bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
To Secure These Rights
Authors: Shelton Jon
Published: September 2023

This chapter highlights that the intention of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act (GI Bill) was to provide both economic security and additional economic opportunity for veterans. It notes that the implementation of the GI Bill, which allowed southern white supremacists the discretion to deny full benefits to Black veterans, was also racially discriminatory, and the benefits accrued disproportionately to white families. The chapter explores how the social democracy of the New Deal and the two decades after World War II ushered in a time of rising expectations of greater social and economic rights for most working Americans. It looks at how policymakers, union leaders, and civil rights activists all sought new, sweeping possibilities: the right to a job, broad access to healthcare, and high-quality, truly universal public education. The chapter reviews how public education would grow in the postwar years into an increasingly prominent aspect of the social democratic project. It assesses the growing complexity of American society and workers' needs for more education. It then argues that the opportunity through education would do what the unfinished project of New Deal-era social democracy had failed to do: ensure all Americans had a chance at economic security.
“What You Earn Depends on What You Learn”
Authors: Shelton Jon
Published: September 2023

This chapter demonstrates that even prominent Republicans like George H. W. Bush sought to highlight their embrace of investment in human capital for political gain. The chapter illustrates how supporting public education allowed Bush to separate himself from the hard-hearted approach of Ronald Reagan while cultivating a conservative version of the education myth. Initiating the push for national standards, the chapter discusses how Bush as president helped to further advance the idea that human capital through education represented the means for American workers to find opportunity and, if they succeeded, security, in a globalizing world. The chapter also peeks at Bill Clinton's coronation as chair of the Democratic Leadership Council in 1990, and considers how it represented the culmination of a major shift in the Democratic Party. In a more globally integrated America, the chapter narrates that Clinton and other new Democrats believed American working people could no longer hope good blue-collar jobs would come back, and it was folly to even try to protect them. Instead, they should embrace change, and one of government's most important roles would be to ensure everyone had a fair shake, without any guarantees, in the world economy. The chapter concludes by highlighting that the agenda of Clinton and the Democratic Leadership Council used education and other social policies to overcome supposed “deficiencies” that existed in those left behind by American capitalism.
A Social Democratic Future?
Authors: Shelton Jon
Published: September 2023

This chapter documents the growing cracks in the education myth. It recounts that Donald Trump's rise, following a similar playbook as Scott Walker, capitalized on both economic and cultural resentments in winning a major upset over Hillary Clinton, who, like Barack Obama, is a quintessential professional-class meritocrat. The chapter notes the revolt against the myth on the left, as political figures such as Bernie Sanders and unions such as the Chicago Teacher Union have pushed for a much more robust version of social democracy in which public education is only one piece of a wider set of social and economic rights necessary for full citizenship. This chapter investigates why we value education and what we hope to get out of it. Because our institutions change so slowly, public education can seem to have a timeless quality, as if we have always valued it for the same reasons. But, as the chapter shows, the reasons American politicians, policymakers, intellectuals, and working people have advocated for more investment in public education have changed dramatically over time. The chapter argues that the boldest and most dramatic efforts to expand social democracy in the first half of the twentieth century, such as social security, strong collective bargaining rights, and minimum wage laws had little to do with public education. It then delves into how the seeds of the education myth grew into a fast-growing and ubiquitous weed that increasingly choked off the promise of any broad social democratic possibilities in the future.
Aleppo in Space and Time
Authors: Anderson Paul
Published: September 2023

This chapter introduces the city of Aleppo in relation to its shifting location in the nation-state and regional and transregional economies under Baathist rule. The chapter acknowledges Aleppo as the most heavily contested and brutalized city in Syria's civil war. Despite its relative economic stagnation under Baathist rule, Aleppo retained a strong sense of its identity, character, and excellence due to its heritage and pride in authentic cultural forms. The chapter then discusses the merchants of Sunni Muslim affiliation, referencing their social order premised on the ideals of respectability and reputation. It considers economic liberalization as a cultural process wherein merchants represent public figures.
Exchange Ideologies of Urban-Rural Difference
Authors: Anderson Paul
Published: September 2023

This chapter explores the concept of exchange ideologies while referencing differences between urban and rural people evident among merchants in Aleppo under Baathist rule. The regime's divide-and-rule policy maintained the bourgeoisies as competing elites in the city's markets and commercial chambers. The chapter explains how merchants deployed a mix of language and exchange ideologies to represent merchants and clans as different kinds of social beings. In comparison, the modes of commerce and speech of rural incomers were defined as uncouth. The chapter also expounds on the concept of urban identity which delegitimized social rivals and mobilized political support in elections to the Chamber of Commerce.
The Hospitality Economy
Authors: Anderson Paul
Published: September 2023

