bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Feeling the way out
Authors: Minh-ha Trinh T.
Published: May 2017

This chapter details the personal experiences of those in the line of combat, with a particular focus on Vietnam and the battle of Điện Biên Phủ. It describes the setting of the battle and the sobering prelude to future U.S. military defeat, particularly the subterranean warfare employed by the Viet Cong. The chapter then looks to the psychological costs of having been involved in the conflict in Vietnam, and how soldiers today are haunted by their experiences. Here the chapter asserts that, “[a]nimalizing the human other goes hand in hand with humanizing the animal.” In addition, the chapter also looks into the much debated mantra, “boys don't cry,” in the context of war veterans still coping with their “walking nightmares.”
Preface to Tertullian
Authors: Barton Carlin A. , Boyarin Daniel
Published: May 2017

This serves as an introduction to Tertullian and attempts to place his various uses of the word religio in the totality of his thought.
Governed by a Perfect Fear
Authors: Barton Carlin A. , Boyarin Daniel
Published: May 2017

This chapter continues the project of placing Tertullian’s particular conceptions within the broader framework of his thought. In this chapter, I concentrate on his notions of effective government.
The Thrēskeia of the Judaeans: Josephus and The New Testament
Authors: Barton Carlin A. , Boyarin Daniel
Published: May 2017

In this chapter, we begin to show how Josephus, the first-century AD Jewish historian, can be understood much more richly without the concept of “religion” getting in the way. What we would separate as religious and political are not at all separated in his work or presumably in his cultural world.
Introduction: Personification and Its Discontents
Authors: Stout Daniel M.
Published: May 2017

No man, if he had his choice, would be the angel Gabriel to-morrow! … He might as well have an ambition to be turned into a bright cloud or a particular star. … He would rather remain a little longer in this mansion of clay, which, with all its flaws, inconveniences, and perplexities, contains all that he has any real knowledge of or any affection for....
Not World Enough
Authors: Stout Daniel M.
Published: May 2017

Chapter five looks at William Godwin’s 1793 novel, Caleb Williams. It argues that this novel depicts the ways in which denser patterns of settlement destabilized notions of responsibility and accountability, by making it possible for neighbors to harm each other through otherwise innocent actions. The novel is thus a gothic tragedy that serves as rejoinder to utopian, anti-property schemes such as those advocated by Thomas Spence. In this text antagonism is a naturally-occurring fact, created by the absence of a coherent legal theory of easement, the area of law that attempts to deal with what economics knows as the problems of social cost by articulating our rights to necessarily shared goods like air, water, and light.
Occupying Jim Crow
Authors: Goldberg David E.
Published: May 2017

Chapter 2 details how black workers responded to the resistance of white tourists and the ambiguous state of segregation in the late 1880s and early 1890s. In their campaigns to desegregate public and commercial leisure space, black activists used violent and non-violent resistance to manipulate class divisions among whites and fight against discrimination by claiming full rights as citizens and free choice as consumers. By claiming that the right to consume was equal to the right to work, black workers helped refute free labor ideology as the basis of economic freedom.
Words Fail
Authors: Dickinson Colby
Published: May 2017

This book is concerned with matters of representation and failure, especially insofar as they indicate deep and often startling truths about the nature of spiritual and theological reflection. This volume turns to poets such as Celan, Wallace Stevens, Adrienne Rich, Giovanni Pascoli and Giorgio Caproni because they are all poets who sought directly to enter into the struggle with oppression that takes place within language. They illuminate the tensions present within the failures of representation in a profound manner. The path this study of poetic struggle against oppression and representation takes is one that links these tensions with various contemporary continental thinkers whose work continues to highlight the vast philosophical and theological stakes at play within these poetic endeavors. There has been much philosophical speculation on the potential failure of language as well as the search for a presentation of the “thing itself” beyond representation. Here, the book pursues the writings of a trio of philosophers, Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Giorgio Agamben—very much in that order—as prime examples of how modern poetry presents us with a profitable vantage point from which to survey these ongoing struggles of living in a highly fragmented (post)modern world. Alongside these thinkers, this book looks specifically at the form of ‘spirituality’ that is given shape by this intersecting of poetics and theological-philosophical reflection. Such a focal point takes shape in the author’s reflections on how poets’ and philosophers’ understanding of poetics and religious identity were offering rich suggestions about our “spiritual” nature.
Introduction
Authors: Dickinson Colby
Published: May 2017

This chapter introduces The Spiritual and Creative Failures of Representation: On Poetry, Theology and the Potential of the Human Being with a passage from Paul Celan’s Atemwende. In doing so, the intimate link between language and oppression, vast and complicated as it may be, and tangled up with movements of fear and structural injustice, are placed in front of the reader, introducing them to the occasion of reflection that this book will dwell within. Its trajectory is forecast in the summary of chapters, wherein the path is mapped ahead of time, from Derrida’s reworking of the “as if,” through the challenges of failure in the face of the theo-political, and wonders in the shadow of Agamben’s “atheology,” before entreating us to rest not in our failed representations, but precisely in that place in which all representations fail.
Hegel and Kierkegaard
Authors: Wahl Jean
Published: May 2017

