bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Parmenidean Ascent
Authors: Della Rocca Michael
Published: January 2021

The central aim of The Parmenidean Ascent is to reveal the power of an extreme monism of a Parmenidean variety in a more uncompromising manner than has been attempted for many a year. For the Parmenidean monist, there are no distinctions whatsoever, and indeed distinctions are unintelligible. The book not only defends—against the tide of much recent scholarship—the attribution of such a sweeping monism to Parmenides, it also embraces this monism in its own right and expands these monistic results to many of the most crucial areas of philosophy. The topics that come in for this rationalistic, monistic treatment include being, action, knowledge, meaning, truth, and metaphysical explanation. There is thus no differentiated being, no differentiated action, knowledge, etc. Rather all is being, just as all is action, knowledge, etc. The motive force behind this argument is a combination of a detailed survey of the failures of leading positions (both historical and contemporary) to meet a demand for the explanation of a given phenomenon, and a powerful rationalist, Bradleyan argument against the reality of relations. The result is a rationalist rejection of all distinctions and a skeptical denial of the intelligibility of ordinary, relational notions of being, action, knowledge, etc. A further significant upshot is the rejection of any distinction between philosophy itself and the study of its history. Throughout the book, attention is paid to philosophical methods, including especially the method, so popular today, of relying on intuitions and common sense. The historically minded and rationalist approach throughout this book goes a long way toward demonstrating the ultimate bankruptcy of this prevalent methodology.
The Call of Parmenides
Authors: Della Rocca Michael
Published: January 2021

Chapter 1 advances an interpretation of Parmenides as rejecting all distinctions and all non-being and as thus espousing a radical form of monism. Parmenides’ monism is so radical that, according to him, non-being cannot even be thought of or spoken of. Strong textual evidence is marshalled for seeing Parmenides’ rejection of distinctions as driven by his explicit and implicit commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the PSR, according to which each fact or thing has an explanation. The Parmenidean rejection of all distinctions amounts to a paradox in part because, in saying that non-being cannot be thought or said, Parmenides seems to be speaking of non-being. Comparison of Parmenides’ paradoxical view and Wittgenstein’s position in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus is developed. Important secondary literature on Parmenides is engaged with, particularly the writings of G. E. L. Owen and Alexander Mourelatos.
Substance
Authors: Della Rocca Michael
Published: January 2021

The first case in which this book identifies the pressure to make the Parmenidean Ascent is that of substance or being. This chapter analyzes several episodes in the history of philosophy in which philosophers appropriately issue an explanatory demand when it comes to substance: what is it in virtue of which a substance is a substance? These philosophers all then go on to fail to observe this explanatory demand in their own positive accounts of substance. The views of Aristotle, Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, and Jonathan Lowe are examined in some detail. This pervasive failure of a wide swath of prominent theories of substance leads to the suspicion that there is something systematically amiss with the notion of substance. Chapter 3 seeks to identify the culprit.
Substance
Authors: Della Rocca Michael
Published: January 2021

This chapter identifies the source of the failure to satisfy the explanatory demand with regard to being or substance. The culprit is the presupposition that we are trying to understand what it is to be a relational substance, a substance that stands in relations. Chapter 3 argues that any attempt to meet the explanatory demand for a relational substance is embroiled in vicious explanatory regresses or circles. Potential objections to this argument are shown to be lacking, and a comparison between this argument against relational substance and Bradley’s famous regress argument against the reality of relations is offered. The only way to save the notion of substance is to affirm undifferentiated or non-relational substance. This is a Parmenidean Ascent with regard to being: there are no beings, not even one being, rather there is simply being. A comparison between this conception of being and Aquinas’ conception of God is offered.
Meaning
Authors: Della Rocca Michael
Published: January 2021

In its most general form, the explanatory demand with regard to meaning addresses the question: what is it for representation or aboutness or meaning to be present? This question can focus on linguistic meaning in particular or on aboutness in general, including non-linguistic aboutness. Through a detailed analysis of leading theories—including those of Grice, Searle, Soames, Descombes, Horwich, Putnam, Kripke, Lewis, and Davidson—it is shown how the failure to meet the explanatory demand with regard to meaning is pervasive. A Bradleyan regress argument is then deployed to make a Parmenidean Ascent: there is no differentiated meaning, instead all is meaning. This ascent is intimated—perhaps unwittingly—in the classic arguments of Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” and Davidson’s “On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.” The chapter closes with a Parmenidean Ascent with regard to truth that follows from the Parmenidean Ascent with regard to meaning.
Meaning, the History of Philosophy, and Analytical Philosophy
Authors: Della Rocca Michael
Published: January 2021

