bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
From the Editor
Authors: Harding James M.
Published: August 2008

We open this issue of Theatre Survey with Marvin Carlson's essay on how the events of 9/11 and the subsequent wars with Afghanistan and Iraq have affected New York theatre. At the core of Carlson's essay is a very subtle depiction of theatre forced by world events to contemplate anew its understanding of history and its understanding of the role that theatre has to play in history. Carlson's essay offers us an image of theatre communities that, in their responses to the deeply troubling events of the past two and a half years, have struggled to understand whether theatre is outside or inside of history, that is, whether theatre is “somehow out of place in a situation of real crisis and suffering” or whether it can be an actual force of change. At one level, then, Carlson's essay is significant because it illuminates how acts of terrorism and acts of war force theatre to return to the most basic questions about its function in society at large. Those questions serve as our point of departure because their answers change with history.
Living History Museums and the Construction of the Real through Performance
Authors: Magelssen Scott
Published: August 2008

The narrative fabric of modern history, writes Roland Barthes, tends to be woven with a certain amount of “useless” details, which, though they are ultimately “filling” (“catalysis”), nonetheless have “indisputable symbolic value.” As a consequence, the past two centuries have seen the “development of techniques, of works and institutions based on the incessant need to authenticate the ‘real.’” These techniques include photography, reportage, exhibitions, and, I would like to emphasize, “the tourism of monuments and historical sites”—the subject of this essay. Indeed, for the tourist, the symbolic value accorded the minutiae on display at historic sites, preserved or re-created for public display, seem to be the very elements that guarantee real history, despite the fact that many of these details are often the most conjectural elements.
EDITOR'S FOREWORD
Authors: Harding James M.
Published: August 2008

When I first approached my colleague Jody Enders about the possibility of doing a special issue of Theatre Survey during her tenure as Associate Editor, I had no idea that she would translate my offer into a major event in the journal's history. We at Theatre Survey have long been blessed with a steady stream of excellent scholarship from theatre historians around the world, but seldom have we been able to amass, in a single issue, as prestigious a collection of scholars as those whose work grace the pages of our November issue. I am grateful to each and every one of them for their contributions. But I am especially grateful to Jody Enders for her (nothing short of) magical ability to recruit so many prominent voices in our profession and to place them in a dialogue about the future of theatre history in this new millennium. She well deserves our acknowledgment and admiration for the amazing work that she had done here, and I am delighted to have the occasion of this special issue of Theatre Survey to express my deep appreciation of the work that she has been doing for the journal since she became Associate Editor almost two years ago. Soon Jody's tenure as Editor will begin, and as you read the collection of essays she has compiled for this issue, I suspect your thoughts will concur with my own about what this transition in Editors means: while the future of theatre history in the new millennium may be subject to debate, the future of Theatre Survey looks very promising indeed.
Theatre History and Historiography: A Disciplinary Mandate
Authors: Postlewait Thomas
Published: August 2008

Historical scholarship, despite the many changes in methodologies and models over the years, is one of the abiding missions of the discipline of theatre studies: yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Yesterday, as is well known, Theaterwissenschaft was the foundational methodology for scholarship and doctoral education. Today, of course, our approaches to theatre history encompass several dozen research methodologies and analytical models. And tomorrow? Will cultural, social, political, and intellectual histories still provide a reliable foundation? Or will we develop fields of investigation and modes of analysis that draw upon new ideas in psychology, neuroscience, and biology? One thing is clear: our methods and models will continue to change.
What Have They Done to the Evidence?
Authors: Fern Annette
Published: August 2008

Some years ago, during a discussion in the ASTR Executive Committee about the relevance of the Theatre Library Association's participation in ASTR, a scholar on the cutting edge of contemporary theory is reported to have asked a TLA representative exactly what it was that libraries were doing to support postpositivist research. No one remembers what the answer was (it was evidently satisfactory), but I recall thinking that if I had been asked the question, my own reply would have been that libraries weren't doing anything at all; that the business of the library was to preserve the evidence as well as it could and provide access to it, so that scholars could make use of it in whatever manner they chose.
Feminist Performance as Feminist Historiography
Authors: Canning Charlotte
Published: August 2008

Given performance history's disciplinary complexity, not to mention the complications of a “we” comprised by so many different scholars, Theatre Survey's question is, in one sense, unanswerable. In another sense, if I translate the question to what I can do (staying fully aware that others will propose answers different from mine), however, I can offer an answer from my position as a feminist performance historian and historiographer. My response to it is twofold. The argument I make here is for performance that foregrounds historiographical operations, making physical, gestural, emotional, and agonistic the processes that construct history out of the past. Concomitantly, I am arguing for history that overtly acknowledges the ways in which it is a performance of the past, but not the past itself. This dual approach is especially important in feminist accounts of the past because performance has historically been a crucial constituent of feminist theories and practices.
Thinking History, History Thinking
Authors: Blau Herbert
Published: August 2008