First presented at the third Hegel Congress in 1933, Wahl here explores the relations between Hegel and Kierkegaard, showing both their opposition and what they share in the midst of the dissimilarities that remain. From here, Wahl moves on to follow the study of the Kierkegaard-Hegel opposition in the existential philosophy of present-day Germany, paying particular attention to Heidegger and Jaspers.
Creolizing Cosmopolitics
Authors: Yountae An
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the possibility of using the reconceptualized notion of groundless ground as a new framework from which to envision a new form of self, of thinking and inhabiting the world, differently. A comparative reading of Glissant’s poetic, a poetic of resistance he calls “forced poetic,” and of continental philosophers’ theopoetic (Derrida, Caputo, Kearney, Keller), suggests the poetic as an epistemological alternative and political instrument that enables the possibility of an open cosmopolitical future and a relational self, born in the wombs of pain and trauma.
Messianic Eschatology, or The Production of Ultimate Events of Being
Authors: Moati Raoul , Wyche Daniel
Published: May 2017

The first chapter argues that totalization cannot saturate the crucial, ultimate events of being and that the full deployment of being implies a suspension of the historical order of war.
The Terrestrial Condition
Authors: Moati Raoul , Wyche Daniel
Published: May 2017

Chapter 4 explores Levinas’s critique of Heidegger and Sartre’s conceptions of the Being-thrown.
Introduction: After the Controversy
Authors: Balibar Étienne
Published: May 2017

This introductory chapter traces the evolution of the various hypotheses concerning the upheavals that modernity has produced in the field of philosophical anthropology, as collected in this volume. It credits the formation of this book to its initial conception as a response to a question raised by Jean-Luc Nancy—“Who comes after the subject?” The chapter also summarizes the contents of the book in brief—breaking it down into three paths which help to interrogate the utterances of the subject of philosophy (autoreference, community, judgment)—and provides an overview into the theoretical approaches that inform the studies conducted in the following chapters.
Aimances in Rousseau: Julie or The New Heloise as Treatise on the Passions
Authors: Balibar Étienne
Published: May 2017

This chapter looks at how writing and theory are superimposed in Rosseau's novel, Julie or the New Heloise. Drawing upon two of Paul de Man's readings of the novel in his Allegories of Reading, the chapter embarks on a discussion regarding passion, which is generally considered to hold the philosophical key to the novel, by deriving from two assertions. The first is that that “passion is not something which, like the senses, belongs in proper to an entity or a subject but, like music, it is a system of relationships that exists only in the terms of this system;” it is a relational notion. De Man's second assertion defines the literary category of allegory as a “narrative of the second degree,” which includes the deconstruction of its own immediate, apparently realistic signification.
From Sense Certainty to the Law of Genre: Hegel, Benveniste, Derrida
Authors: Balibar Étienne
Published: May 2017

This chapter attempts to bring the reading and discussion of Derrida in relation with other texts, and other heritages, in order to illustrate how his manner of philosophizing has transformed our understanding of certain fundamental problems. It sketches a series of rereadings, beginning with the famous first chapter of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, “Sense Certainty.” Relating the Hegelian text to various texts by Derrida—passages from The Post Card, Parages, and Monolingualism of the Other—this chapter shows that, taken together, in their dispersion and their kinship, these texts form what might be called “Derrida's sense certainty.” Between Hegel and Derrida, however, a further mediation is necessary: that provided by Émile Benveniste's 1970 essay, entitled “The Formal Apparatus of Enunciation.”
The Messianic Moment in Marx
Authors: Balibar Étienne
Published: May 2017

This chapter reexamines a recurring question in interpretations of Marx: “What is the relationship between his concept of politics and religious (or theological) discourse?” Here, the chapter focuses mainly upon a single text: the article, entitled “Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung,” that Marx published in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher in March 1844. For the first time, in this text, Marx uses the name “proletariat.” Hence, this chapter shows that, read to the letter and placed within its proper context, this text represents the “messianic moment” in Marx's thought, and it makes it possible to examine the permanence and the metamorphoses of this dimension throughout his work.
Zur Sache Selbst: The Common and the Universal in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Authors: Balibar Étienne
Published: May 2017

