bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Artificial Slaves in the Renaissance and the Dangers of Independent Innovation
Authors: Lagrandeur Kevin
Published: April 2020

This chapter discusses how Renaissance stories of the golem of Prague, of Paracelsus’s homunculus, and of a talking brass head built by a natural philosopher in Robert Greene’s play Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay show the fears and hopes embedded in that culture’s reactions to human invention—as well as an ambivalence to the idea of slavery, for intelligent objects are almost uniformly proxies for indentured servants. Moreover, the tales examined in this chapter about artificial servants foreshadow our modern ambivalence about our innate technological abilities. The power of their technological promise is countervailed by fears that these products of our own ingenuity will overwhelm us.
Machines Like Us? Modernism and the Question of the Robot
Authors: March-Russell Paul
Published: April 2020

This chapter examines the technophobia of modernist literature towards the question of machine intelligence. The chapter takes Edmund Husserl’s ‘Philosophy and the Crisis of European Man’ (1935) as its starting point, in terms of the tension between a vitalistic conception of what defines the ‘human’ as opposed to the apparent sterility of machine technology. Husserl’s lecture is contextualized alongside critical thinkers Walter Benjamin, Gustave Le Bon, and Georg Simmel, and literary writers Albert Robida and Emile Zola. The second section concentrates upon Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (1872), with its satirical depiction of machine intelligence, in contrast to H. G. Wells’s grotesque rendering of the Beast Folk in The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896) as a form of cyborg life. The final section, focusing upon representative texts by modernist authors such as E. M. Forster, Villiers de l’Isle Adam, Raymond Roussel, and Karel Čapek, argues that they respond variously to the templates of Butler and Wells.
Artificial Intelligence and the Parent–Child Narrative
Authors: Singler Beth
Published: April 2020

This chapter employs anthropological approaches to examine the cultural influences on our stories about AI. First, the role of biological analogies in conceptions of AI will be highlighted. Second, a more nuanced approach to the anthropomorphism that results from such analogical thinking will be outlined, based on cognitive anthropology. This will allow us to identify specific intentional projections of human attributes that are mapped onto the nonhuman in our narratives. Third, we will consider how these projections come laden with cultural assumptions. Finally, the chapter will consider the parent–child relationship in AI narratives, and employ ethnographic research on the concept of the child to highlight what specific cultural assumptions about the human child, and then, subsequently, the AI child, are present in our stories.
Artificial Intelligence and the Sovereign-Governance Game
Authors: Dillon Sarah , Dillon Michael
Published: April 2020

Sarah Dillon and Michael Dillon bring political theory into dialogue with literary criticism in order to explore the interaction between artificial intelligence and the ancient conflict between sovereignty and governance, in which sovereignty issues the warrant to rule, and governance operationalizes it. They focus on three novels in which games, governance, and AI weave themselves through the text’s fabric: Iain M. Banks’s The Player of Games (1988) and Excession (1996), and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice (2013). These novels play out the sovereign-governance game with artificial as well as human actors. In doing so, they question what might be politically novel about AI, but reveal that whilst AI impacts the pieces on the board, it does not materially change the logic of the game. These texts therefore raise questions, but do not provide answers, with regard to what might be required for AI technologies to change the algorithms of modern rule.
Being Rational and Being Right
Authors: Comesaña Juan
Published: April 2020

This book defends a cluster of theses related to the rationality of action and belief. The starting point is that rational action requires rational belief but tolerates false belief. From there, it argues for a novel account of empirical evidence according to which said evidence consists of the content of undefeated experiences. This view, “Experientialism,” differs from the two main views of empirical evidence on offer nowadays: Factualism, according to which our evidence is what we know, and Psychologism, according to which our experiences themselves are evidence. The book argues that Experientialism fares better than these rival views in explaining different features of rational belief and action. The discussion is embedded in a Bayesian framework, and the book also examines the problem of normative requirements, the easy knowledge problem, and how Experientialism compares to Evidentialism, Reliabilism, and Comesaña’s own (now superseded) Evidentialist Reliabilism.
Introduction
Authors: Comesaña Juan
Published: April 2020

This chapter introduces the rest of the book. It is assumed that practical rationality requires theoretical rationality. Three views about basic empirical evidence are introduced: Psychologism, according to which our basic empirical evidence is constituted by our experiences; Factualism, according to which our basic empirical evidence is constituted by those propositions we know through experience; and Experientialism, according to which our basic empirical evidence is constituted by those propositions we are basically justified in believing by our experiences. The rest of the book is dedicated to developing objections to Psychologism and Factualism, and to defending Experientialism.
Probability and Decision Theory
Authors: Comesaña Juan
Published: April 2020

