bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Scour Evaluation Using HEC RAS Model: A Case Study On Musiri Bridge, Trichy, India
Authors: Suriya S. , Vignesh P. , Udhayakumar M. , Vishnuram J. S. , Suresh P.K.
Published: December 2023

Bridge scour is a natural phenomenon that can cause serious damage to infrastructure. It occurs when water flows around bridge piers or abutments, eroding the soil or sediment that supports them. This can lead to structural failure, which poses a significant risk to public safety. To mitigate this risk, engineers must design bridges with scour in mind, taking into account factors such as flow velocity, sediment transport, and erosion resistance. In doing so, they can ensure that our infrastructure remains safe and sustainable for years to come. Bridge scour evaluation is a crucial step to assure the structure’s safety and integrity. There are several approaches to designing, evaluating, and inspecting bridges for scour. Scour assessment is significant since it might jeopardize the bridge’s integrity. Floods scouring bed material surrounding bridge foundations are the most prevalent cause of bridge failures. Proper scour analysis is required as scour has found to be a serious threat to bridge structures since it increases the risk of collapse of bridge. Moreover, scour seriously affects the capacity of the bridge and causes structural damage. This research focusses on the scour analysis of Musiri bridge (Thanthai Periyar bridge) located on Cauvery River in Trichy. The bridge is subjected to local scour. Hydraulic Engineering Centre, River Analysis Simulation (HEC-RAS) software is used to analyze the effect of scour at different cross sections of the river, both in upstream and downstream. A planform analysis has been done across the bridge for a time period of over 10 years using open-source satellite data with the help of Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS) software. This centre line of the river across the bridge is mapped across different years to understand the effect of scour for the period of 2013 to 2023. Remedial measures have been suggested to combat the effect of scour in the study area. Bridges are just one piece of a larger puzzle, and their construction and maintenance have environmental and social impacts that must be carefully managed. Hence, it’s important to consider the broader implications of infrastructure development and it should ensure safe and simple design of bridge constructions so that the infrastructure investments can benefit both present and future generations.
Effect of vermicompost on soil quality parameters for different land use patterns
Authors: Jayaswal K , Christian J , Singh N K , Padhiyar H , Yadav M , Sanghvi G
Published: December 2023

Extensive industrialization, urbanization, and excessive use of chemicals in agricultural practices have caused soil quality depletion and reduced its nutritional value. In this context, the present study aimed to evaluate the effect of vermicompost (VC) on different soil properties such as pH, electrical conductivity, soil organic carbon, soil organic matter, total phosphorus, and bulk density to understand the soil enrichment for different land use patterns i.e., agriculture soil (AS), forest soil (FS) and barren soil (BS). The collected soil samples were mixed with VC in different proportions (1:1, 1:2, 1:3, 1:4, and 1:5) and analyzed in terms of aforementioned parameters. Among the investigated soils, the highest microbial biomass was observed for FS samples and noted in the range of 6 – 8 mg/gm of soil. All the original soils, supplemented samples, and VC were also subjected to plant growth analysis. The soil quality index (SQI) was determined using principal component analysis for selected soil samples and resulted mixtures obtained from soil and various proportions of VC. Among all samples, highest SQI was observed as 0.785 for VC. Overall, the result of the study showed that vermicompost can be a potential substitute of chemical fertilizers, thus improving the soil quality and crop yield.
Assessment of effectiveness of leachate control measures adopted by the GHMC at the Jawaharnagar dump yard, Hyderabad.
Authors: SeethaRam Katakam Venkata , Faheemuddin Mohammed , Sai Akash Prathi Venkata
Published: December 2023

To address the problems posed by hitherto un-scientific method of dumping un-segregated solid waste at the Jawaharnagar dump yard (JDY) recently Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) adopted certain measures to scientifically process the waste at the JDU; this involves extraction of RDF and manure at various stages besides obtaining mostly inert material for final land filling. The leachate obtained during the process is separately collected and treated at the site. This study aims to check the effectiveness of these measures in controlling the leachate to the surrounding aquifer as groundwater plays a significant role in sustainable use of water resources. Groundwater samples are collected from the surrounding region and analyzed for TDS, TH, chlorides, fluorides besides PH once before the monsoon and once after the monsoon. From the results it can be shown that leachate pollution of groundwater is still a problem. When compared with the groundwater quality data in the literature taken before the recent GHMC measures, the latest data shows marginal improvement as the legacy leachate from the previous landfill nearby continues to pollute the groundwater in the vicinity of the dump yard.
Machine Learning in Management
Authors: Degefe Elizabeth , Savani Krishna , Sheetal Abhishek
Published: December 2023

Although artificial intelligence and machine learning have been around for more than 70 years, their use in academia and industry has grown exponentially in the last decade.
Definitions of Geopolitics
Authors: Kovac Igor
Published: December 2023