Is there a real world out there? I'll soon be moving the question to other perceptual sites, but at bedrock, Ground Zero (now hallowed by 9/11), or when push comes to shove, making their peace with deconstruction, few historians deny it—and come, let's face it, none really can (no Bishop Berkeleys among them), it's real enough for them. With all the signifiers shifting, and some of them under erasure, there may be uncertainties in the referential structure, as out the window, through the rain, across the lake from me now in Seattle, what should be the Cascades is, with a hint of snowcaps above, mainly a minimalist gray vaporous wall of clouds, nothing to be seen on the landscape of what I am sure was there, but then for a moment the trees (from Berkeley's forest, perhaps?), but not as metahistory. And so it may be with the recuperated vagaries of any historical context that, however obscured by the years, somehow inhabited time, or survived the attritions of time, to more than suggest, if not certify, that there was a there there. The important thing, of course—no different in this millennium, but after the collapsing towers suddenly a crazier world, with there all over, dispersed or even secreted—is to determine how to get there, with the swift accrual of history affecting theatre history.
Acting, Singing, Dancing, and So Forth: Theatre (Research) in the University
Authors: Worthen W. B.
Published: August 2008

About midway through Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel Oryx and Crake, the protagonist Jimmy (later known as Snowman, survivor of a genetically engineered global epidemic induced by his childhood friend, Crake) leaves home for the university, or in this case for the Martha Graham Academy. In a culture driven by the collusion of technology and capital it's not surprising that the best students are sent to lavish technical universities (Crake attends the Watson–Crick Institute), while arts and humanities students listlessly rusticate at Martha Graham, learning the pointless yet “vital arts” of “acting, singing, dancing, and so forth” and how to deploy them in the service of commodity culture (Jimmy's skill with language leads him to major in Applied Rhetoric, eventually writing advertising copy for Crake's new life forms). Like much else in Oryx and Crake, Atwood's vision jibes chillingly enough with the rhetoric of today's corporate university: compared to jet propulsion, cancer research, or even the battle of Appomattox (on my campus, history is a social science), the arts and humanities can be made to seem “like studying Latin, or book binding: pleasant to contemplate in its way, but no longer central to anything” (187).
The Women of Provincetown, 1915–1922. By Cheryl Black. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2002; xvi + 224 pp. $29.95 cloth.
Authors: Larabee Anne
Published: August 2008

Anyone who has encountered the Provincetown Players, the art theatre that launched Susan Glaspell and Eugene O'Neill, knows what an amazingly vibrant and creative community it was, a progressive smart set teaming with ideas for a new American drama. In The Women of Provincetown, Cheryl Black gives us the most richly detailed work on the Provincetown to date, drawing on an impressive range of primary sources. For this reason alone, the book is essential reading for theatre historians and other scholars working on the emergence of American drama. A playwright, actor, director, and dramaturge herself, Black has enough experience to explore the range of roles needed to make theatre, providing a context for the predominantly literary studies of Provincetown plays.
Staging America: Cornerstone and Community-Based Theater. By Sonja Kuftinec. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003; pp. xviii + 255. $45 cloth.
Authors: Larabee Anne
Published: August 2008

Through this case study of the Cornerstone Theater, Staging America sets out to explore the complexities of theatrical practices that aim to transform their audiences and enact social change, especially within the context of national identity. Cornerstone was founded in 1986 by a group of Harvard graduates interested in “bringing theater to the culturally disadvantaged,” but the company soon found itself equally transformed by the communities it served (66). With unusual theoretical depth in its use of cultural studies and ethnography, Staging America chronicles Cornerstone's changes as it attempted to become America's national theatre, traveling across the country to foster grassroots productions of classical plays. It is a fascinating journey that never quite settles on any easy conclusions, for if Cornerstone has ever come close to being a national theatre, it is only with the same unease that any single “America” can ever be staged or even defined. Kuftinec argues that this unease is Cornerstone's strength, as it constantly refigures itself in an anxious dialogue over national identity. Ultimately, she says, Cornerstone reflects America as “a matrix of continuously refigured difference.”
A Beautiful Pageant: African American Theatre, Drama, and Performance in the Harlem Renaissance, 1910–1927. By David Krasner. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; pp. 370. $35 cloth; Stories of Freedom in Black New York. By Shane White. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002; pp. 260. $27.95 cloth.
Authors: Thompson Lisa B.
Published: August 2008

In “Writing the Absent Potential: Drama, Performance, and the Canon of African-American Literature,” Sandra Richards argues that scholars largely ignore the African-American contribution to theatre and performance. She suspects that most critics regard “drama as a disreputable member of the family of literature” (65). Even African Americanists neglect dramatic literature; indeed, the Norton Anthology of African American Literature includes only a scant number of plays. Both David Krasner and Shane White effectively redress this oversight and shift the focus from African-American literature to blacks on stage in their recent monographs about early nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century drama.
Early American Theatre from the Revolution to Thomas Jefferson: Into the Hands of the People. By Heather S. Nathans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 246. $70 cloth.
Authors: Brown Jared
Published: August 2008

