bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Constraints of Time
Authors: Baics Gergely
Published: January 2018

This chapter addresses the problem of time by examining the temporal geography of household provisioning. It scrutinizes the seasonal, weekly, and daily schedules of food shopping, outlining how complementary rhythms provided steady supplies to customers, while also sustaining permanent and stable trade at the public markets. The provisioning journey was structured not only by the distance one traveled to the public market but also by the conjunctures of time. Just as public markets distributed all varieties of foodstuffs to New Yorkers at a dozen privileged locations, their year-round business agglomerated food supplies of widely different seasonal cycles. Not surprisingly, seasonality first and foremost determined the frequency of residents' marketing visits.
Conclusion
Authors: Baics Gergely
Published: January 2018

This concluding chapter summarizes key themes. This book documents the profound consequences that the deregulation of food markets had on the built environment of the city, and the daily lives and living standards of its residents. Specifically, it outlines the complex interplay of political economy, urban geography, and the material conditions and social inequalities of New Yorkers. With the dissolution and formal repeal of traditionally tightly controlling market laws, the full power of free-market forces was unleashed to restructure the geography and daily routine of provisioning. The lack of government oversight across the entire provisioning chain allowed, even accelerated, the fragmentation and polarization of residents' food access. A wholly new geography emerged, whereby residential location determined one's options of food access, corresponding to each neighborhood's class and ethnic divisions of space.
William Faulkner and the Machine Age Watershed
Authors: Parrish Susan Scott
Published: January 2018

This chapter considers the influence of the Great Mississippi Flood on William Faulkner. At the time of the 1927 disaster, Faulkner was twenty-nine years old. As he consumed the media coverage of the Great Flood, especially the South's representation of the event as a second War of Northern Aggression and as a symptom of southern colonization at the hands of outside capital, he came to realize that a scenario of modernization—which had not yet become a standard European modernist topic—had occurred just miles from his own town. Moreover, the flood would allow him to adapt or contend with urban European models of modern subjectivity (found in Freud or Dada, for example) by giving form to a 1920s rural, multiracial environmental crisis.
All That Endures from Past to Present
Authors: Nucho Joanne Randa
Published: January 2018

This chapter takes a closer look at the way in which political actors and popular discourses mobilize sectarianism as an explanation for conflict as well as justification for actions taken in the aftermath of violence, creating a sectarian narrative that appears rigid, intractable, and deeply historical. Moreover, the sectarian explanation appears to give it a sense of unending repetition. The aftermaths of three violent incidents that took place in Beirut in recent years shape the analysis: a 2009 fatal shooting in a Beirut neighborhood that was quickly forgotten; a larger street clash in Beirut in 2010 that was perceived as a harbinger of political instability; and a fight in 2011 in Bourj Hammoud that launched a large-scale eviction of Kurdish and Syrian migrant workers. This final example is explored in the most ethnographic detail and reveals just how a wholly new kind of “sectarian conflict” (between Armenians and Syrian-Kurds) emerges as an explanation in the aftermath of a violent incident.
The View from the Executive (1792)
Authors: Fontana Biancamaria
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines how the most important effect that the Narbonne episode had on Staël's political position was to increase her skepticism about the power of political institutions. Executive power under the new constitutional monarchy had proved as incapable of providing guidance and leadership as the parliamentary factions had been at the time of the Constituent Assembly. Specifically, it was unable to keep the country out of a disastrous war. To some extent this failure could be ascribed to a poor constitutional design, which obstructed the proper functioning of the executive and limited its powers. The chapter also shows how, since the beginning of the Revolution, political institutions had been systematically undermined and wrecked by the relentless pressure of public opinion.
Cross and Scepter
Authors: Bagge Sverre
Published: January 2018

Christianity and European-style monarchy—the cross and the scepter—were introduced to Scandinavia in the tenth century, a development that was to have profound implications for all of Europe. This book is a concise history of the Scandinavian kingdoms from the age of the Vikings to the Reformation. It shows how the rise of the three kingdoms not only changed the face of Scandinavia, but also helped make the territorial state the standard political unit in Western Europe. It describes Scandinavia's momentous conversion to Christianity and the creation of church and monarchy there, and traces how these events transformed Scandinavian law and justice, military and administrative organization, social structure, political culture, and the division of power among the king, aristocracy, and common people. The book sheds new light on the reception of Christianity and European learning in Scandinavia, and on Scandinavian history writing, philosophy, political thought, and courtly culture. It looks at the reception of European impulses and their adaptation to Scandinavian conditions, and examines the relationship of the three kingdoms to each other and the rest of Europe, paying special attention to the inter-Scandinavian unions and their consequences for the concept of government and the division of power. The book provides an essential introduction to Scandinavian medieval history for scholars and general readers alike, offering vital new insights into state formation and cultural change in Europe.
Introduction
Authors: Bagge Sverre
Published: January 2018