International relations literature and the foreign policy community offer and use multiple definitions of geopolitics. More often than not, both camps use the term even without providing or hinting at its conceptualization. This causes muddy thinking and misunderstandings among scholars, as well as misunderstandings between scholars and policymakers. It is unrealistic to expect that at some point, the scholarship will agree on a single common definition, nor is this something worth aiming for. Instead, raising awareness about ontological differences when defining geopolitics, as each definition leads to different (foreign) policy implications, makes more sense for academia and policymakers. Being cognizant of ontological diversity propels clarity of academic writing and informs policymaking. Thus, a conceptual analysis of the term geopolitics is needed to facilitate greater transparency when using the term. Probably the best place to start such an analysis is with the etymology of geopolitics, since no one objects to that: two ancient Greek words: gê (earth) and politikós (statesman). Gê personifies objectivity and determinism, while politikós represents subjectivity and interpretivism. Some definitions of geopolitics stress the first set of characteristics, while others emphasize the second. Moreover, two ontological continua—material–ideational and praxis–science—can be formed from this etymology that form an ontological matrix of geopolitics. Using this matrix, nine different types of definitions of geopolitics can be identified: classical geopolitics; geopolitics as strategic geography; cognitive geopolitics; global geopolitics; critical geopolitics; geopolitics as philosophy of statesmen; anti-geopolitics; geopolitics as logos, pathos, and ethos; and geopolitics as nexus. Each of them carries its unique ontological take on geopolitics, as well as lays particular foundations for policymakers. Such a typology excels other endeavors of classifying geopolitics, since they suffer from one or more vices: they are not systemic, they lack clear classification criteria, they cannot encapsulate all definitions of geopolitics, and their classroom and policy utility are mediocre. Finally, the functionality of the ontological matrix of geopolitics for didactical purposes and for bridging the gap between academia and policymaking is apparent. Namely, making students understand that meta-theoretical issues matter is much easier if visualization is possible. Depicting and explaining ontological positions on the geopolitical matrix is instrumental as similarities and differences become illustrative. Being exposed to the geopolitical matrix equips the people committed to the process of bridging the gap between academia and practice with a new and helpful tool.
Effects of tafamidis on the left ventricular and left atrial strain in patients with wild-type transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis
Authors: Nishizawa Rosy Haruna , Kawano Hiroaki , Yoshimuta Tsuyoshi , Eguchi Chisa , Kojima Sanae , Minami Takako , Sato Daisuke , Eguchi Masamichi , Okano Shinji , Ikeda Satoshi , Ueda Mitsuharu , Maemura Koji
Published: December 2023

Aims

Although tafamidis is used in patients with wild-type transthyretin cardiac amyloidosis (ATTRwt-CA), its specific effect on cardiac function is unclear. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the effect of tafamidis on left atrial (LA) and left ventricular function using speckle-tracking echocardiography for 1 year of treatment in patients with ATTRwt-CA.

Methods and results

We included 23 patients (mean age, 76 years) with ATTRwt-CA confirmed via biopsy. We analysed the left ventricular and LA strain using 2D speckle-tracking echocardiography and compared these parameters before and 1 year after starting treatment with tafamidis between 16 patients with sinus rhythm (SR) and 7 patients with atrial fibrillation (AF). In ATTRwt-CA patients with SR, LA reservoir strain significantly improved by 1-year tafamidis treatment (10.5 ± 5.0% to 11.9 ± 5.3%, P = 0.0307) although global longitudinal strain (GLS) did not (−10.6 ± 3.1% to −11.3 ± 3.0%, P = 0.0608). In contrast, LA reservoir strain was not significantly changed (5.4 ± 2.9% to 4.9 ± 1.7%, P = 0.4571), and GLS deteriorated (−8.4 ± 2.3% to −6.8 ± 1.4%, P = 0.0267) in ATTRwt-CA patients with AF.

Conclusion

LA function improved with tafamidis treatment in ATTRwt-CA patients with SR but not left ventricular function. However, these cardiac functions did not improve with tafamidis treatment in ATTRwt-CA patients with AF.
Show and tell: farmer field days and learning about inputs with heterogeneous yield effects
Authors: Murphy David M A , Roobroeck Dries , Lee David R
Published: December 2023

Organic inputs can be effective in reversing soil degradation and improving crop yields, but are often underused in a developing country context. This study seeks to determine whether farmer field days (FFDs) are effective in disseminating information about novel organic inputs, and the extent to which they increase demand for these products. Using experimental auctions to measure willingness to pay (WTP) among smallholder farmers in Western Kenya, we find that those farmers exposed to information from FFDs related to biochar and vermicompost, novel organic inputs, have lower WTP for the products. We present evidence that this is likely driven by two factors in particular: changes in perceptions of input profitability and heterogeneity in yields across demonstration plots within field day sites.
Nut Cracked? Does the ACORN Trial End the Debate Surrounding Vancomycin and Piperacillin-Tazobactam Combination Therapy and Increased Risk for Acute Kidney Injury?
Authors: Pogue Jason M , Aitken Samuel L
Published: December 2023

