bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A Science of Sand
Authors: Lehmann Philipp
Published: July 2023

This chapter notes the European climatologists' realization of the instability of paleoclimates. In the iconography of anthropogenic global warming, glaciers and deserts together represent the alarming consequences of changing climates. Environmental knowledge about the history of the Sahara could serve both as data for scientific theories and as important information for colonial governments that wished to implement imperial projects. The chapter considers that the ice age theory correlates to large climatic shifts. It elaborates on French colonial engineer François Roudaire devising an ambitious plan to rebuild the “granary of Rome” and create large water surfaces in the Sahara using the full force of modern technology at his disposal.
Epilogue
Authors: Lehmann Philipp
Published: July 2023

This concluding chapter explores the development of climatology over the twentieth century. It starts with the end of the Versteppung debate after the Second World War and connects the matter with current concerns about global warming and desertification. Fears about climatic catastrophes, even global ones, have a history that goes back much further than the second half of the twentieth century. However, climate science showed signs of becoming more methodologically inclusive again, increasingly considering not only atmospheric but also telluric factors of long-range climatic changes. The chapter provides an outlook on the rise of modern geoengineering schemes, such as carbon capture technologies.
Redefining Utopianism for a Post-consumer society
Authors: Claeys Gregory
Published: July 2023

This chapter talks about rethinking the very principles of human existence as a species from the ground up to prevent the world's destruction and the extermination of people. It proposes the tradition known as utopianism as one way of fighting the spectre that is haunting humanity, the ghastly dystopian image of its own. It also mentions “doomerism,” which is one response to the environmental apocalypse and often breeds depression, a sense of hopelessness, and a paralysing inactivity. The chapter examines the concept of utopia, which demands the masses to rise above the limits imposed by everyday reality and instead envision long-term futures in which humanity survives and flourishes. Utopia can be used today to help explain the history of humanity's aspirations and to project viable alternatives to the grim fate facing everyone.
The Mythical Background
Authors: Claeys Gregory
Published: July 2023

This chapter points out how it is much easier to project a utopian society that has never abandoned primitive simplicity than to imagine one corrupted by commerce and luxury. It discusses the convenience of envisioning exiting a society where luxury has infected only the upper and middle but not the lower classes, which was the case in most modern revolutions. It also considers some memories and practices that reflect a recurrent belief in an original human equality, prior to such degeneration. These were historically central to the image of what might be returned to during much of the utopian tradition. The chapter treats these memories and practices as the legacy of the childhood of humanity that illustrate much about the core utopian theme.
Theories of Realised Utopianism
Authors: Claeys Gregory
Published: July 2023

This chapter provides an overview of various medieval and early modern concepts of the ideal society. It stresses the confluence of religious and classical sources with respect to ideas of limiting property holding. It also describes the evolution from the early sixteenth century onwards of concepts of heaven, Eden, and the Golden Age into demands to transform the earth in their image. The chapter implies that utopia might actually be created and considers utopianism as positing a realistic dimension, not necessarily definitive of everyday life but existing as an alternative to it. It highlights heterotopia, liminality, and the concrete utopia, which indicate how everyday life can be conceived as intersecting with, harbouring, or promoting utopia at various levels.
Tocqueville's Dilemmas, and Ours
Authors: Atanassow Ewa
Published: July 2023

How can today’s liberal democracies withstand the illiberal wave sweeping the globe? What can revive our waning faith in constitutional democracy? This book argues that Alexis de Tocqueville, one of democracy’s greatest champions and most incisive critics, can guide us forward. Drawing on Tocqueville’s major works and lesser-known policy writings, the book shines a bright light on the foundations of liberal democracy. The book argues that its prospects depend on how we tackle three dilemmas that were as urgent in Tocqueville’s day as they are in ours: how to institutionalize popular sovereignty, how to define nationhood, and how to grasp the possibility and limits of global governance. These are pivotal but often neglected dimensions of Tocqueville’s work, and this fresh look at his writings provides a powerful framework for addressing the tensions between liberalism and democracy in the twenty-first century. Recovering a richer liberalism capable of weathering today’s political storms, the book explains how we can reclaim nationalism as a liberal force and reimagine sovereignty in a global age—and do so with one of democracy’s most discerning thinkers as our guide.
Mountains in Archaic Greek Poetry
Authors: König Jason
Published: July 2023

This chapter discusses fantasy images of mountains from classical antiquity that come from the Homeric hymns, such as Mount Ida, ‘mother of wild beasts’. It looks at texts that have been composed over the course of several centuries and clearly respond to each other and to the Homeric epics, and the even more complex portrayal of mountains. The combined body of archaic epic tells a broadly coherent story about the developing relationship between the gods, and between gods and humans. The chapter discusses the formation of the world, the struggles between divine powers before the existence of humans, and the formation of the Olympian pantheon that involves the absorption of new gods into the community on Olympus. It also explores the heroic age, where the gods and mortals are separated by a huge gulf which may nevertheless be bridged occasionally by personal contact.
Mountains in Greek and Roman Art
Authors: König Jason
Published: July 2023

