Search results for ""Debate""

In Black Athena Writes Back Martin Bernal responds to the passionate debates set off by the 1987 publication of his book Black Athena. Producing a shock wave of reaction from scholars, Black Athena argued that the development of Greek civilization was heavily influenced by Afroasiatic civilizations. Moreover, Bernal asserted that this knowledge had been deliberately obscured by the rampant racism of nineteenth-century Europeans who could not abide the notion that Greek society—for centuries recognized as the originating culture of Europe—had its origins in Africa and Southwest Asia. The subsequent rancor among classicists over Bernal’s theory and accusations was picked up in the popular media, and his suggestion that Greek culture had its origin in Africa was widely derided. In a report on 60 Minutes, for example, it was suggested that Bernal’s hypothesis was essentially an attempt to provide blacks with self-esteem so that they would feel included in the march of progress. In Black Athena Writes Back Bernal provides additional documentation to back up his thesis, as well as offering persuasive explanations of why traditional scholarship on the subject remains inaccurate and why specific arguments lobbed against his theories are themselves faulty.Black Athena Writes Back requires no prior familiarity with either the Black Athena hypothesis or with the arguments advanced against it. It will be essential reading for those who have been following this long-running debate, as well as for those just discovering this fascinating subject.

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Since the nineteenth century, ideas centered on the individual, on Emersonian self-reliance, and on the right of the individual to the pursuit of happiness have had a tremendous presence in the United States—and even more so after the Reagan era. But has this presence been for the good of all? In Negative Liberties Cyrus R. K. Patell revises important ideas in the debate about individualism and the political theory of liberalism. He does so by adding two new voices to the current discussion—Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon—to examine the different ways in which their writings embody, engage, and critique the official narrative generated by U.S. liberal ideology. Pynchon and Morrison reveal the official narrative of individualism as encompassing a complex structure of contradiction held in abeyance. This narrative imagines that the goals of the individual are not at odds with the goals of the family or society and in fact obscures the existence of an unholy truce between individual liberty and forms of oppression. By bringing these two fiction writers into a discourse dominated by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Isaiah Berlin, John Rawls, George Kateb, Robert Bellah, and Michael Sandel, Patell unmasks the ways in which contemporary U.S. culture has not fully shed the oppressive patterns of reasoning handed down by the slaveholding culture from which American individualism emerged.With its interdisciplinary approach, Negative Liberties will appeal to students and scholars of American literature, culture, sociology, and politics.

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Ohio Canal Era, a rich analysis of state policies and their impact in directing economic change, is a classic on the subject of the pre–Civil War transportation revolution. This edition contains a new foreword by scholar Lawrence M. Friedman, Professor of Law, Stanford Law School, and a bibliographic note by the author. Professor Scheiber explores how Ohio—as a “public enterprise state,” creating state agencies and mobilizing public resources for transport innovation and control—led in the process of economic change before the Civil War. No other historical account of the period provides so full and insightful a portrayal of “law in action.” Scheiber reveals the important roles of American nineteenth-century government in economic policy-making, finance, administration, and entrepreneurial activities in support of economic development. His study is equally important as an economic history. Scheiber provides a full account of waves of technological innovation and of the transformation of Ohio’s commerce, agriculture, and industrialization in an era of hectic economic change. And he tells the intriguing story of how the earliest railroads of the Old Northwest were built and financed, finally confronting the state-owned canal system with a devastating competitive challenge. Amid the current debate surrounding “privatization,” “deregulation,” and the appropriate use of “industrial policy” by government to shape and channel the economy. Scheiber’s landmark study gives vital historical context to issues of privatization and deregulation that we confront in new forms today.

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This book examines the common metaphor that equates computing and writing, tracing it from the naming of devices (“notebook” computers) through the design of user interfaces (the “desktop”) to how we describe the work of programmers (“writing” code). Computing as Writing ponders both the implications and contradictions of the metaphor.During the past decade, analysis of digital media honed its focus on particular hardware and software platforms. Daniel Punday argues that scholars should, instead, embrace both the power and the fuzziness of the writing metaphor as it relates to computing—which isn’t simply a set of techniques or a collection of technologies but also an idea that resonates throughout contemporary culture. He addresses a wide array of subjects, including film representations of computing (Desk Set, The Social Network), Neal Stephenson’s famous open source manifesto, J. K. Rowling’s legal battle with a fan site, the sorting of digital libraries, subscription services like Netflix, and the Apple versus Google debate over openness in computing.Punday shows how contemporary authors are caught between traditional notions of writerly authority and computing’s emphasis on doing things with writing. What does it mean to be a writer today? Is writing code for an app equivalent to writing a novel? Should we change how we teach writing? Punday’s answers to these questions and others are original and refreshing, and push the study of digital media in productive new directions.

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'Twas Honest old Noah first planted the Vine And mended his morals by drinking its Wine. —from a drinking song by Benjamin Franklin There were, Peter Thompson notes, some one hundred and fifty synonyms for inebriation in common use in colonial Philadelphia and, on the eve of the Revolution, just as many licensed drinking establishments. Clearly, eighteenth-century Philadelphians were drawn to the tavern. In addition to the obvious lure of the liquor, taverns offered overnight accommodations, meals, and stabling for visitors. They also served as places to gossip, gamble, find work, make trades, and gather news. In Rum Punch and Revolution, Thompson shows how the public houses provided a setting in which Philadelphians from all walks of life revealed their characters and ideas as nowhere else. He takes the reader into the cramped confines of the colonial bar room, describing the friendships, misunderstandings and conflicts which were generated among the city's drinkers and investigates the profitability of running a tavern in a city which, until independence, set maximum prices on the cost of drinks and services in its public houses. Taverngoing, Thompson writes, fostered a sense of citizenship that influenced political debate in colonial Philadelphia and became an issue in the city's revolution. Opinionated and profoundly undeferential, taverngoers did more than drink; they forced their political leaders to consider whether and how public opinion could be represented in the counsels of a newly independent nation.

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The Yield is a once-in-a-generation reinterpretation of the oeuvre of Franz Kafka. At the same time, it is a powerful new entry in the debates about the supposed secularity of the modern age. Kafka is one of the most admired writers of the last century, but this book presents us with a Kafka few will recognize. It does so through a fine-grained analysis of the three hundred "thoughts" the writer penned near the end of World War I, when he had just been diagnosed with tuberculosis. Since they were discovered after Kafka's death, the meaning of the so-called "Zürau aphorisms" has been open to debate. Paul North's elucidation of what amounts to Kafka's only theoretical work shows them to contain solutions to problems Europe has faced throughout modernity. Kafka offers responses to phenomena of violence, discrimination, political repression, misunderstanding, ethnic hatred, fantasies of technological progress, and the subjugation of the worker, among other problems. Reflecting on secular modernity and the theological ideas that continue to determine it, he critiques the ideas of sin, suffering, the messiah, paradise, truth, the power of art, good will, and knowledge. Kafka's controversial alternative to the bad state of affairs in his day? Rather than fight it, give in. Developing some of Kafka's arguments, The Yield describes the ways that Kafka envisions we can be good by "yielding" to our situation instead of striving for something better.