Observational data published over the past decade have suggested that concomitant receipt of piperacillin-tazobactam with vancomycin significantly increases the risk for vancomycin-associated acute kidney injury. Importantly, however, there is significant controversy surrounding this association, and debate continues about the veracity of the risk. Given this ongoing debate, the recently published “Cefepime vs Piperacillin-Tazobactam in Adults Hospitalized With Acute Infection: The ACORN Randomized Clinical Trial” is of tremendous interest to the infectious diseases community. In ACORN, the authors conclude that there was no association between receipt of cefepime or piperacillin-tazobactam and the primary outcome of acute kidney injury or death by day 14, despite the fact that >75% of the population received concomitant vancomycin. In this perspective, we provide a brief history on the controversy, provide a critical analysis of the ACORN findings, and ultimately discuss how these data help inform the ongoing debate.
Liszt as Musical Engraver, Translator, and Colorist
Authors: Kim Hyun Joo
Published: December 2023

This essay investigates Liszt’s arrangements of the existing instrumental sounds and effects on the piano. Drawing on the discipline of French visual cultural history, this chapter situates Liszt’s sonic reworkings within the nineteenth century’s broader interest in visual art reproduction. Musical analyses illustrate that Liszt experimented with a wide array of adjustments, alterations, and radical transformations, revealing his fidelity to the original and his creativity as an arranger. He reconceived the piano as an instrument capable of suggesting the coloristic effects of particular orchestral instruments from strings to timpani, the organ, and Hungarian folk instruments, such as fiddle and cimbalom. All in all, Liszt fashioned his role as a musical engraver, translator, interpreter, and colorist to make the reproduction in “black and white” as vibrant and alive as the original.
“The Sound of the Show”
Authors: Titrington Craft Elizabeth
Published: December 2023

Alex Lacamoire (b. 1975) is an award-winning arranger, orchestrator, keyboardist, music director, and music producer. Through his work on Broadway shows, including In the Heights (2008), Hamilton: An American Musical (2015), and Dear Evan Hansen (2016) and films, including The Greatest Showman (2017) and the In the Heights screen adaptation (2021), Lacamoire is defining the sound of twenty-first century musicals. In this interview, Lacamoire discusses arrangement and orchestration, the collaborative process, his musical influences, his use of digital technologies, and efforts to diversify theater industry music departments. Using score examples from Dear Evan Hansen and Hamilton, he demonstrates his approach to creating “the sound of the show.” A substantive introduction situates the interview and Lacamoire’s work in recent musical theater trends and scholarship.
The Sevdalinka as Traditional Bosnian Love Song
Authors: Efendić Nirha
Published: December 2023

The sevdalinka represents traditional Bosnian oral lyric poetry, a celebrated form of love song, which emerged in urban locales in the Balkans as a fusion of Slavic oral lyric song and Oriental influences. The term sevdalinka became widely accepted only at the end of the nineteenth century, although the song’s existence can be traced to the second half of the sixteenth century. In addition to twentieth-century definitions of the sevdalinka, this chapter presents a retrospective of the scholarly interest in the genre and representative examples of the most frequent motifs within a literary-theoretical approach. This chapter considers the impact of the sevdalinka on modern lyric poetry and the repertoires of singers who have appeared on radio stations after World War II along with their contributions to the wider popularity of the traditional Bosnian urban love song. The chapter ends with a discussion of recent interpretations of the sevdalinka by younger performers.
Between Vulgarity and Beauty in the Interstices of Orality and Literacy
Authors: Ó Laoire Lillis , Williams Sean
Published: December 2023

This chapter links contemporary nineteenth-century hierarchies of taste with Petrie’s often tacitly expressed opinions about Irish song melodies. In examining Petrie’s statements equating aesthetic and moral value, the chapter finds that some of the attitudes contained in his work continue to be relevant to the way song melodies are perceived and assessed today. By analyzing variants of one song air (used for ‘An Buachaill Caol Dubh’ in Munster and for another song, ‘An Caisideach Bán,’ in Connacht and Ulster), these ideas are unpacked and explored. The essay demonstrates that an underlying preference for an AABA melody format, still favoured nowadays, follows classical European norms. Historically conditioned aesthetic judgement notwithstanding, the chapter further argues that scholars and performers may set aside such preconceived ideas by appreciating the interplay of complex dynamics between oral and literate performance without necessarily having to accept a prescribed set of inherited assumptions regarding Irish song melodies.
Adorno’s Critique of Heidegger
Authors: Zuidervaart Lambert
Published: December 2023

