bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
A case of successful surgical management of primary retroperitoneal mucinous cystadenoma
Authors: Afzal Zeeshan , Stupalkowska Weronika , Mahler-Araujo Maria B , Bowden David , Davies Richard J
Published: February 2020

Primary retroperitoneal mucinous cystadenoma (PRMC) is a rare tumour. It was first reported in 1965, and since then, less than 100 cases have been reported. It is cystic in nature and most commonly affects the female population. It becomes symptomatic in later stages due to its mass effect, making the diagnosis challenging in its early asymptomatic stage. We report a case of a 32-year-old female who presented with abdominal pain and a mass in left iliac fossa. Diagnostic imaging revealed a large cystic lesion in retroperitoneum. A midline laparotomy was performed, and a complete surgical excision was accomplished without any spillage. Surgical histology confirmed the diagnosis of PRMC. The patient was discharged on postoperative day 2. There was no evidence of tumour recurrence on repeat imaging at 90-day follow-up. Surgical approach, with complete resection and without any spillage, remains the most effective and appropriate treatment for this tumour.
Road salt impact on soil electrical conductivity across an urban landscape
Authors: Shannon Thomas P , Ahler Sam J , Mathers Alex , Ziter Carly D , Dugan Hilary A
Published: February 2020

Road salt application is a necessary component of winter road maintenance but comes with an environmental cost. Salts are transported via stormwater drainage or overland and soil throughflow to surface waterbodies, where excess ions create unfavorable or even uninhabitable conditions for freshwater organisms. Soils may retain salts during the process of overland and subsurface flow, thus acting as reservoirs that slow the transport of salt into freshwaters. Understanding the capacity and consistency of anthropogenic salt storage in urban soils may allow us to discover when and where deicing salt applications are most harmful. This article investigates the degree to which soils across a heterogeneous urban landscape retain salts. We measured the electrical conductivity (EC) of soils in an urban setting. Land covers included forests, grasslands, open spaces, low- and medium-density developments and along roadsides. We found that across land-cover types, soil carbon and porosity were correlated to EC in late summer, which suggests that pore space is an important and long-lasting reservoir for salt. In addition, more developed areas, had higher mean soil EC and greater EC variability within and between sites, with 75% of overall variance occurring within individual sites. We hypothesize that this within-site heterogeneity is driven by anthropogenic modifications to salt inputs and soil characteristics. The high EC variance in highly developed urban soils is a previously undiscussed phenomenon and highlights the fine-scale complexity of heterogeneous urban landscapes and the need for high-resolution sampling to accurately characterize urban ecosystems.
Self-Reported Knee Pain Does Not Impact Physical Training Negatively in Conscripts
Authors: Rips Leho , Rahu Madis , Kuik Rein , Varblane Ahti , Olveti Indrek , Ööpik Vahur , Mölder Hanno , Timpmann Saima , Tammaru Marika , Toom Alar , Kartus Jüri-Toomas , Gapeyeva Helena
Published: February 2020

Introduction

Despite the great number of investigations on the effects of injuries during military service, there is limited information available on the use of self-reported instruments. This study evaluated self-reported knee pain (KP) and its effect on physical performance during military service in the Estonian Defense Forces.

Material and Methods

Ninety-five male conscripts aged 19–25 years were divided into two study groups based on the occurrence of KP or not. Self-reported KP and function according to the Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) were measured. Physical fitness level was scored using the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT). KOOS and APFT were measured in the beginning and at the end of the 6-month period of military service.

Results

Significant differences in favor of the group without KP (P < 0.001) were found for all subgroups of the KOOS. In spite of KP, the physical condition improved significantly (P < 0.001) in both study groups as measured with both the APFT test (22.2% increase) and running time (10.3% decrease).

Conclusion

In conclusion, self-reported KP and limited function according to KOOS did not hinder the improvement of physical condition and running speed as assessed by APFT in Estonian conscripts.
Monitoring a methanol maser flare associated with the massive star-forming region G358.93–0.03
Authors: Volvach A E , Volvach L N , Larionov M G , MacLeod G C , van den Heever S P , Sugiyama K
Published: February 2020

We report the earliest detection of the 19.967-GHz [transition 21–30E (t = 0)] methanol maser associated with the massive star-forming region G358.93–0.03. The flare was detectable from 2019 January 23 to March 5, for only 44 d. It turned out to be the most powerful 19.967-GHz maser in the Galaxy in the entire history of observations, taking into account the 104-Jy flux from it on the Earth’s surface and the distance to the source, 6.75 kpc. The 19.967-GHz maser flared contemporaneously with the first of two flares detected in associated 20.971-GHz methanol masers. We estimated that the ratio of flux densities between these two transitions is F20.971/F19.967 = 14 ± 4, increasing to >520 in the second flare. We discuss the differences between the two flares in the 20.971-GHz methanol masers and the consequence thereof.
Other Roman Writers
Authors: Jillions John A.
Published: February 2020