This chapter introduces the mathematics of probability and decision theory. The probability calculus is introduced in both a set-theoretic and a propositional context. Probability is also related to measure theory, and stochastic truth-tables are presented. Problems with conditional probability are examined. Two interpretations of the probability calculus are introduced: physical and normative probabilities. The problem of logical omniscience for normative probabilities is discussed. Dutch Book arguments and accuracy-based arguments for Probabilism (the claim that our credences must satisfy the probability axioms) are examined and rejected. Different interpretations of the “idealization” reply to the problem of logical omniscience are considered, and one of them is tentatively endorsed. The expected utility maximization conception of decision theory is introduced, and representation arguments are considered (and rejected) as another reply to the problem of logical omniscience.
Excuses, Would-Be Knowledge, and Rationality-Based Decision Theory
Authors: Comesaña Juan
Published: April 2020

This chapter considers a reply to the previous chapter, a reply according to which although we can never have false justified beliefs, we can have excusable (or reasonable) false beliefs. The chapter starts by arguing that any view according to which there cannot be false justified beliefs must face two problems: the demarcation problem and the suspension problem. While the excuses maneuver may help with the demarcation problem, it cannot help with the suspension problem. The chapter then examines two particular instatiations of the excuses maneuver: Williamson’s (briefly) and Lasonen-Aarnio’s (in more detail). Finally, the chapter also examines attempts at defining justification as “would-be knowledge,” and finds them wanting as well.
The Problem of Easy Rationality
Authors: Comesaña Juan
Published: April 2020

This chapter discusses a version of Cohen’s problem of easy knowledge, arguing for a novel resolution. A brief history of the problem is presented, and then a systematized version of it is developed. Possible solutions are examined, and denying the existence of ampliative inference is defended as a possible solution. It is explained how this is not as bad as it sounds. The chapter also discusses the relation between this solution and one of the arguments against Factualism presented in chapter 4. It is explained that those arguments against Factualism remain in place even if one rejects the possibility of ampliative inference. Finally, the issue of whether and how the problem of easy rationality applies to Experientialism is discussed.
Evidentialism, Reliabilism, Evidentialist Reliabilism?
Authors: Comesaña Juan
Published: April 2020

Experientialism is compared and contrasted with Evidentialism, Reliabilism, and Evidentialist Reliabilism. The generality problem for Reliabilism is discussed, as well as the issue of how to measure reliability. A probabilistic understanding of reliability is put forward. In particular, reliability is understood in terms of evidential probabilities, not physical probabilities. An extension to credences is explored. Experientialism is non-Evidentialist insofar as it does not take experience to be evidence, and is non-Reliabilist insofar as it appeals to a normatively loaded notion of evidential probability.
Theories in History and Practice
Authors: French Steven
Published: April 2020

This eliminativist view must immediately face the concern that scientists themselves appear to be committed to the existence of theories. They talk about them, apparently refer to them, argue that they are equivalent or not and so forth. However, here it is shown that when it comes to classical and quantum mechanics, as well as quantum field theory—to give just three examples—what is meant by the theory is hugely contested. Indeed, this meaning is typically constructed retrospectively and promulgated by various means, such as through the use of certain textbooks, for example. Likewise it is contentious whether two putative formulations of the ‘same’ theory should be regarded as equivalent or not and again the role of interpretive practices comes to the fore.
Reasons for the Irrational
Authors: Moriarty Michael
Published: April 2020

Chapter 7 brings about a dialectical switch. The previous chapter dealt with the intrinsic irrationality of many human customs and attitudes. Now Pascal, while acknowledging that these critical insights are valid in their own terms, points out what they fail to register: that an apparently irrational attitude (for instance, reverence for aristocrats) may serve a worthwhile function in terms of preserving social order and therefore keeping anarchy at bay (Pascal’s account of the origins of societies in violence is discussed here). Though we cannot implement an ideal justice, the powerful in practice establish a ‘justice’ that maintains social order. We can thus make a constructive and in some sense rational use of our characteristic irrationality and capacity to be led astray by the imagination. This prepares the way for the re-evaluation of human capacities discussed in Chapter 8.
The Claims and Limits of Reason
Authors: Moriarty Michael
Published: April 2020

Pascal argues that a genuinely divine religion would not be contrary to reason, but that it would contain elements beyond the reach of human reason (a fully comprehensible religion might well be a human invention). Christianity contains such elements, mysteries (such as the doctrine of the Trinity), and miracles. Hume’s objection to miracles cannot carry conviction with anyone prepared to accept the concept of an interventionist God, and the Pascalian seeker is in this position. It is reasonable to take some beliefs on authority, but to do so in cases where personal judgement is legitimate is superstition.
The Curious Eye
Authors: Webster Erin
Published: April 2020