Chapter 7 considers the consequences of the Parmenidean Ascent with regard to meaning for the alleged distinction between philosophy and the study of its history. The argument that any such distinction is unintelligible focuses on the disregard of the history of philosophy in certain quarters of analytical philosophy. The argument identifies three pillars or struts of analytical philosophy: realism, the method of intuition or common sense, and discreteness in metaphysics. The chapter then shows how each of these three struts is implicated in the disdain for or ignoring of the history of philosophy. Rejecting an isolationist response to this analytical forgetfulness—a response that separates the study of the history of philosophy from philosophy itself—the chapter goes on to challenge the struts of analytical philosophy and to make a Parmenidean Ascent with regard to the distinction between philosophy and the study of its history.
The Violent Image
Authors: Bolt Neville
Published: January 2021

Fast-moving, self- propelled 'violent images' have radically changed the nature of insurgency in the modern world. Global media have revolutionized the way ideas, messages and images are disseminated, and the speed with which they travel. First satellite TV, then laptops and the Internet, and now mobile phones and social media have transformed the way we communicate, collapsing time and distance. Rebels who hope to overthrow states or to build transnational, ideological communities, have adopted these dynamic technologies. But they have also learned the key lesson: in a visual world, the power of the image has supplanted that of the written world. Neville Bolt investigates how today's revolutionaries have rejuvenated the nineteenth century 'Propaganda of the Deed' so that terrorism no longer simply goads states into overreacting, thereby losing legitimacy. The deed has become a tool to highlight the underlying grievances of communities. Pictures of 9/11, 7/1, and Abu Ghraib are today's weapon of choice. The Violent Image explores what happens in the 'moment of shock'; how emotive pictures attach to messages, causing populations to rise up in anger. From the Fenians to the Taliban to the Arab Spring we learn how insurgents have adapted the way they use violence to tell stories and effect social change. In the 'war of ideas', the new revolutionaries aim to set in motion surges of support that spread virally through global networks at such speed that states can no longer defend their own strategic narratives. Have we now reached the point where insurgents and populations are driving images and ideas so fast, that a new era of revolutionary politics is already upon us?
The Terrorist Act as Communicator
Authors: Bolt Neville
Published: January 2021

Propaganda of the Deed has shifted its center of gravity since its emergence in the anarchist repertoire of the late 19th century. The act of terror as an act of communications faltered when anarchists failed to dominate the means of distributing their messages to a mass population. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries the dynamism of mass media and prevalence of digitally connected consumers of historical media technologies and newer social media platforms have allowed state challengers to find support more easily and more rapidly at the grass roots. Chapter 1 draws on late 19th century anarchism, World War 1 propaganda, post-colonial struggles, Afghanistan’s Taliban, and al-Qaeda to chart changes in political communications in diverse conflict theatres.
The Culture and Development Manifesto
Authors: Klitgaard Robert
Published: January 2021

This book is a manifesto for building on diverse cultural strengths in international development. Gently but firmly, it demonstrates how and why cultural studies and anthropology have fallen short in application and, arguably, in terms of social science. Nonetheless, anthropology and cultural studies have much to offer, as the book shows through lively examples ranging from West Africa to South Sudan, from Haïti to Hawai’i, from Nepal to Native America. Anthropology can provide distinctive information and compelling descriptions, case studies of successful adaptation and resistance, the deconstruction of cultural texts, useful checklists, and processes for combining outside expertise and local knowledge. Beyond the important task of identifying how cultural features interact with particular projects, The Culture and Development Manifesto displays new ways to think about goals (and risks), new kinds of alternatives, new and perhaps métisse ways to implement, and, as a result, new kinds of politics.
Is Culture a Key to Development?
Authors: Klitgaard Robert
Published: January 2021

In the late 1980s the economy of the small African country of Equatorial Guinea was foundering. Macroeconomic adjustment hadn’t controlled corruption or strengthened the institutions of property, credit, and taxation. As a result, so-called free-market reforms had made little difference in, of all places, the market. Do reforms need to take account of local cultural conditions—including the possibility that what outsiders call development is not a priority? The finance minister explained to me the relevance, in cultures like his, of dictatorship, forced labor, and restrictions of freedom of speech and assembly. Indeed, he argued that Westerners can’t understand apparent torture without an appreciation of his country’s history and political culture. If not so stridently, other Africans agree that culture is a critical variable in advancing, or resisting, various forms of development. Some say, “We need to change our culture to move ahead.” Others argue, “At least we should adjust our policies to our cultural specificities.” How to take culture into account becomes a crucial practical question in development policy and management.
The Misuse of Culture
Authors: Klitgaard Robert
Published: January 2021

An obstacle to applying cultural knowledge is the fear of misuse and misunderstanding. Histories of cultural categories becoming cultural stereotypes have left behind scars and sensitivity, and this has lead some scholars to abandon the concept of “culture” altogether. Applying cultural knowledge is also deterred by chronic tension between accepting cultures as they are (trait-taking) or trying to change them (trait-making). Either way, one faces criticism. What’s more, a scholar’s ethnographic nuances may be misappropriated in practice and, in some cases, be bowdlerized by fellow academics. A detailed example from South Sudan conveys the dangers of misuse and misunderstanding. No wonder many anthropologists (and others) shy away from policy design and implementation.
Adjusting to Cultures
Authors: Klitgaard Robert
Published: January 2021