Other Roman writers add breadth to the range of attitudes toward divine guidance. Propertius became more pious toward the end of his life, but his early poems are cynical and depict Jupiter as self-centered, spiteful, and deaf to prayer. Even so he mentions numerous forms of divination: astrology, dreams, omens, necromancy, casting lots, throwing dice, offering incense at household shrines. Ovid prefers “simple truth” and rails against popular religion and morality in The Art of Love and Metamorphoses. Livy detested the immorality and cynicism of the new generation represented by Ovid and the Epicurean Petronius, who in Satyricon was biting in his mockery of merchant-class pieties. But in his History of Rome Livy believes more in the tradition of Rome than in poetic stories of divine guidance. Lucan too largely dismisses divine interventions in history yet has a warm attitude toward Delphi’s holiness and accessibility.
The Stoic Philosopher Posidonius
Authors: Jillions John A.
Published: February 2020

Posidonius of Apamea (c. 135–c. 50/51 bce) was the thinker most influential in shaping the religious Stoicism that dominated the Greco-Roman world in the first century ce. He was a Greek philosopher teaching in Rome, and a mark of his influence was that his student Cicero later felt obliged to write a number of extended works debunking the thought of his teacher. Posidonius’s views were largely shaped by his reading of Plato (and to some extent Aristotle). His central affirmation is that communion and “sympathy” between the divine and created worlds is constant and permanent. This “cosmic sympathy” meant that any movement in one part of the universe affected others, like touching a cosmic mobile, thus making it possible to read divine signs in nature. Likewise, a spiritual force in every human soul—one’s daimon, like the famous daimon of Socrates—makes possible communion with the divine in numerous ways, especially through dreams.
The Jewish Community
Authors: Jillions John A.
Published: February 2020

This chapter introduces Jewish approaches to divine guidance. Corinth was a leading community of the Jewish diaspora and maintained close connections with Jews elsewhere, especially in Jerusalem and Rome. There was a variety of “Judaisms” in this period, but their common focus was on the written Torah and the oral tradition of interpretation. God’s guidance is therefore closely linked to the community’s understanding of how God speaks over time through the Hebrew Bible and the oral law. Most Jews did not see the scriptures as having a life independent of the community’s inspired guidance in the present. This allowed for a degree of fluidity and changing interpretation, as witnessed in the Greek Septuagint and the books of mixed canonical status that came to be known as the Apocrypha. Of these, Tobit, Judith, and Susanna give particular insight into Jewish understanding of divine guidance.
Epilogue
Authors: Delgado Melvin
Published: February 2020

This epilogue will highlight concerns that I and countless others have about where our nation is and is going regarding social justice. There is also a measure of hope by identifying the challenges before us, and identifying them is an essential step in addressing them as a profession. Only when there is a coming together of collective imagination with collective consciousness can we make significant progress as a nation and a profession. The nation is in the midst of a major political crisis that has immediate and far-reaching consequences for significant segments of its population, with consequences that will be felt worldwide and particularly in our own hemisphere. Questioning the legal system, including the legitimacy of judges when they do not agree with a presidential directive, is not your typical “law and order” stance in a democracy, but one more associated with totalitarian regimes.
Fatal Attraction
Authors: Furman Nelly
Published: February 2020

Simply summarized the plot of Georges Bizet’s Carmen is that of a crime of passion. This banal plot does not by itself account for the extraordinary international success of the story in different media. The themes that explain the tragic end are imbedded in the libretto. Through a textual and structural analysis of the libretto, the themes of love, passion, gender, freedom, possessiveness, and responsibility, as well as the importance of language in human relations are given new emphasis. The chapter concludes with a discussion of personal trauma and political issues that may account for Georges Bizet’s interest in bringing this story to the operatic stage in 1870.
Social Geographies of Bombay’s Sex Trade, 1880–1920
Authors: Tambe Ashwini
Published: February 2020

This chapter explores the relationship between spatial and social stratification in Bombay, focusing on the history of Kamathipura. With its heterogeneous racial makeup, this officially sanctioned red light zone was an exception to the orderly delineation of European and Indian spaces in the colonial city of Bombay. What did it mean that differently hailed social groups lived side by side in the same set of streets? Drawing on Jim Masselos’s call to examine, at a granular level, how social distinctions were drawn and maintained in proximity, this chapter focuses on struggles between Europeans and Indians to claim specific streets in Kamathipura. It recounts the history of migration of European and Indian sex workers and the conflicts that intensified in the early 1900s as the population of the city grew. It also reflects on how racial hierarchies were experienced by onlookers: even though Indian and European brothel workers lived side by side, social stratification was observed in ways that were felt deeply; class and caste enacted a clear grammar of difference. The story of how this part of Bombay emerged as the iconic center of its sex trade is a reminder of how intense social stratification can be experienced amidst the dense sharing of public space.
‘A Powerful Weapon for the Employers’?
Authors: Caru Vanessa
Published: February 2020