The Curious Eye explores early modern debates over two related questions: what are the limits of human vision, and to what extent can these limits be overcome by technological enhancement? Today, in our everyday lives we rely on optical technology to provide us with information about visually remote spaces even as we question the efficacy and ethics of such pursuits. But the debates surrounding the subject of technologically mediated vision have their roots in a much older literary tradition in which the ability to see beyond the limits of natural human vision is associated with philosophical and spiritual insight as well as social and political control. The Curious Eye provides insight into the subject of optically mediated vision by returning to the literature of the seventeenth century, the historical moment in which human visual capacity in the West was first extended through the application of optical technologies to the eye. Bringing imaginative literary works by Francis Bacon, John Milton, Margaret Cavendish, and Aphra Behn together with optical and philosophical treatises by Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Robert Hooke, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton, The Curious Eye explores the social and intellectual impact of the new optical technologies of the seventeenth century on its literature. At the same time, it demonstrates that social, political, and literary concerns are not peripheral to the optical science of the period but rather an integral part of it, the legacy of which we continue to experience.
The Constraints of Patronage
Authors: Tacoma Laurens E.
Published: April 2020

This chapter analyses the second characteristic of Roman political culture: it was structured by a specific form of patronage that was both pervasive, encapsulating wide sections of the population in its network, but also weak, in the sense that ties could shift relatively easily. How it structured unstable hierarchical networks can be seen in the local elections that were held in Pompeii. The campaigns for these elections can be analysed thanks to the survival of the programmata, election notices that were painted on the walls of the houses of the city. At an abstract level, these local elections produced a totalizing discourse. They made the implicit claim that the political system mattered immensely and that there were no alternative routes to articulate social success. This claim pertained primarily to those people who aspired to be members of the elite: they were supposed to stand for office and have their elite status formally demarcated by membership of a political institution. But its reach also extended further: it tied the whole community to the political system, fostering a notion of universal participation. The question then becomes one of how such a system functioned. Along what lines was the population mobilized? How did elite competition work? It is argued that both groups were captured in expectations of each other’s behaviour that were structured by patronage relations, but again, some leeway was left to them. Participation was universal and competition was fierce, but both were at the same time subject to clear constraints.
The Interaction of Institutional Quality and Human Capital in Shaping the Dynamics of Capital Structure
Authors: Santarelli Enrico , Tran Hien Thu
Published: April 2020

This chapter aims to find if trade-off theory or pecking order theory best explain the capital structure of non-state firms during the post-transition process in Vietnam. We investigate the effect of human capital, institutional quality, and their interaction on the capital structure decision. Findings suggest the capital structure of Vietnamese firms is a balance between the trade-off theory and the pecking order theory. Accessing formal debts is tough for young and non-state firms, whereas those with access to formal loans take advantage of their leverage tools to exploit the tax benefits against the costs of financial distress. Other findings include: (i) profitability and debt tax shields are no longer important when entrepreneurs adopt informal debt financing; (ii) high-quality institutions enable firms to reduce reliance on debt financing; (iii) while human capital encourages entrepreneurs to obtain more loans, its interaction with institutional quality deters debt financing and favours other financial sources.
How Important Are Management Practices for the Productivity of Small and Medium Enterprises?
Authors: Demenet Axel , Hoang Quynh
Published: April 2020

Is the lack of ‘managerial capital’, alongside human and financial capital, a constraint on the growth of firms in developing countries? The evidence on this is still mixed, especially among small and medium enterprises. This chapter uses a panel of Vietnamese enterprises to investigate this question. We build a multidimensional measure of managerial capital, combining both practices and attitudes, and link it with consistent estimates of firm-level productivity and mark-up. We show that there is a positive and significant association between managerial capital and productivity: changes in management practices allow firms to be more efficient. Furthermore, we compare this association by firm size, and show that managerial capital is arguably as important for micro and small firms as it is for medium ones. Finally, it appears that the indicators related to ‘entrepreneurial attitudes’ play a more important role than elementary business skills.
Are Politically Connected Firms Less Constrained in Credit Markets?
Authors: Rand John
Published: April 2020

Utilizing a panel of over 2,000 Vietnamese micro, small and medium enterprises over a ten-year period, we analyse the importance of being politically connected on both access and cost-of-credit obtained from formal financial institutions. Controlling for unobserved time-invariant firm-level heterogeneity, productivity self-selection concerns, and access to alternative credit markets, we first show that political connections through membership of the Communist Party of Vietnam decreases the likelihood of being credit-constrained by 4 percentage points. Second, politically connected firms accessing credit face lower cost-of-capital than non-connected enterprises not excluded from formal financial markets. Third, we show firms would increase their debt burden between 20 and 72 per cent if all credit constraints were removed and their desire for external finance was fully met, and our credit gap estimates also that the impact of political connections is most valuable during periods of financial distress, and less prevalent during business cycle upswings.
Slack Resources and Innovation in Vietnamese SMEs
Authors: Nguyen Tam Thanh , Trinh Chieu Duc
Published: April 2020