This chapter talks about mountains, which were objects of fascination in Greek and Roman art in ways quite different from modern landscape painting. Mountains in Greek and Roman art were compressed and miniaturised because of the restrictions of the media within which they were depicted, such as on a coin, and it was also a consequence of their symbolic function, which allowed the image to stand as a shorthand for a particular place. The chapter analyzes the mountains recurring frequently in Roman mythological wall paintings that tie images from myth to particular places with powerful, centuries-old narrative associations. The chapter highlights the greater realism of mountains in Greek and Roman art that tempt the viewer into a fantasy of identification with the scenes on display. The Greek and Roman images of these mountains draw on the ever-present potential for mountains to be experienced as landscapes of risk where human agency is liable to be overwhelmed.
Warfare and Knowledge in Mountain Territories
Authors: König Jason
Published: July 2023

This chapter highlights mountains as places of warfare in the ancient world, noting their great strategic significance in controlling key mountain passes that had military and economic advantages. It talks about the posed distinctive challenges of leadership as mountain battle sites were often unpredictable and hard to conquer and control. It points out how the distinctive topography of particular mountain regions led to a situation where the same patterns of warfare repeated themselves over and over again in successive campaigns. The sites of mountain warfare shaped military history through their very real and enduring physical form and were places of real suffering and bravery. The chapter considers mountains as territories of the imagination, noting that some ancient authors make an attempt at topographical precision, but often those efforts are overwhelmed by their interest in portraying mountains in battle as places of confusion and fear.
Mountain Narratives in Greek and Roman Historiography
Authors: König Jason
Published: July 2023

This chapter discusses three figures that overshadow the view of mountain generalship in ancient historiography: Xerxes, the Persian king; the Macedonian Alexander the Great; and the Carthaginian Hannibal. The campaigns of these three figures were used as images against which other later military campaigns were measured, describing them as powerful exemplars of the rewards and hazards of human dominance over the earth's surface. The chapter highlights mountain-battle scenes that were used by later historians as arenas for characterisation. The chapter analyzes these battle scenes and focuses on specific moments and specific places, side by side with other passages of landscape depiction. It looks at evidence for a rhetorical strand of landscape description in some ancient historiography.
Strabo: Civilising the Mountains
Authors: König Jason
Published: July 2023

This chapter explores Strabo's Geography, which is written in the early first century CE and offers a breathtakingly wide-ranging picture of the regions and communities of the Mediterranean world. It cites Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae, giving one of the most sensationalistic and emotionally powerful accounts of the infighting of the imperial elite and the constant threat of external invasion in the newly Christian empire. Geography and Res Gestae are among the most intricate and extensive portrayals of mountains surviving from the ancient world. The chapter examines the variety of ways in which ancient traditions of writing about mountains and other kinds of landscape could be used. It discusses how Geography and Res Gestae draw on widespread conventions of depicting mountain warfare and mountain conquest.
Mountain Saints in Late Antique Christian Literature
Authors: König Jason
Published: July 2023

This chapter looks at frequent descriptions of inhabiting mountain territory and in the saints' lives that survive from late antiquity right through the medieval period, many of which have mountain settings. It highlights the flexibility of the Greek term oros, which can refer to mountain peaks where some holy men are said to have occupied sites on or near the summits. Oros also applies to the rocky expanses of wild terrain at lower altitude, especially in late antique Egypt, where it is used almost interchangeably with the Greek word erēmos. The chapter describes the authors of the saints' lives that offer a broadly positive vision of isolated mountain lifestyles that are cut off from urban civilisation. Men and women who practised asceticism became heroes of holiness through the texts that presented them to the wider world.
Epilogue
Authors: Kalisman Hilary Falb
Published: July 2023

This epilogue traces the legacy of mandate-era education into the present day, as teachers' unions call for strikes across the Middle East. The sight of amassing Jordanian, Iraqi, and Palestinian public school teachers storming from their classrooms and streaming into the streets to protest a variety of issues has become a regular occurrence in the twenty-first century. They have framed their protests using the term “dignity,” thereby underscoring their degenerating economic status, their frustration, and what they perceive as the injustice of their place in society. These strikes and laments for teachers' lost dignity have their origins in the mandate period; educators' nostalgia for a higher social and economic status is based in historical fact. Ultimately, teachers' loss of prestige, though it took unique forms across Britain's former mandates, was part of global trends in the relationship between state and school: education became a right rather than a privilege.
Other “Isms”
Authors: DiIulio John Peter
Published: July 2023

