bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Rise of Reagan’s America
Authors: Stein Judith
Published: September 2014

Invisible Bridge is an old-fashioned study of American character from the unraveling of the Watergate scandal in 1973 through the 1976 presidential nominating conventions. The title is its thesis. Nikita Khrushchev told Richard Nixon that if people believe that there is an imaginary river, leaders should not tell them the truth, but should build them an imaginary bridge. America’s chief bridge-builder was Ronald Reagan, who forged the cult of official optimism and virtue. Perlstein believes that this hubris endures, governing both parties in America today.
Not an Option
Authors: Kazin Michael
Published: September 2014

The current state of American two-party politics is profoundly depressing—and shameful. In Congress, the Republicans rail against any program that helps workers and the poor, block any chance for undocumented women and men to become citizens, oppose every attempt to regulate corporations and wealthy donors, and preach that a boss’s religious credo should trump the health needs of his female employees. The Democrats swat away at these outrages but—whether due to their fear of alienating swing voters and their own rich contributors or the president’s lackluster leadership—seldom do so aggressively, even though polls show a majority of Americans agree with them on the issues.
“They did what they liked”: Chevron and Dow on Trial
Authors: Mukerjee Madhusree
Published: September 2014

“They want me to be bankrupt, they want my wife to leave me, they want me to jump off a building,” says Steven Donziger, a lawyer based in New York City whose team won an unprecedented judgment against Chevron in 2011. That year, an Ecuadorean court found Texaco guilty of having polluted close to 2,000 square miles of the Amazon basin with crude oil, toxic wastewater, and other contaminants. The country’s Supreme Court eventually ordered the company’s successor, Chevron, to pay $9.5 billion for environmental remediation, medical treatment, and other relief for those affected. But Donziger’s victory painted a bull’s-eye on his back. The lawyer says he’s been watched; that he’s had laptops, thousands of documents, bank statements, and tax returns seized by court order and handed to Chevron’s lawyers; and that friends and supporters have been turned against him by threats of ruinous lawsuits.
For Pleasure: A Letter
Authors: Hale Benjamin
Published: September 2014

Dear David, As you know, I begin most of my emails with apologies. So first of all, I am so sorry for being late getting back to your email, and for being appallingly late with the review of M.’s latest novel. And I apologize most of all for this: I just cannot do it. This book has been an anchor around my neck ever since you sent me a galley back in the winter. I have finally clawed my way out to page 700-something and still the remaining 300-some pages loom ahead, foreboding and without promise. At some point in the more than six months it’s taken me to get this far into the book, I started forcing myself to read it by taking it to the gym with me. It made sense for the task of reading this book to accompany my trying to lose weight on the stationary cycle: both are joyless, laborious, repetitive chores done in a state of squinty-eyed perspiration and only in the distant hope that, eventually, I will finally get rid of something heavy.
Brute Ideology
Authors: Johnson Walter
Published: September 2014

The field of U.S. history today is characterized by a mania for management. The “new” history of capitalism has focused its attention on the creation and daily reanimation of the grand abstraction from which it draws its title: the mid-level market makers who take capital and transform it into capitalism. In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, increasing numbers of historians have turned their attention to the histories of powerful historical actors we have too long ignored or dismissed as “dead white men” unworthy of the attention of the properly progressive historian: financiers, bankers, and businessmen of all kinds. Despite the obvious importance of the task and the avowedly critical purpose of the turn towards the study of the mechanisms of market practice, however, some of the bolder claims that have been used to mark out the novelty of this “new” history seem unwarranted, perhaps even misguided.
American Shudders: Race, Representation, and Sodomy in Redburn
Authors: Greven David
Published: September 2014

Newer critical treatments of Redburn argue that its significance lies in its critique of antebellum slavery, most saliently in chapter 31, in which Wellingborough Redburn, the first-person narrator, offers an ekphrastic depiction of the Nelson Monument in Liverpool, England. This monument contains an especially significant detail: the four naked, chained male figures at the base of the pedestal. Redburn tells us that he can never look at their “swarthy limbs and manacles, without being involuntarily reminded of four African slaves in the market-place.” The abjection of the figures is significant for understanding not only issues of race and slavery but also the queer aspects of Redburn : the vulnerability of younger males in the grip of more powerful, older males. This essay examines the connections between Melville’s striking thematization of race and his representation of gender and same-sex sexuality. Race discourse here functions as a coded means of expressing and negotiating the difficulties of same-sex desire, informed by Melville’s awareness of the sodomitical shipboard practices that he, throughout his work, suggested with alternate slyness and horror.
An Oceanic Modernity: Matthew Fontaine Maury, Ahab, and the White Whale
Authors: Sugden Edward
Published: September 2014

