bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Geographic Distribution of Oases in Arid Regions
Authors:   Senior Lecturer Department of Geography and Fundamentals of Economics Jizzakh State Pedagogical Institute, Toshboev Zafarjon Makhramkulovich
Published: May 2021

This article examines the oases that appeared on the inhabited continents of the planet. Historically, in the desert regions formed two main types of irrigated agriculture - small oasis and large oasis. Small oasis farming as a geographical type is developed in the vicinity of small water sources (small streams, streams, springs) in the foothills and in areas where deserts are flooded, groundwater leaks, temporarily adjacent to runoff. The fields of different sizes within the oases made them look like dry sheets, while at the same time showing property and legal inequality.
IMPLEMENTING INTERACTIVE METHODS FOR DEVELOPING STUDENTS’ INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
Authors:   Lecturer Fergana state university, Alimjanova Feruza Ibrohimjonovna
Published: May 2021

It is known that any language teaching technology is based on new principles of education, but at the same time should serve for developing students’ intercultural communicative competence in the educational process. One of the main tasks of pedagogy is to improve the quality of education, increase the intellectual activity of students, the formation of the speech culture, and the introduction of new methods in the classroom. The subject and object of the educational process are a teacher and a student in effective pedagogical technology.
Development of Physics Edutainment Website to Improve Students’ Critical Thinking Skills During the Covid-19 Pandemic
Authors: Salsabila Sania , Kholiq Abd.
Published: May 2021

During the Covid-19 pandemic that swept the world including Indonesia, and to improve students' critical thinking skills, it is necessary to have supporting media in the learning process as an edutainment website. This study intends to determine the validity of the edutainment website developed in physics lessons to improve student's critical thinking skills. The research method used is development research with the DDD-E model. This research was only limited to media development, and no practicality and effectiveness tests were carried out. In this study, the validity data were obtained from the results of validation by expert and were analyzed by descriptive quantitative using the category of Likert scale percentage. If the percentage of each aspect is ≥ 61%, then the edutainment website developed can be declared valid. The results of this study are the percentage of validity in the learning aspect of 90.30%, the material aspect of 90.56%, the media aspect of 88.65%, and the critical thinking aspect of 84.70%. Based on this, it can be concluded that the edutainment website is very valid so that it can be used as a physics learning media to improve students' critical thinking skills. The edutainment website can be an alternative learning media by utilizing information technology and hopefully in further research, it can apply edutainment website and perform practicality and effectiveness tests for learning both in class and distance learning
Uji Perbandingan antara Virtual Lab dengan Real Lab pada Hukum Archimedes dengan penggunaan HOT-LAB
Authors: Purnama Riki , Silvianti Novia , Idris Salsabilla Fauziah , Nabilla Nida
Published: May 2021

Pandemi Covid-19 menjadi kendala dalam melaksanakan kegiatan eksperiman secara langsung. Namun demikian dapat diatasi dengan percobaan interaktif menggunakan Virtual Lab yang sistematis dan memiliki akurasi yang baik. Dalam penelitian ini dilakukan kegiatan praktikum secara virtual menggunakan simulasi PhET yang dipadukan dengan HOT-LAB guna mengetahui perbandingan antara virtual lab dengan real lab yang dipadu dengan HOT-Lab. Metode yang digunakan adalah dengan uji perbandingan dari hasil analisis data percobaan antara Data Analytics dan Graphic Analytics. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian menunjukkan selisih hasil virtual lab dengan real lab relatif pada batas nilai ralat.  Hasil perhitungan berat (W) di udara pada m1 = 1 kg sebesar (9,51 ± 0,951) N, m2 = 2 kg diperoleh (19,32 ± 1,932) N, dan m3 = 5 kg diperoleh (45,6 ± 13,68) N. Sementara itu perhitungan berat (W) di medium air pada m1 = 1 kg yaitu (0,43 ± 0,043) N, m2 = 2 kg sebesar (9,615 ± 0,9615) N, dan untuk m3 =5 kg diperoleh (24,35 ± 4,87) N. Perhitungan selisih volume untuk m1 =1 kg sebesar (5,15x10-4 ± 0,0024) m3, m2 =2 kg diperoleh (1,2 x 10-3 ± 0,0035) m3, dan benda m3 =5 kg (2,66 x 10-3 ± 0,0115) m3. Berdasarkan data tersebut kenaikan grafik pada percobaan relatif sama, rasio perbandingan juga sama, meskipun nilai yang dihasilkan berbeda
Molecular Detection of Drug-Resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Sputum Specimens from the New and Previously Treated Tuberculosis Cases at the National Reference Chest Diseases Laboratory in Lusaka, Zambia
Authors: Mumena DK , Kwenda G , Ngugi CW , Nyerere AK
Published: May 2021