Heather S. Nathans's well-documented study, covering the colonial theatre, the theatre of the revolution, and postrevolutionary theatre to shortly after 1800, focuses on Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. She argues convincingly that the theatre of the time was significantly affected by social, political, and financial matters, therefore located in a social, political, and financial context Nathans calls “crucial” (5).
Theatre, Society and the Nation: Staging American Identities. By S. E. Wilmer. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002; pp. vii + 281. $70 cloth.
Authors: Chansky Dorothy
Published: August 2008

In Theatre, Society and the Nation, S. E. Wilmer promises two enticing strands of investigation. First, he seeks “to illustrate the role of the theatre and live performance in reformulating concepts of national identity” (3) over some two hundred and fifty years of U.S. history. Second, his introduction asserts that besides examining “theatrical events and the printed texts of plays” the book “considers the audience and critical response” on the part of both “the dominant and oppressed groups in society” (3–4). Wilmer's work is rewarding on roughly half the topics proffered: it provides valuable information about many printed texts and performances of resistant discourse as well as some critical journalism and scholarship that responded to these pieces. On actual audience response, the book is virtually silent, sometimes substituting the comments of artist participants, publicity, or theory for the reactions of people who actually witnessed the events.
The Girls in the Big Picture: Gender in Contemporary Ulster Theatre. By Imelda Foley. Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 2003; pp. xvi + 170. $25.95 paper.
Authors: Morash Chris
Published: August 2008

“A new language of criticism is essential to describe and inscribe dramatic forms” (145): so writes Imelda Foley at the conclusion of her study of gender in contemporary Ulster theatre, The Girls in the Big Picture. It is not without irony, therefore, that her book is a perfect example of the exuberantly lively business of theatre in performance continually bursting through the limits of an overly schematic theoretical paradigm.
Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture. By Ann Daly. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002; pp. 320. $19.95 paper.
Authors: Torres Lepecki André
Published: August 2008

Western theatrical dance emerges in the late Renaissance as an increasingly autonomous art form. However, as theatrical dance strove toward the ideal of its own aesthetic self-sufficiency, toward an autonomy that would eventually confer it its place as a truly modern art form, dance developed a paradoxically intimate, intricate, and convoluted relationship with its other—writing. The historical persistence of a continuous dialoguing between dancing and writing indicates how dance's aspirations for aesthetic autonomy were precisely that: an impossible (modern) wishing. Historically, the role and function of writing in regards to dance has been one of partnering. This partnering has oscillated among three foundational modes of writings on dance: the archival (writing as the guarantor of dance's historical survival, as seen already in the late 1500s, in Arbeau's Orcheseography), the choreographic (writing as mode of composing dances directly on paper, as seen in the exams for the Académie Royale in late seventeenth-century France), and the writing of criticism. Of these three modes, criticism—understood as writing aimed at explaining or translating to an audience the opacity of dance's appearing—won't emerge in its incipient form until the late eighteenth century. This mode is today the most prominent role writing takes in relation to dance, in which the function of the critic is simultaneously to preserve and explain the dances she witnesses.
Joe Orton: A Casebook. Edited by Francesca Coppa. London: Routledge, 2003; pp. 181. $85 cloth.
Authors: Hamill Kyna
Published: August 2008

Is it perverse to take an interest in the infamous death of a writer? How many years should pass until we can discuss the details of a tragic death in an objective context? In the case of the promising playwright Sarah Kane, it is still too soon. With Joe Orton, however, it is easy to mistake the man for the literary construction that now personifies him. In different ways, both of these writers suffer the plight of being forever fused with their texts in postmortem criticisms of their writing. In the case of Orton, however, because of the genre of his writing, we seem to be able to laugh about it.
Gender, Theatre, and the Origins of Criticism: From Dryden to Manley. By Marcie Frank. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 175. $60 cloth.
Authors: Schmitt Julia
Published: August 2008

Gender, Theatre, and the Origins of Criticism: From Dryden to Manley explores the role theatrical artists played in the emergence of literary criticism. Marcie Frank suggests that a study of this emergence should begin with John Dryden, and that it must also include the contributions made by female playwrights (such as Aphra Behn, Catharine Trotter, and Delarivier Manley)—not merely as side notes worthy of attention in a feminist attempt to include women writers in the history of criticism but, more important, as writings that actively carried on the genealogical literary tradition that Dryden established. Frank makes the case that by figuring the transmission of a national vernacular canon “as a patrimony, [Dryden] drew the lines of access to a native literary tradition for subsequent writers and critics” (2). The essays in the book work to establish the presence of a critical legacy left to us by Dryden, Behn, Trotter, and Manley. In doing so, Frank hopes to restore the theatre's rightful place in the story of criticism's emergence, thereby allowing an acknowledgment of the “performativity of criticism, both in the sense of what it accomplishes—the establishment of a native tradition coded as filiation—and in the appreciation of the means by which it does so” (2).
Rehearsing the Revolution: Radical Performance, Radical Politics in the English Restoration. By Odai Johnson. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000; pp. 184. $34.50 cloth.
Authors: Payne Fisk Deborah
Published: August 2008

