bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Theory of European Military Intervention
Authors: Gegout Catherine
Published: January 2019

Chapter one first defines military intervention. It can occur with or without the consent of the targeted government and/or the United Nations, be direct or indirect, and be characterized as liberal and humanitarian. This section also situates military intervention among other seven other types of intervention: economic, political, cultural, institutional, legal, medical, and environmental. The following section discusses the theory of European military intervention, based on insights from realism, constructivism and post-colonialism. The realist approach is essential for explaining European intervention in Africa, as it takes account of motives such as security, economics, prestige and also, if an intervening state faces limited threats on these three counts, humanitarianism. Constructivism is used to uncover the norms of legality and Eurocentrism. Post-colonialism highlights the importance of history for the understanding of policy decisions on intervention, introduces the concept of neo-colonialism, and helps to address and refine the issue of Eurocentrism, which to date remains under-researched in the literature on international relations.
Actors in Military Intervention
Authors: Gegout Catherine
Published: January 2019

Chapter three locates European military intervention alongside the military interventions and political and economic presence of other regional and international actors. African states have agency in their own foreign policies, but African security organizations are dependent on European funding for the deployment of troops, and they cooperate with the European Union. The United Nations is present in Africa, but it often has to act alone: European actors are not always there to support UN missions. However, Europeans are keen on reinforcing UN capacity to fight militias. China is increasingly an important economic partner of Africa, and now becoming a security actor there. European actors are trying to develop relations with China on African security affairs. The United States is an important security actor in Africa, with military bases there. Its role and motives are studied in detail, as it influences the decisions of European actors to intervene.
The European Union
Authors: Gegout Catherine
Published: January 2019

Chapter six shows that even the European Union, which gives a high priority to addressing development problems, and which is legally constrained to act in accordance with international law, often adopts a realist type of foreign policy in Africa. First, in terms of aid and trade (including arms trade), the European Union privileges relations with strong economies in the North of Africa, South Africa, and oil-resource states. The second section demonstrates that the European Union plays a limited diplomatic role in conflicts in Africa, it is securitizing its development policies, and has deployed civilian operations which face difficulties on the ground. Then, an analysis of EU military interventions in Africa shows that they are not consistent, and are either discussed but not carried out, or limited in time and space. The fourth section focuses on motives. The European Union has never intervened primarily for humanitarian motives. EU states do not have a consistent approach towards conflicts, and when they discuss intervention, they often fail to give any priority to European solidarity. As a result, and as expected by realism, member states are more likely not to intervene, or to intervene unilaterally or in ad hoc interventions, than to work through the EU framework.
Arabic Thought in the Liberal Cage
Authors: Omar Hussein
Published: January 2019

This chapter argues that Egyptian practitioners of party politics, such as Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid and ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Jawish, articulated many of the key insights of a postcolonial critique of Eurocentric modernity in the years 1904–1922 over half a century before those critiques appeared in the academic field of postcolonial theory. These political activists repeatedly refused and refuted the charge that they were motivated by pecuniary greed or religious fanaticism, instead insisting that their thoughts and actions be recognized as political, while rejecting the restricted notion of the political as it had come to be defined by imperial hegemons. They rejected the imperial claim that the political and the ethical existed in separate domains and insisted on an alternative model wherein a political education was not, and could not be, understood separately from a moral one. Through the questions these intellectuals posed, they interrogated the very basis of the political theory upon which Lord Cromer’s rule in Egypt was derived. They would come to dismiss the immaculate sphere of “politics” posited by imperial officials as a myth, in a manner that would prefigure several later twentieth century notions of the political.
Corrupting Politics
Authors: Ali Nadia Bou
Published: January 2019

The chapter explores the relationship between culturalism and liberalism in modern Arabic. It argues that internal contradictions from within Arabic thought haunt the attempt to define the Arabs as an organicist community. These contradictions within particular identity are expressed in the pervasive anxiety about habits and language. Anxiety emerges when there is a crisis in imaginary identification, it is generated as a remainder of acknowledging the self in a specular image: the mirror of language, the Arab’s moustache. It emerges from a process of misrecognition, when uncanny elements within identity itself become overwhelming. Rather than read the discourse on habits as a desire for Western modernity the chapter argues against a non-dialectical pitting of culture (Arab, non-West) against liberalism (West), which forecloses the real loss that is generated from this modern antinomy: the retreat and scarcity of politics in both liberalism and culturalism.
Illiberal Islam
Authors: Devji Faisal
Published: January 2019