This chapter reviews John Stuart Mill's practical philosophy and considers a few general lines of criticism. It confirms whether Mill is too libertarian by pointing out the classic conservative critique of Mill, and whether he is too progressive by noting other notable conservative critiques of Mill that stem from the revisionist tradition. It also questions if Mill is too conservative and if he is too communitarian. The chapter encounters the inquiry of moral motivation and asks whether or not Mill can account for the whole of morality. It argues that Mill's practical philosophy, while certainly not immune from error or criticism, can withstand many inquiries.
Explaining the Language-Opinion Connection
Authors: Pérez Efrén , Tavits Margit
Published: July 2023

This chapter outlines the changing trajectory of scientific work on the connection between language and human thought. It focuses on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which is the broad notion that differences between tongues determine how humans interpret their world. Even though the hypothesis garnered backlash, Dan Slobin, Lera Boroditsky, and others refashioned the claim into a more constructive conversation about when, why, and how language can, generically, shape human cognition. The chapter considers Noam Chomsky's idea of Universal Grammar suggesting that all humans come equipped with a shared, hardwired capability to learn the language. It explains that belief-sampling allows the consideration of individual opinions as fluid and amenable to a host of forces that impact the content of people's beliefs.
Battle of the Sexes
Authors: Pérez Efrén , Tavits Margit
Published: July 2023

This chapter tackles the possible correlation between the language–opinion hypothesis and gender inequality. Language–opinion hypothesis primarily connects the presence (absence) of grammatical gender to public attitudes toward gender equality. A genderless language boosts mass support for efforts to combat gender inequality, implying that structural nuances between tongues explain some of the persistence of gender disparities. The chapter cites the patterns of varied genderedness of languages, referencing the differences between gendered languages and genderless languages. It then explains how simple quirks in language can affect how mentally receptive people can be to an even more equitable balance between men and women.
Today Is Tomorrow
Authors: Pérez Efrén , Tavits Margit
Published: July 2023

This chapter looks into language playing a crucial role in shaping people's time perspectives and their endorsement of policies with long time horizons. Variation across individuals' level of short-termism influences people's mass opinion about future-oriented policies and reasons behind voters' choices. The chapter also details the application of language–opinion hypothesis to political domains that are permeated with temporal implications. Thus, language can operate as a ceiling to dampen down what might otherwise be stronger public support for pro-environmental and other future-oriented policies. The chapter clarifies language differences alone does not affect why efforts to combat global change have not been more aggressive.
Sensing Ethnic Divisions
Authors: Pérez Efrén , Tavits Margit
Published: July 2023

This chapter considers whether interviewing in a minority versus majority language can heighten the mental salience of ethnic diversity and divisions. It mentions that ethnic diversity is a growing hallmark of many modern societies. Since modern societies become more multiethnic and multilingual, research on ethnic relations finds it harder to ignore language or to treat it as a background variable with little theoretical import. Speaking a minority language heightens the mental salience of ethnic diversity and divisions, which leads people to integrate these considerations into their political opinions. Meanwhile, people who interview in a minority language are more likely to express political opinions than prioritize ethnic considerations.
The Rise of the Bowtie in the Song Dynasty
Authors: Wang Yuhua
Published: July 2023

This chapter looks at the early stage of the second era, State Maintaining under Partnership, by examining politics during the Song Dynasty (960–1276). It shows that the Song emperors took advantage of a fragmented elite to concentrate monarchical power in the bureaucracy, which was staffed by the newly expanded civil service examination system. The chapter begins by discussing the relationship between the ruler and his bureaucracy, the fiscal system, and the military system. It elaborates on the two types of Song elites: patronage-based professional elites and newly risen scholar-officials. The chapter then jumps to employ the Wang Anshi Reform as a case study to investigate how these two types of elites differed in their preferences regarding the ideal strength of the state. Using information from an original dataset on the major officials from this period, the chapter shows that the nationally marrying professional elites were more likely to support the state-strengthening reform than the locally marrying scholar-officials. The chapter then explores how the Song state and society, respectively, changed after the Wang Anshi Reform.
The Development of Private-Order Institutions
Authors: Wang Yuhua
Published: July 2023

This chapter considers another aspect of State Maintaining under Partnership by analyzing how private-order institutions emerged in the late imperial era. It examines how Chinese elites in the late imperial era relied on social cooperation to provide security and services. It then shows that Chinese elites invented private-order institutions—lineage organizations and lineage coalitions—which helped them overcome commitment problems in a weak state. The chapter supports these arguments using an original dataset of historical conflicts, civil service examination success, and lineage organizations identified from genealogical records. With the development of private-order institutions and their partnership with the state, the chapter further elaborates on how it helped explain China's durable political order in the late imperial era, despite a weakening state and frequent challenges from foreign invaders and internal rebels.
Nehru's India
Authors: Sherman Taylor C.
Published: July 2023