Background: Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (DR-TB) is one of the major public health issues globally. Zambia is highly burdened by TB and multi-drug resistant TB. In this study, sputum samples obtained from the new and previously treated cases of TB were examined for drug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB). Methods: Sputum specimens were processed using the N-acetyl-L-cysteine-sodium hydroxide method, stained and examined using fluorescent technique and microscopy respectively. Mycobacterial DNA was extracted using the Genolyse kit, then subjected to multiplex polymerase chain reaction amplification and reverse hybridization. Drug-resistance and mutations in MTB genes were detected using the Genotype MTBDRplus VER 2.0 and MTBDRsl VER 2.0 assays. Results: A total of 329 MTB-positive sputum specimens, 102 from the new TB cases and 227 from previously treated TB cases, were analysed for drug-resistance. Among the new TB cases, 3.9% had Rifampicin (RIF) mono-resistance, 12.8% Isoniazid (INH) mono-resistance, and 17.7% had Multi-Drug Resistance (MDR). For the previously treated TB cases, 10.1% had RIF mono-resistance, 6.6% INH mono-resistance, 33.0% MDR, 1.8% poly-drug resistance, and 0.8% had pre-Extensively Drug-Resistance (pre-XDR). Mutations identified were rpoB (Ser531Leu, His526Asp, Asp516Val, His526Tyr, and Glu510His), katG (Ser315Thr 1 and Ser315Thr 2), InhA (Cys15Thr), gyrA (Ala90Val and Asp94Gly), and eis (Cys14Thr), each with a varying frequency. Conclusion: DR-TB is prevalent, especially MDR-TB, which is currently the most worrisome form of DR-TB and an emerging threat hampering efforts in the control of TB in Zambia. The early detection and effective treatment of TB cases are key in the control of DR-TB.
A Cross-sectional Study on Challenges Faced and Strategies Adopted in Responding to Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19) by Hospital Administrators in Kaski District
Authors: KC Deepti , Poudel Sharmila , Hamal Thakuri Surya Bahadur , Shrestha Shreejana
Published: May 2021

Background: Following the outbreak of Coronavirus disease in 2019, the year 2020/21 has been an incredibly challenging one for all global health-care systems. Methods: A cross sectional descriptive research design was used to conduct the study. The study was carried out in all general private and public hospitals of Kaski district of Nepal. Data were collected from 25th October to 5th December, 2020 from the Hospital administrators using a semi structured interview schedule. Descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. Results: Most (96.3%) of the hospitals reported that increased cost or expenses of the hospitals creating financial threat is the most challenging situation that hospitals are facing in this pandemic. In addition shortages of ventilators creating ethical dilemma for patient allocation and changing guidelines from authorities have been reported as a challenge by 88.9 percent of the hospitals respectively. All of the surveyed hospitals had developed the use of thermometers for screening at the hospital entrances to minimize the risk. Conclusion: Hospitals in this pandemic are facing a lot of challenges with regard to staff management, PPE management and so on. Hence they need to adopt best strategies in responding to the corona virus.
Modeling Metabolic Diseases with Organoids: A Review
Authors: Bustos JF , Alvarado Gonzalez JC , de Abreu DAR , Liebisch-Rey H , Silva A , Ortiz D , Ramírez LB , Ortega J , Celis Regalado LG
Published: May 2021

An organoid is a functional unit of any given organ capable of reproducing under culture, as well as a biological structure similar in both function and structure to its in vivo equivalent. They are miniature-sized functional versions of organs, formed by masses of cells which self-organize to form a three-dimensional structure.
Erroneous Recording of Maternal Heart Rate as Fetal Heart Rate During Second Stage of Labour: Isn’t it Time to Stop this?
Authors: Saeed F , Abeysuriya S , Chandraharan E
Published: May 2021

Electronic Fetal Heart Rate (FHR) monitoring is recommended to assess fetal well-being during labour in high risk pregnancies. This Cardiotocograph (CTG) monitoring relies on the ultrasound technology with the limitation of signal loss in 15% to 40% of the cases [1]. In the earlier versions of these CTG monitors, fetal heart tracings were generally of reasonable quality with many artefacts and some degree of occasional large signal noise. Subsequent models were improved by signal modulation and autocorrelation. Although, these new methodologies of signal processing have reduced the signal loss, the issues of inadvertent monitoring of the maternal heart rate as fetal heart rate and inaccurate evaluations of baseline fetal heart rate (i.e. doubling or halving) continue to pose difficulties during intrapartum fetal heart rate monitoring.
Neutrophil to Lymphocyte Ratio Reflects the Proteolytic Activity of the Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Wall
Authors: Sasarman VA , Andercou O , Bruno S , Chira M , Oprea A , Trifan C , Bindea D
Published: May 2021

