bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Irish Free State of the 1920s
Authors: Barry Frank
Published: October 2023

Official data on economic conditions in the Irish Free State are available only from 1926: analyses that take this as their starting point are likely to understate significantly the industrial expansion that occurred over the first decade of independence. Much of the criticism of the economic policies adopted at the time is argued to have been misplaced. Because the Free State had emerged from a victorious rather than a defeated empire, its major export market remained intact. Pressures to create new jobs were also far weaker than in the newly established ‘successor states’ on Europe’s eastern peripheries: land redistribution in Ireland was much further advanced, there were fewer landless labourers, and emigration options remained more easily accessible. The stability-oriented monetary and fiscal policies of the time would yield benefits both then and into the future. Nor did the governments of the 1920s adhere as closely to laissez-faire principles as is generally imagined. The modest ‘experimental’ tariffs adopted created considerable numbers of jobs, which would have been included in the official data for 1926. The chapter also identifies the largest manufacturing employers in operation in the state on the eve of the Great Depression. Even by 1929, four of the five largest employers were foreign-owned. The foreign share of employment across all of industry is likely to have been around 15 per cent in 1922. It had grown to around 20 per cent by the end of the decade.
From the Great Depression to the End of the Emergency
Authors: Barry Frank
Published: October 2023

This chapter analyses industrial developments over the four sub-periods into which the decades between the beginning of the Great Depression and the formation of the first Inter-Party government in 1948 can be roughly divided. Irish industry, and the economy more generally, was only modestly affected over the early years of the Great Depression. The decline in manufacturing employment between 1929 and 1931 was a fraction of the fall recorded in the United Kingdom. The accession of Fianna Fáil to power in 1932 brought a major shift in policy, though similar policies were being adopted across the world. While agriculture suffered severely as a consequence of the land annuities dispute with Britain, industrial employment expanded dramatically with the move to full protection. Brewing was one of the few industries to decline over the period to 1938: this was associated with the opening of a Guinness brewery in London. Many of the largest manufacturing employers of later decades emerged over this period. Despite legislation that attempted to restrict foreign control, many were foreign-owned. The performance of industry in neutral Ireland over the Second World War era is examined. The vigorous post-war rebound paralleled developments across the rest of Western Europe. The worsening balance-of-payments position and the austerity policies that it triggered would be met with the transformative policy responses of the mid-to-late 1950s. The largest manufacturing employers of 1948 are identified.
A CANDID FRIEND
Authors: Steane Andrew
Published: October 2023

The themes of the book are introduced: presentation of science for the general reader; correction of popular misconceptions; a critique of some modern cultural practices. The misconceptions are (1) that scientific study is able to explain how there can be a physical universe as opposed to no physical universe, (2) that biological evolution is without direction or purpose, (3) the claim that social, aesthetic and moral experience is largely explained by evolutionary genetics. The critique is around the notion that science is somehow owned or only fully appreciated by one outlook which calls itself ‘scientific’.
QUANTUM FLUCTUATION?
Authors: Steane Andrew
Published: October 2023

‘Quantum fluctuation’ has entered into common language, but what does it mean? It is widely taken to mean something untrue. It is widely taken to mean that the vacuum of space is a kind of froth of randomly appearing and disappearing particles or chaotic ripples. But in fact the vacuum is smooth in both space and time and no particles spontaneously appear in it. The term ‘fluctuation’ is misleading. The physics here is really about a smooth spread of values. This is expounded through various examples and analogies.
THE VERY EARLY UNIVERSE
Authors: Steane Andrew
Published: October 2023

Astronomy and the physics of gravity and quantum fields together give much evidence about the early stages of the universe. In particular, the concept of ‘false vacuum’ arises. This is a state of the fields where they are temporarily of one form, and then morph into another, like dew drops forming in a saturated water vapour. This process, and what it says about the early universe, is presented.
NOTHING COMES OF NOTHING
Authors: Steane Andrew
Published: October 2023

The chapter discusses the fact that physics does not account for the origin of the physical world. Rather, it describes the patterns and evolution of that set of structures which have physical existence. Science cannot solve the metaphysical question of existence itself, because it does not have the tools to address it. As soon as we invoke a mathematical equation to describe something physical we have assumed already that the thing described by that equation has physical existence.
WHAT SCIENCE CAN AND CANNOT DO
Authors: Steane Andrew
Published: October 2023

The discussion returns to the difference between physics and metaphysics, and more generally what science contributes to our overall understanding. Science has a valuable contribution to make, but we should understand what it is doing. It is essentially descriptive. The method of observation and rational deduction and empirical testing can uncover and describe what is there, and it can show links between one thing and another, but it cannot account for how all these links, and the things thus linked, can be there in the first place. The physics profession should not mislead the public about this.
SCIENCE, SCIENCE FICTION AND THE MULTIVERSE
Authors: Steane Andrew
Published: October 2023