This chapter looks into the hospitality economy in Aleppo. It examines mercantile gathering or leader-centered peer networks as a form of social membership of the market and an associated exchange ideology. Hospitality enabled principal merchants to engage and manage the tensions inherent in credit relations and to construe credit–debt relations with their customers as a form of mutuality and mutual obligation. Moreover, notions of mutuality can underpin commodity exchange in various social and cultural settings. The chapter discusses how the madafa economy structured the access to the market, and incorporated attendees into a political economy sanctioned by the regime.
Exchange Ideologies and the Futures of the Syrian Nation
Authors: Anderson Paul
Published: September 2023

This chapter provides an overview of the notion of exchange ideology and its relevance to the future of Syria. It considers economic liberalization in Syria as a cultural and social process by referencing the nature of the commerce of Aleppo's merchants. Exchange ideologies of Aleppine commerce reveal how merchants reimagined boundaries of moral community in adaptive ways that took advantage of new opportunities for transregional mobility after the collapse of the USSR. Thus, exchange ideologies became a medium for contesting the nature of the Syrian polity. The chapter highlights that the modes of exchange of Aleppine merchant were shaped by the regime's attempt to retain political control while fostering a degree of economic liberalization.
The Lure of the Game
Authors: Cleveland Todd
Published: September 2023

This chapter reviews the history of commercial hunting safaris in the colony. Exploring its inception and steady development, the chapter unfolds how a largely unregulated endeavor was transformed over time into a tightly controlled industry that featured seasoned, highly professional outfitters and a proactive colonial government eager to protect and expand this revenue stream. By deliberately inviting eminent politicians, celebrities, and other influential sorts from abroad to hunt the colony's renowned game, and by ensuring that they had truly sublime experiences while on safari, the state was counting on these visitors to return home and exclaim the wonders of Mozambique and, by extension, the Portuguese colonial project. As part of this propagandistic strategy, the chapter emphasizes how safari operators, with the active support of the Portuguese state, aggressively courted big-game hunters in the United States and in Europe's most preeminent countries. As Lisbon grew increasingly anxious owing to the waves of decolonization that crashed across the continent in the 1960s, the chapter highlights how these international connections grew increasingly important, with tourism again powerfully mixing with politics in Mozambique.
Safari
Authors: Cleveland Todd
Published: September 2023

This chapter focuses on Mozambique's celebrated game but pivots to reconstruct the development of the camera safari industry. It follows how colonial officials converted the expansive Gorongosa reserve in central Mozambique into a national park in 1960, rendering it a formally protected animal sanctuary that quickly drew increasing numbers of visitors from around the world. Even if the tourist infrastructure at Gorongosa was always modest, the chapter highlights that the space featured a density of wildlife that even its more famous South African neighbor, Kruger National Park, could not match. The chapter also stresses that the formal establishment of the space as a national park reflected a broader, international thrust to generate profits in the name of conservation. It then underlines those accounts of these guests' positive experiences at the park and, more broadly, in the colony, which provided significant political capital for the increasingly isolated Estado Novo. Ultimately, the chapter emphasizes that the consequent influxes of visitors that the promotional efforts—and, of course, the grandeur of the space itself—generated were ably facilitated and serviced by African laborers, the backbone of Gorongosa's workforce.
The Sole Exception to the Rule
Authors: Dorsey M. Girard
Published: September 2023

This chapter explains that poison gas shaped behavior even though it was not deployed as nations sled closer to using it and anticipated reacting to enemies' deployment. The chapter looks into Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt's proponents of the conflict. Britain was more active than the United States and Canada in introducing chemical weapons as tools of psychological warfare that would unsettle and possibly demoralize or scare the enemy. The chapter details how British policy affected the Western Allies. It explains how even if provisions against gas were deployed by 1942, the Allies continued to use gas as a tool in their efforts to shape the enemies' behavior.
The Limits of Friendship
Authors: Dorsey M. Girard
Published: September 2023

This chapter explores how chemical weapons influenced alliances as World War II expanded. The Western Allies embarked on a combined chemical warfare policy. They worked together by sharing trust, culture, and knowledge in ways none of them shared with the Soviet Union, the Free French, or China. The chapter explains that issues of international law, national sovereignty, and strategic vulnerability played roles in the significance of joint decision-making for chemical warfare and managing to minimize the risks of a gas war. It mentions that the risk of gas warfare in Europe was at an apogee on the cusp of D-Day.
Rolling the Dice
Authors: Dorsey M. Girard
Published: September 2023