Cultures interact with policy choices in ways that produce unintended consequences (alas, often negative ones). On the positive side, better knowledge about the interactions between policies, cultures, and outcomes can lead to better outcomes. This chapter offers some exciting examples. The field of cultural ergonomics takes culture into account in the design of everything from stoves to truck interiors to housing for the poor. A successful agroforestry program in Haïti didn’t try to change local “cultures” but to include locals in culturally appropriate ways. Other inspiring examples of cultural knowledge in action include governance reforms among Indigenous nations in the United States, culturally attuned pedagogy in Hawai’i, and a remarkable rural development program in West Africa. They have in common the application of anthropological knowledge through processes that respect and empower local people.
Headless Relative Clauses in San Pedro Mixtepec Zapotec
Authors: Antonio-Ramos Pafnuncio
Published: January 2021

Headless relative clauses are investigated in the Zapotec variety spoken in San Pedro Mixtepec, Oaxaca, Mexico. Two related constructions are briefly introduced as well: wh- interrogative clauses and headed relative clauses. San Pedro Mixtepec Zapotec is shown to possess the three main kinds of free relative clauses that are attested crosslinguistically, each of which is distinguished by syntactic, morphological, and semantic properties: maximal, existential, and free-choice free relative clauses. The language also has two other kinds of headless relative clauses: light-headed relative clauses introduced by pronominals, and headless relative clauses introduced by relative pronouns.
Headless Relative Clauses in K'iche'
Authors: Pixabaj Telma Angelina Can
Published: January 2021

This chapter offers a preliminary description of headless relative clauses in K’iche’. The language exhibits all three varieties of free relative clauses that are attested crosslinguistically: maximal, existential, and free-choice. It also has two other kinds of headless relative clauses: light-headed relative clauses introduced by determiners (without wh-expressions) and headless relative clauses with no marking of any kind (neither wh-expressions nor determiners). Overall, the picture that emerges is that all three varieties of free relative clauses exhibit clear morpho-syntactic and semantic differences that differentiate them both from each other as well as from headed relative clauses. One characteristic that helps to differentiate between them is the different subsets of wh-expressions they make use of. All of these wh- clausal constructions are related but, crucially, independent. Of the two kinds of headless relative clauses that do not make use of wh-expressions, one kind—light-headed relative clauses—is introduced by a determiner, while the other kind has no special marking. Both exhibit distributional and semantic restrictions that distinguish them from headed relative clauses.
Headless Relative Clauses in Chuj
Authors: Royer Justin
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores various types of headless relative clause constructions in Chuj, a Mayan language spoken in Huehuetenango, Guatemala, and Chiapas, Mexico by 45,000 to 70,000 speakers. The main focus is free relative clauses, of which Chuj features three kinds: maximal free relative clauses, existential free relative clauses, and free-choice free relative clauses. Following earlier work on other languages, maximal free relative clauses and existential free relative clauses are argued to be structurally identical at their core; the difference in their interpretations is a consequence of a difference in the elements that each kind combines with. Chuj is also shown to feature a rich inventory of other types of headless relative clauses. These include headless relative clauses introduced by both a wh-word and a determiner [+WH, +DET], those introduced only by a determiner [−WH, +DET], and those that are formed with neither a wh-word nor a determiner [−WH, −DET].
Introduction
Authors: Evans John H.
Published: January 2021

This chapter begins by describing the late 19th-century and early 20th-century eugenics debates from which the contemporary human gene editing debate emerged, and it then brings the debate forward to the contemporary technological possibilities. The chapter introduces the slippery slope, which is the theoretical metaphor for the book. Slippery slopes have the most morally virtuous act at the top and, from the perspective of those at the top, the most reprehensible actions at the bottom. People’s positions tend to slide down the slope. The chapter finishes by discussing how strong barriers can be built on the slope to arrest the slide.
The CRISPR Era, the National Academies Report, and the Median Trait Barrier
Authors: Evans John H.
Published: January 2021

This chapter begins with the discovery of human gene editing, and how the immediate ethical response used the existing weakened barriers. The chapter then turns to a detailed analysis of how an influential report by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine advocated taking down the somatic/germline barrier. The replacement barrier proposed by the National Academies is deemed unstable, and in its place this chapter describes a strong barrier located at the median trait in a population. That is, people could modify their children to take them up to the median value on any trait but not above the median. This would satisfy the dominant contemporary value of justice or fairness, which would require the genetically disadvantaged to overcome their disadvantage, but not allow anyone to use genetics to gain advantage over others.
Possible Barriers Further Down the Slope
Authors: Evans John H.
Published: January 2021