This book charts the rise of three Scandinavian kingdoms—Denmark, Norway, and Sweden—from the tenth century until the end of the Kalmar Union and the introduction of the Reformation in the early sixteenth century. Drawing on new ideas about personal relationships, rituals, feuds, and mediation, it examines the kingdoms' alternative paths to state formation and the specifically medieval contribution to this process. In discussing Scandinavian state formation, the book also considers the changing map of Western Christendom in the High Middle Ages. In particular, it describes how the European state was exported to new areas and how Western Christendom expanded in the Mediterranean, in Scandinavia, and in East Central Europe. Whereas the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea was for the most part an object of conquest and colonization, the three Scandinavian kingdoms were established in the North and West, and Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary in the East.
Targeting the Right Issue: Trafficked Children and the Human Rights Imperative
Authors: Bhabha Jacqueline
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the flourishing industry in transnational child trafficking leading to different forms of exploitative child labor in peacetime, along with its human rights implications. It begins with a discussion of important innovations in the representation of trafficked children who use the asylum protection system to secure a lawful permanent status, as well as progress in dealing with child victims of trafficking outside the asylum system. It then considers some of the complexities involved in curbing the “supply” of trafficked children, questions regarding the magnitude of human trafficking and how best to counter it, and the assumption that trafficking is simply a form of modern-day slavery. It also describes the law enforcement approach to child trafficking and public education campaigns for at-risk children about the danger of being trafficked. The chapter concludes by suggesting alternatives to existing strategies aimed at stemming the flow of trafficked children.
How Macroeconomics Lost the Complexity Vision
Authors: Colander David , Kupers Roland
Published: January 2018

This chapter tells the story of how macroeconomics developed as a separate field in an attempt to add aspects of complexity to the standard model with the aim of improving policy advice, but how those aspects of complexity were quickly lost it again. Instead of dealing with the macro economy as a complex system, macro economists focused on dotting is and crossing ts. The chapter begins by clarifying the difference between macroeconomics and microeconomics. Microeconomics builds a theory up from the individual elements—from the micro level to the macro level. It starts from assumptions of rational individuals and then analyzes how they would coordinate their actions, and what role the state should play in that coordination. Macroeconomics developed as a separate branch of economics when J. M. Keynes’s work was integrated into formal models in the 1930s and 1940s.
Arab Nationalism and Competing Loyalties: From the 1920s to the Arab Revolt in Palestine
Authors: Dawisha Adeed
Published: January 2018

This chapter looks at a growing number of voices in the three most important Arab domains of the time—Iraq, Greater Syria, and Egypt—who were declaring themselves to be Arabs, sometimes in conjunction with, at other times to the exclusion of, other identities. Beyond the claims of historical validity, Iraq in the 1920s and 1930s was one of only four countries with a measure of independence, at least in matters of domestic policy. It was in Iraq that the intellectual headquarters of Arab nationalism resided in the person of Sati‘ al-Husri, whose ideas were eliciting a receptive echo among the country’s political elites. Indeed, Husri and other Arab nationalists, many of whom were his disciples, set out to make Iraq the beacon from which Arab nationalist ideas would spread to the rest of the Arab world. The chapter also studies the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine.
Consolidating Arab Nationalism: The Emergence of “Arab” Egypt
Authors: Dawisha Adeed
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the emergence of “Arab” Egypt. When the idea of a Western alliance threatened to isolate Egypt in 1953, an Egyptian campaign to galvanize the citizens of other Arab states against Western alliances had to tap the most readily acceptable bond that drew Egyptians and the other Arabs together, that of Arab nationalism—the notion that, politically divided as they were, the Arabs still constituted one indivisible nation. Thus, the phenomenal speed with which Arab nationalism became the predominant radical, on the whole anti-Western, ideology in the region in the 1950s resulted in large measure from Egypt’s onslaught against Western alliances. Moreover, Egypt’s undoubted success was aided substantially by two factors: the country’s own capabilities, and Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir’s committed leadership and single-minded pursuit of his goals.
The Apex of Arab Nationalism: The United Arab Republic and the Iraqi Revolution, January–September 1958
Authors: Dawisha Adeed
Published: January 2018