This essay teases out the significance of the allusion made to the oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury in “The Chart” chapter of Moby-Dick . It uses this allusion as a starting point for thinking about substantial shifts in the ways in which antebellum Americans charted time, before considering how these changes might allow us to characterize the modernity of the 1840s and 1850s. Maury, in creating charts of whale movements and currents, demanded an “oceanic standard time,” which is to say a perception of time in which the felt experience of individual sailors was outsourced to an abstracted set of scientific coordinates. Such an observation has substantive consequences for our understanding of Moby-Dick , as it allows us to see that Melville channeled these energies into the depictions of his characters and the natural world. The essay sets up a counterpoise between Ahab, who embraces and internalizes the methods of Maury, and the descriptions of whales in the book, which direct us to consider a more complex account of antebellum time. Following the movements of whales allows us to think more broadly about Melvillean historical consciousness and, by extension, issues of narrative time.
Hawthorne, Melville, and Emersonian Character
Authors: Ronan John
Published: September 2014

This essay proposes that Melville’s sketch of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau in chapters 36–41 of The Confidence-Man (1857) was written, in great part, for his estranged friend Nathaniel Hawthorne. The chapters, it argues, respond to Hawthorne’s thoughts about Emerson’s character theory, expressed in “The Great Stone Face” (1850) and in conversations the two men shared in the Berkshires in 1850 and 1851.
The Animals of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
Authors: Norris Margot
Published: September 2014

Even when they appear to signify a symbolic function, animals in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake generally remain grounded in the ecology of the natural world. We see a hen scavenging a ravaged landscape after battle, two cavemen struggling to acquire the means to speak and communicate, and hear the conflicting insects in a version of Aesop’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper argue. Yet all of these Wake an creatures remind us that the cultural contexts of their narratives reflect the need for food, habitat, and other resources necessary for the survival of living beings.
Narrative Disruption as Animal Agency in Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing
Authors: Malewitz Raymond
Published: September 2014

This paper asks whether animals can ever break out of anthropocentric value systems in literary narratives and, if so, what critical methods might be enlisted to reveal a literary animal’s independent agency. Examining the representation of a gray wolf in Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Crossing , it concludes that the animal’s agency (and, by extension, the agency of all literary animals) emerges when its behavior temporarily exhausts, confuses, or transforms the human use to which it has been put.
Animal Worlds in Modern Fiction: An Introduction
Authors: Herman David
Published: September 2014

To provide a point of entry into the special issue, my introduction begins with a discussion of Jonathan Lethem’s 2014 story “Pending Vegan,” which concerns a visit to SeaWorld and explores institutions, practices, and attitudes that are centrally important for the study of animal worlds in modern fiction. I then move to an overview of cross-disciplinary conversations about animals and human-animal relationships being conducted under rubrics such as critical animal studies, posthumanism, cognitive ethology, and zoosemiotics, and suggest how the essays included in the present issue intervene in the larger context for research afforded by these conversations.
Fables of the Tiger Economy: Species and Subalternity in Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger
Authors: Walther Sundhya
Published: September 2014

Aravind Adiga’s 2008 novel The White Tiger appropriates an animal perspective in order to represent an animalization of the poor that runs counter to popular narratives of India’s economic growth; the novel uncritically deploys an anthropocentric perspective that is premised on the abjection of the animal and the sanctity of the human. At the same time, the narrative’s pivotal moment turns on the Deleuzo-Guattarian becoming-animal of the protagonist. This instance of mutual exposure transgresses humanist boundaries and infects the spaces of the text with a counter-narrative of contagion that suggests a different ethical potential for postcolonial, and posthumanist, representation.
The Literary Animal and the Narrativized Zoo
Authors: Santesso Aaron
Published: September 2014

As zoo design shifted late in the nineteenth century from a taxonomic model to more ambitious “natural” and “authentic” exhibits, the zoo began to draw more heavily on literary strategies of display and audience interaction. The introduction of “narrativized display,” in which the zoo visitor is guided through an ideologically aware and carefully controlled experience featuring devices such as backstories and dramatic climaxes, allowed for the fostering of an emotional, not just logical, connection to the animal. Ultimately, the “authentic” zoo emerges as a new and influential form of fiction-derived spatial communication.
Species Performance, or, Henry James’s Beastly Sense
Authors: Bateman Benjamin
Published: September 2014

This essay examines Henry James‘s “The Beast in the Jungle” through the dual lenses of feminist theory and animality studies. It argues that May Bartram slowly erodes John Marcher‘s related senses of patriarchal pride and species exceptionalism, exposing him absolutely to an environment over which he no longer exercises dominion. Conceptualizing gender and species performativity as related enterprises rooted in particular ways of seeing, the story comes to envision configurations of animality and sexuality more fluid and less violent than those espoused by the ideological distortions of Darwin that gained momentum in the early twentieth century.
Boundary Issues: Human–Animal Relationships in Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely beside Ourselves
Authors: Calarco Matthew
Published: September 2014

In this essay, I suggest that Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely beside Ourselves can be read as offering a helpful way of rethinking human-animal relations in view of constituting a form of life that does some justice to the rich and complicated nature of animal worlds.
Mongrel Fiction: Canine Bildung and the Feminist Critique of Anthropocentrism in Woolf’s Flush
Authors: Kendall-Morwick Karalyn
Published: September 2014

