bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Vittoria Colonna
Authors: Brundin Abigail
Published: June 2013

Vittoria Colonna (b. 1490/2–d. 1547) made her name as the author of numerous lyric poems in the Petrarchan style in 16th-century Italy. Her poetry was widely published in printed editions in her lifetime and after, as well as being set to music by many composers. She was admired as an impeccable stylist who manipulated the sonnet form with considerable agility while also demonstrating the appropriate decorum and gravity. At the same time, especially in her later spiritual verses, Colonna pushed the genre in new, innovative directions that proved very influential for successive generations of poets. Although she always claimed to have no desire to see her work circulate beyond a close group of friends, Colonna’s reputation as a literary figure was considerable by the time of her death in 1547. She began composing poetry early in life, but her renown as a Petrarchist grew in the wake of her husband’s death in 1525, when mourning became the dominant theme in her lyrics. She was promoted by Pietro Bembo, who admired her style and seriousness, and she corresponded with many of the major literary figures of her day. Her involvement with the religious controversies of the 1530s and 1540s brought a decidedly evangelical flavor to much of her mature poetic production, and was also integral to her close friendship with Michelangelo Buonarroti. Notably, Colonna was the first secular woman to achieve a high level of literary status in Italy for vernacular production, and her example opened the way for subsequent women writers to publish in all manner of genres. In this she was greatly aided both by her aristocratic status and by her widowhood, which conferred on her a degree of independence and wealth that allowed her the space to write. She resisted a second marriage and devoted her later years to religion and literature, producing some of her most striking spiritual poetry in the years before her death. She also wrote a number of prose meditations, expressing a female perspective on the reformed faith that so influenced her.
Crime and Punishment
Authors: Dean Trevor
Published: June 2013

The study of crime and criminal justice has been one of the most lively areas of the historiography of late medieval and early modern Europe since the 1980s. One of the reasons for this effervescence is that the study of crime lies on the cusp of two key historiographies: that of state formation and evolution, and that of social groups and classes outside the elite. The contribution of public prosecution and punishment of crime to state formation has been a major theme, though it has tended to be supplanted by a more user-focused approach (use of public machinery as part of private disputes). Similarly, the records of criminal trials seem to provide us with direct access to the words and actions of all kinds of subaltern groups, from laborers and artisans to servants and slaves; yet how far these words and actions have been shaped by the dictates of judicial processing remains uncertain. The historiography therefore tends to fall into one of these two categories: the history of the judicial process (the courts, their jurisdiction, forms and frequency of punishment) and the history of individuals and social groups or practices as viewed through the lens of indictments and witness testimony. As historians have explored the range of judicial sources, so the range of crimes and behaviors they have studied has expanded, but three main themes continue to dominate research in this area. Violence figures above all, but subdivided into its various types or victims (vengeance, women, children, poisoning, for example) and with verbal assault now added to physical assault. Sex crimes, though much less common, have attracted much research and discussion: chiefly, rape, sodomy, and prostitution, but also abduction, clandestine marriage, and adultery. Lastly, theft and robbery, again much less represented in the sources, have been studied either at the level of the individual (“professional”) thief or of social groups. This article surveys all these aspects across Western Europe in the period of the Renaissance and Reformation, which is here taken to be the two centuries from 1350 to 1550.
Landscape
Authors: Büttner Nils
Published: June 2013

This article concentrates primarily on landscape art and the visual depiction of natural scenery. It took a long time before the term “landscape” gained acceptance as the name of a painting genre. It first came into general use during the course of the 17th century, though as early as 1521, Albrecht Dürer had referred to his Antwerp colleague Joachim Patinir as a “gut landschafft mahler” (“good landscape painter”). The term became commonly used by 1604, when Karel von Mander used it in the prequel poem to his Schilder-Boeck (“painter-book”) for young painters, where he dedicated a whole chapter to landscape. The first landscape paintings originate from a time long before panel painting and its generic terminology were established. Among ancient wall paintings, many landscape images have survived. Furthermore, there is at least some literary evidence for the existence of antique panel paintings, for example in the work of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio; in particular the Vitruvian ideal of decorating interiors with “topia,” or evocations of places, which was postulated in his De architectura libri X (Book 7, chapter 5, Parts 1–3) exerted an important influence on early modern art. Examples can be found in the landscape paintings alleged to Studius (or Ludius), mentioned in Gaius Plinius Secundus’ work Naturalis historia (Book 35, chapters 116–117) Apart from chorographia, usually translated as “depictions of specific geographical regions or nations,” the locus amoenus, or “pleasant place” or idyll, was one of the most popular subjects in both secular and sacred contexts. From ancient times landscape images have combined esthetic pleasure with allegorical reference. Landscape paintings were used to depict geographical regions based on explorers’ interest, but could also be instrumentalized to legitimize claims of ownership, which may be the reason why landscape murals retained their unbroken popularity as a decorative element until the early modern period of privileges and power claims, landscape images have ornately decorated the palaces of the mighty from the Middle Ages to modern times. Yet landscape motifs also played an important role in the privileged imagistic media of tapestries and book and calendar illustration. Especially in the field of court art, the whole range of functional and receptional contexts noted from the era of antiquity onward remained alive. Thus, landscape imagery in panel painting remained a form of art in its own right and was in no way limited to merely forming the backgrounds of sacred history paintings.
Early Netherlandish Art
Authors: Wise Elliott D. , Rothstein Bret
Published: June 2013