This chapter focuses on the United Arab Republic (UAR). The UAR, formed by the fusion of Egypt and Syria on February 1, 1958, came as a stunning surprise to most Arabs and non-Arabs. No one whose expectations were shaped by rational assessment could think that an organic unity between two Arab states was at all possible in such a short space of time. It was not the actual unity that was so surprising; Arab nationalists fervently believed in the eventual amalgamation of Arab countries. However, no one was prepared for the breathless pace at which events were to unfold. The chapter then looks at the Iraqi revolution, which was characterized by both General ‘Abd al-Karim Qasim and Colonel ‘Abd al-Salam ‘Aref as a crowning achievement of Arab nationalism.
The Demise of Arab Nationalism: A Postmortem
Authors: Dawisha Adeed
Published: January 2018

This chapter argues that after the Six Day War, Arab nationalism’s slide toward political marginality became irreversible. What stamped on it the sense of finality was the fact that it was Egypt under Gamal ‘Abd al-Nasir that lost. Indeed, Egypt’s devastating defeat was Arab nationalism’s mortal loss, for the fate of Arab nationalism during the struggles, triumphs, and reversals of the 1950s and 1960s was inexorably linked to Egypt and its charismatic president. Had it just been Syria or Jordan, or even both, who lost the war, it would not have been the unmitigated disaster for Arab nationalism that the June war turned out to be. But Arab nationalism could not survive the abject humiliation inflicted on its acknowledged prophet, who promised a fabled triumph in this al-Ma‘raka al-Masiriya, the battle of destiny.
Navigating the Ethno-Racial State
Authors: Paschel Tianna S.
Published: January 2018

The recent wave of ethno-racial reforms in Colombia and Brazil not only institutionalized black political subjects into the law but they also created ethno-racial state apparatuses that catalyzed the institutionalization of black movement actors. This chapter examines how everyday political practices in these new contexts—in which blacks were now legitimated as the subjects of rights and in which a myriad of new state institutions managed ethno-racial issues—have constructed new kinds of black political subjects in Colombia and Brazil. It draws on government documents, interviews, and insights from ethnographic fieldwork to make sense of how black movement actors in Colombia and Brazil navigated the new political landscape.
Divination and the History of Surplus Knowledge
Authors: Struck Peter T.
Published: January 2018

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the book's main themes. It begins by discussing the practice of divination for many millennia and across the whole Old World. It then reviews bodies of scholarship on divination and make a distinction between classical Greek ideas of divination and the quite different phenomena of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible or the later development of apocalyptic literature. It then details the book's effort to work through evidence that positions divinatory knowledge within the classical thought-world in a way that is more or less analogous to the position of the modern concept of intuition. It also makes a case for understanding divination as more closely related to surplus knowing than occult religion.
Reciprocity among “Decent Folk”
Authors: Rosenblum Nancy L.
Published: January 2018

This chapter talks about the principal defining characteristic of the democracy of everyday life: rough parity in give and take among neighbors. Reciprocity among “decent folk” fleshes out this facet of the democracy of everyday life, for “decent folk” carries a distinctive understanding of equality for the purposes of living side by side. Moreover, reciprocity cannot be reduced to the idea of mutual advantage because it has a fundamentally social and moral aspect: the shared project of a well ordered society. Historically and in some parts of the world today, reciprocity does shape many social interactions. But social scientists characterize it as the prelude to more complex forms of coordination and developed institutions.
Political Theory and the Democracy of Everyday Life in America
Authors: Rosenblum Nancy L.
Published: January 2018

This concluding chapter offers a systematic account of a political theory about the meaning and value of the democracy of everyday life for formal, organized democracy, as well as its importance for the quality of life personally and individually. The moral identity of the good neighbor shaped by the democracy of everyday life is distinct from the political identity of the good citizen. The chapter traces continuities as well as discontinuities between the democratic ethos among neighbors and political democracy proper. It also represents the democracy of everyday life as the hardy remainder or “saving remnant” when formal democracy seems to have lost its integrity.
Hagiographies of Mary
Authors: Ihnat Kati
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines a new form of literature that emerged in twelfth-century England, the collections of Marian miracle stories, designed to prove through reasoned argument that Mary was worthy of devotion. Marian miracle collections first appeared in English monasteries in the early twelfth century, depicting the imagined rewards of entreating Mary to act on their behalf. The Marian genre was a further expression of the drive to record letters, laws, histories, and hagiographies that pervaded Anglo-Norman monastic culture. In order to understand the part the miracle story played in the development of the Marian cult, the chapter traces its inception and early development within wider literary and devotional patterns. It also considers the prayers, chants, offices, and feast days that lie at the heart of the universal miracle collections before concluding with a discussion of how the miracle stories were communicated in the liturgy.
Enemies of Mary
Authors: Ihnat Kati
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the prominence of Jews in Marian miracle stories. In order to exemplify the right approach to praising and celebrating Mary, the miracle story often made use of the trope of the “bad guy”—commonly depicted as Jewish—against which the good devotee is contrasted. The Jewish characters in miracle collections generally carry out the opposite of what appropriate devotion should look like: desecration instead of veneration, doubt instead of belief, violence instead of mercy. After tracing the origins of the juxtaposition between Mary and the Jews in narrative, the chapter considers a number of stories that portrayed the Jew as an antagonist against whom to exercise Mary's mercy and justice, including the tale of Theophilus and the stories of the Jewish boy, the image of Mary at Lydda, the Virgin's Image Insulted, the Jews of Toledo, Theodore and Abraham, and the Jews of Toulouse.
A Place at the Altar
Authors: DiLuzio Meghan J.
Published: January 2018