This book brings a provocative but nuanced set of new interpretations to the history of early independent India. The book reevaluates the role of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, in shaping the nation. It argues that the notion of Nehru as the architect of independent India, as well as the ideas, policies, and institutions most strongly associated with his premiership—nonalignment, secularism, socialism, democracy, the strong state, and high modernism—have lost their explanatory power. They have become myths. The book examines seminal projects from the time and also introduces readers to little-known personalities and fresh case studies, including India's continued engagement with overseas Indians, the importance of Buddhism in secular India, the transformations in industry and social life brought about by bicycles, a riotous and ultimately doomed attempt to prohibit the consumption of alcohol in Bombay, the early history of election campaign finance, and the first state-sponsored art exhibitions. The book also shines a light on underappreciated individuals, such as Apa Pant, the charismatic diplomat who influenced foreign policy from Kenya to Tibet, and Urmila Eulie Chowdhury, the rebellious architect who helped oversee the building of Chandigarh. Tracing and critiquing developments in this formative period in Indian history, the book offers a fresh and definitive exploration of the nation's early postcolonial era.
Coda
Authors: Sherman Taylor C.
Published: July 2023

This coda begins by providing several reasons why the image of Jawaharlal Nehru as the architect of independent India is a myth. First, Nehru never had the intention to be the architect of independent India. Rather than seeing him as The Architect, it is better to understand Nehru as fulfilling a number of roles as prime minister: patron, mediator, educator and symbol. He understood the nature of democracy, especially in a young country like India, and had an instinct for the importance of the embodiment of ideals in individuals. In these four roles, Nehru did influence the country he served. However, it is important to avoid posthumously investing him with superhuman powers. The coda then presents a few additional characterisations of the Nehru era, considering postcolonial nationalism and internationalism in India.
Against Otherworldliness
Authors: Lamb Michael
Published: July 2023

This chapter looks into the otherworldliness within Augustine of Hippo's texts. It discusses Augustine's famous and controversial belief known as the “order of love” (ordo amoris). Augustine's participationist ontology highlights how his order of love is simultaneously focused on moral psychology and metaphysics. Augustine identifies hope as necessary for the good life but recognizes that simply possessing hope is insufficient. However, many interpreters worry that Augustine's excessively otherworldly hope denies any legitimate hope for temporal goods, including the goods of politics. The chapter considers the criticisms of Hannah Arendt, Martha Nussbaum, and Reinhold Niebuhr who worry that Augustine's order of love instrumentalizes the neighbor and evacuates the world of its value.
Pedagogies of Hope
Authors: Lamb Michael
Published: July 2023

This chapter examines how Augustine of Hippo utilized rhetoric to instruct and encourage audiences. It then highlights the pedagogy of Augustine's most rhetorical texts, most of which were sermons. Recognizing the rhetorical and pedagogical purposes of Augustine's homilies of hope complicates influential interpretations of Augustine's pessimism and furnishes a more capacious vision of his moral and political thought. The chapter acknowledges how rhetorical devices serve pedagogical functions, helping to diagnose the dangers of presumption while discouraging listeners from sliding into despair. Moreover, Augustine's sermons reveal an egalitarian, dialogical impulse that contests the critiques of his allegedly monological and totalizing style.
Introduction
Authors: Gill Michael B.
Published: July 2023

This introductory chapter recounts Anthony Ashley Cooper's life as the third Earl of Shaftesbury, the rise and fall of his philosophical influence, and the challenges and rewards of reading his characteristic prose. Shaftesbury's Charactersticks of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711) was one of the most important philosophical works of the first part of the eighteenth century. It played a momentous role in turning European thought away from the negative and toward the positive—in nature, religion, morality, and art. These shifts away from the negatives of fear and hostility toward the positives of admiration and love involved the ideas of numerous early modern thinkers. But none played a bigger role than Shaftesbury's philosophy of beauty. The chapter details that the book explains his views of the beauty of nature and God, of virtue, of art in general, of painting, and of writing.
Nature and God
Authors: Gill Michael B.
Published: July 2023