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This volume reflects Jacques Derrida's engagement in the late 1970s with French political debates on the teaching of philosophy and the reform of the French university system. He was a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy (Greph), an activist group that mobilized opposition to the Giscard government's proposals to "rationalize" the French educational system in 1975, and a convener of the Estates General of Philosophy, a vast gathering in 1979 of educators from across France. While addressing specific contemporary political issues on occasion, thus providing insight into the pragmatic deployment of deconstructive analysis, the essays deal mainly with much broader concerns. With his typical rigor and spark, Derrida investigates the genealogy of several central concepts which any debate about teaching and the university must confront. Thus there are essays on the "teaching body," both the faculty corps and the strange interplay in the French (but not only the French) tradition between the mind and body of the professor; on the question of age in teaching, analyzed through a famous letter of Hegel; on the class, the classroom, and the socio-economic concept of class in education; on language, especially so-called "natural languages" like French; and on the legacy of the revolutionary tradition, the Estates General, in the university. The essays are linked by the extraordinary care and precision with which Derrida undertakes a political intervention into, and a philosophical analysis of, the institutionalization of philosophy in the university.

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This handbook is a comprehensive guide to the federal Endangered Species Act, the primary U.S. law aimed at protecting species of animals and plants from human threats to their survival. The Act protects not only threatened and endangered animals and plants, but their habitats as well, from direct and indirect threats such as hunting and development. Enacted in 1973 without opposition, the Act has over the past 27 years become a focal point for controversy, as efforts to protect species have clashed with traditional views of economic progress. Despite the often heated debate, the Act enters the 21st century essentially unchanged. This handbook, intended for lawyers, government agency employees, students, community activists, businesspeople, and anyone else who needs to understand the Endangered Species Act, guides the reader through the Act's provisions, including the procedures for listing species and designating their critical habitats, the requirements the Act places on federal agencies, and the scope of protections afforded to listed species. It contains a discussion of the modern extinction crisis and a brief history of endangered species protection in the United States. The handbook also explains how the Act and its implementing regulations have been interpreted by courts over the years. It provides valuable tips for citizens who wish to become involved in application and enforcement of the Act. The handbook includes the text of the Act, as well as a bibliography of related legislative materials, case law, and legal scholarship.

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The crisis of tradition early in the twentieth century—signaled by the collapse of perspective in painting and tonality in music and evident in the explosive ferment of the avant-garde movements—opened a new stage of modern art, which aesthetic theory is still struggling to comprehend. David Roberts situates the current aesthetic and cultural debates in a wider historical frame which extends from Hegel and the German Romantics to Lukács and Adorno, Benjamin and Baudrillard. Art and Enlightenment: Aesthetic Theory after Adorno is the first detailed analysis in English of Theodor Adorno’s seminal Philosophy of Modern Music, which can be seen as a turning point between modern and postmodern art and theory. Adorno's diagnosis of the crisis of modernist values points back to Hegel's thesis of the end of art and also forward to the postmodernist debate. Thus the paradoxes of Adorno’s negative aesthetics return to haunt the current discussion by representatives of the second generation of the Frankfurt School, Anglo-American Marxism, and French poststructuralism. Going beyond Adorno's dialectic of musical enlighten-ment, Roberts proposes an alternative model of the enlightenment, of art applied to literature and exemplified in the outline of a theory of parody. In its critique of Adorno, Art and Enlightenment clears the way for a reconsideration of twentieth-century artistic theory and practice and also, in offering a model of postmodern art, seeks to disentangle critical issues in the discussion of the avant-garde, modernism, and postmodernism.

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Political economy, John Shovlin asserts, can illuminate the social and economic contexts out of which a revolutionary impulse developed in France. Beyond the role of political economy in political life, massive public engagement with problems of economic order mediated an enduring cultural transformation. Economic activity was reimagined as a patriotic pursuit, and economic agents—farmers, merchants, and manufacturers—came to be viewed as potential citizens. Drawing on hundreds of political economic tracts published in France between the 1740s and the early nineteenth century, Shovlin shows how mid-level French elites (magistrates, clerics, lawyers, soldiers, landed gentlemen) sought to balance their interests and values with the need to regenerate a nation that had seemingly entered a period of decline. In their view, France's moral, political, and economic power depended not simply on expanding the national wealth but also on reviving civic spirit. The "political economy of virtue" held that luxury was the cause of the nation's economic and moral degeneration. When the monarchy failed to reform its political economic structures in the 1760s and 1770s, mid-level elites sought to eliminate the stranglehold of the plutocracy. Shovlin argues that the Revolution grew out of a debate on how to establish a commercial society capable of fostering both wealth and virtue, and the revolutionaries sought to create such a society by destroying the institutions that channeled modern wealth into the hands of courtiers and financiers.

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All of us take our moral bearings from a conception of the good, or a range of goods, that we consider most important. We are in this sense selves in moral space. Building on the work of the philosopher Charles Taylor, among others, David Parker examines a range of classic and contemporary autobiographies—including those of St. Augustine, William Wordsworth, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Gosse, Roland Barthes, Seamus Heaney, and J. M. Coetzee—to reveal a whole domain of life narrative that has been previously ignored, one that enables a new approach to the question of what constitutes a "good" life narrative. Moving from an ethics toward an aesthetics of life writing, Parker follows Wittgenstein's view that ethics and aesthetics are one. The Self in Moral Space is distinctive in that its key ethical question is not What is it right for the life writer to do? but the broader question What is it good to be? This question opens up an important debate with the dominant postmodern paradigms that prevail in life writing studies today. In Parker's estimation, such paradigms are incapable of explaining why life writing matters in the contemporary context. Life narrative, he argues, faces readers with the perennial ethical question How should a human being live? We need a new reconstructive paradigm, as offered by this book, in order to gain a fuller understanding of life narrative and its humanistic potential.

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What is it for a sentence to have a certain meaning? This is the question that the distinguished analytic philosopher William P. Alston addresses in this major contribution to the philosophy of language. His answer focuses on the given sentence's potential to play the role that its speaker had in mind, what he terms the usability of the sentence to perform the illocutionary act intended by its speaker.Alston defines an illocutionary act as an act of saying something with a certain "content." He develops his account of what it is to perform such acts in terms of taking responsibility, in uttering a sentence, for the existence of certain conditions. In requesting someone to open a window, for example, the speaker takes responsibility for its being the case that the window is closed and that the speaker has an interest in its being opened.In Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning, Alston expands upon this concept, creating a framework of five categories of illocutionary act and going on to argue that sentence meaning is fundamentally a matter of illocutionary act potential; that is, for a sentence to have a particular meaning is for it to be usable to perform illocutionary acts of a certain type. In providing detailed and explicit patterns of analysis for the whole range of illocutionary acts, Alston makes a unique contribution to the field of philosophy of language—one that is likely to generate debate for years to come.