This book illuminates a previously underappreciated dimension of religion in ancient Rome: the role of priestesses in civic cult. Demonstrating that priestesses had a central place in public rituals and institutions, the book emphasizes the complex, gender-inclusive nature of Roman priesthood. In ancient Rome, priestly service was a cooperative endeavor, requiring men and women, husbands and wives, and elite Romans and slaves to work together to manage the community's relationship with its gods. Like their male colleagues, priestesses offered sacrifices on behalf of the Roman people, and prayed for the community's well-being. As they carried out their ritual obligations, they were assisted by female cult personnel, many of them slave women. The book explores the central role of the Vestal Virgins and shows that they occupied just one type of priestly office open to women. Some priestesses, including the flaminica Dialis, the regina sacrorum, and the wives of the curial priests, served as part of priestly couples. Others, such as the priestesses of Ceres and Fortuna Muliebris, were largely autonomous. The book offers a fresh understanding of how the women of ancient Rome played a leading role in public cult.
Introduction: State, Republic, and Commonwealth
Authors: Dauber Noah
Published: January 2018

This book examines the tensions between state and society in early modern England (1549–1640) in order to elucidate the reception of the classical commonwealth in the wake of the Reformation. It analyzes five cases: the Reforming Christian commonwealth of the counselors who surrounded Edward VI; the vision of England as a society of orders in Thomas Smith's De Republica Anglorum; the Aristotelian monarchical republic of John Case's Sphaera Civitatis; the exploration of private and public in Jacobean England, especially in the Aphorisms and Essays of Sir Francis Bacon; and the penal state and the commonwealth of conscience in Thomas Hobbes's Elements of Law. This introduction discusses the history of political thought and the early modern state in England, focusing on commonwealth as a theory of the state.
Power Analysis and International Relations
Authors: Baldwin David A.
Published: January 2018

This chapter is divided into two parts. The first is an intellectual history of the treatment of the concept of power in the international relations literature in America from World War I until the 1960s. The focus is on comparing and contrasting the treatment of power by Hans J. Morgenthau and his followers and the treatment of power by Harold and Margaret Sprout, Arnold Wolfers, Frederick Sherwood Dunn, Quincy Wright, Richard Snyder, Ernst Haas and others who viewed themselves as promoting the study of international relations as a social science. The second part of this chapter is organized in terms of different analytical perspectives on power in the international relations literature. These perspectives include the treatment of power as identity, goal, means, mechanism (balance of power), competition, and capability.
The Making of a Techno-Political Device
Authors: von Schnitzler Antina
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the micro-political battle between residents tinkering with technology and engineers trying to secure it. It tackles a number of questions, such as the relationship between technology and the constitution of particular forms of agency and subjectivity; how technical devices such as the prepaid meter mediate such relationship to the state; and how the “de-scription” of technology might enable us to read particular configurations of power. To answer these questions, the chapter traces a genealogy of the prepaid meter, from its invention in Victorian Britain to the late-apartheid period and into the present, and how it became intertwined with techno-politics. In following the travels of the prepaid meter, it conceptually reconsiders the relationship between ethics, politics, and technics.
Introduction
Authors: Mayville Luke
Published: January 2018

This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of events surrounding John Adams' decision to write the Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, which would eventually be hailed as “the finest fruit of the American enlightenment.” It then sets out the book's purpose, which is to present Adams as a student and critic of the political power of elites. It suggests that Adams has much to teach us about teach us about wealth and power in our own times. Specifically, he can help us as we attempt to comprehend and respond to one of today's most urgent problems: the outsized influence of wealth in our politics.
Dignified Democracy
Authors: Mayville Luke
Published: January 2018