The concept of a multiverse is introduced and discussed. This kind of concept is at the border between science and speculation. It is unclear whether it amounts to explanation, because it is unclear whether it is falsifiable. We should ask also whether the attitude that tends to be involved here is appropriate. We should hesitate before thinking that a mere equation or a physical theory can give us warrant to speak of multiple universes. We hardly know what we would be talking about.
SINKING THE SELFISH GENE
Authors: Steane Andrew
Published: October 2023

The text now turns to evolutionary biology. The overall process of neo-Darwinian evolution is discussed, especially with a view to bringing out elements which have been omitted in much of modern discourse. It is argued that, in his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins has mixed up teleology with causation, and consequently major parts of the argument of that book are flawed. Also, the logic of negotiation, along with that of competition, is highly influential in evolution and ought not to be overlooked. Finally, the relation of genome to cell is not simply one of controller to controlled. It is also argued that central parts of another argument by Dawkins, in The Blind Watchmaker, are flawed. Although evolution is not a goal-driven process, it is nevertheless false to say that it has no direction, because it is subject to all the constraints placed on it by the patterns which we call laws of nature.
SCIENCE AND SENSIBILITY
Authors: Steane Andrew
Published: October 2023

Religious sensibility is considered, and how it works alongside scientific analysis. Scientific analysis invokes models which are not themselves the natural world, but which help us understand. Religious sensibility involves a willingness to encounter the world directly, interested to apprehend, as fully and truthfully as possible, the nature of each thing and person. We are not always looking for explanation; we are looking for the meaning of the verb ‘to be’, and for the personal resources to enact our own role appropriately.
FRUIT PIE
Authors: Steane Andrew
Published: October 2023

A parabolic story is offered about three villages with different tastes who are learning a new method of cooking.
INTRODUCTION
Authors: Katzir Shaul
Published: October 2023

The Introduction sets out the historical and historiographical context of piezoelectricity’s technological applications discussed in this book. In particular, reflecting the book’s main theme, the Introduction discusses the relationships between science and technology in the early twentieth century and the proper ways to analyse them, building on the work of historians and sociologists. In lieu of contrary claims, science and technology are seen as interacting but distinguished human endeavours, with different characteristics. The transformation of the field of research and knowledge from an early non-applicable disciplinary science, to being the basis of technological development, to applied research and development of devices and their methods of use, and back and forth to disciplinary science are described as a five-stage model that reveals how technologies evolve from scientific fields and how they in turn shape these fields.
THE TUNING-FORK ROOTS OF THE QUARTZ CLOCK
Authors: Katzir Shaul
Published: October 2023

The chapter explores the development of new exact tuning-fork frequency-measuring standards useful for the novel range of radio communication during WWI and its aftermath, and the construction of the first electronic clock required to monitor the accuracy of such a standard. It begins with the war research and development of wireless communication by academic French and British scientists and engineers utilizing the novel electronic valve oscillator (triode), and who independently constructed the first triode-maintained tuning-fork along with new means of multiplying its frequency. The high exactitude of the device, the tradition of exact measurements, and the increasing demands for high accuracy in regulating and using radio led the British National Physical Laboratory to construct such a standards system. The American Telephone and Telegraph Company produced its own system, which included a continuously working clock, that would allow it to integrate its telecommunication network in order to strengthen its monopoly.
DEVELOPMENT OF NEW APPLICATIONS BEYOND SONAR AND FREQUENCY CONTROL
Authors: Katzir Shaul
Published: October 2023

Following the inventions of sonar and crystal frequency control, engineers, scientists, and inventors suggested quite a few novel usages of piezoelectricity. This chapter surveys the main employments of the phenomenon to new technical applications in the interwar period, from the highly useful frequency filters (a case of multiple discovery) through optical relays and delay lines to various kinds of pressure meters. It examines how the inventors became acquainted with piezoelectricity and their main reasons to exploit it, rather than other phenomena. Thereby, it shows that the recognition of the phenomenon as technically useful changed attitudes to it, and led to the development of new applications, devices, and methods.
The Experience of Totality
Authors: Littmann Mark , Espenak Fred
Published: October 2023

This introductory chapter details the experience of totality. The first sign of totality is a tiny nick on the Sun’s western side, but the naked eye cannot detect the difference. As time flies, the sky grows darker and the shadow of the Moon approaches. At the midpoint in totality, the corona of the Sun stands out most clearly, its shape and extent are never quite the same from one eclipse to another. The darkness of the Moon’s shadow is enough to let Venus, Mercury, and other bright planets near the Sun be visible. The chapter mentions the instinct of experiencing outside of the normal human experience.
The First Eclipse Chasers
Authors: Littmann Mark , Espenak Fred
Published: October 2023