This chapter outlines a structural interpretation of the Hegelian statement, “Tun aller und jeder,” or TAJ, and its function within Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, in order to pave the way for a better understanding of what at the heart of the “system,” and sometimes against it, constitutes the irreducible singularity of this work. At the same time the chapter also considers the debates surrounding interpretations of Hegel's work. The expression das Tun aller und jeder occurs at the end of Chapter V, Section C, §a (“The spiritual animal kingdom and deceit, or the 'matter in hand' itself”), and it is almost immediately taken up again in the Introduction to Chapter VI (“Spirit,” der Geist).
The Social Contract Among Commodities: Marx and the Subject of Exchange
Authors: Balibar Étienne
Published: May 2017

This chapter unfolds the moments of a Marxist critical construction of the universal. From the first, Marx's theory of commodity and money fetishism formed one of the most admired and contested aspects of his “critique” of political economy. In an astonishing fashion, it restores the correlation of sovereignty and subjection to the heart of the modern “social relation” that appears to herald the triumph of free individuality. To this end, it was necessary conceptually to reinscribe the classical schema of the “contract” into the representative and practical space of commodity exchange, whose immediacy he explodes by showing its latent metaphysics, which is also an anthropology and a politics.
Judging Self and Others: On the Political Theory of Reflexive Individualism
Authors: Balibar Étienne
Published: May 2017

This chapter attempts another rereading of classical texts in order to rethink the question of “responsibility” for actions as an agency of the individualization of the subject, and next to characterize the democratic function of the “faculty of judgment.” It begins with the Greek idea of the citizen capable of judging, as referenced from Aristotle's Politics, Book III. The chapter then turns to a discussion of what this texxt refers to as “reflexive individualism”—the other face what has been called “possessive individualism.” Finally, after addressing the citizen's competence the chapter turns to their relative incompetence—after the foundation of reflexive individualism, the chapter observes its limitation in the form of a judiciary that is essentially a social institution.
Heidelberg, February 5, 1988
Authors: Derrida Jacques , Gadamer Hans-Georg , Lacoue-Labarthe Philippe
Published: May 2017

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Jacques Derrida, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe speak individually and in turn on the question of Heidegger’s politics in relation to his philosophy, as well as in relation to the then recent controversy provoked in the French press by the publication of Heidegger and Nazism by Victor Farias. Gadamer recounts his experience as Heidegger’s student and then colleague, the responses of those around him to Heidegger’s involvement in Nazi party politics, and his own discovery of Derrida’s work beginning in the 1960s. Derrida speaks of the mediatized nature of the public event itself, the necessity not to be totalitarian in discussing Heidegger’s compromise with totalitarianism, the heritage of Heidegger in France, and the broader question of responsibility. Lacoue-Labarthe lays out the ethical questions at stake for him in the debate, as well as the elements of the French intellectual scene that provide the ground for the controversy, proposing finally the possibility that a certain reading of Heidegger might, paradoxically, provide access to the true nature of Nazism.
Heidelberg, February 6, 1988
Authors: Derrida Jacques , Gadamer Hans-Georg , Lacoue-Labarthe Philippe
Published: May 2017

The three philosophers gather in a restaurant in Heidelberg to take questions from the public, while members of the press cover the event. The first question concerns the notion of responsibility, which becomes the leading motif of the entire discussion: Heidegger’s responsibility as a thinker who gravely compromised himself politically; his readers’ responsibility with regard to their own deep knowledge of this compromise in relation to other aspects of Heidegger’s work; the responsibility of philosophy itself, both intellectually and ethically. Questions are posed as well on Heidegger’s post-war silence on the Holocaust and his refusal to retract his own statements and actions in favor of Nazism in 1933.
Scenes of Instruction
Authors: Jordan Mark D.
Published: May 2017

This chapter argues that the teaching of ancient philosophical ethics and its early Christian sequels happens mainly not through principles, deductions, or even cases but in persuasive scenes of instruction. These scenes were imitated and enriched by Christian writers on ethics. The scenes seem to disappear in a work like Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, where they are overwritten by the dialectical form of the disputed question. The chapter concludes that this overwriting should be understand in relation to the belated anticipation that characterizes the scene of the Summa itself.
The Good of Reading
Authors: Jordan Mark D.
Published: May 2017

If Thomas Aquinas’s Summa theologiae should be read attentively, the book itself shows that moral formation cannot end with reading. Certainly the Summa was not written to be the object only of expert interpretation. Some of the book’s best readers during the last century understood that truly historical scholarship must allow that the Summa would change lives in the present. If the nouvelle théologie and ressourcement were sometimes contrasted with neo-Thomism, their commitment to engaged reading is one of the best approaches to reading the Summa as a performance of moral teaching.
“Community, Number”
Authors: Nancy Jean-Luc
Published: May 2017