This essay reads Virginia Woolf’s Flush as a canine Bildungsroman that challenges this genre’s humanist and phallocentric underpinnings. Woolf signals the phallocentrism of traditional Bildung by contextualizing Flush’s development within circumstances that parallel those of the woman writer. Rather than simply serving as a proxy for the woman writer, the figure of the dog exposes the anthropocentrism that underwrites the privileging of male experience throughout the literary canon. Ultimately, I show how Woolf intertwines the Bildung processes of Flush and Elizabeth to develop a model of literary character that extends beyond the gendered category of the human and reflects the companion-species entanglements that give shape to human and nonhuman experience.
Shimmering Reality: The Question of Metaphysical Relativity in Mystical Theology
Authors: Laude Patrick
Published: September 2014

How can the Absolute conceivably be side by side with the existence of “non-absolute” realities given that such a “co-existence” would perforce imply some sort of “relationality” between the former and the latter, and thereby run contrary to the notion of an unconditionally free and necessary ab-solutum ? This is the main question pondered in this essay through a liminal survey of some of the most rigorous concepts of the Absolute provided by a cross-religious spectrum of metaphysical teachings that include Śaṅkara’s Advaita, Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka, Kashmiri Śaivism, and the Sufi school of “Unity of Being” (wahdat al-wujūd) . Śan. kara provides a fitting starting point for this analysis of the ontological status of “other-than-the-Ultimate” when characterizing Māyā as “neither real nor unreal” in his Crest Jewel of Discrimination . These perplexing words will be used as keys to argue that wisdom and mystical traditions tend to assign an ambiguous ontological status to phenomenal realities. Furthermore, it is proposed here to show that each of these traditions does emphasize one of the two aforesaid characterizations in its approach to the mystery of universal metaphysical relativity, or universal existence: neither “being” (or real) nor “nonbeing” (or unreal).
Out of the Ge-stell ?: The Role of the East in Heidegger’s das andere Denken
Authors: Ma Lin , van Brakel Jaap
Published: September 2014

Heidegger has notoriously named the essence of the technological world the Ge-stell (framework, enframing). Here, we reveal that yet another term, Gestellnis , figures in some of his writings from the 1970s. According to Heidegger, as the essence of the Ge-stell, Gestellnis shows a way toward the fore-garden of Ereignis (appropriating event). In opposing the Ge-stell mode of comportment toward beings, Heidegger glimpses the promise of the other thinking, which seems to be useless from the perspective of traditional metaphysical thinking. In characterizing this mode of thinking, he resorts to Zhuangzi’s parables of uselessness ( wuyong 无用). One way of stepping out of the Ge-stell is to make central the comportment toward beings as embodied in non-metaphysical art. Heidegger designates this as das andere Denken (the other thinking). In charting this course, Heidegger turns toward ancient Asian traditions insofar as they remain uncontaminated by current planetary-interstellar world conditions, which for him epitomize the absence of the dichotomy of appearance and essence. From Heidegger’s standpoint, before the Western tradition gains maturity through its own self-transformation, the allegedly inevitable event of East-West dialogue can only be anticipated. However, at the ontic level East Asian sources have undeniably played a role in his search for ways out of the Ge-stell .
The Ideal State for Humans in Xunzi
Authors: Kim Doil
Published: September 2014

Here, attention is given to a cluster of terms that Xunzi uses in his understanding of the ideal state for humans and that reveal their internal relations. The cluster includes zhi 治, li 理, he 和 , and yi 一 . The kind of ideal state for humans that Xunzi envisions is finally explained on the basis of the relations among these terms. Li especially comes under close scrutiny. A new interpretation of li is offered by revealing its holistic nature. In relation to this nature, an ethical and political requirement in Xunzi’s thought is extracted from a relevant notion, da li 大理 . Also, the substantive content of the ideal state is elaborated by examining other relevant terms such as lun 倫 and fen 分 . Finally, the relation of the cluster of terms to the notion that has been traditionally considered central to early Confucian thought, yi 義 , is examined. Briefly stated, the aim here is to bring to light the conceptual map of a cluster of terms that converge on the idea of the ideal state for humans, which is central to Xunzi’s ethical and political thought.
Self and the Dream of the Butterfly in the Zhuangzi
Authors: Cheng Kai-Yuan
Published: September 2014

This essay offers a new interpretation of the butterfly dream in the Zhuangzi , which has been the focus of vigorous inquiries and heated debates in recent years. The novelty of this attempt lies in identifying a line of reasoning in the “Qiwulun” chapter that embodies a deep puzzle about the nature of self and in unpacking how the butterfly dream passage at the end of that chapter addresses the puzzle in question. Such a reading is cast within a larger context of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi , where death is a major theme. The idea of interpreting the butterfly dream in connection with the issue of death is not new. However, this idea has never been made sufficiently clear. An attempt will be made to provide a sensible and plausible reading of the butterfly dream that it is hoped will be relevant and beneficial to contemporary philosophy of self and death.
Textual Pragmatics in Early Chinese Madhyamaka
Authors: Kantor Hans-Rudolf
Published: September 2014