In the aftermath of the First World War, Bombay witnessed workers’ upsurges on an unprecedented scale. In order to cope with this new situation, the colonial authorities and the millowners alternated between repression and acclimation of methods, which had proven to be successful in England to abate social unrest. Building quarters to house the workers was one of them.
This chapter begins by setting colonial intervention in its wider context, questioning the very limited role private employers played in the field of workers’ housing. It then studies how intervention of the authorities had unexpected effects that totally contradicted the initial aim of their building programed, which was to regulate workers’ unrest. It rather encouraged the development of solidarities that opened up new spaces of politicization and arenas of struggle.
Civil Disobedience and the City
Authors: Raman Robert Rahman
Published: February 2020

This essay examines the interaction between different sections of Bombay’s working population and the Indian National Congress during the first two years of the Civil Disobedience movement. It looks at this engagement primarily through the vernacular archives, and explores the divergent, sometimes conflicting, trends in the articulations of nationalism in the Civil Disobedience movement and the Congress. This essay draws upon Masselos’ work and focuses on the spatial templates of the Civil Disobedience movement. It maps the relationship between the functioning of the local units of the Congress and the political infrastructure of the city’s mill districts. It argues that there was a co-relation between their mobilization practices in the city’s working-class neighborhoods and their attempt to appropriate social spaces.
The Politics of Business
Authors: Khan Danish
Published: February 2020

This essay examines the tenure of the Congress ministry (1937-39) in Bombay and argues that it allowed the Muslim League to define its contours of opposition in terms of economic policies, and position itself as a pro-business, urban grouping. The two factors that shaped this were the Congress’s decision to introduce Prohibition and levy urban property tax, sales tax on cloth and petrol; and the emergence of a loose Muslim League-led, anti-Congress coalition in Bombay politics that transcended religious and social barriers. The Bombay Assembly and Municipal Corporation witnessed the coming together of Parsi, Hindu and Muslim merchants and landlords. These factors played within the spectrum of the perceived rural turn taken by the Congress to the detriment of urban, business interests.
The Gulf Monarchies Face the Twenty-First Century
Authors: Marina  , Ottaway David
Published: February 2020

The six Gulf monarchies form a distinct bloc within the Arab world. Saudi Arabia seeks to dominate it and is presently entangled in a struggle for regional hegemony with Iran. The 2011 uprisings failed to overturn any of the monarchies,which all became acutely aware of the threat that these uprisings posed, andthen chose to accelerate reforms in response. Five of the Gulf countries have tiny indigenous populations, most outnumbered by foreign workers. They also haveenormous oil or gas wealth andambitious 2030 visions for development. In addition, the five all face the double challenge of having an expansionist Iran and domineering Saudi Arabia as neighbors. Since independence from Britain in 1971, they have dedicated themselves, several with notable success, to establishing modern states, national identities and a global stature. Meanwhile, under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi kingdom is finally undergoing radical social and economic changes in the midst of unprecedented political repression and major resistance to the Saudi bid for regional primacy from both Iran and other increasingly independent-minded Gulf monarchies.In addition, U.S.-Saudi relations, the bedrock of Saudi stability and security, are deteriorating.
China’s Global Governance Interactions
Authors: Morton Katherine
Published: February 2020

In recent years the Chinese approach toward global governance has shifted beyond a traditional defensive stance and toward more active engagement. This new alignment in Chinese foreign policy suggests a growing confidence on the part of the CCP leadership in China’s domestic governing arrangements as well as its capacity to lead by example in international affairs. New shifts in Chinese discourses, diplomacy, and responses to key global challenges seem to reflect a new global leadership ambition on the part of the Xi Jinping administration. China’s deepening engagement in global governance is a reflection of its rising power and international status as well as a long-standing aspiration to contribute toward the making of international order on its own terms.
China’s Relations with Asia
Authors: Yahuda Michael
Published: February 2020

No region in the world is more important to China than Asia. The future of China’s diplomacy in the potentially volatile region of East Asia will involve a series of interrelated challenges. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, Beijing did well to manage these challenges, but entering the second decade its diplomacy has stumbled as its relations with several key players—most notably Japan, South Korea, and the United States—have all encountered new strains. China’s position in Southeast Asia is also mixed—it has cultivated a few client states (Cambodia and Myanmar), but its relations with the majority of Southeast Asian countries is mixed. Its position among the main southwest Pacific nations—Australia and New Zealand—is also mixed and strained. Similarly, Beijing has also encountered difficult relations with India and other South Asian states.
China’s Relations with Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East
Authors: Eisenman Joshua , Heginbotham Eric
Published: February 2020

