bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Making of Meaning in the Sociology of Niklas Luhmann
Authors: Morgner Christian
Published: April 2022

This chapter outlines a different approach to the work of Niklas Luhmann, one that is critical of sociology’s tendency to reduce theoretical projects to single labels, but also to show that there is much to gain from engaging with a sociological project that provides a profound understanding of meaning-making. Recently the fields of cultural sociology, cultural history, and the arts and humanities have widely discussed meaning but have been largely unaware of the rich and conceptually advanced theory of meaning developed by Luhmann. Consequently, in this chapter an in-depth analysis of this term and its embedding in Luhmann’s sociology of knowledge and culture is presented in order to overcome simplistic accounts that reduce this sociological project to being concerned only with systems. Such a rephrased reading shall not only provide a guide to the reader when approaching the translated chapters by Luhmann but will also open up a new debate of the sociological theory presented by Luhmann.
Afterword
Authors: King Michael
Published: April 2022

This Afterword considers the disappointing reception of Luhmann’s ideas by Anglophone intellectuals and their failure to appreciate the originality of his vision or the breadth and depth of his scholarship. To do that, it uses the essays in this book as a starting point for an examination of the structural mismatch between Luhmann’s world and the world of institutionalized academic sociology in English-speaking countries. This is a focus on the institutions which accommodate sociology and its related disciplines to examine if there are any structural factors which could interfere with the compatibility of Luhmann’s theory and its acceptance by these institutions as a valid way of perceiving the world. The more fully the complexities and, in particular, the epistemological implications of Luhmann’s sociology reveal themselves, the less possible it becomes for institutionalized sociology to treat Luhmannian sociology as just another sociological theory, albeit a ‘grand theory.’ This is why the essays in this book are so important. The epistemological and semantic problems that they pose are so fundamental to the self-image of sociology as a discipline that they cannot be resolved simply by minor adjustments to existing theories or substituting one validation criterion for another. To continue to do so is to turn a deaf ear to Luhmann’s repeated plea for sociology to open its eyes to the deceptions inherent in its own self-image and for it to recognize that the social world that it claims to observe scientifically is a social world of its own creation.
An Apprentice and a Slave
Authors: Magliocca Gerard N.
Published: April 2022

Chapter 2 describes Bushrod’s two-year apprenticeship in Philadelphia studying law with James Wilson. The chapter also explores Bushrod’s initial relationship with George Washington, his friendship with Elizabeth Willing Powel, and his social and intellectual life in the national capital. Then the chapter describes West Ford, an enslaved person born at Bushfield who was almost certainly related to Bushrod (as either his half-brother, nephew, or son) and explores some aspects of Ford’s life.
An Imperfect War
Authors: Magliocca Gerard N.
Published: April 2022

Chapter 5 recounts Bushrod Washington’s appointment to the Supreme Court and George Washington’s death. Bushrod’s relationship with his uncle deepened after George retired from the presidency. After a short-lived campaign for a seat in Congress, Bushrod was named to the Court by President John Adams in 1798. The chapter then provides some basics about how the Supreme Court functioned and about the personalities of the other justices before turning to the two controversies that dominated Washington’s early years as a justice: the Sedition Act and the tensions between the United States and France that nearly led to war.
A Long Judicial Life
Authors: Magliocca Gerard N.
Published: April 2022

Chapter 12 is about Justice Washington’s final years on the Supreme Court. His most notable opinion in this era came in Ogden v. Saunders, in which he upheld the constitutionality of prospective state bankruptcy laws over the dissent of Chief Justice Marshall and Justice Story. Ogden provides a fine example of Washington’s judging method, and this chapter reviews his notes, his opinion, and his responses to the chief justice’s dissent. The chapter concludes with the justice’s death in 1829 and the tributes that followed.
The Royal Printer’s Tale, 1577 to 1611
Authors: Shuger Debora
Published: April 2022

The final chapter traces the Elizabethan bibles’ subsequent printing history, when, the story goes, the Geneva and Tomson, their Calvinist marginalia treasured by a people hungry for God’s word, started dramatically outselling the Bishops’. The story, however, misconstrues the statistics: first, by assuming that later editions of a bible will resemble the initial one; and second, by failing to realize that after 1559 all bibles (unless imported) came from the press of a single printer—the printer who owned the bible patent. In 1578, the patent was purchased by Christopher Barker, client of those urging Genevan-style reforms. Over the next five years Barker seems to have enlisted his press in the service of this project. In 1583, however, a new archbishop having entered the picture, the Geneva and Tomson shed their militantly Calvinist prefaces, and the Bishops’ came back in print, albeit only the massive folio and stripped of its distinctive paratexts. The Geneva quartos outsold their Bishops’ counterpart because the latter was not for sale. But Barker’s Geneva quartos differ considerably from earlier Genevas, the banished Calvinist preface having been replaced with a flock of mere Christian paratexts. The increasingly popular small-format editions have no notes; between 1583 and 1611 nearly half the Genevas and three-quarters of the Tomsons provide just the translation. These are not Calvinist bibles but forerunners of the King James, their popularity indicative of a broadly based preference for bibles that did not encase the text in confessionalized orthodoxies but did fit comfortably in one’s pocket.
Mapping Latvians in Local and Global Perspectives
Authors: Gibson Catherine
Published: April 2022

