bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Imperatives of Purity and Sensuality
Authors: McManus Laurie
Published: January 2021

This chapter analyzes the factors contributing to the debates over musical purity and sensuality that had formed a significant thread of music criticism by the early 1850s, when Brahms began his career. The construction of purity developed in two interrelated ways: First, through the German Romantic valuation of music from Bach and earlier; this early music’s contrapuntal techniques and mostly diatonic harmony were praised as pure and moral by a range of commentators from E. T. A. Hoffmann to Justus Thibaut to Dominicus Mettenleiter. Second, in Eduard Hanslick’s famous 1854 treatise, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, he attempted to divorce music from its extra-musical and political contexts; nonetheless, his argument retained the connotations of moral superiority while claiming purity for contemporary instrumental music. Pure music stood in opposition to Wagnerian sensuality, a Young Hegelian development that presented revisionist notions not only of opera but also of music’s meaning and communicative power. In this context, ideas of musical purity came under fire just as Brahms began his compositional career.
The Temptation of Opera
Authors: McManus Laurie
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores opera—established as the antithesis of musical priesthood—as a site of debate over musical sensuality including the gendered discourse on opera and the critique of purity in those composers who, in Wagner’s words, “failed” to write opera with their “chaste and innocent hands.” A generation of revolutionary music critics, including Rudolf Benfey and Ludwig Eckardt, applied these Wagnerian values to Brahms with negative results, depicting purity as his weakest characteristic. Brahms’s own potential libretti and styles of opera in the 1860s and 1870s seem to explore alternatives to the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk, from genres such as the oratorio to Singspiel, and topics including Carlo Gozzi’s eighteenth-century fairy-tale plays. Two of Brahms’s works from this period, the Op. 57 Daumer lieder and Op. 50 Rinaldo, contain dramatic and erotic elements that inspired some contemporaries to hope Brahms would take the next step toward an opera.
Growth and Development Planning in India
Authors: Datta K. L.
Published: January 2021

The central theme of this book is to appraise the role of planning to maximize the rate of economic growth, and improve the standards of living and quality of life of the people in India since Independence. The book addresses four core areas. First, it delves into the circumstances which led to the adoption of planning and presents a comprehensive analysis of the economic scenario that unfolded in the six decades between 1951 and 2011, documenting shifts in growth and development strategy. Second, it explores the rate and pattern of economic growth, and traces reasons behind the shortfall in growth rate from the target. Third, the book contextualizes the backdrop against which economic reform measures were introduced to understand how different areas and sectors of the economy were integrated with the reform process. Fourth, it analyses the transition from growth measures pursued until the 1970s, to a mix of growth and redistribution from the 1980s, and then to inclusive growth in the 2000s, and finds out how income, especially of the poor and marginalized sections of the population increased. It makes an assessment of the level and change in poverty over time, and the impact of economic growth on poverty reduction. These four thematic areas of the book are essential to understand the process of economic growth and its impact on the lives of the people in India's rapidly changing socio-economic environment. Finally, it assesses the economic scenario in the 2010s, when planning was abandoned, and pinpoints the reasons behind dipping growth rate, and suggests measures for its revival.
Has MGNREGS Affected Farm Profitability?
Authors: Narayanamoorthy A.
Published: January 2021

It is argued that the national rural employment guarantee scheme introduced during 2006 has increased the farm wage rate substantially by artificially increasing demand for labour. This seems to have resulted in sharp reduction in farm profitability. Is there any substance in this argument? Chapter 6 delves into this issue deeply utilizing cost of cultivation survey data from different states and different crops consisting of both low and high value crops. The chapter also narrates why the impact of MGNRGES on farm profitability cannot be the same for all crops and all states with empirical evidence. With an analysis of operation-wise cost of cultivation, this chapter also attempts to bring out the variation in its impact between high productivity states and low productivity states.
Farm Profitability in Andhra Pradesh
Authors: Narayanamoorthy A.
Published: January 2021

This chapter addresses the issue of farm profitability specific to Andhra Pradesh, one of the large agricultural states in India. Farmers in general and in Andhra Pradesh in particular are passing through a painful phase with widespread indebtedness and high proportion of farm suicides during the last two decades. What is the cause this crisis? Is it because of low remuneration from crops? Although a large number of studies have attempted to study the possible reasons for this unprecedented crisis, the issue of profit from crop cultivation covering longer period of data and crops has not been studied in detail. Utilizing time series data from eight important crops, chapter 8 examines whether farmers reap any steady profits over time. Further, it also provides an in-depth analysis of how many years farmers were able to harvest profit especially in relation to cost C2 since seventies.
Through the ‘Indian Lens’
Authors: Ke Zhang
Published: January 2021