This chapter begins by discussing the views of Thomas Burnet and John Locke regarding nature. Many today hold views of nature diametrically opposed to those of Burnet and Locke. Wilderness is now taken to be of great intrinsic value, the height of beauty. The third Earl of Shaftesbury was instrumental in initiating this modern revaluation of nature. The chapter looks at his pivotal view of nature, which emerged as a solution to a problem he took to be of the deepest philosophical and personal importance: the problem of how worship of God can be both transportingly emotional and entirely rational. It first explains Shaftesbury's problem, describing his view of religious emotion and religious rationality. The chapter then considers Shaftesbury's solution, looking at his view of beauty in general and his view of the beauty of nature. It concludes by raising the question of what happens when Shaftesbury's view meets Charles Darwin.
Painting
Authors: Gill Michael B.
Published: July 2023

This chapter focuses on history painting, which the third Earl of Shaftesbury believes represents morally significant conduct. History paintings were larger-than-life representations of stories from mythology, the Bible, and the ancient world. They were not intended to be historical records. Their purpose was to convey the message or moral of the stories. According to Shaftesbury, to be successful at conveying the moral of a story, a history painting may need to alter some of the details of the source text. His fullest treatment of history painting is A Notion of the Tablature, or Judgment of Hercules. This “notion,” or essay, was a painstakingly detailed description of a painting Shaftesbury himself conceived and commissioned the Italian painter Paolo de Matteis to execute. In his account of how to complete the painting, Shaftesbury expressed clearly his two criteria of artistic beauty: the criterion of formal unity that is essential to all beautiful things, and the criterion of truthful representation of virtue and vice that must be met by morally representational works of art. The chapter then considers moviemaking, the contemporary art form that comes closest to conveying Shaftesbury's conception of history painting.
A Leadership-Based International System Is Built and Adapts
Authors: Tucker Paul
Published: July 2023

This chapter looks into the comprehensive redesign of international relations. The redesign was a response to material and moral desolation after the wreckage that came after World War II, the collapse of international trade, and Europe's supposed Enlightenment. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is unambiguously a judicial body since its judgments are deemed final and without appeal so United Nations members are obliged to comply. The chapter explores the different forms and substances of international law and relations showcased in the Cold War. After the war, the North Atlantic multilateral and Pacific Rim bilateral security treaties opened and preserved space for a Western-style economic system. The chapter tackles the efforts of adapting international institutions to US-led globalization.
Institutions for Cooperation
Authors: Tucker Paul
Published: July 2023

This chapter explores how international regimes and organizations fit into the Humean account of cooperation feasibility across borders. It highlights equilibria, design, and delegation as key themes. Since institutions run through people's social, civil, and civic lives, the rules need to be stable to achieve a stable equilibrium. Moreover, any social institution can be characterized by dimensions of emerging organically or self-enforcing. The chapter elaborates on the differences between regimes and organizations. It also looks into the constitution, operation, and pathologies of international organizations. Additionally, some international policy bodies are formally recognized as international organizations under international law, which matters since it determined whether a body has specific rights, obligations, and capabilities.
Political Realism in International Relations
Authors: Tucker Paul
Published: July 2023

This chapter considers applying political realism in international relations and institutions. It mentions how institutionalized interdependence can entail mutual and reciprocal political responsibilities, which are framed politically instead of through moral responsibilities. Realist international political theory guides people away from oversimplified, morality-first approaches to international cooperation. Political philosopher John Rawls provides insights into how liberal states should approach international affairs. Moreover, Rawls approached exclusion from his society of states and peoples by setting principled tests for inclusion. The chapter tackles order, system, and society as international basic legitimation demands. It then elaborates on the precepts for liberal states participating in a system of international regimes, such as not being order threatening, macro-reciprocity, and good faith.
Basel and the International Financial System
Authors: Tucker Paul
Published: July 2023

This chapter discusses how central banks emerged as potent international standard setters. It looks into reforms for making the financial system more resilient given discordant geopolitics, and to help the Basel Tower avoid being compromised by its confidential dialogue with the industry it is meant to oversee. The consensus of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel flips between groups of different size, composition, and authority, and on the history of central banking. The chapter notes the correlation between BIS and a vindicatory genealogy of social norms fostered by calamities faced collectively. It explains how digital currencies are the result of geopolitics and domestic diplomacy.
A Brief Intellectual History of the Aesthetic Cold War
Authors: Kalliney Peter J.
Published: July 2023

This chapter shows how the aesthetic debates of the cold war, especially debates about autonomous versus utilitarian theories of literary production, were inextricable from anticolonial discussions about literary language. It provides a lengthy, technical background of the aesthetic debates over decolonization and the cold war. It also talks about writers from the decolonizing world that were keen to assert their autonomy yet did not necessarily forsake the goal of serving their primary constituents with their work. The chapter considers the intellectual history of the aesthetic cold war as an attempt to explain how certain key concepts in late colonial and early postcolonial literature can be understood as part of fundamental debates about aesthetic autonomy and aesthetic utilitarianism. It suggests that the aesthetic cold war and the history of global English literature in the twentieth century cannot be written without one another.
Indigeneity and Internationalism: Soviet Diplomacy and Afro-Asian Literature
Authors: Kalliney Peter J.
Published: July 2023