This chapter covers risking gas warfare in Europe. United States, Canadian, and British attitudes toward such things as white phosphorus and botulism helped shape the discussions and decisions about how to balance the risk and rewards of using chemical weapons during this period. Germany targeted British civilians with the Vengeance weapons in the aftermath of D-Day, so British leaders turned reluctantly to gas as a possible tool of retaliation and rocket destruction. The chapter explains that the Western Allied relationship continued to evolve, referencing the status of the United States, Canada, and Britain after the attack of Germany. It also tackles the war between Japan and the Western Allies that involved gas use.
Critical Timing
Authors: Dorsey M. Girard
Published: September 2023

This chapter looks into the increasing likelihood of chemical warfare in the Pacific. World War II marks the dawn of the nuclear age, establishing poison gas's place in the panoply of acceptable weapons. However, the war ended with a convention defeat in Europe and a shocking new weapon in the Pacific, the Manhattan Project. The chapter notes the momentum of using gas in the invasion of Japan until the plan went moot after the atomic bomb. It looks into the plans to use chemical weapons in assaulting Formosa (also known as Taiwan) due to its importance in setting the foundation for Operation Downfall.
What and Where Is Israel?
Authors: Lustick Ian S.
Published: September 2023

This chapter looks into a gestalt shift in Israel. It highlights the stark discrepancy between the perception of West Bank and Gaza Arabs and their actual living status. A gestalt shift is expected to trigger the actual perception of the area instead of the continued justification of the work on behalf of a negotiated two state solution (TSS). Science and politics solve issues by simplifying the world enough to grapple with it in the same way as creating communities of the same belief. The chapter cites the gestalt switch to one state reality paradigm if the TSS paradigm produces anomalies since Israelis living in the West Bank do not have to be treated as if they are living in Israel.
Israel/Palestine
Authors: Munayyer Yousef
Published: September 2023

This chapter explores Israel's journey towards decolonization into a single state. The settler colonialism structure is built by several processes of taking the stronger group of land, rights, access, and identity from the weaker indigenous population over time. The political conditions that limited the indigenous population's control over state action took shape under the British Mandate and the State of Israel. The chapter highlights the importance of taking Israel/Palestine's unique history and current reality into account to create guiding principles for the decolonization process. It explains how the settler-colonial processes of Zionism over the past century structured the unequal and unjust present that Israelis and Palestinians live in today.
Palestinians in Israel and the One State Reality
Authors: Mustafa Mohanad , Ghanem As’ad
Published: September 2023

This chapter looks into how Palestinians living in Israel adjusted their politics and strategies following the one state reality (OSR). It also mentions that Palestinian citizens of Israel played a role in shaping the post-Oslo reality in “Historical Palestine.” Moreover, Palestinians in Israel continued to suffer from the lack of a clear collective project as they were excluded from the national movement and were part of a national indigenous minority. The chapter notes how projects like Equality in the Jewish State and Joint List collided at certain points with the ethnic structure of the state. It acknowledges how division and disagreement over the course of collective action will very likely worsen in the coming years.
Beyond Oslo
Authors: Elgindy Khaled
Published: September 2023

This chapter tackles the collapse of the Oslo process in line with the success of Israel's settlement enterprise and the collapsing political consensus around the goal of two states. United States and foreign policymakers began looking at alternative solutions after the two state model based on territorial partition and demographic separation became unworkable. The chapter clarifies that the solutions of binationalism, confederation, and the traditional two state model need a fundamental change to the power dynamics between Israelis and Palestinians. A viable peace process must have the right incentive structure in terms of the costs and consequences of maintaining the status quo or the benefits of altering it. The chapter then notes possible steps US officials can take to achieve an equitable resolution that is mutually acceptable and sustainable over time.
Sandel and the Proliferation of Political Subjects
Authors: Honig Bonnie
Published: September 2023

This chapter tackles the proliferation of political subjects in accordance with Michael Sandel's virtue theory. It details Sandel's point that the communitarian conception of the self is preferable to the liberal conception on philosophical or epistemological and ethico-political grounds. According to Sandel, the status of the self as subject, of homosexuality, and pornography can all be resolved by a community that discerns in the other some likeness to itself or some sign of distinctive worth. The chapter then looks into Sandel's construction of radical situatedness and radical unsituatedness to animate his need to secure a middle option. It mentions the similarity between Sandel's identification of politics as friendship with the task of harmonization and the Rawlsian practices of self-reflection.
Notes from Underground
Authors: Jackson Michael
Published: September 2023

This chapter talks about the author's work in a poultry mash factory as soon as he passed his university entrance exams as he intended to save enough money over the summer months to supplement his university bursary. It mentions Fritz Jackson, who founded the Poultryman's Cooperative and shared the same family features and the same name as the author. It also recounts how Fritz originally had been a land buyer but lost his fortune in 1928 and 1929, when he became liable for the debts of the former owners and mortgagees of all the land he'd ever sold. The chapter looks at the author's reading of Erich Fromm and fascination by the idea that one's first duty in life was the realization of one's full potential. It explores Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground that inspired the author's conclusion that his responsibility to create a life for himself absolved him of any obligation to others.
Transitions
Authors: Jackson Michael
Published: September 2023

