bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Fields, Trajectories, and Symbolic Power
Authors: Gadinger Frank
Published: June 2023

This chapter demonstrates how Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology can address challenges in research of polycentric governing, such as the blurring of geographical scales, the ambiguous relationship between private and public sectors, and the fluid constructions of authority. Bourdieu’s practice-oriented approach is analytically promising in methodological and conceptual terms. By taking practices as a main methodological entry-point, his account allows researchers to use everyday activities of governing—such as negotiating, mandating a group of experts, and defining benchmarks—as a key to understand social order and change. Regarding concepts, Bourdieu’s vocabulary, particularly his notion of field, provides useful tools to study governing from a relational point of view, which overcomes explanations stuck in an agent-structure dichotomy. Following Bourdieu, a description of emerging trans-scalar and trans-sectoral fields—e.g. of security, human rights, and finance—focuses on knowledge structures, power relations, and practices of in- and exclusion, always in their particular trajectories and histories. Bourdieu’s account addresses power relations comprehensively, allowing for the study of different facets of power that are at work simultaneously. In Bourdieu’s vocabulary, power, legitimacy, and techniques are interrelated, with power as the driving forces that constitutes the means for a wider analysis of domination in distinct fields. However, this strong emphasis on symbolic power and domination implies that the normative dimension of practices and opportunities of reflexivity and critical agency are downplayed. The chapter illustrates these points empirically with reference to different Bourdieu-oriented research examples around security, trade, and health.
Conclusion
Authors: Gadinger Frank , Scholte Jan Aart
Published: June 2023

This concluding chapter draws together general findings from the preceding chapters on ‘how governing works today’. We reflect on the benefits of our fourfold classification of theories of contemporary governing and their accounts of techniques, power, and legitimacy: how this analytical framework fosters revealing comparisons, constructive exchanges, and the further development of the various approaches. We also pause to consider possible limitations, including neglect of history and unconscious Euro-centrism, as several chapters in the book have highlighted. Moving beyond theory, the concluding chapter considers broader insights from the book’s interdisciplinary and cross-paradigm conversation regarding political practice, including in particular democratic accountability and the possibilities of resistance. We finish with suggestions for further research that can build on the agenda developed in this volume.
International Law and Sea-Dumped Chemical Weapons
Authors: Dawson Grant
Published: June 2023

The purpose of this book is to wrestle with a mistake from humanity’s collective past that is currently impacting our precious marine environment. Following the two world wars of the twentieth century, governments decided to dispose of unwanted chemical weapons into the Ocean of the world. As the issue of sea-dumped chemical weapons is quintessentially transboundary in nature, we will all have to deal with the adverse effects of those chemical weapons on our fragile planetary ecosystem. The book contains a systematic conceptual analysis of the international legal frameworks governing the remediation of sea-dumped chemical weapons. Where deficiencies are found in the law, legal solutions are offered. In addition, practical approaches to the problem are explored. But it is difficult to pursue any solution in the absence of a holistic awareness—and acceptance—of how our past actions have damaged our ecosystem or in the absence of the will to urgently do something about it. It is high time for us to come to grips with the environmental legacy of past dumping of chemical weapons into the Ocean. The intention of the present book is to identify and analyse the problem, offer guidance, and provide hope to both ourselves and succeeding generations so that we can tackle and solve the problem of sea-dumped chemical weapons and restore the balance of the ecosystem that we share with the other creatures of the planet.
The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Its Potential Applicability to Sea-Dumped Chemical Weapons, and Its Conceptual Legal Relationship to the Chemical Weapons Convention
Authors: Dawson Grant
Published: June 2023

An examination of the law of the sea is essential to understanding the past and present legal frameworks that apply to sea-dumped chemical weapons. UNCLOS is a significant source of relevant rules of international law in the relation of the legal obligations of states parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention—especially in relation to UNCLOS’s provisions that are dedicated to preserving and protecting the marine environment. There are a number of inconsistencies both within the Chemical Weapons Convention and when that Convention is compared to UNCLOS. These four areas of inconsistency are as follows: the dissonance of the Chemical Weapons Convention’s pre-1985 exemption for sea-dumped chemical weapons with the marine protection provisions of UNCLOS, the dissonance of the exemption with the progression of international environmental law, the dissonance caused by the exemption as an impermissible inter se agreement subsequent to UNCLOS, and the dissonance within the text of the exemption itself. There is a distinct lacuna in the legislative history of the Chemical Weapons Convention with respect to the origin of the pre-1985 exemption for sea-dumped chemical weapons, which appears to have been added late in the negotiation process, with no recorded discussion among the states that could otherwise have shed light upon what states intended when they included this environmentally deleterious exemption into an otherwise environmentally robust treaty.
The Applicability of Other Legal Instruments to the Remediation of Sea-Dumped Chemical Weapons
Authors: Dawson Grant
Published: June 2023

