larvae of this family are known also as grubs, a term applied to the larvae of several Coleoptera (beetles) and Hymenoptera (ants, bees, and wasps) in general. Grubs of the Scarabaeidae are the most serious turfgrass pests in the northeastern United States, and are considered a major pest in the Midwest, Southeast, and parts of the southwestern United States. Their subterranean habits make them among the most difficult of turfgrass insects to manage.
Scarabaeid Pests: Subfamily Cetoniinae
Authors: Vittum Patricia J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter discusses the green June beetle, which is a member of the order Coleoptera, family Scarabaeidae, subfamily Cetoniinae. Adults of this subfamily have the epimeron of the mesothorax visible from above. This beetle feeds on ripe, thin-skinned fruits. Another closely related species, C. mutabilis, is called the figeater and is sometimes confused with the green June beetle. Historically, the green June beetle was considered a turfgrass pest of regional importance, but activity of this species has increased on turfgrass throughout the eastern United States. Turf damage by this insect primarily is mechanical rather than being caused by feeding; the large (third-instar) grubs disrupt the soil surface by burrowing in the soil and producing mounds. This activity makes mowing difficult and, by exposing and damaging turf roots, can lead to turf loss caused by desiccation and disease.
Scarabaeid Pests: Subfamily Melolonthinae
Authors: Vittum Patricia J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter focuses on the Asiatic garden beetle, in the order Coleoptera, family Scarabaeidae, subfamily Melolonthinae, tribe Sericini. Adult Asiatic garden beetles are pests of ornamental plants and vegetable gardens. Although the insect breeds in greater abundance in weedy, abandoned areas than in lawns, the grubs often are destructive to turfgrass. Turf injury is most prevalent where weedy, disturbed areas and turfgrass sites exist side by side. Because the Asiatic garden beetle is attracted to bright lights on warm nights of July and August, the beetle is a nuisance at all types of nighttime amusement and recreational parks, open-air restaurants, and well-lit storefronts. The chapter also looks at the European chafer, as well as May and June beetles.
Sampling Techniques and Setting Thresholds
Authors: Vittum Patricia J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter looks at sampling techniques and setting thresholds. The cornerstone of any integrated insect management regime is accurately identifying pest insects (including assessing population density) and developing appropriate action thresholds. Various methods have evolved by which the populations of insects present in the turf environment may be determined relatively rapidly and efficiently. These methods have become standard techniques for reporting insect densities. The chapter differentiates between passive sampling techniques (use of traps) and active visual inspection techniques (actual quantification of insect populations). Thresholds in turf integrated pest management usually are more accurately considered tolerance levels, or action thresholds. The tolerance level, or action threshold, for turfgrass insects is site-specific and depends on many factors.
National Failure and International Disregard
Authors: Barnhart Joslyn
Published: January 2021

This chapter defines key terms and discusses the relationship between humiliation and other emotions like shame, embarrassment, and anger. It characterizes the features of the international events that are likely to arouse the deepest forms of national humiliation and are most likely to significantly affect world affairs. The chapter categorizes the events into two general forms. First are events in which a state fails to perform in accordance with its status and second are events in which a state is attributed fewer rights and privileges than expected. It also explains the two key characteristic features of humiliation: a sense of other-directed outrage and a sense of self-doubt and impotence.
The Cross-National Consequences of Humiliating International Events
Authors: Barnhart Joslyn
Published: January 2021

This chapter presents statistical evidence in order to support the model of humiliation. The cross-national and within-country approaches used in the chapter shed light on the degree to which the behaviour of recently humiliated states differs from that of states that have not experienced recent humiliation. It examines the relationship between two potentially humiliating events, defeat in conflict and involuntary territorial loss, as well as the levels of subsequent aggression and hostility. The analysis in the chapter also shows that states that have recently experienced these two types of events behave differently than those that have not. States that have experienced recent defeat, for instance, are 42% more likely to initiate conflict in the ten years after a defeat than states that have not recently been defeated. It demonstrates that not all defeats or territorial losses affect states in the same way.
The Oil Wars Myth
Authors: Meierding Emily
Published: January 2021