The chapter explores the different concepts of Latvians and Latvia that emerged among mapmakers in the Baltic provinces in the late nineteenth century. The Bielenstein family of Baltic German mapmakers used maps to consolidate a vision of their Germanic Heimat in rural Kurland through the efforts of pastor August Bielenstein and his children to map the Latvian language area. This is contrasted with the outlook of Riga-based teacher, ethnographer, and museum director Matīss Siliņš, who both mapped his vision of a Latvian territory and situated Baltic inhabitants in relation to global migration patterns at the turn of the twentieth century. The chapter sets the emergence of these different spatial narratives against the backdrop of the growing demand for cheap paper products and popular science publications in vernacular languages among the population of the Baltic region, who had the highest literacy rates in the whole of the Russian Empire. Not restricted by the ban on printing in Latin script imposed on other parts of the western borderlands, printing houses in the Baltic produced maps for display at public exhibitions, on classroom walls, or for inclusion in geography textbooks. The increasing visibility of cartographic print culture in society transformed maps into a familiar object of everyday material and visual culture, spreading map literacy among a broad spectrum of lower-class Latvian-readers. The chapter elucidates the ways in which the interests of mapmakers and demands of consumers conjoined to shape cartography as a form of popular print culture in late imperial Russia.
Epilogue
Authors: Gibson Catherine
Published: April 2022

The epilogue provides a summary of the key arguments of the book: that geographically and socially diverse populations engaged in ethnographic mapmaking in the Russian Empire to explore a range of imperial, national, local, and global ways of thinking about the relationship between nationhood and territory; the content, appearance, and circulation of ethnographic maps was heavily influenced by the institutions, patrons, funders, printers, and publishers involved in their process of production and dissemination; examining the reception history of maps and audience’s reactions and emotional responses is crucial for assessing the relative power and impact of maps on popular understandings of the relationship between nationhood and territory. Finally, it provides an outlook on the continued politicisation of mapping in the Baltic region in the interwar period and beyond.
Riga
Authors: von Winning Alexa
Published: April 2022

The chapter examines an Orthodox convent in Riga, erected between 1889 and 1914 in Riga by two elite Russian women, as an element of Russian imperial rule in the Baltic region and as example of ‘female empire building’. The convent embodied the strategies of Russian rule in the Western periphery and the importance of religious architecture for ‘Russification’. Besides, it testifies to the impressive scope of female agency in the late imperial era. The chapter portrays Ekaterina (1861–1927) and Natalia Mansurova (1868–1934), daughters of a noble family with strong involvement in Russian imperial and religious politics, as female imperial agents who, over the course of two decades, erected five churches and a host of smaller religious buildings that established foreign territory for the Russian Empire. The chapter explores how two basic social structures—religion and the family—could both empower and restrict female agency. It argues that the protagonists built on family resources to utilize religious and imperial dynamics at the end of the nineteenth century. Ultimately, they were forced to choose between the two, because both church and family claimed women’s ‘selfless’ service and subordination.
Criminal Fraud and Election Disinformation
Authors: Horder Jeremy
Published: April 2022

Criminal Fraud and Election Disinformation is about the state’s approach to fraud and distortion of the truth in politics, especially during election campaigns. Deliberate mischaracterization of political opponents and their policies has always been a part of politics; however, lying, dishonesty, and distortion of the facts remain morally wrong and have the potential to obstruct important political interests. For example, a false or misleading claim publicized about an election candidate may lead someone to lose an election that they might otherwise have won. So, does—and should—the law seek to provide protection from the risk of this happening, by directly prohibiting the making of false or misleading political claims, or by obliging internet platforms to censor such content? In attempting to answer this question, Jeremy Horder draws a key distinction between what is called ‘political viewpoint’ fraud and ‘electoral participation’ fraud. In the interests of protecting freedom of speech, false or misleading claims (disinformation) involving political viewpoint content should be tolerated, not only by the criminal law but also by the internet platforms which host political content. By contrast, in the interests of preserving the integrity of democratic electoral processes, disinformation involving electoral participation information should be prohibited by the criminal law and censored by internet platforms. This book provides explanations of how the criminal law in various jurisdictions frequently prohibits false or misleading political claims falling into both categories of disinformation.
Personal Attacks and Political Disinformation in UK Law
Authors: Horder Jeremy
Published: April 2022