Background: This study aims to evaluate the local proteolytic activity from the level of Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) wall and correlate the obtained values with the preoperative values of NLRs (Neutrophil-Lymphocyte Ratio), evaluating a possible association between the two variables and, implicitly, between the local proteolysis process and the systemic inflammatory response of those patients diagnosed with AAA. Methods: The current study is monocentric, observational, and prospective, taking place at the Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Patients undergoing elective or emergency classical surgery for unruptured AAA or ruptured AAA were included in the study. During classical surgery, samples from the infrarenal aortic aneurysmal wall were collected in a standardized manner, from the central part of the anterior wall from uAAA and rAAA and were analyzed by gel zymography. Results: The concentration of MMP2 was similar in the ruptured/non-ruptured group, without any statistical significance. In the MMP-9 case, we obtained a mean of 821.35 U arb/µg at the level of unruptured aneurysmal wall and 1411.57 U arb/µg at the level of the ruptured aneurysmal wall. According to the ANOVA test, there is a significant difference between the two categories of aneurysms. The same correlation was observed regarding both the zymogen category, pro-MMP-2, as well as pro-MMP-9: they expressed significant higher quantities of inactive enzymes in rAAA. We splitted the study population into two categories: patients who presented preoperative NLR values < 5 and > 5. MMP-2 collagenase levels did not register statistical differences between the two groups, p = 0.3236. High levels of MMP-9 are positively associated with increased values of NLR, the NLR<5 group had an MMP-9 mean of 902.41(473.71) U arb/µg, statistically lower than the MMP-9 mean indicated in the NLR>5 group, 1474(521.21) U arb/µg. Similarly, MMP-2 and MMP-9 zymogens were found in statistically higher quantities (p < 0.05) in the NLR>5 group of patients. Conclusions: This is the first study that analyzes a possible correlation between the local proteolytic activity at the site of the dilated aneurysmal aortic wall and circulating levels of NLR. Following the results obtained, we conclude that the group of patients presenting with NLR>5 preoperatively, as in the rAAA group, significantly greater levels of MMP-9 and inactive proenzymes were identified. Local metalloproteinase MM9 activity is proportional to the systemic inflammatory activity. Concomitantly, we hypothesize that the increased sensitivity of NLR as a prognostic marker in AAA pathology, which is ensured and confirmed by its strong association with local proteolytic activity, directly implied in the evolution of the disease.
Path Planning and Obstacles Avoidance in Dynamic Workspace Using Polygon Shape Tangents Algorithm
Authors: Ramadhan Duaa , Al-Mayyahi Auday , Rashid Moofed
Published: May 2021

This paper presents the design of a path planning system in an environment that contains a set of static and dynamic polygon obstacles localized randomly. In this paper, an algorithm so-called (Polygon shape tangents algorithm) is proposed to move a mobile robot from a source point to a destination point with no collision with surrounding obstacles using the visibility binary tree algorithm. The methodology of this algorithm is based on predicting the steps of a robot trajectory from the source to the destination point. The polygon shapes tangent algorithm is compared with the virtual circles' tangents algorithm for different numbers of static and dynamic polygon obstacles for the time of arrival and the length of the path to the target. The obtained result shows that the used algorithm has better performance than the other algorithms and gets less time of arrival and shortest path with free collision.
Fishermen, the Fishing Industry and the Great War at Sea
Authors: Robinson Robb
Published: May 2021

Recent discussion, academic publications and many of the national exhibitions relating to the Great War at sea have focused on capital ships, Jutland and perhaps U-boats. Very little has been published about the crucial role played by fishermen, fishing vessels and coastal communities all round the British Isles. Yet fishermen and armed fishing craft were continually on the maritime front line throughout the conflict; they formed the backbone of the Auxiliary Patrol and were in constant action against U-boats or engaged on unrelenting minesweeping duties. Approximately 3000 fishing vessels were requisitioned and armed by the Admiralty and more than 39,000 fishermen joined the Trawler Section of the Royal Naval Reserve. The class and cultural gap between working fishermen and many RN officers was enormous. This book examines the multifaceted role that fishermen and the fish trade played throughout the conflict. It examines the reasons why, in an age of dreadnoughts and other high-tech military equipment, so many fishermen and fishing vessels were called upon to play such a crucial role in the littoral war against mines and U-boats, not only around the British Isles but also off the coasts of various other theatres of war. The book analyses the nature of the fishing industry's war-time involvement and also the contribution that non-belligerent fishing vessels continued to play in maintaining the beleaguered nation's food supplies.
The Cognitive Value of Religious Truth Statements
Authors: Ross Tamar
Published: May 2021

This chapter tackles the problem of religious truth in a broader theological context, and not simply with reference to one of the prevailing challenges, typically the challenge of the reliability of tradition or the confrontation with science. It makes us aware of the surprising anti-realist position of Rav Kook, wherein he is willing to consider various truth statements as not capturing truth fully and completely. The chapter explores Rav Kook's position against the history of non-realism in Jewish tradition, but more significantly against the broader orientations of postmodern philosophy. In seeking to distinguish Rav Kook from postmodern thinkers, the chapter allows us to appreciate the fine balancing act between the theoretical flexibility that allows him to adopt an instrumentalist view of truth statements and the relativism that characterizes postmodern philosophy. Rav Kook, then, offers an intriguing balance between non-realist understandings on the one hand and an ontological grounding of his spiritual life on the other, largely by virtue of his mystical experience and panentheistic world-view. This balance opens up promising avenues in a contemporary educational context, wherein one seeks to integrate willingness to adopt a view that does not rely on heavy ontological claims for grounding truth with religious fervour and devotion.
Life and Background
Authors: Malcolm William K.
Published: May 2021