The Indian philosopher Muhammad Iqbal developed one of the earliest Muslim criticisms of liberalism in the early twentieth century. Given the caste, communal and other differences that he thought made a European form of nationalism and so democracy impossible in India, Iqbal asked how social relations there might be envisioned in its absence. He went on to question the three liberal categories, interest, representation and contract, that underlay the liberal form of nationalism and democracy, and describe and try to re-imagine the non-liberal ways in which Indians related to one another in moral, philosophical and aesthetic terms.
A New Deal Between Mankind and its Gods
Authors: Bidar Abdennour
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses Muhammad Iqbal’s response to the argument of Friedrich Nietzsche about the exit from religion. Instead of considering this event as the death of god, Iqbal considers it as the birth of a new man, and the starting point of a new era in the spiritual history of humanity. Following Iqbal’s line of thought, the chapter points to a de-Westernization of the theory of an exit from religion and, in so doing, offers a critique of Western liberalism. In Iqbal’s view, liberation from the guardianship of God does not mean there is no longer any relationship between God and humanity. Thus, when Iqbal talks about a metaphysical liberalism, he is referring to the intuition of the future, characterized by the next step in our spiritual evolution where the human species is liberated from the vision of a divine form as something different from itself, and has instead liberated itself in this divine form. In this sense, the exit from religion signals the beginning of a dialectical process of integrating God into humanity. Accordingly, Iqbal’s ideas can serve as a tool for understanding liberalism and secularization not only as a political process but as a spiritual re-birth for humankind.
The First Minds
Authors: Reber Arthur S.
Published: January 2019

The book presents a novel theory of the origins of mind and consciousness dubbed the Cellular Basis of Consciousness (CBC). It argues that sentience emerged with life itself. The most primitive unicellular species of bacteria are conscious, though it is a sentience of a primitive kind. They have minds, though they are tiny and limited in scope. There is nothing even close to this thesis in the current literature on consciousness. Hints that cells might be conscious can be found in the writings of a few cell biologists, but a fully developed theory has never been put forward before. Other approaches to the origins of consciousness are examined and shown to be seriously or fatally flawed, specifically ones based on: (a) the assumption that minds are computational and can be captured by an artificial intelligence (AI), (b) efforts to discover the neurocorrelates of mental experiences, the so-called Hard Problem, and (c) looking for consciousness in less complex species by identifying those that possess precursors of those neurocorrelates. Each of these approaches is shown to be either essentially impossible (the AI models) or so burdened by philosophical and empirical difficulties that they are effectively unworkable. The CBC approach is developed using standard models of evolutionary biology. The remarkable repertoire of single-celled species that micro- and cell-biologists have discovered is reviewed. Bacteria, for example, have sophisticated sensory and perceptual systems, learn, form memories, make decisions based on information about their environment relative to internal metabolic states, communicate with one another, and even show a primitive form of altruism. All such functions are indicators of sentience. Conversations with a caterpillar function as a literary vehicle Finally, the implications of the CBC model are discussed along with a number of related issues in evolutionary biology, philosophy of mind, the possibility of sentient plants, the ethical repercussions of universal animal sentience, and the long-range impact of adopting the CBC stance.
Why Has a Cellular Basis of Consciousness-type Model Not Been Proposed Before?
Authors: Reber Arthur S.
Published: January 2019

We have a chat with my caterpillar who manages to communicate that not only is he/she conscious but all living species are. I review reasons why no one has put forward this CBC-type model before, the main one being that the theory seems just crazy to most people, and follow up with a defense of anthropomorphism which others see as a confounding factor. There is a segue on fish and whether they feel pain—at least in the same manner as we feel pain as part of an interpreted, unpleasant experience with strong motivational elements. The conclusion is that of course they do—and the group of philosophers and piscine experts who take the stance that they do not are critiqued. The chapter ends with a survey of others who are or might be comfortable with the CBC model, beginning with Darwin who certainly would have embraced it.
Entailments of the Cellular Basis of Consciousness Stance
Authors: Reber Arthur S.
Published: January 2019

The CBC model has a number of implications for evolutionary biology, the cognitive neurosciences, consciousness science, micro- and cell-biology, and philosophy, particularly the philosophy of mind. A section covers the hierarchical nature of evolutionary mechanisms emphasizing why basic, early evolved functions (like awareness) become fixed and stable and are present in all later-evolved species. Special sections cover other, related topics such as reductionism (where a pragmatic form is recommended), the need to avoid an uncomfortable mysterianism that has crept into philosophy, whether plants are also conscious (probably not but I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise), ethical considerations of universal sentience, and the possibility of altruism in bacteria. A cluster of specific problems that emerge from the CBC also are discussed, such as how multicellular species emerged, how the sentience of single-celled organisms morphed into the focal awareness of the collective.
Representations of Nizam al-Mulk
Authors: Yavari Neguin
Published: January 2019