This chapter discusses Soviet-led cultural diplomacy efforts, especially the Afro-Asian Writers' Association and its house magazine, Lotus, which were very similar to US programs. It points out that Soviets were no more successful than their rivals in recruiting ideological mouthpieces among global south writers. It also argues that the major difference between the superpowers' programs is that Soviet-led cultural diplomacy insisted on the value of linguistic and cultural heterogeneity. The chapter examines how Lotus captured the incomparable temporalities of decolonization by toggling between past, present, and future tenses. It pays special attention to Alex La Guma as he preferred Communist politics or socialist realist aesthetics and his career questions the simplicity of categories as decolonization unfolded amidst the cold war.
A Failure of Diplomacy: Placing Eileen Chang in Global Literary History
Authors: Kalliney Peter J.
Published: July 2023

This chapter examines US cultural diplomacy through the career of Eileen Chang and her dealings with the United States Information Agency (USIA), the cultural diplomacy offshoot of the US State Department. Unlike the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), the USIA and the State Department were open about their sponsorship of cultural goods that changed how their position in the decolonizing parts of Asia were understood. It also seeks to show how South Africa's loss was the world's gain. The chapter discusses Alex La Guma's work to help explain how the cold war and the conditions of his exile frame his approach to anticolonial nationalism. It cites La Guma's travel writing in A Soviet Journey, which was originally commissioned and published by the Soviet firm Progress Publishers.
Notes from Prison: Individual Testimony Meets Collective Resistance
Authors: Kalliney Peter J.
Published: July 2023

This chapter examines the genre of the prison memoir, with forays into the archives of PEN International. Jailing writers is a basic way of curbing intellectual freedoms, but the experience of reading prison memoirs is also a reminder that these writers used the language of human rights to resist. It also explains how prison memoirs show how writers collaborated with the cold war's human rights organizations to imagine themselves as part of an international, affirmatively nonaligned network of intellectuals, crisscrossing national boundaries and entrenched ideologies. Without glossing over the differences between European, African, and Asian accounts of political detention, the chapter recognizes some of the representational affinities between them by suggesting that the idea of human rights brought intellectuals from metropolitan and decolonizing parts of the world into closer contact. It notes how the genre of prison memoirs evolved as it became closely associated with non-governmental organizations.
Conclusion
Authors: Kalliney Peter J.
Published: July 2023

This chapter reviews how the United States and the Soviet Union coopted, defanged, and rerouted the literature of decolonization, and how the cold war's partisans recruited and corrupted intellectuals from the decolonizing world. It talks about punitive state measures that strengthened the narrative that intellectuals belonged to a non-aligned creative guild that trespassed national borders and narrow ideological affiliations. The tendency of nation-states to seize on the abuses of rival states allowed dissident writers to mobilize cold war rivalries in their defense. The chapter confirms how key debates in postcolonial studies were formed in the crucible of the aesthetic cold war. It proposes a different model for writing a global history of literature in the twentieth century.
A Political Economy of External Finance
Authors: Queralt Didac
Published: July 2023

This chapter explores the political economy of public finance. It tackles the legacy of war finance on statebuilding. In response, foreign investors devised the mechanism of extreme conditionality in an effort to minimise risk. The chapter elaborates on the public finance dilemma of financing the war with taxes or foreign debts, which primarily correlates to the mobilization of significant resources addressing critical infrastructure, health crises and natural disasters to fund the government in a relatively short time. The chapter cites that rulers secure government funds through foreign loans while dodging political compromise and fiscal efforts required to establish allegedly good institutions.
War, Credit, and Fiscal Capacity
Authors: Queralt Didac
Published: July 2023

This chapter tackles the short- and long-term repercussions of external capital access on fiscal capacity, which is the ability to raise taxes. It also cites that war finance is consequential for state building. Moreover, access to external finance during wartime in the Bond Era decreased the likelihood of strengthening fiscal capacity. Thus, war finance in the Bond Era shaped fiscal capacity all the way into the early twenty-first century. The chapter considers the issue of history compression in the study of legacy effects. It clarifies that war funded by taxation did make states in the short or long run instead of war funded primarily with external debt.
Where Paralytics Walk and the Blind See
Authors: Dunn Mary
Published: July 2023