The term “early Netherlandish art” here refers to objects produced, and to a considerable extent consumed, between roughly 1380 and 1520 in the Low Countries, an area that encompasses modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands. This region underwent a number of seismic cultural shifts during the “long 15th century,” including the birth of modern banking, the rise of regional and linguistic identity, the growth of a middle class, and fundamental changes in vernacular religious practice. Part and parcel of these changes was a remarkable efflorescence of visual expression motivated by shifts in economic and political identity and fueled by the readily available capital, both owned and loaned. The historical result is a visual culture that demonstrates remarkable complexity. Visual piety, for instance, betrays significant evidence of vernacular literacy (propelled by the printing press), its objects requiring responses that are both emotionally charged and thoughtful, at times even erudite. Far from simply a mechanism to extract tears from a credulous populace, religious imagery became an ever more refined and idiosyncratic tool for self-reform. Political expression seems to have become similarly complex, with civic identity becoming ever more important as conflicts between cities and their noble rulers became increasingly common. Thus, while in some ways visual expression represented a continuation of earlier practices, this efflorescence in the visual arts presented opportunities for the enterprising artist to transform how people conceived of art in the first place. It should come as no surprise, then, that artists who commanded high prices and enjoyed a large body of quite competitive patrons—including Jan van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes, the Limbourg brothers, Gerard Loyet, Claus Sluter, and Rogier van der Weyden—were both able and willing to pursue quite striking and, at times, boldly self-conscious sorts of innovation. Indeed, it is hardly surprising that such innovation should occur, given both the expansion of the market for art and the kinds of discernment that governed it.
Switzerland
Authors: Head Randolph C. , Neufeld David Y.
Published: June 2013

The Swiss Confederacy was a product of the late 14th and 15th centuries that occupied an increasingly anomalous place within the mostly Germanic Holy Roman Empire and the European political system during the 16th and 17th centuries. The evolution of its complex political and institutional fabric, which long rested on late medieval feudal and communal practices, was accompanied by the emergence of a distinctive historical mythology, centered on the figure of William Tell and the three “Urschweizer” forest cantons, that profoundly shaped understandings of the Confederacy both inside and outside its boundaries. The Confederacy garnered attention from European thinkers from time to time as a model alternative to the emerging system of absolute sovereign states—for example, during the Dutch Revolt and before the French Revolution—but otherwise remained little more than a footnote in broader histories of Europe. The extraordinary richness of Swiss source material, ranging from the early medieval holdings of abbeys such as St. Gall to the extraordinary illustrated urban chronicles of the 15th century to the remarkably intact series of administrative records of the Swiss cantons from the 16th century onward, also contributed to various historiographical movements as historians’ interests changed. Inside Switzerland, a dense tradition of local and regional history grappled with the epistemic potency of Swiss historical mythology through repeated waves of revision and restatement, beginning in the first published overview by Petermann Etterlin in 1507 (Kronica von der loblichen Eydtgnoschaft, jr harkommen und sust seltzam strittenn und geschichten [Basel, Switzerland: Mich. Furtter, 1507]) and continuing to the present. The profoundly federal nature of Swiss politics always shaped Swiss historical practice as well, however, so that even today, much of the best historical writing on Switzerland is cantonal or local in focus, even as it embodies larger historiographical currents. This article seeks to provide access to this complex historical terrain by concentrating on the political, social, and cultural history of the Swiss region in particular. Larger European movements with significant Swiss components—including Humanism, particularly in the person of Erasmus of Rotterdam; the printing industry, which flourished early on in Basel; and the artistic currents of the northern Renaissance—are not included, since they are better comprehended in their European scope. Many publications on Swiss history carry titles in German and French, and often also in Italian; here, only one title is given in most cases, depending on the origin and focus of the reference.
Sociological Approaches to Hinduism
Authors: Clementin-Ojha Catherine
Published: June 2013