The main focus of Chapter 3 is what remains of criminal defamation, in spite of the abolition of the general offence of defamation. What remains can be called the ‘election defamation offence’, in section 106 of the Representation of the People Act 1983. This offence is committed when someone makes a false statement of fact about the personal conduct or character of an election candidate, with intent to affect the voting return of that candidate. The history of the section 106 offence is examined, and is linked with the late Victorian widening of the franchise, which led to more contested elections in which candidates could profit electorally by casting doubt—through false statements, if need be—on each other’s fitness for office. The continued existence of the offence is criticized, and contrasted with sounder justifications for the criminalization of hate speech and intimidation. Election candidates targeted by false claims should rely on private or public law remedies for such claims.
The Web of the World
Authors: Fiddes Paul S.
Published: April 2022

This chapter considers the way in which ‘co-inherence’ shapes Williams’ developing perspective on William Blake. The account draws on lecture notes, lectures, and published pieces. Especially significant is the lecture of March 1939, written when Williams was beginning to use the term ‘co-inherence’. Throughout his commentary on Blake, Williams consistently draws attention to the interrelatedness of living things in Blake’s poetry, culminating in the metaphor of a great ‘web’, expressing a wholeness of creation that can be built by the imagination: a ‘co-inherence’ that defeats ‘incoherence’. The necessity of forgiveness, which Williams flags up, takes on a fresh character in the light of co-inherence, since we enter the web of relations through an exchange of forgiveness. Linking imagination and forgiveness with co-inherence leads Williams to believe that Blake’s view of reason is not opposed to Wordsworth’s ‘feeling intellect’. Finally, the context of co-inherence enables Williams to reaffirm Blake’s visionary power.
Ethical Data Gathering
Authors: Martens David
Published: April 2022

This chapter starts by detailing the importance of privacy, and discusses some concepts from the European General Data Protection Regulation that can guide us in ethical data gathering. Next to these concepts, it covers some privacy techniques such as encryption, obfuscation, and differential privacy, that look to reconcile privacy and the gathering and storing of personal data. It also describes the pressure from governments towards technology companies for backdoors in encryption services, so as to obtain access to personal data, and lists the main arguments for and against such practices. Biased data science models often stem from bias in the data that is gathered, and are discussed with cautionary tales related to the under-representation of elder and low income persons in a city app, and revealed discrimination issues in reported stories from a picture app and a recruitment system. Yet another data gathering practice that has important ethical considerations is human experimentation. This is discussed in a historical context and the ethical issues of often occurring online experiments, including those on dating and social media sites, are also discussed.
Technology, Risk, and Support for Social Safety Nets. An Empirical Exploration Based on Italy
Authors: Guarascio Dario , Sacchi Stefano
Published: April 2022

This chapter investigates the role of exposure to technological risk in shaping social policy preferences, specifically on support for universal basic income and means-tested guaranteed minimum income. Evidence is provided for Italy, to exploit the availability of high-quality data, allowing measures of two dimensions of technological risk. Objective risk hinges upon the degree of substitutability of one’s occupation by machines, while subjective risk concerns a worker’s perception of their substitutability. We posit that exposure to technological risk induces individuals to ask for protection, and thus increases support for social policy. We test two hypotheses: first, that exposure to objective risk of replacement by machines is correlated with support for both safety nets; second, that such effect is increased by high perception of risk. On the whole, results confirm a strong relationship between exposure to technological risk and support for social safety nets, once objective risk is disentangled from subjective perceptions.
Internet and Platform Work in Europe
Authors: Drahokoupil Jan , Piasna Agnieszka
Published: April 2022

This chapter provides an overview of quantitative comparative evidence on Internet and platform work in Europe. It shows that many have had experience of Internet and platform work, but only a small group engages in this work on a regular basis. Very low-income levels are a likely reason for this attrition and explain why the majority of these workers are also employed in the offline labor market. Activities performed by online workers usually require basic skills, even though the workers performing them tend to be better educated than the general population. Low incomes and a lack of standard employment put online work in the category of precarious employment. The vulnerability of online workers is aggravated by the fact that their offline jobs also tend to be nonstandard, based on freelancing or temporary contracts, while their work trajectories are more fragmented.
Transformation of Education Policy and Governance in the Digital Era
Authors: Hartong Sigrid , Piattoeva Nelli , Saari Antti , Savage Glenn
Published: April 2022