In the first chapter, Nancy addresses concepts of communism, community, and the common, outlining the significance of each of these terms and distinguishing his approach from other attempts to define the relation between these terms. Following a proposal to rethink community in terms of “number” by Jean-Christophe Bailly, the chapter approaches community in terms of “number” or “the numerous.” It is this term that allows one to understand community as a plurality rather than as commonality. The chapter outlines the circumstances in which Blanchot’s The Unavowable Community was written as a response Nancy’s essay “The Inoperative Community.” It also addresses how Blanchot’s response already invited further reflection on his exchange with Nancy, which is then taken up in The Disavowed Community.
Underground Passage: The Mole in Its Burrow
Authors: Szendy Peter
Published: May 2017

A reading of Kafka’s story “The Burrow” which shows that listening means to expose oneself to being listened to.
Exit: J.D.’s Dream
Authors: Szendy Peter
Published: May 2017

A final (and posthumous) homage to Jacques Derrida: the ear of the other is always at the heart of my own ear, which is now always already divided in a “split hearing,” the divided source of all drives toward surveillance.
Introduction
Authors: Rodríguez Matos Jaime
Published: May 2017

The introduction foregrounds the relation of the formless to the fields of thought treated in the book: Latin Americanism, the Cuban Revolution, the question of political representation in connection to philosophical developments concerning time, and the writings of Lezama Lima. The book explores the link between abstract symbolic procedures and various political experiments in giving form to a principle of sovereignty based on the category of the People. It advances the notion of the formless as the limit of modern and contemporary reflections on the meaning of politics. The introduction also begins to outline the philosophical consequences of a formless concept of temporality (also understood in the book as the end of a single hegemonic Time and the end of multiple temporalities, or times) for the critique of metaphysics.
The (Mixed) Times of Revolution
Authors: Rodríguez Matos Jaime
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the role of Christianity in the work of José Lezama Lima as it relates to his engagement with Revolutionary politics. The chapter shows the multiple temporalities that the State wields, and contrasts this thinking on temporality with the Christian apocalyptic vision held by Lezama. The chapter is concerned with highlighting the manner in which Lezama unworks Christianity from within. Yet its aim is not to prove yet again that there is a Christian matrix at the heart of modern revolutionary politics. Rather, it shows the way in which the mixed temporalities of the Revolution, already a deconstruction of the idea of the One, still poses a challenge for contemporary radical thought: how to think through the idea that political change is possible precisely because no politics is absolutely grounded. That Lezama illuminates the difficult question of the lack of political foundations from within the Christian matrix indicates that the problem at hand cannot be reduced to an ever more elusive and radical purge of the theological from the political.
Nihilism: Politics as Highest Value
Authors: Rodríguez Matos Jaime
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores some of the consequences of placing politics in the site of the highest value, a fundamentally theological gesture. The chapter shows to what extent this is the fundamental gesture even in proposals that begin by affirming the contingent, such as the post-foundationalism often associated with Left-Heideggerian thought. The chapter puts forward the proposal that to think the void at the heart of all politics, a void that was the discovery and most important evidence made available by the Age of Revolutions, is far from being the task of reactionary subjects, but is in fact the only way forward when confronting our dire contemporary political situation globally. The chapter also traces the similarities between apparently disparate approaches to politics related to Cuba, all of which share the belief that there is a proper, real and true, politics, which then becomes the standard against which one can measure the deviation of the “nihilist” subject.
Noise
Authors: Crawley Ashon T.
Published: May 2017

This chapter expands upon how noise is generally considered excessive and, thus, discardable. But rather than discarding noise, this chapter discusses a Blackpentecostal practice of living into and elaborating “joyful noise,” as a way of life, as a mode of being together with others in the world. Rather than discarding noise, noise becomes the foundation for otherwise existence, and this as a critique of normative violence. Noise of blackness is a way to exist that is fundamentally against becoming a historical being, a way to exist against participation in History.
Flower and Song
Authors: Padilla Elaine
Published: May 2017

This comparative chapter by Elaine Padilla offers a model of divine creativity by which the cosmos continuously emanates from within God. It draws from the Aztec concept of teotlizing, or the process by which the primordial space begets itself and becomes tangibly as cosmos, and Karl Rahner’s understanding of the divine self-disclosure. Divine creativity is recaptured as the movement toward differentiation of all things in the divine unity, followed by the movement of interweaving by which all differences are brought together into a fragile unity. These ongoing processes tangibly make manifest the mystery of life called “flower and song” in Aztec religion. The comparison urges Rahner’s theology to embrace the creative potential and divine presence in darkness and chaos as well as in light.
Developing Christian Theodicy in Conversation with Navid Kermani
Authors: Stosch Klaus von
Published: May 2017

Klaus von Stosch observes that many Christian theologians today defend some sort of free will theism or open theism. For Armin Kreiner, William Hasker, and others, the answer to the problem of evil is a free will defence, often combined with a natural law defence. They view revelation as personal communication between God and humankind, and God’s purpose with humankind as to establish and to deepen a relationship of mutual love. This essay gives an outline of Hasker’s account of the problem of evil and shows how Christians can learn from the ideas of the Muslim theologian Navid Kermani. Kermani’s notion of revelation is structured aesthetically, and he draws on the terror as well as the love and beauty of God.
Response: Christology in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Nicholson Hugh
Published: May 2017