Academic studies of Chinese Buddhist views of language generally focus on issues such as paradox, contradiction, and the limits of expression and thought. However, such studies seldom seem to focus on the fact that many Buddhist texts deliberately use an ambiguous mode of linguistic expression, one that actually constitutes their compositional patterns and is designed to enhance and promote the Mahāyāna Buddhist soteriological goal, namely liberation from suffering via detachment from falseness. In fact, many of the treatises and exegetical commentaries of the Chinese masters develop a textual pragmatics rooted in the ambiguous and paradoxical rhetoric of early Madhyamaka scriptures translated by Kumārajīva (344–413). This essay discusses the philosophical and soteriological significance of such a linguistic-textual pragmatics as we find it in the early Chinese Madhyamaka scriptures.
The Buddhist Paradox of the Liar: A Quinian Defense of the Doctrine of Expedient Means
Authors: Fried Edward
Published: September 2014

Here, a central tenet of Mahāyāna Buddhism, the doctrine of expedient means, is defended in light of the Quinian doctrine of ontological commitment. The need for such a doctrine arises because of significant disparities between Mahāyāna Buddhist teachings and those of Theravāda Buddhism, which are historically prior. In particular, the Lotus Sūtra deploys the doctrine to explain why the Buddha had taught multiple vehicles (ways to enlightenment) when there is in fact only one, the Buddha’s own way. It is argued here (1) that at least some Buddhist apologetics have been directed toward defending the Buddha against an accusation that he lied; (2) that the Lotus Sūtra does not deny that the Buddha lied, but rather that he spoke a falsehood; and (3) that although it is unclear whether the Buddha can be defended against an accusation of lying, it is provable that he spoke no falsehood in preaching multiple vehicles. The proof depends on the logical regimentation of Mahāyāna and Theravāda views as formal languages with disparate discriminative resources. On this basis strict limits can be derived for the number of vehicles to which the users of each language are ontologically committed. The upshot is that the Mahāyāna Buddhist can claim that her theory supersedes the earlier teachings without having to deny the truth of those teachings; they were true because they were assertible in the theory of enlightenment in which they were originally presented.
The Creation of the Human Being in Thomas Aquinas and Mullā Ṣadrā
Authors: Rezazadeh Reza
Published: September 2014

The creation of the human being is an issue that has arisen from time to time in both Western and Eastern philosophy/theology. Aquinas (1225–1275) from the West and Mullā Şadra (1572–1640) from the East both challenged the previous alternative theories, and they rejected the preexistence of the human soul in its creation. However, they presented two different theories about the creation of human beings that are rooted in their diverse metaphysical principles. Aquinas held that the human soul is corporeal in its createdness, in the sense that the soul is neither eternal nor preexistent. It comes new into existence through creation by God. However, Şadrā thought/proved that the human soul is corporeal in existence and spiritual in subsistence.
Practical and Productive Knowledge in the Twelfth Century: Extending the Aristotelian Paradigm, c. 1120– c. 1160
Authors: Nederman Cary J.
Published: September 2014

There is no doubt that the writings of Aristotle were heavily influential in shaping moral and political thought during the Western Middle Ages. But there remains considerable dispute about when and how Aristotelianism was first introduced into medieval Europe. Some scholars argue that only when Latin translations of Aristotle’s works become available in the thirteenth century was his impact felt. By contrast, others claim that Aristotelian moral and political doctrines circulated in early times – in particular, the twelfth century – as a result of well-known intermediary classical and Christian texts. I examine this controversy with reference to the relationship between Aristotelian ideas of ‘productive’ knowledge (the ‘mechanical arts’) and of the ‘practical’ sciences of ethics, economics, and politics, which constituted a central feature of Aristotle’s thought.
‘The Hours that They Ought to Direct to the Study of Letters’: Literate Practices in the Constitutions and Rule for the Dominican Sisters
Authors: Smith Julie Ann
Published: September 2014

The place of reading and learning in the lives of Dominican nuns has, in recent years, been the focus of significant scholarly study. This research has examined the ways in which religious women engaged with, and contributed to, literate cultures. Here, attention is focused on the requirements for reading and learning in the thirteenth-century constitutions for the Dominican Sisters. These are read in conjunction with the requirements of the Augustinian Rule and the Friars Preachers’ constitutions to elucidate the possibilities that were enabled for the literate practices of Dominican women.
Albrecht Dürer and the Ideal City
Authors: Morrison Tessa
Published: September 2014