This chapter examines the Chinese views on India in late Qing Chinese travel writings. There were two distinct modes of observation and critical reflection. On the one hand, by observing and analyzing India, the Chinese authors tried to gain knowledge of the British rule in India and the Western culture. On the other hand, seeing a reflection of China in India, they pondered China’s own international crisis. Huang Maocai, the first official sent by Qing government to British India, utterly praised British governance in India, but the observers after Huang were more eager to find out the reasons why India became colonized by the British Empire. By studying these travelogues, this chapter reveals a key transition of Chinese intellectuals’ views towards Western colonial power in the nineteenth century, from ‘positive confrontationism’ to ‘resistant nationalism’.
‘Tagore and China’ Reconsidered
Authors: Lee Yu-Ting
Published: January 2021

This chapter re-examines the relationship between Rabindranath Tagore and China, which was previously understood through the poet’s 1924 controversial trip to China and thus subject to rather fixed interpretation. It argues that while it is important to explore how Tagore’s contemporary Chinese thinkers responded, usually emotionally, to his proposal of the ‘revival of Eastern culture’ according to their respective stances, more depth and dimensions can be restored to the event to sustain a fuller understanding of how cultural debate was conducted in the early twentieth-century world. To this end, starting from a thought-provoking conversation between Tagore and Feng Youlan, a to-be prominent philosopher who was a PhD researcher at Columbia University in 1920, this chapter seeks to demonstrate a philosophical reading of ‘Tagore and China’ and goes further to expand the intellectual web, covering both Chinese and Western thinkers of distinction, to reveal the world historical significance of Tagore’s uneasy interaction with China.
Between Alliance and Rivalry
Authors: Wen-shuo Liao
Published: January 2021

The increasing availability in recent years of the Nationalist government documents, intelligence materials, and the personal papers and diaries of Nationalist figures from the 1930s to 1940s has allowed historians to refresh their perspectives on the events of these years and acquire a clearer view of how the Nationalist government in Chongqing assessed the War situation both in China and abroad. This chapter further explores Wartime networking across geo-political borders for intelligence collaboration and anti-Japanese propaganda campaigns, and probes the impact of Chongqing’s perceptions of India on its planning to form alliances and exercise diplomacy, determined largely by India’s strategic position and by the fact that the decolonization of India and its independence would enable India to join the war and thus help safeguard Chinese interests.
Shipping Nationalism in India and China, 1920–52
Authors: Reinhardt Anne
Published: January 2021

The steamship networks that linked China and India from the mid-nineteenth century were a key facet of the British colonial presence in both places. By the early twentieth century, shipping was an important arena of nationalist mobilization in both as well. In China and India, the nationalist shipping entrepreneurs Lu Zuofu and Walchand Hirachand used both commercial and political means to dismantle the colonial shipping system, foster national autonomy, and envision decolonized futures. Although these entrepreneurs did not a have any direct contact with one another, the unmistakable parallels in their actions and arguments underscore the importance of the historical and structural connections between China and India between the 1920s and 1950s as these entrepreneurs contended with a shipping system of global reach. This chapter compares Lu and Hirachand’s strategies to develop national shipping power under colonial/semi-colonial rule and as a part of decolonization.
Introduction
Authors: Kikon Dolly , McDuie-Ra Duncan
Published: January 2021

Dimapur has a limited public history, rarely features in popular culture, and has failed to capture the information of scholars. This chapter addresses the question ‘why Dimapur’ and offers six answers that serve as the book’s argument. First, Dimapur is the largest city in a tribal majority state. Second, Dimapur gives us the opportunity to frame frontier urbanism as a research agenda in India/South Asia. Third, more than just a city, Dimapur is a spatial experiment, a zone between the hills and plains, between tribal and non-tribal space. Fourth, Dimapur is a city governed under extraordinary laws with a substantial military presence and two camps of surrendered militants on its outskirts. Fifth, Dimapur has been both a city of conflict and a city of refuge. Finally, Dimapur allows the opportunity to begin an account of the Northeast, and Nagaland in particular, with urban modernity.
Producing Urban Space
Authors: Kikon Dolly , McDuie-Ra Duncan
Published: January 2021

This chapter analyses the efforts to make Dimapur more city-like. Beginning with attempts to hold municipal elections with reserved seats for women in 2017, we navigate the deeply contentious politics around the classification and re-classification of space in the city. As the largest city in a tribal state, Dimapur is an experiment in the production of legible urban space in areas with customary law and constitutional protection. At present the experiment is provoking deep anxieties. Producing legible urban space from the collection of settlements, villages, barracks, commercial zones, ceasefire camps, encroached tracts, and wastelands under various socio-legal regimes is rarely coherent and often chaotic. We argue that the city is a space to challenge and transgress customary law in ways unthinkable at the village level. However, transgression was a catalyst for crisis, a scenario likely to remain constant in urban politics for the conceivable future.
Audible City
Authors: Kikon Dolly , McDuie-Ra Duncan
Published: January 2021