This chapter examines hypothetical barriers on the slope below where the somatic/germline and disease/enhancement walls once were. The first is the goals of medicine barrier, where any trait that the medical profession defines as a disease could be modified. The second is the family genes barrier, where people would be allowed to modify their children to any set of traits that the parents could in principle produce through sexual reproduction. The third is the boundary of humanity barrier, where any genes from outside of the human species are not allowed. Finally, the liberal eugenics barrier would allow any genetic modification that did not harm someone else.
Middle Eastern Middle Powers
Authors: Pinfari Marco
Published: January 2021

This chapter analyzes a selection of mediation and conflict-prevention initiatives promoted by Middle Eastern middle powers since the 1980s. It begins by noting that behavioral approaches to middle power status consider systematic engagement in mediation and conflict prevention as one of the key traits of “middlepowerness,” and reflects on how the literature on middle power mediation and norm-based international behavior can be applied specifically to the Middle East. It then turns to the analysis of three case studies of norm-based mediation or conflict resolution initiatives promoted by three Middle Eastern middle powers—Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—since the 1980s.
Iran
Authors: Saikal Amin
Published: January 2021

The Islamic Republic of Iran is described by some pundits as a “middle power,” or as an influential regional player, without whose cooperation not many Gulf and Middle Eastern problems can be satisfactorily addressed. The republic has achieved a level of power and resource capability to be able to impact geopolitical developments within its region and beyond, in support of what it regards as its national interests. The country’s economic and hard and soft power, along with its size, geographical position, culture, and riches drawn from oil and gas, are taken into account in this respect. It is therefore able to affect events, positively or negatively, in its neighborhood, and to deal with major powers from a bargaining position at bilateral and multilateral levels.
The Kingdom and the Glory?
Authors: Mabon Simon
Published: January 2021

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has faced a number of serious challenges to its geopolitical position in the Persian Gulf regional security complex. Having long relied upon the United States as a guarantor of its security, recent friction between Washington and Riyadh, coupled with what appeared to be a burgeoning rapprochement between the US and Iran, has caused policymakers in Riyadh to reconsider Saudi foreign policy behavior.
Small-State Aspirations to Middlepowerhood
Authors: Mason Robert
Published: January 2021

This chapter argues that small states such as Qatar and the UAE can break the mold of small-state classification, but that the tipping point to middlepowerhood for Qatar came and went during the Morsi presidency in Egypt. Furthermore, as a result of the backlash against an active and interventionist Qatari foreign policy, it could yet become an outlying state on the fringes of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The UAE is found to be approaching a “tipping point” to middlepowerhood due to a combination of factors that are generally enhancing its influence in international affairs.
Institutional Elaboration
Authors: Minett Mark
Published: January 2021

Accounts of Altman’s career trajectory tend to efface dynamic intra- and intermedial relationships in favor of presuming the constraint and emergence of norm-breaking expressivity. Industrial filmmaking is paradoxically said to have groomed Altman to be an observational documentarian while also somehow training him in Hollywood’s illusionist norms. Filmed television is taken to be a forum in which Altman’s expressive agency was shackled by the producer-dominated medium’s attenuated version of Hollywood style, inadvertently fueling his later desire to reject Hollywood’s norms. Chapter 5 employs archival material and formal analysis to specify the contingencies of Altman’s industrial contexts and to demonstrate how they actually contributed to his development, steering him toward practice-oriented preferences and providing opportunities to push beyond standard approaches. The manner in which Altman’s elaborative attitude toward institutional norms extends across “Earlier Altman” to “Early Altman” challenges hierarchizing assumptions about the nature and direction of cross-media influence.
The Coolie's Great War
Authors: Singha Radhika
Published: January 2021

Though largely invisible in histories of World War one, over 550,000 men in the ranks of the Indian Army were followers or non-combatants. From porters and construction workers in the ‘Coolie Corps’, to ‘menial’ servants and those who maintained supply lines and removed the wounded from the battlefield, Radhika Singha draws upon their story to give the sub-continent an integral rather than ‘external’ place in this world –wide conflict. The labor regimes built on the backs of these 'coolies' had long sustained imperial militarism. This was particularly visible in the border infrastructures put in place by combinations of waged work, corvee, and, tributary labor.These work regimes, and the political arrangements which sustained them, would be bent to the demands of global war. This amplified trans-border ambitions and anxieties and pulled war zones closer home. Manpower hunger unsettled the institutional divide between Indian combatants and non-combatants. The ‘higher’ followers benefitted, less so the ‘menial’ followers, whose position recalled the dependency of domestic service and who included in their ranks the ‘untouchables’ consigned to stigmatised work. The book explores the experiences of the Indian Labor Corps in Mesopotamia and France and concludes with an exploration of the prolonged, complicated nature of the ‘end of the war’ for the sub-continent. The Coolie's Great War views the conflict unfolding over the world through the lens of Indian labor, bringing new social, spatial, temporal and sensory dimensions to the narrative.
Making the Desert Bloom?
Authors: Singha Radhika
Published: January 2021