Do countries fight wars for oil? Given the resource's exceptional military and economic importance, most people assume that states will do anything to obtain it. Challenging this conventional wisdom, the book reveals that countries do not launch major conflicts to acquire petroleum resources. The book argues that the costs of foreign invasion, territorial occupation, international retaliation, and damage to oil company relations deter even the most powerful countries from initiating “classic oil wars.” Examining a century of interstate violence, the book demonstrates that, at most, countries have engaged in mild sparring to advance their petroleum ambitions. The book elaborates on these findings by reassessing the presumed oil motives for many of the twentieth century's most prominent international conflicts: World War II, the two American Gulf wars, the Iran–Iraq War, the Falklands/Malvinas War, and the Chaco War. These case studies show that countries have consistently refrained from fighting for oil. The book also explains why oil war assumptions are so common, despite the lack of supporting evidence. Since classic oil wars exist at the intersection of need and greed–two popular explanations for resource grabs–they are unusually easy to believe in. The book will engage and inform anyone interested in oil, war, and the narratives that connect them.
From Value to Violence
Authors: Meierding Emily
Published: January 2021

This chapter begins by tracing oil's development from a largely invisible, worthless material into a vital natural resource. It discusses oil's contemporary military and economic significance for petroleum-exporting and petroleum-importing states. It also cites existing international relations debate about the value of conquest, showing how oil's exceptional utility has led most theorists to assume that the resource is worth fighting for. The chapter talks about oil war skeptics that have questioned claims on the significance of oil and yet have failed to dislodge classic oil war beliefs. It introduces the idea of the oil wars myth as a powerful story told about countries' willingness to fight over petroleum resources.
Searching for Classic Oil Wars
Authors: Meierding Emily
Published: January 2021

This chapter examines over six hundred militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) in order to determine whether oil ambitions motivate militarized conflict. It provides evidence of classic oil wars, in which severe militarized interstate conflicts are driven largely by participants' desire to obtain petroleum resources. It also points out how MIDs in oil-endowed territories were either very minor or motivated by other issues. The chapter introduces four new categories of conflict: oil spats, red herrings, oil campaigns, and oil gambits. It explains that oil spats are minor confrontations driven by petroleum ambitions, such as China and Vietnam's 2014 confrontation over a drilling rig in the South China Sea. It also describes red herrings, which are not fought for oil, but instead, aggressors are motivated predominantly by aspirations to political independence or regional hegemony.
Oil Campaigns
Authors: Meierding Emily
Published: January 2021

This chapter examines two prominent oil campaigns: Japan's invasion of the Dutch East Indies and northern Borneo from 1941 to 1942 and Germany's aggression against the Soviet Union in World War II from 1941 to 1942. It explains how oil ambitions drove both Japanese and German attacks as they were desperate to acquire additional petroleum resources. It also points out that Japan and Germany's willingness to fight for oil was endogenous to their ongoing conflicts, namely the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945 and World War II in Europe from 1939 to 1945. The chapter analyzes how the Second Sino-Japanese and World War II in Europe were not themselves caused by petroleum ambitions. It also discusses how Japan and Germany delayed their oil campaigns for as long as possible, only resorting to international aggression after alternative means of satisfying national petroleum needs had failed.
Oil Gambit
Authors: Meierding Emily
Published: January 2021

This chapter evaluates the unique historical oil gambit, focusing on Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. It recounts how Saddam Hussein initiated a severe conflict that aimed to seize Kuwait's petroleum resources. It justifies why labeling Iraq's invasion a classic oil war as an oversimplification. Although Saddam aspired to control Kuwait's oil, his broader goal was to resist a perceived existential threat emanating from the United States. The chapter emphasizes how Saddam believed that the US government was inciting Persian Gulf oil producers to drive down international oil prices in order to achieve its long-standing ambitions of preventing Iraq's regional rise and removing him from power.
Oil and Military Effectiveness
Authors: Kelanic Rosemary A.
Published: January 2021

This chapter discusses the military value of oil and traces its origins to the historical transformation from coal to oil as the major military fuel during World War I. Oil's superiority over coal was made clear by the conduct of the war, and by its end, all of the major powers understood that oil coercion had emerged as a major international threat. Even countries that lacked oil had no choice but to adopt oil-fueled military technology because coal related transportation was no longer competitive. The chapter then explains how oil deprivation influenced Japan's decision to surrender at the end of World War II in the time and manner that it did. The case illuminates in empirical detail the military devastation inflicted by the Allied blockade, which completely severed Japanese oil access.
Oil and the Future of Great Power Politics
Authors: Kelanic Rosemary A.
Published: January 2021