There are other legal instruments that apply (or not) to the remediation of sea-dumped chemical weapons. The London Convention and Protocol do not expressly require state action to remedy environmental damage from past dumping, although they, like UNCLOS, can be interpreted to obligate such cleanup. The Basel Convention regulates the movement and transport of chemical weapons, but does not require states to clean up the environmental damage that is currently being caused by chemical weapons that were dumped in the past. There is potential for regional seas conventions to serve as leges speciales to the environmental protection legal regimes of UNCLOS in relation to sea-dumped chemical weapons. Many of these regional schemes consist of more robust marine protection provisions that could obligate states to undertake positive remediation measures.
A Time in Place, a Place in Time
Authors: Hindle Steve
Published: June 2023

Provides a historiographical framework for the study of the early modern English rural community and argues that the spatiality of social relations has been neglected in previous studies of social and economic differentiation; describes the unique body of source material which survives for the analysis of the Warwickshire parish of Chilvers Coton, and briefly summarizes its geographical, topographical, demographic, occupational, and jurisdictional characteristics; explains the methodological approach of spatially sensitive nominal record linkage and justifies the selection of the thirteen households which form the basis of the study; explains that this reconstruction captures a specific rural community at a particularly important moment in its historical development but argues that the experience of Chilvers Coton was only one membrane on a broader map of social and economic transformation; notes that the project has a literary afterlife in that George Eliot was born in Chilvers Coton in 1819 and that much of her fiction is anchored in this part of the Warwickshire landscape. Above all, the chapter justifies the micro-historical approach to the experience of social and change.
The Alehouse in the Bull Ring
Authors: Hindle Steve
Published: June 2023

A study of the victualler Frances Rason, the widowed owner of the village’s only alehouse; emphasizes the long history of brewing and hospitality in this particular building and discusses her working relationship with her late husband and father-in-law who had been licensed to sell ale on the premises since the 1640s; stresses the significance of this particular site of sociability and exchange, not least because the village had no shop; identifies the likely client-base of the alehouse and uses the extant probate inventory to reconstruct the use of space, the disposition of material goods, and the exercise of hospitality within the building; reconstructs the relationship between the landlady and her only maidservant, and closes with Rason’s death in 1685 and the subsequent sale of the alehouse property.
Temple House at Lutman’s End
Authors: Hindle Steve
Published: June 2023

A study of the husbandman Henry King who rented one of the five ancient farmsteads in Chilvers Coton; discusses the precarious fortunes of middling farmers in the parish, especially at a time of static and falling prices; analyses the terms of his lease, placing its provisions in the context of leasehold agreements across the parish, which were becoming much more common in the late seventeenth century; discusses King’s fraught relationship with his landlord and the negotiations through which he was persuaded to stay at Temple House at a time when many other tenants were either abrogating or failing to renew their leases; explains the motivation for enclosing part of the waste of Coton Outwoods immediately adjacent to Temple House, and King’s role as a tenant to the new allotment; notes his sudden death in 1695 and uses his inventory to characterize the household economy and material culture of the King family, in which spinning and dairying seem to have loomed large; notes that Temple House had long been a site for negotiations over common right in the parish, and concludes by briefly discussing the discussions that took place there in the early 1760s as plans were being made for the parliamentary enclosure of the common fields and the waste in the parish.
Space, Place, and Flow
Authors: Hindle Steve
Published: June 2023

Characterizes Chilvers Coton as a rural community, emphasizing the structures which unified it, but noting its increasing submersion in the regional economy of north-east Warwickshire in particular and the midlands in general; discusses the incorporation of the local economy into wider markets for goods and labour; notes the ambiguity that although the community increasingly came to resemble an estate village with a single dominant landlord, its taskscape became dominated by the silk-weaving industry which lay beyond Newdigate control; compares the census of 1684 with another listing of residents and occupations drawn up in 1781, noting the contraction in agriculture and coalmining activity, but the significant expansion of ribbon manufacture; emphasizes the significance of economic change for the generation of inhabitants that lived c.1650 to 1725 and argues that, in contributing to and accommodating these transformations, these ‘unremarkable’ people made their own history in their own terms.
“Nobody, I Myself”
Authors: Shortslef Emily
Published: June 2023

This chapter links Othello’s complicated relationship to the didactic moral warning against interracial marriage foregrounded in its source text to the play’s formal experimentation with deathbed complaint. In the early modern domestic tragedies whose tropes and conventional plotlines inform Othello, the deathbed complaint—spoken by a character who professes their unhappiness and repents the actions that have brought them to this unhappy state—is the privileged rhetorical form for validating the ideological “happiness script” that shapes the play. Desdemona’s deathbed complaint, however, is markedly different, not only in its content but in its form. Tracing the formal fragmentation and distribution of the parts of the deathbed complaint throughout the last act of the play, the chapter suggests that Othello relinquishes its own ethical authority with regard to its informing happiness script and puts the burden of ethical judgment on the interpretive labor of audiences.
Introduction
Authors: Harris Amy
Published: June 2023