This foundational chapter presents Mitchell’s writing as a barometer of the times that he inhabited. It sets out the book’s biographical and critical aims to examine the precise nature of the author’s literary achievement against the dramatic geopolitical background of the early decades of the twentieth century. Drawing authoritatively upon original sources, Mitchell’s short life is summarised as a triumph of innate talent over the social hardship and cultural poverty of his upbringing, from his origins in peasant society to service in the army and the airforce, thereafter moving to city life in Scotland and London, before finally settling in Welwyn Garden City. Mitchell’s personal experience of many of the key developments of the modern world, in country and city, at home and abroad, in wartime and peacetime, is shown to have shaped his personal ideology – particularly his left-wing radicalisation. The two central planks of his greatest writing, his love of nature and his fierce social commitment, are traced to his peasant upbringing as son to a poor Aberdeenshire crofter. His literary corpus is presented as a knowing response to the zeitgeist of the inter-war years, as a renunciation of outmoded Victorian modes and an embracing of the new.
Noise: Sean Bonney’s Resistance
Authors: Skoulding Zoë
Published: May 2021

Sean Bonney’s work shows how noise may be deployed within a lyric structure to interrogate political relationships. Challenging Jacques Attali's view of noise as the clash of the new with what is culturally dominant, Greg Hainge argues that noise is a relational ontology that can best be understood through resistance within an 'expressive assemblage'. With reference to Hainge’s analysis of noise, this chapter explores the aurality and noise that inhabit Bonney’s reworking of lyric forms, from folk songs to the poetry of Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Bonney’s reading of Rimbaud, in which the dérèglement de tous les sens is a challenge to collective reordering of political senses, offers a guide to a politically disruptive listening. If the senses are socially mediated, but society is dominated by late capitalism, who owns what is heard? What forms of power are made audible and how? Listening, against the white noise of the neoliberal acoustic field, is the urgent political task to which Bonney’s poetry sets its readers.
Performance: Listening Bodies
Authors: Skoulding Zoë
Published: May 2021

Discussion of Deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie and artist Christine Sun Kim draws attention to the embodiment of sound performance, which is considered in this chapter in relation to technology, race, gender, bilingualism and, though the parallel performances of humans and birds, ecology. The work of poets such as Bob Cobbing and Henri Chopin offers examples of how sound poetry of the 1960s explored a liberated listening through recording. Yet such a listening, enabled by machines, draws attention back to the capacities of the human body. Serres’ simultaneous emphasis on the centrality of the senses and the space of codes and messages in which the body moves frames a discussion of various boundaries between language, sound and noise in the work of Emma Bennett, Jonathan Skinner, Holly Pester, Tracie Morris, Hannah Silva and Rhys Trimble.
Barbara Comyns and New Directions in Women’s Writing
Authors: Turner Nick
Published: May 2021

Focussing on Barbara Comyns’ first three novels, published between 1947 and 1956, Nick Turner asserts the originality of an undeservedly neglected writer. Comyns anticipates the female gothic and the Second Wave feminist impulse through her oppressed and vulnerable female characters. The essay suggests Comyns’ writing is innovative and challenging in three ways: firstly, for the way her depiction of domestic space, settings and movement, coupled with the notions of marriage, motherhood and family life, contests the status quo; secondly, for the manner in which the novels place the animal world in close proximity to the human world; and thirdly, for the nature of her comedy - black, surreal, anarchic. Demonstrating how Comyns at times engages with impressionist and surrealist art permits a consideration of her writing in the context of a so far minor tradition in British women’s literature and art, exemplified by Leonora Carrington.
Henry Lawrence Tivy (1848–1929): The Rise and Fall of a Cork Loyalist
Authors: McCarthy Alan
Published: May 2021

Henry Lawrence Tivy was a butter merchant and later newspaper proprietor from Cork city who used his newspapers in both Cork and Dublin, such as the Cork Constitution and Evening Mail, to articulate his views about southern Irish unionism and loyalism. This chapter engages with Tivy’s public life and career, assessing his politics and experience of the Irish revolutionary period, as well as his contributions to the civic life of his native city. It will chart the uneasy transition of unionist families such as the Tivys into the Irish Free State and seeks to engage with the duality of H.L. Tivy’s public life as a proud citizen of Cork and dedicated supporter of the Union between Britain and Ireland.
De-Modernizing Publishing
Authors: Foss Colin
Published: May 2021

The bureaucracy of modern publishing presented the biggest obstacles to the publication of books during the Siege of Paris. Readers demanded books, pamphlets, and manifestos about their present situation as quickly as possible. Modernity couldn’t keep up. To satisfy this demand, smaller, upstart printers began producing books in basements, courtyards, and living rooms, side-stepping the complicated publishing practices inherent to the modern publishing industry. The Société des gens de lettres, an author-advocacy group, found itself struggling against the very networks of publishers, printers, editors, agents and authors that made publishing so profitable. While the organization did offer literary events in Paris during the Siege, it also threatened to sue newspapers that published unattributed poetry or other literary texts and fought for author’s rights at a moment when there was little to no recourse for such legal action. Disrupting the very networks that made literature such good business, the Siege effectively threw the industry back a hundred years.
The Hangover after the Handover
Authors: Wu Helena Y.W.
Published: May 2021