Nuremberg artist Albrecht Dürer was a polymath of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He is generally known as a painter, engraver, printmaker, mathematician, and art theorist; architect, social reformer, and utopian writer are not in the normal list of his achievements. In 1527, Dürer published Etliche Unterricht, zur Befestigung der Städte, Schlösser und Flecken (Instruction on the Fortification of Cities, Castles, and Towns). The book goes beyond being an instruction manual on the design of a fortified city. His plan was functional, pragmatic, and socially responsible, and the purpose of its design was to improve the status and lifestyle of German artisans. Dürer’s ideal city was not an isolated work; it was compatible with his other writings that were directed towards the improvement of artisans’ skills and conditions.
Since Feeling is First: Teaching Royal Ethics through Managing the Emotions in the Late Middle Ages
Authors: Zahora Tomas
Published: September 2014

The appropriation of the works of Aristotle and his commentators on the emotions by scholars like Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century brought about the challenge of accommodating them within the Christian ethical tradition. I explore the transformation of emotions discourse by analysing three specula written for the French royal family by Vincent of Beauvais, Giles of Rome, and Durand of Champagne. I argue that these works create a space in which new and older modes of managing behaviour coexist, even as the gradual privileging of the emotions against the traditional focus on the mores amounts to emotions’ discursive reification.
Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Coronet’: Doubleness, Conversion, and Meditation
Authors: Cousins A. D.
Published: September 2014

Andrew Marvell’s ‘The Coronet’ is a meditation on conversion. It is also a poem where artistic self-consciousness and self-display at once convey and conflict with celebration or exploration of the sacred. A will to authorial power is inseparable from a will to reverence. In its knowing self-division and contrarieties the poem offers a revealing window onto Marvell’s poems of religious dialogue.
The Constraints of the Past and the Failure of Central Asian Regionalism, 1991–2004
Authors: Rosset Damian , Svarin David
Published: September 2014

This article examines the failure of regional integration in post-Soviet Central Asia. It proposes a narrative of the rise and fall of Central Asian regionalism between 1991 and 2004 centered on the perceptions and expectations of the region’s republics. The argument is that these states did not emerge from the USSR in an ideational vacuum, where their construction of self at the international level was to be defined from scratch. Rather, the Central Asian elites inherited pre-existing understandings of the role and place of their respective state in the new international system. At the regional level, an actual and a perceived set of power relations led to incompatible preferences and strategies, thus making it impossible to find common ground for Central Asian regionalism.
The Economic Position of Officials in the Provincial Ural Administrations at the End of the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th Centuries
Authors: Lyubichankovskiy Sergey
Published: September 2014

In academic literature the question of the economic position of regional officials during the late imperial period of the Russian empire is little studied. This article has the two main tasks: first, to discover the typical salary of an official in the provincial Ural cities and their minimum standard of living; second, to divide the officials of the provincial administration into homogenous groups depending on their income, that is rank them according to their financial position. The paper concludes that officials of provincial Ural administrations during the late imperial period suffered from steadily worsening material conditions which were extreme for at least one-third from them. This situation made those officials want to create own trade-unions. The Government’s refusal to sanction the creation of such trade unions provoked the growth of corruption among local officials realizing coporate interests.
The New Soviet Man as a “Gypsy”: Nomadism, War, and Marginality in Stalin’s Time
Authors: Edele Mark
Published: September 2014

This essay explores the history of nomadic Gypsies ( tsygane ) in the Soviet Union prior to, during, and after the Second World War. It asks what this history of itinerancy, displacement, and marginality can tell us about Soviet society more generally. It argues that nomadic Tsygane on Soviet territory under Stalin were not so much exotic outliers but rather an extreme example of the displacement and homelessness of these decades.
EU Integration: An Enforcement of or an Impediment to National Identity in Bulgaria and Macedonia
Authors: Mitropolitski Simeon
Published: September 2014

European Union integration was conceived as a process of gradual convergence of different national social norms and values through common supranational institutions; thus a new EU-influenced national identity had to harmoniously merge with old national traits. In-depth research, based on interviews and other triangulating techniques in two post-communist Balkan countries, Bulgaria and Macedonia, suggests that the process of EU integration, with respect to national identities, is more complex than previously thought. The new national identity, influenced by EU integration, for those who accept it, does not always join seamlessly with old national traits. It may completely replace national loyalty, or, alternatively, be completely marginalized by a revival of ethnic nationalism.
From Kiachta to Vladivostok: Russian Merchants and the Tea Trade
Authors: Lee Chinyun
Published: September 2014