This chapter begins with the author's concern of why he couldn't be like his peers, confidently pursuing their goals in life and accepting the world into which they were born. The chapter notes that the relation between the world within and the world without is uncertain as each partly determines the appearance of the other, and life is a dynamic interplay between being an actor and being acted upon. It also mentions that the author's experiences were the base metals from which his worldview was forged. The chapter details how the author took some time before he accepted what it means to give oneself wholly and unreservedly to another upon meeting Pauline. It highlights the transition from orality to literacy that entail a complete transformation in consciousness.
Return to Cambridge
Authors: Jackson Michael
Published: September 2023

This chapter details how the author sailed from Freetown on an Elder Dempster ship, which had a long history of carrying colonial administrators out to Britain's West African. It talks about the author's gravitation toward the West Africans on board the Elder Dempster ship, which reflected how he and his companions did not want to be reminded of the colonial nostalgia and class snobberies of the country to which they were returning. It also looks at a few lines that anticipated the author's thesis, which provides a view that was succinctly captured in a Kuranko adage. The chapter explains how the adage implies that the world is like a headload, the weight of which depends on how a person chooses to carry it. The chapter cites that Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground echoes in Karl Marx's comment that one must force the frozen circumstances to dance by singing to them their own melody.
Existential Mobility and Multiple Selves
Authors: Jackson Michael
Published: September 2023

This chapter reviews life stories that the author heard from refugees in Wellington and from Sierra Leoneans in London that resonated with his own destabilized sense of self. It describes the unsettled situation that affected the author's thinking and made him increasingly critical of the Procrustean categories into which academics typically compress and solidify the flux of human experience. It also talks about the author's fieldwork with African migrants in Copenhagen and Amsterdam that made him acutely aware of their ever-changing relationships to the world in which they were struggling to survive and the worlds from whence they came. The chapter explores how Jackson reflected the function of the term “migrants” or “refugees” in media and academic discourse. It looks at the symbolic violence involved in reducing tens of thousands of human beings to an anonymous mass comparable to a migrating herd, a plague, a flood, a pathology, or a problem.
Isidore Mortem
Authors: Siegel Martin J.
Published: September 2023

This chapter chronicles how the Kaufmans landed in a five-story brick tenement on Division Street with sixteen other families. It looks at the early lives of Tzvi Hersch bar Schloma, his wife Ruchel, and their three more children: Rebecca in 1904, Abraham in 1906, and Isidore on June 24, 1910. Like most newcomers, the Kaufmans sought out the familiar and joined the Landsmanschaft for new arrivals from Jagielnica. As the chapter highlights, these benevolent societies provided everything from help during hard times to cemetery plots to comfort in cafés frequented by members. As Galitzianers, the Kaufmans hugged the bottom of their new home's totem pole, which placed even Russians and other Poles higher. The chapter also discusses how some Jews abandoned their faith altogether, choosing new creeds like socialism or anarchism, while others more quietly and gradually shed the shtetl rituals. The Kaufmans seem to have epitomized this evolution, with the older children hewing close to orthodoxy while the younger siblings born in America adopted a “revolving door” Judaism—synagogue attendance twice a year on high holidays. The chapter recounts how Kaufman began racing through the public schools of New York City, finished his educational race, and reached the tape in June 1931. The end of school warranted another change, too. He decided during his third year to become Irving rather than Isidore. Now he ditched Isidore and became Irving Robert Kaufman, IRK.
Immortality
Authors: Siegel Martin J.
Published: September 2023