This chapter follows the sounds of Dimapur through the lives of musicians and the nascent music industry. Dimapur has become a home for Naga musicians to establish music schools and recording studios and to hold events across many genres. Dimapur is also the subject of the city’s music. Musicians write and sing about the city, giving the urban landscape a presence in popular culture. The city also appears in music videos, circulated digitally through YouTube and other platforms, putting the city ‘on the map’ for the consumers of contemporary Naga music, whether in the frontier, in cities in other parts of India, or in diaspora. Through these networks, Dimapur is experienced as sound and image, some of which draw conspicuously on the past of militarism, though much eschews the past to project notions of a future, a capitalist future of wealth and conspicuous consumption played out in the urban landscape.
Ellora
Authors: Lahiri Nayanjot
Published: January 2021

Two coins of Rajaraja I found outside a ‘Indrasabha’ – a Jain cave – at Ellora are described here. Their significance is also explained in view of the fact that Ellora was far outside the limits of Rajaraja’s empire.
Buddhist Group of Thanala Caves
Authors: Lahiri Nayanjot
Published: January 2021

A description of several of the eighteen caves there, the memorial stupas, the remains of paintings of the Mahayana phase, the various phases that could be detected on the basis of architecture and style, the descriptions of various deities – mithunas, a Naga, Gajalakshmi representations—all this, and much more, figures in this article.
Creative Destruction and Urban Space
Authors: Orvell Miles
Published: January 2021

This chapter focuses on the deliberate destruction of the city (“creative destruction”), clearing out older buildings to make way for newer, more profitable ones. Penn Station’s demolition is the most notorious example, and the chapter examines the way photographers represented its demise and how it ignited a new preservation movement. Life magazine carried the story of urban renewal through the post–World War II period, including its coverage of the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe project in St. Louis, which came to symbolize the failures of government-subsidized housing. While creative destruction was considered a necessary cornerstone of capitalism, artists were critiquing the process in works of parody (Robert Smithson) and in the dramatic dismantling of buildings (Gordon Matta-Clark). The whole question of the “life cycle” of buildings and cities is considered, focusing on the work of Alan Berger in his theory of “drosscape” and in Rem Koolhaas’s notion of buildings with a fixed life.
Picturing Climate Change: “It’s the Apocalypse”
Authors: Orvell Miles
Published: January 2021

Ecological awareness goes back at least to Henry David Thoreau in the mid-nineteenth century, but it is only in the late twentieth century that a broader awareness emerged, centering on the effects of a changing climate on the Earth’s surface. The cataclysmic terror of Hurricane Katrina was most vividly photographed by Robert Polidori, among a dozen other New Orleans photographers, and his work is examined in this chapter. A different approach is taken by John Ganis, who has concentrated on the coastal regions of the East and Gulf states and has provided the perspective of a long-range view. Both photographers reveal the fragility of material structures, in which the movement from order to chaos can create shocking images of our disrupted environment. Yet another perspective is taken in the work of James Balog, whose time-lapse photographs and movies have disclosed the melting of polar glaciers at a speed that has startled scientists, even while it has confirmed the worst fears of climate change and the ruins it entails. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the way two popular climate movies by Roland Emmerich have imagined climate disaster, and the ambiguities of such representations.
The Fossil Record of the Pancrustacea
Authors: Hegna Thomas A. , Luque Javier , Wolfe Joanna M.
Published: January 2021

Fossils are critically important for evolutionary studies as they provide the link between geological ages and the phylogeny of life. The Pancrustacea are an incredibly diverse clade, representing over 800,000 described extant species, encompassing a variety of familiar and unfamiliar forms, such as ostracods, tongue worms, crabs, lobsters, shrimps, copepods, barnacles, branchiopods, remipedes, and insects. Having colonized nearly every environment on Earth, from hydrothermal vents to terrestrial habitats, they have a diverse fossil record dating back to the Cambrian (540–485 Ma). The quality of the fossil record of each clade is variable and related to their lifestyle (e.g., free-living versus parasitic, benthic versus pelagic) and the degree of mineralization of their cuticle. We review the systematics, morphology, preservation, and paleoecology of pancrustacean fossils; each major clade is discussed in turn, and, where possible, fossil systematics are compared with more recent data from molecular phylogenetics. We show that the three epic clades of the Pancrustacea—Allotriocarida, Multicrustacea, and Oligostraca—all have Cambrian roots, but the diversification of those clades did not take place until the Middle and Late Paleozoic. We also address the potential affinities of three “problematic” clades: euthycarcinoids, thylacocephalans, and cyclids. We conclude by assessing the future of pancrustacean paleobiology, discussing new morphological imaging techniques and further integration with growing molecular phylogenetic data.
Prelude to War
Authors: Heyman Barbara B.
Published: January 2021