This concluding chapter explores the implications of the theory for great power politics as China continues to rise in the twenty-first century. If significant quantities of Persian Gulf oil could be realistically transported overland, away from U.S. naval interference, then the future threat to Chinese imports would remain low. Combined with a petroleum deficit that is likely to be large, Chinese coercive vulnerability could be held to a moderate level. Moderate coercive vulnerability should induce China to pursue indirect control as it emerges as a great power. Thus, the theory predicts that China is likely to eventually forge alliances with major oil-producing countries and transit states to keep oil in “friendly hands.” As yet, China is too militarily weak to shield friendly oil-producing states from interference by the United States or other potential rivals, but the beginnings of an alliance-based strategy appear to be taking shape under the auspices of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), described by some analysts as a nascent framework for twenty-first-century Chinese grand strategy.
Thinking with Catholicism, Empire, and History
Authors: Moran Katherine D.
Published: January 2021

This chapter begins with an overview of George Everett Adams's and Helen Taft's speeches, which they delivered as Protestants in a country that was increasingly home to a large and growing Catholic minority. It argues that Adams's and Taft's speeches were part of a much larger religious pattern in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In the ongoing currents of anti-Catholicism in U.S. culture, many late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Protestants joined their Catholic compatriots in speaking with nostalgia and admiration about the figures and institutions of Roman Catholic exploration and evangelization. The chapter also describes how men and women celebrated idealized versions of Catholic imperial pasts as the United States grew into a global power. It traces Catholic origin stories that emerged in three different sites and circumstances: the upper Midwest, Southern California, and the U.S. colonial Philippines.
Making Parallel Histories out of Spanish Missions
Authors: Moran Katherine D.
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores the mission celebrations that developed in Southern California, among newly arrived Anglo settlers and tourists, and between the 1880s and World War I. It talks about mission writers who celebrated the Spanish Franciscans that were led by Junípero Serra and founded missions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It also argues that the celebrations in the Midwest elevated Catholic missionaries to the status of regional and national founding fathers in ways that naturalized U.S. territorial expansion. The chapter mentions the Serra celebrations that contended with the recent history of violence in Southern California. It describes the war with Mexico and ongoing violence against Mexicans, as well as the murder and displacement of Native Americans.
Rural Development in Taiwan, 1950s–1970s
Authors: Looney Kristen E.
Published: January 2021

This chapter examines Taiwan's impressive record of rural development. In Taiwan, the defeated Kuomintang regime (KMT or Chinese Nationalist Party) sought to regain control of mainland China by transforming the island into a model province that would legitimize its right to rule. The KMT carried out a comprehensive land reform program in the early 1950s, which led to the creation of a smallholder farm economy with extremely low levels of inequality. In addition to land reform, the KMT built up a rural extension system to provide technical education and production inputs to farmers. These institutions resulted in nearly two decades of accelerated growth. According to Taiwan's former president Lee Teng-hui, agriculture played a textbook role in Taiwan's development. It met the domestic demand for food, accounted for a substantial share of exports, and provided capital and labor for industrialization. As one of the first countries in the post-World War II period to achieve industrialized nation status, Taiwan stands out as an exemplary case of successful development. The chapter then sheds light on what happened after the government's urban-biased policies were reversed in the 1970s.
Conclusion
Authors: Looney Kristen E.
Published: January 2021