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This explores the political and poetic understanding of the deconstruction of the 'animal question'. Re-examining how we relate to other animals has far-reaching implications for how we think of ourselves. This textbook reveals how thinkers on deconstruction, including Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous and Nicholas Royle, have consistently addressed questions about animality. Cixous questions human intervention between the death of a wild bird and the predation of a domestic cat. Kelly Oliver explores Derrida's analysis of what or whose gaze is at stake when a King oversees the autopsy of an elephant. Royle examines in what sense the vulnerable impressions made by the tunnelling of a mole might be thought of as the traces of a text. Throughout this collection authors explore the politics, and the poetics, of a less human-centred world. They demonstrate that even when this world is viewed through the prism of fields such as literature, autobiography and philosophy, it always shows traces of other animals. It expands the current debate on the 'animal question' through new essays by established authors, such as Peggy Kamuf, Sarah Wood and Judith Still, that critically examine a wide range of texts by Derrida, Cixous and Royle. It includes the first English translation of 'Un Refugie' by Helene Cixous, showing how her approach to relations between humans and other animals is similar to but distinct from that of Derrida. It republishes Nicholas Royle's ground-breaking essay 'Mole'.

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Now in a revised and updated second edition, this volume provides an authoritative account of the current status of archaeological theory, as presented by some of its major exponents and innovators over recent decades. It summarizes the latest developments in the field and looks to its future, exploring some of the cutting-edge ideas at the forefront of the discipline.The volume captures the diversity of contemporary archaeological theory. Some authors argue for an approach close to the natural sciences, others for an engagement with cultural debate about representation of the past. Some minimize the relevance of culture to societal change, while others see it as central; some focus on the contingent and the local, others on long-term evolution. While few practitioners in theoretical archaeology would today argue for a unified disciplinary approach, the authors in this volume increasingly see links and convergences between their perspectives.The volume also reflects archaeology's new openness to external influences, as well as the desire to contribute to wider debates. The contributors examine ways in which archaeological evidence contributes to theories of evolutionary psychology, as well as to the social sciences in general, where theories of social relationships, agency, landscape and identity are informed by the long-term perspective of archaeology.The new edition of Archaeological Theory Today will continue to be essential reading for students and scholars in archaeology and in the social sciences more generally.

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Over-consumption is one of the key issues of our time, especially in the Western world. Over the past decade, in the face of historically unprecedented levels of consumer spending in the West - and the more recent impact of recession - a vigorous politics of anti-consumerism has emerged in a range of wealthy nations. This timely and original new book provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of what has come to be called the 'new politics of consumption'; a politics embodied in movements such as culture jamming, simple living, slow food and fair trade. The book offers an examination of anti-consumerism at a time when the idea of 'consumer excess' is being re-framed by a global economic downturn, and crucially explores what this means for the future of political debate. Drawing on interviews with activists across three continents, and offering a refreshingly accessible discussion of contemporary commentary and theory, Kim Humphery sympathetically explores anti-consumerism as cultural interpretation, lifestyle change, and collective action. Whilst analysing the positive advances of the anti-consumerist movement, Excess also challenges contemporary critical thinking on consumption, taking issue with the return to theories of mass culture in contemporary anti-consumerist polemic. Alternatively, Humphery begins to forge a politics of anti-consumerism that addresses the complexity of material acquisition and which avoids treating consumers as mere dupes in the logic of capitalism, viewing them instead as active participants in a culture which is capable of transformation.

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This book seeks to develop a new agenda for the centre-left. During the 1990’s, left of centre governments or coalitions came into power in the US, many of the European Union countries, and in societies elsewhere too. The modernisation of social democracy was crucial to these successes – all centre-left parties that came to power revised and updated their traditional doctrines. Recent years have seen the widespread return of the right to power, coupled to the prominence of far right parties in many countries. The centre-left must respond. Third-way thinking was a major source of ideological renewal, but today we must move beyond the political formulae of the 1990s. The authors represented in this volume show how. The papers included were prepared for the summit of progressive leaders held in July 2003. All have been written by leading experts in their fields. In his extensive introduction, Anthony Giddens draws the threads together to sketch a powerful and novel left-centre political approach. The book includes contributors from John Kay, Folke Schuppert, Tom Berntley, David Halpern, Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Nicola Rossi, David Held, Mary Kaldor, Rebecca Willis and James Wilsdon. Formerly Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, Anthony Giddens is a leading contributor to political debate around the world. He is the author of numverous widely acclaimed works including The Third Way (1998) and The Third Way and its Critics (2000).

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The idea of finding a 'third way' in politics has become a focus of discussion across the world. Political leaders, in the US, Europe, Asia and Latin America claim to be following its principles. Yet the notion has also attracted much criticism. Some say it is an empty concept without any real content. Critics from the more traditional left argue that it is a betrayal of left-wing ideals. Anthony Giddens's The Third Way (Polity Press, 1998) is regarded by many as the key text of third way politics. Translated into twenty-five languages, it has shaped the development of the third way. In this new book Giddens responds to the critics, and further develops the ideas set out in his earlier volume. Far from being unable to deal with inequalities of wealth and power, he shows, third way politics offers the only feasible approach to these issues. The work is indispensable for anyone who wants to understand the most important political debate going on today. Anthony Giddens is the Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author or editor of over thirty books. His previous works, especially Beyond Left and Right (Polity Press, 1994) have influenced debates about the future of social democracy in many countries across the world. Frequently referred to in the UK as Tony Blair's guru, Giddens has made a strong impact on the evolution of New Labour.

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A succinct and comprehensive history of the development of citizenship from the Roman Empire to the present dayCitizenship, Inequality, and Difference offers a concise and sweeping overview of citizenship's complex evolution, from ancient Rome to the present. Political leaders and thinkers still debate, as they did in Republican Rome, whether the presumed equivalence of citizens is compatible with cultural diversity and economic inequality. Frederick Cooper presents citizenship as "claim-making"--the assertion of rights in a political entity. What those rights should be and to whom they should apply have long been subjects for discussion and political mobilization, while the kind of political entity in which claims and counterclaims have been made has varied over time and space. Citizenship ideas were first shaped in the context of empires. The relationship of citizenship to "nation" and "empire" was hotly debated after the revolutions in France and the Americas, and claims to "imperial citizenship" continued to be made in the mid-twentieth century. Cooper examines struggles over citizenship in the Spanish, French, British, Ottoman, Russian, Soviet, and American empires, and he explains the reconfiguration of citizenship questions after the collapse of empires in Africa and India. He explores the tension today between individualistic and social conceptions of citizenship, as well as between citizenship as an exclusionary notion and flexible and multinational conceptions of citizenship. Citizenship, Inequality, and Difference is a historically based reflection on some of the most fundamental issues facing human societies in the past and present.