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, pressure to digitize the education sector has reached a new level worldwide. Beyond being framed as the only way for education to properly respond to the pandemic, digital technologies are envisioned to facilitate more efficient and informed decision-making on educational provision in the welfare state, including personally tailored precision education. This chapter critically reflects on one core aspect of the digitalization of education across countries: datafication. We illustrate how a growing amount of (digital) data is produced and used in all three basic contexts of educational decision-making: policy development, accountability, and school practices. However, in doing so, datafication increasingly shifts power toward non-governmental actors, particularly EdTech vendors. Equally, there is a growing centrality and entanglement of data across these three contexts, which, however, may not (only) lead to an optimization of welfare by fostering precision education, but may instead also pose significant challenges and risks.
Epidemics in Small Communities
Authors: Smallman-Raynor Matthew , Cliff Andrew , Ord Keith , Haggett Peter
Published: April 2022

‘Epidemics in Small Communities’ develops an understanding of the ways in which an infection can achieve community circulation in small geographical areas. It begins by examining the local disease records of two doctors in general practice in the United Kingdom (William Pickles of Wensleydale and Edgar Hope-Simpson of Cirencester) to shed light on the processes whereby individual cases of diseases, such as measles and influenza, can develop into full-blown epidemics. The second half of the chapter focuses on Iceland as an island laboratory for the study of epidemic diffusion processes in the period 1902–1988. For this 87-year period, records of 131 discrete epidemic waves (with a recorded total of >0.5 million cases) of measles, influenza, and five other infectious diseases are examined in terms of wave spacing, wave velocity, and wave geography. These findings are related both to epidemiological theory and to aspects of the changing historical geography of the island.
The Boards of Appeal of Networked Services Agencies: Specialized Arbitrators of Transnational Regulatory Conflicts?
Authors: Tovo Carlo
Published: April 2022

This chapter deals with the Boards of Appeal (BoAs) of the EU Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) and the EU Agency for Railways (ERA). It shows that these bodies exercise, through a quasi-judicial procedure, a substantially exclusive competence to review the individual decisions adopted by these agencies. However, it also highlights that, when exercising this competence, these BoAs tend to mimic EU Courts, as to the scope and intensity of their review. The chapter maintains that this ‘judicialization’ deprives the appeal mechanism of much of its added value, without strengthening the effectiveness of the judicial protection offered to appellants. The chapter thus find that the appeal mechanism should remain a form of specialized administrative review, based on reasons of expediency and extended to the content of the contested decisions. This, together with their composition and their innovative arbitration competences, would also enable ACER and ERA BoAs to emerge as specialized ‘arbitrators’ of transnational regulatory conflicts between EU agencies and national regulatory authorities.
The Trailblazers: The Boards of Appeal of EUIPO and CPVO
Authors: Hanf Dominik
Published: April 2022

This chapter focuses on the Boards of Appeal of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and of the Community Plant Variety Office (CPVO), which are historically the first Boards of Appeal (BoA) created by the European Union (EU). It details the task of the EUIPO and CPVO in the registration and cancellation of exclusive property rights of trade marks and designs and plant variety rights, respectively. It also looks at the legislative proposal for creating a European trade mark as a unitary intellectual property that is granted and cancelled by an independent European Economic Community (ECC) Trade Mark Office. The chapter highlights the rationale of the legislative proposal, which is to ensure an expedient and specialized review of the ECC’s decisions and save the Court of Justice from being overloaded by the expected high number of essentially ‘technical’ cases. It describes the appeal provisions of EUIPO and CPVO that considered as ‘legal transplants’, as they were inspired by those of the European Patent Convention of 1973.
Frontex: Great Powers but No Appeals
Authors: Stefan Marco , Hertog Leonhard den
Published: April 2022

This chapter explores the accountability challenges of Frontex, a supranational agency with operational character which exercises executive powers with far-reaching impacts on individuals. It investigates the administrative mechanisms and internal procedures through which responsibilities for alleged fundamental rights abuses are linked to decisions, actions, or inactions by the various EU and national authorities participating in Frontex operations. The chapter points out that Frontex has neither Board of Appeals (BoAs), nor anything that closely resembles it. Such state of affairs reflects the nature of EU cooperation in the area of external border management, which combines intergovernmental and supranational logics of allocation of operational responsibility, without a coherent and effective oversight and accountability system.
Rethinking the Position of the Boards of Appeal from a Comparative Perspective
Authors: Oosterhuis Sofie , Widdershoven Rob
Published: April 2022

This chapter highlights the legal nature of the Board of Appeal (BoA) of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO). It talks about how the BoA remedy should be exhausted by individuals as a pre-condition for the admissibility of judicial review before the EU Courts and the General Court (GC), and in appeal before the Court of Justice (ECJ). It also mentions the hybrid nature of the BoAs as they combine features of an administrative procedure with features of a judicial procedure. The chapter cites Article 58a of the Statute of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), which limits the review of an appeal before the ECJ against a General Court judgment. It gives a comparative research on the two systems of pre-trial procedures in EU Member States and the UK, which are somewhat similar to the BoA mechanism.
Contradiction
Authors: Grewal Gwenda-lin
Published: April 2022