The main concern of sociology of religion is to understand the role of religion in the construction of the social link as well as in the process of contemporary social change. To make Hinduism a subject for sociology, therefore, entails studying the religious beliefs, practices, and institutions of the Hindus in relation to other aspects of their society and culture. Such an approach is not altogether new. The first travelers and missionaries who came to India and, later, the British officials who ruled it collected a vast amount of information on its society and religions, providing an informal sociological description and analysis on the facts of Hinduism that should not be neglected. However, it is only from the beginning of the twentieth century that there has been a scholarly body of sociological studies of Hinduism and Hindu society. Hinduism is a complex phenomenon that requires a many-sided approach. Hence, the sociological method should be complementary to other approaches, such as history and anthropology. In fact, there is no sharp distinction between sociology of religion and social anthropology when these disciplines are applied to Indian studies. Both share many objects of study, and their methods also overlap to a certain extent. A serious sociological approach to Hinduism cannot fail to also consider the historical approach given the continuity between the present and the past in Indian society. This multifaceted approach is reflected in the scholarly works selected in this article. They bear on the two indigenous institutions around which the Hindus organize their social and religious identities: caste (jāti) and sect (sampradāya); see also the Oxford Bibliographies in Anthropology article Caste. A central feature of Indian society, the caste system is a type of social stratification inseparable from Hinduism and from its conception of hierarchy. This issue is surveyed in the Caste System as the Hindu Social Order. The many sects that compose Hinduism cannot be isolated from the society in which they originated. This issue is surveyed in Sociological Studies of Hindu Religious Groups. The discussion bears also on the way Hinduism informs mundane activities. The beliefs and practices of Hindus shape their social conditions, giving birth to new social ways of doing things. Hence, another key theme to consider is the Social Role of Hinduism. For other studies considering Hinduism both as a product of social interactions and as a force that influences social life, see Ethnographic and Sociological Definitions in the Oxford Bibliographies in Hinduism article Defining Hinduism. For the way Hinduism structures family and informs the social life of women, see the article Women in Hinduism.
Tobacco
Authors: Hahn Barbara
Published: June 2013

Tobacco is a New World plant. It first came to the notice of Europeans when Columbus made landfall in the Caribbean. His sailors remarked its use by Native Americans, and its commodity leaves became a classic example of the Columbian Exchange, in which American plants entered European trade routes (and vice versa) after 1492. Spain and Portugal introduced it to Europe and their sailors carried it around the world. It became the first staple crop successfully exported from the English colonies of North America in 1617 and shifted the colony toward plantation production using slave labor by the 18th century. British settlers around the Chesapeake Bay found that tobacco cultivation perfectly served mercantilist purposes, in which colonies existed in order to provide raw materials that the imperial metropolis could reexport or manufacture for sale around the world, leading to a favorable balance of trade. Since the 16th century, one nation after another picked up the tobacco habit; the British were lucky to find their principal crop powerfully addictive, which contributed to the nation’s imperial power. Around the world, in producing and consuming regions, both colonial and metropolitan laws regulated the trade. Manufacturing made multiple consumer goods out of agricultural products, and consumption methods included smoking tobacco—usually its leaves—in pipes and cigars, as well as chewing, snuffing, and dipping. With consumption came cultivation: French, Spanish, and Dutch empires all grew tobacco where they found mild climates, but leaf from the British Chesapeake remained popular in world markets. American independence from Britain after 1776 and the American Civil War between 1861 and 1865 did little to disrupt the dominance of the crop or the consumption of its commodities. In the 20th century, cigarettes became the principal method of consumption—a shift that accompanied the development of corporations, nearly global monopolies, that still produce most of the world’s tobacco products. Since the middle of the 20th century, public health concerns have diminished tobacco consumption in postindustrial nations, while new consumers appear in developing countries as they enter the world capitalist system and engage in industrial production.
West Indian Economic Decline
Authors: Reid Ahmed
Published: June 2013