This concluding chapter assesses what lessons can be drawn from the East Asian experience of rural development. While rural development, like industrial development, was a state-led phenomenon in East Asia, it embodied a distinct political logic, melding technocratic with mobilizational approaches to development in order to effect transformative change. An important lesson, which is evident in the cases of Taiwan, South Korea, and China, is simply that rural development needs state support. Policymakers must recognize that it is not a natural outgrowth of industrialization and that urban bias is a political problem that demands a political solution. Rural development requires public investment and institutions capable of providing tenure security, credit services, extension programs, market access, and other public goods to smallholders. Campaigns can speed up the pace of change, but in the absence of strong and participatory rural institutions, they are unlikely to make a long-term difference and can easily spiral out of control.
Internal States in the U.S.
Authors: Wood Alex J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter analyzes internal states in the United States, focusing on ConflictCo. Here, workplace institutions were found to do little to rationalize discipline or constrain its arbitrary application by managers. The chapter demonstrates that managers at ConflictCo typically gained compliance through threats and punishments, such as termination of employment and disciplinary action. However, managers' ability to secure control in this way was identified as being challenged by a union-backed worker association. The legal and media campaign waged by the union and the worker association successfully curbed the ability of managers to impose blatant despotism. The chapter then investigates the operation of normative control at ConflictCo, showing how in this workplace a heavy emphasis was placed on propaganda and rituals to try to legitimize control. These normative controls were found to be dysfunctional in that they actually legitimized resistance.
Limits of Control and Spaces of Resistance
Authors: Wood Alex J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter evaluates the limits and contradictions of control at PartnershipCo and ConflictCo. The findings demonstrate that while flexible scheduling represents a source of managerial control, it also, paradoxically, provides fuel for resistance. At PartnershipCo, this resistance was found to be hidden as a result of the union's individualized and integrated tendencies toward collective resistance. At ConflictCo, however, few examples of hidden resistance were identified, owing to the high level of surveillance and fear that marked the workplace regime. For the majority of workers, the same was also true for open resistance. However, a relatively small number of workers managed to overcome this fear and joined a worker association that used social media networks and the symbolic power of direct actions to successfully challenge employer control at ConflictCo. These findings suggest that, even when only small numbers of workers are able to carve out spaces of resistance within the flexible workplace of the twenty-first century, they may nevertheless be able to harness social media-based networks in order to successfully raise labor standards through threat of reputational damage.
Conclusions
Authors: Wood Alex J.
Published: January 2021

This concluding chapter explains that the findings from ConflictCo and PartnershipCo suggest that a form of flexible despotism is key for understanding workplace control of workers in the twenty-first century. It considers how the form that flexible despotism takes is modified by the differing levels of bargaining power of workers. Specifically, the chapter looks at how the provision of greater employment rights and union protection leads to a more progressive form of flexible despotism—but one in which precarious scheduling nonetheless remains central to workplace control. This account of power at work provides a valuable insight into the experiences of control of a large number of postindustrial workers in the on-demand economy. The chapter then reflects on the implications for the future of work in the on-demand economy and assesses the forms of workplace control that are likely to achieve prominence as the century progresses.
The Communications Revolution and Evangelical Internationalism
Authors: Turek Lauren Frances
Published: January 2021

This chapter explains the practical mechanisms by which evangelical organizations expanded their reach. It talks about many scholars of Christianity that have attributed the global expansion of evangelicalism to “new technology” without adequately demonstrating how technological innovations made evangelical Christianity appealing to its new adherents throughout the world. The chapter also illuminates the strategic approach of U.S. evangelical organizations in using electronic communications to spread the gospel. It shows how individuals and local communities abroad interacted with Christian media and details how evangelicals throughout the world came to view themselves as members of a transnational community of believers by the early 1980s. It examines the interplay of religious and political beliefs that underpinned the push for overseas evangelism, the technological mechanisms that fostered evangelical internationalism, and the scriptural interpretations that informed evangelical notions about human rights and the role that the United States should play in the world.
The Challenge of South African Apartheid
Authors: Turek Lauren Frances
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores the evangelical contribution to the debate over U.S. relations with the apartheid government of South Africa and the global anti-apartheid movement. It talks about some members of the Southern Baptist Convention that joined progressive religious groups in order to protest U.S. involvement with the regime. It also describes why many evangelicals urged the Reagan administration to refrain from imposing sanctions on South Africa or pursuing disinvestment strategies. The chapter analyzes the evangelical groups' claims that the policies would have dire effects on the fragile human rights situation in South Africa and expressed concern about the potential for a communist takeover. It discusses the evangelical antisanctions rhetoric that employed a paradoxical blend of human rights language, religious beliefs, and anticommunism.
Plastic Form
Authors: Lewis Cara L.
Published: January 2021