One finds in the Euthydemus a plethora of dramatic hints that point to other Platonic dialogues, particularly those that surround Socrates’ trial and execution. Whether these are direct allusions or recurring themes, they heighten the sense that this dialogue is meant to be read as a reflection on the activity of doing philosophy. As Euthydemus and Dionysodorus re-enter the conversation, they claim that to wish Cleinias to become good is to wish for him to become other than he is, which is to wish to destroy (corrupt) him. This makes his lover, Ctesippus, angry. Ctesippus accuses Dionysodorus of falsifying his intent, which leads Euthydemus to ask whether it is possible to speak falsely. If it is not, then it does not seem possible to contradict, to refute, or to be ignorant. And where there is no threat of contradiction, there is no distinction between life and death, and so, no soul. Contradiction, however, comes with a certain heated intensity even or perhaps especially when it is delivered as if it were cold, detached logic. Death may be contradiction’s threat, but by the same turn contradiction is what makes the world come alive. Socrates at least is fearlessly willing to hand himself over to Dionysodorus, as if to Medea, to be boiled alive, provided he will be rejuvenated. The suggestion seems to be that the annihilation of the self that Euthydemus and Dionysodorus offer may be poetically stimulating rather than purely destructive.
Crito Interrupts Socrates
Authors: Grewal Gwenda-lin
Published: April 2022

What exactly is the plot of the Euthydemus? Crito interrupts Socrates’ narration wondering whether Socrates is giving an accurate report. Cleinias has begun to look a bit too advanced, as if he would not need Euthydemus or anyone else as a teacher. This would make him appear that much better than Critobulus. The interruption, while seeming to shut down the narration, also serves as a continuation of the dialogue. Socrates draws Crito into the very conversation he was just having with Cleinias about making and using. They were searching for a knowledge that would combine the two, and so, produce human happiness. This is a seeming request for a self-ruling art—one which can produce its own needs for its own use without depending on anything outside of it. This seems to point, on the one hand, to high-level politics and, on the other hand, to thinking.
State Capitalism
Authors: Som Lalita
Published: April 2022

The crises emanating from the Global Financial Crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic have underscored, the emergency role of the State and its smooth, seamless reactivation, for situations when private activity and markets are disrupted. In many countries, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been a crucial part in delivering on that effort as agents of the State. While SOEs are increasingly sought to play a role during emergency situations, evidence suggests that they misallocate capital and mismanage resources. This is indicative of the conflicts of interests in owning and regulating enterprises as well as between the commercial and non-commercial objectives of SOEs, crony capitalism, the private agenda of public officials, internal management of SOEs, the significant role played by state owned banks and financial institutions, and the conflicts that arise in the State’s primary role vs its ownership of enterprises. The eight country studies in this book provide answers to these key policy questions related to state capitalism. Generalizing from the results of multi-country studies to arrive at universally applicable predictions, prescriptions, and policy recommendations is inherently difficult. But the eight country studies highlight, from available research, the principal common characteristics of, and practices followed by, successful SOEs independently of country context. Among other conditions, the two most important conclusions that can be drawn from the country studies are that competition and regulation rather than ownership per se are key to efficiency.
A framework for understanding and evaluating SOE performance
Authors: Som Lalita
Published: April 2022

The chapter provides the conceptual framework that is used in this book for understanding and evaluating the nature, structure, influences, and incentives that impinge upon the operations of SOEs and their performance. In addition, it deals with the role of State-owned banks and financial institutions in the growth of State capitalism and at the contradictions in State-led capitalism in the face of the rise of the regulatory state and the inherent conflicts of interest, the link between State capitalism and crony capitalism, when interest groups approach the State to seek handouts, rents, and other privileges, the private agenda of public officials running and managing SOEs, how SOEs allocate resources and their impact on total factor productivity the challenges of internal management in SOEs, the effects of adopting of private sector practices for better SOE management, and how states fare in fulfilling their primary roles when they are responsible for running and managing large and many SOEs.
Country case study 3: India
Authors: Som Lalita
Published: April 2022

CPSEs have played an important role in the economy, despite most sectors being open to private players. SOEs have been a ‘captive tax base’ and have provided a regular stream of dividends to enhance public revenue. But, at times of financial hardship for GoI, SOEs are squeezed even harder for short-term fiscal convenience, and as a source of revenue to window-dress budgets. They have been forced to buy back government’s holdings or to buy equity in other SOEs, to bolster government finances. The State has used SOEs in many indirect ways to support its agenda. CPSEs especially have continued to expand and add capacity and their surprisingly healthy profits have provided a regular stream of revenues to the government. Yet CPSEs are not part to any coherent strategy to achieve higher rates of economic growth through greater efficiency, innovation, and competition, nor to make them globally competitive.
Conclusions from a review of SOEs in the country case studies
Authors: Som Lalita
Published: April 2022