This chapter tackles the first records of total solar eclipses. It starts with Francis Baily laying the foundations of the field of solar physics by sparking the immediate, intense, and unending study of the Sun’s physical properties that had been generally ignored or discounted. The chapter details the observations of the corona made by great astronomer Johannes Kepler, Spanish astronomer José Joaquín de Ferrer, and Italian-born French astronomer Giacomo Filippo Maraldi. Meanwhile, professional photographer Berkowski captured the first successful photograph of the Sun. The chapter also considers the emergence of spectroscopy, citing how Pierre Jules César Janssen mapped solar prominences.
The Eclipse That Made Einstein Famous
Authors: Littmann Mark , Espenak Fred
Published: October 2023

This chapter looks into the 1919 total solar eclipse that proved Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Einstein realized his principle of equivalence that relativity required gravity to bend light rays, much as it bends the paths of particles. Moreover, Erwin Freundlich tested the aspects of relativity by obtaining solar eclipse photographs from observatories around the world. The chapter explores Einstein’s attempts to prove his general theory of relativity by referencing the motions of Mercury and gravitational redshift. It mentions how scientists travelled the world to measure and re-measure the bending of starlight around the Sun at every total eclipse. In the 1970s, a new method emerged for testing relativity by the deflection of radiation around the Sun.
Eye Safety During Solar Eclipses
Authors: Littmann Mark , Espenak Fred
Published: October 2023

This chapter highlights the importance of eye safety during solar eclipses. Eye protection is needed when the Sun is partially eclipsed. On the other hand, when the Sun is entirely eclipsed, its bright surface is hidden from view so it is completely safe to look directly at the eclipsed Sun without any filters. The most convenient way to watch the partial phases of an eclipse is with solar eclipse glasses, which are made from several types of materials like black polymer. The chapter considers alternative safe filters for the Sun, such as welders' goggles, pinhole projectors, telescopes and solar filters for cameras, binoculars, and telescopes. It advises against using standard or polaroid sunglasses to observe the partial phases of an eclipse.
The Fool, the Knight, and the Counselor
Authors: Knapper Daniel
Published: October 2023

This chapter explores how Shakespeare imitates Paul’s style in three plays: A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Pericles, Prince of Tyre; and The Winter’s Tale. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he draws on what may be called Paul’s rhetoric of admiratio in the Corinthian epistles to develop Bottom’s comic epiphany, delivered after waking from a night of confusion and metamorphosis in the woods outside of Athens. In Pericles, he imitates other aspects of Paul’s rhetoric of admiratio in Ephesians to shape Pericles’ speeches during a storm off the coast of Ephesus, including a prayer, a benediction, and a valediction. And in The Winter’s Tale, he draws on Paul’s accusatory rhetoric in Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Galatians to develop Paulina’s angry rebukes of the jealous King Leontes at the Sicilian court. The chapter shows that Shakespeare uses these Pauline imitations to highlight various aspects of Paul’s character, including his foolishness and egomania in Midsummer; his chivalric, knightly qualities in Pericles; and his courage and zeal in Winter’s Tale. The chapter also shows that Shakespeare presents the Pauline characters and their stylistic practices as focal points for exploring larger issues related to Paul’s theology in the plays, including the problems of perception and the grounds of knowledge (Midsummer); the purpose of suffering and the means of enduring it (Pericles); and the dynamics of authority, interpretation, and belief in the face of the unknown (Winter’s Tale).
Tanquam Paulus in Cathedra
Authors: Knapper Daniel
Published: October 2023

This chapter explores how Lancelot Andrewes imitates Paul’s style in his courtly sermons, specifically sermons preached to royal audiences on major church holidays such as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. The chapter shows that Andrewes develops key features of his preaching style—wordplay and imagery—by imitating passages from Paul’s epistles that humanists typically invoked in their accounts of Paul’s witty and elegant style. In his Ash Wednesday sermons, Andrewes imitates passages from Romans, 1 Corinthians, and Philemon to develop elegant yet powerful confutations of doctrinal error, and exhortations to moral and devotional living. In his Good Friday sermons, he imitates passages from Galatians and other epistles to develop lively, vivid depictions of Jesus crucified. The chapter also shows that Andrewes develops his Pauline exhortations, confutations, and depictions to contest various aspects of Puritanism, including Puritan assumptions about proper preaching style, attitudes toward religious good works, and notions of religious idolatry.
Introduction
Authors: Ettenhuber Katrin
Published: October 2023