Who was Nizam al-Mulk? In a similar way to ‘Umar II and Charlemagne, Nizam al-Mulk is praised in medieval historiography not just for his political acumen, but also for his knowledge of law, patronage of the clerics, and his ability to stand his ground in religious debate. Nizam al-Mulk crossed the chasm that divided politicians from religious professionals, the one that separated Islamic from Iranian, Sufi from legist, Turk from Persian, Hanafi from Shafi‘i, and sultan from caliph. His uniqueness is reinforced by his enduring legacy, which contrary to current scholarship is shaped not by the Nizamiyya schools, but by his Siyar al-muluk, a guide to good rule written for the Saljuq sultan, Malikshah (r. 1073-1092). This chapter argues that the life of Nizam al-Mulk and its many retellings provide a fulcrum, or an organizing principle, for perceiving the transformation of the social order in medieval Iran.
Al-Qaeda 2.0
Authors: Holbrook Donald , Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

On 16 June 2011, three days before his sixtieth birthday, Ayman al-Zawahiri was declared the new leader of Al-Qaeda, replacing the fallen Osama bin Laden. The veteran Egyptian jihadist had little of his predecessor's charisma and enjoyed much less popularity, respect and celebrity. Yet, as scores of jihadi commanders from different organizations have succumbed to their enemies' missiles, bombs and bullets, Zawahiri has soldiered on. His tenure as Al-Qaeda's leader has been marked by some of its darkest and most challenging moments, which have threatened the viability and future of Al-Qaeda's central leadership. The gravest such development has been the emergence of Islamic State as a separate and rival jihadist entity. The best way to gauge Zawahiri's response to these threats is by studying the official statements and public communiqués that he has issued since taking the reins. This book provides the reader with professional translations of Zawahiri's key statements during his first five years as leader of Al-Qaeda. These official communications are introduced and contextualized to provide the reader with a comprehensive sourcebook, outlining the Al-Qaeda leadership's stance on the challenges to its existence since the death of bin Laden.
Message of Hope and Glad Tidings to our People in Egypt, Part 8
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

The Arab Spring revolutions undermined the relevancy of Al-Qaeda, as forces that were anathema to the group—nationalism, pluralism, areligious mass mobilization—had materialized to topple secular regimes, which otherwise had always been a central objective of Al-Qaeda and Zawahiri in particular. The latter thus responded, seeking to exploit disillusionment in the fallout of the revolutions and reframing the events according to Al-Qaeda’s agenda. The mainstay of this public relations initiative was his ‘Message of Hope and Glad Tidings’ series, aimed predominantly at citizens of his native Egypt, but with dedicated messages to peoples across the Arab world. In this eighth instalment of the series, we thus dip into an ongoing debate where Zawahiri continues in his attempts at reframing the revolutions, presenting the uprising in Egypt as a protest against areligious laws and treaties and against the peaceful relations with Israel, underpinned by American interference
Testimony to Preserve the Blood of the Mujahidin in Al-Sham22
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

Here Zawahiri addresses the turmoil and infighting in Syria more directly, emphasizing that ISIS is subordinate to his organization. He traces the origin of the Islamic State of Iraq, highlighting the fact that whilst that group at also operated in objectionable ways, it still pledged allegiance to bin Ladin. Zawahiri claims to have inherited this fealty. He details correspondence between the two organizations at the outbreak of civil war in Syria that he seeks to use to demonstrate his overall control. He accuses Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi of being driven predominantly by power, thus preparing the ground for more direct public denunciation of the ISIS leadership
Friday Prayers and Sermon in the Grand Mosque of Mosul
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

On 4th July 2014 ‘Al-Furqan’, one of the media outlets used by ISIS, published ‘exclusive coverage’ of a Friday sermon delivered by the organization's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi at the Grand Mosque in Mosul. It was with this confidence and sense of purpose, that the leadership of ISIS declared at the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan that it was establishing a worldwide Caliphate which would be called the Islamic State. Al-Baghdadi, the group announced, was to become Caliph Ibrahim, commander of the faithful. As he greeted worshipers at the Grand Mosque, he presented the Caliphate’s creation as a divine mission which all believers would be obliged to support. The split from Al-Qaeda could not be clearer or more public, the rejection of al-Zawahiri’s authority could not be more stark. The two separate jihadi entities were no longer just competitors locally, embroiled in the turmoil in Syria, but engaged in a global confrontation, vying for the hearts and minds of the same constituency.
Support Your Prophet—Peace and blessings be Upon Him
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