This chapter discusses Henry James's The Golden Bowl (1904). It shows how James's sculptural aesthetics, elaborated through a series of ornate metaphors, encompasses not only sculptural objects but also the viewing practices and temporalities associated with sculpture. Such viewing in the round, with its frequent retreading of old ground, creates the surface texture of James's, at times, almost impenetrable prose. Viewing in the round also activates a narrative temporality that renders the novel as a dynamic form to be processed over time, revisited, and reviewed. The Golden Bowl thus helps one to see that novelistic engagement with the fine arts does not produce self-contained, static, spatial form. Instead, shifts in perspective and point of view as James's characters circle sculptural objects—and as readers make their way around the novel—reinvent the novel as an experiment in plastic form.
Mortal Form
Authors: Lewis Cara L.
Published: January 2021

This chapter analyzes Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927). It diverges from the critical commonplace that aligns the form of To the Lighthouse with Lily Briscoe's painting and claims instead that the novel unfolds the iconographic implications of a still-life composition. The carefully arranged dish of fruit and a seashell on the Ramsays' table signals the novel's interest in minor, everyday objects and also establishes a vanitas motif—a reminder of mortality and the impermanence of human life. Woolf's still life metamorphoses into various vanitas forms throughout the novel, precipitating later turns of the plot and linking up with the novel's elegiac project. All these vanitas motifs are thus mortal forms that help to determine the shape and flow of the narrative, which is itself a mortal form—hopelessly entangled with human emotion, fated to reckon with mortality, and challenged to mourn the dead. In this way Woolf, like James, requires one to modify the notion that the modernist novel is best approached as a spatial form.
Protean Form
Authors: Lewis Cara L.
Published: January 2021

This chapter focuses on Mina Loy, a writer enmeshed in the avant-garde conversation about abstraction and invested in identifying a purity of form in the work of those she admires. Responding to her contemporaries, friends, and lovers, Loy lauds recognizably mainstream aspects of abstract form—the particulate core, the fundamental element, the essential shape—in the service of surprising ends, most notably an emphasis on the body and emotional intimacy. Thus, poems such as the autobiographical Songs to Joannes (1917) and the ekphrastic “Brancusi's Golden Bird” (1922), among several others, encourage one to reframe the interarts notion of pure form as something other than entirely sterile, since Loy's work consistently demonstrates how abstraction can coincide with affect and sexuality. Loy asks one to revel in the erotics of formal purity found in the denuded body and self, text and art object; her protean forms are always on the verge of merging with other forms or generating new forms. Loy's ardent futurity accordingly represents a strain of maximalist abstraction that counters the colder modernism of F. T. Marinetti, Ezra Pound, and others.
Epilogue
Authors: Lewis Cara L.
Published: January 2021

This epilogue looks at the challenge posed by modernism's constituent forms, addressing the question about form's ability to console. As the proliferating, ever-extending relations of modernism attest, form is exceptionally dynamic in the first half of the twentieth century. As intermediality makes modernism, it also makes modernism vulnerable. But it does not follow that all modernists' formal efforts are attempts to shore fragments against ruins. Modernist form is not nearly so brittle, and there lies some strength in its flexibility: “In its apparent fixity, form is all about change. In its fixity, form is all about the relationship of change to continuance, even when the continuance is itself precarious.” Modernism's forms matter because they demonstrate the possibility of this precarious continuance, even when continuance ultimately fails. Their consolation is not to provide the shelter of a crystalline structure but rather to help one cope with change by giving shape to it.
Digital Dwelling
Authors: Trnka Susanna
Published: January 2021

This chapter focuses on the world of digital dwelling. It assesses how virtual space enlarges but also condenses the spaces and temporalities of everyday life. It analyzes what it is like being online with young people, the middle-aged, and the elderly. The chapter also examines how school humiliations are offset by international sniper games, differences and similarities between the world of marbles and the world of Facebook, and how internet shopping might constitute an antidote to a life otherwise plagued by agoraphobia. The chapter provides a response to Martin Heidegger's deep concerns over how people's dependence on technology strips away not only their agency but their very humanity. It also examines both the dangers and the promises of traversing through virtual spaces, directing on the ways that Czechs' lives are now punctuated with small freedoms that may or may not offset the challenges of living in a world radically transformed by the use of technology.
Ballroom Dance and Other Technologies of Sexuality and Desire
Authors: Trnka Susanna
Published: January 2021