As a former British colony (1842-1997) and now a Special Administrative Region (from 1997 onwards) practicing the “One Country Two Systems” policy with the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong has witnessed at all times how relations are formed, dissolved and refashioned amidst changing powers, identities and narratives. With an eye to real-life events and cultural representations, the book presents an interdisciplinary study of “local relations” through the lens of the things and places that stand or that have once stood for Hong Kong’s “local”. The book argues that the signification of the local and the constellation of local relations embody the continuous acts of deterritorialization and reterritorialization beyond the political arena and through the cultural and social relations formed between cultural icons and urban dwellers.
In its post-handover, post-hangover years where Hong Kong’s local multiples by appearance and connotation as in the 2014 Umbrella Movement and the 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Protests, the book proposes lessons to learn from the city in face of the discourses of nationalism, globalization and localism. As more are to unfold, the book opens up manifold postcolonial perspectives by the agency of both human and nonhuman to confront and interrogate the contemporary experiences—unprecedented since the Cold War era—shared by Hong Kong and the world where established beliefs and systems are continuously challenged in the postmillennial era.
After all, what does it mean, or take, to live in post-1997 Hong Kong when the local, global and national are constantly given new meanings?
Local Relations and Their Postcolonial Outlooks
Authors: Wu Helena Y.W.
Published: May 2021

With an eye to museum exhibitions, governments’ narratives, historical accounts and scholarly analyses, among others, Chapter 1 examines the underlying political, social and cultural connotations in different narratives about Hong Kong. By uncovering the hegemony of representing Hong Kong through “the Hong Kong story”, the chapter exposes the unequal powers at work, arguing for the need to hybridize different local milieus, positionings and perspectives by redistributing significances to both human and nonhuman agencies and rekindling connections to Hong Kong’s local on different levels. Highlighting the interconnection between the social, political and cultural realms in facilitating representation, interpretation and mediation, the chapter maps out the multiple realities, contrasting stances and varied connotations wherein different “Hong Kongs” are constructed and local relations are entailed in varying constellations.
All Hail the King of Kowloon! Mediating Malleable Materiality
Authors: Wu Helena Y.W.
Published: May 2021

In Chapter 3, Tsang Tsou-choi—named “one of the oldest graffiti artists in the world” by the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003—comes into the picture. As a self-proclaimed “king” since the 1950s, Tsang spent decades writing his family’s “(hi)stories” on different surfaces in the streets of Hong Kong, ranging from walls, lampposts and post boxes to electricity boxes. Alongside the writings he produced and the places he reinvented in the city, the connection Tsang made with the local territory and local history is examined in this chapter as a confluence of local relations which reverberate and fluctuate on their own according to different footprints and traces Tsang left in the city and in the mind of his fellow urban dwellers.
Consuming Abolition
Authors: Oldfield J. R.
Published: May 2021

This Chapter explores the complex relationship between anti-slavery activity and consumerism. It begins with a discussion of the resonance and meaning of anti-slavery artefacts, from Wedgwood’s famous cameo of the kneeling slave to ceramics, needlework and fabrics. It then goes on to discuss the significance of the Boston Anti-Slavery Bazaar, not least as a successful commercial enterprise. The Bazaar, however, was in many ways a victim of its own success, leading its organisers to abandon it in favour of a subscription system. The same was true of the huge popular success of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853). ‘Tom’ became a fad or ‘mania’ but in doing so became divorced form his original (anti-slavery) context. By placing consumerism in a wider perspective, this chapter probes the sometimes-difficult relationship between consumerism and anti-slavery, highlighting the threats as well as the opportunities.
Time, Weather, and Waste: Michel Tournier’s Gemini (Les Météores)
Authors: Krell Jonathan F.
Published: May 2021

Gemini is the most geographical or spatial of Tournier’s novels. Natural occurrences like weather and tides, and spaces shaped by humans, like gardens and landfills, are key “characters” in the novel. Tides illustrate the double meaning of temps (time and weather), and the intertidal creatures that suffer through low tide are a metaphor for all marginals, especially the disabled and homosexual characters of Gemini. Gardens prove the intimate bond between humans and humus, from the lush gardens of Tunisia to the geothermal gardens of Iceland, to the tiny perfection of the Japanese miniature garden. Finally, towering landfills, alive with rats and gulls, present an infernal mirror of our consumer society, a malignant inversion of homo economicus into homo detritus.
Cloud Erotica: Stéphane Audeguy’s The Theory of Clouds (La Théorie des nuages)
Authors: Krell Jonathan F.
Published: May 2021

Audeguy’s Theory of Clouds reaches far beyond the cirrus, cumulus, stratus, and nimbus forms we know. The Krakatoa volcano was “the largest cloud ever recorded,” a natural bomb that was duplicated decades later by the grotesque mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, and the ashes rising from the chimneys of Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Humans have allowed themselves to be “denatured,” destroying themselves and the world in the process. There is an intimate relationship between the microcosm of the human body and the macrocosm of nature, neither of which we can fully understand: a “confrontation between the limitlessness of desire and the unthinkable infinity of nature” (Audeguy, Opera mundi 39). Audeguy’s protagonist Abercrombie is a true “erotologist,” obsessed by the mysterious connection between female bodies (microcosm) and clouds (macrocosm).
Republican Citizens, Precarious Subjects
Authors: Lane Jeremy F.
Published: May 2021