This chapter draws from Adams' writings to argue that the most effective means of diverting admiration from wealth might be to create and maintain offices and stations that, by virtue of the honor they bestow, enjoy the admiration of the public. Meritocratic judgeships and high elected offices, when honor is attached to them, might compete with the grandeur of wealth for public admiration. It is shown that the spirit of Adams' political thought warns against the democratic impulse to knock down honorable institutions. A democratic political community might believe it is equalizing conditions by electing judges and secretaries of high office rather than appointing them, or by regulating political offices with highly restrictive limits on the duration and number of terms, but the unintended consequence of attempts to bring offices closer to the people might be the elimination of the only markers of social distinction that can compete with wealth for the admiration of the public. Adams captured the point succinctly in his notes on Mary Wollstonecraft's An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution.
An Interactionist Theory of Resolve
Authors: Kertzer Joshua D.
Published: January 2018

This chapter proposes an interactionist approach that views resolve as a state shaped by both dispositional and situational factors. It first provides an overview of interactionist theories, elaborating what scholars of international politics gain by thinking of resolve in an interactionist manner. In particular, it considers three motivations for interactionism: partitioning variance, interactive theories, and definition of the situation. The chapter proceeds by discussing two sets of situational variables, the human costs of fighting and the costs of backing down, and four dispositional variables: time and risk preferences, honor orientations, and trait self-control. It then introduces an interactionist theory of resolve, presenting a series of hypotheses to explain why certain types of actors define the situations they face differently, and are therefore more or less sensitive to certain types of costs of war.
Resolve in Great Power Military Interventions, 1946–2003
Authors: Kertzer Joshua D.
Published: January 2018

This chapter employs a set of Boolean statistical analyses to study the impact of situational and dispositional pathways of resolve on the probability of victory of great power military interventions during the period 1946–2003. It first explains the importance of microfoundations in international relations theory before justifying the use of Boolean statistics to test the effects of resolve on conflict outcomes without inferring resolve from the same outcomes it is being used to explain. It then presents the results, which suggest that the situational and dispositional determinants of resolve also predict the probability of victory. There is relatively weak support for the costs of fighting, but more support for the costs of backing down, in terms of both intrinsic stakes and extrinsic reputation costs.
The New Entities of Abbacus and Renaissance Algebra
Authors: Wagner Roi
Published: January 2018

This chapter offers a historical narrative of some elements of the new algebra that was developed in the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries in northern Italy in order to show how competing philosophical approaches find an intertwining expression in mathematical practice. It examines some of the important mathematical developments of the period in terms of a “Yes, please!” philosophy of mathematics. It describes economical-mathematical practice with algebraic signs and subtracted numbers in the abbaco tradition of the Italian late Middle Ages and Renaissance. The chapter first considers where the practice of using letters and ligatures to represent unknown quantities come from by analyzing Benedetto's fifteenth-century manuscript before discussing mathematics as abstraction from natural science observations that emerges from the realm of economy. It also explores the arithmetic of debited values, the formation of negative numbers, and the principle of fluidity of mathematical signs.
Fragility in Banking and the Role of Regulation
Authors: Vives Xavier
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the unique characteristics of banks that make them heavily regulated and subject to public intervention. It first explains the roots of fragility, contagion, and systemic risk in the banking sector before discussing as an example of fragility the development and crisis of shadow banking in the 2007–2009 crisis. It then considers the regulatory response to banking fragility with the establishment of prudential regulation and the safety net, the side effects of regulation, and the reasons behind the regulatory failure in the 2007–2009 crisis, along with the main measures of the regulatory reform that followed, including the emphasis on macroprudential measures. The chapter concludes with an assessment of regulation in emerging and developing economies and the contrast with developed economies.
Summary of Findings and Policy Implications
Authors: Vives Xavier
Published: January 2018

This book has examined the evolution of the banking sector, the role of regulation and the response to the perceived regulatory failure in the 2007–2009 crisis, the nature of competition in banking, and the trade-off between competition and stability. It has argued that competition in banking is good for society, provided that regulation and supervision are adequate. Competition is a main source of static and dynamic efficiency, and the banking sector is no exception. While competition is not responsible for fragility in banking, there is a trade-off between competition and financial stability along some dimensions. This trade-off could be “regulated away” in principle, but regulation is imperfect. This chapter presents a summary of the book's findings and their implications for competition policy and regulation. It concludes with an overview of challenges for researchers, bankers, and regulators/supervisors.
Harmony
Authors: Lewis Michael J.
Published: January 2018