A central feature of British West Indian economic history is the precipitous decline of the plantation system. At its peak, profitable plantation colonies such as Jamaica produced and shipped unprecedented amounts of sugar, rum, and coffee to Britain and the mainland colonies in North America. With the success of antislavery action in ending the slave trade and slavery, the forecast for the continued success and record achievements for the plantation system was not positive. Further, with the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, the plantation system could no longer rely on a steady supply of enslaved labor from Africa resulting in a significantly reduced labor force that became a common feature during this important transition to freedom. To compound matters further, the relative successes gained during the Haitian Revolution and the Napoleonic conflict dissipated because the high prices sustained during this period of expansion were replaced by a steep fall in prices: this pattern continued well into the 20th century. The final and perhaps most devastating blow during this transitional period was the emergence of alternative sources for sugar coming mainly from Brazil and Cuba, the growth of beet in Continental Europe, and the loss of protection West Indian sugar enjoyed for many centuries. The intersection of these factors resulted in the dramatic economic decline of a region that was once at the center of the Atlantic trading system. What was evident is that once profitable estates laid in ruins, and colonies that were at the forefront of Atlantic commerce were now producing less than half their highest levels.
Gender, Behavior, and Representation
Authors: Gidengil Elisabeth
Published: June 2013

Discussions of gender, behavior, and representation have been dominated by the notion of a “gender gap.” The term simply refers to a significant sex difference in political orientations or political behavior. It became a staple of political commentary in the wake of the 1980 US presidential election when a gap of eight percentage points separated women and men in their vote for Ronald Reagan, with women being much less likely than men to vote for the Republican candidate. This gap encouraged quantitatively oriented feminist scholars to start focusing on gender as a factor in understanding voting behavior and political preference. Since then, many studies have revealed that women tend to be more supportive of government intervention to help those in need, more resistant to the use of force, more “dovish” on military matters, and more tolerant of new lifestyles and changing moral values than men. Similar gaps have appeared across time and across surveys, and research done in other established Western democracies confirms that these gender gaps are a more pervasive phenomenon. Studies have also shown that women are typically less interested in politics, less knowledgeable about political matters, feel less politically efficacious than men, and are less likely to express political opinions. Yet despite these indications that women are less politically engaged, male-female differences in political activity are typically quite modest. This contrasts with the gender gap at the elite level. Concern with the lack of women in elected office has led to studies that seek to account for women’s underrepresentation and examine whether having more women in legislatures affects legislative behavior and policy outcomes. It is important to recognize that there are some potential pitfalls in pursuing research on the gender gap phenomenon, including the risk of categorical thinking, reinforcing gender stereotypes, and inviting normative comparisons. It can give rise to a female-centered perspective that risks overlooking the fact that gender influences men’s political orientations and behavior as well. Moreover, when we ask why women’s political behavior and political orientations differ from men’s—rather than the other way around—we implicitly assume a male norm. Focusing on male-female differences can also lead to a neglect of the differences among women, which often exceed those between women and men. Note that this article follows much of the literature in using the term “gender” in referring to any male-female differences and not just those that are socially constructed. Note also that the focus is mainly on established Western democracies.
Outcomes of Social Movements and Protest Activities
Authors: Giugni Marco , Bosi Lorenzo , Uba Katrin
Published: June 2013

Scholarship has left the study of the consequences of social movements in the background for a long time, focusing instead on movement emergence, characteristics, and dynamics. Since the mid-1970s, however, scholars have paid an increasing interest in how social movements and protest activities may produce change at various levels. The existing literature can be ordered according to the kind of consequence addressed. In this regard, one can roughly distinguish between political, biographical, and cultural outcomes. Political consequences are those effects of movement activities that alter in some way the movements’ political environment. Biographical consequences are effects on the life course of individuals who have participated in movement activities, effects that are at least in part due to involvement in those activities. Although their contours are less easily defined, cultural outcomes can be seen as the impact that social movements may have in altering their broader cultural environment. The bulk of the existing works have dealt with policy outcomes, which can be considered as a subcategory of political outcomes. Biographical outcomes are less numerous, but they form a substantial and quite coherent body of literature. Cultural outcomes have been studied much less often. More recently, scholars have started to investigate the effects that social movements and protest activities may have on other aspects of society, such as the economy and market-related institutions, or on other movements. In addition, one should also consider the distinction between internal and external outcomes as well as that between intended and unintended consequences. Both distinctions partly crosscut the typology of political, biographical, and cultural outcomes, although one might think of political outcomes as mostly external and more intended, biographical outcomes as mostly internal and unintended, and cultural outcomes as both internal and external and mostly unintended.
Political Development of Turkey
Authors: Özbudun Ergun
Published: June 2013