This superb monograph examines how radical politics found expression in performance in the decade prior to the Glorious Revolution. The years from 1678 to 1688 saw the English monarchy rocked by successive crises, ranging from allegations of secret Catholic plots to murder the king (largely fabricated) to murmurings of dark dealings between Louis XIV and Charles II (largely true). The inability of Charles II to produce a legitimate heir also worried a Protestant citizenry who feared that the line of succession would devolve to James, the Catholic brother of Charles II. Arbitrary rule, strict censorship, excessive taxation, and an atmosphere of Stalinesque surveillance further inflamed the populace. As Johnson wryly notes, the problem with the Restoration was that it restored too much, especially the oppressive political attitudes that caused the Civil War in the first place. Amid this tumult, Johnson situates the patent theatres and street performance. He is certainly not the first scholar to do so, but he is, happily, the first in a long time to combine keen intelligence with common sense. That he tells this compelling story stylishly and with verve gives one all the more reason to read this first-rate study.
The Commedia dell'Arte in Naples: A Bilingual Edition of the 176 Casamarciano Scenarios. 2 vols. Edited and translated by Francesco Cotticelli, Anne Goodrich Heck, and Thomas F. Heck. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001; pp. 1,168. $99.50 cloth.
Authors: Winet Evan
Published: August 2008

In 1896, Benedetto Croce donated to Naples's Biblioteca Nazionale two manuscript volumes from the late seventeenth century. These books had been prepared by Annibale Sersale, Count of Casamarciano, and contained 183 canovacci (scenarios) of the commedia dell'arte. Today, this Casamarciano zibaldone (collection) comprises the largest extant collection of commedia canovacci with nearly a quarter of the total surviving scenarios from any source. By contrast, Flaminio Scala's Il teatro delle favole rappresentative (first published in 1611, and translated into English by Henry F. Salerno in his influential 1967 edition) contains only 50. The Casamarciano scenarios have never been published in English translation, or even, astonishingly, in any complete Italian version, before now. For this reason alone, The Commedia dell'Arte in Naples is a publication of enormous significance for the dramaturgical study of commedia.
Playing the Past: Approaches to English Historical Drama, 1385–1600. By Benjamin Griffin. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2001; pp. xiii + 193. $70 cloth.
Authors: Marty Paulette
Published: August 2008

Benjamin Griffin takes an innovative approach to studying the history-play genre in early modern England. Rather than comparing history plays to their chronicle sources or interrogating their political implications, Griffin studies their relationships with other early modern English dramas, contextualizing them for “those who wish . . . to understand the history play by way of the history of plays” (xiii). He seeks to identify the genre's distinct characteristics by selecting a relatively broad spectrum of plays and examining their dramatic structure, their historical content, and their audiences' relationship to the subject matter.
Romantic and Revolutionary Theatre, 1789–1860. Edited by Donald Roy. Compiled and introduced by Victor Emeljanow, Kenneth Richards, and Laura Richards. Theatre in Europe: A Documentary History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 558. $130 cloth.
Authors: Daniels Barry
Published: August 2008

I was introduced to sourcebooks as an undergraduate in the 1960s. At that time, the most frequently used were A. M. Nagler's A Sourcebook in Theatrical History (1952), Toby Cole's Directors on Directing (1963), and Toby Cole and Helen Chinoy's Actors on Acting (1948). These books first introduced me to the process of theatre history, and as I believe it is important to introduce this process to students, I continued to use both Nagler and the Cole and Chinoy volume, which was expanded in 1970, in teaching theatre history.
The Actor as Playwright in Early Modern Drama. By Nora Johnson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003; pp. 221. $60 cloth.
Authors: Bednarz James P.
Published: August 2008

This book, which focuses on the manner in which four Renaissance actor-playwrights justify their practice as dramatists, is both stimulating and exasperating, since it is based on a splendid idea insufficiently realized. The central premise of Nora Johnson's study is her contention that recent scholarship has tended to overemphasize Ben Jonson's model of “sovereign” authorship to the exclusion of those early modern English dramatists who acknowledged the communal and collaborative sources of their labor.
Shakespeare in Production. Series edited by Jacky Bratton and Julie Hankey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; The Merchant of Venice. Edited by Charles Edelman. $65 cloth; Shakespeare in Production. Series edited by Jacky Bratton and Julie Hankey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; The Taming of the Shrew. Edited by Elizabeth Schafer. $65 cloth; Shakespeare in Production. Series edited by Jacky Bratton and Julie Hankey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; King Henry V. Edited by Emma Smith. $23 paper.
Authors: Flachmann Michael
Published: August 2008