Over recent decades concerns at the increased scarcity and precarity of salaried employment have dominated political struggles, theoretical debates and cultural representations in France. This study argues that such concerns are evidence of a profound shift in the French economy and labour market. In its first, theoretical part, the study engages with work in political economy and sociology, sketching a new interpretative framework, the better to understand the nature and implications of this profound shift. This shift has challenged certain fundamental French republican values, opening up a rift between the precarious forms of subjectivity characteristic of post-Fordist labour and older notions of republican citizenship. In its second part, the study finds symptoms of this rift in a range of cinematic and literary representations of the contemporary workplace, as these depict the dilemmas faced, the trajectories followed, and the geographical regions inhabited by French workers of different ages, sexes, classes, and ethnicities.
The Crisis of Fordism
Authors: Lane Jeremy F.
Published: May 2021

This chapter offers an account of the crisis of Fordism in France from the 1970s on, identifying key developments at the global, national, and regional level, showing how these have affected corporate governance, so that by the 2000s the experience of work had radically altered. This will enable a clearer distinction between ‘post-Fordism’, a term we take in a general sense to refer to the unstable set of economic arrangements emerging from the crisis of Fordism, and ‘neo-liberalism’, understood as an ideological project that has exploited that crisis to push for welfare reductions and the liberalisation of global flows of goods, capital, and labour. This then leads into a critical review of a range of diagnoses of this situation, from those (Frédéric Lordon) who see it as the product of neo-liberalism as an exogenous ideological project, to those (Yann Moulier Boutang) who highlight its endogenous determinants within the contradictions of Fordism, to those (El Mouhoub Mouhoud and Dominique Plihon) who occupy a mid-point in these debates. The aim here is to begin sketching a new interpretative framework from a critical synthesis of these accounts.
Modulating Work and Welfare
Authors: Lane Jeremy F.
Published: May 2021

A range of French sociologists of work have argued that contemporary management practices manifest a shift away from disciplinary modes of governmentality towards what De Gaulejac terms ‘post-disciplinary’ forms, Brunel ‘pastoral’ modes of power, and Zarifian forms of Deleuzean ‘control’. This chapter seeks, first, to provide evidence of this shift in governmentality and, second, to show how this involves more modulated, precarious forms of subjectivity that challenge established notions of French republican citizenship. It employs Deleuze’s distinction between a disciplinary ‘mould’ and the ‘modulated’ forms of power typical of ‘societies of control’ as its overarching interpretative framework. The chapter examines recent changes in management practice alongside a representative sample of reforms to the legal regulation of work and welfare in France from 2000 on, reforms that draw on notions of ‘activation’ and ‘flexicurity’. It argues that these practices and legal reforms exemplify the shift from to more ‘modulated’ and precarious forms of subjectivity that challenge the tents of French republican citizenship.
Conclusion
Authors: Lane Jeremy F.
Published: May 2021

The Conclusion seeks to summarise the findings of the preceding chapters, showing how and why the shift to more precarious forms of post-Fordist employment have challenged established French Republican ideals and practices. It also considers possible future routes out of the impasses of post-Fordism.
Quincampoix, or the Wind Traders
Authors: Goggin Joyce , Erken Merlijn , De Bruyn Frans , Looijesteijn Henk , Paul Helen J. , Petram Lodewijk
Published: May 2021

This full-length tragicomedy in three acts explores the thematic opposition between traditional Dutch commercial and republican virtue, and the speculative corruption of 1720. Set in Amsterdam at the height of the “wind trade” that inflated the South Sea and Mississippi Bubbles, as well as local Dutch speculative bubbles, the play dramatizes both market mania and intergenerational conflict between parent and child, with a predictable victory for the younger generation. In this instance, Hillegond, daughter of the merchant Bonaventure, loves a sensible, virtuous young man named Hendrik, but she is also pursued by Windbag, a pompous, self-important speculator in bubble shares. Windbag is a French popinjay blown ashore from Paris and London by the shifting winds of speculation. Bonaventure is dazzled by Windbag’s fortune and is drawn into the speculative activity, but his brother, Noble-Heart, prefers Hendrik, who personifies the native steadfastness of the Dutch character. Hendrik’s name recalls the wise Prince Frederik Hendrik (a ruler associated with proclamations opposing uncontrolled speculation). At the close of the play Bonaventure faces the prospect of financial ruin, but he is rescued from his own imprudence by his brother, who buys back the “futures” contracts that had threatened to undo him. Noble-Heart counts the cost of this financial rescue as a trifle compared to the value of preserving the family’s honour and its credit or reputation.
Harlequin Stock-Jobber
Authors: Goggin Joyce , Erken Merlijn , De Bruyn Frans , Looijesteijn Henk , Paul Helen J. , Petram Lodewijk
Published: May 2021