This chapter examines the critique of Heidegger in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics and Ontology and Dialectics, interpreting it as a contest over the temporal character of truth. Adorno charges Heidegger with “ontologizing the ontic,” in three ways: by treating the concept of Being (Sein) as a concrete thing; by absolutizing the mediation of subject and object; and by freezing actual history into an unchanging “historicity.” What connects Adorno’s criticisms is a concern he dialectically shares with Heidegger over what Iain Macdonald calls “blocked possibility.” Adorno rejects Heidegger’s blocked possibility—beyng beyond Being, an “other beginning” before the metaphysical beginning—for the sake of a different blocked possibility: a future society in which needless suffering would end. But they share the claim that truth is temporal. The chapter concludes with suggestions about how their debate could yield a better understanding of the temporality of truth.
Feminist Inquiry
Authors: Hawkesworth Mary
Published: December 2023

This chapter surveys interpretive strategies devised by feminist scholars within humanities, social science, and natural science disciplines to challenge inadequate and inaccurate representations, faulty arguments, personal biases, social prejudices, omissions, distortions, and disinformation within mainstream scholarship and thereby improve understandings of the world. It traces debates about feminist methodologies as they have been emerging in Anglo-American scholarship since the 1970s, moving from near-exclusive concerns about gender to more expansive investigations of race, ethnicity, gender, sexualities, and processes of racialization and gendering to contemporary attempts to devise intersectional analyses across diverse research domains. Probing the politics of feminist knowledge production, it engages debates concerning the comparative merits of feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint, and feminist postmodernist approaches to research.
Pluralizing Comparison
Authors: Simmons Erica S. , Smith Nicholas Rush
Published: December 2023

This chapter provides an overview of pluralizing comparison. It highlights comparison as one of the fundamental building blocks of social science research. Political science graduate students are typically taught the comparative method during their training, which essentially revolves around J. S. Mill’s discussion on the method of agreement and the method of difference. The chapter references Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities study to showcase the possibilities for scholarly breakthroughs that might be possible if we diversify what, how, and why researchers compare. Moreover, the study forces social scientists to question the naturalness of nation-states as a unit of analysis while using comparative techniques, which are not reducible to the goal of causal inference.
Interpretivist Methods in the Digital Age
Authors: Biccum April R.
Published: December 2023

The twentieth-century expansion of Interpretivist Methods in the social sciences could be characterized as nothing short of an epistemological revolution. Political science is unique for the way that Interpretive scholarship has been marginalized, where elsewhere it has transformed disciplines, becoming a normal part of inquiry. At the same time, the communications revolution has had an extraordinary impact on both knowledge production and political and social change. While computational methods and Big Data have renewed Political Science’s confidence in quantification, Interpretivist scholars have been slow to address how digital data and communications affordances impact both what we study and how we study it. This chapter points out that communications studies as a field is founded upon Interpretivist assumptions and is part of this methodological revolution. What this means for Political Science is that given the widespread impact of the Interpretivist Turn there is simply no legitimate reason for the continued marginalization of Interpretivist Methods. What it means for Interpretivists in Political Science is that there is already a rich seam of social theory and methodological practice upon which Interpretivists can draw for a Digital Interpretivist Political Science and which provides scope for connecting Interpretivists across disciplinary divides. The aim of this chapter is to provide an introduction to this social theory and cross disciplinary spaces in hopes of facilitating these kinds of connections.
Causal Inference with Time-Series Cross-Sectional Data
Authors: Xu Yiqing
Published: December 2023

This chapter surveys new development in causal inference using time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) data. It starts by clarifying two identification regimes for TSCS analysis: one under the strict exogeneity assumption and one under the sequential ignorability assumption. It then reviews three most commonly used methods by political scientists: the difference-in-differences approach, two-way fixed effects models, and the synthetic control method. For each method, the chapter examines its assumptions, explain its pros and cons, and discuss its extensions. It then introduces several new methods under strict exogeneity or sequential ignorability, including the factor-augmented approach, PanelMatch, and marginal structural models. It concludes by providing some recommendations to applied researchers and pointing out several directions for future research.
The Network Science of Public Policy Diffusion
Authors: Gopal Ishita , Desmarais Bruce A.
Published: December 2023

For over half a century, rigorous empirical analysis of the patterns according to which policies have spread across governments has led to a substantial accumulation of knowledge regarding the attributes of governments and policies that predict the spread of policy. Recently, a more thorough integration of policy diffusion research with relational and network approaches to analysis has led to insights regarding the pathways that connect governments and facilitate the diffusion of policies. This chapter reviews recent developments regarding network approaches to policy diffusion research, and unifies these findings and ideas as the “network science of public policy diffusion.” The chapter also offers guidance regarding directions in which the study of policy diffusion research can be advanced through network scientific approaches. Specifically, it suggests that researchers look to the policy networks literature for theoretical innovation, and that the adoption of multilayer network analysis methods would facilitate substantial advancements in the empirical analysis of the systems determinants of public policy diffusion.
Machine Learning
Authors: Moses Laura M. , Box-Steffensmeier Janet M.
Published: December 2023