Slack resources are usually identified as an endogenous motivation for firms to innovate, but it is crucial to assess this relationship, especially in different institutional contexts. Therefore, the chapter investigates the relationship by exploring a longitudinal dataset of 15,589 observations from about 2,500 surveyed manufacturing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Vietnam. The analysis reveals that slack resources promote innovation in different ways. While the financial slack harms the efforts of innovating, the presence of human resource slack encourages firms to engage more in innovation activities resulting in the introduction of new products or business processes. The authors further found that for firms located in a more favourable business environment the impact of human resource slack on innovation is less pronounced whereas the negative impact of financial slack is lessened. The above results enrich the literature on the relationship between slack and innovation within an institutional context in emerging economies.
Does Union Membership Pay Off? Evidence from Vietnamese SMEs
Authors: Torm Nina
Published: April 2020

In the absence of adequate institutional mechanisms, trade unions can potentially promote some measure of equity and social justice for workers including for instance higher wages and other worker benefits. Yet limited data availability means little is known about the effect local firm-based trade unions may have on individual earnings in developing and transition economies. Using matched employer–employee data from the 2013 and 2015 SME surveys, this chapter examines the union wage premium among workers in Vietnamese small and medium-sized enterprises. Controlling for both firm and worker characteristics, including time-varying unobserved heterogeneity, the results show that unionized workers’ wages are 9–22 per cent higher than those of non-union workers, with the exact estimate depending on the econometric approach chosen.
Rudolf Clausius
Authors: Hanlon Robert T.
Published: April 2020

Clausius completed the heat engine analysis that Carnot started by eliminating the caloric theory on which it was based and replacing it with Joule’s heat–work equivalence. He proceeded to validate Carnot’s theory of the irrelevance of the working substance’s nature by proving equivalent performances between an engine based an ideal gas and one based on liquid–vapor water. Clausius embraced two principles that became forerunners of the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics: 1) heat–work equivalence, and 2) heat must flow from hot to cold whenever work is done in a cyclic process. He also introduced a new physical property of matter he named U, which later became known as internal energy. In his work, Clausius took the first major step towards completion of thermodynamics.
The creation of thermodynamics
Authors: Hanlon Robert T.
Published: April 2020

The North British group of scientists, including Thomson, Rankine, an adopted Joule, Tait, and Maxwell created in the written word the field of thermodynamics in which temperature plays a central role. Thomson experienced the first glimpse of dQ/T; however, a valid definition of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics remained absent. John Tyndall challenged the revisionist history of this group in which Joule was declared the first to discover heat–work equivalence and not the German Mayer. This led to the infamous Tait–Tyndall controversy.
Practical applications and Gibbs energy (G)
Authors: Hanlon Robert T.
Published: April 2020

Gibbs introduced a new property, later called Gibbs free energy (G), to provide the means by which to quantify the maximum amount of work that can be generated by a given process at constant temperature and pressure. This property can also be used to determine chemical reaction spontaneity.
Dissemination of Gibbs’ work
Authors: Hanlon Robert T.
Published: April 2020

Gibbs’ work was disseminated along two different paths. Path 1: Gibbs -> Maxwell -> Pupin -> Helmholtz -> van’t Hoff -> community. Path 2: Gibbs -> van der Waals -> Roozeboom -> community. This dissemination provided the means for Francis Arthur Freeth to employ the Gibbs phase rule in practice. Concluding discussion concerns the translation of Gibbs work.
Reading Chaucer in Time
Authors: Gaston Kara
Published: April 2020

Reading for form can mean reading for formation. Understanding processes through which a text was created can help us in characterizing its form. But what is involved in bringing a diachronic process to bear upon a synchronic work? When does literary formation begin and end? When does form happen? These questions emerge with urgency in the interactions between English poet Geoffrey Chaucer and Italian Trecento authors Dante Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Francis Petrarch. In fourteenth-century Italy, new ways were emerging of configuring the relation between author and reader. Previously, medieval reading was often oriented around the significance of the text to the individual reader. In Italy, however, reading was beginning to be understood as a way of getting back to a work’s initial formation. This book tracks how concepts of reading developed within Italian texts, including Dante’s Vita nova, Boccaccio’s Filostrato and Teseida, and Petrarch’s Seniles, impress themselves upon Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and Canterbury Tales. It argues that Chaucer’s poetry reveals the implications of reading for formation: above all, that it both depends upon and effaces the historical perspective and temporal experience of the individual reader. Problems raised within Chaucer’s poetry thus inform this book’s broader methodological argument: that there is no one moment at which the formation of Chaucer’s poetry ends; rather its form emerges in and through the process of reading within time.
Ever Looser Union?
Authors: Schimmelfennig Frank , Winzen Thomas
Published: April 2020