The time honored Russian tea trade has been unjustly neglected. A 1727 treaty with China made the Russian town of Kiachta, on the border, the first major market for trade; throughout the first half of the nineteenth century Chinese merchants transported tea through Kiachta over great distances, thereby controlling the export. In 1862 Russian merchants first came to Hankou, a famous Chinese tea port. They built factories, produced black tea and tea bricks, and successfully exported them. They built a tea empire by improving production methods, inventing tablet tea, and shortening the tea route by sending it on the Trans-Siberian Railroad—an excellent example of cooperation between merchants and the Russian government—using railroads to consolidate their influence over its colonies. Under Russian management Odessa and Vladivostok surpassed Kiachta in importance as tea transferring ports; and the status of Chinese tea was still strong when its rival, Indian Assam tea, arrived on the scene. In 1915 the First World War lifted the Russian tea business to its historical zenith; but the White Russian merchants’ close association with the tsarist regime ensured its sudden end after the Bolshevik Revolution. The story of Russian tea is nothing less, in fact, than an object lesson in the consequences of failure to globalize.
Chinese Russia: Imperial Consciousness in Vladimir Sorokin’s Writing
Authors: Filimonova Tatiana
Published: September 2014

China plays a crucial role in the contemporary fiction of Vladimir Sorokin. Sorokin’s fascination with the country parallels a heightened geo-political awareness of China in an increasingly globalized Russia. This paper argues that Sorokin’s work expresses an ambiguous view of China, with protagonists who see the country ambivalently: both as a metaphorical extension of self and an increasingly powerful “other.” This paper examines Sorokin’s novel Blue Lard (1999), the short stories “Iu” and “The Concrete Ones” (2000), the novels Day of the Oprichnik (2006) and The Blizzard (2010), and Aleksandr Zel’dovich’s film The Target (2011), for which Sorokin penned the screenplay. On the one hand, China functions as an imaginary projection of the Russian imperial self, as evidenced by the abundance of Russo-Chinese linguistic and semantic fusions in Sorokin’s fictional worlds. On the other hand, Sorokin reveals a deeply entrenched sinophobia, as growing Chinese economic and demographic power threatens Russia’s imperial dominance in Eurasia.
Spaniards in the Nahua City of Xochimilco: Colonial Society and Cultural Change in Central Mexico, 1650–1725
Authors: Conway Richard
Published: September 2014

In 1650, a Nahua noble named don Martín Cerón y Alvarado set down his last wishes in a codicil. Eminent but now elderly and frail, don Martin had served many times as governor of the central Mexicanaltepetl(ethnic state) of Xochimilco. Located by the lakes to the south of Mexico City, Xochimilco was a prominent and populous polity, renowned for its bountiful wetland agriculture. Such was its size and economic vitality that Spanish authorities, under King Philip II, decided to award it superior municipal status as a city—one of just four such designations in the basin of Mexico. In keeping with his position as the dynastic ruler of a prestigious alteped, don Martin was a lord of the highest social rank. He could trace his exalted lineage back to Acamapichtli, the Mexica forebear of the Aztec emperor Moteuhcçoma Xocoyotzin. By 1650, though, don Martin was the last of his kind. No person in Xochimilco would again hold his honorific title,tlatoani(dynastic ruler). His codicil and an earlier will and testament, both written in Nahuatl, marked the passing of an era.
Notaries of Color in Colonial Panama: Limpieza de Sangre,Legislation, and Imperial Practices in the Administration of the Spanish Empire
Authors: Espelt-Bombín Silvia
Published: September 2014

On July 20, 1740, King Philip V of Spain was given paperwork regarding a dispute over the adjudication of a notarial office in Panama City and, as usual, he was expected to make a decision. The king also had in hand recommendations from the Cámara of the Consejo de Indias. The king would have handled the case in a relatively straightforward manner, but for one fact—the two notaries involved in the public bid were of African descent.
Military Orders in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Portuguese Tradition, the Holy See, and the Independent Nation
Authors: Da Silva Camila Borges
Published: September 2014

This article is a study of the controversial role of Portuguese military orders in Brazil, starting from that nation’s independence in 1822 and continuing through the nineteenth century, under both the first Emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro I, and his son, Dom Pedro II. The debates around the presence of the orders, whose mission was rooted in both Portuguese colonial power and the authority of the Holy See, on Brazilian soil are important because they shed light on the process and nature of the growth of that nation’s independence. The government’s struggle to maintain the orders in Brazil, in spite of ongoing criticism, and only with the exertion of great diplomatic effort, demonstrates how necessary they were to the functioning of the state. The orders constituted an important source of income, yes, but they were valuable even more as ways of granting honor and prestige. Their presence allowed Dom Pedro I to unite the empire of Brazil by decorating local elites, thus securing their services and loyalty.
Publish, Don’t Perish: A Glimpse Behind the Scenes in Academic Publishing
Authors: Millholland Valerie
Published: September 2014

I never thought I’d be sitting here talking to all of you, but I do want to thank you and tell you how honored I am that you have given me this award. It was completely unexpected, and I still think I’m going to wake up one day and find it was all a dream.