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The Scandal of Kabbalah is the first book about the origins of a culture war that began in early modern Europe and continues to this day: the debate between kabbalists and their critics on the nature of Judaism and the meaning of religious tradition. From its medieval beginnings as an esoteric form of Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah spread throughout the early modern world and became a central feature of Jewish life. Scholars have long studied the revolutionary impact of Kabbalah, but, as Yaacob Dweck argues, they have misunderstood the character and timing of opposition to it. Drawing on a range of previously unexamined sources, this book tells the story of the first criticism of Kabbalah, Ari Nohem, written by Leon Modena in Venice in 1639. In this scathing indictment of Venetian Jews who had embraced Kabbalah as an authentic form of ancient esotericism, Modena proved the recent origins of Kabbalah and sought to convince his readers to return to the spiritualized rationalism of Maimonides. The Scandal of Kabbalah examines the hallmarks of Jewish modernity displayed by Modena's attack--a critical analysis of sacred texts, skepticism about religious truths, and self-consciousness about the past--and shows how these qualities and the later history of his polemic challenge conventional understandings of the relationship between Kabbalah and modernity. Dweck argues that Kabbalah was the subject of critical inquiry in the very period it came to dominate Jewish life rather than centuries later as most scholars have thought.

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Rhetorical theory, the core of Roman education, taught rules of public speaking that are still influential today. But Roman rhetoric has long been regarded as having little important to say about political ideas. The State of Speech presents a forceful challenge to this view. The first book to read Roman rhetorical writing as a mode of political thought, it focuses on Rome's greatest practitioner and theorist of public speech, Cicero. Through new readings of his dialogues and treatises, Joy Connolly shows how Cicero's treatment of the Greek rhetorical tradition's central questions is shaped by his ideal of the republic and the citizen. Rhetoric, Connolly argues, sheds new light on Cicero's deepest political preoccupations: the formation of individual and communal identity, the communicative role of the body, and the "unmanly" aspects of politics, especially civility and compromise. Transcending traditional lines between rhetorical and political theory, The State of Speech is a major contribution to the current debate over the role of public speech in Roman politics. Instead of a conventional, top-down model of power, it sketches a dynamic model of authority and consent enacted through oratorical performance and examines how oratory modeled an ethics of citizenship for the masses as well as the elite. It explains how imperial Roman rhetoricians reshaped Cicero's ideal republican citizen to meet the new political conditions of autocracy, and defends Ciceronian thought as a resource for contemporary democracy.

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One of the enduring questions about our planet is how it has remained continuously habitable over vast stretches of geological time despite the fact that its atmosphere and climate are potentially unstable. James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis posits that life itself has intervened in the regulation of the planetary environment in order to keep it stable and favorable for life. First proposed in the 1970s, Lovelock's hypothesis remains highly controversial and continues to provoke fierce debate. On Gaia undertakes the first in-depth investigation of the arguments put forward by Lovelock and others--and concludes that the evidence doesn't stack up in support of Gaia. Toby Tyrrell draws on the latest findings in fields as diverse as climate science, oceanography, atmospheric science, geology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. He takes readers to obscure corners of the natural world, from southern Africa where ancient rocks reveal that icebergs were once present near the equator, to mimics of cleaner fish on Indonesian reefs, to blind fish deep in Mexican caves. Tyrrell weaves these and many other intriguing observations into a comprehensive analysis of the major assertions and lines of argument underpinning Gaia, and finds that it is not a credible picture of how life and Earth interact. On Gaia reflects on the scientific evidence indicating that life and environment mutually affect each other, and proposes that feedbacks on Earth do not provide robust protection against the environment becoming uninhabitable--or against poor stewardship by us.

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This book studies major works of literature from classical antiquity to the present that reflect crises in the evolution of Western law: the move from a prelegal to a legal society in The Eumenides, the Christianization of Germanic law in Njal's Saga, the disenchantment with medieval customary law in Reynard the Fox, the reception of Roman law in a variety of Renaissance texts, the conflict between law and equity in Antigone and The Merchant of Venice, the eighteenth-century codification controversy in the works of Kleist, the modern debate between "pure" and "free" law in Kafka's The Trial and other fin-de-siecle works, and the effects of totalitarianism, the theory of universal guilt, and anarchism in the twentieth century. Using principles from the anthropological theory of legal evolution, the book locates the works in their legal contexts and traces through them the gradual dissociation over the centuries of law and morality. It thereby associates and illuminates these masterpieces from an original point of view and contributes a new dimension to the study of literature and law. In contrast to prevailing adherents of Law-and-Literature, this book professes Literature-and-Law, in which the emphasis is historical rather than theoretical, substantive rather than rhetorical, and literary rather than legal. Instead of adducing the literary work to illustrate debates about modern law, this book consults the history of law as an essential aid to the understanding of the literary text and its conflicts.

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The wave of liberalization that swept world markets in the 1980s and 90s altered the ways that governments manage their economies. Reinventing State Capitalism analyzes the rise of new species of state capitalism in which governments interact with private investors either as majority or minority shareholders in publicly-traded corporations or as financial backers of purely private firms (the so-called “national champions”). Focusing on a detailed quantitative assessment of Brazil’s economic performance from 1976 to 2009, Aldo Musacchio and Sergio Lazzarini examine how these models of state capitalism influence corporate investment and performance.According to one model, the state acts as a majority investor, granting the state-owned enterprise (SOE) financial autonomy and allowing professional management. This form, the authors argue, has reduced many agency problems commonly faced by state ownership. According to another hybrid model, the state uses sovereign wealth funds, holding companies, and development banks to acquire a small share of equity ownership in a corporation, thereby potentially alleviating capital constraints and leveraging latent capabilities.Both models have benefits and costs. Yet neither model has entirely eliminated the temptation of governments to intervene in the operation of natural resource industries and other large strategic enterprises. Nevertheless, the longstanding debate over whether private ownership is superior or inferior to state capitalism has become irrelevant, Musacchio and Lazzarini conclude. Private ownership is now mingled with state capital on a global scale.

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"The time has come now," Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet as he presented the preliminary draft of a "Proclamation of Emancipation." Lincoln's effort to end slavery has been controversial from its inception-when it was denounced by some as an unconstitutional usurpation and by others as an inadequate half-measure-up to the present, as historians have discounted its import and impact. At the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, Louis Masur seeks to restore the document's reputation by exploring its evolution.Lincoln's Hundred Days is the first book to tell the full story of the critical period between September 22, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he signed the final, significantly altered, decree. In those tumultuous hundred days, as battlefield deaths mounted, debate raged. Masur commands vast primary sources to portray the daily struggles and enormous consequences of the president's efforts as Lincoln led a nation through war and toward emancipation. With his deadline looming, Lincoln hesitated and calculated, frustrating friends and foes alike, as he reckoned with the anxieties and expectations of millions. We hear these concerns, from poets, cabinet members and foreign officials, from enlisted men on the front and free blacks as well as slaves.Masur presents a fresh portrait of Lincoln as a complex figure who worried about, listened to, debated, prayed for, and even joked with his country, and then followed his conviction in directing America toward a terrifying and thrilling unknown.

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Produced by a team of world-leading economists, this is the benchmark account of recent and historical trends in inequality.World Inequality Report 2022 is the most authoritative and comprehensive account available of global trends in inequality. Researched, compiled, and written by a team of world-leading economists, the report builds on the pioneering edition of 2018 to provide policy makers and scholars everywhere up-to-date information about an ever broader range of countries and about forms of inequality that researchers have previously ignored or found hard to trace.Over the past decade, inequality has taken center stage in public debate as the wealthiest people in most parts of the world have seen their share of the economy soar relative to that of others. The resulting political and social pressures have posed harsh new challenges for governments and created a pressing demand for reliable data. The World Inequality Lab, housed at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, has answered this call by coordinating research into the latest trends in the accumulation and distribution of income and wealth on every continent. This new report not only extends the lab’s international reach but provides crucial new information about the history of inequality, gender inequality, environmental inequalities, and trends in international tax reform and redistribution.World Inequality Report 2022 will be a key document for anyone concerned about one of the most imperative and contentious subjects in contemporary politics and economics.