The Introduction begins by explaining the logical ideas and concepts that will be used in the literary case studies that follow. It charts historical developments in the use of key terms, paying particular attention to the shifting meanings and applications of the words ‘logic’ and ‘dialectic’. A second section examines previous engagements with logic in literary scholarship and suggests that the neglect of logic in literary studies can be attributed to its perceived associations with scholastic philosophy. The final part of the Introduction shows that this association is in fact the product of sixteenth-century polemic and argues for a more balanced consideration of the early modern arts curriculum, and of the place of logic in it.
“The grain of the city”
Authors: Obert Julia C.
Published: October 2023

This chapter focuses on Belfast, tracing the British building program in the city from the arrival of Sir Arthur Chichester amidst the Plantations of Ulster in the early seventeenth century. It examines the physical marginalization of Irish communities in the city’s early days and considers subsequent planning projects designed to defuse restive subaltern spaces, and it connects these architectural choices to the highly siloized, sectarianized geography of contemporary Belfast. Indeed, Belfast’s Peace Lines, its interface spaces, and its partisan symbolism—features that have survived Belfast’s post-Peace Agreement “urban renaissance”—mark out forms of unbelonging and chart identity-based “no-go” areas. However, far from ascribing absolute power to this unhomely landscape, this chapter suggests that Belfast’s architectural spaces enable structures of both subjection and subversion. It investigates how particular pedestrians find ways to move against seemingly prohibitive geographies, and considers how these moves might recover agency for bodies in place. It reads the work of writers Ciaran Carson, Glenn Patterson, and Robert McLiam Wilson for insubordinate spatial practices, and theorizes the resistant value of these practices. As the body moves through space in pursuit of its own agenda, whether reclaiming ruins for childhood play, drifting about the city by car, or understanding space through sound rather than rubbled vision, it can develop a kind of rebellious intimacy with place. If parts of Belfast are subject to nicknames, shortcuts, and pedestrian reimaginings, then the “grain of the city” changes ever so slightly; amidst uhomely spaces, tunnels of personal influence can be excavated.
“Ghost Spaces”
Authors: Obert Julia C.
Published: October 2023

This chapter argues that Windhoek is indelibly marked by its histories of genocide and apartheid (enacted under German and South African rule, respectively), and that those histories live on in the city alongside its post-independence present. Namibia gained its independence in 1990, and much has been done in the last decades to decolonize its capital city’s symbolism. Nonetheless, thirty years of postcoloniality can hardly fully heal the wounds of more than a century’s colonial violence—and today, the scars of these periods are barely beneath the skin of the city’s built environment. Literary representations of Windhoek tend to foreground these scars, often critiquing the seemingly squandered promise of Namibia’s independence by featuring the income gap—which also manifests itself as a geographical gap—between the city’s postcolonial elites and its chronically poor. This means that Windhoek is a haunted space: an uncanny neocolonial revenant of the colonial city. While many Windhoek writers dwell with this discomfort, others indicate that the power of the “architectural uncanny” in the city is far from absolute. Several texts set in Windhoek feature a recalcitrant dériviste or “drifter”: one who roams the city, slipping into “forbidden” places. Others relocate the focal point of place in the body instead of in the map, allowing each pedestrian to turn the city into a personal palimpsest, loosing hordes of her own ghosts in its streets. These texts treat “ghost space” as vibrant space, one in which individuals reanimate submerged histories as part of a vital collective present.
Of Cruise Ships and Chattel Houses
Authors: Obert Julia C.
Published: October 2023

This chapter suggests that the postcolonial topography of Barbados is rife with unsettling reminders of a vicious colonial past. In fact, Barbados offers a study in what we might call the Caribbean Gothic: ruins of sugar mills and the shells of former Great Houses—structures built on and by the labor of enslaved people—dot the island’s landscape today, and these structures still exert a kind of monstrous authority in local life. Further, since much of what has been preserved in Barbados whitewashes the spaces of the transatlantic slave trade, this chapter argues that history itself has been allowed to go to ruin in many sites that claim memorializing power. In other words, Bajan spaces are too often repackaged to appeal to visitors rather than being meaningfully decolonized for the benefit of locals. However, as contemporary Barbadian literature suggests, the Gothic can sometimes be a “mode of seeing” rather than a form of repression. The island’s strategic silences may help to sanitize the country for tourists, but in actuality, they are less rhetorical voids than they are uncanny reminders of Barbados’ colonial past. As such, Bajan texts often make silenced spaces speak, reanimating the ghosts of enslaved persons and repopulating plantation houses with those ghosts. Moreover, a number of local authors turn to the island’s landscape itself as a more fundamental source of belonging, taking the rhythms of life and of literature from its ecological features.
From Re-instrumenting to Re-purposing Farm Support Policies
Authors: Anderson Kym , Strutt Anna
Published: October 2023