World War one witnessed the first dense flow of Indian labor into the Persian Gulf. To reconstruct the campaign in Mesopotamia/Iraq after the reverses of 1915-16, the Indian Army demanded non-combatants for dock-work, construction labor and medical and transport services. This chapter explores the Government of India’s anxious deliberations about the choice of legal form in which to meet this demand. The sending of labor for military work overseas had to be distanced conceptually from the stigmatized system of indentured labor migration. There was a danger of disrupting those labor networks across India and around the Bay of Bengal which maintained the supply of material goods for the war. Non-combatant recruitment took the war into new sites and spaces. Regimes of labor servitude were tapped but some form of emancipation had to be promised. The chapter focusses on seven jail- recruited Indian Labor and Porter Corps to explore the work regime in Mesopotamia. Labor units often insisted on fixed engagements rather than ‘duration of war’ agreements, but had to struggle for exit at the conclusion of their contract. After the Armistice, Britain still needed Indian labor and troops in Mesopotamia but sought to prevent the emergence of a settler population.
The Recruiter’s Eye on the ‘Primitive’
Authors: Singha Radhika
Published: January 2021

(237words) This chapter explores the deepening during World War one of colonial interest in the military, labor and political potential of those it categorized as ‘primitive’ populations. Among these were the ‘hill-men’ of India’s North-East Frontier deployed for militarist border-making both as porters and as informal auxiliaries. But work gangs for road building and expeditionary columns were also drawn from so- called ‘Santhalis’ or ‘aboriginals’, strung along the path of migration eastwards from Bihar and Orissa. Keen to highlight the importance to empire of the North-East Frontier, considered less significant than the North-West Frontier, the Assam government offered to raise ‘primitive hill-men’ labor companies for France. Some ‘hill-men’ chiefs feared the depletion of their retinues, others saw new opportunities unfold. Recruitment set up circuits between local conflicts and new theatres of war, resulting in the prolonged Kuki-Chin uprising of 1917-1919 along the Assam –Burma border. War also intensified the extractive drives of state and capital over forest and mineral resources, as illustrated in a small uprising in Mayurbhanj in Bihar and Orissa in which ‘Santhalis’ were held to be very prominent.. At both sites officials concluded that the resistance of ‘primitive’ populations to war- drives which subjected their persons and re-shaped their environments arose from ‘millenarian’ dreams of autonomy. However ‘primitivity’ also offered rich possibilities for the post-war reconstruction of imperial legitimacy. It was the ground on which certain tracts inhabited by ‘backward populations’ were excluded from the scheme of responsible government introduced in 1919.
The Short Career of the Indian Labour Corps in France
Authors: Singha Radhika
Published: January 2021

This chapter adds the story of the Indian Labor Corps to the narratives of the various ‘colored’ units brought to France to deal with the manpower crisis which erupted in 1916.The label ‘colored’ or ‘native labor’ justified inferior care and a harsher work and disciplinary regime than that experienced by white labor. The notion was that to ‘work’ natives properly, the managerial regimes peculiar to them also had to be imported into the metropolis. However distinct social and political agendas gave some units or companies more room than others to get acknowledgement for their services. The chapter explores the war experience of the men in the Indian Labor Corps, beginning with their transformation into military property, and the stretched out journey which took them to France and brought them back. Experience also took shape from their engagement with the environments, object -worlds, and orders of time within which they were positioned. By creating suggestive equivalences between themselves and other military personnel, they sought to lift themselves from the status of coolies to that of participants in a common project of war service. At the same time, they indicated that they had not put their persons at the disposal of the state in exactly the same way as the combatant.
Dance Typologies
Authors: Dickason Kathryn
Published: January 2021

The opening chapter explores the relationship between medieval biblical interpretation and dance. The Vulgate was the urtext by which medieval authorities developed and justified their ideas concerning dance and its place in Christianity. Biblical glosses, as well as visual representations of the Bible, constructed the archetypes of sinful and holy dancers, thereby creating influential paradigms of Christian dancing bodies. Moreover, these exegetical strategies reveal particular political underpinnings of late medieval theology, including anti-Judaism, sacred kingship, and crusader ideology. The first section examines interpretations of Miriam and her dance of praise. The second section focuses on interpretations of the dancers around the golden calf and their idolatry. The third section explores interpretations of the dance of David, including its foreshadowing of the Passion of Christ and bolstering of the Crusades. The last section scrutinizes interpretations of the dance of Salome through the perspectives of sacrilege and misogyny.
Partnering Divinity
Authors: Dickason Kathryn
Published: January 2021