Differentiated integration is a durable feature of the European Union and a major alternative for its future development and reform. This book provides a comprehensive conceptual, theoretical and empirical analysis of differentiation in European integration. It explains differentiation in EU treaties and legislation in general and offers specific accounts of differentiation in the recent enlargements of the EU, the Euro crisis, the Brexit negotiations and the integration of non-member states. Differentiated integration is a legal instrument that European governments use regularly to overcome integration deadlock in EU treaty negotiations and legislation. Instrumental differentiation adjusts integration to the heterogeneity of economic preferences and capacities, particularly in the context of enlargement. By contrast, constitutional differentiation accommodates concerns about national self-determination. Whereas instrumental differentiation mainly affects poorer (new) member states, constitutional differentiation offers wealthier and nationally oriented member states opt-outs from the integration of core state powers. The book shows that differentiated integration has facilitated the integration of new policies, new members and even non-members. It has been mainly ‘multi-speed’ and inclusive. Most differentiations end after a few years and do not discriminate against member states permanently. Yet differentiation is less suitable for reforming established policies, managing disintegration, and fostering solidarity, and the path-dependency of core state power integration may lead to permanent divides in the Union.
Mapping Differentiated Integration
Authors: Schimmelfennig Frank , Winzen Thomas
Published: April 2020

This chapter maps the development of differentiated integration over the entire history of the EU and across all member states and policies. It shows that differentiation has been on the rise in treaty law and legislation. Yet, relative to the dramatic growth in EU authority and member states over time, there is no evidence for a trend towards ‘ever looser union’. This chapter further shows that differentiated integration is mainly ‘multi-speed’. Most national opt-outs are temporary and end after a few years. However, there is evidence for ‘multi-tier’ integration, too. A small and stable periphery has formed driven by Denmark and the United Kingdom. While there is no sign of multi-menu integration, differentiation also has a policy dimension in that the integration and differentiation of core state powers shapes the evolving multi-tier structure of the EU. In contrast, the EU’s market and flanking policies constitute the domain of multi-speed integration.
Conclusion
Authors: Schimmelfennig Frank , Winzen Thomas
Published: April 2020

This chapter evaluates the implications of differentiated integration for the legal order, democratic quality, degree of solidarity, and further development of European integration. The chapter argues that eschewing differentiation would entail serious opportunity costs for the EU. Forgoing differentiation and limiting European integration to a clear choice between ‘in’ and ‘out’ would most likely result in a lower level and regional as well as functional scope of European integration, providing fewer opportunities for democratic community formation, more limitations to democratic choice, and less European solidarity than differentiated integration does. As regards the further development of European integration, differentiation is likely to prove useful in getting new policy domains ‘off the ground’, but less relevant for the further consolidation and deepening of already highly integrated policies. In these areas, the academic and policy debate is likely to focus increasingly on the governance and implications of differentiated integration.
Governance and The Shareholders As A Class
Authors: Davies Paul
Published: April 2020

This chapter examines in more detail the role company law allocates to shareholders. The first part of the chapter analyses the rationales for requiring some corporate decisions not to be fully delegated to the board. Mandatory involvement of the shareholders is limited to a small number of corporate decisions. In the absence of a statutory requirement for shareholder input into the decision, the chapter examines how easy it is for shareholders who wish to involve themselves in corporate decision-making to do so, whether in the case of particular decisions or by removing directors of whose management they disapprove. The second part of the chapter discusses the recent development of regulatory pressures on institutional shareholders to ‘engage’ with the companies in which they invest. This is a development associated above all with the Stewardship Code and is based on the notion that shareholders have a bigger contribution to make to the management of large companies than the Companies Act assumes to be the case.
Governing Private Security Companies
Authors: Kruck Andreas
Published: April 2020

This chapter retraces how states as governors have weighed and rebalanced the imperatives of competence and control in utilizing private military and security companies (PMSCs) as intermediaries. It argues that the complex and varying competence requirements of governors, derived from both their operational deficits and their legitimacy concerns, as well as changes in the salience of these requirements, have shaped the levels and modes of control imposed on PMSCs. Focusing on the United States, the chapter explains the shifting control mechanisms applied in different periods: 1) the 1990s and early 2000s, 2) the mid-2000s to early 2010s, and 3) the recent years until 2018. Competence–control theory contributes to a deeper understanding of states’ problem with controlling PMSCs. More generally, the chapter highlights that politics and power are key to grasping the evolution of control mechanisms in indirect forms of governance.
Victorian Poetry and the Culture of Evaluation
Authors: Dawson Clara
Published: April 2020