Drawing from a sample of about 1 million firms in 109 countries, an IMF study found that SOEs are less productive than private firms by one-third, on average. Productivity of SOEs in countries with perceived lower corruption is more than three times higher than those in countries where corruption is severe. Still, the many examples of successful, profitable SOEs in several (but not all) of the eight countries studied provide significant hope of SOEs’ continued relevance and use. The financial and public health crises have highlighted the need for more state productive capacity, government procurement capabilities and symbiotic public–private collaborations. Further investment in state’s productive capacity in order for SOEs to play an effective role during economic crises will be dissipated, if it falls on weak and poorly managed structures in SOEs; if regulation follows a pecking order in which SOEs, and crony capitalist firms are protected the most, followed by domestic private firms, foreign firms, and SMEs; if politicians continue to undermine the functioning and independence of regulators; if there is pervasive corruption surrounding the relationship between an SOE and its contractors; if political connections serve as a substitute for missing or weak property rights; if state control of factor markets leads to rent seeking by both governments and enterprises; and if political interference disallows price adjustments of goods and services provided by SOEs. Countering that unfortunate impression, the stellar performance of SOEs in Singapore over a long period of time, of a few key SOEs in Saudi Arabia and India (the islands of excellence in a sea of mediocrity), and the dominant role that SOEs have played in propelling China to the top of the world league of nations cannot be set aside and completely overlooked dismissively. Most countries do not have the public ethos and absence of corruption that Singapore enjoys.
The General, the Particular, and the Art of the Commonplace
Authors: Yousef Nancy
Published: April 2022

The rejection of abstraction and generalization in Romantic aesthetics has a long afterlife in nineteenth-century culture. The emergence of particularity as a countervailing source of value is exemplified by a new and philosophically informed appreciation for the humble details depicted in Dutch painting, while an emphasis on the effects of blur and soft focus in early discussion of photography as an art form attests to the persistence of a contrary valuation of ideal types. These cultural debates form a network of conceptual and historical links connecting William Wordsworth, George Eliot, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wordsworth’s poetics of the everyday and Eliot’s realism do not straightforwardly valorize particularity, but instead deploy an unstable and generative dynamic between specificity, analogy, and generality. This dynamic is also at work in Wittgenstein’s notion of “family resemblance,” a labile range of similarities among individual instances that cannot be reduced to a single common element. The philosopher’s early formulations of “family resemblance” are revealingly bound up with nineteenth-century intellectual culture through the figure of Francis Galton, whose experiments in composite photography represent a unique convergence of scientific and aesthetic investment in abstraction. Intended as visualizations of statistically determined common traits, Galton’s composite portraits (including the “criminal,” the “scientist,” the “Jew”) were an object of fascination for Wittgenstein, who repeatedly adduced them as examples of errant method and yet also commissioned and held as a keepsake a composite portrait of himself and his siblings. As a form of analysis and of recollection, “family resemblance” emerges as an affectively charged approach to the imagination of the ordinary as a ground of aesthetic and epistemic value.
A Novel Concerning Human Understanding
Authors: Yousef Nancy
Published: April 2022

This chapter mounts an extended argument for reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations together as related efforts to rethink long-standing philosophical presuppositions about the privacy of thoughts and sensations. The writings of the novelist and the philosopher evince a shared preoccupation with inwardness as a prevailing concept and governing trope in philosophical psychology, one that extends back to foundational empiricist accounts of mind, such as John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, a work that served as the basis for the nascent field of psychology in the nineteenth century. In Middlemarch, Eliot approaches the “problem of other minds” at once diagnostically and historically, as an inherited—and for that reason difficult to disown—picture from the recent philosophical past. “Pictures” of inwardness and egoism in the novel correspond to what Wittgenstein describes as “pictures that hold us captive” in his investigations of deep-seated convictions about the “privacy” of psychic life. Both Eliot and Wittgenstein redirect attention to the desires, disappointments, and temptations that give rise to the picture in the first place. In both writers, complex modulation of multiple voices and striking juxtapositions of examples and aphoristic reflections effect a fundamental reshaping of the “problem of other minds.” Epistemological analysis is displaced by investigations of everyday scenes of expectation and rejoinder, withholding and responding, which foreground the ethical challenges of privacy and disclosure.
The Spirit of the Commonplace, or When does it make sense to use the word “soul”?
Authors: Yousef Nancy
Published: April 2022