This chapter focuses on Johann Georg Rapp, who persuaded nearly a thousand of his followers to leave Germany for America, where they would build three towns in the wilderness, and in the process renounce private property, personal ambition, and even sexual relations. These towns he named Harmony (1804), New Harmony (1814), and Economy (1824); all remain intact today to an unusual degree. They reveal Rapp's ever more imaginative use of architecture as an instrument of religious expression and of social cohesion. Rapp's towns are the most important and influential of all cities of refuge, which would not only shape other separatist societies but also—as later reformers looked more at the communism of the Harmonists than their architecture—a substantial portion of the world itself.
East and West, Right and Left
Authors: Shoshan Nitzan
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines how Germany's young right-wing extremists articulate their relations to cultural and ethnicized difference as they discursively constitute their own political selves, focusing in particular on their identification and self-identification as easterners. It considers some developments that have reshaped the extreme right in Germany over the past couple of decades, paying attention to the contemporary legacy of the East–West divide in the post-reunification era and its political significance both nationally and, more specifcally, for the young right-wing extremists. It also analyzes the vulnerability of Ossis (East Germans) to right-wing extremism right-wing extremism in today's Germany and concludes with a discussion of important trends that have reconfigured far right nationalism across the Continent, including Germany, in recent decades.
Penal Regimes of Political Delinquency
Authors: Shoshan Nitzan
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the juridical production of what it calls “political delinquency,” a figure that condenses irresolvable contradictions between forceful taboos on the one hand and liberal law on the other. Drawing on ethnographic materials, legal texts, and court cases, the chapter shows that the production of political delinquency, including that of young right-wing extremists, ultimately rests on hermeneutical procedures that appeal to affective states in general and hate in particular. It asks a number of questions, such as how the legal banning of right-wing extremism tallies with the constitutional prohibition of censorship, or what assumptions about symbols, their users, and the context of their deployments underpin the interpretative frameworks under which law regulates nationalism and xenophobia in Germany. It also considers denazification in juridical institutions and practices, ambiguities in interpreting legal codes as well as symbols/signs, and mechanisms of legal regulation.
Afterword
Authors: Shoshan Nitzan
Published: January 2018

IN RECENT YEARS, as tensions between Athens and Berlin over the former’s debt crisis have deepened, Germany’s past was staged not only on the streets of Greece, where portraits of Chancellor Merkel and Finance Minister Schäuble, rendered as Nazis, decorated demonstration posters. Under the shadow of sour negotiations, the Greek government announced it would seek 162 billion euros in damages from Germany over unpaid WWII reparations and a forced war-time loan. Later, citing a figure of 341 billion euros, Justice Minister Paraskevopoulos raised the possibility of property seizures should Germany fail to respect its alleged obligations. Prime Minister Tsipras and other prominent politicians spoke of “an open wound” and a “moral issue.” For the most part, Berlin and German media hit back with anger and denial, some complaining about “moral blackmail.” Germany’s debts and reparations have been legally, politically, and definitively resolved during its reunification, Merkel insisted; 1989, we see once more, continued to re-sequence history and signal a new “Stunde Null” and a new national project....
Elite-Led Transitions
Authors: Haggard Stephan , Kaufman Robert R.
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines how international factors may influence elite-led transitions, from direct military pressures and even intervention to the effects of international institutions and diffusion. The discussion is organized around Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way's distinction between leverage and linkage as sources of international influence. In four cases—Cyprus (1983), Grenada (1984), Panama (1989), and Haiti (1994)—outside intervention took a military form and directly displaced incumbents and/or established new democratic governments. Regime changes in Grenada and Panama came in the wake of U.S. military interventions that ousted the governments of Bernard Coard and Manuel Noriega, respectively. In the case of some low-income African countries, democratic transitions were motivated by threats or withdrawal of political and military support and economic aid—including from multilateral institutions. The chapter also considers the domestic politics of elite-led transitions, institutional transitions, and transitions in dominant party systems in Senegal and Mexico.
Inequality, Development, and the Weak Democracy Syndrome
Authors: Teo Terence
Published: January 2018

This chapter explores the interrelationships between inequality, economic development, and the so-called weak democracy syndrome. More specifically, it analyzes the effect of inequality on reversions in general and on the distributive conflict cases in particular, as well as some theoretical alternatives, including modernization theories of democratic transitions. It first considers the elite-reaction model of reversion before proposing an alternative, which places greater weight on institutional and economic factors. It then examines the determinants of reversions to authoritarian rule more generally as well as those that might be uniquely associated with elite-reaction and populist reversions. It shows that despite differences in proximate causal processes, the possibility that cases of reversion to autocracy and elite-reaction reversions can be traced to common causal roots in the weak democracy syndrome. The chapter concludes by assessing underlying factors that distinguish “reverters” from “survivors,” including inequality, measures of political institutionalization, and economic performance.
A Low Dishonest Decade
Authors: Gunitsky Seva
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the crisis of liberal capitalism and the fascist cascade of the late interwar period. A wave of fascism that swept the world after 1933, which was the result of a growing disparity in relative power between the declining democratic powers—Britain, France, and especially the United States—and their vibrant nondemocratic rivals, led by Nazi Germany. During these years, fascist institutions penetrated the governments of many self-proclaimed authoritarians but also left a lasting legacy on the structure of modern democratic regimes. At its height in the summer of 1942, the fascist order—fascist states, their fellow travelers, occupied territories, colonies, satellites, and puppets—included nearly half the world's population, stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Black Sea.
Hārūn al-Rashīd under Occupation
Authors: Mestyan Adam
Published: January 2018