This article is divided into three main parts: the Historical Setting, the Constitutional System, and Contemporary Politics. The first part analyzes the Ottoman-Turkish political developments from the start of the reform period to the transition to a competitive party system (1789–1946). Indeed, Turkey offers an interesting combination of elements of change and continuity. On the one hand, the change from the multinational and multireligious Ottoman monarchy to a Westernizing, republican nation-state represents a sharp break with the past. On the other hand, below this surface of radical change one can observe strong elements of continuity, such as an authoritarian and statist political culture that prioritizes the “sublime interests of the state” (raison d’état) over individual rights and liberties. It is also true that the main center-periphery cleavage in contemporary Turkish politics had its roots in the Ottoman past. The center-periphery cleavage in the Turkish context denotes the cleavage between the central military and bureaucratic state elites, on the one hand, and all social segments that remain outside this center, on the other. The second part focuses on the present constitutional system, with references to earlier constitutional developments. It will be observed that none of the Ottoman and the republican constitutions, with the partial exception of that of 1921, were made by a freely elected and broadly representative constituent or legislative assembly through a process of genuine deliberations and compromises. Consequently, they all lacked sufficient democratic legitimacy. The third part analyzes various aspects of contemporary Turkish politics, from the democratic transition in the mid-1940s up to the present time. One of the most striking facts about contemporary Turkish politics is that, despite nearly seventy years of multi-party competitive politics, Turkey has not yet been able to fully consolidate its democratic system and, since 2013, it has been experiencing a drift toward authoritarianism. This part also deals with such challenges as the rise of political Islam and of Kurdish nationalism.
Voter Turnout
Authors: Blais André , Anduiza Eva
Published: June 2013

Participating in elections is an essential component of democracy: citizens in democratic political systems are expected to be able to vote and to choose their representatives. Through their vote, either directly in presidential elections or indirectly in parliamentary elections, citizens also select among competing government alternatives. Turnout is thus a central topic in politics. Although turnout is the most widespread form of political participation, many people do not vote. Moreover, turnout varies substantially over time and across types of elections within a country as well as across countries. Who votes and under what conditions people are more likely to turn out are central questions in this literature. Explanations for turnout variation have focused both on individual characteristics (such as age, education, or political attitudes) and contextual features (such as the effect of compulsory voting, electoral systems, or party competition). Far less research has been devoted to the consequences of electoral turnout.
Religion, Politics, and Civic Engagement in the United States
Authors: Grant J. Tobin
Published: June 2013

Though church and state are constitutionally separated, religion and politics are often intertwined. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his classic Democracy in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), the nation is both highly religious and unapologetically democratic. Some of the most effective political movements in the US political development included the active involvement of churches and religious communities. One reason is that churches and other religious communities in the United States often encourage civic engagement. Civic engagement is a broad concept that includes any activity aimed at changing society, government, or policy. Education and psychology often focus on civic activities such as volunteering or participating in a nonprofit organization. Political science and sociology often use the term “civic engagement” more narrowly to mean “political participation.” This would include activities whose aim is to affect political outcomes. Political participation includes voting, persuading others to vote, campaign contributions, working for a campaign, contacting or lobbying public officials, and protesting. A consistent empirical finding in the study of religion and civic life is that those who are involved in religion are more likely to be more civically engaged as voters, volunteers, and activists. Churches and other religious communities can become active as organizations. They can also increase the civic engagement of their adherents by mobilizing them, providing the skills to participate, or fostering democratic values. Political parties and candidates target religious voters to bring them into the political process. Studies of religion and civic engagement continue to examine the many ways religion affects civic engagement in the United States.
The Historiography of Twentieth-Century American Conservatism
Authors: Kimmage Michael
Published: June 2013