This chapter describes the world of sex and the erotic. It discusses movement and interrelationality by means of observing ballroom dance lessons, which is a required part of coming of age for many Czech youth. Following a daughter and her mother through the first steps of becoming a cultured ballroom dancer, the chapter looks at how sexuality, male dominance, and female sexual objectification are both encouraged and circumscribed on the dance floor. It considers the universality of sexual imagery and the prevalence of male violence across a range of domestic and public sites. The chapter also questions what sexuality means in terms of women's agency and whether or not, as Jan Patocka suggested, there is indeed an inherent liberatory potential to deeply intimate, erotic relations. It analyzes whether sex is a possible path to self-transcendence.
The New Europeans
Authors: Trnka Susanna
Published: January 2021

This chapter gives an analysis of reproduction and the role of new technologies in creating and recreating contemporary families. It takes into account both Martin Heidegger's depiction of society as an alienating force and Jan Patocka's emphasis on the social foundations necessary for individuals to engage in “caring” for their “souls.” The chapter reflects on what the role of the family might be in providing possibilities for self-discovery or “self-realization.” Specifically, it examines how to reconcile the rise of new European family lifestyles with a strongly patriarchal culture that emphasizes women as pre-eminently talented in taking care of children and questions what the drawbacks are for men if the family cannot function as a site where they too can find a higher purpose in life. The chapter also considers the pressures and possibilities of creating identities that do not accede to the demands of twenty-first century capitalism.
Home Care Fault Lines
Authors: Cranford Cynthia J.
Published: January 2021

This revealing look at home care illustrates how elderly and disabled people and the immigrant women workers who assist them in daily activities develop meaningful relationships even when their different ages, abilities, races, nationalities, and socioeconomic backgrounds generate tension. As the book shows, workers can experience devaluation within racialized and gendered class hierarchies, which shapes their pursuit of security. The book analyzes the tensions, alliances, and compromises between security for workers and flexibility for elderly and disabled people, and argues that workers and recipients negotiate flexibility and security within intersecting inequalities in varying ways depending on multiple interacting dynamics. What comes through from the book's analysis is the need for deeply democratic alliances across multiple axes of inequality. To support both flexible care and secure work, the book argues for an intimate community unionism that advocates for universal state funding, designs culturally sensitive labor market intermediaries run by workers and recipients to help people find jobs or workers, and addresses everyday tensions in home workplaces.
Tensions Between Flexibility and Security
Authors: Cranford Cynthia J.
Published: January 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the relationship between workers and recipients of domestic, or home-based, personal support services. Recipients and workers develop close and meaningful work relationships, yet they experience different “faces of oppression,” which can bubble up in the relationship and generate tension. Recipients face marginalization vis-à-vis a state and society that values independence. This marginalization fuels recipients' quest for flexibility in their current services. Meanwhile, workers experience different axes of oppression, namely devaluation and lack of recognition within class and gender inequalities, which shapes their pursuit of security. The majority of personal support workers in the urban areas of industrialized nations are immigrant women from less industrialized countries, and their economic insecurity is infused with racialization through nation of origin, language, accent, religion, culture, or skin color. What exacerbates tensions or encourages solidarity between recipients and workers? This book answers this question with a multilevel comparative study of in-home, old age, and disability support programs in Los Angeles and Toronto.
Gender, Migration, and the Pursuit of Security
Authors: Cranford Cynthia J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter discusses how dynamic processes of gendering, racialization, and precarization make diverse people into personal support workers who lack security at the labor market and intimate levels. Enduring gendered inequalities that relegate more women than men to unpaid domestic work serve to structure and justify the concentration of women in this paid domestic work and its devaluation. What immigrant women from professional and working-class backgrounds had in common that shaped their eventual location in personal support was the marginal place of their nation of origin in the global economy vis-à-vis the United States, Canada, and by extension Britain. Gendered and racialized migration shaped the location of immigrant workers in North America, but their entry into personal support had as much to do with dynamics in the local labor markets of Toronto and Los Angeles, namely the intersection of racialization, gendering, ageism, and precarious employment, supported by the state. Social networks certainly opened up jobs to immigrant workers with few other options, but these jobs were precarious.
Disability and the Quest for Flexibility
Authors: Cranford Cynthia J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter analyzes the quest for flexibility among personal support recipients, considering their experiences of impairment and aging and how these bodily realities clash with the value that North American culture places on independence and youth. Recipients sought flexibility in the labor market, which was a continuum ranging from hiring and firing power to a degree of say on who came into one's home to provide intimate support. Recipients also sought flexibility at the intimate level along two dimensions. The first was their ability to use their own knowledge to direct how their bodies were handled and their homes managed. The second dimension was their ability to influence and change which service tasks were provided, when, and where. This deep understanding of recipients' quest for flexibility, together with the account of workers' long-standing pursuit of security in the previous chapter, begins to reveal tensions between the two groups. Recipients' desire for flexibility in service tasks can be in tension with workers' efforts to gain security by defining the parameters of their job. At the labor market level, recipient flexibility to choose the worker can be in tension with worker's employment and income security.
Negotiating Flexibility with Security in Los Angeles’s In-Home Supportive Services
Authors: Cranford Cynthia J.
Published: January 2021