This chapter investigates the use of dance in evoking and transmitting ineffable religious experience. While earlier chapters examined group dances performed in public, this chapter turns to more intimate or private performances within the mystic’s imagination. Focusing on female mystics and so-called brides of Christ (including saints, nuns, and beguines) of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, it reveals how these women created a new repertoire of choreography (dance-writing) that privileged the body and the imagination. Mystics’ dance language opened creative and subversive avenues to access the radical alterity of God. The first section analyzes the kinetic content of bridal mysticism. The second section takes a closer look at women’s own writings and the (de)privatization of performance. The choreography of intimacy marked a state of interiority and ecstasy; it manifested the privileged, personalized moment of encounter. The third section presents evidence for the gender politics of certain partnerships, in which women were victims of divine domination.
Dance in the Late Middle Ages
Authors: Dickason Kathryn
Published: January 2021

The final chapter documents the demise of sacred dance at the end of the Middle Ages, c.1350–1450. Focusing on dance mania and the dance of death, it shows how dance gradually became associated with decadent and morbid, rather than religious and heavenly, motifs. The first section demonstrates how the choreomania (dance mania) epidemics of France, the Low Countries, and the Rhineland befuddled clerics and tested the limits of legitimate dance. The second section focuses on the danse macabre, or the dance of death, which was seemingly related to the plague. With its penchant for self-transcendence, dance probed the realm of the unknown. By the sixteenth century, the religious tenor of the dance of death movement began to erode. This shift coincided with the professionalization and secularization of courtly dance in the Western world.
The Borderwork of Humanitarianism During Displacement from War-Torn Syria
Authors: Carpi Estella
Published: January 2021

This chapter attempts to add nuance to the scholarly debate on the security politics of borders and invites its readers to consider the practices and identities of refugees, host border societies, and earlier border migrants in a way that considers their pre-crisis (im)mobility status within the hybrid human realm of the border. The vacillating status of earning a living across the border in times of peace pervades the space of local citizenship during displacement. Against this backdrop, a clear-cut humanitarianism along borders—purporting to distinguish who is the host and who is the guest—acts as a force intended to preserve nation-state privileges. This vacillating status between borders represents the local citizens’ desire that the refugees return home as soon as possible; the refugees, in turn, are left to deal with the paradox of this request, as they are unable to definitively choose either site. It is in this vein that this chapter engages with ungraspable categories of life—and humanitarian labels—pushing border-crossing beyond a matter of life or death, and draws on the taxonomies that humanitarian borderwork and national border policies engender.
Integrating African Migrants?
Authors: Buehler Matt , Han Kyung Joon
Published: January 2021

Given historically amicable relations between North Africa’s native citizens of Arab and African descent, it is counterintuitive that prejudice against foreign African migrants from sub-Saharan countries seems to be rising. Discrimination seems to be intensifying against African migrants who have recently arrived from Congo, Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Mali, and elsewhere. Where conflict and poverty proliferate in these countries, migrants flee to North Africa seeking clandestine access to Europe by boat across the Mediterranean, or by foot through Spain’s North African enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta. In response, Spain, Italy, and North African countries have increased border and maritime security. Thus, as an alternative, many sub-Saharan African migrants have decided to resettle in North Africa. Previously, articles have appeared depicting North African states as “sender” countries of migrants. Yet, more recently, they have also become “recipient” countries of African migrants.
Disseminating Survival
Authors: Frühauf Tina
Published: January 2021

Media played an important role in the reestablishment of Jewish culture in postwar communities, especially newspapers published by and for survivors. Much of their content was a crucial component in the identificatory practices of integrated Jews and their pre-Holocaust understanding of Germanness. The newspapers were especially significant for the cultural activity of the communities and in establishing a postwar identity. Their content also picked up prewar threads, broadly transmitting music journalism and criticism. By reporting on music, the papers contributed to the reestablishment of a cultural identity in the communities. In turn, the primary aim of the first postwar broadcasts was of a different nature, namely to give voice to the formerly oppressed and to familiarize the general public with Jewish culture. In this way, radio contributed to the democratization of everyday life, creating a sense of community, with new communicative potentials for marginalized groups.
Music in Social Life
Authors: Frühauf Tina
Published: January 2021

Communities with sound financial and organizational structures organized cultural programs with the goal to attract members, educate them, and encourage identification with Jewish heritage. The Jewish community of Hamburg is a case in point. Its music programs reveal an evolving cultural identity, informed by secularization and interaction with the mainstream (as evident in performers and repertoires) as well as moments of historicization. Music played an important role in fostering a culture of dialogue as evident in the various collaborations with non-Jews. But music in social life also sought to cement a communal identity, offering representations of Jewishness no matter how subjective. Within the variety of musical expressions and performances, subjects related to Israel and Yiddish culture crystalized from the 1960s onward. These two poles were of great importance, as can be observed in many other communities, as a kaleidoscopic gaze into the cultural work of Frankfurt, Cologne, and Düsseldorf reveals.
The Rise and Fall of the Qajars
Authors: Tabatabai Ariane M.
Published: January 2021