Hugh Nicholson’s essay first highlights the salient points of the essays by Bidlack and Moyaert. The second part of the essay takes as its point of departure the contextual factors for the development of doctrine highlighted in each essay, to raise the disquieting possibility that polemic is integral to the Christological concepts that sustain Christian identity. It highlights the role of polemic, especially anti-Jewish polemic, at key moments in the development of Christological doctrine, as well as the tendency toward what Nicholson calls “Christological one-upmanship.” Christological development exemplifies a feature of religion more generally, the constitutive role of inter-communal polemic in the development of religious belief.
On Anger
Authors: Williamson Terrion L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter takes up the position of the infamous “angry black woman” by avoiding righteous, revisionist, or reactionary arguments about black women and anger and instead considering black women’s anger as critical posture. The argument neither begins nor ends with the stereotype, but with the supposition that representational discourse has been largely unable to account for anger as an aspect of black female subjectivity. The case is therefore made that anger is inherently bound up with the notion of claim for black women, and accounting for this interaction requires an interrogation into the most intimate of black female spaces. The chapter ultimately turns to a discussion of reality television, Claudia Rankine’s discussion of Serena Williams, and a brief analysis of Toni Morrison’s Sula.
Getting Happy
Authors: Williamson Terrion L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter takes up the position of the prototypically moral good Christian girl-cum-woman. It considers what the correspondence between morality and immorality reveals about the constraints under which sexuality is often put in the black Christian church by way of, first, an interview conducted between former gospel artist Tonéx and Christian talk show host Lexi Allen in which Tonéx effectively outed himself, and, second, “No More Sheets,” a recorded sermon of popular televangelist Juanita Bynum.
Baby Mama
Authors: Williamson Terrion L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter uses the ubiquitous “baby mama” to discuss what Lindon Barrett calls “bla(n)ckness”—a concept that radically calls into question traditional discourses by exposing the violence that often sets those discourses into motion and by revealing alternative discourses that resist the dichotomization upon which dominance, and dominate discourses, often rely. It argues that not only have social scientists found the link between poverty and unwed pregnancy that has long structured national debates about single black mothers to have been fatefully misinterpreted, but that young black mothers themselves evince the faulty logic upon which these debates so heavily rely.
In the Life
Authors: Williamson Terrion L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter discusses the case of eight black women who were the victims of a serial murderer between July 2003 and October 2004 in Peoria, Illinois. It begins with an analysis of the Don Imus incident of 2007, in which the “shock jock” referred to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos,” in order to foreground the unwitting alliance between discrimination and liberalism at the level of representational discourse, and to suggest how black women in the life expose the limitations of a social order conditioned by value.
Afterword
Authors: Williamson Terrion L.
Published: May 2017

The conclusion ends with a personal narrative that is tied to the narrative that opens the book. It contends that “home” is an inaugural space of black feminist practice, and that because of the significance of home, which extends beyond the immediate and relational to the extended and communal, as a site of analysis, reckoning with it is an important endeavor in theorizing blackness and black social life.
The Impact of Accounting on Environmental Costs to Improve the Quality of Accounting Information in the Jordanian Industrial Companies
Authors: Alqotaish Atalla M. , Qatawneh Adel M.
Published: May 2017

The Impact of Accounting of Environmental Costs to Improve the Quality of Accounting Information in the Jordanian Industrial Companies is a study aimed to explore the importance of accounting on environmental cost in the improve of the quality of accounting information. Data were collected through from the Jordanian companies and a questionnaire distributed among the workers of offices and departments of accounting in the industrial companies listed in Jordan stock market. The study came up with the following findings: The study has shown that there exists a significant statistical relationship between the size of environmentally-related accounting disclosure of information for publicly owned companies and the adequacy of financial listing of such companies. The study has shown that there exists a significant statistical relationship between Investors decisions and the information provided by the collective performance disclosure. As per the study results, we recommend the following: The necessity of accountants' obligation towards environmentally-related auditing information provided with the financial reports, and the necessity of emphasizing on information importance as provided by the environmentally-related collective performance.
Social Media in Food and Beverages Industry: Case of Klang Valley, Malaysia
Authors: Perumal Ilangovan , Devi Krisnan Uma , Abdul Halim Nur Syahirah Binti
Published: May 2017