This chapter looks at how things had generally been quiet since the sentencing, as Manny Bloch prepared the Rosenbergs' appeal to the Second Circuit. But in August, a small dissenting voice rose from the multitudes who had found no fault with the case and moved on. The chapter discusses how the National Guardian's, a far-left newsweekly, heated opposition to the Korean War and shunted it far out of the mainstream. Crusading journalists James Aronson and William Reuben then began a series of articles on the case. The chapter follows how the magazine published heartrending, if propaganda-rich, letters between Julius and Ethel. It then examines an organization for a new trial or clemency: the National Committee to Secure Justice in the Rosenberg Case. The chapter pays particular attention to their first press release, and analyzes how the release played up the Jewish angle, noting that Jewish and other newspapers had voiced “fear that the Rosenbergs were also victims of religious bigotry.” Ultimately, the chapter argues that Kaufman believed that he had done his duty in condemning the Rosenbergs and was determined to stand by his decision to the end. But that didn't mean he necessarily wanted them dead—or that he craved eternal identification as the man responsible.
The Most Cherished Tenet
Authors: Siegel Martin J.
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses the day when Irving Robert Kaufman first confronted the Pentagon Papers. It elaborates on published news stories and the excerpts of Defense Department documents from what became known as the Pentagon Papers: a forty-seven-volume opus dissecting the origins of America's involvement in Vietnam and its conduct of the war until 1968. Although the volumes were designated “Top Secret,” the chapter argues that much of their content was already public in the form of old news articles and official memoirs. Nonetheless, the United States claimed describing them in print would reveal important facts damaging to American alliances and secret negotiations to withdraw from Vietnam. The chapter begins with a discussion of Kaufman's role in the Pentagon Papers. It recalls the time when Kaufman had condemned the Rosenbergs for arrogating to themselves the decision to transmit atomic information to the Russians, even if the USSR was then an ally. Now, when the government accused the Times of a similar sort of arrogance—claiming it could decide for itself whether disclosing secret documents threatened the nation—Kaufman was far less credulous. As the chapter emphasizes, the two cases differed greatly, but it's also true that after two decades on the bench and all the accompanying political and social change, Kaufman was simply less willing to swallow government protestations of national security.
Keep the Beacon Burning
Authors: Siegel Martin J.
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses how Irving Robert Kaufman was forced to surrender the chief judge's gavel, his since 1973. Federal law capped a chief's age at seventy, and Kaufman's time was nigh. The chapter mentions that circuit chiefs handle a host of administrative duties and more generally serve as the public face of the court. The chapter then follows how being chief gave Kaufman a lab for experimentation. He insisted the court “clear” its cases—decide as many appeals as filed in a given year—and he used the judges' meetings every sixty days to brandish a list of unresolved appeals and interrogate the slowpokes. The chapter also considers how Kaufman streamlined simpler appeals by issuing summary orders immediately after argument, though some judges thought this smacked of assembly-line justice. His plan to expedite criminal appeals accelerated certain deadlines and resulted in the fastest average time for resolution in the country. Finally, the chapter explores how Kaufman created a “Civil Appeals Management Plan” deputizing the court's staff counsel to summon lawyers for settlement talks and clearing some appeals off the docket before the judges had to face them.
Don’t Hammer Nails with a Saw
Authors: Hughes Jeffrey W.
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses how to effectively tackle environmental challenges and problems by first identifying the expected outcomes. It highlights that the value of any tool depends entirely on the situation in which it is used. Tools and techniques are possible means to an end, but never the end itself. The chapter considers the effectiveness of the repeat-why technique and the divide-and-conquer method in identifying desired outcomes. It then introduces the SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, reasonable, and timely) objectives as a key problem-solving skill. Moreover, even if solving environmental factors is easier without people, people and their doings are always part of the equation.
Becoming an Ace Researcher
Authors: Hughes Jeffrey W.
Published: September 2023

This chapter considers how to collect data while also highlighting that useful and trustworthy information comes from careful planning and execution. It details the process of obtaining data by drafting and aligning a research overview, SMART objectives, and dummy graphs. Dividing and conquering the research and data is important until the mini-plans become effective and data collecting undertakes the research. Moreover, conducting a pilot study tightens the overall plan and makes the whole ordeal efficient. The chapter also explains that researchers must give good consideration to expert advice since it might not always be the best solution to the research.
Things You Need to Know about Data Collection and Statistics
Authors: Hughes Jeffrey W.
Published: September 2023

This chapter explores the inner workings of science and how researchers seek to promote objectivity over subjectivity in decision-making. It also covers the process of describing the data-collecting approach. Research questions often revolve around the orientation of inventory/descriptive, comparative/monitoring, or how/why. While hypothesis testing is not used much for inventory/descriptive-type questions, it is the method that scientists use to answer comparative/monitoring and how/why-type questions. The chapter then details the essentials of statistics, statistical analysis, and variability in an effort to understand the collected data. It lists the relevant details to include in data collection, such as scales of the study area, sampling period, and consistent units.
Do You See What I See?
Authors: Hughes Jeffrey W.
Published: September 2023

This chapter details the tools used for successfully connecting with people. Understanding the default mindset of a person is key in connecting with someone who does not see things the same way. Typecasting people is an example of assumptions and preconceived notions at work. Moreover, Walter Poleman's PLACE Program (Place-Based Landscape Analysis and Community Engagement) is remarkably effective at getting people from different political and socioeconomic groups to talk with, listen to, learn from, and respect one another. The chapter also considers connecting with people through field outings, community celebrations, and presentations even if they do not necessarily share similar views and initiatives.
Becoming an Ace Leader
Authors: Hughes Jeffrey W.
Published: September 2023