Over the last two decades, developing countries have become central to China’s increasingly ambitious foreign policy makers. This chapter begins by explaining China’s conceptualization of the developing world and its position in Beijing’s geostrategy. After describing the three characteristics of China’s approach—asymmetry, comprehensiveness, and its interlocking structure—the chapter then explains the various economic, political, and security policy tools that comprise it. China works to bring the separate strands of its foreign policy together in a comprehensive whole and to build synergies between component parts. Ultimately, the chapter concludes that Beijing’s primary objectives—regime survival and advancing China’s position in an increasingly multipolar world—are probably insufficient to engender widespread political support among developing countries for a China-led world order.
Introduction
Authors: Pitts Andrea J. , Medina José
Published: February 2020

This chapter provides an introduction to the volume by outlining the structure of the collection, as well as the main content, themes, and approaches employed in the essays. The book is divided into the four following sections: “Decolonial Movidas: Gender, Community, and Liberation,” “Making Feminist Selves: Self-Authority, Affect, and Narrativity,” “Knowing Otherwise: Language, Translation, and Alternative Consciousness,” and “Aesthetic Longings: Latina Styles, Bodily Vulnerability, and Queer Desires.” Each section highlights a diverse range of issues and methods addressed by Latinx feminists, as well as an array of Latinx authors whose work has been pivotal in shaping the area of study.
Revisiting Gender
Authors: Lugones María
Published: February 2020

This chapter provides an analysis of the work of Rita Segato and María Lugones’s assessment of Segato’s approach to gender and questions of decoloniality. The chapter examines the concepts of “patriarchy” and “gender” from within several critical paradigms among communities of color, including, specifically, indigenous and Afro-descendant communities within Abya Yala (a Puna term for the geographic lands of the Americas). Lugones proposes that terms of analysis such as “patriarchy” and “gender” undermine the complexity of the relations of power constituted in and through coloniality, including specifically the racialization of gendered terms. European women were racialized, but colonized females were not. Retaining the use of gender as a category of analysis thereby leaves decolonial activists and scholars working toward coalitional struggle with indigenous and Afro-descedent communities unable to sufficiently affirm the embodied, erotic, intersubjective, and otherwise distinct modes of communal relations not bound by dimorphic gender categories that continue to exist among these communities. The conclusion of the chapter then traces Lugones’s contributions to decolonial feminism, responding to the concerns she raises in the previous sections.
Crossroads and In-Between Spaces
Authors: Schutte Ofelia
Published: February 2020

The essay focuses on Gloria Anzaldúa’s narrative of overcoming shame in Borderlands/La Frontera. It addresses the question of coming to terms with multiple conditions of oppression obstructing the creative agency of radical Latina subjects. The discussion occurs along two intersecting planes: (1) the existential question of self-knowledge as the self undergoes the difficult process of identifying and releasing the weight of past oppressions and (2) the situated character of Anzaldúa’s Chicana/Latina condition in light of the heteronormative and epistemic constraints she faces as a Latina writer whose work is intimately interlinked with her sense of self. Anzaldúa’s message of overcoming shame is shown to have some affinities with Friedrich Nietzsche’s reflections on freedom from shame as the ultimate seal of liberation. Considered as Anzaldúa’s companion in a journey in self-overcoming at the crossroads of indigenous and Chicana/Tejana cultures, her new mestiza takes on a new significance.
“Remaking Human Being”
Authors: Moya Paula M. L.
Published: February 2020

In “Remaking Human Being,” the author enumerates the decolonial elements of Helena María Viramontes’s novel Their Dogs Come with Them to illustrate the importance of literature and literary criticism for a decolonial project. After defining decoloniality, the essay shows that Viramontes structures her narrative and personifies her characters to reveal the socioeconomic and ideological forces that keep Latinx and other people of color in conditions of subordination. Moreover, Viramontes’s pluralized and digressive narrative structure, together with a faithful witnessing of her characters’ daily actions and embodied subjectivities, demonstrates the importance for social justice projects of cultivating multiple and diverse perspectives on any given event. By enabling her characters—and her readers—to develop a kaleidoscopic consciousness, Viramontes effectively provides the imaginative resources to facilitate our ability to remake ourselves and their world(s) we share.
Latin America, Decoloniality, and Translation
Authors: Costa Claudia de Lima
Published: February 2020

This chapter reflects on the feminist decolonial turn in Latin America by taking as its point of departure the debates on the coloniality of power and of gender. It analyzes how decolonial feminisms might unsettle hegemonic feminisms through the practice of translation—based not only on a linguistic paradigm, but more importantly, on an ontological one. In applying the notion of translation as equivocation, derived from Amerindian perspectivism, to discussions of the coloniality of gender, this chapter explores how some Latin American feminists were enacting a decolonial politics avant la lettre. It argues that translation becomes a key element in forging alternative feminist decolonial epistemologies, as well as a practice enabling partial connections among the various feminist formations in the Americas.
Vulnerable Bodies
Authors: Minich Julie Avril
Published: February 2020