This chapter reveals the most accurate account of Barber’s first major commission, the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. It was commissioned in 1939 by Samuel Fels of Fels-Naptha soap for his ward Iso Briselli, a young violinist prodigy. Barber’s work on the concerto in Switzerland was interrupted by the impending Nazi invasion in Poland and, on arriving home, the illness of his father. As the work could not be completed in time for Briselli’s debut, it was premiered instead by Albert Spalding and the Philadelphia Orchestra and received a generous response, newspapers reporting it to be an “exceptional popular success.” The chapter also features four songs on texts by Gerard Manley Hopkins, James Agee, W. B. Yeats, and Frederic Prokosch, a friend of Barber’s. It mentions the piano trio he wrote for the wedding of Barber’s sister Sara and his nomination to the National Institute of Arts and Letters as its youngest member.
World Cataclysm 1942–1945
Authors: Heyman Barbara B.
Published: January 2021

On the verge of World War II, Barber was called to serve in the United States Army. He and other musicians shared the same sentiments in regard to serving in the military: they were patriotic, but they wished to continue writing music. Because of Barber’s poor eyesight, he was assigned to special services, which included musical activities. Throughout the world, however, there was an increasing demand for his work. Even in the Army, his compositions, particularly Commando March, became part of the band repertoire. For this he was granted “the best working conditions” during the war, for which he was immensely grateful. He was also commissioned to write a symphony for the Army Air Corps, which reflected his experiences with pilots in training. The Second Symphony, called the Flight Symphony, is built on musical themes that “exude flight and are rife with code,” according to the analysis by Senior Master Sergeant Bill Tortolano of the United States Air Force Band. It was premiered by the Boston Symphony under the direction of Serge Koussevitzky. Barber was eventually transferred to the New York Office of War Information so he could concentrate on his work. This chapter also discusses Four Excursions, piano pieces written for Jeanne Behrend to perform on her programs promoting American piano music to international audiences. In 1944, Barber composed Capricorn Concerto, a tribute to the home he and Menotti lived in for nearly thirty years.
Disorder and Chaos
Authors: Marrone Gaetana
Published: January 2021

Le mani sulla città (Hands over the City, 1963), Rosi’s indictment of local civic corruption, maps the labyrinthine spaces and power hierarchies of Naples, the city that exemplified for him scandalous urban developments in postwar Italy. The film, which exposes the rapacity of land speculators operating in collusion with local government, features spectacular collapse and eviction scenes that reflect Rosi’s rapport with Neapolitan theater and his aesthetic ties to Cartier-Bresson. Cadaveri eccellenti (Illustrious Corpses, 1976), adapted from Leonardo Sciascia’s Il contesto, is Rosi’s noir on the Mafia’s ascendancy to a de facto partner in national government. The film, which unfolds around a series of unsolved murders of distinguished jurists, reflects Rosi’s political unease with the “historic compromise.” To capture these political maneuverings, Rosi breaks with “documented” realism and devises a neobaroque view of the South as an iconic site of corruption, doubt, conspiracy, suspicion, and visual theatricality.
A Holy Baptism of Fire and Blood
Authors: Byrd James P.
Published: January 2021

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln said both North and South “read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.” Lincoln quoted several biblical texts in this address—which, according to Frederick Douglass, “sounded more like a sermon than a state paper.” The Bible, as Lincoln’s famous speech illustrated, saturated the Civil War. This book offers the most thorough analysis yet of how Americans enlisted scripture to fight the Civil War. As this insightful narrative reveals, no book was more important to the Civil War than the Bible. From Massachusetts to Mississippi and beyond, the Bible was the nation’s most read and most respected book. It brought to mind sacred history and sacrifice. It presented a drama of salvation and damnation, of providence and judgment. It was also a book of war. Americans cited the Bible in addressing many wartime issues, including slavery, secession, patriotism, federal versus state authority, white supremacy, and violence. In scripture, both Union and Confederate soldiers found inspiration for dying and killing like never before in the nation’s history. With approximately 750,000 fatalities, the Civil War was the deadliest of the nation’s wars. Americans fought the Civil War with Bibles in hand, with both sides calling the war just and sacred. This is a book about how Americans enlisted the Bible in the nation’s most bloody, and arguably most biblically saturated war.
“The Stone Which the Builders Rejected”
Authors: Byrd James P.
Published: January 2021

This chapter narrates the role of the Bible in the secession crisis that erupted after Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860. While Benjamin Morgan Palmer and other southerners saw slavery as “a divine trust,” many northerners agreed with Lincoln’s quotation of scripture—“A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand,” meaning the nation could not endure if it remained divided over slavery. In response, southerners scoured the scriptures for arguments to support white supremacy, fearing that many non-slaveholding whites in the South would refuse to support secession. In all, the Bible contributed to the righteous indignation on both sides, helping to pave the way for war.
“Trust in Providence and Keep Your Powder Dry”
Authors: Byrd James P.
Published: January 2021