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WINNER OF THE PEGASUS AWARD FOR POETRY CRITICISMThe Dolphin Letters offers an unprecedented portrait of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick during the last seven years of Lowell's life (1970 to 1977), a time of personal crisis and creative innovation for both writers. Centred on the letters they exchanged with each other and with other members of their circle - writers, intellectuals, friends and publishers, including Elizabeth Bishop, Caroline Blackwood, Mary McCarthy and Adrienne Rich - this book has the narrative sweep of a novel, telling the story of the dramatic breakup of Lowell and Hardwick's twenty-one-year marriage and their extraordinary, but late, reconciliation.Lowell's sonnet sequence The Dolphin (for which he controversially adapted Hardwick's letters as a source) and his last book, Day by Day, were written during this period, as were Hardwick's influential books Seduction and Betrayal: Women and Literature and Sleepless Nights. Lowell and Hardwick are acutely intelligent observers of marriage, children, friends and the feelings that their personal tribulations gave rise to.The Dolphin Letters, edited by Saskia Hamilton, is a debate about the limits of art - what occasions a work of art, and what moral and artistic licence artists have to make use of their lives and the lives of others as material. The crisis of Lowell's The Dolphin was profoundly affecting to everyone around him, and Bishop's warning that 'art just isn't worth that much' haunts us today.

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"Yanomami" raises questions central to the field of anthropology - questions concerning the practice of fieldwork, the production of knowledge, and anthropology's intellectual and ethical vision of itself. Using the Yanomami controversy - one of anthropology's most famous and explosive imbroglios - as its starting point, this book draws readers into not only reflecting on but refashioning the very heart and soul of the discipline. It is both the most up-to-date and thorough public discussion of the Yanomami controversy available and an innovative and searching assessment of the current state of anthropology. The Yanomami controversy came to public attention through the publication of Patrick Tierney's best-selling book, "Darkness in El Dorado", in which he accuses James Neel, a prominent geneticist who belonged to the National Academy of Sciences, as well as Napoleon Chagnon, whose introductory text on the 'Yanomami' is perhaps the best-selling anthropological monograph of all time, of serious human rights violations. This book identifies the ethical dilemmas of the controversy and raises deeper, structural questions about the discipline. A portion of the book is devoted to a unique roundtable in which important scholars on different sides of the issues debate back and forth with each other. This format draws readers into deciding, for themselves, where they stand on the controversy's - and many of anthropology's - central concerns. All of the royalties from this book will be donated to helping the Yanomami improve their healthcare.

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When the United States violates the laws of war, who should bear the responsibility? The US has historically relied on the checks and balances of Congress and the Supreme Court to constrain executive power, and yet these boundaries are challenged by presidential war power. While other scholars have focused on presidents starting military conflicts abroad or infringing on civil liberties at home, Stuart Streichler integrates international humanitarian law into an analysis of the repercussions of presidential war powers for human rights.Presidential Accountability in Wartime starts by outlining the history of the development of the laws of war, including the Geneva Conventions and Nuremberg Trials. Then, using President George W. Bush’s authorization of interrogating detainees of the CIA and US armed forces during a national security crisis as a case study, Streichler examines how the checks and balances of Congress and the Supreme Court failed to hold anyone personally responsible. He uses originally classified documents to unravel the decision-making process of the White House and how it fits into the wider context. The book closes with an insightful interpretation of the torture debate that highlights the hazards of relying on the body politic to hold wartime presidents accountable and the repercussions for basic human rights in times of war. In doing so, it raises profound questions about the character of the presidency, the unreliability of checks and balances, and the American constitutional system of government.

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How has psychoanalysis developed in France in the years since Lacan so dramatically polarized the field?In this book, Dana Birksted-Breen and Sara Flanders of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and Alain Gibeault of the Paris Psychoanalytical Society provide an overview of how French psychoanalysis has developed since Lacan. Focusing primarily on the work of psychoanalysts from the French Psychoanalytical Association and from the Paris Psychoanalytical Society, the two British psychoanalysts view the evolution of theory as it appears to them from the outside, while the French psychoanalyst explains and elaborates from inside the French psychoanalytic discourse. Seminal and representative papers have been chosen to illuminate what is special about French thinking. A substantial general introduction argues in favour of the specificity of 'French psychoanalysis', tracing its early influences and highlighting specific contemporary developments.Sections are made up of introductory material by Alain Gibeault, followed by illustrative papers in the following categories: the history of psychoanalysis in France the pioneers and their legacy the setting and the process of psychoanalysis phantasy and representation the body and the drives masculine and feminine sexuality psychosis. An excellent introduction to French psychoanalytical debate, Reading French Psychoanalysis sheds a complementary light on thinking that has evolved differently in England and North America. It will be ideal reading for beginners and advanced students of clinical theory as well as experienced psychoanalysts wanting to know more about French Psychoanalytic theory, and how it has developed.

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Teaching in Transnational Higher Education examines current trends and challenges that face students, teachers and institutions of higher education around the globe. This book comes at a pivotal moment where many universities are offering their courses in offshore locations. Students who could once not access an international qualification can now do so without leaving their home country. The book clearly defines and takes an in-depth look at the various types of transnational education, including: institutions that have campuses abroad, teach specific courses abroad, and form partnerships with diverse schools to teach jointly. Teaching in Transnational Higher Education serves as a forum for debate on such insightful topics as: the modification of teaching to adapt to the needs of diverse students the use of technology in the classroom the view of higher education as a marketable service the importance of cultural awareness and understanding in a transnational classroom the complexities of assuring quality education across borders The authors choose to highlight a broad sampling of transnational programs including those in: Zambia, China, and the United Arab Emirates among others. Interviews with students and teachers participating in these programs of study make this an enjoyable and unique portrait of higher education that is invaluable to those who teach and learn around the world.Lee Dunn is a lecturer and academic developer in the Teaching and Learning Centre at Southern Cross University. Michelle Wallace is an Associate Professor in the Graduate College of Management at Southern Cross University.