In this video message, Zawahiri celebrates the attack on the headquarters of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and is quick to claim credit for it on behalf of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. This of course comes at a time when Al-Qaeda’s central command is broadly seen as inactive and marginalized. He focuses on alleged double standards of the West regarding its support for democracy, tracing, as always, his grievances back to colonial times, whilst emphasizing more normative components of this grievance, with an obvious focus on the prohibition of ridiculing the prophet. He reiterates his criticism of the transgressors in Syria, noting that the route taken by IS contravenes the more inclusive plan for caliphate creation drafted by bin Ladin.
The Islamic Spring, Part 6
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

In this sixth episode of the ‘Islamic Spring’ series, Zawahiri seeks to address some of the issues IS became famous for spearheading, particularly the question of Shia dominance in the MENA region and the rise of Iran. He warns of a broad coalition of adversaries, including Shia forces and crusaders, that will undermine the interests of Sunni Muslims, and blames al-Baghdadi for the disunity among the latter.
Sham [Syria] is Entrusted Upon your Shoulders
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

Here Zawahiri touches upon another dynamic in the geopolitics of the region: the position of Saudi Arabia, at this stage engaged in fighting with Shia Muslim Houthi rebels in Yemen. The statement also comes in the wake of multiple Saudi-led efforts to consolidate opposition forces against the Assad regime in Damascus, including the December 2015 Riyadh Conference. Zawahiri uses the opportunity to remind his audience of Saudi treachery, listing the regime’s crimes from collusion with British colonial representatives to their harassment of the late bin Ladin. He also weaves in his continued denunciation of IS, by now making very explicit comparisons between the group and the early transgressing Kharijites
Women’s Digital Activism
Authors: Sreberny Annabelle
Published: January 2019

One of the many transformations that is taking place across the Middle East and North Africa region is women's engagement with new communications technologies and their increasing involvement in public life. Despite the initial enthusiasms of the uprisings of 2011, the region is now in considerable turmoil and digital developments are only slowly rolling out across the region. Using Mouffe's notion of the “political” as what is put into public contention in a society, the chapter explores how women in various countries across the Middle East are using and appropriating these new communication tools, especially social media, finding their voices and setting new social agendas for action, many of which revolve around issues of the body and female presence in public space.
Digital Rights Activism after the Arab Spring
Authors: Hussain Muzammil M.
Published: January 2019

This chapter examines the efforts of advanced-industrialized Western democratic states to promote internet freedom through the backing of several international policy summits and associated funding efforts for promoting freedom of expression, for global internet users, especially in closed repressive political systems. However, the recent leaking of key classified documents identifying unlawful global surveillance practices by both authoritarian and democratic states, has further galvanized global attention towards the credibility and meaning of “internet freedom promotion.” In order to better understand what the promotion of Internet freedom entails and to unpack the complex international political economy of this global arena of policy entrepreneurship, this chapter critically examines the key stakeholders that have define and consolidate the norms and frameworks surrounding the shared global digital commons that have been used by protest movements and democracy promoters during all of the recent waves of transnational political mobilizations, including the Green Revolution, the Arab Spring, and Occupy Wall Street. The chapter argue that future investigations should discard reductive frames of analysis like ‘cyber-optimism” and “cyber-dystopianism,” and instead pay more critical attention on the key tech-savvy “communities of practice” that have emerged with a pragmatic focus on overseeing and infusing democratic norms into esoteric telecommunications policy.
Epilogue
Authors: Weber Ingmar
Published: January 2019

Changes in the global digital landscape over the past decade or so have transformed many aspects of society, including how people communicate, socialize, and organize. These transformations have also reconfigured how companies conduct their businesses and altered how states think about security and interact with their citizens. Glancing into the future, there is good reason to believe that nascent technologies such as augmented reality will continue to change how people connect, blurring the lines between our online and offline worlds. Recent breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence will also have a profound impact on many aspects of our lives, ranging from the mundane—chat bots as convenient, always available customer support—to the disruptive—replacing medical doctors with automated diagnosis tools....
Governing Least
Authors: Moller Dan
Published: January 2019

This book defends libertarianism and more broadly a classical liberal view of political economy. It is often assumed that libertarianism depends on thinking that property rights are absolute, or on fetishizing individual liberty. This book argues that, on the contrary, the foundations of libertarianism can be found in widely shared, everyday moral beliefs–particularly in strictures against shifting our burdens onto others. The core of libertarianism, on this interpretation, lies not in an exaggerated sense of our rights against other people, but in modesty about what we can demand from them. The book then connects these philosophical arguments with related ideas in economics, history, and politics. Among the questions addressed are what the moral basis of private property is; how to think about property in a service economy; what the significance of luck is in determining social outcomes; what the history of capitalism tells us about free markets; whether libertarians should support reparations for slavery; what role political correctness plays in shaping policy debates; and whether classical liberals should favor incremental change over utopian policy shifts.
Libertarianism
Authors: Moller Dan
Published: January 2019