In their “Editors' Preface” to the Cambridge University Press Shakespeare in Production series, J. S. Bratton and Julie Hankey proudly describe the “comprehensive dossier of materials,” including “eye-witness accounts, contemporary criticism, promptbook marginalia, stage business, cuts, additions and rewritings,” that make up the heart of this brilliant and exceptionally useful collection of Shakespeare editions. Conceived by Jeremy Treglown and first published by Junction Books, the series was later printed by Bristol Classical Press as Plays in Performance, though none of the original four titles remains in print. Already published in the descendant Cambridge Shakespeare in Production series are nine plays—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, The Tempest, King Henry V, Romeo and Juliet, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Merchant of Venice—with Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Troilus and Cressida, Othello, and As You Like It forthcoming.
Shakespeare Survey 54: Shakespeare and Religions. Edited by Peter Holland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001; pp. x + 372. $80 cloth.
Authors: Wortham Christopher John
Published: August 2008

This richly eclectic volume contains much of interest for theatre historians and academic critics of Renaissance drama as a sociocultural phenomenon. Additionally, it offers a good deal for theatre artists. The main part of the volume, dedicated to the theme of “Shakespeare and Religions,” comprises sixteen articles on topics as various as performance in Japan and the first translation of Shakespeare into Hebrew. Most of the articles are broadly new historicist in flavor, offering insights into interpretation through examination of cultural formations embedded within the text of the plays. Religion is, of course, demonstrated to be one of the most formative influences.
Frozen Moments: Writings on Kabuki, 1966–2001. By Samuel L. Leiter. East Asia Series No. 111. Ithaca: Cornell University, 2002; pp. xx + 360; 210 illustrations. $21 paper.
Authors: Iezzi Julie A.
Published: August 2008

This lavishly illustrated collection covers a period of time that has seen tremendous growth in English-language kabuki scholarship. In 1966, there were in print but three introductory books on kabuki in English—Faubian Bowers's Japanese Theatre (1952), Earle Ernst's The Kabuki Theatre (1956), and A. C. Scott's The Kabuki Theatre of Japan (1966)—along with a handful of plays in translation and a few journal articles. Today, thanks to the work of such researchers as Samuel L. Leiter, James R. Brandon, Leonard Pronko, Donald Shively, Lawrence R. Kominz, Andrew C. Gerstle, and others, kabuki scholarship can boast of dozens of books and book chapters, as well as scores of articles covering a range of topics from music, theatre architecture, and dramatic text to actors, acting, and audience. Furthermore, with the recent publication of the four-volume series Kabuki Plays on Stage (edited by Brandon and Leiter, 2002–3), fifty-one previously untranslated plays are now available in English. No longer is it necessary to spend years learning the Japanese language in order to carry out research into kabuki theatre.
Chinese Theories of Theater and Performance from Confucius to the Present. Edited and translated by Faye Chunfang Fei. Foreword by Richard Schechner. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999, 2002; pp. 213. $55 cloth, $21.95 paper.
Authors: Wichmann-Walczak Elizabeth
Published: August 2008

Originally published in 1999, this book is the first and still the only major collection of primary sources in English translation for the study of Chinese theories of theatre and performance. In an earlier Theatre Survey review of this anthology (42:1 [May 2001]: 96–8), Sara Davis focused on the historical development of Chinese theatre and devoted a substantial portion of her comments to the earlier periods, noting with regret that these eras and the professional folk performance that flourished during them are underrepresented in this volume. This is undoubtedly true, but the unequal coverage does not originate with editor Fei. Very few literati-scholars wrote for or about the performing arts prior to the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). Written theatre theory in China being primarily in the hands of these gentlemen until the modern era, the relative paucity of early primary sources is therefore an unavoidable reality. With the 2002 republication of Fei's anthology in paperback form, it therefore seems appropriate to reassess her work, describing and evaluating the materials that are included for the larger readership now provided access.
Human rights and the social construction of sovereignty
Authors: Reus-Smit Christian
Published: August 2008

Sovereignty and human rights are generally considered separate, mutually contradictory regimes in international society. This article takes issue with this conventional assumption, and argues that only by treating sovereignty and human rights as two normative elements of a single, inherently contradictory modern discourse about legitimate statehood and rightful state action can we explain key moments in the expansion of the international system during the twentieth century. After developing a constructivist argument about communicative action, norm formation and sovereignty, the article focuses on post-1945 decolonization, showing how ‘first wave’ post-colonial states played a crucial role in constructing the ‘international bill of rights’, how they invoked those rights to justify the norm of self-determination, and how this norm in turn licensed the proliferation of new sovereign states in Asia and elsewhere.
Machiavelli: human nature, good faith, and diplomacy
Authors: Berridge G. R.
Published: August 2008