This chapter argues that post-1882, Arab patriotism served simultaneously to reconfigure and reinvent the khedivial regime. During this period, the full-fledged practice of civic patriotism in Arabic was firmly established. The two collectivities of audience (a physical experience) and nation (an imagined community) began to overlap. The understanding of the audience as a closed and private group in the Muslim entertainment tradition transmuted into the understanding of the audience as a public community. Ultimately, the audience stood for the collective of the homeland; sometimes simply expressed as “the people of the East.” The cooperation of Egyptian singers with Syrian actors and writers was decisive in the popularization of Arabic musical theater; the patriotism they expressed often appealed not so much to territorial unity but to a higher idea of Arab solidarity in Ottoman colors to gain imagined sovereignty against the British.
Behind the Scenes: A Committee and the Law, 1880s–1900s
Authors: Mestyan Adam
Published: January 2018

This chapter discusses the legal background of theaters in late Ottoman Egypt, starting with a microhistory of the Comité des Théâtres. Its administrative history highlights the process by which khedivial theaters became state institutions overseen financially and administratively by the Comité des Théâtres. Financial experts expressed cultural preferences through indirect censorship of the program within the Opera House. The preferences of the khedives were also taken into consideration—when and if there was no cost involved—and some favored Arab impresarios could use the Opera House. In this way, patriotism in Arabic was staged in the stage of the symbolic Opera House within the colonial frames. As a consequence, “culture” attained a double function as both legitimizing and mirroring elite power. The chapter also considers private theaters and their legal environment.
Transportation on Networks
Authors: Galichon Alfred
Published: January 2018

This chapter considers the optimal network flow problem, which is a generalization of the optimal assignment problem considered in Chapter 3. In optimal flow problems, one considers a network of cities, or edges, to move a distribution of mass on supply nodes to a distribution of mass on demand nodes. The difference from a standard optimal assignment problem is that the matching surplus associated with moving from a supply location to a demand location is not necessarily directly defined; instead, there are several paths from the supply location to the demand location, among these some yield maximal surplus. Therefore, both the optimal assignment problem and the shortest path problem are instances of the optimal flow problem; these instances are representative in the sense that any optimal flow problem may be decomposed into an assignment problem and a number of shortest path problems. The chapter shows how to easily compute these problems using linear programming.
In Harm's Way
Authors: Auyero Javier , Berti María Fernanda
Published: January 2018

Arquitecto Tucci, a neighborhood in Buenos Aires, is a place where crushing poverty and violent crime are everyday realities. Homicides—often involving young people—continue to skyrocket, and in the emergency room there, victims of shootings or knifings are an all-too-common sight. This book takes a harrowing look at daily life in Arquitecto Tucci, examining the sources, uses, and forms of interpersonal violence among the urban poor at the very margins of Argentine society. It provides a powerful and intimate account of what it is like to live under the constant threat of violence. It argues that being physically aggressive becomes a habitual way of acting in poor and marginalized communities, and that violence is routine and carries across various domains of public and private life. The book traces how different types of violence—criminal, drug related, sexual, or domestic—overlap, intersect, and blur together. It shows how the state is complicit in the production of harm, and describes the routines and relationships that residents, particularly children, establish to cope with and respond to the constant risk that besieges them and their loved ones.
The State at the Margins
Authors: Auyero Javier , Berti María Fernanda
Published: January 2018

This chapter examines the relationship between the state's presence at the urban margins and the depacification of poor people's daily lives in Arquitecto Tucci, focusing in particular on the role of the local police in the neighborhood and the way it partakes in the crime it is supposed to be controlling. It first considers the ways in which the local police see the area and its residents, showing that police agents understand the origins and character of violence as “cultural.” It then presents a series of vignettes to depict the particular presence of the repressive arm of the state in Arquitecto Tucci before discussing police brutality and the highly selective nature of law enforcement when it comes to incarceration of offenders. It argues that law enforcement in Arquitecto Tucci is intermittent, selective, and contradictory.
Don’t Sell Islamism Short
Authors: Owen John M.
Published: January 2018