Traditionally, libertarians have assumed that individual rights are absolute, and that these are what ground criticisms of the welfare state. This chapter argues that libertarians can appeal to the much weaker notion of thresholds against harm. These thresholds can be overcome, but only at some margin, and doing so imposes various residual obligations on us, for example of restitution. We cannot generally take people’s property without incurring these obligations, e.g., to repay money we have taken from our neighbors in order to deal with some threat we face. The existence of thresholds and of residual obligations supports libertarian opposition to an expansive welfare state.
Wealth, Disability, and Happiness
Authors: Moller Dan
Published: January 2019

According to the Easterlin paradox, higher incomes make individuals happier within a country, even though the population as a whole doesn’t seem to get happier with more national income. This chapter argues that economic growth doesn’t or at least soon won’t make us happier, but we have reason to pursue economic growth anyway. It does this by way of examining the related disability paradox, according to which people with significant disabilities experience far less of an impact on their happiness than the healthy predict. The lesson of these paradoxes is that happiness is overrated, that there is more to welfare than happiness, and indeed that we care about far more than our welfare.
Stressed Economies, Distressed Policies, and Distraught Young People
Authors: Smith Mark , Leschke Janine , Russell Helen , Villa Paola
Published: January 2019

This chapter adopts a critical perspective on policymaking in European labor markets before, during, and after the Great Recession. Using extensive analysis of recent policies at the flexibility–security interface, the chapter identifies four key weaknesses in relation to young people: There was an over-reliance on supply-side policies and quantitative targets, reforms were driven by macroeconomic stability goals rather than by a coherent vision for the labor market, reforms focused on a downward pressure on job security and employability despite slack labor demand, and there was limited consideration of the impact of precariousness and career insecurity on young people and their life courses. It is argued that European and national employment policy need to focus on durable and resilient labor markets for young women and men transitioning from school to work in the postcrisis period.
How do youth labor flows differ from those of older workers?
Authors: Flek Vladislav , Hála Martin , Mysíková Martina
Published: January 2019

This chapter analyzes youth labor market dynamics, their structure, and their policy implications, focusing on selected European Union countries during the various stages of the Great Recession and comparing flows between labor market statuses for young people (aged 16–34 years) with those for prime-age individuals (aged 35–54 years). The flow approach views labor market transitions as a state-dependent process, simultaneously involving all movements of individuals between employment, unemployment, and inactivity. The main result is that young workers are more likely to move between employment and unemployment in both directions. This is instructive for assessing the gap in the labor market prospects of the two age groups and particularly for understanding differences in the evolution of youth and prime-age unemployment rates. The socioeconomic determinants of transitions between employment and unemployment in both directions are estimated, with the aim of illustrating the depth of age-based labor market segmentation and marginalization.
How can young people’s employment quality be assessed dynamically?
Authors: Berloffa Gabriella , Matteazzi Eleonora , Mazzolini Gabriele , Şandor Alina , Villa Paola
Published: January 2019

This chapter adopts a dynamic approach to the study of youth labor market integration. It focuses on individual trajectories (i.e., sequences of employment statuses) and considers the timing, order, and length of employment and jobless spells. It uses EU-SILC longitudinal data (2006–2012) for 17 countries to depict youth employment outcomes in two different phases: labor market entry and approximately 5 years after leaving education. The extent to which the experience of a certain trajectory type differs by gender, education level, and across countries is analyzed. Results show that although males and females have similar chances of accessing paid employment rapidly, women’s labor market conditions deteriorate over the following few years in terms of both security and success. Stricter rules on the use of temporary contracts tend to reduce the probability of fragmented trajectories in both phases, narrowing the gender and education gaps with respect to employment and income security.
Stuck in the parental nest?
Authors: Mazzotta Fernanda , Parisi Lavinia
Published: January 2019

This chapter provides an extensive analysis of leaving and returning home by young people in 14 European countries. It analyzes the effect of the Great Recession, considering a period from 2005 to 2013 and controlling for two key determinants of living arrangements: employment and partnership. The main result is that the Great Recession has reduced the probability of leaving home and increased the probability of returning home, with differences across country groups. In particular, the probability of leaving home in Southern and Eastern European countries slightly declines during the period of analysis, whereas a sharp decrease is recorded in Continental countries at the beginning of the Great Recession. Southern European countries show an increase in home-returning throughout the entire period. Finally, both leaving and returning home seem more closely linked to partnership than to employment.
What happens to young people who move to another country to find work?
Authors: Akgüç Mehtap , Beblavý Miroslav
Published: January 2019