What did family life look like from the vantage point of unmarried and childless family members? The experience of eight Sharp siblings reveals previously under-examined aspects of Georgian family life. Being unmarried did not render someone family-less. Despite the geographic distance between them, the Sharps were, as brother John once remarked, “remarkable for unanimity.” Their records show a family spread over Durham, Northumberland, Northamptonshire, and London, yet bound tightly together through correspondence, shared finances, extended visits, support for religious and social benevolence, care for nephew and nieces, and summer holidays spent together. The Sharps’ lived reality was more radical than any of their political or religious positions. Their daily experience was an implicit critique of hierarchal patriarchal household structures. While there were some hierarchies, particularly the unremarked upon one between husband and wives, the most important Sharp power nexus was horizontal, not vertical. Unmarried and married, householders or not, parents or not, no sibling was cast as subordinate while others were cast as autonomous agents; no sibling held control over the purse-strings, thus constraining the others. Ultimately, the Sharps’ experiences uncover how important lateral kin like siblings and cousins were to marital and household decisions, expose single sociability not centered on courtship, highlight the importance of aunting and uncling on their own terms, demonstrate how charitable acts and philanthropic endeavors could serve as outlets or partial replacements for parenthood, and uncover genealogical practices tied to values and identity instead of to biological descendants’ possession of property.
Prehistory
Authors: Harris Amy
Published: June 2023

The Sharp siblings, born in the 1720s and 1730s in northern England, entered a family culture already shaped by relatively congenial parenting practices, grounded in Christian ideals, and built by day-to-day domestic entertainments, such as books, music, and amiable sociality. This chapter describes the seventeenth-century ancestors of the Sharp siblings—the Sharps and Whelers—and examines the marriage and childbearing patterns among them. The account covers how the earlier generations’ marriage rates, fertility problems, and social prosperity shaped the family culture the Sharp siblings inherited. Simultaneously, infant and child mortality influenced material inheritance.
Portrait
Authors: Harris Amy
Published: June 2023

This interlude describes the Sharp family portrait produced by Johan Zoffany in 1779–81. The portrait shows seven of the Sharp siblings, three sisters-in-law, and three nieces on their boat the Apollo anchored at Fulham on the River Thames. Also on board is a variety of musical instruments, some being played by the Sharps. While the painting contains humorous references, its content highlights family relationships built on sibling ties, not marital ties, and it celebrates a sense of shared, equitable household governance.
Introduction
Authors: Hopkins John North , McGill Scott
Published: June 2023

This introductory chapter explores the ways that forgery and related categories of fabrication operate through deception but at the same time have aims and functions that lie beyond deceit. We consider the unique position of forgeries in the historical record: although they and pseudepigrapha, copies, fakes, and related works are not what they seem to be, they remain real texts and objects in their own right, with much to tell us about literary history, art history, and cultural history more broadly. Of particular interest is the way that forgeries and related forms draw on people’s desire for a lacunose ancient past and its valued authority, including the authority of ancient authors, artists, and objects. The outsize role that authorship plays in generating meaning and value in forgeries, we contend, makes these especially productive works for investigating questions of authorial identity and agency. While arguing that the category and idea of the ancient confers value, the chapter also examines the different forms of value that exposed forgeries possess. Throughout the introduction, we explain how the contributors to the volume address all of these issues to establish a coherent framework of discussion. The authors present forgeries in and across time as valuable and authentic works in their own worlds and as highly useful evidence for a wide range of historical and theoretical issues.
‘Corinthian Bronzes’
Authors: Hallett Christopher H.
Published: June 2023

A new type of miniature bronze came into being in the late Hellenistic period. Of exquisite quality, and furnished with their own bases, these figurines were designed to be portable. Many were fashioned in retrospective styles; some even purported to be antiques. Such statuettes are well attested in the ancient literary sources, and are referred to by Roman authors as ‘Corinthian bronzes’. This paper argues that many examples actually survive from antiquity. It also makes the case that these miniatures were sold to wealthy art collectors as originals—‘autograph works’ of the most celebrated Greek sculptors of the past. This explains the staggeringly high prices paid for them. Understood in this way, the craze for ‘Corinthian bronzes’ in the first century bce and the first century ce should be regarded as one of the most successful and artistically important instances of large-scale forgery in the history of western art.
Imperial Greek Atticism: A Culture of Forgery?
Authors: Kim Lawrence
Published: June 2023