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Rethinking the Purpose of Business challenges reigning shareholder and stakeholder management theories using philosophical and theological dimensions of the Catholic social tradition. In this useful book, the contributors, including management theorists, moral theologians, economists, ethicists, and attorneys, debate complicated issues such as the ethics of profit seeking, equity and efficiency in the firm, the shareholder value principle, social ethics of corporate management, the principle of subsidiarity, and modern contract theory. While the contributors to this thought-provoking volume share a respect for the power of markets, they also assign value to community, common goods, and personal virtue. Essays combine organizational and management theory with philosophical and theological accounts of human purpose. A central argument of this collection is that the tradition of Catholic social thought provides principles that enable fruitful conversations across disciplines regarding the purpose of business and economic activity. Contributors Michael J. Naughton, Jean-Yves Calvez, Helen J. Alford, O.P., Charles Clark, S. A. Cortright, and Ernest Pierucci discuss the human implications of current shareholder and stakeholder theories. Robert Kennedy, James Gordley, and Dennis McCann assess the communitarian and personal principles of traditional Catholic social teaching as they relate to organizational and managerial theories. Peter Koslowski, Domènec Melé, Lee Tavis, and Timothy Fort consider how Catholic social principles ought to reshape our understanding of the firm. Jeff Gates, James Murphy, and David Pyke consider how concrete practices in ownership and job design should be affected.

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The events of 2016 catapulted immigration policy to the forefront of public debate, and Donald Trump’s administration has signaled a harsh turn in enforcement. Yet the deportation, detention, and border-control policies that North American and European countries have embraced are by no means new. In this book, sociologists David C. Brotherton and Philip Kretsedemas bring together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to reconsider the immigration policies of the Obama era and beyond in terms of a decades-long “age of punishment.”Immigration Policy in the Age of Punishment takes a critical, interdisciplinary, and transnational look at current issues surrounding immigration in the U.S. and abroad. It examines key features of this age of punishment, connecting neoliberal governance, global labor markets, and the national obsession with securing borders to explain critical research and theory on immigration enforcement. Contributors document the continuities between presidential administrations and across countries from many perspectives, with chapters discussing Canada, Australia, France, the UK, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico in addition to the U.S. They offer macro-level analyses of deportations and border enforcement, analyses of national policy and jurisprudence, and ethnographic accounts of the daily life experience of the prison-to-deportation pipeline, the making of deportability, and post-deportation transitions for noncitizens. This book highlights new directions in critical immigration policy and enforcement and deportation studies with the aim of problematizing the age of punishment that currently reigns over borders and those who seek to cross them.

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Haruo Shirane's critically acclaimed Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600, contains key examples of both high and low styles of poetry, drama, prose fiction, and essays. For this abridged edition, Shirane retains substantial excerpts from such masterworks as The Tale of Genji, The Tales of the Heike, The Pillow Book, the Man'yoshu, and the Kokinshu. He preserves his comprehensive survey of secular and religious anecdotes (setsuwa) as well as classical poems with extensive commentary. He features no drama; selections from influential war epics; and notable essays on poetry, fiction, history, and religion. Texts are interwoven to bring into focus common themes, styles, and allusions while inviting comparison and debate. The result is a rich encounter with ancient and medieval Japanese culture and history. Each text and genre is enhanced by extensive introductions that provide sociopolitical and cultural context. The anthology is organized by period, genre, and topic-an instructor-friendly structure-and a comprehensive bibliography guides readers toward further study. Praise for Traditional Japanese Literature: An Anthology, Beginnings to 1600 "Haruo Shirane has done a splendid job at this herculean task."-Joshua Mostow, University of British Columbia "A comprehensive and innovative anthology...All of the introductions are excellent."-Journal of Asian Studies "One of those impressive, erudite, must-have titles for anyone interested in Asian literature."-Bloomsbury Review "An anthology that comprises superb translations of an exceptionally wide range of texts...Highly recommended."-Choice "A wealth of material."-Monumenta Nipponica

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The French Revolution swept away the Old Regime along with many of its ideas about epistemology, history, society, and politics. In the intellectual ferment that followed, debates about religion figured prominently as diverse thinkers grappled with the philosophical and civil status of religion in a post-revolutionary age. Arthur McCalla demonstrates the central place of religion in the intellectual life of post-revolutionary France in Religion and the Post-revolutionary Mind. Certain questions – What is the nature of religion? Does society rest on religious foundations? What ought to be the place of religion in society? – drew sustained attention from across the political spectrum. Idéologues viewed religion as error and sought to eradicate it through the promotion of secular values. Catholic Traditionalists understood religion as a body of revealed truths of supernatural origin that ought to be authoritative in all aspects of life. Liberals sought to replace Christian orthodoxy with a new public faith consonant with liberal values. But these blocs were not monolithic, and McCalla reveals the complexities of each one, as well as the dialogues and rivalries among them. The categories established by the concepts of religion these thinkers constructed continue to shape debates over liberationist critiques, liberal pluralism, laïcité, and political theology. The place of religion in civil society is again a matter of urgent debate. Religion and the Post-revolutionary Mind provides essential historical context for thinking about the status of religion in the contemporary world.

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What, if anything, does biological evolution tell us about the nature of religion, ethical values, or even the meaning and purpose of life? The Moral Meaning of Nature sheds new light on these enduring questions by examining the significance of an earlier—and unjustly neglected—discussion of Darwin in late nineteenth-century Germany. We start with Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings staged one of the first confrontations with the Christian tradition using the resources of Darwinian thought. The lebensphilosophie, or “life-philosophy,” that arose from his engagement with evolutionary ideas drew responses from other influential thinkers, including Franz Overbeck, Georg Simmel, and Heinrich Rickert. These critics all offered cogent challenges to Nietzsche’s appropriation of the newly transforming biological sciences, his negotiation between science and religion, and his interpretation of the implications of Darwinian thought. They also each proposed alternative ways of making sense of Nietzsche’s unique question concerning the meaning of biological evolution “for life.” At the heart of the discussion were debates about the relation of facts and values, the place of divine purpose in the understanding of nonhuman and human agency, the concept of life, and the question of whether the sciences could offer resources to satisfy the human urge to discover sources of value in biological processes. The Moral Meaning of Nature focuses on the historical background of these questions, exposing the complex ways in which they recur in contemporary philosophical debate.

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Torture has lately become front page news, featured in popular movies and TV shows, and a topic of intense public debate. It grips our imagination, in part because torturing someone seems to be an unthinkable breach of humanity--theirs and ours. And yet, when confronted with horrendous events in war, or the prospect of catastrophic damage to one's own country, many come to wonder whether we can really afford to abstain entirely from torture. Before trying to tackle this dilemma, though, we need to see torture as a multifaceted problem with a long history and numerous ethical and legal aspects. Confronting Torture offers a multidisciplinary investigation of this wrenching topic. Editors Scott A. Anderson and Martha C. Nussbaum bring together a diversity of scholars to grapple with many of torture's complexities, including: How should we understand the impetus to use torture? Why does torture stand out as a particularly heinous means of war-fighting? Are there any sound justifications for the use of torture? How does torture affect the societies that employ it? And how can we develop ethical or political bulwarks to prevent its use? The essays here resist the temptation to oversimplify torture, drawing together work from scholars in psychology, history, sociology, law, and philosophy, deepening and broadening our grasp of the subject. Now, more than ever, torture is something we must think about; this important book offers a diversity of timely, constructive responses on this resurgent and controversial subject.