This chapter provides a brief overview of the reign of the Qajars and its impact on Iran’s contemporary history. It focuses on the implications of the Qajar era for Iran’s military affairs, foreign policy, and security thinking. The chapter surveys the Russo-Persian Wars, Iran’s relations with and balancing efforts with regard to key powers—including Britain, Russia, and France—and the Constitutional Revolution.
Reza Shah, the Modernizing Strongman
Authors: Tabatabai Ariane M.
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores the legacy of Reza Shah, the founder of the Pahlavi dynasty—the last dynasty to rule over Iran. It provides an overview of key military and other reforms undertaken by the king to modernize his country, as well as their implications for the advent of the modern state of Iran. The chapter also discusses how Reza Shah’s reign laid out the foundations for the rise of the Islamic Republic
The Revolution Expands
Authors: Tabatabai Ariane M.
Published: January 2021

This final chapter assesses Iran’s national security thinking and policies today. It discusses Tehran’s contemporary military interventions, from Afghanistan to Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. It also engages the contentious Iranian nuclear file and the regime’s tumultuous relationship with the United States and its regional partners from President George W. Bush to President Donald Trump and his decision to kill Qassem Soleimani.
Beethoven, Symphony No. 2 in D, op. 36/i (Adagio molto–Allegro con brio)
Authors: Hepokoski James
Published: January 2021

This chapter moves on from Mozart and Haydn to consider an early-nineteenth-century movement from Beethoven, the initial movement of his Symphony No. 2, written at the onset of what he considered to be an aesthetic “new path” of composition (and which we tend to regard as the onset of his “middle period”). While the parallels between this movement and that of Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 (chapter 5) are clear—a major-to-minor “fall” in the introduction, themes with “military” connotations, a drive toward a triumphant conclusion, and the like—the differences between the two are equally instructive. With Beethoven we are thrown into a more turbulent musical world, where the classical norms of late-eighteenth-century sonata practice are exaggerated, hyper-dramatized, and sometimes overridden (with “deformations”). The older “default” norms of sonata practice begin to be regularly challenged, and with them arises a new, proto-romantic sense of “listening” and “understanding.” Once past the initial historical backdrop and reframing of Sonata Theory for the onset of a new century, the close reading of the movement that takes up the most of the chapter argues that a central issue in the movement is that of major-minor conflict, where the introduction’s “fall” into minor is not overcome until the climactic post-sonata coda. In part this also prepares the reader for the extended discussions of the minor-mode sonata in the ensuing chapter.
Introduction
Authors: Schmelz Peter J.
Published: January 2021

The Introduction to Sonic Overload explains the motivations for the book and sets in play its general themes. Taking stock of the contemporary overabundance of information, the introduction asks how we reached this point. It focuses on the late USSR for an answer by first looking at paradoxical accounts about information overload in the Soviet Union of the 1970s and early 1980s. Valentin Silvestrov and Alfred Schnittke serve as guides for considering further how information overload affected and was affected by music in the USSR. Schnittke’s and Silvestrov’s evocations of the past range across a spectrum from overmuch to not enough. Each composer engaged with overabundance, using music as a means to articulate a sense of self amid the often overwhelming sensations of too much. The introduction presents the main premises of the book by defining polystylism and style before tying style to fundamental senses of identity, purpose, and meaning both within and against society. The remainder of the introduction discusses the overall argument of the book, from embracing to rejecting polystylism, as well as the contents of each chapter and its role in the ongoing narrative.
Eschatology
Authors: Schmelz Peter J.
Published: January 2021

The beginning of the third and final section of the book, Chapter 7, looks at another response to the anxieties accompanying the transition from Stagnation to Perestroika in the 1980s. The chapter studies the eschatological “postludes” cultivated by Valentin Silvestrov, including, most prominently, his monumental Fifth Symphony (1980–82), a nostalgic re-imagining of Bruckner and Mahler for the end of time. For Silvestrov the genre of the postlude represented a “collection of echoes, . . . a form . . . open not to the end, as is more usual, but to the beginning.” “It is not the end of music as art,” he added, “but the end of music, in which it may remain for a very long time.” This chapter thus considers the cultural work performed by Silvestrov’s resulting sense of “unending ending.” It treats his eschatology as a “useful fiction” to illuminate the conflicted sensations of stasis and acceleration that characterized the last decades of the USSR. Silvestrov, like many in the late twentieth century, began seeing the end everywhere. He responded by composing its echoes. The resulting music spoke to the sense of malaise and environmental catastrophe that gripped the USSR during its final years even as the promises of glasnost and perestroika took hold.
Ghosts and Shadow Sounds
Authors: Schmelz Peter J.
Published: January 2021