This chapter examines the parallels between three activities practiced by Greek intellectuals under the Roman Empire: literary forgery, the detection of such forgeries, and Atticism, that is, the fashionable practice of writing in the long-dead dialect of classical Athens. Through an analysis of the Attic Greek lexicon Selection of Attic Phrases and Words by the late second-century-ce grammarian Phrynichus, I explore three points of contact: (1) the mutual interdependence of the scholarly disciplines of Atticism and Echtheitskritik (authenticity-critique); (2) the overlap of terminology between the terms used in Atticist discourse to describe the words and authors recommended as Attic or censured as not, and those used in discussions of authenticity to denote genuine texts and their spurious/counterfeit counterparts; and (3) the shared ideology in which the ‘best’ Atticists are those who, like forgers, are most capable of using ‘authentic’ words, taken from ‘authentic’ writers, to compose ‘inauthentic’ works that strive to be mistaken for genuine.
The Fluidity of False Coins
Authors: Higbie Carolyn
Published: June 2023

Among the problems of the Roman republic and the empire was a shortage of coins, which impeded transactions, exacerbated political strife, and encouraged counterfeiting. As early as the Social War, Romans had suffered from a shortage of coins and the resulting counterfeits. It proved impossible, despite the efforts of Sulla and several other emperors, to eliminate counterfeiting, which was endemic in Roman’s western provinces and occurred in epidemics throughout the empire. Inconsistency in the manufacture of coins, the variety of coins in circulation, and the effects of circulation on coins made it very difficult to distinguish and remove counterfeits from the market. Romans seem to have regarded coins as objects of practical value only, despite the efforts of emperors to use them as propaganda. Although scholars distinguish three types of coins circulating in the Roman world—genuine, counterfeit, and unofficial/irregular—the evidence suggests there were really only two, genuine and counterfeit.
Forgery and the Desire for the Classical Author in the Pseudo-Ovidian De vetula
Authors: Burek Jacqueline M.
Published: June 2023

This chapter discusses the motives for literary forgery in the thirteenth-century pseudo-Ovidian poem De vetula. It reads the poem as an allegory of forgery, with each character representing a different kind of text: an original classical text, a later medieval copy of that classical text, and eventually, the forgery that pretends to be the genuine work of a classical author. At the literal level, De vetula’s characters participate in a standard fabliau plot. When read allegorically, however, their emotions and actions symbolize medieval audiences’ longing for unmediated access to classical literature, and the lengths to which some writers were willing to go in order to satisfy that desire. Through these characters, the unknown author of De vetula acknowledges forgery’s inherently transgressive nature, while also explaining why an author who recognizes the unethical quality of forgery might nevertheless choose to commit forgery. In this way, this chapter uses the medieval De vetula to reflect more broadly on the reasons for creating forgeries of classical literature.
Is Restoration Forgery?
Authors: Bartman Elizabeth
Published: June 2023

This chapter explores why in the eighteenth century the restoration of sculptures came to have the negative connotations that persist to the present day. Countering the traditional association of restoration with fraud, it argues that restorers were more transparent, professional, and aesthetically driven than is typically acknowledged. In Rome during the eighteenth century, as the scholarly understanding of ancient art grew, restorers achieved greater authenticity in terms of style and iconography. Paradoxically, many collectors and restorers would (and did) argue that restoring lost limbs or heads actually made statues more authentic, as a statue so restored came closer than a fragment to expressing the work’s true character.
Epilogue: Beyond Deceit and Beyond
Authors: Collins Jeffrey
Published: June 2023

This chapter brings the preceding contributions into conversation and situates them within the broader landscape of forgery studies, arguing that the contributors advance these discussions under three complementary headings. The problem of “Defining Forgery” and its kin is engaged by Kenneth Lapatin on ideas of forgery, Carolyn Higbie on Roman coins, Lawrence Kim on literary Atticism in imperial Rome, Irene Peirano Garrison on Roman “pseudepigrapha,” and Sascha Kansteiner on Renaissance repair of Roman sculpture. The necessity of “Locating Forgery” through close contextual analysis is targeted by Christopher Hallett on Corinthian bronzes, Joseph Howley on Roman books, Talia Di Manno on Early Christian relics in the Counter-Reformation, and Elizabeth Bartman on critiques of sculptural restoration in the age of the Grand Tour. The challenge of “Reading Forgery” in light of ambiguous authorship or veracity is addressed by Frederick Clark on post-antique reactions to Dares Phrygius’s Destruction of Troy, Kathryn Langenfeld on the Life of Aurelian, Jacqueline Burek on the medieval pseudo-Ovidian autobiography De vetula, and Sean Alexander Gurd on recent “fictional forgeries” by Armand Schwerner and Pascal Quignard.
At Light Speed
Authors: Nolte David D.
Published: June 2023