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Though underexplored in contemporary scholarship, the Victorian attempts to turn aesthetics into a science remains one of the more fascinating aspects of that era. As mind and emotion were increasingly understood in terms of biology, aesthetic experience began to be thought of less as abstract judgment and more as an interaction between the nervous system and the materiality of art. In The Outward Mind, Benjamin Morgan approaches this period of innovation as an important origin point for current attempts to understand art or beauty using the tools of the sciences. Moving chronologically from natural theology in the early nineteenth century to laboratory psychology in the early twentieth, Morgan draws on little-known archives of Victorian intellectuals such as William Morris, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and others, to argue that scientific studies of mind and emotion transformed the way that nineteenth-century writers and artists understood the experience of beauty and effectively redescribed aesthetic judgment as a biological adaptation. Looking beyond the Victorian period to humanistic critical theory today, he also shows how the historical relationship between science and aesthetics could be a vital resource for rethinking aspects of contemporary literary and cultural criticism such as materialism, empathy, practice, and form. At a moment when the tumultuous relationship between the sciences and the humanities is the subject of ongoing debate, Morgan argues for the importance of understanding the arts and sciences as being incontrovertibly intertwined.

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Though underexplored in contemporary scholarship, the Victorian attempts to turn aesthetics into a science remains one of the more fascinating aspects of that era. As mind and emotion were increasingly understood in terms of biology, aesthetic experience began to be thought of less as abstract judgment and more as an interaction between the nervous system and the materiality of art. In The Outward Mind, Benjamin Morgan approaches this period of innovation as an important origin point for current attempts to understand art or beauty using the tools of the sciences. Moving chronologically from natural theology in the early nineteenth century to laboratory psychology in the early twentieth, Morgan draws on little-known archives of Victorian intellectuals such as William Morris, Walter Pater, John Ruskin, and others, to argue that scientific studies of mind and emotion transformed the way that nineteenth-century writers and artists understood the experience of beauty and effectively redescribed aesthetic judgment as a biological adaptation. Looking beyond the Victorian period to humanistic critical theory today, he also shows how the historical relationship between science and aesthetics could be a vital resource for rethinking aspects of contemporary literary and cultural criticism such as materialism, empathy, practice, and form. At a moment when the tumultuous relationship between the sciences and the humanities is the subject of ongoing debate, Morgan argues for the importance of understanding the arts and sciences as being incontrovertibly intertwined.

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Every decade since 1950 has seen more floods and more wildfires on every continent. Deserts are expanding, coral reefs are dying, fisheries are declining, and hurricanes are strengthening. The debate about climate change is over: there's no question that global warming has made the Earth sick, and the outlook for the future calls for ever-warmer temperatures and deadlier results. Something must be done - but how quickly?With "Global Fever", William H. Calvin delivers both a clear-eyed diagnosis and a strongly worded prescription. In striking, straightforward language, he first sets out the current state of the Earth's warming climate and the disastrous possibilities ahead should we continue on our current path. Increasing temperatures will kill off vegetation and dry up water resources, and their loss will lead, in an increasingly destructive feedback loop, to even more warming. Resource depletion, drought, and disease will follow, leading to socioeconomic upheaval - and accompanying violence - on a scale barely conceivable.It is still possible, Calvin argues, to avoid such a dire fate. But we must act now, aggressively funneling resources into jump-starting what would amount to a third industrial revolution, this one of clean technologies - while simultaneously expanding our use of existing low-emission technologies, from nuclear power to plug-in hybrid vehicles, until we achieve the necessary scientific breakthroughs.Passionately written, yet thoroughly grounded in the latest climate science, "Global Fever" delivers both a stark warning and an ambitious blueprint for saving the future of our planet.

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In recent decades, Oliver Wendell Holmes has been praised as "the only great American legal thinker" and "the most illustrious figure in the history of American law." In this volume, Albert Alschuler paints a much darker picture of Justice Holmes as a distasteful man who, among other things, espoused Social Darwinism, favored eugenics, and as he himself acknowledged, came "devilish near to believing that might makes right." Alschuler begins by examining Holmes's power-focused philosophy and then turns to Holmes the person, describing how the horrors he experienced in the Civil War would transform his outlook into one of moral skepticism and profoundly color his decisions, both personal and legal. This skepticism, Alschuler argues, was at the root of his personal indifference to others, his romanticization of war and struggle, his persistent efforts to substitute power metaphors for judgments of right and wrong, and his "bad man" concept of law. His pernicious legacy, according to Alschuler, is evident in twentieth-century legal thought, whether one takes an economic or a critical legal approach. Contrary to the perception of many modern lawyers and scholars, Holmes's legacy was not a "revolt against formalism," or against a priori reasoning; it was a revolt against the objective concepts of right and wrong--against values. Alschuler's thoroughgoing, no-holds-barred debunking of Holmes, together with his scathing critique of contemporary legal scholarship, will be a lightning rod for discussion and debate.

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This book brings together key debates and empirical cases from an international perspective exploring the ways in which more sustainable communities might develop. There is a growing recognition that more effective sustainable development cannot be achieved without the engagement of the local community. But, this is far from an unproblematic process, and it requires a critical examination of the nature of the potential links between what we now consider as community and sustainable development. The book critically reviews the literatures on sustainable communities before addressing through empirical case studies of Firm, State and Resource perspectives on attempts to create them. The volume is a synthesis of research work and debate conducted over recent years by members of the Economic and social Research Councils research centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS), under its sustainable communities programme. This volume critically explores and analyzes the policies, practices and strategies related to community involvement and how this shapes local environmental contexts. It debates and shares experiences generated through the various empirical studies. It considers the effectiveness of "stakeholder's dialogue" and relationships to reach consensus in ensuring the effective implementation of sustainable development practices. It identifies innovative organization infrastructure and modes of (community) interactions which are conducive to community empowerment and regeneration. It begins to provide a new evidence base to enhance multi-institutional learning possibilities in involving "local" communities in deriving improved sustainable development possibilities.

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‘A must read for all wildlife lovers’ Dominic Dyer Foxes, buzzards, crows, badgers, weasels, seals, kites – Britain and Ireland’s predators are impressive and diverse and they capture our collective imagination. But many consider them to our competition, even our enemies. The problem is that predators eat what we farm or use for sport. From foxes and ravens attacking new-born lambs to weasels eating game-bird chicks, predators compete with us, putting them directly into the firing line. Farming, fishing, sport and leisure industries want to see numbers of predators reduced, and conservation organisations also worry that predators are threatening some endangered species. Other people, though, will go to great lengths to protect them from any harm. This clashing of worlds can be intense. So, what do we do? One of the greatest challenges facing conservation today is how, when and where to control predators. It is a highly charged debate. Mary Colwell travels across the UK and Ireland to encounter the predators face to face. She watches their lives in the wild and discovers how they fit into the landscape. She talks to the scientists studying them and the wildlife lovers who want to protect them. She also meets the people who want to control them to protect their livelihoods or sporting interests. In this even-handed exploration of the issues, Mary provides a thoughtful and reasoned analysis of the debates surrounding our bittersweet relationship with predators.