Machine learning (ML) is increasingly relevant in political science research and benefits both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. It has the ability to improve the accuracy of outcomes, refine measurements of complex human behavior and processes, discover latent patterns in data, and introduce new types of data. The authors’ work intends to provide a clearer understanding of the high-level concepts that will make ML applications successful by emphasizing some general principles, particularities, and demystify some of the technical aspects to support greater use of these tools. This chapter provides a practical guide to ML and discussion of its uses for understanding political phenomena. It then illustrates how these methods can be used to assess theories of voter turnout and how word use varies by partisan identity using text embeddings.
Pluralism and the Public Value of Social Science
Authors: Lupia Arthur
Published: December 2023

This chapter argues that adopting a particular approach to pluralism is a key to increasing the public value of social scientific research. The approach is to be as transparent and as honest as possible about the procedures that produce social scientific claims. This approach is applicable to any social scientific method. Greater honesty and transparency increase the public value of social science by empowering its users to better understand where a given claim does—and does not—apply. Operating in this way gives social scientists new opportunities to provide an incredible form of service to people around the world.
Knowledge Cumulation and Survey Experiments
Authors: Pepinsky Thomas B.
Published: December 2023

This chapter discusses how survey experiments can contribute to knowledge cumulation in political science. It introduces a typology of survey experiments that clarifies how they might fit into general social scientific analyses of causal processes in the social world, and then use “Coleman’s Boat” as a heuristic device for describing the task of knowledge cumulation across macro- and micro-level studies. Survey experimental research can be strengthened by explicitly engaging with the broader theoretical claims and analytical frameworks to which its results might contribute, even under the assumption that survey experimental research is both internally and externally valid.
Federal Government
Authors: Papadopoulos Yannis , Sager Fritz
Published: December 2023

This chapter studies the Swiss federal executive (Federal Council) and concentrates on the specificities of this unique form of collegial government. The chapter presents the mode of election for the members of the Federal Council, highlights the implementation of the consociational norm of power-sharing and changes in the partisan composition of the government, and discusses its position within a political system with many veto points. It then zooms into the internal organization of the government, describes the decision-making processes within the federal executive, and assesses how the collegial principle is challenged by governmental ‘departmentalization’ and partisan polarization. The chapter concludes on the repeated and mostly unsuccessful efforts at reform, mainly in view of enhancing governmental performance.
Decision-Making Process
Authors: Sciarini Pascal
Published: December 2023

The formulation of policies lies at the heart of any political system and is the crucial task assigned to decision makers. Analysing problems, identifying possible solutions, bargaining over draft proposals and bills, and—eventually—adopting a legislative act is the routine business of senior officials, interest groups, experts, political parties, and MPs. The purpose of this chapter is to present the state of knowledge on Swiss federal decision-making processes. It starts with a brief description of the institutional set-up of processes (initiation phase, pre-parliamentary phase, parliamentary phase, and referendum phase) and then turns to a finer-grained analysis of each decision-making phase and links between them. The analysis of these links is all the more important, since the multiplication of arenas is characteristic of the Swiss decision-making system; this is meant to make sure legislative proposals will proceed smoothly from one decision-making phase to the next. In particular, the risk of failure at the end of a process in a referendum vote has favoured the development of the preparatory phase of legislation. The chapter also assesses the respective weights of the main state and non-state actors participating in the process, highlights how institutions influence actors’ strategies, and examines changes in the characteristics of decision-making processes over time. On this basis, it evaluates the relevance of some claims that one finds in the contemporary literature, such as those regarding the ineffectiveness of the pre-parliamentary procedures, the ‘end of consensus’, or the slow pace and low innovation capacity of the Swiss decision-making process.
Commodity Chains
Authors: Ciccantell Paul S. , Smith David A. , Topik Steven C.
Published: December 2023

The concept of commodity chains (along with related ideas of global production networks and value chains) has been a useful tool in recent decades in explaining the dynamics of global history. This chapter discuss the emergence of these key approaches to commodity-focused analysis in history and the social sciences—which explore connections across space and borders, tracing how nature is transformed via extraction, cultivation, processing, transport, and marketing into commodities for consumption and profit. This involves key issues, including the role played by technology, market forces, firm strategies, state policies, and geopolitical strategies in shaping the evolution of commodity chains in the world economy. This is illustrated with a discussion of how these different modes of analysis provide insights into the forces involved in the evolution and expansion of the ‘raw materialist lengthened’ commodity chain of coffee—one of the most valuable internationally traded agricultural goods.
Commodities across the Socialist World
Authors: Dietrich Anne
Published: December 2023