This chapter focuses on California's In-Home Supportive Services (IHSS). At the labor market level, both the Direct Funding Program (DF) in Ontario and the IHSS gave “consumers” the flexibility to hire their own “providers,” yet in IHSS the state was more involved in the employment relationship because it paid the provider rather than giving funding directly to the consumer. Many elderly IHSS consumers hire family, but when family is not available, immigrant seniors hire others from their language and ethnic group, and this goes for Pilipinx. Like in DF, labor market flexibility shaped negotiations in the labor process, but in IHSS it shaped it differently. While DF self-managers forged and embraced a friendly employment relationship, consumers in the IHSS context of paying family or co-ethnic fictive kin were more ambivalent about their employer role and used family ideals and family-like practices to negotiate possible tensions at the intimate level. The state's reliance on filial duty and ethnic community through IHSS may bolster flexibility and security at the intimate level in terms of mutually respectful negotiations of what is done, when, where, and how. Yet, as suggested in the previous chapter, collective backing is also important if the goal is flexibility with security. Indeed, another difference between DF and IHSS is that IHSS providers have a union.
Introduction
Authors: Höcker Arne
Published: January 2021

This introductory chapter provides an overview of how representing cases in fictional narrative became an important touchstone for the development of German literature. The concept case refers to a particular way of thinking, administrating, and classifying that has gained epistemic relevance in various disciplinary and institutional settings. In the most general terms, a case allows the making of connections between a specific, discrete incident that it reports and a general form of knowledge to which it contributes. The particular way a case fulfills its function depends on the disciplinary context in which it appears; criminal cases are used for purposes different from medical or psychological cases. The chapter then looks at the constitutive contribution of case narratives to the establishment of new scientific disciplines, in particular empirical psychology and, more important, the formation of an autonomous discourse of and about literary fiction from the late eighteenth century onward.
“Observe, Write!”
Authors: Höcker Arne
Published: January 2021

This chapter examines how Karl Philipp Moritz invoked the psychological productivity of novelistic storytelling in publishing the “psychological novel” Anton Reiser (1785–1790) as part of his project of empirical psychology or Erfahrungsseelenkunde. This use of fictional narrative for the representation of dispassionate observation, and the choice of engaging a literary genre for the production of psychological knowledge assigned irreducible cognitive qualities to literature. Anton Reiser is not only another case of Moritz's extensive psychological project but also a paradigmatic case for the importance of literary form in the observation and recording of psychic phenomena. The institutional framework of the novel is not just the Magazin zur Erfahrungsseelenkunde, but literary discourse as an epistemological rather than aesthetic enterprise. Ultimately, Anton Reiser is a literary exercise in establishing a perspective from which self-observation becomes possible.
Hot and Cold
Authors: Höcker Arne
Published: January 2021

This chapter evaluates Friedrich Schiller's novella The Criminal of Lost Honor (1786), as well as Heinrich von Kleist's novella Michael Kohlhaas (1808–1810). Although Kleist did not explicitly address the poetological questions that Schiller's novella had posed, Kleist's novella is also best understood as a contribution to the discussion of the poetics of cases. The chapter argues that both Schiller's and Kleist's novellas are not only two literary case histories but also, moreover, two cases that comprise what will become distinctions of literature itself: the distinctions between history and story, between history and case, and between case and story. These distinctions are at stake wherever literary texts cite historical material to produce case histories. Rather than merely citing the historical case, these stories refer to the case in history as an instance of storytelling.