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Michael Fried's often controversial art criticism defines the contours of late modernism in the visual arts. This volume contains 27 pieces, including the introduction to the catalogue for "Three American Painters," the text of his book "Morris Louis," and "Art and Objecthood." Originally published between 1962 and 1977, the essays continue to generate debate today. These are uncompromising writings, aware of their transformative power during a time of intense controversy about the nature of modernism and the aims and essence of advanced painting and sculpture. Ranging from brief reviews to extended essays, and including major critiques of Jackson Pollock, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella, and Anthony Caro, these writings establish a set of basic terms for understanding key issues in high modernism: the viability of Clement Greenberg's account of the infralogic of modernism, the status of figuration after Pollock, the centrality of the problem of shape, the nature of pictorial and sculptural abstraction, and the relationship between work and beholder. In a number of essays Fried contrasts the modernist enterprise with minimalist or literalist art, and, taking a position that remains provocative to this day, he argues that minimalism is essentially a genre of theatre, hence artistically self-defeating. For this volume Fried has also provided an extensive introductory essay in which he discusses how he became an art critic, clarifies his intentions in his art criticism, and draws crucial distinctions between his art criticism and the art history he also wrote.

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The Council of Constantinople of 553 (often called Constantinople II or the Fifth Ecumenical Council) has been described as ‘by far the most problematic of all the councils’, because it condemned two of the greatest biblical scholars and commentators of the patristic era – Origen and Theodore of Mopsuestia – and because the pope of the day, Vigilius, first condemned the council and then confirmed its decisions only under duress. The present edition makes accessible to the modern reader the acts of the council, session by session, and the most important related documents, particularly those that reveal the shifting stance of Pope Vigilius, veering between heroic resistance and abject compliance. The accompanying commentary and substantial introduction provide a background narrative of developments since Chalcedon, a full analysis of the policy of the emperor Justinian (who summoned and dominated the council) and of the issues in the debate, and information on the complex history of both the text and the council’s reception. The editor argues that the work of the council deserves a more sympathetic evaluation that it has generally received in western Christendom, since it arguably clarified rather than distorted the message of Chalcedon and influenced the whole subsequent tradition of eastern Orthodoxy. In interpreting Chalcedon the conciliar acts provide a fascinating example of how a society – in this case the imperial Church of Byzantium – determines its identity by how it understands its past.

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Imagining Afghanistan examines how Afghanistanhas been imagined in literary and visual texts that were published after the9/11 attacks and the subsequent U.S.-led invasion—the era that propelledAfghanistan into the center of global media visibility. Through an analysis offiction, graphic novels, memoirs, drama, and film, the book demonstrates thatwriting and screening "Afghanistan" has become a conduit for understanding ourshared post-9/11 condition. "Afghanistan" serves as a lens through whichcontemporary cultural producers contend with the moral ambiguities of twenty-first-centuryhumanitarianism, interpret the legacy of the Cold War, debate the role of theU.S. in the rise of transnational terror, and grapple with the long-term impactof war on both human and nonhuman ecologies.Post-9/11 global Afghanistan literary productionremains largely NATO-centric insofar as it is marked by an uncriticalinvestment in humanitarianism as an approach to Third World suffering and inanti-communism as an unquestioned premise. The book's first half exposes how persistinganti-socialist biases—including anti-statist bias—not only shaped recent literaryand visual texts on Afghanistan, resulting in a distorted portrayal of itstragic history, but also informed these texts' reception by critics. In thebook's second half, the author examines cultural texts that challenge thislimited horizon and forge alternative ways of representing traumatic histories.Captured by the author through the concepts of deep time, nonhuman witness, andwar as a multispecies ecology, these new aesthetics bring readers asophisticated portrait of Afghanistan as a rich multispecies habitat affectedin dramatic ways by decades of war but not annihilated.

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A contrarian yet highly engaging account of the spread of illiberal and anti-democratic sentiment throughout our culture that places responsibility on the citizens themselves. Over the past three decades, citizens of democracies who claim to value freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law have increasingly embraced illiberal politicians and platforms. Democracy is in trouble--but who is really to blame? In Our Own Worst Enemy, Tom Nichols challenges the current depictions of the rise of illiberal and anti-democratic movements in the United States and elsewhere as the result of the deprivations of globalization or the malign decisions of elites. Rather, he places the blame for the rise of illiberalism on the people themselves. Nichols traces the illiberalism of the 21st century to the growth of unchecked narcissism, rising standards of living, global peace, and a resistance to change. Ordinary citizens, laden with grievances, have joined forces with political entrepreneurs who thrive on the creation of rage rather than on the encouragement of civic virtue and democratic cooperation. While it will be difficult, Nichols argues that we need to defend democracy by resurrecting the virtues of altruism, compromise, stoicism, and cooperation--and by recognizing how good we've actually had it in the modern world. Trenchant, contrarian, and highly engaging, Our Own Worst Enemy reframes the debate about how democracies have ended up in this dire state of affairs and what to do about it.

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Stuart S. Miller addresses a number of issues in the history of talmudic Palestine that are at the center of contemporary scholarly debate about the role rabbis played in society. In sharp contrast to recent claims that the rabbis were a relatively small and insular group with little influence, this book demonstrates that their movement was both more expansive and diffuse than a mere counting of named rabbis suggests. It also underscores some of the dynamics that allowed rabbinic circles to spread their teachings and to ultimately consolidate into an effective and productive movement.Many overlooked terms and passages in which rabbis and the members of their circles appear in the Talmud Yerushalmi are investigated, and special attention is given to the identity of persons who are collectively referred to after their places of residence ("Tiberians," "Sepphoreans," "Southerners," etc.) While the results confirm the insular nature of the interests of the rabbis, they also point to the definition and coherence that this insularity provided their movement. Therein lies the secret of the "success" of rabbinic Judaism, which never depended upon sheer numbers but rather on the internal strength and sense of purpose of rabbinic circles. Subjects that are considered include: rabbinic "households," the identity of the 'ammei ha-'arez and their relationship to the rabbis, village sages and their connection to urban rabbis, and the venue of rabbinic "teachings," "instructions," "expositions," "pronouncements," and stories.

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China Miéville's brilliant reading of the modern world's most controversial and enduring political document: The Communist Manifesto. 'It's thrilling to accompany Miéville... as he wrestles – in critical good faith and incandescent commitment – with a manifesto that still calls on us to build a new world' Naomi Klein 'Read this and be dazzled by its contemporaneity' Mike Davis 'A rich, luminous reflection of and on a light that never quite goes out' Andreas Malm 'Reading with [Miéville] today sharpens our senses to contemporary internationalist movements from below' Ruth Wilson Gilmore '[Written] with diligence and a ruthlessly critical eye worthy of Marx himself' Sarah Jaffe In 1848, a strange political tract was published by two German émigrés. Marx and Engles's apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system, which penetrates every corner of the globe, reduces every relationship to that of profit, and bursts asunder the old forms of production and of politics, remains a picture of our world. And the vampiric energy of that system is once again highly contentious. The Manifesto shows no sign of fading into antiquarian obscurity, and remains a key touchstone for modern political debate. China Miéville is not a writer hemmed in by conventions of disciplinary boundaries or genre, and this is a strikingly imaginative take on Marx and what his most haunting book has to say to us today. Like the Manifesto itself, this is a book haunted by ghosts, sorcery and creative destruction.

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