Victorian Poetry and the Culture of Evaluation argues that the dialectic and dynamic relationship between the periodical review and poetry creates a culture of evaluation which shapes Victorian poetic form. The mediation of poetry by the periodical review orients poets towards public readership and reception, heightening their self-consciousness about their audience and generating a poetics of publicness. Using methodologies associated with historical poetics and new formalism, the book examines the dialogues between poets and periodical reviews from the 1830s to the 1860s. It juxtaposes male and female poets and canonical and uncanonical texts. Challenging the critical binaries of fame and celebrity, the culture of evaluation posits a new way of reading Victorian poetry. It illuminates poets’ engagement with the immediacy and inevitability of writing for the present and for the contemporary media through which poetry was read and disseminated. New patterns of reception were created by mass print culture and both poets and reviewers were preoccupied with reaching the newly constituted mass audience. The changes to the material forms of poetry (e.g. through the periodical or gift-book) and the subjection to the commercial imperatives of the literary marketplace encouraged bold experiment with verse. The book identifies three poetic strategies for articulating the preoccupation with a mass audience and the demands of mass media: voice, style and address. Chapters on voice, style, and address explore the development of poetic form in dialogue with periodical reviews.
Introduction
Authors: Dawson Clara
Published: April 2020

The Introduction offers a background to the Victorian poet and Victorian poetry. The concepts of popularity and intrinsic merit are discussed, and literary criticism is examined through several periodicals that enjoyed a wide readership. The power that reviewers held over the reception of poetry was both commercial and critical, and the spontaneity of writers could be eradicated by the reviewing culture. Although it was impossible not to be conscious of the periodical reviewing culture, poets had to affect an ignorance about writing for this specific audience. In order for their work to be considered truthful and sincere, poets were expected to be oblivious of the system that would evaluate and mediate their work to the public. In reviewers’ evaluations of voice, style, and address, there is a concern with how poetry is mediated in the Victorian period.
Between Kultur and Civilisation
Authors: Rogers Asha
Published: April 2020

This chapter on the interwar origins of the UK’s premier national cultural agency considers why literature—a form seemingly opposed to the more obvious forms of propaganda—was attractive to state investment. It does so by showing how literary policy was first yoked to foreign policy, amid the growing national rivalries of the 1930s, in ways that posed challenges for the cultural philosophy of the British state. It then turns to Stanley Unwin’s Books and Periodicals Committee to show how the British state deferred to literary experts and industry insiders, including to commission libraries of ‘world literature’ on decidedly English terms. The chapter concludes by discussing the contrasting approaches taken by T.S. Eliot and Stephen Spender to working for the state cultural ‘machine’ via the British Council.
Labour Law from an Ontological Perspective
Authors: Adams Zoe
Published: April 2020

This introductory chapter explains the motivation behind the book. It argues that it is unhelpful to talk about what labour law should be doing, and how, without a deeper understanding both of what law is, its ontology, and the nature of the society to which it is specific. The chapter introduces key themes and ideas, and outlines, briefly, the chapters to follow. It introduces the reader to social ontology, and the particular approach to social ontology inspiring the book. It contrasts two competing conceptions of the law–market and law–society relationship, and explains how these conceptions influence assumptions about the nature, and function, of labour law, and of the concept of the wage.
Cultural Psychology
Authors: Holmes Robyn M.
Published: April 2020

Cultural psychology draws upon major psychological topics, theories, and principles to illustrate the importance of culture in psychological inquiry. It explores how culture broadly connects to psychological processing across diverse cultural communities and settings, highlighting its application to everyday life events and situations, and presenting culture as a complex medium in which individuals acquire skills, values, and abilities. One central theme is the view of culture as a mental and physical construct that individuals live, experience, share, perform, and learn; a second core theme is how culture shapes growth and development. Culture-specific and cross-cultural examples reveal connections between culture and psychological phenomena. The text is multidisciplinary and presents different perspectives on how culture shapes human phenomena. It provides an introduction to this field; covers the history of cultural psychology, cultural evolution, and cultural ecology; explains methods; and examines language and nonverbal communication, and cognition and perception. Topics investigating social behavior include the self, identity, and personality; social relationships, social attitudes, and intergroup contact in a global world; and social influence, aggression, violence, and war. Topics addressing growth and development include human development and its processes, transitions, and rituals across the life span; and socializing agents, socialization practices, and child activities. Additional topics explore emotion and motivation, mental health and psychopathology, and future directions for cultural psychology. Chapters contain teaching and learning tools, including case studies, multidisciplinary contributions, thought-provoking questions, class and experiential activities, a chapter summary, and additional print and media resources.
Cultural Psychology in the 21st Century
Authors: Holmes Robyn M.
Published: April 2020