Machiavelli believed that diplomacy, unlike military service, was of no significance for civic virtue, and that in foreign policy it was no substitute for arms and money. Nevertheless, it enhanced the virtù of even the strongest prince. It was for this and other reasons that Machiavelli also believed that the good faith on which negotiation depends was generally observed. His view that promises need not outlast the conditions that produce them is an escape clause that is equally necessary. Machiavelli does not deserve the charge, laid at his door by Harold Nicolson, of corrupting the art of diplomacy.
Thucydides and hegemony: Athens and the United States
Authors: Lebow Richard Ned , Kelly Robert
Published: August 2008

Fifth century Greeks distinguished between hegemonia (legitimated leadership) and arkhe (control). Thucydides employed this distinction to track the changing nature of the Athenian Empire during the Peloponnesian War, and the ways in which a diminishing concern for balancing self-interest against justice corroded Athenian authority, made survival of the empire increasingly problematic and encouraged the disastrous expedition to Sicily. The Melian Dialogue—often cited by realists to justify a power-based approach to foreign policy—is intended to symbolize this decay. Building on our analysis of Thucydides, we examine the British, Soviet and American experiences with hegemony. A striking feature of the contemporary American situation is the extent to which American leaders claim hegemonia but deny any interest in arkhe. Rightly or wrongly, much of the rest of the world has the reverse perception. This seeming contradiction has important implications for US foreign policy and world politics more generally.
The ‘third debate’ revisited
Authors: Navon Emmanuel
Published: August 2008

This article challenges the idea that IR theory is in the midst of a ‘third debate’ between ‘positivistic’ and ‘post-positivistic’ approaches, by showing that neither the ‘first’ nor the ‘second’ debates have lost any of their relevance, and by arguing that the ‘third debate’ and the allegedly new paradigms it generated do not constitute a challenging innovation. While the ‘first debate’ is a debate between two visions of human nature, the ‘second debate’ is a debate between two visions of knowledge. A critical stance vis-à-vis rationalism does not imply a rejection of political realism, nor an endorsement of postmodernism or constructivism.
The unfinished global revolution: intellectuals and the new politics of international relations
Authors: Shaw Martin
Published: August 2008

More than a decade after the revolutions of 1989, we can see these as a high point of a new, worldwide and increasingly global wave of democratic revolution and counter-revolution. Violent struggles between the political forces unleashed have produced genocidal wars and stimulated global state formation. These developments present concerned citizens and students of international relations and politics with new challenges. This article criticizes two trends in the responses of political intellectuals in the West: the ‘new anarchism’ of some critical thinkers in the academic discipline of international relations, and ‘yesterday's radicalism’ which has led some left-wing critics to revive the defence of sovereignty for repressive and genocidal non-Western states. The lecture concludes by outlining an alternative ‘new politics’ of international relations
Communism, fascism and counter-revolution in world politics
Authors: Mann Michael
Published: August 2008

This is a rich, impressive and timely book. At a time when American and neoliberal triumphalism deny the significance of any revolution later than 1776, and when almost no-one in the social sciences is still studying either revolution or class, Fred Halliday has demonstrated that we have been living in a revolutionary age, dominated by the conjoined effects of war and class revolution. In case you find his sub-title mysterious, Karl Marx noted that the Europe of his time was dominated by five Great Powers, but Revolution, ‘the sixth Great Power’, would soon overcome them all. Halliday would suggest that Marx was only half-right. Revolution did not overcome all five Powers, but it did transform them all—and their successors. Hannah Arendt and Martin Wight also emphasized that couplings of war and revolution have dominated much of modernity. But Halliday adds that these are not to be seen as ‘disruptions’ of International Relations, they are International Relations, since they have set the overall parameters of the modern international system. They did so, he says, in three distinct revolutionary phases from the sixteenth century to the present-day: sixteenth-seventeenth century religious wars/revolutions, late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Atlanticist wars/revolutions, and twentieth century wars/revolutions which became increasingly dominated by communism.
Nothing revolutionary
Authors: Walt Stephen M.
Published: August 2008

Over the past quarter-century, Fred Halliday has distinguished himself as a prolific and insightful scholar of international affairs. He has imbibed a generous dose of Marxist theory without being intoxicated by it, and one might say the same for his consumption of other types of theory as well. Not content to be an armchair academic, Halliday is personally acquainted with a number of revolutionary movements and his writings combine an obvious sympathy for their aspirations with a clear-eyed sense of their shortcomings. The result is a combination of intellectual range and personal experience that is nearly unique among contemporary scholars of world politics.
The rise of the state system in Africa
Authors: Warner Carolyn M.
Published: August 2008