This chapter considers the first lesson that can be drawn from three historical Western ideological contests concerning political Islam and secularism today: this is no time to short-sell Islamism. The first contest pitted Catholics and Protestants over which form of Christianity should be established or favored by the state. This dispute raged in Western and Central Europe from roughly 1520 until around the 1690s. The second struggle, which emerged in the 1770s and lasted for a century, occurred in Europe and the Americas and dealt with the issue of whether the best regime was a monarchy or a republic. The third struggle, which arose in the 1910s and endured until the late 1980s, involved communism, liberalism, and fascism. The chapter argues that Westerners discount Islamism because of their own secularist bias and that Islamism is in fact a reaction to secularism.
Conclusion
Authors: Owen John M.
Published: January 2018

This book has examined ideological contests in Western history and what they tell us about Islamism's prolonged struggle with secularism. In conclusion, it offers a few suggestions on what the United States ought to do and not to do in the Middle East and what this means for American foreign policy. It argues that the United States simply cannot decide the contest between Islamism and secularism and so should resort to what political scientist Jonathan Monten calls “exemplarism.” The U.S. government should also remember that, although it cannot resolve the Muslims' ideological contest by force, it can influence how Muslims themselves resolve it. This concluding chapter also considers two things that the United States can do to nudge constitutional democracy: to engage in public diplomacy and to remain the attractive society that it always has been—to be true to itself.
Enlightening Symbols
Authors: Mazur Joseph
Published: January 2018

While all of us regularly use basic mathematical symbols such as those for plus, minus, and equals, few of us know that many of these symbols weren't available before the sixteenth century. What did mathematicians rely on for their work before then? And how did mathematical notations evolve into what we know today? This book explains the fascinating history behind the development of our mathematical notation system. It shows how symbols were used initially, how one symbol replaced another over time, and how written math was conveyed before and after symbols became widely adopted. Traversing mathematical history and the foundations of numerals in different cultures, the book looks at how historians have disagreed over the origins of the number system for the past two centuries. It follows the transfigurations of algebra from a rhetorical style to a symbolic one, demonstrating that most algebra before the sixteenth century was written in prose or in verse employing the written names of numerals. It also investigates the subconscious and psychological effects that mathematical symbols have had on mathematical thought, moods, meaning, communication, and comprehension. It considers how these symbols influence us (through similarity, association, identity, resemblance, and repeated imagery), how they lead to new ideas by subconscious associations, how they make connections between experience and the unknown, and how they contribute to the communication of basic mathematics. From words to abbreviations to symbols, this book shows how math evolved to the familiar forms we use today.
Curious Beginnings
Authors: Mazur Joseph
Published: January 2018

This chapter traces the beginnings of mathematical notation. For tens of thousands of years, humans had been leaving signification marks in their surroundings, gouges on trees, footprints in hard mud, scratches in skin, and even pigments on rocks. A simple mark can represent a thought, indicate a plan, or record a historical event. Yet the most significant thing about human language and writing is that speakers and writers can produce a virtually infinite set of sounds, declarations, notions, and ideas from a finite set of marks and characters. The chapter discusses the emergence of the alphabet, counting, and mathematical writing. It also considers the discovery of traces of Sumerian number writing on clay tablets in caves from Europe to Asia, the use of Egyptian hieroglyphics, and algebra problems in the Rhind (or Ahmes) papyrus that presented simple equations without any symbols other than those used to indicate numbers.
Refuting Origins
Authors: Mazur Joseph
Published: January 2018

This chapter discusses the debate among experts over the origins of the Hindu-Arabic numerals. One such expert was the French mathematician and historian Michel Chasles, who argued that by the fifth century, France already had a decimal place-value system for computations documented in Boethius's Arithmetic, which seemed to use a multiplication table with Arabic numbers. For much of the nineteenth century, the Indian origin of positional decimal notation had been challenged. The chapter also considers the claim made by George Rusby Kaye in 1907 that the numerals and the decimal system could not have been Indian in origin and that the history of Hindu-Arabic number representation was complicated by the existence of so many forgeries of the time. Whatever the truth, it is quite likely that sometime in the fifth century, Indian numbers had come to Alexandria via a trade route through Syria before moving westward.
Symbol Infancy
Authors: Mazur Joseph
Published: January 2018

This chapter discusses the evolution of symbolic algebra that began in the first half of the sixteenth century. Algebra was not always called algebra. In the mid-fifteenth century some Italian and Latin writers called it Regula rei e census. The twentieth-century mathematician and science fiction author Eric Temple Bell allegedly remarked that in the mid-seventeenth century, mathematicians were able to introduce negative and rational exponents because symbolic manipulation liberated their thinking from the wilderness of words. The chapter considers the contributions of the Arab algebraist al-Qalasādi, who used letters of the Arabic alphabet to denote arithmetic operations and whose notation was clearly an attempt at symbolizing algebra through abbreviations, a first approximation to what we would consider true symbols. It also examines how Italy cultivated the seeds of algebra, citing in particular Gerolamo Cardano's Ars Magna.