After a period of relative neglect, the study of postwar American conservatism has recently come to preoccupy historians of the United States. It now ranks among the liveliest subjects in the entire field of 20th-century US history. The historiography breaks into four phases. In an early phase, from the 1950s through the 1970s, conservatism being written into the historical narrative was an act of scholarly will at a time when liberalism and radicalism were much closer to the historiographical mainstream. In a second phase, in the 1970s and 1980s, conservatism was deemed a major historical force in modern America and was characterized as a “backlash” against the New Deal, the civil rights movement, the Great Society, the feminist movement, etc. In a third phase, conservatism was presented as more active than reactive. according to these historians, ideas that had crystallized in the 1950s came into their own politically in the 1980s, in the Reagan era. During the fourth and (for the time being) final phase, accent has fallen on the varieties of American conservatism and on its hybrid nature, absorbing and interacting with trends that could be characterized as liberal or radical. In this article, the relevant historiography is separated into seven branches (arranged alphabetically): anticommunism, the conservative movement, foreign policy, libertarianism, media, race-class-gender, and traditionalism. It has been argued that anticommunism, traditionalism, and libertarianism were fused into a “modern” American conservatism, that disparate ideas were fashioned into a workable ideology, and that this ideology was the tool Reagan used to remake American politics. The classic formulation of this argument is The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 (Nash 2006 cited under Monographs), to which there are many revisionist alternatives. Media concerns the changing role of communication, from the intellectual magazines of the 1950s to talk radio in the 1990s, and beyond. Foreign policy encompasses conservative debate on the ideals and practice of American foreign policy, moving among isolationism, realism, and neoconservatism. In the future, scholars will work through other arguments and narratives involving these branches, and new branches will surely be added.
Cosmopolitan Political Thought
Authors: Godrej Farah
Published: June 2013

Cosmopolitan political thought is an emerging subfield of political theory. It is motivated by a turn beyond studying the texts and ideas of the traditional Western canon and also by reflections on what kinds of approaches should characterize such study. It emerges from, yet distinguishes itself from, two other subfields: cosmopolitanism and comparative political theory. It acknowledges that theorizing beyond Western resources is crucial, but it suggests that the more important question is a methodological one. That is, it is not simply about the content of which ideas and texts are studied, but also about how they are studied and what assumptions are revealed by a given way of approaching non-Western resources. Cosmopolitanism traces the emergence of its ideas to the ancient Greek and Roman traditions of Stoicism, calling for recognizing the community of rational beings worldwide as the source of the most fundamental moral and social obligations. Contemporary cosmopolitanisms apply this idea to a diversity of themes and debates, ranging from questions of nationalism and global distributive justice to international law, human rights, global democracy, climate change, and just war theory. Comparative political theory, meanwhile, is a subfield of political theory that emerged to focus on the study of political thought from civilizations outside the West. These studies include, among others, histories of political thought within certain non-Western traditions (such as the Indic, Islamic, Chinese, African, or Latin American ones), the history of particular concepts within civilizations, conceptual comparison across civilizations, and the treatment of interpretive or commentarial debates pertaining to certain concepts or problems within certain traditions. Cosmopolitanism raises the question of broadening the scope of political questions to the global, but it privileges the West and suggests that its intellectual heritage contains resources for such theorizing. Comparative political theory addresses non-Western texts and ideas, but it remains silent on which approaches would constitute a more cosmopolitan evolution in political theory’s self-understanding. Cosmopolitan political thought moves beyond both these discourses, engaging in methodological reflection about how the tasks and purposes of political theorizing might be reconceived so that the very practices of theorizing might become more cosmopolitan. Among other things, it argues that any study of non-Western thought must proceed from within, from a perspective internal to the tradition and its central texts, preoccupations, ideas, and concerns. Thus, it emphasizes detailed study of, and immersion within, any important civilizational intellectual tradition as the prerequisite for any subsequent engagement with such ideas. The study of works within particular civilizations serves to further a more cosmopolitan mode of political theorizing rather than simply serving as an artifact of regionally specific interest.
Hannah Arendt
Authors: Maloney Steven
Published: June 2013

Hannah Arendt (b. 1906–d. 1975) was a singular political theorist and a voracious reader. Arendt’s works show traces of influence from a diverse cross-section of political writers. Her works are noted for their similarities to the civic republic tradition, existential philosophy, critical theory, and pragmatism, to name a few. Despite these influences, her work is difficult to pigeonhole into any single category. Her academic voice and theoretical positions also changed over time. Indeed, her work can be compared to that of a painter who composes sketches and studies to work out the contours of form and method before creating a major work. Arendt’s diverse “sketches and studies,” as well as the breadth of her references and influences, have resulted in divergent interpretations of her work from academics and readers alike.
Failed and Weak States in Theory and Practice
Authors: Rotberg Robert I.
Published: June 2013

A failed state is a country with a government that cannot or will not deliver essential political goods (public services) to its citizens. The state, usually not yet a nation-state, may hold a seat in the United Nations and function as a sovereign entity in regional and world politics, but so far as most of its people are concerned, the state fails them by its inability to perform state functions adequately. Thus, failed states are those political entities in international politics that supply deficient qualities and quantities of political goods and, simultaneously, no longer exercise a monopoly of violence within their territories.
Politics of South Africa
Authors: Lodge Tom
Published: June 2013