“At Light Speed: The Birth of Interferometry” tells how Arago attempted to use Snell’s law to measure the effect of the Earth’s motion through space but found no effect, in contradiction to predictions using Newton’s particle theory of light. Direct measurements of the speed of light were made by Hippolyte Fizeau and Leon Foucault who originally began as collaborators but had a falling-out that turned into an intense competition. Fizeau won priority for the first measurement, but Foucault surpassed him by using the Arago interferometer to measure the speed of light in air and water with increasing accuracy. Jules Jamin later invented one of the first interferometric instruments for use as a refractometer.
Holographic Dreams of Princess Leia
Authors: Nolte David D.
Published: June 2023

“Holographic Dreams of Princess Leia: Crossing Beams” presents the history of holography, beginning with the original ideas of Denis Gabor who invented optical holography as a means to improve the resolution of electron microscopes. Holography became mainstream after the demonstrations by Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks who used lasers after they were invented by Ted Maiman at Hughes Research Lab following suggestions by Charles Townes on the operating principles of the optical maser. Dynamic holography takes place in crystals that exhibit the photorefractive effect that are useful for adaptive interferometry. Holographic display technology currently under development uses ideas of holography merged with light-field displays developed by Gabriel Lippmann.
The Quantum Advantage
Authors: Nolte David D.
Published: June 2023

“The Quantum Advantage: Interferometric Computing” describes the development of quantum algorithms and quantum computing, beginning with the first quantum algorithm invented by David Deutsch as a side effect of his attempt to prove the many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. Peter Shor found a quantum algorithm that could factor the product of primes, threatening all secure communications in the world. Once the usefulness of quantum algorithms was recognized, quantum computing hardware ideas developed rapidly into quantum circuits supported by quantum logic gates. The limitation of optical interactions, that hampered the development of controlled quantum gates, led to the proposal of linear optical quantum computing. Boson sampling, consisting of a complex cascade of single-photon interferometers, has been used to demonstrate quantum supremacy, also known as quantum computational advantage, using photonic integrated circuits.
The Workings of Repetition in Romantic-Period Poetry
Authors: Houghton-Walker Sarah
Published: June 2023

Building on the points about rhyme and repetition established in the previous chapter, this chapter looks at rhythm and form as similarly repetitive aspects of poetry which involve more or less variation from a repeated norm. It reminds the reader of the newly self-conscious attitude to formal questions understood to belong to romantic-period writers. It goes on to consider a range of other ways in which poetry engages with forms of recapitulation and re-reading, sometimes in almost imperceptible ways. Other, more blatant types of recapitulation are also introduced, including types of influence and allusion, and ideas of translation (including ekphrasis and metaphor as forms of translation). The chapter draws on a range of sources to indicate the particular interest of romantic-period writers in these forms of textual repetition.
Conjunctions, Repetition, and Revision
Authors: Houghton-Walker Sarah
Published: June 2023

Thinking about reflection, revision, and second looks, this chapter explores the importance of conjunction both to Wordsworth’s sense of his own development as a poet, and in relation to his ability to produce an appropriately organized, ‘sincere’ poetry, suggesting the model of the rhizome as a way of conceiving this. The chapter raises the idea of redundancy, which haunts ideas of tautology and repetition in language. It considers Wordsworth’s revisionary praxis, and his translation of Chaucer as a specialized form of the same textual revision. It also acknowledges the role of the reader as similarly involved in a process of revision. Special attention is paid to ideas of recollection and reflection, and also to words like ‘still’ and ‘now’ which manage to convey competing senses of immediacy and sequence, as part of an argument about Wordsworth’s attempt to reflect the operation of memory and experience, and the significance of habitual activities, within the texture of his verse.
‘The Thorn’, Tautology, and Tragic Repetition
Authors: Houghton-Walker Sarah
Published: June 2023

This chapter examines Martha Ray as a specifically tragic figure, drawing on the idea of anagnorisis (a specialized form of repetition), or ‘recognition’, to think through the potential which inheres in repetition for sincere expression of the problem of sincere expression itself. The negative contemporary reception of Wordsworth’s ‘The Thorn’ was not appeased by Wordsworth’s addition of the famous ‘Note’ to the text; both note and poem, however, offer commentary on the potential for forms of repetition to be profoundly meaningful. Returning to the poem in a context of tragedy (Aristotelean recognition, as well as Job’s biblical suffering), the chapter dwells on the expressive potentials of tautology in particular.
Coleridge and Repetition
Authors: Houghton-Walker Sarah
Published: June 2023