In our age of biomedicine, society often treats sickness and disability as problems in need of solution. Phenomena of embodied difference, however, have not always been seen in terms of lack and loss. This book explores the case of early modern Catholic Canada under French rule and shows it to be a period rich with alternative understandings of infirmity, disease, and death. Counternarratives to our contemporary assumptions, these early modern stories invite us to creatively imagine ways of living meaningfully with embodied difference today. At the heart of the account are a range of historical sources: Jesuit stories of illness in New France, an account of Canada's first hospital, the hagiographic vita of Catherine de Saint-Augustin, and tales of miraculous healings wrought by a dead Franciscan friar. In an early modern world that subscribed to a Christian view of salvation, both sickness and disability held significance for more than the body, opening opportunities for virtue, charity, and even redemption. The book demonstrates that when these reflections collide with modern thinking, the effect is a certain kind of freedom to reimagine what sickness and disability might mean to us. Reminding us that the meanings we make of embodied difference are historically conditioned, the book makes a forceful case for the role of history in broadening our imagination.
Hagiographic Prosthetics in the Vie de la Mère Catherine de Saint-Augustin
Authors: Dunn Mary
Published: July 2023

This chapter references Vie de la Vénérable Mère Catherine de Saint-Augustin, sitting at the intersection of the Jesuit and Hospitaller worlds. The Vie takes Catherine de Saint-Augustin as its subject, who is a demoniac, visionary, and Hospitaller nun at the Hôtel-Dieu. It considers Vie as a collaborative text from the warp of Catherine's own spiritual journal and the weft of Paul Ragueneau's interpretative overlay. The chapter addresses the question of whether Catherine's visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary and baby Jesus were real or were just figments generated by demonic manipulation. It discusses Catherine's contests with the legions of demons and indications of spiritual corruption or heaven-sent trials intended to purify her soul.
The Arithmetic of Polynomial Dynamical Pairs
Authors: Favre Charles , Gauthier Thomas
Published: July 2023

This book presents new mathematical research in the field of arithmetic dynamics. Specifically, the book studies one-dimensional algebraic families of pairs given by a polynomial with a marked point. Combining tools from arithmetic geometry and holomorphic dynamics, the book proves an “unlikely intersection” statement for such pairs, thereby demonstrating strong rigidity features for them. It further describes one-dimensional families in the moduli space of polynomials containing infinitely many postcritically finite parameters, proving the dynamical André-Oort conjecture for curves in this context, originally stated by Baker and DeMarco. The book is a reader-friendly invitation to a new and exciting research area that brings together sophisticated tools from many branches of mathematics.
Introduction
Authors: Tang Shiping
Published: July 2023

This chapter notes the significance of institutions in economic development. Institutions can be understood as instruments for allocating production factors to different sectors or shifting an economy from one state to another. The chapter elaborates on the concept of the institutional foundation of economic development (IFED) underpinned by possibility, incentive, capability, and opportunity. While economic development is a challenge without any institutional panacea, IFED is only one component of the new development triangle, which contains state capacity and socioeconomic policy in addition to IFED. The chapter explains institutions and developmental strategies and policies as the prime movers for modern economic development.
A Systematic Statement of IFED
Authors: Tang Shiping
Published: July 2023

This chapter outlines a concise yet systematic statement of the institutional foundation of economic development (IFED). Institutions and policies shape development by governing four immediate drivers of individual actions: the possibility (of freedom), incentive, capability, and opportunity. Moreover, the six dimensions of institutions shape economic development by impacting four drivers of individuals' actions and initiatives. The chapter elaborates on the six dimensions of IFED: hierarchy for order and stability, liberty, property rights and beyond, social mobility channels, good redistribution, and inequality of opportunity. It notes that some dimensions include the status of conventional wisdom or the lack of systemic quality data.
Legal Belonging across the Mediterranean
Authors: Marglin Jessica M.
Published: July 2023

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Shamama case, which highlights the concept of “legal belonging.” The neutral category of legal belonging allows one to observe the ways in which the furnace of nationalist fervor forged new molds of inclusion and exclusion, especially for Jews. Moreover, it permits one to view the modernization of state membership in both North Africa and Europe as an entangled process of legal change that played out across the Mediterranean—rather than an example of a Western invention exported abroad. The sprawling legal battle over the estate of Nissim Shamama, a Tunisian Jew who died in Italy, challenges old assumptions—about citizenship, Jews, and the Islamic world. It also offers new ways to think about what it means to legally belong.
Heirs Apparent (1873)
Authors: Marglin Jessica M.
Published: July 2023

This chapter assesses how, in the months after Nissim Shamama's death, various heirs began preparations to claim their portion of the millionaire's estate. Nissim's great-niece ʻAziza and her husband Moses, along with Masʻuda, the estranged widow, developed plans to prove that Nissim had died an Italian, hoping to ensure that the will was upheld. The three nephews—Qā'id Momo, Joseph, and Nathan—soon realized that having Jewish law applied to the estate was their only hope and set out to prove that Nissim had died a Tunisian. Before long, both sides recognized the importance of Jewish law to the case, and rabbinic authorities across the Mediterranean became involved. Meanwhile, Tunisian government officials put intense pressure on Nissim's three nephews in Tunisia. The bey's advisers did everything in their power to convince the presumptive heirs to relinquish a percentage of their inheritance to the government—forcing the nephews to take dramatic measures to protect their claims on the estate.
Rav Nissim the Jew
Authors: Marglin Jessica M.
Published: July 2023