Both sides finally got what they wanted in July at the First Battle of Bull Run—here was a real battle, giving both sides the chance to face off against the enemy. Here also was the first providential test of the war, the first indication of which side God would take once the fighting started. For many southerners, Bull Run (or Manassas, as southerners called the battle) confirmed their reading of God’s will; for many northerners, Bull Run stirred disillusionment and a call for of the nation to rededicate itself to God. The battle also provoked revaluations of several key biblical texts, including Exodus in the South and Romans 13 in the North, with both sides trying to tease out the relationship between the Bible and Bull Run.
“Woe to That Man by Whom the Offense Cometh”
Authors: Byrd James P.
Published: January 2021

In the presidential campaign of 1864, Democrats ramped up racist attacks against Lincoln’s campaign. Many Democrats said that a vote for Lincoln was a vote for racial equality, whites losing jobs to blacks, and white women raped by black men. Lincoln’s opponents attacked him with racist biblical satire. This political use of scripture contrasted with Lincoln’s own reflections on the Bible, which viewed the war as God’s judgment on both North and South for slavery. If the war was God’s judgment, it was a fierce judgment in 1864, with horrific battles, but also the massacre of African American troops at Fort Pillow, and the inhumane conditions at Andersonville Prison. Death tolls rose, bringing with them shouts for revenge, but also pleas for Americans to remember that every human life was sacred to God—a biblical idea that may have been one of the war’s most troubling casualties.
The Sounds of Zombie Media
Authors: Flood Lauren
Published: January 2021

This chapter investigates how do-it-yourself (DIY) cultures in New York City and Berlin make sound and music with “zombie media,” or physical materials rescued from obsolescence that are recycled, repurposed, and reanimated. In situating DIY repurposing practices within a context of conspicuous production, or the tendency to obsess over constant invention and fabrication, it explores zombie media as experimental instrument building, sound art, and multimedia art. Through solo tinkering, group workshops, concerts, and exhibits, participants employ the DIY ethos present in underground and experimental music and art scenes, as well as maker and hacker cultures, to explore the aesthetic, material, and cultural value of electronics at various life stages and afterlives. Some of their tools and techniques of repurposing include: circuit bending, hardware hacking, scavenging electronic waste, and repairing broken audio equipment. Drawing on discussions of the zombie, ranging from its original Haitian context to its widespread use as a symbol for the anxieties of late capitalism and overconsumption, the chapter shows how participants engage infrastructures of waste through an ethic of aversion, cultivating sustainability skills that demonstrate “productive” uses of time and materials, but which nevertheless embody conspicuous production. The lure of zombie media is its reanimating power—a resourcefulness-through-resistance that operates via sincerely held beliefs about labor, frugality, and conserving material goods.
Truthmakers and Easy Ontology
Authors: Thomasson Amie L.
Published: January 2021

Sympathy has been growing for the idea that existence questions can be answered by ‘easy’ arguments. But some have suggested that an important project remains for ontology: not determining what exists, but rather what makes true those claims we accept. The question addressed here is: If we accept the easy approach to ontology, can we legitimately take on the truthmaker project? There are two versions of this project: one has the goal of giving a uniquely true statement of what the fundamental entities are, while the other takes it merely as a constraint on metaphysics to give some good account of what the truthmakers are for claims we accept. I will argue that, if we truly take on board some of the basic theses of easy ontology, we should have serious reservations about both of these projects.
The Fundamentality of Physics
Authors: Ney Alyssa
Published: January 2021

A core commitment among physicalists is that physics holds some special status among the sciences, that it is fundamental. This paper argues that the most common interpretation of the fundamentality of physics, in terms of the ontological or explanatory completeness of physics, faces several insurmountable challenges. This interpretation relies on questionable assumptions about physics, many of which have been widely recognized as questionable in the philosophy of science for decades. Moreover, completeness physicalism is untenable in failing to provide the physicalist with any usable guide to ontology or metaphysical commitments. These same considerations motivate a revised interpretation of fundamentality in terms of a notion of ontological or explanatory maximality. This maximality physicalism is developed and defended.
Introduction
Authors: Seth Sanjay
Published: January 2021

This is the introduction to a book that challenges the assumption that the knowledge dominant in the world, although born in Europe in the modern period, is nonetheless “universal” and true for all times and places. The introduction sets out why the book defines our knowledge as “modern” and as Western,” and proceeds to outline the three intellectual currents it will draw upon—postcolonialism being the most important of these—to demonstrate that the knowledge disseminated in universities and utilized to govern peoples throughout the world is in fact parochial rather than universal.
The Code of History
Authors: Seth Sanjay
Published: January 2021