Africa's relation to the concept and practice of ‘state’ and ‘states system’ has been problematic since its first encounters with those who were armed with the concept. In observing the collapse of authority and governance in a number of African states, some scholars have suggested that Africa presented the states system with alternative political organizations. Others argue that so long as there is a kernel of armed authority in territorially demarcated areas, a state exists. Africa's polities have often responded unconventionally, yet strategically, to interaction with the sovereign state system first elaborated by the Europeans. To comprehend the novelty, or lack of it, in the ‘state system’ of contemporary Africa, we need to know something about its pre-colonial political structures and organizations and about the imprint of empires (the construct which effectively limited the ‘international’ system of sovereign states to the West) on Africa. Did colonialism and the Western system of sovereign states rule out alternative structures for the newly independent African states? What might alternative structures have looked like? What impact did colonial rule have on the development of states in Africa? Does contemporary Africa have a ‘state system’? This article addresses these questions in the context of the Special Issue's concern with both the structure of the international system and developments among and between the units.
The long nineteenth century in Europe
Authors: Meadwell Hudson
Published: August 2008

Histories of European international politics are punctuated by turning points. Typically, these watersheds have been connected to major wars. What do such histories have to tell us about nineteenth century Europe? What, if anything, is left out in the telling? My purposes in posing these questions are, first, to suggest that these histories focus too narrowly on war and, second, to propose an alternative perspective on modern European politics.
American power and the empire of capitalist democracy
Authors: Ikenberry G. John
Published: August 2008

The United States is today a global superpower without historical precedent. It stands at the centre of an expanding democratic-capitalist world order that is itself, fifty years after its creation, the dominant reality in world politics. Despite expectations that American hegemony would disappear and trigger the emergence of a new and unstable multipolar post-Cold War order, the opposite has in fact happened. American power has grown even greater in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although American power is not uniformly welcome around the world, serious ideological challengers or geopolitical balancers are not to be found. Scholars who a decade ago were debating the prospect of co-operation and conflict in a post-hegemonic world are now debating the character and future of world politics within an American unipolar order.
The construction of a ‘realistic utopia’: John Rawls and international political theory
Authors: BROWN CHRIS
Published: August 2008

‘The limits of the possible in moral matters are less narrow than we think. It is our weaknesses, our vices, our prejudices that shrink them.’

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract Book II, Chapter 12.2

[cited from John Rawls The Law of Peoples, p. 7]

After presenting a brief sketch of John Rawls's theory of justice, his international political theory is outlined and evaluated. Rawls develops a classification of ‘peoples’ based on whether or not they are ‘well-ordered’. The Law of Peoples covers ‘liberal’ and ‘decent’ peoples who adhere to minimum standards of human rights and are not aggressive in their international relations. This is in the realm of ‘ideal’ theory; ‘non-ideal’ theory must cope also with societies that are not well-ordered, such as outlaw states and burdened societies. The long-term aim is that all should be part of a confederation of decent peoples. Rawls's theory has been criticized by cosmopolitan liberals for its communitarian tendencies, but has much to offer scholars of international relations, including a systematic basis for classifying states, a helpful discussion of the distinction between reasonableness and rationality, and a powerful restatement of the importance of utopian thinking in international relations.
The politics of bandwidth: international political implications of a global digital information network
Authors: HERRERA GEOFFREY L.
Published: August 2008

This article addresses the issue of the information revolution and international affairs. It makes three arguments. First, the evolution of a global digital information network is likely to diminish state capacity and autonomy, but the specific nature of the effects of new information technologies are indeterminate because the technology and the politics are inextricably intertwined and the technology itself is not yet ‘complete’. Second, the effects of a mature digital information infrastructure are best understood as the outcome of a three-way political struggle between centralized political authorities (states), centralized economic entities (firms) and individuals as both consumers and citizens. Third, in spite of the indeterminacy of technological change, a matrix of possible outcomes can be constructed. The globalization argument is partially correct: state capacities will drop, relatively speaking, and firm capacities will increase unless states and people can reconceptualize their relationship and guide technological development to suit their interests. The article analyses three representative pieces of a mature global digital information network—the physical network media, cryptography, and digital money—to show how the new information technologies are deeply political and their effects therefore indeterminate.
The causes of convergence in Western immigration control
Authors: MEYERS EYTAN
Published: August 2008

In recent years, some scholars have argued that there has been a convergence of the immigration control policies of the industrial democracies. This article demonstrates that, in fact, there has been an extraordinary similarity among the immigration control policies of the major receiving countries for over a century. It examines six alternative explanations for these similarities in immigration control policies: (1) a global hegemon that forces or persuades various countries to act in unison; (2) global or regional migration regimes and organizations; (3) interdependence between the immigration control policies of various countries; (4) emulation of immigration control policies of one country by other countries; (5) the world system approach; and (6) interdependence between the socioeconomic and foreign policy factors that lead to immigration control policies. The article argues that it is the last factor that explains most of the similarity among the immigration control policies. It demonstrates how global economic cycles, shared migratory pressures, alliances that produce common foreign policy considerations, wars that receiving countries are involved in and global ideological cycles produce the convergence of immigration control policies in various receiving countries.
Reflections on nuclear optimism: Waltz, Burke and proliferation
Authors: WOODS MATTHEW
Published: August 2008