This chapter explores how the team of lawyers working for the Tunisian government suggested that as a Jew, Nissim Shamama's national law was none other than Jewish law. Because Jews constituted a distinct nation, Nissim's nationality was identical to his faith. The insistence that Judaism was a nationality posed a particular challenge for Pasquale Stanislao Mancini. Indeed, rejecting the claim that Judaism amounted to a nationality was no simple matter. Mancini ultimately offered two reasons why Jewish law could not be Nissim's national law: first, Jews' distinctiveness did not amount to a separate nationality. Second, Jewish law was not a proper legal system but rather a confused jumble of customs and usages—and thus could not properly be considered a national law.
“With One Color, We Cannot See”
Authors: Zubrzycki GeneviÈve
Published: July 2023

This chapter evaluates the performance of Jewishness by non-Jews. It asks what cultural appropriation means in the Polish context before turning to the analysis of multicultural utopias embodied in the discovery, recovery, and performance of Jewish culture by non-Jewish Poles. To make sense of the Jewish revival, one needs to adopt an interpretive sociological approach and focus on the meaning individuals give to their actions. The chapter then identifies six main registers of engagement with Jewishness and Judaism noticeable in individuals and institutions alike: crude cultural appropriation, casual engagement, romantic engagement, critical-introspective engagement, political engagement, and empathetic versions of appropriation. This interpretive approach and typological framework reveal that Jewish-related discourses and practices in the fourth, fifth, and sixth registers of engagement serve to deconstruct identity and reconstruct it along new lines. Organizations like Kraków's Jewish Culture Festival not only bring non-Jewish Poles into contact with past Jewish presence in Poland but seek to instill an understanding that Jews and Jewish culture are constitutive of Polish culture.
Coming Out
Authors: Zubrzycki GeneviÈve
Published: July 2023

This chapter focuses on the renewal of Jewish life proper, investigates how it intersects with the “Jewish turn,” and asks what this all means for the community of Polish Jews. Many of the “new Jews” displayed an understanding of identity as primordial. At the same time, they demonstrated that identity is constructed and takes hard work. The readiness of some of the interlocutors to embrace their Jewishness on the basis of having one Jewish ancestor clearly shows the power of biological understandings of ethnic identity, but also of cultural imaginaries where even partial and remote Jewish ancestry seems to matter more than “Polish” or other religious or national origins. Constructing that Jewish self, however, requires significant cultural work: solving genealogical mysteries, learning new languages, adopting new traditions and rituals, and sometimes even formally converting. Ultimately, the process entails cultural reappropriation.
A Forensic Approach to Racial Inequality
Authors: Rosenberg Andrew S.
Published: July 2023

This chapter looks at several important theoretical and technical concerns with unmasking the persistent racial inequality in international migration. It presents the theoretical issues as a conversation with three different groups of skeptics. These theoretical skeptics address both the ethical and practical considerations associated with studying race and racial inequality in international politics. The first group cites supposedly mass immigration from the global South to the global North and the lack of explicitly racist laws to invalidate the argument that racial bias persists. The second group are racial “eliminativists,” who claim that race and racism are social constructions that have immense power. As a result, we should refrain from referring to them or measuring them because doing so breathes life into a damaging, violent fiction. The final group claims that the concept of race is contextual and does not travel across national borders. To respond to these theoretical skeptics, the chapter adopts and discusses the racial ontology of Alain Locke. It then considers the technical issues: the lack of explicitly racist laws, the general difficulties associated with studying ideologies such as racism, and the issue of data availability.
The Distinctive Value of Elections
Authors: Chapman Emilee Booth
Published: July 2023

This chapter characterizes the practice of popular voting and lays out the account of the value(s) of this practice, which is at the heart of the book. The chapter demonstrates the depth of citizens' attachment to the practice of voting and identifies the three core normative features of popular voting as a democratic practice. The chapter then provides an overview of the aspects of democracy's value that voting most uniquely instantiates. It argues that popular voting performs essential functions that support a healthy democratic culture. The argument is not that voting is the only or even the most important participatory practice in democratic societies, but rather that it plays an essential role—especially in large communities—and is not interchangeable with other forms of participation. Moreover, the value of voting's distinct role in modern democracy is partly constituted by its special salience in citizens' beliefs about democracy.