Not such a dream was being told I’d have to prepare an “address”—something editors rarely have to do. We are more at ease sitting in a comfortable chair reading manuscripts, or writing soothing letters to our authors who sometimes get very frazzled with all the complicated things that are involved in scholarly publishing. So I thought I’d just say a few words, certainly not an address, about what it is like to be an editor at a university press, since I fear some people think all we do is take authors out to lunch or to dinner at expensive restaurants. And we do, of course, do that too, and it is something I shall miss as I venture into retirement.
The transformation of the South African credit market
Authors: Schraten Jürgen
Published: September 2014

South Africa was the first African country to introduce a legal framework for the consumer credit market in 2005. More than six years after its introduction a public debate about over-indebtedness and unsecured lending received public recognition. It was caused by constantly increasing numbers of unsecured loans and growing levels of private indebtedness. Purpose of the research undertaken was the question why this problem arose after the implementation of the National Credit Act (NCA). This article shows that the competitive credit market itself, which was intended with the NCA, contains the tendency towards unsecured lending and, as a consequence, over-indebtedness. As remedies it discusses the option of compulsory credit counselling and the introduction of legal debt discharge. Credit counselling could level the asymmetry of knowledge between creditors and debtors. Strongly regulated options of legal debt discharge would follow an international trend in developed consumer societies with the purpose of reintegrating over-indebted citizens.
Nation-Building, Africanism and the 2010 Fifa World Cup: what did they do for social cohesion in post-apartheid South Africa
Authors: Nyar Annsilla
Published: September 2014

This paper addresses issues of nation-building and Africanism as seen through the lens of South Africa’s hosting of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. It discusses the challenges posed to social cohesion and critically examines the shift in South Africa’s national identity toward Africanism through the World Cup. The paper draws upon some findings from the Gauteng City-Region Observatory’s (GCRO) 2010 FIFA World Cup longitudinal study as reference points for the paper. The research was conducted amongst a sample of small and micro-entrepreneurs in Gauteng in order to gauge the expectations and impact of the FIFA World Cup on small business in the province. Such key findings from the research include the contention amongst 92 per cent of respondents that Ghana’s performance in the World Cup ‘brought (us) together as Africans’, while 62 per cent of respondents responded positively to the statement that ‘foreigners are taking our benefits’. This data is indicative of South Africa’s ambivalent relationship with the African continent and allows a critical perspective on the prospects for social cohesion in a post-apartheid society. The paper concludes by reflecting on the impact and meaning of the World Cup for South Africa and its ambitions to unite South Africans behind both a nation-building project and an Africanist agenda which looks to mobilise the African continent.
A reactive approach to technological changes: Solidarity’s responses at the ArcelorMittal Vanderbijlpark Plant, 1989 to 2012
Authors: Hlatshwayo Mondli
Published: September 2014

Academic debates about Solidarity’s ‘reinvention’ in a post-apartheid South Africa do not include a discussion on the trade union’s responses to technological changes and production. As a contribution to debates on the role of Solidarity in the post-apartheid South Africa, my research was conducted on how Solidarity and its processors at the Vanderbijlpark steel plant responded to technological changes. In-depth interviews, factory visits, and archival sources were the main data sources for the article. The main finding of the article is that Solidarity was unable to respond proactively to technological changes at the plant. In other words, Solidarity’s ‘reinvention’ has not expressed itself in the sphere of production processes and technological changes in the plant. The union left the terrain of production to management, and reacted to the effects of technological changes such as retrenchment long after management had implemented changes in production technologies. The strategy of the union was asymmetrical in the sense that it only focused on wage struggles, and ignored technological changes at the plant.
The sociological dimension of external military interventions: The Portuguese military abroad
Authors: Carreiras Helena
Published: September 2014

This article addresses, from a sociological point of view, the involvement of the Portuguese armed forces in international peace operations. After reviewing some major sociological contributions for understanding change in military institutions and the development of international military missions, it concentrates on the Portuguese case, aiming at uncovering the place and meaning of peace operations for the Portuguese armed forces during the past two decades. After briefly recalling some facts and figures concerning the Portuguese participation in peace operations, it addresses the relevance of such involvement at different analytical levels, showing that peace operations have come to play a decisive role in the national defence political discourse, the organizational configuration of the Portuguese armed forces and the soldiers’ professional identity. The last section consists of a short prospective exercise looking at possible implications of disengagement from international peace missions. The conclusion is that, considering the strategic, organizational and socio-psychological centrality of these missions, disengagement is likely to have important consequences in the overall strategic definition, purpose and identity of the Portuguese military, while entailing an additional cost: the possible loss of at least part of a recently reinforced legitimacy.
In favour of Heroines: Lincoln Clarkes’s Vancouver photographs
Authors: Wood Kelly
Published: September 2014

This article examines Lincoln Clarkes’ photographic series Heroines, exploring the ways in which it demonstrates that available models for writing about photography are insufficient. The author argues that the Heroines series’ blurs the boundaries between commercial, documentary and fine art photography. The article examines how these images supplement a tradition of documentary after postmodernism and its critique of representation. Heroines evidences an as-yet uncategorizable form, one that brings into relief the ways in which certain theories of photography fail to explain and fully interpret such photographs. On this basis, the article argues that the importance of Heroines lies ultimately in how it suggests new strategies of evaluating the political work of photography in the aftermath of identity politics.
The Pirate and the Sovereign: Negative Identification and the Constitutive Rhetoric of the Nation-State
Authors: Mills Robert Elliot
Published: September 2014