The imperative to attend to ordinary language shapes how the poet William Wordsworth and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein approach “truths” which do not lend themselves to proof, verification, or theorization. The poet and the philosopher both draw attention to the commingling of literal and figural meanings in everyday evocations of “soul” and “spirit.” “Soul” makes sense in Wordsworth and Wittgenstein because they credit the importance and the everydayness of utterances and expressions we might easily exclude or overlook as obviously fanciful, a mere figure of speech, or a mystification of material facts. “In my heart,” “upon my soul,” “as I live and breathe”: Wordsworth and Wittgenstein take such commonplace turns of phrase seriously, as bearing philosophical, affective, and ethical weight. Suspending a facile distinction between literal and figurative meanings, but nevertheless insisting on the place that the “soul” holds in conversation—be it in colloquy with others or in silent introspection—Wordsworth and Wittgenstein each affirm the import of ordinary language as a source of cognition and recognition at a cultural moment that each felt (separately, and separated by over a century) was at risk of overlooking or trivializing forms of responsiveness and responsibility that have their sole articulation in the meaningful idiosyncrasies of everyday speech.
Leaving the Convent?
Authors: Plummer Marjorie Elizabeth
Published: April 2022

Chapter 3 investigates nuns’ decision-making process on whether to stay in or leave convents in electoral and Albertine Saxony during the 1520s through 1540s, finding that the women did not necessarily make choices about monastic life for religious reasons. Women who chose to stay in the convent, even if following the theological principles pointed out by Luther and his followers or accepting the new church and convent orders written for them, vanished from public discussion. Thus, each nun’s moment of deciding to leave or stay did not define their whole devotional experience or confessional preference. This chapter uses petitions, individual testimony during visitations, etc. and shows that the women did not necessarily make choices about monastic life for religious reasons. It also shows why a single assertion of conversion or acceptance of devotional practice is insufficient to understand why women left, stayed in, or returned to the convent.
Introduction
Authors: Capp Bernard
Published: April 2022

This chapter provides an introduction to the world of Barbary, and to British perceptions and attitudes towards it. It outlines Barbary’s political history, governmental structures, and complex society, made up of Turks, janissaries, Moors, Jews, renegade Europeans, corsairs, and slaves. It covers Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, the three regencies under the nominal rule of the Ottoman Empire, with Algiers serving as the model, and also the very different structures found in Morocco, which never fell under the sway of the Ottomans. Sections on the world of the corsairs explore their rise, operational strategy, ships, leaders, and galley-slaves. It assesses the role of English renegade corsairs in the early seventeenth century, such as the notorious Captain John Ward, and the parallels between Barbary’s corsairs and the Christian corsairs of Malta, Italy, and France. The Introduction also explores the issue of slave numbers, both British and European, the ‘ransom economy’, and the wider labour-value of European captives. The chapter ends by returning to the ambivalent attitudes of the English towards the Ottomans and Barbary, a compound of awe, fear, contempt, and respect. It stresses the need to distinguish clearly between attitudes towards the Ottoman Empire and to the ‘piratical’ regencies.
Faith and Identity
Authors: Capp Bernard
Published: April 2022

Chapter 4 explores the issues of identity, both religious and political, facing the British captives in Barbary, and also facing the renegade corsairs and soldiers who had moved there voluntarily. Trust in God’s providence helped some captives endure the ordeal of enslavement, though the chapter explains how the doctrine could prove a two-edged sword. The chapter also explores the circumstances and motives that led some captives to accept Islam and ‘turn Turk’, and the relationship between coercion, incentives, and resignation in such decisions. Religious identity could be fluid and multilayered. What did apostasy mean to those who took this step? For renegade corsairs, it might be wholly transactional; for some slaves too, it might be no more than an outward performance. In other cases a pragmatic or coerced apostasy might over time evolve into a genuine attachment to Islam. The chapter also explores the apostasy of captured children, who had little or no understanding of what it meant, but whose new identities might take firm root. It ends with the challenges facing apostates who later found their way home and sought to return to the Christian faith.
Escaping from Barbary
Authors: Capp Bernard
Published: April 2022

Escaping from Barbary was hazardous, with no overland route to safety from Algiers or Tunis. Harsh punishments or death awaited those recaptured. Chapter 5 begins by exploring mutinies or risings on board the corsairs’ own men-of-war or prizes. Although many designs were abandoned or foiled, others succeeded, a few bloodless, some ending in mass slaughter. The chapter then turns to ‘the chances of the sea’, the possibility of freedom if a man-of-war was driven ashore or encountered a British warship. Some slaves escaped by being smuggled aboard a visiting ship or swimming out to one, though the crown and merchants strongly disapproved of such exploits as a threat to peaceful commerce. Other captives desperate to escape fashioned flimsy boats and attempted to paddle their way to Europe, with one such case graphically described by William Okeley. Only Morocco offered, for a time, an overland route to safety, for slaves who could escape and reach the Spanish outpost at Mamora.
Arranging Redemptions
Authors: Capp Bernard
Published: April 2022