This essay examines how the Chicana feminist muralist Juana Alicia fosters environmental justice activism that values vulnerable lives in her two most famous murals, both painted at Twenty-Fourth and York Streets in San Francisco’s Mission District: Las Lechugueras (1983) and La Llorona’s Sacred Waters (2004). It explores how Juana Alicia gives visual form to an environmental ethics that prompts a politics of inclusion, equitable resource distribution, and bodily diversity. Juana Alicia’s murals remind us what antiracist, feminist, disability, environmental, and other social justice movements share: an investment in radical interdependence between different kinds of bodies and beings. They depict disabilities created by environmental hazards (including pollution, pesticide poisoning, and the privatization of water) without reducing disability to tragedy, prompting viewers to envision a world in which working-class communities of color are not forced to bear the brunt of environmental risk.
Hapoel Tel Aviv and Israeli Liberal Secularism
Authors: Sorek Tamir
Published: February 2020

This chapter analyzes the rhetoric of hardcore Hapoel Tel Aviv (Israel) football and basketball fans, and quantitatively examines the many people who sympathize with various teams. Our study reveals that stadium rhetoric is actually an expression of fundamental struggles between competing definitions of Israeliness. The rhetoric of Hapoel fans in the realm of Israeli sport is an uncommon combination of socialism, anti-nationalism and anti-racism. However, rather contradictorily, this rhetoric also lined with violence, sexism, classism, and Germanophobia. In addition, hardcore Hapoel fans use terminology associated with the Holocaust in a provocative manner. This rhetoric is partly related to the demographic of both the hardcore fans and the wider circle of sympathizers who tend to be mostly middle class and far more secular than the fans of other teams. It is argued that the transgressive rhetoric of Hapoel fans is partly related to the decline in the political power of the secular elite in Israel. These insights are based on an online survey that was conducted in September 2012, and the website and forums of Hapoel Tel Aviv fans, fans’ songs available on YouTube, as well as interviews with fans.
Qatari Female Footballers
Authors: Lysa Charlotte
Published: February 2020

Female Qatari footballers are being encouraged by government policies to pursue sports careers in accordance with pressure from international organizations. At the same time, they are subject to a conservative in which it is largely unacceptable for women to play football. This tension has driven many female football players in Qatar to create a safe space for their activities through forming university teams. Using interviews with young women engaged in football activities, this chapter shows that these safe spaces do not carry the same negative connotations of masculinity as the official clubs and national team do – which subsequently enables women to challenge the perception that it is impossible for them to play football, while preserving their femininity and adhering to societal moral codes at the same time. By establishing women’s football as a university activity rather than something that conflicts with their academic priorities, they are able to play football without getting into conflicts with their families. These women seek the freedom to pursue their objectives and shape their own lives.
Introduction
Authors: Cubitt Sean
Published: February 2020

The Introduction introduces the concept of ecocritique as a radical form of environmentalism and ties it to the anecdote, where human and ecological forces combine to produce a unique event, whose telling is also an event. It establishes the idea of encounter between historical and natural agencies, and among teller, telling, and audience, lodging the claim that anecdotal evidence provides a key technique in the task of the humanities: to judge between the claims of different forms of the Good. It argues for the value of treating popular media as anecdotes, and asks how encounters might be possible in the age of digital distribution.
Rango and Appearance
Authors: Cubitt Sean
Published: February 2020

Gore Verbinski’s computer-animated feature film Rango (2011) uses CGI (computer-generated imagery) to tell the story of a chameleon in the Wild West who learns to become a hero: a common narrative arc. The film also deals with drought. The relation between performance and self-presentation of its animated characters, Rango who pretends to be a hero, and Beans who suffers from spells when she is paralysed and mentally absent, poses ethical questions about the audience’s obligations to the characters. In the narrative, water has become a form of money, and the community is held in debt. The chapter establishes a major theme: the distinction between financial debt and moral obligation, against the background of Rango’s story, the search for someone to be.
Becoming Human
Authors: Cubitt Sean
Published: February 2020

Iron Man 2 (John Favreau, 2010) focuses on a man isolated from his environment by a protective suit, and from his friends, family, and romantic interest by the conviction that he is dying as a result of the suit itself. While Tony Stark performs the role of billionaire playboy, Iron Man perceives the world in a doubled form, as perspectival image and as data diagrams in his heads-up display. The chapter gives a brief history of data visualisation, the most important visual language since perspective and now more dominant, to seek out the difficulty of being human in isolation, and at a moment when regimes for understanding the world are in flux. The chapter includes a discussion of the fictional inventor as a paragon of a mythical form of labour, and traces his construction to a new version of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic, engaging Stark in competition with his AI.
Otherwise than Human
Authors: Cubitt Sean
Published: February 2020

Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013) is the story of a clone haunted by memories of a previous existence. In the opening sequence, this ambivalent existence is echoed in the mix of digital and physical effects. Discussion of this ambivalence leads into an analysis of nonidentity versus identity, especially in a critical sequence in which clone Jack watches and is observed by a fish. Themes of individualism raised in the chapter on Iron Man return here in more complex form as Jack oscillates among individuality, fidelity to a model, and species-being. This is the third film in a row which raises issues of debt and obligation through the trope of a character who is dead, dying, or reborn, a theme of posthumous existence in this case posed as the only alternative to an absent community.
Posthumous Media
Authors: Cubitt Sean
Published: February 2020

The coincidence of the departure of the two Voyager spacecraft from the solar system with the Global Financial Crisis brought their mission and associated media back into prominence. The animations made by James Blinn, Charles Kohlhase, and colleagues at the time of their launches and the golden discs designed by Carl Sagan to carry sounds and images of Earth on a flight that will not conclude for a million years gives a new perspective on the idea of the posthumous. Drawing together themes of coded irreality, melancholia, obligation and debt, redemption, and the subjunctive mode of anecdotes, this chapter demonstrates how the critical moments observed in each of the previous films can be assembled into a collective vision of a period in history.
Anglo Nostalgia
Authors: Campanella Edoardo , Dassù Marta
Published: February 2020

Nostalgia has become a major force in global politics. While Donald Trump hopes to ‘make America great again’, Xi Jinping calls for a ‘great rejuvenation of the Chinese people’, and a majority of Russians still mourn the Soviet Union. But it is Brexit, with its idealization of a bygone era of full sovereignty, that epitomizes nostalgic nationalism in its purest form. Despite its romantic flavor, nostalgia is a malaise—a combination of paranoia and melancholy that idealizes the past, while denigrating the present. This epidemic of mythicizing national history is shaping politics in risky ways, fueled by ageing populations, shifts in the global order, and technological disruption. When deployed in the political debate, collective nostalgia is used as an emotional weapon, capable of mobilizing a nation towards illusory goals. Drawing on psychology, political science, history and popular culture, Anglo Nostalgia analyses the rapid spread of this global phenomenon, before focusing on Brexit as a case study. With the detachment of informed outsiders, Campanella and Dassù expose nostalgia’s great danger: the oversimplification of reality, leading to unprecedented political miscalculations and rising geopolitical tensions.
Nostalgia as an Emotional Weapon
Authors: Campanella Edoardo , Dassù Marta
Published: February 2020

Nostalgia is a multifaceted concept that leads to contrasting political outcomes. Reflective nostalgia is the benign form of the malaise. It looks at the past through critical eyes and recognizes that something might have been lost, but that much has been gained along the way. Restorative nostalgia, which proposes to rebuild the lost home, is the malignant form. The problem is that the world is now primarily dealing with a toxic restorative nostalgia used for political ends. Ordinary citizens struggle to adapt to the disruptions imposed on them by global forces that are out of their control, inducing them to find comfort in historical eras when life was easier, slower, and less colored by uncertainty. When thrown into political debates, nostalgia becomes an emotional weapon that can be used either defensively or offensively. To those who reject a cosmopolitan world and yearn for the socio-economic opportunities that were enjoyed by older generations, nationalism promises a source of identity and security. Equally, for those who aspire to restore the national glory of the past, nationalism provides a means to gain influence – to the detriment of other nations. This chapter shows why it is possible to talk about nostalgic nationalism only in the United Kingdom.
Birth of an Idea
Authors: Campanella Edoardo , Dassù Marta
Published: February 2020

Brexiteers’ historical and nostalgic elucubrations coincide with a concrete, albeit utopian, political project: that of Global Britain. Bringing this to fruition entails rekindling old friendships in the Commonwealth, rediscovering the special relationship with America, and intensifying links with Asian economies. This chapter shows how the debate concerning Great Britain’s global role is nothing more than the culmination of an intellectual dispute that has lasted for more than 150 years—since the late Victorian era when the British Empire’s global pre-eminence was slipping as a result of combined internal and external fractures. It all started in 1873 at the Oxford Union, with a debate on how to reorganize and modernize Pax Britannica. Since then, plans have differed in detail, but they have all sought to unite the Anglosphere behind a common purpose. Some have called for the creation of a British imperial federation or a multi-national commonwealth, while others would have liked to see a more formalized Atlantic Union, or even a new Anglo-American state. Hardcore Brexiteers simply continued this project. All the institutional arrangements proposed over the years were intrinsically nostalgic and utopian. They attempted to creatively preserve a past that was falling apart by promoting Britain’s political and economic interests to the detriment of increasingly more assertive colonies. Unsurprisingly, none of these proposals has ever amounted to anything. Nostalgia, which tends to oversimplify reality, hardly makes for enlightened politics and effective policies.
The Foreign Policy of Nostalgia
Authors: Campanella Edoardo , Dassù Marta
Published: February 2020