This chapter analyzes the labor market integration of South–North and East–West migrants, together with intra-European and non-European Union migrants, vis-à-vis native peers in main European destinations. The analysis considers individual characteristics and labor market outcomes by migrant origins. Labor market outcomes are estimated, controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and for country-fixed and year effects. Using interaction effects, the chapter estimates whether the work-related outcomes of young migrants differ vis-à-vis native peers. The econometric analysis using pooled European Social Surveys (2002–2015) suggests that individual characteristics explain part of the migrant–native peer differences. Particularly, migrants from Eastern and Southern Europe exhibit important gaps vis-à-vis native peers regarding unemployment, contract type, and overqualification. Overall, migrant youth and women seem to be in vulnerable situations in destination labor markets. In addition to nondiscriminatory treatment, transparent competence screening and smooth skills transferability could alleviate such youth and gender vulnerabilities.
Are the work values of the younger generations changing?
Authors: Hajdu Gábor , Sik Endre
Published: January 2019

This chapter analyzes whether work values differ between birth cohorts, age groups, and time periods. Using large cross-national surveys from more than 30 countries, it is shown that the centrality of work is highest in the middle age groups and significantly lower during 2005–2009 than in the 1990s. However, there are no detectable gaps between birth cohorts. Thus, in contemporary Europe, the generations are not divided significantly with regard to their work values so that rather than pointing to generational differences, the lack of them should be emphasized. From a policy standpoint, this means that the generational differences often referred to in public debates and used in political discourses are a myth. The results presented in this chapter imply that if sound European Union policies are implemented to cope with youth unemployment, they will not fail because of generation-specific attitudes.
Documentary Filmmaking in Contemporary Brazil
Authors: Furtado Gustavo Procopio
Published: January 2019

This book examines the vibrant field of documentary filmmaking in Brazil from the transition to democracy in 1985 to the present. Marked by significant efforts toward the democratization of Brazil’s highly unequal society, this period also witnessed the documentary’s rise to unprecedented vitality in quantity, quality, and diversity of production—including polished auteur films as well as rough-hewn collaborative works; films made in major metropolitan regions as well as in remote parts of the Amazon; intimate first-person documentaries as well as films that dive headfirst into struggles for social justice. The transformations of Brazilian society and of filmmaking coalesce and become entangled in this cinema’s preoccupation with archives. Historically linked to the exercise and maintenance of power, the concept of the archive is critical for the documentary as a cultural practice that preserves images from the present for the future, unearths and repurposes visual materials from the past, and is historically invested in filmic images as records of the real. Contemporary films incorporate, reflect on, and rework a variety of archives, such as documents produced by official institutions, ethnographic images, home movies, and photo albums—and engage not only with what is preserved but also with lacunas in the record and with alternate forms of remembering, retrieving, and transmitting the past. Through its interaction with archives, this book argues, the contemporary documentary reflects on and intervenes in the distribution of visibilities and invisibilities, centers and margins, silences and speech, living memory and its preservation in the record—thus locating the documentary on archival borders that concern Brazilian society and filmmaking alike.
Introduction
Authors: Furtado Gustavo Procopio
Published: January 2019

The introduction offers an overview of the documentary in contemporary Brazil and discusses the significance of archive concepts for the documentary in general and for Brazilian documentaries in particular. The archive has been undervalued as a heuristic concept in documentary film studies, which have tended to discuss it only in the literal sense of film archives and to speak of repurposed footage. The documentary, however, has an inherent affinity with the concept of the archive that becomes crucial in the work of many filmmakers. Taking Eduardo Coutinho’s Cabra marcado para morrer (Man Marked For Death/Twenty Years Later, 1964–1985) as a point of departure, the introduction argues that the documentary has a Janus-faced relationship with the archive, at once producing lasting records for the future and de-archiving materials from the past, returning what was hidden and stored away to the present.
Reparative Mediations
Authors: Furtado Gustavo Procopio
Published: January 2019

Just as the exploration of geographic areas such as the Amazon is economically extractive, an extractive logic has informed ethnographic image production from its inception. Travelers collect valuable records to fulfill the interests and needs of metropolitan publics, as well as to furnish their museums, libraries, and archives—often leaving indigenous subjects diminished by the experience of contact. The cooperative Video in the Villages (VNA) attempts to invert this extractive pattern through the repatriation of archival images to indigenous communities and the introduction of video technology for indigenous use. Focusing on the group’s inaugural video and several recent works made in collaboration between indigenous and non-indigenous filmmakers, this chapter traces the group’s attempt to rework the contact imaginary and re-orient the ethnographic archive to serve indigenous needs.
Homes, Archives, and Archons
Authors: Furtado Gustavo Procopio
Published: January 2019