Chapter 7 explores the ‘redemption business’, the organization and payment of ransoms in Barbary, and the roles played by a variety of intermediaries, including merchants, consuls, Jews, and Moors. It assesses individual redemptions organized privately and the large-scale operations mounted on the initiative of the state, notably by Leate and Frizzell in 1624, Edmund Cason in 1646–47, and William Bowtell in the 1680s. The chapter also provides the first account of the mission by two clerics in 1662—the only time England imitated continental arrangements. The chapter assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the English systems, and the problems facing negotiators. It compares English arrangements with those of continental powers, and compares their performance. It also explores the role of Jews, and the anti-Semitism provoked by their part in the capture as well as redemption of slaves. Another section examines the significance of exchange as a method of liberating slaves. Once freed, former captives faced the challenge of rebuilding their broken lives. The chapter’s final section offers a pioneering assessment of the challenges they faced, and how far the effects of enslavement might continue to shape their lives.
Government Action
Authors: Capp Bernard
Published: April 2022

Chapter 8 traces the British state’s efforts to curb the corsair threat and liberate the slaves by diplomacy, money, force, or a combination of all three, across the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth. Its efforts were frustrated by the early Stuarts’ limited resources and the fact that, throughout the period, other foreign policy issues always enjoyed higher priority. The chapter shows how, nonetheless, from the 1650s the state deployed its growing naval strength to apply pressure, and with increasing effect. The chapter outlines and assesses the failed pre-Civil War expedition of Robert Mansell and William Rainborough’s success at Salé, and later naval operations from Robert Blake to Arthur Herbert. By Charles II’s death in 1685, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli no longer posed a threat to British shipping. The chapter then explores why Morocco proved far less susceptible to naval pressure, through a combination of geographical and political factors, and traces the interminable negotiations that finally brought peace in 1721.
Conclusion
Authors: Capp Bernard
Published: April 2022

The Conclusion draws together the main threads of the book and broadens the discussion to reflect on British attitudes towards slavery and freedom, showing how Barbary coloured political discourse in both the civil war and Restoration periods. It shows how some radicals who condemned the ‘slavery’ of the English people under the so-called Norman Yoke were paradoxically willing to contemplate something very similar to slavery as a suitable punishment for offenders in England. A generation later, Whig pamphleteers warned that the accession of the Catholic James, duke of York, would reduce the English people to the misery of slaves in Algiers. The Conclusion provides an overview of the book’s findings, in particular on the much disputed issue of the conditions experienced by slaves in Barbary, and the factors that shaped them. It summarises how ransoms were raised and how redemptions were organized, comparing Britain and its continental neighbours in their approach to the challenges they shared, the responses they adopted, and the degree of success or failure that resulted.
Conclusion
Authors: Dudney Arthur
Published: April 2022

Many of our received ideas about the eighteenth century in South Asia were mediated through colonial scholarship and epistemology, and would therefore have been unthinkable to the people of that era. This study situates late pre-colonial Persianate Indian literary culture in a global early modern context, presenting the philological and literary methodology of Ārzū and his circle as the paradigmatic early modern combination of maintaining a deep respect for tradition while stretching that tradition’s fundamental categories and assumptions to breaking point and sometimes beyond. Persianate literary society in early eighteenth-century Delhi can inspire us with its transnational and multiconfessional outlook, but this early modern cosmopolitanism may unfortunately not be able to provide a workable model for cosmopolitanism in our own time.
Introducing Epiphanies
Authors: Chappell Sophie Grace
Published: April 2022

In which I introduce and define the central idea of the book, that of an epiphany; discuss numerous examples; and consider different developments of the idea or something like it in history, and in Iris Murdoch, William Wordsworth, Gerard Manley Hopkins, C. S. Lewis, James Joyce, and others.
What is it Like to be a Human Being?
Authors: Chappell Sophie Grace
Published: April 2022

In which I offer a descriptive exploration of human phenomenology. It is in epiphanies in particular that we encounter value; but it isn’t only there. Value is pervasively presented to us in the whole continuum of our subjective experience, not only the peaks in that continuum that we call epiphanies. So it is important to look at the whole continuum. Our subjective experience is very complex and very various, so I cannot examine all of it. But in this chapter I look at some important aspects.
Republics of Conversation
Authors: Chappell Sophie Grace
Published: April 2022

In which I respond—more exploratorily than conclusively—to the threat of relativism to my epiphany-based and experience-based ethics. Central to my response is a sort of transcendental argument: views that can be acceptable to us must be ones that are contributory to, not subversive of, a republic of conversation.