Chapter 16 reflects upon the past contributions of cultural psychology and the directions the discipline will travel in the future. It discusses influential thinkers in the 20th and 21st centuries and reconsiders constructs such as individualism and collectivism. It addresses current and future research endeavors in personality, the self and personality, depression, face, face and self-perceptions, values research, and the connection between values and social change. It also addresses current and future research in development through the subtopics of the Six Cultures Study on Socialization, children as active agents, socialization, education, and parenting. Finally it explores the current and future directions of the topics mental health issues, emotions, applied social psychology, morality, and cultural collisions. This chapter includes a case study, Culture Across Disciplines box, chapter summary, key terms, a What Do Other disciplines Do? section, thought-provoking questions, and class and experiential activities.
The Textualization of Mark’s Gospel
Authors: Keith Chris
Published: April 2020

Chapter 3 addresses the initial textualization of the Jesus tradition in Mark’s Gospel. It argues against starting with Q and other hypothetical sources. Its main focus, however, is upon the pioneering work of Werner Kelber on this topic. Contrary to Kelber’s “oral-preference perspective,” the chapter argues for seeing the introduction of the manuscript medium as a continuation and heightening of tradition processes that were already underway. He does so on the basis of Jan Assmann’s theory of the zerdehnte Situation (“extended situation”). The main argument is that the textualization of the Gospel of Mark should be seen as a commencement rather than a cessation. The chapter closes with a consideration of patristic testimony about the writing of Mark’s Gospel on this basis.
Seeing Like an Area Specialist
Authors: Cumings Bruce
Published: April 2020

In this chapter, the author argues that the ubiquitous and often polemical distinction between ‘area studies’ and history as idiographic disciplines and ‘social science’ as a nomothetic discipline is false, and that the best scholarship has now moved towards an integration of history and the ‘areas’ into a theoretically-informed American intellectual agenda that is considerably more advanced than the modal type of inquiry in American social science, which remains wedded to an obsolescent model of how people do their work in the so-called ‘hard’ sciences.
Beyond National Liberalism
Authors: Kelly John D.
Published: April 2020

This chapter discusses the intertwined constitutions of social sciences and Pax Americana with ethnographic notes on emerging unintended consequences of all this entanglement, and the need they demonstrate for a clearer critique of the specific institutional forms the Americans and their sciences have given to liberalism: a world of self-determination, free and privileged enterprise, separated and only formally equal rights, and very limited liabilities. He argues that deliberately radical critiques, such as the denunciations of American empire, do less than can an unfettered, simply liberal, re-examination of these realities.
Guru Gobind Singh (1666-1708)
Authors: Grewal J.S.
Published: April 2020

The unifying theme in the life of Guru Gobind Singh was confrontation with the Mughals, which culminated in a struggle for political power. This fact is brought into sharp focus when we consider the Guru’s life and legacy simultaneously in the context of the Mughal Empire, its feudatory states in the hills, and the Sikh movement. The creation of the Khalsa in 1699 as a political community with the aspiration to rule made conciliation or compromise with the Mughal state almost impossible. Their long struggle ended eventually in the declaration of Khalsa Raj in 1765. Using contemporary and near contemporary sources in Gurmukhi, Persian, and English, this book is a comprehensive study of this era of Sikh history. The volume elaborates on the life and legacy of Guru Gobind Singh and explores the ideological background of the institution of the Khalsa and its larger political context. The author, however, emphasizes that the legacy of the Khalsa was also social and cultural. This authoritative volume on the tenth Guru is a significant addition to the field of Sikh studies.
Socio-Political Import of Courtly Literature
Authors: Grewal J.S.
Published: April 2020

A few of the compositions of the Dasam Granth represent devotional literature. The Jap Sahib and the Akal Ustat embody Guru Gobind Singh’s conception of God, His omnipotence and omnipresence, unity in diversity, prem bhagti, equality of human beings, and sectarian dispensations. The Shabads and Savvayyas dwell on true religious belief and practice. In the Var Durga ki, the Ram Avtar, and the Krishan Avtar, the deities Durga, Ram and Krishan are not supreme but instruments of the Supreme Being to strengthen the forces of good against evil. They are entitled to use physical force. In this context the Bachittar Natak declares and legitimizes the mission of Guru Gobind Singh to institute a panth for destroying the enemies of Guru Gobind Singh and his Sikhs. This panth was equated with the Khalsa, created eventually to establish Sikh Raj.
Emotions and Modernity in Colonial India
Authors: Pernau Margrit
Published: April 2020