This chapter attempts to understand Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s interest in forms of recapitulation, both in his philosophical consideration of the operation of the imagination (especially, though not exclusively, in his discussion of desynonymy), and in his interest in novel forms of syllabic prosody. Thinking about Coleridge’s distinction between copies and imitations, it attends to his description of a water-insect as a way of understanding the character of Coleridgean repetition, and its role in recollection and composition. It moves on to discuss specific examples of repetition in Coleridge’s own poetry. The chapter seeks to represent something of the immediate, wider context of Wordsworth’s own interest in repetition, and also to offer an opportunity for comparison of the handling of textual repetitions within poetry from the same period.
Conclusion
Authors: Houghton-Walker Sarah
Published: June 2023

This chapter concludes the book by drawing together the various allusions to Wordsworth’s interest in poetic ‘sincerity’ which have recurred throughout its chapters. It reviews the wider critical attention which has been paid to Wordsworth and sincerity, as well as Wordsworth’s explicit interest in sincerity in the ‘Essays upon Epitaphs’, thinking about some of the difficulties and opportunities that the concept of repetition raises for poets aspiring towards authenticity. It explains the centrality of recapitulation, achieved through a combination of repetitions and the use of conjunctions, to Wordsworth’s own achievement of verse which is as true to lived experience as possible, and thus as sincere as it is possible for writing to be.
Silius Italicus’ Punica
Authors: Stover Tim
Published: June 2023

This chapter seeks to shed new light on Silius Italicus’ epic technique by focusing on the Punica’s allusive interactions with Valerius’ Argonautica. In it the author demonstrates that Silius’ intertextual engagement with Valerius’ poem is more explicit than is often acknowledged and argues that Silius’ stance vis-à-vis Valerius is less antagonistic than other critics see it. The chapter shows that in Book 11 of the Punica Silius highlights Valerius’ Argonautica as an important and respected model. It then demonstrates that Silius frames the Punica as the culmination of the historical process inaugurated in the Argonautica before illustrating how he enriches his poem in various ways by reworking Valerian material.
Rural India and Peasantry in Hindi Stories
Authors: Vanashree
Published: June 2023

Rural India and Peasantry in Hindi Stories: Narratives after Premchand deals with the literary representation of peasant life in a vast expanse of land designated as the Hindi Heartland. Multiple regions in north and central India, that might be placed under this rubric, form a continuum of agrarian culture. Exploring non-canonical rural stories in Hindi, those that have not received the much-deserved attention, this study offers rich resources and possibilities for analysis of the diverse modes of expression of peasant culture—their anguish and hopes, desires, and dreams—in a major geo-cultural zone of India. More than thirty stories that are studied here, in ten chapters, inherit a strong tradition of peasant narratives after Munshi Premchand and engage in serious reflection on an intricate array of messy complications and contingencies the rural populace has experienced since the early decades of independent India through the period of liberalization till the recent decades. Undoubtedly, these stories bring to the fore the diverse subterranean issues as well as visible circumstances: the issues of caste, class, gender, intergenerationality, etc. and urge us to revisit the history and politics of famine and floods, rural education, and deforestation, deepening our interest in the topography of north and central Indian peasantry and the records of rural lives almost as reliable as a sociological survey. This book invites us to include the world of rural India and peasantry in our approaches to the studies of human sciences, thereby remapping their contours.
Land Grab: The Dispossessed in the Spectacles of Jugaad
Authors: Vanashree
Published: June 2023

The varied contexts in several stories of the peasantry’s past and since the 1950 and onwards enable us to understand the adverse repercussions of land reforms like Bhudan, and Chakbandi (Land Ceiling Act) and projects like building dams and canals, meant to liberate the landless and small farmer from many pressures. They initially raised the hope in the magic that the spirit of freedom of India could bring about, but soon turned into grim disappointment. The opening story, in flash back and forth, invokes in the memory vision of Ramjatan, images of nineteenth century colonial India, the legend of a small peasant Chelik who refused to surrender his land for the project Indigo, suffered bloody thrashing, by the bullying Angrej Sahib. Chelik’s weird resistance is remembered as a testimony to a peasant’s emotional bond with the land. The successive narratives unfold how since the 1950s the new arrangements in the guise of development programmes dispossessed many of the fertile pieces of lands, leading to endless litigations and migration of small peasants to the cities for alternative means of subsistence.
The Programmatic Response of Social Democratic Parties to the Great Recession
Authors: Bremer Björn
Published: June 2023

Chapter 3 analyses how social democratic parties changed their electoral strategies in the context of the crisis. It tests whether crises have an influence on party positions by examining whether social democratic parties changed their programmes strategically in the wake of the 2007-2009 financial crisis. The results show that social democratic parties moved to the left in response to the crisis, but that this leftward shift did not extend to all economic issues. On the one hand, social democratic parties defended the welfare state and opposed economic liberalism after the 2008 financial crisis, which partially reversed their Third Way. On the other hand, many parties supported the reduction of government deficits during the crisis, i.e. they joined the chorus of austerity that became dominant during the eurozone crisis. This confirms that the positions of social democratic parties on fiscal policies did not align with their positions on other socio-economic policies in the shadow of the economic crisis. The rest the book explains this incoherent platform by focusing on the support for austerity among the centre-left.
Public Opinion Regarding Fiscal Consolidation in the Face of Trade-offs
Authors: Bremer Björn
Published: June 2023