Food production has been globally inefficient for many decades, with too many resources employed in agriculture in high-income countries and too few in numerous low-income countries where governments heavily taxed farm exports. This chapter shows that over recent decades, policy instrument choices of advanced economies have moved away from mostly price support at the border to also domestic output and input price supports and then to somewhat-decoupled payments, to direct income payments to farmers, and to more-concerted payments to farmers for their co-provision of public goods. Even so, many agri-food policy instruments are far from economically optimal for attaining society’s stated objectives, and their global economic welfare cost is still high. The chapter concludes by outlining ways in which present farm supports could be re-purposed in high-income and emerging economies to achieve more-efficient, more-equitable, healthier, and more environmentally friendlier outcomes.
Government Response to Ultra-Processed and Sugar Beverages Industries in Developing Nations
Authors: Gómez Eduardo J.
Published: October 2023

How were the governments of three middle-income countries with high levels of non-communicable diseases (NCDs)—India, Mexico, and South Africa—able to implement sugar-sweetened beverage taxes (SSBs) despite intense opposition from powerful corporations? Employing a multiple streams analytical framework to explain the agenda-setting process, this chapter highlights several factors that generated supportive coalitions for SSBs, including the importance of transnational advocacy in each country as well as governments’ interest in generating more revenue from the tax. By contrast, regulatory measures to regulate the soda and snack food industries, such as limits on advertising, sales, and food labeling, have been less accepted by the same governments. To explain why, the chapter argues that coalitions around these policies are weaker, regulation generates lower levels of public contestation and visibility, and the prospect for generating government revenue is less pronounced.
Asymmetric Power in Global Food System Advocacy
Authors: Harris Jody
Published: October 2023

Food systems policy has multiple legitimate aims, and different policy actors hold different values, beliefs, and interests around these issues. In low-income countries, global narratives and non-national coalitions regularly intervene in food policy processes, and they exert influence due to historical and current power relations. There are significant questions, however, about the implications and legitimacy of this international intervention into national food policies. Focusing on Zambia, this chapter finds that internationally formulated ideas are increasingly evident over time in food policy, transferred to national policy through the normative promotion of certain ways of understanding the issue of malnutrition. With its focus on multi-sectoral action to reduce stunting, the recent nutrition policy narrative impinges directly on an existing food security narrative by attempting to alter agriculture policy away from maize reliance. The nutrition policy sub-system in Zambia is therefore split, with implications for both sides on progressing a coherent policy agenda.
Sustainable Food and Farming
Authors: Paarlberg Robert
Published: October 2023

This chapter examines four important food production innovations that have been favored by scientists but opposed by influential swathes of the public: Green Revolution farming, industrial agriculture, the use of synthetic chemicals versus organic farming, and genetically engineered crops (GMOs). While three of the four innovations enjoy widespread use despite civil society opposition, GMOs do not. This chapter explains why: except for GMOs, public misgivings did not find political expression until after farmers had experienced the benefits from these innovations, making them impossible to take away. However, activists raised strong objections early with respect to GMOs, before the seeds were in wide use, and therefore most farmers never had a chance to enjoy and defend the benefits. Genome editing, a more recent crop science breakthrough, met early legal resistance in Europe, but broad popular resistance is unlikely to follow, so widespread deployment in farming is likely.
Enabling Positive Tipping Points in Public Support for Food System Transformation
Authors: Fesenfeld Lukas Paul , Sun Yixian
Published: October 2023

Public opinion is an important factor that shapes the political economy of food system transformation, especially for salient issues such as meat consumption. This chapter provides a scoping review of the academic literature on public opinion regarding sustainable food policy. On this basis, the chapter presents a framework for studying public opinion on food system transformation. The framework accounts for the roles of policy framing, design, and feedback in promoting food system transformation across different political economy and institutional contexts. Using survey experimental evidence with representative samples in China, Germany, and the US, the chapter shows that the combination of policy framing and design is key for securing public support for transformative food policies. The strategic sequence of policies over time might enable positive tipping points in food system transformation. Future research should use more mixed-method approaches to investigate how public opinion interacts with the broader political economy context.
Urban Food Systems Governance in Africa
Authors: Haysom Gareth , Battersby Jane
Published: October 2023

Focussing on African cities, this chapter problematizes responses to urban food and nutrition insecurity. The rapid transformation of both African cities and food systems has precipitated new and novel forms of governance. By reflecting critically on nascent urban food systems governance approaches in the region, this chapter questions the role of power and agency in such processes, and it suggests that urban food governance requires focusing on both traditional government-led policies and projects as well as societal relationships and processes. Actions that integrate both government-led and societally driven processes are key to robust and inclusive urban food governance. Contextual specificity is an essential food governance consideration, activating responses informed by city-specific needs. Food systems governance models that do not suitably correspond to both citizen capacities and the obligations of the state will not effectively address the dietary transitions and increasing food and nutrition insecurity in African cities.
Protecting civilians or enforcing order?
Authors: Pingeot Lou
Published: October 2023