Showing that history writing is not the simple application of a method to sources bequeathed to us from the past, but rather a code that constructs “the past” in particular ways, this chapter explicates the elements of the code. Modern history treats past objects and texts as the objectified remains of humans who endowed their world with meaning and purpose, while constrained by the social circumstances characterizing their times; this time of theirs is dead, and it can only be represented, not resurrected; the past is only ever the human past, and it does not include ghosts, gods, spirits, or nature. In outlining these core elements of the code of history, it engages with those forms of history writing—the history of art, music, and science—that do not always share all the elements of the code, but for that very reason illuminate all the more clearly what the discipline presupposes.
The Anachronism of History
Authors: Seth Sanjay
Published: January 2021

Modern historiography is a modern and European invention, yet is thought to yield knowledge of all human pasts, giving rise to a paradox explored in this chapter. It is a cardinal sin for history writing to fall prey to anachronism, and yet applying the code of history to times and places where the presumptions that define it were/are not shared is itself anachronistic. What does it mean to write histories of premodern and non-Western pasts that were not disenchanted, where gods had not been deprived of agency, where the past constantly bled into the present, and where texts were not seen as the congealed remains of the purposes and meanings of their human authors? Modern histories of non-Western pasts must, this chapter concludes, be written in recognition that such histories are translations, not better or truer representations; and with acknowledgment of and due attention to the fact that much gets lost in translation.
International Relations
Authors: Seth Sanjay
Published: January 2021

This chapter offers a postcolonial critique of the discipline of international relations, which constitutes itself as a discipline by defining a unique and distinct object: the “anarchy” that prevails in the international realm, where unlike the “domestic” realm, there is no sovereign power. In defining its object thus, it also assumes that the international order is composed of sovereign states. But until a few decades ago empires covered the larger surface of the globe and included the majority of its people. The discipline manages the extraordinary feat of either forgetting this altogether or accounting for it by dismissing it as a “survival” of an earlier era, destined to be surpassed in the inexorable teleological march toward state sovereignty that is thought to have begun with the Peace of Westphalia. The “amnesia” regarding empire that characterizes the discipline is disabling, because the imperial past shadows and shapes the contemporary international order.
Epilogue
Authors: Seth Sanjay
Published: January 2021

The epilogue assesses the ethical and political, as well as the intellectual, implications of the arguments advanced in a book that has sought to show that the rise of an initially European knowledge to global dominance was not a story of the forward march of intellectual progress, but rather the story of an initially Western European emic knowledge that became globally hegemonic. The charges of relativism and irrationalism leveled against those who question the status of this knowledge are in significant measure animated by the fear that the grounds upon which our moral and political aspirations rest are thereby undermined. The epilogue dissents both from those who see in contemporary challenges to knowledge the slippery slope of epistemological and moral anarchy, and from those who denounce modern, Western knowledge and call for an “epistemology of the South.”
Action
Authors: Della Rocca Michael
Published: January 2021

Chapter 4 argues that, as in the case of substance, prominent accounts of action rightly insist on—but fail to meet—the explanatory demand with regard to action: what is it in virtue of which an action is an action? This failure is observed both in the case of causal theories of action (represented by Davidson and his followers) and in the case of rival non-causal theories (represented by Anscombe and her followers). This chapter then appeals to a Bradleyan regress argument to show that—as in the case of substance—such a failure is inevitable as long as one assumes that one is dealing with differentiated or relational action. The only remedy is to make a Parmenidean Ascent with regard to action: there are no actions, not even one action, there is simply action, analogous to actus purus in Aquinas’ sense.
Metaphysical Explanation
Authors: Della Rocca Michael
Published: January 2021

In chapter 8, the Parmenidean, Bradleyan methodology turns its sights on metaphysical explanation. The Parmenidean Ascent in this chapter does not proceed—as in previous chapters—by showing that proponents of this notion fail to meet an explanatory demand. Rather, the argument is that proponents of metaphysical explanation are committed to irrational actions in positing certain facts. These actions are arbitrary, performed without sufficient reason, and violate Ockham’s Razor, which counsels us not to multiply entities without needing to do so. This chapter shows how attempts by Schaffer to avoid the force of this argument by modifying Ockham’s Razor are inadequate. Throughout the chapter, connections between this argument and Quine’s arguments against modality are highlighted. The upshot is that differentiated, relational metaphysical explanation needs to be given up, that a structured ontology must be rejected, and that we must make a Parmenidean Ascent with regard to metaphysical explanation.
Tamers, Deniers, and Me
Authors: Della Rocca Michael
Published: January 2021