Chapter 5 analyses the public’s fiscal policy priorities. Traditional survey questions used by the Eurobarometer and other surveys ignore that fiscal consolidation carries substantial trade-offs: in hard times, governments must cut spending or raise taxes to achieve it. This chapter accounts for these trade-offs by using data from two novel survey experiments conducted in Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. First, it uses a split-survey experiment to analyse whether and to what extent individuals support fiscal consolidation when different trade-offs are acknowledged. Second, the chapter uses a conjoint survey experiment in which respondents were asked to evaluate different combinations of fiscal policies, including fiscal consolidation. The results show that voters care less about government debt support than conventional surveys suggest. Although most citizens support fiscal consolidation in principle, reducing government debt is not a priority for them. This suggests that political actors, including centre-left parties, had a greater degree of freedom to respond to the crisis and were not as constrained by public opinion as one-dimensional survey questions suggest.
Conclusion
Authors: Bremer Björn
Published: June 2023

Chapter 9 summarizes the main argument and the empirical findings from the previous chapters. It outlines the broader contributions of the book, raises open questions that the book cannot answer, and suggests possible avenues for future research. Finally, the book concludes by re-evaluating the fate of social democracy in Europe in the twenty-first century in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Following the Great Recession, social democracy experienced a profound electoral crisis across Europe and the conclusion explores whether and how social democratic parties can escape from this crisis. It argues that the policy crisis caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine provides both opportunities and risks for the centre-left: it contributed to a favourable shift in economic discourse, but it also massively increased government debt. As the pressures on governments to return to austerity could increase again, social democratic parties need to escape from their electoral and ideational trap identified in the book. They need to rediscover the state as a strong actor that corrects market outcomes and protects the weakest members of society from unwanted excesses of capitalism. To this end, social democratic parties need to develop new bold ideas that respond to some of the biggest economic and political challenges of our time, redefining their raison d’âtre. Only this will allow them to regain their place at the heart of European politics.
Land, Waqf, Ma’tam, and the Moral Economy
Authors: Brown Rajeswary Ampalavanar
Published: June 2023

The economic evolution of the waqf, which was institutionalized in law and land, assisted the renaissance of Islamic finance and the creation of Bahrain as the financial hub of the Gulf states. In the contemporary Middle East, Islamic philanthropy has become a vital tool in state control, as in Syria. Fyzee Asaf considered the waqf to be a form of internal colonizing of Mohammedan law, a religious contract that was fundamental for an Islamic moral economy. In Bahrain, the waqf and ma’tam have, to a degree, protected land from appropriation by the state by placing it within the Shari’ah legal code.
Islamic Banking in Bahrain
Authors: Brown Rajeswary Ampalavanar
Published: June 2023

Islamic banking is not an abstract principle but is shaped by the context in which it operates. Islamic finance in Bahrain draws on oil capital flows from the rich Gulf states that have made it possible for Bahrain to emerge as a major hub of Islamic finance, next in importance only to Malaysia. Moreover, Bahrain’s colonial past has encouraged a market liberalization of the role of Shari’ah governed by English common law. Bahrain’s experiment with innovative finance has led to the growth of offshore banking and commercial dispute resolution in local municipal and overseas English courts. It is this adaptability and dynamism that has made Bahrain unique in developing innovative instruments and operations in Islamic finance. In developing innovative financial instruments, subtle but important shifts have taken place in the interpretation of Shari’ah.
The Bahrain Stock Market
Authors: Brown Rajeswary Ampalavanar
Published: June 2023

Major concerns in the procedures of the Bahrain stock market have been asset pricing, commercial arbitration, and the involvement of political and legal interests in bankruptcy and liquidation. In effect, in many cases intervention came from the commercial banks and state-owned corporations. Contested legal pluralism and jurisdictional fluidity, reflecting Bahrain’s moderate colonial legal heritage, provides a framework for its relations with conservative, oil-wealthy Gulf neighbours seeking global expansion. The stock market demonstrates the Bahrain model of modernity and globalization in finance, in contrast to the fragmenting Islamic parochialism and the limiting stance of Saudi Arabia and of even the UAE.
The Impact of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008 on the Bahrain Economy
Authors: Brown Rajeswary Ampalavanar
Published: June 2023