How did Eastern bloc regimes guarantee stable commodity flows in the globalizing economy of the Cold War, having only a limited access to convertible currency and global trade networks? A common practice was trade and cooperation among member states of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) on the ideological basis of the international socialist division of labour. As rising commodity prices on world markets for raw materials and agricultural goods burdened their national economies with debts, Eastern bloc regimes turned towards socialist-leaning countries in the Global South. This chapter analyses how regimes approached this by reviewing the provision of commodities in the socialist world, focusing on grain supply in the Soviet Union and China and cash crops in the Global South, energy networks within the CMEA, the importance of consumer goods in Eastern Europe, and sugar production in Cuba. It concludes by drawing attention to lacunae for future research.
Plantations and Commodities
Authors: Nadri Ghulam A.
Published: December 2023

This chapter examines the approaches to and perspectives on the relationship between the plantation system and commodity production, and how the literature has contributed to broadening the meaning and application of plantation as an analytical framework within commodity history. Through a brief discussion of how the scholarship has looked at the agrarian economy of colonial India and using the system of indigo cultivation in the nineteenth century as a case study, it explores to what extent the Indian experience of agricultural production fits into the plantation typologies that scholars have identified. Through analysis of the modes and methods of indigo cultivation and peasant-planter relationships, the chapter argues that, despite being based primarily on peasant cultivation, Indian indigo production should be considered a form of plantation in which peasants produced the crop for European planters.
Computational Methods for the History of Commodities as Illustrated by Apple Pie Recipes
Authors: van Erp Marieke , Bosma Ulbe
Published: December 2023

This chapter provides an introduction to computational methods for commodities analyses focused on natural language processing and Semantic Web technologies. Natural language processing is the research field at the intersection of linguistics and computer science, aimed at investigating how computers can be used to process large amounts of texts. Semantic Web is the research field concerned with representing knowledge in a machine-readable manner, allowing for integrating information from different sources and reasoning over them. The authors illustrate the potential, as well as the challenges, for the use of computational methods for commodities analyses through a case study on apple pie recipes to explore culinary practices as independent variables in sugar consumption. The chapter concludes with an outlook and guidelines on how to include computational methods further in commodity-history research.
Commodities, Interdisciplinarity, and Historical GIS
Authors: Crespo-Solana Ana
Published: December 2023

The sea and the forests have been inextricably linked since the invention of the ship and, during the early-modern age, the forest and its main resource, wood, underwent a process of politicization and commercialization, due to the importance of timber as a basic raw material and commodity for the consolidation of merchant navies and warships. This chapter discusses the interdisciplinary methodology employed to develop a Geographic Information Systems tool, enabling the integration of historical and archaeological information with timber provenance data to analyse wreck-site patterns and the use of timber. The chapter focuses on historical narratives about seafaring and shipwrecks, in order to determine and identify models for the searching for the so-called Iberian ship design, and the use of wood as a basic natural resource in the construction of such machinery of war and commerce.
Commodities Shaping a New Imperial History
Authors: de Luxán Meléndez Santiago , Figueiroa-Rego João , Sanz Rozalén Vicent , Stubbs Jean
Published: December 2023

Tobacco, which originated in the Americas, was one of the early commodities to shape a new imperial history. This chapter highlights recent historiography of tobacco in the Iberian Empires, which from the seventeenth century became embedded in transimperial and transcolonial connections in territories of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. This longue-durée history was one of tobacco monopoly and an Atlantic tobacco system that was integrally tied to the slave trade from Africa to the Americas, extended across the Pacific; was constantly dogged by opposition, illicit trade and smuggling; and witnessed major changes in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This is illustrated by two case studies, one of Portugese and the other of Spanish tobacco history, and a concluding section signals comparative lessons of this history and the relevance of the Iberian case for the broader study of commodities and empire.
Commodity Frontiers
Authors: Bosma Ulbe , Vanhaute Eric
Published: December 2023

The concept of commodity frontier has become an increasingly valued transdisciplinary device to explain the dynamic relationship between place-specific commodity production and global socio-spatial expansion. As Jason Moore, who coined the concept, has pointed out, capitalism developed as a new historical system to overcome ecological degradation by relocating entire production complexes. Illustrated by the examples of wheat, timber, and sugar production and trade, this chapter reviews how the concept of commodity frontiers has developed into a global historical-comparative framework that takes into account variations in time, space, and commodities. A focus on commodities and commodity frontiers is proving invaluable to understand the interaction between structural changes on a global scale and local processes of resilience, resistance, and accommodation. Indeed, the increasing popularity of the concept of commodity frontiers is driven by the widely felt need to confront the systemic causes of our current global ecological crisis from a bottom-up perspective.
Anthologies of the Self
Authors: Urli Sebastián
Published: December 2023