Proliferation optimism is the controversial theoretical and worrisome practical product of neorealism. This article reviews and ultimately rejects proliferation optimism by showing how it actually reproduces what it seeks to eliminate: pessimism. This article interprets proliferation optimism through the lens of Burkean conservatism and contends—adopting the formative reasoning of neorealism and optimism—that as the ideal nuclear society which optimism envisions resembles the ideal conservative society Burke describes in his Reflections, that optimism reproduces a core belief of conservatism: flawed human nature. The article contends that, contrary to the first principles of neorealism, an unheralded view of human nature operates within optimism to yield its reservations about widespread proliferation which, in turn, reveal optimism's essential pessimism. Illustrating how optimism is pessimism may diminish its theoretical and practical allure.
Reading the state from elsewhere: towards an anthropology of the postnational
Authors: MANDAVILLE PETER
Published: August 2008

My aim in this review article is to advance the argument that some of the best accounts of how we relate internationally are to be found outside the conventional boundaries of international relations (IR). In a recent review article in this journal, Kate Manzo also suggests that international relations might profit from a closer engagement with examples of disciplinary boundary crossing located in—or, perhaps more accurately, between—other fields of study. She advocates a widening of the ‘international imagination’ so as to incorporate categories of analysis and approaches to the study of power usually seen as falling outside the remit of IR as it is traditionally understood. It is, of course, the very nature of this ‘traditional’ IR that finds itself under question today. Manzo convincingly demonstrates how the work of writers such as Roxanne Lynn Doty and Arturo Escobar refigures debates about colonialism, race and development such that their intrinsic import to the international is laid bare. Although I find myself in almost complete agreement with Manzo—particularly as regards her point about mainstream IR's neglect of other sites and forms of power—I want in this article to highlight a different, although equally subversive, dimension of doing multidisciplinary work in international relations.
PHARMACY FOR THE BODY AND SOUL: DUTCH SONGBOOKS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Authors: Veldhorst Natascha
Published: August 2008

Mention sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Dutch vocal music and the knowledgeable music lover usually thinks immediately of the brilliant polyphonic creations of famous Flemish masters like Josquin des Prez, Adrian Willaert and Orlande de Lassus. And they did indeed write compositions that still appeal to the imagination. Take Josquin’s polyphonic, chirping El Grillo, a relatively simple but effective piece that can entice even the most a-musical twenty-first-century student into the world of the Renaissance. Those familiar with the Baroque will recall Jan Pietersz Sweelinck, the organist of the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam and a composer of bewitching instrumental and vocal music, including his four books of polyphonic Pseaumes de David (1604–21) to the texts of Clément Marot and Theodore Bèze, which are still being performed regularly. Perhaps, too, the French, Latin and Italian arias by Constantijn Huygens from his Pathodia sacra et profana (1647). But it is then that the singing seems to stop in the Low Countries. The names of the composers, at least, are barely known beyond our borders.
A novel articulated mechanism mimicking the motion of index fingers
Authors: Figliolini Giorgio , Ceccarelli Marco
Published: August 2008

In this paper we propose an analytical formulation for simulation and design of a one d.o.f. articulated finger mechanism with three phalanges. The formulation is based on a study of the design and operation of an index human finger. In particular, we have

proposed a suitable mechanical design for an anthropomorphic finger as both an approximation of human architecture and an easy practical design. Kinematic characteristics are illustrated with numerical examples.
Mechanism design of a simplified 6-DOF 6-RUS parallel manipulator
Authors: Liu Xin-Jun , Wang Jinsong , Gao Feng , Wang Li-Ping
Published: August 2008

This paper concerns the issue of mechanism design of a simplified

6-DOF 6-RUS parallel manipulator. The design of robotic mechanisms, especially

for 6-DOF parallel manipulators, is an important and challenging problem

in the field of robotics. This paper presents a design

method for robotic mechanisms, which is based on the physical

model of the solution space. The physical model of the

solution space, which can transfer a multi-dimensional problem to a

two or three-dimensional one, is a useful tool to obtain

all kinds of performance atlases. In this paper, the physical

model of the solution space for spatial 6-RUS (R stands

for revolute joint, U universal joint and S spherical joint)

parallel manipulators is established. The atlases of performances, such as

workspace and global conditioning index, are plotted in the physical

model of the solution space. The atlases are useful for

the mechanism design of the 6-RUS parallel manipulators. The technique

used in this paper can be applied to the design

of other robots.