Modern South African politics is organized around liberal democratic institutions. Sophisticated political parties compete in properly administered elections. A bill of rights enforced through a constitutional court checks executive power. Strong trade unions, vigorous civil society, and a free press each enliven political life. Optimism about South Africa’s future needs qualification, though. One political party, the African National Congress, predominates. Through its use of patronage within the bureaucracy, boundaries that should separate party concerns from public interest have become blurred. Patronage has promoted inefficiencies, especially obvious in education, public health, and municipal administration. Venality has become routine in public contracting and in secret donations to political parties. Sharp social inequality and high levels of poverty persist despite heavy expenditure on social grants. South Africa’s crime rates and its level of HIV-AIDS infection also point to severe social stresses. The virtues and the shortcomings of this political regime reflect its history. Until 1994, discriminatory laws disenfranchised most South Africans. Under apartheid and earlier segregationist orders instituted by white settlers, Bantu-language-speaking “Africans,” about 80 percent of the population in 1990, were excluded from most kinds of citizenship. Their mobility was governed by “pass laws” and restrictions on their urbanization, which began to be developed in the late 19th century. From 1948, “apartheid” controls imposed by Afrikaner nationalist administrations attempted to ensure that as few Africans as possible should become permanently urbanized. Instead, policymakers hoped the economy would depend on migrant workers maintaining their families in designated ethnic “homelands.” The details of modern South African politics were shaped by the bargaining that accompanied the 1994 constitutional settlement. The integrity of South African elections is also the legacy of the procedural routines that governed white party politics between 1910 and 1994. The organizations that predominate in today’s political life have long lineages. Critical media, strong trade unions, and lively associational life also draw on well-established institutions often dating back decades. More negatively, one-party authoritarianism is a strongly entrenched feature of South African politics. It is a product of racially segmental nationalism still evident in voting behavior and the demotic political language used by political parties to their core supporters. Corruption is partly attributable to leftover habits of patrimonial rule that apartheid helped to preserve in ethnic homelands. Poverty and social inequality were institutionalized by apartheid. In short, historical predispositions exercise profound and competitive influences over South Africa’s modern political trajectory.
Genocide
Authors: Shaw Martin
Published: June 2013

Genocide is now understood as a major type of collective violence, with a distinctive place in the spectrum of political violence, armed conflict, and war, of which it is usually seen as a part. However the idea of genocide dates only from the 1940s, when in the space of four years after its introduction (in a critique of Nazi occupation policies during the Second World War), it became the subject of a major international convention. The concept quickly become central to political and cultural discourses about violence, but the developed academic study of the phenomenon took some decades to develop, before finally taking off around the end of the Cold War. The rapidly expanding field is interdisciplinary, with major contributions from historians, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, legal scholars, and others. It has highly contested parameters, including the definition of the phenomenon, the universe of cases, the appropriate explanatory frameworks, and so on. It is also considerably politicized, with significant disagreements over how the academic study of genocide should be related to the development of international policies for its prevention. The field’s growth came initially through the extension of understandings of the Nazi genocide of the Jews, which by the late 20th century was known as “the Holocaust,” to other cases, both historic (such as the Ottoman extermination of the Armenians) and contemporary (such as the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides). However, it has since expanded to consider phenomena quite different from the Holocaust in scale and form, such as the diverse and long-drawn-out pattern of genocide during European colonization of the non-Western world. At the same time, the transformations of political violence and war in the post–Cold War world have led to new divergences over the applicability of the genocide idea to recent events. Recent cases, such as the former Yugoslavia, have raised questions about the relationships of population removal and sexual violence to genocide. Because of these tensions, the growth of the field has been accompanied by theoretical, paradigm, and political differences. This bibliography attempts to capture these features of a fast-moving academic field and to provide the reader with a way to explore its essential literature.
Motherhood
Authors: Geist Claudia , Gull Bethany
Published: June 2013