Chapters 10 and 11 attempt to counteract the resistance that will inevitably meet the extreme, Parmenidean conclusions in this book. Chapter 10 explores attempts to avoid these results by limiting the principle of sufficient reason (the PSR). This attempted modification is the taming strategy with regard to the PSR. This chapter identifies Kant and Dasgupta as representative (and very different) examples of PSR-tamers, and it shows how these taming strategies are each incoherent. Much use here is made of one of Leibniz’s arguments for the PSR which—though, perhaps, unsuccessful—is instrumental in mounting the charge of incoherence against the taming strategy. Connections between the limiting of the PSR embraced by tamers and the radical form of monism operative throughout this book are explored.
The Parmenidean Ascent
Authors: Della Rocca Michael
Published: January 2021

In realizing that relational metaphysical thinking is incoherent, we see that differentiated thoughts are not possible and that our language must amount, at most, only to fragments of thoughts and not genuine thoughts. At the same time, in making the Parmenidean Ascent and in divesting our words of metaphysical significance, we are free to use (or at least appear to use) the same words but without the metaphysical accretions that in Parmenidean fashion are being eliminated. This chapter is an expression of the inevitably fragmentary character of attempted thoughts and—with its reversion to a fragment of the first sentence of this book—it is also an expression of the use of the same words that we have always used but are now without metaphysical significance.
The Insurgent Image
Authors: Bolt Neville
Published: January 2021

Pictures speak louder than words. Violent acts create opportunity spaces––a hiatus in the political status quo shaken beyond comprehension for a brief time. In that moment, the state struggles to control the normality of its monopoly on violence and people’s confidence in the state’s ability to deliver security. If that space is prepared before the event with stories of struggle and grievance, the act caught on camera becomes a metaphor and an icon through which audiences connect to frames of understanding. Complex problems are simplified. And for a brief time an opportunity space opens to be exploited. This may be called shock doctrine. Chapter 4 explores the meaning of violent images from Iran to Pakistan and Northern Ireland.
Spontaneous Revolution
Authors: Bolt Neville
Published: January 2021

Chapter 7 looks at the historic tension between top-down command-and-control vanguardism and fluid, organic expressions of spontaneity within mass populations according to revolutionary theories. It evaluates whether violent images and the response they evoke in audiences are sufficient to mobilize populations to rise up without the need for an organizing, centralized elite or vanguard. In other words, a leaderless revolution. Symbol-rich, shock-and-awe images cross nation state borders via electronic connections before triggering local grievances within social movements and the social networks that both underpin them and link them in what individuals increasingly perceive as a common global imaginary. Is the future one of organized overthrow of governments or state implosion when political elites can no longer maintain their own security and tenure under the force of waves of televised protest?
Cultures Approaching Cultures
Authors: Klitgaard Robert
Published: January 2021

The field of social and cultural anthropology has evolved from the science of man to something more like cultural critique. Some have deconstructed and thereby dismissed both “cultural science” as well as “development.” Others deconstruct that deconstruction, finding within anthropology itself a culture of marginality. The chapter summarizes stereotypical differences between anthropology and economics, which resemble something like clashing cultures. Given them, how can we move ahead more constructively? As with cross-cultural work in general, we have to be attentive to the differences while at the same time being receptive to ideas and approaches that may at first seem strange or unhelpful. We should entertain the possibility of being both critical and constructive.
Are the Scientific Problems Too Hard?
Authors: Klitgaard Robert
Published: January 2021

Underlying the resistance of many anthropologists to the amplification and application of cultural knowledge are worries about pseudoscience. This chapter reviews the scientific difficulties in studying culture and development. Concepts are fuzzy and contested. Measures are inexact and controversial. The chapter provides new analyses of some of the latest data on various measures of development (including a new construct measuring life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) and various cultural variables. The relationships are sometimes surprisingly strong. But they are only suggestive, as full causal models remain an impossible dream. Nonetheless, thanks to analogies from soil science, psychology, and medicine, the chapter concludes with a less grand but perhaps more useful way to apply cultural knowledge.
Headless Relative Clauses in Tlaxcala Náhuatl
Authors: Flores-Nájera Lucero
Published: January 2021

This chapter describes the basic structural, morpho-syntactic, and semantic characteristics of headless relative clauses in the variety of Náhuatl spoken in Tlaxcala. It shows that the language has free relative clauses, i.e. headless relative clauses introduced by wh-expressions. In particular, it has all three main varieties that have been attested crosslinguistically: maximal free relative clauses, existential free relative clauses, and free-choice free relative clauses. Other types of headless relative clauses are attested as well, including light-headed relative clauses, i.e. relative clauses that, rather than a full nominal head, only have a determiner-like element as their head.
Headless Relative Clauses in Tseltalan
Authors: Polian Gilles , Aissen Judith
Published: January 2021