The turn toward intimate terrains and private life is a major trend in contemporary documentary. Materials, styles, and themes germane to the photo album and the home movie increasingly migrate to the documentary screen and into the public sphere. As this chapter discusses, this move does not represent a retreat from the social and the historical in favor of atomistic or narcissistic self-involvement but rather a changing approach to the sociohistoric, which is rendered through the self-conscious and refracting lens of personal experience and located in the microcosm of interpersonal relationships. Engaging with the history and theory of familial image-making, this chapter explores the reworking of the home mode in Consuelo Lins’s Babás (2010), Gabriel Mascaro’s Doméstica (2012), and João Moreira Salles’s Santiago (2007)—three films that deal with relationships of power, labor, and servitude in private life and the home.
Introduction
Authors: Iverson Jennifer
Published: January 2019

The Westdeutscher Rundfunk [West German Radio] or WDR studio emerged in the early 1950s in Cologne, West Germany in a conflicted Cold War climate. On the one hand, electronic music signified social and artistic progress; avant-garde music stood as a reliable marker of democracy and freedom in contrast to Nazi and Soviet aesthetic mandates. On the other hand, technophobic audiences and critics reacted with skepticism to de-personalized, machine-mediated concerts, often regarding the new sounds with disdain. Nevertheless, cultural administrators, especially by means of the regional radio network, channeled funding to new music and the electronic studio as a way of rebuilding West Germany’s cultural hegemony. The WDR studio’s heterogeneity—its ability to incorporate and make use of several different types of resources—became a key to its success. The studio’s composers and technicians synthesized new sounds from scientific discourses. They reclaimed military technologies and long-standing musical lineages, opening up a new frontier. By embracing electronic music, West Germany found a way out of its decimated postwar landscape and emerged as a leader in the cultural Cold War.
Origins
Authors: Iverson Jennifer
Published: January 2019

In the early 1950s, the WDR studio founders articulated a guiding mythology: electronic music would be a timbral utopia, in which composers would finally have control over all aspects of the sound. In reality, the earliest WDR electronic works were little more than montages of radio-play sound effects. Studio technicians, working as invisible collaborators, produced the sounds, guided the technical processes, and even composed the studio’s first electronic pieces. Meanwhile, composers freely appropriated the technicians’ labor and creative ideas, thereby maintaining their authority over the studio’s first musical results. This dynamic of invisible collaboration, in which technicians provide essential tacit knowledge behind the scenes, is comparable to the culture of a scientific laboratory. As the vignettes in this chapter reveal, the WDR studio was a site for experimentation, collaborative creation, and hierarchical reappropriation.
Kinship
Authors: Iverson Jennifer
Published: January 2019

WDR composers drew from several sources in creating their electronic timbral utopia, including John Cage’s early works. His compelling prepared piano pieces provided a model for the new sounds of early electronic music by Schaeffer, Stockhausen, and Eimert. Furthermore, Cage’s square-root form provided a model for Stockhausen’s and Koenig’s handling of duration in their early tape music, especially because Cage embraced a proportional approach to pitch–time relationships. Although Cage and Tudor’s 1954 European tour to Donaueschingen and Cologne was partly a scandal, the pair were valued as celebrities by power brokers in the European milieu. Cage became more of a provocateur in the later 1950s, growing distant from the younger avant-garde composers. Tudor, however, remained exceptionally important as a nodal figure in the new music network, whose prodigious and consistent performances knit together the American and European avant-garde scenes in the 1950s and 1960s.
Introduction
Authors: Reynolds Daniel
Published: January 2019

The introduction argues that conceptual discontinuity, or dualism, has had a significant influence on the development of media theory. Many theories have held media and the mind apart from one another and from the world at large. The introduction argues that this is often a result of media theorists importing dualist conceptions of the mind into their approaches to media. It outlines an alternative history of antidualist thought in media studies, from surrealism in the 1920s through contemporary philosophy of new media, but it argues that an antidualist orientation does not always result in nondualism. The introduction suggests that an embodied, extended understanding of the mind will be key for a truly nondualist theory of media. It provides an overview of the remainder of the book, showing how the chapters work together in articulating a new theory of media and mind.
Transactionism
Authors: Reynolds Daniel
Published: January 2019