Social media marketing plays an important role for the food and beverages industry either new or existing companies. The main objective of this study is to determine the factors influencing the usage of social media as a marketing medium in the food and beverage industry. The study was conducted to test the research question and hypotheses. Data was gathered from quantitative research methods. This research investigate the factors influencing the usage of social media as a marketing media in the food and beverage industry. A total of 198 respondents were participated in this research. Questionnaire has been used to collect the information from respondents to measurement and quantify the respondent’s response with the help of 5 point Likert scale (which indicate 1 = strongly disagree, to 5 = strongly agree). Data collected was analyzed using Pearson Correlation Coefficient and Multiple Regression Analysis. Result shows two of the independent variables; brand awareness and customer acquisition and retention have positive significant value and strong relationship with the dependent variable, the other two independent variables; information platform and feedback have negative significant value relationship with the dependent variable.
Risk Management and Forecasting Macro-Variables Influences on Bank Risk
Authors: Valipour Hashem , Sohouli Vahed Mostafa
Published: May 2017

Nowadays banks, as the most important component ofmoney market, are playing a very important role in country’s economy. By developing money markets, banking and financial institutes’ activities it is extensively developed and with no doubts economic development is not possible without considering the role of banking and money markets. By virtue of special and sensitive role of banks in Iran economic system, any shock, disturbances and/or ineffectiveness in economic systems directly effect on banks’ and financial institutes’ performance as well as phenomenon such as high inflation and/or price shocks and fluctuations in other markets such as currencies shall directly and indirectly effect on banks’ risk and profitability. Hence in this paper the effects of economic macro variables on capital adequacy, liquidity risk and credit risk of banks have been reviewed. The results show that there is a positive and significant relationship between gross domestic product (GDP), petroleum revenue, and exchange rate oncapital adequacy of banks. But the effects of liquidity and inflation on capital adequacy of banks are negative and significant which means it causes decreasing of capital adequacy of banks. Increasing in the variables of petroleum revenue, liquidity and inflation result in increasing of liquidity risk and vice versa the increasing in variables of GDP and exchange rate decreased the liquidity risk. Petroleum revenue, liquidity and inflation increments cause increasing in banks’ credit risk as well as GDP and exchange rate increments result in decreasing in banks’ credit risk.
A Review of Critical Success Factors Which Drives the Performance of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises
Authors: Mabhungu Isaac , Van Der Poll Breggie
Published: May 2017

The survival of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) depends on their ability to effectively manage the factors that affect their performance. The study identifies through literature review, the various factors that may be critical to the success of MSMEs in the retail sector, and therefore enhance their survival. Identification of Critical Success Factors (CSFs) is important in that it may bring to the attention of MSMEs those CSFs which need to be focused on in order to operate in a profitable and sustainable manner. Owner/manager commitment, employee commitment, business planning, innovation, management of costs, customers, suppliers, information, revenue, competitors, sources of finance, enterprise’s pool of resources and conformance to regulations were identified as some of the CSFs which influence the success and survival of MSMEs. The study is informed and guided by the stakeholder theory. The research lays a foundation for future study on performance measurement framework for MSMEs in the retail sector.
Entrepreneurial Creativity: Sources, Processes and Implications
Authors: Della Corte Valentina , Del Gaudio Giovanna
Published: May 2017

Literature on entrepreneurial creativity has been widely developed in the last decades, with attention both to the process and to its origins and antecedents. The aim of this paper is to systematize the literature on the topic, in order to better clarify the concept of entrepreneurial creativity in its main features and components.The issue still shows rather fragmented contributions on the concept of entrepreneurial creativity in different disciplines, within a very complex multidimensional construct. Therefore, we propose a literature review whose main purpose is to get to an overview of the state-of-art on entrepreneurial creativity and to identify still unanswered issues within this stream of research.
Self-efficacy and Motivations among Saudi Employees toward Creating their Own Business
Authors: Alessa Adlah
Published: May 2017

Saudi Arabia has a unique culture and society, which has influence on the way entrepreneurship is perceived and experienced. The survey of Saudi Arabian employees suggested that men tended to have a greater interest in entrepreneurship and more often wanted to quit their job in order to start a business. Male employees also had greater levels of self-efficacy towards starting a business. The study provides new empirical and comparative evidence drawn from diverse parts of Saudi society. In so doing, the study contributes new knowledge with regards to how Saudi Arabian society, culture, policies and the economy influence attitudes, perceptions and experiences of entrepreneurship.
The Effectiveness of a Multi-Dimensional Teaching Strategy on Students’ Attitudes and Level of Learned-Helplessness
Authors: Eldowah Amal M. , Alnajashi Sumyah A.
Published: May 2017