This chapter analyzes some of Borges’s poems published in the 1930s, such as “Insomnio” (Insomnia), as well as his poetic anthologies published between 1943 and 1960. Drawing on scholarship about issues of self-figuration and authorship, the chapter studies how some of Borges’s corrections and rewritings of his avant-garde poems of the 1920s concur with an expansion of his self-figuration process in poetry. This process, which is studied in detail, reaches its peak in El hacedor (1960) and El otro, el mismo (1964). On the one hand, this examination allows us to challenge and expand Hector Libertella’s reading of Borges as a “gesture” and a “rubric/signature” that has “tamed” and “cured” more alternative and radical avant-garde possibilities such as those represented by Macedonio Fernández. On the other hand, it enables us to shed a different light on Borges’s poetical practices regarding his “conservadurismo poético” (poetic conservatism) (Muschietti and Lihn).
Adolescent Victims and Witnesses
Authors: Wyman Joshua , Dianiska Rachel , Henderson Hayden , Malloy Lindsay C.
Published: December 2023

Adolescence is a developmental window characterized by growth, change, and vulnerability in multiple domains. Several developmental characteristics of adolescence, both cognitive and socioemotional in nature, increase the likelihood adolescents will come into contact with the legal system as victims and witnesses and also shape the statements that adolescents provide in legal contexts. This chapter describes how several facets of adolescents’ cognitive (e.g., executive functioning) and socioemotional (e.g., susceptibility to peer influence) development influence their disclosures, memory, and suggestibility. It reviews the current state of knowledge concerning what is known about adolescents’ willingness to share their legally relevant experiences with others (i.e., issues related disclosure) and their ability to do so (i.e., issues related to memory and suggestibility). The chapter closes by discussing recommendations for policy and practice alongside novel or emerging issues regarding adolescents’ involvement in the legal system as victims and witnesses that warrant additional scientific inquiry.
Orientalism and the Transitional Justice Imaginary in Asia
Authors: Hinton Alexander Laban
Published: December 2023

This chapter explores the key concepts of Orientalism and the transitional justice imaginary in Asia. It considers the notion that transitional justice has been informed by Orientalist assumptions and structural power ranging from histories of colonialism to geopolitics. Moreover, the transitional justice imaginary is variably invoked depending on the person, time, and context while having a loose structure focused on its core assumption of a teleological transformation from authoritarianism to liberal democracy and a set of secondary assumptions. The chapter explains that Asia, where transitional justice doppelgängers are widespread, sits uneasily in these genealogies. One way to avoid the pitfalls of Orientalist transitional justice, the chapter concludes, is to take a more dynamic phenomenological approach that takes into account lived experience and the complex cultural landscapes in which transitional justice is enacted.
‘The Archive’ is Not an Archives
Authors: Caswell Michelle
Published: December 2023

Little of the humanistic inquiry at ‘the archival turn’ has acknowledged the vast intellectual contribution of archival studies as a field of theory and praxis in its own right. This chapter argues that the refusal of humanities scholars to engage with scholarship in archival studies is a gendered and classed failure in which humanities scholars—even those whose work focuses on gender and class—have been blind to the intellectual contributions and labour of a field that has been construed as predominantly female and professional (that is, not academic), and as such, unworthy of engagement. The chapter proposes concrete solutions for bridging this intellectually unsustainable divide through workshops, collaborative scholarship, and interdisciplinary reading clusters that educate humanities scholars about the intellectual contribution of archival studies.
Metadata
Authors: Gitelman Lisa
Published: December 2023

Beginning with the computational contexts within which the term metadata was initially deployed, this chapter first addresses ways that the idea may have achieved its belated power within the so-called archival turn and then explores its continued currency. If the notion of the archive can point us towards questions of power, truth, and fiction, then the concept of metadata stands to call our attention to matters of control. While suggesting the fantasy of a total description or a total ontology of information resources, the metadata concept helps to support a particular epistemic frame—vernacular, trenchant, inescapable—in which finding ostensibly equals knowing.
Response to ‘Frameworks’
Authors: Foster Janet
Published: December 2023

This response reflects on the chapters in the preceding section on 'Frameworks' from the perspective of a freelance archivist and provider of training in archives and records management. It emphasises the pressures of resource constraints in small and local archives but considers how the approaches described could open new community connections.
The Materiality of Written Textual Forms
Authors: Wiggins Alison
Published: December 2023