The politics of nostalgia worked its magic in the context of the Brexit referendum, where a single Yes or No vote was needed to make a difference, but it was hardly enough to manage the post-referendum environment, and it is certainly not a good compass for navigating the twenty-first century’s international system. Brexiteers fantasized about London’s future based on its glorious past, but never laid out a clear, practical, and pragmatic plan leading away from Brussels and towards their idealized temporal destination. The gap between restorative aspirations and political reality was simply too wide. Since June 2016, Brexiteers have flirted with a variety of proposals. They had no real clue where they were heading, with their options ranging from a “glorious Brexit”, a “red-white-and-blue Brexit”, a “hard Brexit” to a “soft Brexit”, a “clean Brexit”, a “jobs-first Brexit”, and even the “no-deal Brexit”. This chapter is aimed at dismantling the fallacies produced by nostalgic arguments, with a particular focus on the Commonwealth, the “Singapore plus” model and security policy.
The Anglo-Saxon Tribe
Authors: Campanella Edoardo , Dassù Marta
Published: February 2020

Hardcore Brexiteers, a minority within the Leave camp, clung nostalgically to the idea that Britain would find her rightful place within a renewed Anglosphere—namely, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States; that it would go from being an ordinary European Union member state to a modern version of the old imperial Mother Country. This chapter argues that the Anglosphere already exists in many fields, but that it is invisible within the political atmosphere, and can hardly be turned into something more institutionalized, as claimed can be done by Leavers. All the rather impressive forms of collaboration in intelligence, diplomacy, education and security among these countries do not imply the establishment of a more structured political community. It is precisely the lack of political integration that likely prevents these countries from clashing over thorny issues, giving the impression of a relatively cohesive grouping.
Nostalgia and the Future of Sovereignty
Authors: Campanella Edoardo , Dassù Marta
Published: February 2020

Although it is difficult to identify another place where national consciousness and dissatisfaction with its current global role are as intertwined as in Britain, similar forms of nostalgic nationalism might affect other countries in the future. Nostalgia, after all, has penetrated the foundations of the socio-political fabric of several nations and structural forces, such as ageing populations, mass immigration and technological disruptions, which will reinforce attitudes of longing. This is why it is important to start a serious discussion about the “nostalgic politics” that is likely to become a distinctive feature of this part of the twenty-first century, and also a threat to the liberal international order. The problem with nostalgia is that it induces individuals to shift their political attitudes in favor of a nationalist agenda. In the end, the politics of nostalgia can be seen as part of the battle for sovereignty to regain control over the fate of a nation and its identity. To succeed in the game of today’s emotional politics, mainstream parties need to play by its rules. They should themselves leverage the past, which offers ample evidence that progress in the future is always still possible, countering restorative nostalgia with reflective nostalgia.
Imperialism and the Developing World
Authors: Kohli Atul
Published: February 2020

This book is a study of the causes and the consequences of modern imperialism, with a focus on British and US imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively. It analyzes the dynamics of both formal and informal empires. It shows that, time and again, the pursuit of national economic prosperity led hegemonic powers to expand into peripheral areas of the world. Limiting the sovereignty of states on the periphery was the main method of ensuring that peripheral economies stayed open and accessible to Anglo-American economic interests. Loss of sovereignty, however, greatly hurt the life chances of people living in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. Sovereign states may not be sufficient to facilitate economic progress, but sovereignty is a precondition for the emergence of effective states. Effective states, in turn, are necessary to propel countries toward prosperous industrial societies. Some exceptions notwithstanding, imperialism—both formal and informal—has thus repeatedly undermined the prospects of steady economic progress in the global periphery.
Varieties of Colonialism
Authors: Kohli Atul
Published: February 2020

British colonialism in India was prolonged and deep. By contrast, British rule in Africa, including in Nigeria, was relatively short and superficial. This chapter analyzes the motives, mechanisms, and impact of British colonialism by comparing these two experiences. The economic importance of India to Britain was far greater than that of Nigeria. Crown rule over India was established with brutal force and sustained via despotic institutions of rule. The Scramble for Africa was sparked by growing competition among European powers, but the economic context was also important. The British left behind moderately well-functioning state institutions in India but an impoverished economy, in which the life expectancy of an average Indian was thirty-two years. In Nigeria both the state and the economy that the British left behind were seriously underdeveloped.
The King and the People
Authors: Kaicker Abhishek
Published: February 2020