This chapter proposes a theoretical approach to media use that treats media and their users’ minds as continuous with one another. It calls this approach “transactionism.” It shows how the philosophy of John Dewey is relevant to the study of contemporary media. The chapter shows how Dewey’s ideas can clarify historical problems from throughout the history of media studies. It uses examples from video games and films to illustrate the utility of transactionism in thinking about individual media and in thinking about relationships among media. It shows how contemporary philosophy of mind extends concepts from Dewey’s philosophy. This clarifies the relationship between Dewey’s ideas and the film and video game examples that the chapter presents.
Platforms as Emergence
Authors: Reynolds Daniel
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses the concept of the platform, which is an increasingly prominent way of understanding the functioning of media technologies. It traces the philosophical, disciplinary, and ideological implications of theoretical and critical works that characterize aspects of media technology, at varying scales, as platforms, in particular in the developing subdiscipline of “platform studies.” It challenges the ways that the concept of the platform naturalizes the functioning of media. It shows how the concept of the platform relates to the idea of ontological emergence. It argues that the platform would be more useful in describing epistemological emergence. This chapter argues that an understanding of the platform in terms of ontological emergence erects unnecessary divisions among media, media technologies, and users. It challenges the idea that platforms must necessarily be computational or even technological.
Designing a Game Boy
Authors: Reynolds Daniel
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses the development of the Nintendo Game Boy portable video game console. It shows how Nintendo imagined its players’ physical relationship to the console, and how it imagined the bodies of the players who might use the device. It examines the patent history of the Game Boy in making an argument that the console’s designers thought about users’ bodies by articulating technology. The chapter shows how the marketing campaign for the device presented consumers with images of Nintendo’s idealized user for the Game Boy, and how the campaign set the tone for Nintendo’s corporate brand identity going forward, an identity that the chapter argues continues to be rooted in particular ideals of mobility and embodiment.
Conclusion
Authors: Reynolds Daniel
Published: January 2019

The conclusion summarizes the key claims of the book, the stakes of these claims, and the utility of a transactional approach to media use. It makes a call for transdisciplinary scholarship, pointing out that no system, whether a medium, a mind, or a discipline, is ever truly closed. It discusses scientific discoveries in recent centuries that have affirmed that humans do not occupy a centralized, privileged position in the universe. While these decenterings can be traumatic, they bring us closer to an understanding of our continuity with the rest of the natural world. The conclusion argues that the task with which we are left is that of feeling our way through the cosmos, and attempting to feel our way toward one another. It suggests that media can be valuable tools for doing just this.
Millennial Missionaries
Authors: Dugan Katherine
Published: January 2019

This book is an ethnography of millennial-generation Catholic missionaries. The Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) began hiring young adults to evangelize students on college campuses in 1998. Since then, FOCUS missionaries have developed a style of Catholic evangelization that navigates between strict and savvy interpretations of Catholic teaching in contemporary US youth culture. The Catholicism that FOCUS missionaries embrace and promote grew up with them and amid their middle-class American norms—missionaries own iPhones, drink craft beer, and create March Madness brackets. Born in the 1990s, millennial missionaries in their skinny jeans and devotional tattoos, large-framed glasses and scapulars embody an attractive style of Catholicism. They love saints and have memorized the “Tantum Ergo,” are fluent in college-student slang, but reject hook-up culture in favor of gender essentialism dictated by papal teachings. Missionaries rely on their social capital to make Catholicism cool. Many of their peers have been characterized as defectors from religious institutions. Yet, underneath the rise of “nones” is a story of increased religious piety. This book studies religion in the United States from the perspective of proud Catholic millennials. As they navigate their Catholic and US identities, these missionaries propose Catholicism as uniquely able to overcome perceived threats of secularism, relativism, and modernity. How, why, and with what implications is this Catholicism enacted? These questions, which point to power struggles between US culture and religious identity, drive this book. Through their prayers and evangelization efforts, missionaries are reshaping Catholic identity and shifting the religious landscape of the United States.
The Making of Twenty-First-Century Catholic Evangelization
Authors: Dugan Katherine
Published: January 2019

This chapter begins with a brief institutional history of FOCUS and then examines the longer historical trajectories behind the group. This pre-history of FOCUS traces twinned fears—a fear of “secular” US culture and a fear of “cultural” Catholicism—through five shifts in US Catholic history during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These shifts are postconciliar expansions of Catholic prayer, efforts to reclaim Catholic exceptionalism on Catholic college campuses, fears about Catholics on non-Catholic and public campuses, late-twentieth-century Catholics’ conflicted interactions with evangelical Protestants, and an increased strength and presence of a Catholic middle class. FOCUS and its evangelization methods were made possible by these trends.
“Hanging out with Jesus”
Authors: Dugan Katherine
Published: January 2019

This chapter studies FOCUS missionaries’ daily Holy Hour and argues that this particular prayer discipline shapes how Catholic millennials become missionaries who are willing to evangelize college students every single day. Missionaries pray at the intersection of religious experience, religious practice, social context, bodily comportment, and interior processes. Daily Holy Hour involves Adoration, mental prayer, lectio divina, intercessory prayer, and spiritual reading. With each prayer form, millennials enact the mundane work of trying to become twenty-first century Catholic missionaries. These prayer practices—updated, remixed, and reclaimed for a new generation of Catholics—were the way these millennials articulated and embodied their Catholic identity.