Background: Learned helplessness can become a persistent problem that develops in response to a student’s lack of confidence and frustration with a certain course of study.Aims: This study examined the effects that a teaching strategy that was designed to trigger intrinsic motivation components had on students’ attitudes toward an unpopular scientific subject and students’ learned helplessness as a general characteristic.Sample: The participants consisted of 157 female undergraduate students.Method: A teaching strategy that consisted of multi-dimensional intrinsic motivation components was delivered to one neuropsychology class of students, while a second class was taught exactly the same concepts via a traditional lecturing strategy. Two dependent variables were assessed: Attitude toward the neuropsychology course and learned helplessness. The self-rating scales were administered twice: Once at the beginning of the course and once at the end. An analysis of variance ANCOVA was used to compare the results of the two groups of students.Results: The performance of the students in the experimental group was higher than that of students in the control group in terms of course grades. Furthermore, these students exhibited a more positive attitude to neuropsychology than the students in the control group. Learned helplessness decreased in the experimental group, and this was indicative of the fact that the new teaching strategy had a positive effect on motivational levels.Conclusion: A teaching method that incorporates the components of intrinsic motivation can enhance students’ performance on a specific course and can improve their attitude toward completing that course.
Impact of Soil Fertility Improving Trees on Crop Productivity and Farmer Wealth in Zambia
Authors: Kuntashula Elias
Published: May 2017

There has been low uptake of soil fertility improving tree technologies that have been promoted as alternatives to the costly inorganic fertiliser among the poor resource farmers of Sub Saharan Africa. This is surprising given that the majority of smallholder farmers cannot afford inorganic fertilisers. Are these technologies effective? Using data collected in 2013 from 1,231 households across six districts of Zambia, this study showed that the tree technologies increased maize productivity. However, increases in maize productivity were less than those obtained from controlled on-station and field experiments where the technologies could double or more than double maize productivity according to literature. The technologies capacity to marginally contribute to wealth creation was confirmed. Socioeconomic constraints including labour, information access, land and credit need to be tackled for the technologies to give maximum benefits. Research on fertiliser trees should therefore be redirected towards the discovery of such resource constraints saving technologies.
Analytical Methods in Tracing Honey Authenticity
Authors: Trifković Jelena , Andrić Filip , Ristivojević Petar , Guzelmeric Etil , Yesilada Erdem
Published: May 2017

Honey is a precious natural product that is marketed with a wide range of nutritional and medicinal properties. However, it is also a product subjected to frequent adulteration through mislabeling and mixing with cheaper and lower-quality honeys and various sugar syrups. In that sense, honey authentication regarding its genuine botanical and geographical origins, as well as the detection of any adulteration, is essential in order to protect consumer health and to avoid competition that could create a destabilized market. Various analytical techniques have been developed to detect adulterations in honey, including measuring the ratios of stable isotopes (mostly 13C/12C) and the use of different spectroscopic, chromatographic, and electrochemical methods. This review aims to provide a cross-section of contemporary analytical methods used for the determination of honey authenticity in order to help the scientific community engaged in the field of honey chemistry make appropriate choices and select the best applications that should lead to improvements in the detection and elimination of fraudulent practices in honey manufacturing.
Physicochemical Parameters as a Tool for the Assessment of Origin of Honey
Authors: Lazarević Kristina B , Jovetić Milica S , Tešić Živoslav Lj
Published: May 2017

Honey is a complex mixture of various substances, and its composition depends on both botanical and geographical origin, as well as anthropogenic factors. The accurate identification of honey origin guarantees the satisfaction of consumers' needs and has an impact on the honey market value. Physicochemical parameters, some of which are used in routine analysis of honey quality, could be useful for the assessment of its origin. In this review, special attention is paid to those studies that assessed the sugar and mineral composition of honey, whether they were investigated in terms of botanical or geographical origin, or for the characterization of honey type. The oligosaccharides present in honey and the electrical conductivity of honey correlate strongly with its botanical origin. Mineral content could be indicative for distinguishing honeys according to their botanical and geographical origins because it depends on both the soil composition and the floral type of melliferous plants. This review provides insight into the results obtained by various studies from approximately the last 10 years concerning the sugar profile and the mineral and trace element content of different types of honey. An attempt was made to statistically analyze the results regarding mineral and trace element content in order to identify indicators that could distinguish honey by origin.
Polyphenols as Possible Markers of Botanical Origin of Honey
Authors: Gašić Uroš M , Milojković-Opsenica Dušanka M , Tešić Živoslav Lj
Published: May 2017

In recent years, the botanical and geographical origin of food has become an important topic in the context of food quality and safety, as well as consumer protection, in accordance with international standards. Finding chemical markers, especially phytochemicals, characteristic for some kind of food is the subject of interest of a significant number of researchers in the world. This paper is focused on the use of polyphenols as potential markers for the determination of botanical origin of honey. It includes a review of the polyphenols present in various honey samples and the methods for their separation and identification. Special emphasis in this paper is placed on the identification of honey polyphenols using advanced LC-MS techniques in order to find specific markers of botanical origin of honey. In this regard, this study gives an overview of the literature that describes the use of LC-MS techniques for the isolation and determination of honey polyphenols. This review focuses on the research performed in the past two decades.
The Middle Horizon
Authors: Conlee Christina A.
Published: May 2017