This chapter investigates headless relative clauses in Tseltal and Tsotsil, languages which make up the Tseltalan branch of Western Mayan. Headless relatives introduced by wh- interrogative expressions (free relatives) are associated with two interpretations: maximal and existential. There is no distinct free-choice free relative construction, but free-choice interpretations arise as possible readings of maximal free relatives. There are other headless relative clause constructions in Tseltalan which involve an overt determiner combined with the wh-pronoun or which lack an overt wh-pronoun. The authors argue that some of these are derived from headed relative clauses, with discourse-conditioned elision of the head noun, while others are based on free relatives in which the wh-pronoun is augmented by a determiner.
Headless Relative Clauses in Yucatec Maya
Authors: AnderBois Scott , Dzul Miguel Oscar Chan
Published: January 2021

This chapter surveys headless relative clauses (i.e. ones with no overt head noun) in Yucatec Maya, an indigenous language of southern Mexico. For Indo-European languages, discussion of such constructions has focused on “free relative clauses”—those with only a bare wh-word in place of a head—and to a lesser extent, “light-headed” relative clauses⎯those with a dedicated set of pronominal elements in place of a head noun. In contrast, Yucatec Maya is shown to allow for four different kinds of surface headless relative clause forms depending on the presence or absence of a wh-word and the presence or absence of a determiner, quantifier, or other D-element. With respect to free relative clauses, whereas many more well-studied Indo-European languages have morpho-syntactically distinct constructions for definite and indefinite free relative clauses (e.g. with an infinitive or subjunctive form in the latter case), Yucatec Maya is shown to have a single morpho-syntactic form whose (in)definiteness is determined by syntactic context.
Egypt’s Middle Power Aspirations Under el-Sisi
Authors: Shama Nael M.
Published: January 2021

In the international system, states whose capabilities are neither too great nor too small are called middle powers. At a general level of analysis, a middle power could be identified using three approaches: its possession of material capabilities, the way it acts and the way its policymakers perceive its foreign policy identity. The first, often called the “position” approach, sketches at length relevant quantifiable factors, such as geographic location, size, population, gross domestic product (GDP), and defense spending. Yet, a state’s ownership of material capabilities does not in itself indicate that it wants to embrace an assertive and active foreign policy. Therefore, in the late 1980s and early 1990s a shift took place, to the “behavioral” approach, which examines the foreign policy behavior of states to identify and understand middle powers. The third approach, the “identity” approach, considers how policymakers think about the foreign policy identity of their states. This approach presents a straightforward method of identification that has a reasonable power of prediction. It informs us of the kind of foreign policy behavior likely to be followed.
Front Lines and Status Lines
Authors: Singha Radhika
Published: January 2021

.Over 1897-1902, the Tirah campaign, the South African war and the China expedition made it necessary to re-organise the standing non-combatant units of the Indian Army. The contention was that the combatant and the follower ranks of the Indian Army were recruited from entirely different rural strata. In fact there was a considerable overlap in recruiting pools. This overlap increased in World War one due to the growing importance of the auxiliary services and the need to conserve all labor and use it more ‘efficiently’. The ‘higher’ followers, those organised in distinct departments, such as mule-driver and stretcher-bearer units, benefitted from the unsettling of status hierarchies and wage differences; less so the attached or ‘menial’ followers who provided ‘domestic’ services and included ‘untouchable’ service-providers in their ranks. The chapter engages with the global history of domestic work to examine the production of ‘menial’ status in the institutional context of the Indian Army., The care-giving services of the ‘menial’ follower reproduced both the ‘martial caste’ standing of the Indian soldier and the race standing of the British soldier. The ‘menial follower’ tried to stabilise his situation of institutional precarity but remained vulnerable to a regime of personal and discretionary discipline.
The Ends of War
Authors: Singha Radhika
Published: January 2021

This chapter explores the termination of the Great War as a prolonged event, marked by de-mobilisation and re-mobilisation, and shaped by a variety of political interventions. The return home, in the various forms that it took, was an exercise government had to manage throughout the war. It was a crucial part of the war experience for military personnel and one they sought to shape. The chapter examines the ‘returnee’ in his various avatars – as deserter, disabled service-man, and prisoner- of- war, and discharged veteran. It suggests that returning personnel explored a wider range of political options than allowed for in existing literature, where the key question is whether de-mobilised personnel returned with anti-imperialist views and participated in the seething mass movements of 1919-21. The widening arc of military recruitment in 1917-1919 had synergized with the hectic forging of new political constituencies to intensify expectations and anxieties among military personnel. Their prolonged post-Armistice deployment, even as British and Dominion troops were being de-mobilised, gave them the confidence to question race and institutional hierarchies in the army and this was not an apolitical response. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the politics of commemoration and the invocation of an ‘Asia’ stretching from West and Central Asia into India, united by an imagination of self-government.