This chapter looks into how to become an effective leader. It acknowledges how personality differences can wreak havoc in a group. Thus, dysfunction in teams could be avoided if members were up-front about their hard-wired tendencies and if the prospect of attending a meeting did not make people want to scream. Making a meeting worthwhile takes more than just getting people together to talk. The chapter details the process of setting up meetings, citing the significance of brainstorming in generating new ideas. It then discusses the Facilitator-Recorder Approach and the Improved Nominal Group Technique as approaches that work well at getting people to say what they are thinking.
Self-Commemoration and the Interwar Culture of Time
Authors: Kalashnikov Antony
Published: September 2023

This chapter reveals how the overblown monument-building ambitions were hardly exclusive to Stalinism and its fascist cousins. It considers the Stalinist case as only one radical presentation of a global phenomenon. It also describes the darkening interwar years, when the fantasy of an enduring nation largely displaced more optimistic visions of national destiny and prompted a fascination with prospective monument building that bridged the authoritarian–democratic divide. The chapter cites the monuments inaugurated in Depression-era America, which did not lack in grandiose scale and in ambitions to outlast the centuries. It mentions the Works Progress Administration that framed its projects as everlasting monuments to an American spirit undaunted by the ongoing crisis.
Epilogue
Authors: Kalashnikov Antony
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses that the Stalinist regime's concerted attempts to ensure posterity's adulation were not entirely in vain. It describes how Stalinist monuments have weathered iconoclastic campaigns and have retained their visibility, aesthetic appeal, and close associations with the regime that spawned them. It also emphasizes how the aspects of the historical narratives originally vested in Stalinist monuments linger on, although the meaning and significance of the monuments has shifted in the intervening decades. The chapter details how Stalinist monuments continue to resonate with contemporary nationalist and statist discourses, playing a unique and important role in engaging contemporary viewers' emotions and obscuring the more repugnant aspects of the Stalinist experience. It highlights the troubling conclusion that underscores the abiding need to contextualize and critically reframe the dangerously alluring Stalinist monuments as they continue to actively immortalize their era.
Introduction
Authors: Wright Alex
Published: September 2023

This chapter talks about the emergence of the internet into the public consciousness at the end of the twentieth century, showing a bull market in hyperbole about the digital age. It describes how enthusiastic dot-commers were developing computers and spinning a seamless web over all the earth through the internet. It also mentions Steven Johnson, who compared the dawning age of software to a religious awakening and predicted that the visual metaphors of interface design will acquire a richness and profundity that rival those of Hinduism or Christianity. The chapter highlights that the advent of the World Wide Web signaled an evolutionary event on par with the emergence of a new species. It looks at visions of an emerging planetary intelligence that surfaced in the mid-twentieth century writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who foresaw the rise of an extraordinary network of radio and television communication.
Information as “Science”
Authors: Wright Alex
Published: September 2023

This chapter talks about Paul Otlet, who was a bibliographer, pacifist, and entrepreneur who played a role in the formation of the League of Nations during his heyday. Years before Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson pioneered the hypertext information retrieval, Otlet had delivered a prescient prophecy of a new kind of networked, multimedia-rich information space. It highlights Otlet's vision of accessing databases of recorded information from great distances by means of an electric telescope and retrieving facsimile images to be projected remotely on a flat screen. The chapter details how Otlet's notion of a networked electronic information evolved over the course of a long career spent in the pursuit of an idealistic vision that stretched far beyond the scope of information retrieval systems. It recounts Otlet's first step toward unifying the world's information in 1895 with Henri La Fontaine by the establishment of the Répertoire bibliographique universel.
Building Collective Leadership through Research in Action and Narrative Inquiry
Authors: Avila Maria
Published: September 2023

This chapter addresses the question of whether it is possible to change the culture of silos and disconnectedness, both within and outside of academia. It talks about valuing and rewarding civically engaged scholarship and this being important at various levels. It also notes how civically engaged scholarship is crucial for higher education to engage with regional, national, and global communities responsibly, productively, and reciprocally. The chapter highlights that credibility is linked to student enrollment and with partnerships that can lead to internships and employment for students and for capital and research investment. It looks at the aim of higher education to have a culture where governance is a practice shared by all its institutional stakeholders.
The Closing of the Partisan Mind
Authors: Luttig Matthew D.
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses the correspondence between psychological theories of cognitive closure and social identity theories of partisanship that leads to the alternative expectation that closed minds may be attracted to extreme political preferences. The chapter provides a theoretical framework to confirm whether the conflict in the US is a battle between parties that are psychologically different. It also uses the construct of the need for cognitive closure on assertions that extremists of all types are similar in some way. The chapter highlights ideas that allow an integrative statement about the political psychology of closed minds and partisan groupcentrism in US politics. It covers the individual differences in the need for cognitive closure, variation in the internal cohesiveness and polarization of the political parties, and individual and contextual differences in political attention.
Clear Choices, Group-Centric Partisans
Authors: Luttig Matthew D.
Published: September 2023