Pirates are commonly referred to as hostis humani generis, the enemy of all. This essay explores the contours of this figuration through an analysis of early nineteenth century American legal and political texts concerning piracy. I argue that pirate rhetorics in this period are part of a constitutive rhetoric of sovereignty, principally identified with Emerich de Vattel’s famous definition of sovereignty in The Law of Nations. Through an analysis of the textual milieu surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1820 decision in United States v. Smith, I show that the pirate is figured as an anti-sovereign, which allows for the consolidation of an otherwise differential system of international relations characterized by liberal, self-interested, sovereign nations. In becoming hostis humani generis, the pirate enters into an antagonistic relationship with the sovereign that provides the ontological ground for the theory of sovereignty characteristic of modern thought in international law. Supplementing Charland’s theory of constitutive rhetoric with Laclau and Mouffe’s work on antagonisms in social relations, I argue that focusing on negative identification, which is an essential component of any constitutive rhetoric, opens up unique avenues for analysis that may otherwise be obscured by attending solely to the positive dimensions of a rhetoric.
The Atheistic Voice
Authors: Rhodes Joseph
Published: September 2014

This essay defines and describes the atheistic voice. Drawing from Thomas Lessl’s “voice” metaphor (“The Priestly Voice”), the logology of Kenneth Burke, and the literary insights of Mikhail Bakhtin, I map out the rhetorical tropes of the atheistic voice by analyzing the rhetoric of Christopher Hitchens, which exemplifies the atheistic voice as a rhetorical ideal. Hitchens demonstrates that the rhetorical strategies of burlesque and grotesque rejection are the atheistic voice’s primary means of ridiculing and tearing down the god-terms of priestly and bardic discourses. After analyzing these strategies, I point to concerns—some perennial, some contemporary—that the ebb and flow of atheistic voices in a democratic public sphere present.
Data Mining zur Analyse der Auswirkungen von Preissignalen auf Haushaltsstromkunden
Authors: Waczowicz Simon , Klaiber Stefan , Bretschneider Peter , Konotop Irina , Westermann Dirk , Reischl Markus , Mikut Ralf
Published: September 2014

Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der Analyse der Auswirkungen von Preissignalen auf das Verbrauchsverhalten von Haushaltsstromkunden. Er schlägt einen systematischen Auswerteprozess vor, der die Datenvorverarbeitung, verschiedene Aggregationsschritte, die Analyse mit Clusterverfahren (für preisbeeinflusste Typtage bei einzelnen oder aggregierten Haushalten) und die Analyse einzelner Abtastzeitpunkte umfasst. Dieser Auswerteprozess wird auf den Olympic Peninsula Project Datensatz angewendet.
High sensitivity cardiac troponin assays in the clinical laboratories
Authors: Jarolim Petr
Published: September 2014

Immunoassays measuring cardiac troponins I or T have become firmly established as critical tools for diagnosing acute myocardial infarction. While most contemporary assays provide adequate diagnostic performance, the increased sensitivity and precision of the new, high sensitivity assays that have already been introduced into clinical practice, provide the potential to further shorten intervals between blood draws or the time needed to detect the first significant troponin elevation. In addition to the relatively modest benefits at the diagnostic end, the high sensitivity assays and the investigational ultrasensitive cardiac troponin assays offer improvements for predicting major adverse cardiovascular events, development of heart failure or transition to end-stage kidney disease. These novel high sensitivity assays can measure troponin concentrations in 50%–100% of healthy individuals and therefore allow for the distribution of troponin values within a healthy cohort to be measured, patient’s baseline troponin levels to be monitored, and clinicians to be alerted of deteriorating cardiorenal conditions. We envisage that the high sensitivity assays will become important tools for predicting each patient’s risk of future adverse events and for guiding and monitoring corresponding adjustments of preventative therapeutic interventions.
Foreign Capital Inflow and Real Exchange Rate Appreciation in Developing Economies: Theory and Empirical Evidence
Authors: Biswas Anindya , Mandal Biswajit , Saha Nitesh
Published: September 2014

Foreign direct investment specially targeted to export sector is relatively new phenomenon in the global economy. Such inflow of foreign capital changes the sectoral composition of the economy, and it has some influence on the exchange rate of the destination country. In this study, we attempt to provide underlying theoretical and empirical explanations for exchange rate appreciation due to foreign capital inflow. We first use an extended three-sector specific factor model to explain analytically why and how an inflow of foreign capital boosts the price of a nontradable good that helps tilting the exchange rate in favor of the host country and then conduct an empirical analysis based on a panel dataset of 12 prominent developing countries over the time period 1980–2011 to substantiate our theoretical findings. We also strive to look at the possible consequences on factor prices and on sectoral de-composition of a representative economy.