With this pioneering project, Margrit Pernau brings the ‘history of emotions’ approach to South Asian studies. A theoretically sophisticated and erudite investigation, Emotions and Modernity in Colonial India maps the history of emotions in India between the uprising of 1857 and World War I. Situating the prevalent experiences, interpretations, and practices of emotions of the time within the context of the major political events of colonial India, Pernau goes beyond the dominant narrative of colonial modernity and its fixation with discipline and restrain, and traces the contemporary transformation from a balance in emotions to the resurgence of fervor. The current volume is based on a large archive of sources in Urdu, many being explored for the first time. Pernau grounds her work on such diverse sources as philosophical and theological treatises on questions of morality, advice literature, journals and newspapers, nostalgic descriptions of courtly culture, and even children’s literature. This close look into individual experiences, practices, and interpretations reveals the myriad emotions of the day, and the importance of these micro-histories in presenting an alternative account of colonial India.
Words of Her Own
Authors: Murmu Maroona
Published: April 2020

Drawing on a spectrum of genres, such as autobiographies, diaries, didactic tracts, novels and travelogues, this book examines the sociocultural incentives that enabled the emergence of middle-class Hindu and Brahmo women authors as an ever-growing distinct category in nineteenth-century Bengal and the factors facilitating production and circulation of their creations. By exploring the intersections of class, caste, gender, language, religion, and culture in women-authored texts and by reading these within a specific milieu, the study opens up the possibility of re-configuring mainstream history-writing that often ignores women. Questioning essentialist conceptions of women’s writings, it contends that there exists no monolithic body of ‘women’s writings’ with a firmly gendered language, form, style, and content. It shows that there was nothing in the women’s writings that was based on a fundamentally feminine perspective of experiences with an inherent feminine voice. While describing the specifically female life world of domestic experiences, women authors might have made conscious divergences from male-projected stereotypes, but it is equally true that there are a number of issues on which men and women authors spoke in unison. The book argues for distinctions within each genre and across genres in language, content, and style amongst women authors. Even after women authors emerged as a writing community, the bhadralok critics often censured them for fear of their autonomous selfhood in print and praised them for imparting ‘feminine’ ideals alone. Nevertheless, there were women authors who flouted the norms of literary aesthetics and tutored tastes, thus creating a literary tradition of their own in Bangla and becoming agents of history at the turn of the century.
Introduction
Authors: Murmu Maroona
Published: April 2020

The ‘Introduction’ helps the readers situate Hindu and Brahmo women’s literary outpourings within the wider sociopolitical context of nineteenth-century Bengal. It locates the eager penmanship of Bengali women within the larger and growing milieu of print literature; the tension between formal and informal forms of Bengali language; and the statistical analysis of ‘books in print’. The startling fact of the price of woman-authored books being on par with male-authored ones is a revelation about the market for women-authored texts. Extant literature on women authors in the nineteenth century considers the major scholarly epitomes that have appeared in the last 50 years in Bangla and English on women’s writings in Bengal. The ‘Chapters’ Overview’ deals with autobiographies, diaries, didactic tracts, novels, and travelogues written by women writers to examine how their literary production varied in style, content, and language form within and across genres. It demonstates both divergences and convergences in literary creations amongst male and female writers.
Personal Narratives
Authors: Murmu Maroona
Published: April 2020

By choosing two dissimilar genres in the form of Kailashbashini Debi’s diary Janaika Grihabadhur Diary and Saradasundari Debi’s dictated autobiography Atmakatha, the chapter shows how the unmediated (diary) and the highly mediated (autobiography) are still ‘relational’ outputs. These fulsomely reveal fragmented subjectivities, dismembered recollections, slippages, and gaps that are as much a product of their interactions with ‘men’ as they are of their own creation. While Saradasundari surpassed the ideological constriction of Hindu wifehood and sculpted a defiant identity only after the death of her husband, Kailashbashini invented herself through marital love and the ensuing freedom, position, and authority that empowered her to speak. Embedded in the history of nineteenth-century Bengal, these personal narratives are candid enough to critically appraise the times, critique social relations, assess the efficacy of social reforms, and appeal for sociocultural changes. Though their life witnessed ‘big events’ and ‘illustrious men’, these are made insignificant in both personal narratives. The chapter provides vignettes of women’s experiences—negotiations, resistances, rebellions—and a range of emotions—resentment, anger, joy, sadness, rage, melancholy and resignation—which weave a masterpiece of history of emotions in colonial India.
Concluding Note
Authors: Murmu Maroona
Published: April 2020

The conclusion focuses upon reception-based approach to understand the significance of women authors in the social map of reading community in nineteenth-century Bengal. It demonstrates how, even after the emergence of a sizeable reading community catering to books authored by women, due to the spatial ‘respectability’ of the presses from which their books got published the reception of prohibited penmanship by women by the bhadralok society in ‘renascent’ Bengal was disappointing. Since some women flouted the norms of literary aesthetics and tutored tastes, the bhadralok critics, in their reviews of book by women, often censured the authors if their autonomous selfhood in print became threatening and praised them for imparting ‘feminine’ ideals alone. However, such sarcastic comments and caustic critique could not strip women authors of their creative foray in the literary world. By the turn of the century, they had begun creating a literary tradition of their own in Bengali.