An unprecedented exploration of the relationship between the Mughal emperor and his subjects in the space of the Mughal empire’s capital, The King and The People overturns an axiomatic assumption in the history of premodern South Asia: that the urban masses were merely passive objects of rule and remained unable to express collective political aspirations until the coming of colonialism. Set in the Mughal capital of Shahjahanabad (Delhi) from its founding to Nadir Shah’s devastating invasion of 1739, this book instead shows how the trends and events in the second half of the seventeenth century inadvertently set the stage for the emergence of the people as actors in a regime which saw them only as the ruled.
Aurangzeb’s Law and Popular Politics
Authors: Kaicker Abhishek
Published: February 2020

The discourse of sovereignty enunciated at the Mughal court had no place for the participation of its subjects. Yet, by the early eighteenth century, political protests had become visible in the cities of the empire across the historical record. How did this come to be? This chapter shows how Aurangzeb’s discourse of sovereignty privileging of the application of law (sharīʿa) set the terms of the relationship between the king and his subjects. While such legal intervention was designed to impose discipline on a society populated by unruly elites and commoners, an unintended consequence was the creation of new avenues through which urban communities engaged the state: Whether around questions of “justice” in urban disputes, or protests against the prices of food, or the imposition of the poll tax, the people of the empire’s cities began to increasingly demonstrate a capacity to challenge the king in the terms of his own discourse of sovereignty.
Written History
Authors: Walker Iain
Published: February 2020

Europeans arrived in the Indian Ocean at the end of the fifteenth century, and this chapter explores the evidence for the presence of the Portuguese before analyzing the development of the islands both as trading centers in the customary local networks and their development as supply points on the route between Europe and Asia. The French, Dutch and, above all the English were frequent visitors to the islands, initially Mwali, later Ndzuani; the latter island was to remain very firmly within an English, later British sphere of influence for more than two centuries, and this chapter discusses their role in local events. It also explores the different cultural influences on the islands and the cosmopolitan character of the people, their customs, social structures and material culture, as well as analyzes the histories of and conflicts between the four islands. This chapter closes with the devastating Malagasy slave raids at the end of the eighteenth century.
The Nineteenth Century
Authors: Walker Iain
Published: February 2020

Chapter four recounts the arrival of Malagasy leaders on the islands of Mwali and Mayotte in order to profoundly shape the history of the latter island, sold to France to become a colony in 1841. The political maneuvers between France, Britain, Madagascar and Zanzibar had significant consequences on the three smaller islands, particularly as the British tried to suppress the slave trade, the fulcrum of local economies and the source of labor for French plantations on Mayotte. Only Ngazidja remained apart, until finally, towards the end of the century, both Britain and Zanzibar renounced their claims to and influence over the archipelago and France declared protectorates over the three westernmost islands. The development of struggling plantation economies on all the islands and the loss of their historical economic mercantile activities would spell economic disaster for the islands.
Colonial Neglect and the Growth of Political Awareness
Authors: Walker Iain
Published: February 2020

The incorporation of the islands into the colony of Madagascar, as a remote and neglected province, led to economic decline. Colonial plantation owners expropriated large tracts of land leaving little for the local populations. The colonial government lacked the resources to develop the colony and there was a limited understanding of local culture. The customary wedding systems developed significantly during the colonial era, as did Sufism, the latter of which was of some concern to the French. Following the Second World War growth in political awareness was slow and the archipelago was not ready to accede to independence as other colonies had done in 1960. Growing differences between Mayotte and the other islands led to outbreaks of violence, and when territorial president Ahmed Abdallah finally declared independence in 1975, Mayotte chose to remain French.
Sensible Politics
Authors: Callahan William A.
Published: February 2020

Visual images are everywhere in international politics. But how are we to understand them? Callahan uses his expertise in theory and filmmaking to explore not only what visuals mean, but also how visuals can viscerally move and connect us in “affective communities of sense.” Sensible Politics explores the visual geopolitics of war, peace, migration, and empire through an analysis of photographs, films, and art. It then expands the critical gaze to consider how “visual artifacts”—maps, veils, walls, gardens, and cyberspace—are sensory spaces in which international politics is performed through encounters on the local, national, and world stages. Here “sensible politics” isn’t just sensory, but looks beyond icons and ideology to the affective politics of everyday life. This approach challenges the Eurocentric understanding of international politics by exploring the meaning and impact of visuals from Asia and the Middle East. Sensible Politics thus decenters our understanding of social theory and international politics by (1) expanding from textual analysis to highlight the visual and the multisensory; (2) expanding from Eurocentric investigations of IR to a more comparative approach that looks to Asia and the Middle East; and (3) shifting from critical IR’s focus on inside/outside and self/Other distinctions. It draws on Callahan’s documentary filmmaking experience to see critique in terms of the creative processes of social-ordering and world-ordering. The goal is to make readers not only think visually, but also feel visually—and to creatively act visually for a multisensory appreciation of politics.