The functions written texts perform are shaped by and dependent upon their materiality. Meaning is activated through external processes of production and reception that include circulation, annotation, collecting, archiving, performing and, more recently, encoding and algorithmic searching. Texts are not just codes to crack or puzzles to unlock, they create networks and social ties, catalyse relationships, cohere communities, and are intertextual nexus points. This chapter considers how we can conceptualize the diverse material forms of written archival texts as distributed, formal, forensic, and performative, and as both analogue and digital. The examples discussed are reminders that written texts are not static blocks or containers of information, but sites of evolving knowledge. Networked metadata, corpus linguistics, digital photography, textual science, and microscopy give users new ways to encounter and analyse material texts, along with which come the imperative need for training in scholarly and critical archival methods.
The Agency of Archivers
Authors: Ketelaar Eric
Published: December 2023

Very seldom users of archives reflect on the agency of the archivist. They simply describe their encounter with the archive. However, the archive is created and recreated by the archivist, through appraisal, arrangement, description, providing access and reference service, preservation and digitization. Each of these practices of archival mediation is discussed in this chapter. The archivist is only one of the many ‘archivers’: authors, clerks, registrars, antiquarians, record managers, keepers, website builders, genealogists, and other users. Each archiver participates in the recursive production and mediation of the archive. In other words: the production of the archive (or archive formation) throughout the continuum happens through interactions by a host of archivers who shape the archive and are shaped by the archive. What, then, is the difference between the archivist and his or her fellow archivers?
Accidentally on Purpose
Authors: Akkerman Nadine , Langman Pete
Published: December 2023

Usually to signal a collection of artefacts that ended up together in a format that was not intended to be permanent, the term ‘Accidental Archive’ is generally defined only in the broadest of brushstrokes and rarely problematized. Recordkeeping can be seen as a repressive act, silencing alternative stories of the past, but the discovery of an accidental archive may disrupt received narratives: a trunk collected from a seventeenth-century shipwreck, for instance, may allow alternative stories to rise to the surface. It is the accidental archive that has most disruptive potential, but this potential is disrupted by a lack of consensus regarding its nature. In this chapter, we aim to define the accidental archive that it may exist alongside and yet distinct from four other forms of archive with which it might easily be confused: the asserted, the unintentional, the incidental, and the invisible archive.
Response to ‘Encounters and Evolution’
Authors: Fisher Julie A.
Published: December 2023

This response to the chapters in the section on 'Encounters and Evolution' reflects on the way in which these various discussions reflect our expanding and evolving sense of the nature of the archive and its relationship to the peoples who create archives.
From Repositories of Failure to Archives of Abolition
Authors: Beras Karina , Drake Jarrett Martin
Published: December 2023

Archives constitute a critical component for repressive governments to exercise their dominion and violence against peoples within and seeking to enter their borders. Likewise, people in contestation with the dominion and violence of states rely on archives as modes of resistance. This produces a paradox. How, on one hand, do governments construct archives to constrict populations and how, on the other, do those same populations construct counter-archives to subvert the means of their constriction? This chapter examines this seeming paradox through a more targeted query on the ways in which archives as social processes and technologies factor not only into the punishment paradigm but also in relation to abolitionist struggles in the United States. Ultimately, this chapter makes the case for the centrality of archives in facilitating a future free from prisons, policing, and the logics that sustain them.
Writer–Editors Making the Haitian and Caribbean Archives Talk
Authors: Douglas Rachel
Published: December 2023

How do we make archives talk? One answer is: through an editor. This chapter examines how the editor often challenges archival gaps and silences in official records. It explores the idea that the editor can be thought of as epitomizing Derrida’s notion of archive fever. Who is the editor? Can it sometimes be the writer himself or herself who tries to preserve everything of their own work in the face of possible annihilation? To try to answer these questions, this chapter looks at several writers from a postcolonial context, whose work is argued to constitute a form of archive itself in the face of natural disasters including earthquakes, hurricanes, landslides, and flooding.
On Family History and Archives
Authors: Clarke Norma
Published: December 2023

Archival work lends respectability to the professional historian whose role is to ascertain the truth from sources in which she has no personal investment. Family history, once the province of the amateur, is inescapably personal. Recently it has become a popular genre and acquired respectability. This chapter explores some of the pressures and revelations of a mode of research that depends on memory as well as documentation, on familial dynamics as well as text-based or archival study. It discusses secrets and lies, siblings and multiple ownership of ‘the’ family story, and considers how family history raises questions about truth and subjectivity that are important to history writing of any kind. All evidence-gathering involves choices, not all significant events are documented; the memoir-writer is acutely aware of moving between the known and the unknown, making judgements, crafting a story.
Response to ‘Narrators’
Authors: Stewart Alan
Published: December 2023

This response comments on the chapters in the preceding section on 'Narrators'. It notes how different types of user struggle to engage with archives and discusses the variety of obstacles they encounter. Although these difficulties are overcome in various ways, these different case studies emphasise the importance of the story-teller in our relationship with archives.