This chapter addresses the development of police peacekeeping and argues that the turn to policing goes beyond change in the composition of peace operations. Rather, the logic of policing reflects a fundamental tension between two concomitant evolutions in peace operations—the growing importance of protection of civilians and the turn towards stabilization. The pull between these two imperatives is at the centre of police power, which is characterized by a tension between the public mission ‘to serve and protect’ and a mandate to enforce not just public order but social order. The chapter challenges several preconceptions about police forces and policing, including the idea that police’s main function is to respond to crime. It addresses the alternative explanation that police peacekeeping is just a logical response to the merging of crime and conflict. Finally, the chapter situates UN peace operations within the broader field of global policing.
Haiti as a site
Authors: Pingeot Lou
Published: October 2023

This chapter presents the UN stabilization mission in Haiti, MINUSTAH (2004–17), and justifies the selection of the mission as a site for the study of police peacekeeping and its place in the global field of policing. It provides historical and political background and shows that the mission’s stabilization mandate amounted to taking sides in an ongoing process of contested state formation opposing a small dominant class to a vast impoverished majority. The chapter demonstrates that MINUSTAH is a good site to study police peacekeeping and its place in the global field of policing because it reflected broader changes in UN missions and is understood as a blueprint for future operations. The chapter also provides a more reflexive account of the choice of Haiti and the politics of studying the country and presents background on the fieldwork experience and the interviews conducted in Port-au-Prince.
Policing the urban poor
Authors: Pingeot Lou
Published: October 2023

This chapter explores how MINUSTAH disproportionately focused on the poorest neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince as sources of instability. It shows how, under the mission’s stabilization mandate, threats to social order were reinterpreted as threats to security, and thus international security, and groups challenging social order were treated as ‘spoilers’ of a non-existent peace process. Thus, from a population in danger to be protected, inhabitants of poor neighbourhoods became a dangerous population to be policed. The chapter demonstrates the parallels between MINUSTAH’s strategy and counterinsurgency tactics, revealing how concerns for civilian protection were overridden by the goal of stabilization. It puts MINUSTAH’s intervention in a global context, showing how it fits within a trend of militarization of urban marginality. In particular, it explores the synergy between the mission’s actions in Haiti and Brazilian military policing of favelas.
The Social Representation of Power in India
Authors: Lal Vinay
Published: October 2023

There is a considerable scholarly literature on kingship in India and the place of Brahmins and Kshatriyas in the social order. Similarly, historians have been attentive in varying degrees to the political history of India in the period of the great empires, from Ashoka and the Mauryas to the Guptas, as well as during the period of the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughal Empire, and the British Raj. However, a connected history of the social representation of power in India has never been attempted. This chapter makes an attempt at such a history in fragments in the hope that it may be useful to students and researchers, particularly when the fragments revolve around such subjects as the importance of the Red Fort, the singularity of Delhi, the continuities in such practices as darshan, traditions of male and female ascetic warriors, and reinscription as a strategy of power. The chapter treats the subject chronologically and yet the chronology is constantly disrupted, as for instance in the comparison between a fourteenth-century Delhi Sultan and a modern-day Indian politician.
Love in Future Tense
Authors: Devy Ganesh N.
Published: October 2023

This essay is based on a lexicographical sampling of words for ‘love’ and ‘relation’ in India’s diverse languages. It discusses the political context for the collection, nature of the corpus collected, and the range of significance of such a corpus for the social sciences in India. The corpus has over a thousand words collected from over a hundred languages, presented by members of the respective speech communities. Many of these communities are caught in various bitter battles for their own survival. This essay tries to examine how the changing shades of meaning of the term ‘love’ marks the literary history of some of the major Indian languages and how the love terms can be seen as expression of desires that cross over from the area of ‘kama’ (emotive interrelatedness) to ‘artha’ (social and economic affairs). The essay attempts to examine if at all and how the communities from whom these words were collected are connected with the politics of hatred in India in recent years. It is also an attempt to examine if the emotive weave of the communities is in any manner a clash or collaboration with the idea of a totalitarian regime.
Social and Political Role-Play through the Theology of the Hindu Icon
Authors: Lipner Julius
Published: October 2023

The prevalence of images in Hinduism is well known. It is also well known that they play various roles in the life of Hindu worshippers and their social nexus. After giving some historical background of the image and its pliable religious rationale, this essay will inquire not into its aesthetic or artistic qualities, which have been the subject of much study, but into its dharmic foregrounding with a view to understanding what makes it possible in its structural foundation to play several social and political roles among both worshippers and non-worshippers. This facet of Hindu images, which has been little studied, will help us appreciate the versatility and enduring power of the Hindu image even in modern times.
Backwater Infinitude
Authors: Rajan Roby
Published: October 2023