Bahrain did not escape the impact of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis entirely. However, the oil price boom of Bahrain’s GCC neighbours and major capital inflows had, from the 1990s, fuelled credit growth, inflation, and a rise in real estate and harbour construction. The corporate sector had ridden the boom in credit, although with increased vulnerabilities. Bahrain’s banks retained profits and were a major source of liquidity for the stock market during the crisis. Bahrain’s regulatory regime addressed the role of intermediaries in business, structuring securities transactions and managing non-state participants and participants from secondary markets.
Labour Regimes, Mobility, Productivity, and Migrant National Workers
Authors: Brown Rajeswary Ampalavanar
Published: June 2023

At the initiative of the state, Bahrain’s labour structure and recruitment have changed considerably in recent decades. These initiatives included shifting from oil into diversified industries from the late 1990s. Recognizing the importance of clusters in oil processing through BAPCO and aluminium production through ALBA, the government sought to regulate the employment of expatriates while educating locals for the telecommunications, electronics, and technology industries. There was some hoarding of cheap foreign workers within the private sector, and this proved to be an important cause of poor labour productivity in the 1990s. The public sector performed even more poorly than the private sector. Subsidies in the public sector to maintain wages led locals to remain in inefficient posts and resist opportunities to acquire skills and move into more competitive sectors.
Ethics of Environment
Authors: Brown Rajeswary Ampalavanar
Published: June 2023

In recent decades Bahrain has sought to introduce numerous measures to combat climate change, measures taken in the context of powerful market forces. Without doubt, Bahrain faces a long-term threat to the huge oil wealth that has been crucial in financing its modern economic transformation, a threat from the pressures to reduce world dependence on fossil fuels. Bahrain’s measures have included the imposition of energy-saving building regulations that have frequently been related to technological innovation, for example in thee development of wind-power capacity and the increasing use of financial instruments. Important here has been the issuance of Sukuk Islamic Green Bonds to assist in funding climate change projects in Bahrain and beyond.
Conclusion
Authors: Brown Rajeswary Ampalavanar
Published: June 2023

The character of capitalism in modern Bahrain has involved an accommodation with the demands of Shari’ah, and in this, counters the oft-repeated assertion that Islam is inimical to economic modernization. Much of the recent literature on the politics and economy of the Middle East has focused on an alleged decline compared to the advance of Europe from the seventeenth century. That ‘decline’ in the Middle East has been greatly exaggerated, indeed recent decades have seen substantial growth, particularly in Islamic finance and in industrialization, an impressive globalization in both sectors. The alleged constraining influence of Shari’ah on capitalism can no longer be sustained. Economic and financial change in Dubai, which has recently emerged as a potential challenger to Bahrain as a major financial hub, provides yet further insight into Bahrain’s distinctive economic and financial transformation in modern times.
Investing in Religion
Authors: Potts Charlotte R.
Published: June 2023

Studies of the role of religion in a range of pre-industrial economies make it possible, and helpful, to assess the distinctive elements of this subject in ancient Rome by comparison with practice elsewhere. This chapter accordingly surveys the economic significance of Etrusco-Italic sanctuaries in the period preceding the Roman Republic. Beyond providing an analogy for later centuries, however, it suggests that many of the economic aspects of Roman religion were actually shaped by developments in the Archaic period (c.580–480 bc). The characteristic features of Archaic sanctuaries developed in response to a combination of Mediterranean-wide and local circumstances, and arguably met the needs of their communities so successfully that they had a lasting influence on the form and function of their Roman counterparts. Together these factors turned religion, and particularly cult sites, into an economic force. Sanctuaries became privileged places for the exchange of tangible and intangible commodities, and may have established a template for the site and conduct of similar activities in fora and other spaces in the centuries that followed. As such these developments may go beyond providing a point of comparison for Republican and imperial practices by actually outlining their background and rationale: while the scale and complexity of the religious economy may have changed in the Roman period, the social, cultural, and theological elements of the underlying model may have not.
Impact of the Roman Conquest on Temple Economies in Egypt
Authors: Chaufray Marie-Pierre
Published: June 2023

If the Roman reforms of traditional temples in Egypt are no longer seen as being responsible for the decline of Egyptian religion, they did nevertheless have an impact on the internal organization of the priesthood and the management of temple goods. This did not prevent temples from remaining active economic centres in the first two centuries of Roman rule. The bilingual administrative archives of the Egyptian temple of Soknopaios in the village of Dime in the Fayyum give a good idea of the role of the temple in the local economy after the Roman reforms. This chapter aims to present this rich documentation, part of which is still unpublished, and to compare it with the evidence for other temples in Egypt in order to better appreciate the impact of the Roman conquest on temple economies. While Roman reforms brought changes in the temples in the organization of the priesthood, the tax system, and the ownership of temple assets, the reforms did not prevent temples from being active economic centres.