This chapter shows that there is a consistent and substantively strong relationship between the need for cognitive closure and indicators of group-centric partisanship. It includes measures on partisan strength and affective polarization among attentive supporters of two parties. It also examines the strong association between the need for cognitive closure (NFCC) and being a group-centric partisan, which are hypothesized to represent a relatively recent phenomenon. The chapter determines whether the relationship between psychological closure and group-centric partisanship has changed over time by assessing the extent to which NFCC predicts strength of partisanship in the present era compared to the past. It reports the results of an experiment conducted that manipulated the subjects' perceptions about the polarization of the two parties.
Introduction
Authors: Klots Yasha
Published: September 2023

This introductory chapter discusses the tamizdat as well as its history and present-day significance. It briefly explores the patterns of circulation, first publications, and reception abroad of contraband manuscripts from the Soviet Union in the 1950–1980s, covering the period from Khrushchev's Thaw to the Stagnation era under Brezhnev. The chapter traces the outbound itineraries of individual manuscripts across Soviet state borders, as well as their “repatriation” back home in printed form. In doing so, it reveals the history of literary exchanges between publishers, critics, and readers in the West with writers in Russia, whose clandestine texts bring the dynamics of these intricate relationships into focus. The chapter explains that the book is a cultural history of the “irregular heartbeat” of Russian literature on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, desynchronized as it were for political reasons and diagnosed on the basis of aesthetic and sociocultural symptoms caused by the dispersal of texts across different geographies and time zones.
Introduction
Authors: Ong Andrew
Published: September 2023

This chapter introduces the concept of insurgent autonomy, particularly region-making in a highland periphery controlled by Myanmar's largest insurgent armed group, which is known as the United Wa State Army (UWSA). It explains how an autonomous polity is constructed through political military maneuvers and intermittent excursions of people and capital. Moreover, political sensibilities and economic flows shaped present geopolitical relations. Autonomy in the highlands asserts self-reliance, dignity, and survival. Thus, storytelling becomes a key mode of uncovering how the polity engages the world around it. The chapter also elaborates on how tactical dissonance maintains the relational autonomy of the Wa region.
Toward a Breakthrough?
Authors: Jackson Galen
Published: September 2023

This chapter argues that there appeared to be an opportunity for the United States and the Soviet Union to cooperate to help bring peace to the Middle East when President Richard Nixon took office in January 1969. It highlights that both sides seemed to think that the Middle East was an area where they might be able to work together. Although US and Soviet negotiators dedicated a great deal of time and attention to the issue, the chapter chronicles how they ultimately failed to work out a settlement. It narrates that the talks had broken down, the conflict had escalated, and a considerable number of USSR combat troops had been deployed to Egypt. Looking at the Nixon administration's view, the chapter studies the US interests in the Middle East, and how did it think those interests related to Israel's. Was Nixon simply unwilling to try to take advantage of the opportunity to reach an agreement because he felt that he was not in a position to pressure Israel for domestic political reasons? How did the new administration assess Soviet policy? The chapter seeks to understand if Nixon was prepared to move ahead to get a settlement if Moscow was willing to cooperate. And, if so, why did the effort fail?
Introduction
Authors: Pangle Thomas L.
Published: September 2023

This chapter provides a background on the proposition that what has become fully natural for humans is the realization of the perfectibility that contains the potentiality for radically divergent individualizations of the primordially universal sameness of human nature. The chapter talks about Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Reveries that completes his profoundly un-Socratic and intensely anguished quest for knowledge of his own-most, individual, unique me. It also points that Socrates, in contrast to Rousseau, interpreted the Delphic injunction to mean a thorough, dialogical-refutational analysis and purification of one's own, along with others. The chapter highlights how the initial impression that Rousseau has created The Reveries as written recollections of musings of his that took place on several successive solitary walks is deceptive. It discusses what Rousseau meant by and included in the category of dream or reverie.
“Third Walk”—A Spiritual-Religious Autobiography
Authors: Pangle Thomas L.
Published: September 2023