The idea that India’s colonial encounter caused an ‘epistemic rupture’ is widely prevalent among today’s nationalist leaders as well as among contemporary postcolonial scholars. From this diagnosis of ‘rupture’, there follows a political programme of reclaiming the integrity of the damaged indigenous episteme. However, other scholars have pointed out that even at the height of the colonial period, the traditional yogis of India exhibited an indifference to colonialism and to all of its putative ‘effects’ that so bother the nationalists and scholars. Was this indifference a result of the yogis being out of touch with the ‘reality’ of colonialism? The towering figure of Narayana Guru who was a traditional yogi in every sense—including in his indifference to colonialism—but is also unanimously acknowledged as having inaugurated a whole new politics in his native Kerala ought to give us pause before rushing to answer that question in the affirmative. This paper argues that the yogis’ indifference to colonialism was not only consonant with the fundaments of Indian metaphysics, it also carries an implicit critique of some of the basic assumptions of postcolonial scholarship, especially its inflated notions of cultural and civilizational ‘difference’. The paper demonstrates that a certain conception of proprietariness lies at the heart of the two contrasting responses to colonialism, and concludes by suggesting that both the pastness of the past and the tasks one is called to in the present appear in a wholly different light once the proprietary stance is abandoned.
Ambedkar, Tarde, and the Social
Authors: Skaria Ajay
Published: October 2023

This chapter explores how Ambedkar’s early essay, ‘Castes in India’ articulates a conception of the social that draws on and modifies the arguments made by Franz Boas and Gabriel Tarde. It argues that the essay criticizes the concept of race while also distancing itself from what was then usually posed as the alternative to race—the Boasian concept of culture. It also explores the specific sense in which Ambedkar talks of a ‘system of caste’. The emphasis on caste as a system had been around since the nineteenth century, But in focusing on the ‘mechanism’ for endogamy, Ambedkar abandons the older functional and Newtonian understanding of systems, and understands mechanism in Tardean terms—as the ‘infection of imitation’. Specifically, he conceives of caste as a machine constituted by the imitation of a founding Brahminical violence—the violence for which he reserves the term ‘surplus woman’. In doing so, he conceives the systematicity and wholeness of caste in a manner quite different from that attempted later by Louis Dumont, for whom caste as a whole unified by the expressive principle of purity and pollution. This article argues that in doing so, Ambedkar also modifies Tarde’s and Durkheim’s concepts of the social in ways that he perhaps does not quite recognize. For example, while Tarde conceives of caste as outside the world of imitation, Ambedkar sees it as a particularly violent form of imitation; where Tarde can conceive only a personal and individual equality, Ambedkar articulates a social equality.
Don Garcie de Navarre
Authors: Lyons John D.
Published: October 2023

Don Garcie de Navarre, or The Jealous Prince was performed but never printed during Molière’s lifetime. In many ways it is a twin of the subsequent extremely successful Misanthrope, sometimes considered Molière’s greatest comedy. In both plays an eccentric and jealous man courts a woman, who tries to cure the man of his tendency to make jealous and domineering outbursts. The situation of the female protagonist in Don Garcie is unusual in that it is taken for granted that she, a princess, will be able to choose her husband freely. This gives her leverage to attempt to educate the man she loves about the proper way of loving. In the context of Molière’s society the attempt by a woman to refine a man’s manners resembles such efforts as portrayed in the works of women authors such as the novelists Scudéry and Lafayette.
Introduction
Authors: Arnold Jörg
Published: October 2023

Starting with a discussion of the feature film Pride, the Introduction reviews the place of the coal miner in the British cultural imagination and historiography. It proceeds to lay out the study’s two major arguments: first, of a cyclical movement of the coal industry in the period 1967 to 1997; second, of a tension between social imaginaries that emphasized the ‘special’ nature of the miners and self-images that aspired to ‘ordinariness’. The Introduction goes on to outline the methodological approach by introducing Raymond Williams’s concept of ‘structures of feeling’ and Reinhart Koselleck’s theorizing on temporality. It concludes by detailing the study’s broad source base and offering a brief chapter outline.
1967
Authors: Arnold Jörg
Published: October 2023

This chapter charts perceptions about miners and the coal industry in the later 1960s. It falls into three sections. The first section looks at the debate surrounding the publication of the Labour government’s White Paper on fuel policy in November 1967. Whereas policymakers regarded the industry as a liability inherited from a dark past, the National Coal Board (NCB) sought to project a contrasting image of a forward-looking, future-oriented industry. The second section focuses on the miners’ official voice, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). It details the union’s position on the future of the industry and demonstrates the impact of generational change on perspectives about the past among mining trade unionists. The third section shifts attention from the industry to the people working in it. Miners were praised as ‘model workers’ across the political spectrum—as hard-working, adaptable, and productive. Social scientists and artists, by contrast, developed a rather different image of coal miners, depicting them as ‘proletarian traditionalists’ who embodied the very antithesis of the modern ‘affluent worker’. Testimony from ordinary miners, meanwhile, suggests that the people working in the industry were keenly aware of the predicament facing it, and were eager to resolve the crisis in a way that would do least harm to themselves and their families.
1977
Authors: Arnold Jörg
Published: October 2023