Across the Andes major changes occurred in the Middle Horizon (A.D. 650–1000) as the highland Wari and Tiwanaku states exerted their influence over a large region. The people of the Nasca drainage, like many groups, experienced major shifts in settlements and sociopolitical organization, which is the focus of this chapter. Interactions and entanglements between Wari and Nasca people are examined throughout the region and at the site. At La Tiza there was a small residential area and an extensive area of mausoleums where elites were buried. The new mortuary practices indicate the development of new elite kin groups tied to the Wari state. Foreigners were found at the site in this period and buried in the tombs. The chapter also discusses the collapse of Wari and the abandonment of the Nasca region.
Variation and Change in Archaic States
Authors: Feinman Gary M.
Published: May 2017

Humans cooperate in social networks that are larger, more complex, and generally exhibit greater diversity than those of other mammals. Though the behaviors and social mechanisms that sustain these often multigenerational arrangements remain incompletely understood, ritual has been proposed as one important factor that contributes to the resilience and reproduction of human social formations. Underpinned by recent interdisciplinary and comparative analyses of ritual and cooperation, the diversity of human ritual practice during the preindustrial past is considered in this chapter with a focus on archaic (preindustrial) states. Concepts for framing variation and change in ritual practice are advanced with particular consideration given to the axes of scale and modes of cooperation.
Same, Same, but Different
Authors: Murphy Joanne M. A.
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores how two contemporary and culturally related archaic states, Pylos and Mycenae, manipulated ritual to communicate and create status. By exploring the evidence for rituals in these two Greek Bronze Age states, I illustrate that although each was using ritual to express and confirm the elevated status and identities of their elites, both states used different types of ritual to achieve this. In the final periods of the palace’s use, Pylos’s architectural similarity to Mycenae increased, yet it began to differ in its use and location of ritual. As the state of Pylos grew in size, status, and power, it deemphasized burial rituals in favor of palace-based rituals, such as feasting and the making of sacrifices in the palace’s most elaborately decorated room. By contrast, Mycenae continued to invest significant labor and wealth in its burials while also reserving areas such as the cult center for ritual use and for conducting large-scale feasts. Chapter 3 highlights the need for and value of detailed contextual analysis of individual states in any society in order to clarify the reasons behind their similarities and differences.
Rituals and Ceremonies at the Mycenaean Cemetery at Dendra
Authors: Schallin Ann-Louise
Published: May 2017

Chapter 4 focuses on the ritual practices connected with the burials at the Late Bronze Age cemetery at Dendra in the Argolid in Greece, ca. 1600–1100 B.C. During this time, the central Argolid became an archaic state with a pronounced site hierarchy, with Mycenae at the top. In the settling process of this power structure, the various practices, including mortuary ritual, were characterized by competition and the negotiation of sociopolitical positions. Part of the material evidence connected with mortuary practices at the Dendra site and its surrounds is used in Schallin’s analysis of the components of the rituals as she proposes a possible scenario of how the burial practices were materialized at Dendra and how they can be seen as a constituent part in the strategies of elite legitimation. In short, Schallin examines material evidence to identify various components in the mortuary ritual at the Dendra cemetery while suggesting how this ritual linked with the network-type political system at Mycenae.
Chetumal Bay in the Fifteenth to Seventeenth Centuries
Authors: Oland Maxine
Published: May 2017

Spanish documents imply that the Chetumal Bay region acted as a unified force to resist European colonization, yet archaeological data suggest that the experience of the Maya during the fifteenth to the seventeenth century (Late Postclassic through Colonial periods) was highly localized. Some communities, such as at Caye Coco on Progresso Lagoon, were in a state of unstable transition when the Spanish appeared. Their arrival elicited a variety of actions and reactions as local communities attempted to adapt to indirect colonial rule, and these settlements experienced differential rates of colonial control and conversion. In this chapter, the distinct experiences of three indigenous communities at Lamanai, Santa Rita Corozal, and the west shore of Progresso Lagoon are examined.
An Expedient Pottery Technology and Its Implications for Ancient Maya Trade and Interaction
Authors: Aimers James , Haussner Elizabeth , Farthing Dori , Murata Satoru
Published: May 2017

This chapter considers one of the crudest types of pottery ever produced by the ancient Maya, Coconut Walk Plain, a ware that has been interpreted to have been used in evaporative salt production along coastal lagoons and on Ambergris Caye in Belize. A series of similar types, including Rio Juan Unslipped, spans the Preclassic to the Postclassic periods, linking the long-lived salt trade to coastal communities such as Marco Gonzalez. The authors use recent advances in ceramic petrography to identify an imported temper in these poorly made wares that seems counterintuitive for an expedient pottery vessel. Their research suggests that coastal communities considered the entire bay area as a local resource procurement zone because canoe transport was readily available to procure distant resources.