This chapter focuses on the Third Walk in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's The Reveries, which provides a synoptic account of the evolution over the Solitary Walker's entire lifetime of religiosity. It reviews the stygian theological culmination of the Second Walk and an account of an actual walk's autobiographical reverie that was preoccupied with death and the afterlife that lead to the major theme of the Third Walk. It also analyzes the soliloquy of the Third Walk that begins and ends with a famous line of autobiographical poetry by Solon, the Athenian lawgiver who was one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. The chapter explains the Solitary Walker's observation that experience has taught him as he grows old, which is that ignorance is still preferable to learning. It describes the Solitary Walker's lugubrious learning about his own uniquely unhappy destiny and about the passions of others that shape it.
Diversification of Neighborhood Governance
Authors: Tang Beibei
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses in what ways and to what extent economic transformations have produced the social and political conditions of hybrid authoritarianism. The emergence of urban middle-class neighborhoods with property management companies and homeowner associations has transformed the dynamics of neighborhood politics through self-governance and homeowner activism. Meanwhile, the village-to-community transition has placed landless farmers under urban administration and neighborhood governance. The chapter then identifies neighborhood governance issues and priorities under marketization and urbanization. These include disputes regarding property management, conflicts associated with property rights and the distribution collective benefits, disagreement with local government policies affecting neighborhoods, and increasing demands for neighborhood service provision.
Participation in Neighborhood Governance
Authors: Tang Beibei
Published: September 2023

This chapter looks at the perspectives of non-state participants, including social and market groups and residents, and examines the potential outcomes on hybrid authoritarianism of their willingness to participate in neighborhood governance. It describes their response strategies and how their experiences are shaped and guided by state-led discourses. The chapter then argues that non-state actors and organizations are not necessarily in opposition to the party-state all the time, nor is this a zero-sum game. Instead, to a certain degree they perform as important political intermediaries through their multiple roles of participants, collaborators, and strategic players in neighborhood governance. Ultimately, non-state actors are significant in shaping neighborhood governance by shaping how “governmentality” plays out at the Chinese grassroots.
Return to Exile, 1946–1955
Authors: Jagel Matthew
Published: September 2023

This chapter focuses on the period in which Sõn Ngc Thành was imprisoned in France. During that time, Norodom Sihanouk began to press France for political concessions and autonomy. This move was largely due to the influence of Thành's followers, the Democrats. Thành returned to a hero's welcome in late 1951, but he soon joined the anti-French dissidents, the Khmer Issaraks, in the maquis. Despite his absence from the capital, Thành was still a highly influential political figure who pressed Sihanouk to take a hard-line stance with France that, ultimately, resulted in Cambodian independence. Meanwhile, as the chapter shows, in the United States there was a general desire to not get heavily involved in internal developments in Cambodia, and also an ignorance on the part of American officials of the intricacies of Cambodian politics in the waning years of French domination.
Path to Power, 1965–1970
Authors: Jagel Matthew
Published: September 2023

This chapter discusses the events that led up to the Lon Nol and Sirik Matak-led coup that unseated Norodom Sihanouk in 1970. Although much of the picture during this period remains foggy, it is clear that the Khmer Serei was a highly respected and utilized force under the direction of American Special Forces in the Vietnam War. Once again, however, divergent approaches emerged between the State Department on the one hand and American military and intelligence services on the other. Regardless, Sõn Ngc Thành was crucial to recruiting the Khmer Serei, both in aid of the Americans and to battle Sihanouk's forces. Thành was also a key figure—along with American officials—in this coup. The chapter examines the exact nature of these relationships in depth.
Always an Outsider, 1970–1972
Authors: Jagel Matthew
Published: September 2023

This chapter follows the floundering Khmer Republic government in the aftermath of Norodom Sihanouk's ouster. During this time, Sõn Ngc Thành reentered the government and hoped to play a large role in creating and maintaining the new republic. But, despite his role in the coup that led to the formation of the Khmer Republic, the new rulers of Cambodia mostly sidelined him. Thành would continue to recruit Khmer Krom (ethnic Cambodians who lived in Vietnam) into the Cambodian army, while Lon Nol attempted to placate him by appointing him as an advisor to the government. Due to his continued popularity among some segments of society, Thành would later briefly find himself appointed as prime minister. Politically marginalized by Lon Nol, he had little influence by this point and was finally ushered away to retirement in South Vietnam.
Introduction
Authors: Emery Jacob
Published: September 2023

This chapter offers a conceptual anthologizing of the Russian canon through the theme of totality, covering Russian literature's teeming and paradoxical diversity of totalities. It discusses the poetics of possession, particularly in authors who sketch out a historical trajectory running loosely from Russian Imperial Romanticism to post-Soviet postmodern fiction. It also considers the all-encompassing emotional community implied by Leo Tolstoy's epidemic metaphor of artistic experience as an infection. The chapter examines the panoramic text of the world envisioned by Velimir Khlebnikov and other representatives of the early Soviet avant-garde. It investigates the continuous cultural tradition that is guaranteed, in the writings of the dissident poet Osip Mandelstam, by the orchestral metaphor of a common time enforced by the conductor's baton.