This short comic harlequinade is written in the rich and enormously popular theatrical tradition of the Italian commedia dell’arte, imported into the Netherlands via France. Langendijk borrows a range of well-known commedia character types to populate his farce. In a series of twelve scenes he tells the story of Capitano. who plans a voyage to the South Sea (the Mississippi country) to trade in shares. Harlequin, himself a speculator in shares, undertakes to sell Capitano provisions for his voyage. When Capitano discovers that the provisions Harlequin has sold him are nothing but wind-filled bladders and animal guts, a battle ensues between two squadrons armed with inflated pig’s bladders. The cowardly Capitano faints from shock, and Harlequin is taken captive but is set free when he promises to bequeath his paper shares to his captors. The play concludes with Harlequin auctioning off a candle stub, which is handed back and forth between the characters until Gilles, who buys the candle, burns his fingers and drops the stub on a pile of shares that go up flames. The foolish investors are left with nothing, an ending that provides a comic warning to those who risk being burnt by the bubble craze.
Opportunity in an Age of Folly
Authors: Looijesteijn Henk
Published: May 2021

1720 is remembered in European history as the year of folly, when the financial markets ballooned and then collapsed in the capitals of England and France. The financial crisis was of great import to the subsequent history of both countries: England emerged from the crisis on the way to becoming an international financial powerhouse, whereas France failed to modernize its financial infrastructure, which collapsed during the French Revolution. Much less is known, however, outside the Netherlands about the third economy involved in the Bubble, namely, the proto-capitalist economy of the Dutch Republic. This chapter makes the case that the Dutch financial economy, which in 1720 was more advanced than that of its neighbours, bore the brunt of the crisis much better than they. The Bubble in the Dutch Republic channelled some of the country’s previously underused capital reserves back into the economy and allowed for the rise of a number of municipal Bubble companies, chiefly devoted to shipping and insurance. Several of these survived the Bubble and developed into bona fide businesses with surprising longevity. The foremost example of this is the Rotterdam insurance company which lasted until the twenty-first century and continues to exist as a philanthropic foundation.
Introduction
Authors: Archer-Parré Caroline , Dick Malcolm
Published: May 2021

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, perhaps more than any other, was a pivotal time in the development of the mechanics and methods of communication. Commercial, political, legal, social and religious interactions were all facilitated by a variety of material processes such as handwriting, painting, drawing, printing and engraving, which coexisted alongside more ephemeral and immaterial means of communication, including voice, gesture, costume and performance. New sites for consuming the products of communication emerged such as coffee houses, oratories, libraries, institutes, theatres, shops and galleries. Developments in road and water transport and postal systems facilitated means of communication and enabled the products of pen and print to travel further and faster than ever before....
An Archaeology of Letter Writing
Authors: Larsen Ruth
Published: May 2021

This chapter takes a material culture approach in studying epistolary cultures of elite women in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Focusing primarily on the correspondence of Georgiana, sixth countess of Carlisle, it considers how the letter as an object could be an important marker of elite status and form part of the performance of aristocratic ideals. By examining the consumption of stationery, the use of paper, access to postal networks and archival practices, this chapter argues that creation, composition, sending and preserving of letters could all be used in the construction of the aristocratic self in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Abdelkébir Khatibi and the Transparency of Language
Authors: Belhabib Assia
Published: May 2021

A key topic in Abdelkébir Khatibi’s works is undeniably the way in which different parts of the social body do interact, intersect, ignore or even reject each other. A forerunner of postcolonial thought in Morocco, Khatibi explores this challenging question in his essays, more specifically Maghreb pluriel, Du bilinguisme, Chemins de traverse, but also in his dialogues with Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Jacques Hassoun and Rita El Khayat. Khatibi’s vision cleverly scrutinizes human relationships, as well as links between societies that cannot be conceived of independently from group relationships. Playing skillfully with words, Khatibi highlights the importance of language in the formation of social barriers. A vigilant and insightful intellectual, Khatibi questions in his rich and complex work the language of Francophone writers since independence.
“How Lucky Were the Blond Kabyles”
Authors: Brozgal Lia
Published: May 2021

Chapter 5 tackles the issues of race and racism as they relate to the October 17 massacre itself, the way it was documented in police archives, and the anarchive. When read for its representations of race and racism, the anarchive produces a transhistorical discourse that is as instructive in its moments of ambivalence as it is in its most pointed critiques. The chapter begins with a discussion of the difficulties of talking about race in a French context, and then goes on to excavate discourses of race and racism as they have been produced, implicitly or explicitly, in over 50 years’ worth of cultural productions, ranging from documentary and feature film to historical and graphic novels. In each section, cultural productions are read against their specific micro-historical context, conditions of publication or production, and other epiphenomena. At stake in reading race in the anarchive is a process of “race-ing” October 17, that is, of understanding the repression as not simply an inevitable skirmish in a war for independence, but as the fallout of a colonial ideology invested, tacitly but profoundly, in a racialized worldview.
Property, Privilege and Politics: The Coroner in Pre-Famine Ireland, 1801–1846
Authors: McCann Michelle
Published: May 2021