Defining the meaning of motherhood is more complex than once thought. Due to technological and legal changes there is more and more variation among mothers with respect to age, marital status, and sexual orientation. Adoption has long shown that social motherhood is not contingent on giving birth, and surrogacy and in vitro fertilization now create a possible distinction between the gestational mother and the genetic mother. As a result, the very definition of who is a mother can be contentious. The very process of conception, pregnancy, and birthing has undergone much transition, with much greater involvement of medical professionals. The meanings associated with motherhood and motherhood practices vary across historical, sociocultural, and political contexts. Despite the great variation, even within specific countries at one point in time in the practices of motherhood, discourses about what exactly constitutes “good” mothering and who should and should not mother exist. Those at the “frontier” of motherhood, such as queer mothers, continue to shape and reshape the very concept of motherhood and mothering. For many mothers this means they are caught between cultural expectations on how to mother and the realities of their everyday life: for example, breastfeeding practices and childcare arrangements. Although rates of mothers’ labor-force participation are high or increasing in many countries, mothers still face the primary burden of arranging, managing, and even financing childcare solutions for their children; work-family conflict remains a problem for mothers much more so than for fathers. Polices designed to ease the conflict between employment and motherhood, both those implemented by governments and those created by employers, vary greatly across countries, which reemphasizes the context dependency of the meaning of motherhood for women’s lives. Many aspects of research on motherhood suggest that motherhood, and especially the link between motherhood and employment continues to be an important component of persistent gender inequality. In addition to contributing to inequalities between men and women, and between women within any given society, motherhood also contributes to global inequality (through the transnational market for care workers), international adoptions, and international surrogacy.
Conversation Analysis
Authors: Emmison Michael
Published: June 2013

Conversation analysis (hereafter CA) is a rigorously empirical approach to the investigation of social action—or “talk-in-interaction,” to employ the term which has been adopted as the preferred description of the field—which has emerged in the last five decades as the distinctive research program within the wider ethnomethodological perspective. The core premise of CA is that the topic of social interaction per se has been virtually ignored by mainstream social science disciplines and that through the detailed inspection of transcriptions of recordings of conduct in naturally occurring social settings we are able to appreciate the complex forms of order and organization which constitute this bedrock of spoken interaction—the substrate upon which all the institutions of society inescapably depend. The primary aim of CA is to document this order and the systematic methods or practices which human actors rely upon to carry out their everyday social lives. As with its progenitor, ethnomethodology, it is difficult to apply standard scientific categories—theory, method, research design, etc.—to CA. Rather than pursue the testing of hypotheses derived from a priori theorizing, CA favors a more inductive approach to theory building based on the close inspection of actual sequences of conduct. By the same token, although CA does have methodological principles and procedures it is not something that can be utilized in a decontextualized fashion as, for example, an alternative to traditional thematic techniques for analyzing the content of verbal data such as recorded interviews. Since its emergence in the mid-1960s, there have been a number of developments in its core foci. Although the organization of ordinary or mundane conversational interaction still continues to receive scholarly attention, a significant amount of research activity is now undertaken into the talk which transpires in institutional or work-related settings. In addition, many commentators now identify two strands within CA. The first, which has become consolidated as the principal mode of CA research, is concerned with the structural organization of talk and the actions which particular sequences of turns accomplish. The second strand deals with the way descriptions of the social world are made in talk and the categories and commonsense knowledge which are constitutive parts of this process (see Membership Categorization Analysis). Although prominent in the early CA writings, this strand is now less conspicuous. CA is now firmly established within the social sciences. Although its roots are in sociology, the CA approach now informs a great deal of the research work in cognate fields such as linguistics, communication, anthropology, social psychology, education and child development, human-computer interaction, counseling, and psychotherapy.
Gender and Work
Authors: Wharton Amy
Published: June 2013

Gender operates at all levels of social life and is deeply embedded in how work is organized, rewarded, and experienced. The sociological study of gender and work emerged during the 1960s and 1970s, as women’s labor force participation rates rose and as the Women’s Movement began calling attention to gender inequality at home and on the job. The field has evolved over time; conceptual frameworks have expanded and empirical foci have shifted in response to economic and societal changes. Early research focused primarily on workers and sought to determine whether and how men and women differ in their work attitudes and behavior. Over time, researchers have paid more attention to the social relations of work. Studies here focus on how the structure and culture of the workplace shape men’s and women’s social interactions and behavior. A more recent stream of literature in the gender and work area views gender as embedded within work structures and organizations. In this view, gender is not just an attribute that people bring with them to the job, but is built into the workplace itself. The development of new conceptual frameworks has been accompanied by new issues and topics. For example, the rise of the highly feminized service sector prompted an interest in the distinctive characteristics of these jobs. As dual-earner families became the norm, researchers increased attention to the ways that gender shapes work-family relations. Other topics, such as those related to gender discrimination and inequality, have been of interest to gender and work scholars since the field’s emergence in the 1960s.