This chapter charts the perceptions of the miners and their industry around the year 1977, the thirtieth anniversary of the industry’s nationalization. It considers social imaginaries in the political arena alongside miners’ self-images. It links these articulations to competing visions of the past and the future, and, indeed, the miner’s place in society. The chapter proceeds in three stages. The first section focuses on the political arena. It shows that politicians of both major parties shared in the perception that the miners wielded ‘unrivalled firepower’. Although there existed broad consensus that the miners’ power was real, the conclusions that followed from this shared understanding started to diverge. While there remained official cross-party consensus that the future of the coal industry was assured, policy advisers inside the Conservative Party came to identify the miners as an obstacle, rather than a conduit, for the realization of the industry’s potential and the renewal of Britain. The second section focuses on discussions inside the NUM. Here, the period witnessed the escalation of pre-existing tensions between moderates and militants over the question of how to use the miners’ power. Were the miners’ interests best served by constraining or by unleashing it? As the section demonstrates, the issue of power was bound up with divergent understandings of the miners’ identity. Finally, the third section looks at the self-images of ‘ordinary’ miners as recorded by social scientists, autobiographical accounts, and documentaries. It demonstrates just how disparate miners’ ideas about themselves could be.
1981
Authors: Arnold Jörg
Published: October 2023

This chapter focuses on the coal crisis of 1981, which is placed in the broader context of Britain’s accelerating de-industrialization under the first Thatcher government of 1979–83. The chapter proceeds in four stages. First, it situates the February 1981 stand-off between the miners and the government in the context of the political debate about the future of the coal industry. Second, it investigates the nature of the miners’ power as it was understood by contemporaries. What were its foundations? What was its significance? How should it be exercised? It looks, third, at competing understandings of the past that informed different perceptions of the miners’ position in society. Finally, the chapter considers how ordinary miners responded to the broader crisis. It inquires about the futures they charted for themselves in this highly volatile climate.
1984
Authors: Arnold Jörg
Published: October 2023

This chapter focuses on the 1984/5 miners’ strike. It argues that in 1984/5 the miners were neither doomed nor defeated, but defeated themselves. The chapter proceeds in four stages. The first section looks at temporalities. It shows that both the miners and the government looked to past events as a resource to guide their actions in the present. Just as the past mattered, so did the future. All sides operated with horizons of expectation about the future of the industry, as well as about the miners themselves. Yet, as this section argues, it was the present that acquired a special significance: it was the present that would be remembered as a crucial period in which history was made. The second section looks at identities. It was in 1984 that ideas of who the miners ‘really’ were were debated intensely and with sharply differing imaginaries. Competing imaginaries were no mere discourses; they were lived out in everyday practice. As the third section demonstrates, conflicts over temporalities and identities were closely linked to questions of agency and power. The strike laid bare the limits of the miners’ collective agency. The final section looks at how the voices of ‘ordinary’ miners were recorded by social scientists and investigative journalists. The picture they drew of the conflict served to reinforce a perception that ‘1984/5’ marked a watershed in the history of modern Britain.
Conclusion
Authors: Arnold Jörg
Published: October 2023

The Conclusion situates the study’s findings within the historiographical landscapes of British and broader European history. It falls into three parts. The first section reviews the most recent interventions in the field of British labour history and recapitulates some of this study’s major arguments. The second section extends the frame geographically by looking at developments in other coal-producing countries. Drawing on a typology developed by the sociologist John Goldthorpe, it makes a case for locating the difference of the British case in the field of cultural politics, in addition to the political economy of coal. The third section offers some final reflections on the relevance of de-industrialization, both as socio-economic process and as analytical framework, for the story of the British miners between the late 1960s and late 1990s.
Chaos and Confusion
Authors: Rouse William B.
Published: October 2023

Chaos and Confusion sets the stage for the overall book. The frustrations and overall lack of success in addressing societal challenges are outlined. The shortcomings of interventions intended to “fix” the problems are chronicled. The phenomena blocking progress are elaborated. It is argued that success depends on understanding the underlying causes of problems and developing means to remediate these causes. Challenges and uncertainties are addressed in terms of economic growth, health and education, energy and climate, and the roaring infodemic. There are strong interactions among these four ecosystems. The interactions are important, as quick-fix approaches to each challenge will be costly and unproductive. It is argued that a more integrated approach is needed.