Chapter 9 begins studying Alfred Schnittke’s lengthy retreat from polystylism by looking at several of his key compositions from the 1980s, among them his Piano Sonata no. 2, Violin Concerto no. 4, String Trio, and Viola Concerto. In these works, polystylism began to fade as Schnittke emphasized the grotesque, artificial nature of his quotations. He also began speaking more about what he called “shadow sounds,” which soon took precedence in his aesthetic schema, largely replacing polystylism. Yet by the end of the 1980s, as polystylism dissipated, it remained a central category for critics and listeners. Schnittke himself became more unrooted; he emigrated from the USSR to Germany but continued to express a deep ambivalence about his true home.
The Collage Wave Breaks
Authors: Schmelz Peter J.
Published: January 2021

As Chapter 9 shows, Schnittke’s final move away from polystylism to a more introspective, personal style can be heard most audibly in his opera Life with an Idiot and in his Sixth and Seventh Symphonies. These works show the collapse of Schnittke’s previously ecumenical—or apparently ecumenical—musical Weltanschauung. For many, they also bore witness to his declining health and the collapse and fall of the Soviet Union. This chapter explores the musical changes of the final period of his life, including his growing fame worldwide. Chief among these changes is the apparent paradox offered by Schnittke’s retreat from the multiplicity of polystylism even as the Soviet Union during glasnost witnessed an explosion of divergent voices.
Conclusion
Authors: Schmelz Peter J.
Published: January 2021

A new ignorance is on the horizon, an ignorance borne not of a lack of knowledge but of too much knowledge, too much data, too many theories, too little time.

—Eugene Thacker, Tentacles Longer Than Night: Horror of Philosophy, vol. 3 (2015).

It seems to me that our time is already not a time of fundamental, revolutionary innovations. Our time is a time of synthesis. But the synthesis is not like that in polystylism. That period has passed....
America's Scientific Treasures
Authors: Cohen Stephen M. , Cohen Brenda H.
Published: January 2021

America’s Scientific Treasures is a comprehensive travel guide, designed for adults, that takes the reader to well-known and lesser-known sites of scientific and technological interest in the United States. The book is divided into nine geographical chapters. Subdivided by states, each chapter is represented by its scientific and technological treasures, including museums, arboretums, zoos, national parks, planetariums, natural or technological points of interest, and the homes of famous scientists. While the book is aimed at adults, many of the sites may also be of interest to teens and younger children. The traveler is provided with essential information, including addresses, telephone numbers, hours of entry, handicapped access, dining facilities, dates open and closed, available public transportation, and websites. Nearly every site included here has been visited by the authors. Although written with scientists in mind, this book is for anyone who likes to travel and visit places of historical and scientific interest. Included are photographs of many sites within each state.
Southwest
Authors: & Cohen
Published: January 2021

The chapter “Southwest” explains about scientific and technological sites of adult interest in Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah, including Kitt Peak National Observatory, Fleischmann Planetarium, New Mexico Museum of Natural History, Edison Museum, and Natural History Museum of Utah. The traveler is provided with essential information, including addresses, telephone numbers, hours of entry, handicapped access, dining facilities, dates open and closed, available public transportation, and websites. Nearly every site included here has been visited by the authors. Although written with scientists in mind, this book is for anyone who likes to travel and visit places of historical and scientific interest. Included are photographs of many sites within each state.
Pacific
Authors: & Cohen
Published: January 2021

The chapter “Pacific” explains about scientific and technological sites of adult interest in Alaska, California, Hawaiʻi, Oregon, and Washington, including the Anchorage Museum, San Diego Air & Space Museum, Pacific Tsunami Museum, Fort Clatsop, and the Museum of Flight. The traveler is provided with essential information, including addresses, telephone numbers, hours of entry, handicapped access, dining facilities, dates open and closed, available public transportation, and websites. Nearly every site included here has been visited by the authors. Although written with scientists in mind, this book is for anyone who likes to travel and visit places of historical and scientific interest. Included are photographs of many sites within each state.
To Be a Sikh King
Authors: Atwal Priya
Published: January 2021

This chapter provides a sense of the political, cultural and intellectual context in which Ranjit Singh was able to claim the title of ‘Maharajah’. It examines the development of ‘Sikh’ ideas about monarchy, power and rulership that first emerged within the earliest writings of the first Sikh ‘master’, Guru Nanak, in the fifteenth century; whilst considering how attempts to practically interpret and set into action such ideas also evolved within the changing world of the Punjab, leading up to the early years of Ranjit Singh’s reign. This chapter draws upon recent scholarly research that has re-evaluated the dynamics between the Sikhs and the Mughal imperial dynasty, and about the emergence of the Khalsa and Sikh sardars as powers in their own right across eighteenth-century Punjab: studies that casts doubt on earlier scholarly contentions about the ‘republican’ nature of the Khalsa. It thereby aims to outline ideas of Sikh kingship that may have inspired and legitimised Ranjit Singh’s rise to power as a self-styled monarch by the turn of the nineteenth century.