This chapter examines the function, status and qualifications of the men that served in the role of county coroner in Ireland in the first half of the nineteenth century. This remains an under-researched area when compared to other local government figures of authority. The history of the office exposes tensions within a politically polarised society and the need for changes in legislation. A combination of factors initially undermined the social standing and reputation of coroners. An examination of the legislation on coroners that the administration subsequently introduced suggests that the authority of the office in early-nineteenth-century Ireland was not strictly jurisprudential, but political and confessional by nature. By analysing the personal background, work experience, social standing, political alliances and religious patronage of coroner William Charles Waddell (1798-1878), the paper charts the wider social and political narrative that allowed this eminently respectable Presbyterian figure to secure the role of coroner of County Monaghan.
Introduction
Authors: Marín Yarí Pérez
Published: May 2021

The introduction explains the book's scholarly contribution in the context of its interdisciplinary framework, particularly as it relates to the connection between the history of medicine and a the rise of a literary tradition in colonial Latin America. It argues for the importance of turning to medical books when assessing the emergence of a sense of identity linked to reading practices in colonial America, highlighting the often overlooked information these materials stand to offer about readers. Their preoccupation with the health of the community, and in the case of some projects, the fact that there was a demand for additional, revised editions allow us to trace aspects of their interaction with local audiences of the time in ways not possible with other materials. Lastly, this section analyses the relevance of emerging racial categories in early modern Mexico, as well as the existence of identity formulations that call into question a cohesive sense of "Spanishness" for that time and place, drawing attention to the shared radicado experience of the medical authors studied in the book.
Weakening the sex
Authors: Marín Yarí Pérez
Published: May 2021

Chapter 3 addresses the link between colonial ideas on femininity and period understandings of gendered physiology. Similar to their European counterparts in that they deemed women to have a weaker constitution compared to men, medical authors in New Spain, however, began linking arguments on the female body to American environments specifically. Descriptions of physiological processes favoured stricter controls of women’s diets and behaviour under the guise of ensuring their good health. The rising numbers of European women in Mexico are reflected in the fact that the two locally printed medical books that went into second editions in the sixteenth century—Alonso López de Hinojosos’s Svmma (1578, 1592) and Agustín Farfán’s Tractado breve (1579, 1592)—both revised and abridged their first versions in order to make way for sections focused on the treatment of women and children. My analysis traces notions on gender, particularly in the case of ‘exceptional’ gestational processes resulting in 'manly women' and 'effeminate men', showing how authors in the New World brought together under a colonial prism older medical traditions that had taken divergent paths in Europe.
Conclusion
Authors: Marín Yarí Pérez
Published: May 2021

This section briefly discusses the place of sixteenth century print medical texts written by authors who resided in colonial Mexico within the larger context of the study of Latin American letters. It stresses the need to maintain a distinction between presence and influence when assessing the significance of their texts within larger cultural traditions, both in the context of colonial writing and as outputs conditioned by the logic of scientific progress moving into the seventeenth century, which saw some of the most widely disseminated sources of the previous era slip into obscurity as new medical findings superseded earlier formulations. The conclusion remarks on the important role played by this group of radicado figures who authored the print medical books of early modern Mexico, considering how they articulated intellectual positions that both anticipated and differed from later criollo responses to colonial mechanisms for marginalisation and exclusion.
Going off the gold standard
Authors: Robinson Peter
Published: May 2021

This chapter addresses the involvement of two key modernist poets in money and monetary reform. First it considers Pound’s long-term commitment to economic understandings of culture and politics, along with his advocacy for Social Credit by looking at the effect these various views about money had on his poetry. In the course of this exposition it reveals fundamental flaws and contradictory implications in his opposition to a gold standard, his various attempts to fix the value of words, and poems, by relating them to natural processes or material things, and his arguing that states had the power to issue fiat money for the benefit and welfare of citizens. This is followed by a reconsideration of whether T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land is a poem significantly influenced by J. M. Keynes’ writings on the Treaty of Versailles, on related issues connected with Eliot’s work as a bank clerk, and his later views about money in the light of his Christian faith. The chapter also addresses the different relationships between attention to money and anti-Semitism in both poets’ work.
Getting value out of money
Authors: Robinson Peter
Published: May 2021

Beginning with a number of poems which compare and contrast money and friendship, this final chapter returns to questions of value and evaluation so as to look at ways in which the uses that money may have in a culture are finally dependent upon the identification of values other than monetary ones which it can then be found either to disable or support. The value and evaluation of artworks is addressed by considering Byron’s borrowing from ‘On the Death of Dr Robert Levet’ in his ‘Fare Thee Well’, and on Wordsworth’s critical response on reading the latter poem. The chapter concludes by returning to the pedagogical occasion with which this book began and, with reference to Marcel Mauss on gift-cultures, offers an explanation of how a creative writing workshop, however necessary money values may have been in bringing it about, can occasion, foster, and promulgate values which are necessarily other than ones to be accounted for in balance sheets of monetary investment and return.