THE PHILOSOPHICAL EROSION OF AUTHENTIC BELIEF IN IDEOLOGICAL DICTATORSHIPS AND THE FRAGILITY OF INNER CIRCLES

Defenders of the extended mind thesis say that it is possible that some of our mental states may be constituted, in part, by states of the extrabodily environment. Often they also add that such extended mentation is a commonplace phenomenon. I argue that extended mentation, while not impossible, is either nonexistent or far from widespread. Genuine beliefs as they occur in normal biologically embodied systems are informationally integrated with each other, and sensitive to changes in the person’s overall system of beliefs. Environmental states, however, fail to satisfy this central feature of the functional role of belief, and hence fail to be genuine mental states.

Addressing historical cases has not only academic but also political significance, especially if the current agenda is largely determined by the rhetoric and experience of conflicts rooted in history. In this regard, the article focuses on the nature, forms and consequences of British educational policy on the national outskirts in Modern times in the formation of British identity, which supported the practice of national and state building at the ideological level both within the United Kingdom and within the British Empire. Specific historical and contemporary examples demonstrate the possibilities and limitations of educational policy as a humanitarian technology for strengthening the ideological and rhetorical foundations of Great Britain as a multinational and complex public entity. The study focuses on the Scottish case which has the deepest historically roots; its analysis allows a more detailed study of the relationship between the educational strategies of the authorities in the past and their consequences in the present, taking into account the prospects for a second referendum on Scottish independence in the context of Britain’s exit from the European Union.

An insightful look at the long tradition of communal societies in the United States from colonial times to the present, examining their ideological foundations, daily life, and relationships to mainstream American society. With this volume, a fascinating, yet often overlooked, part of the American story is brought to the forefront. In Utopias in American History, independent scholar Jyotsna Sreenivasan makes the case that from the founding of the American colonies to the hippie communes of the 1960s to the cohousing movement, which started in the 1990s, the United States has the most sustained tradition of utopianism of any modern country. Accessible yet authoritative and highly informative, Utopias in American History offers dozens of alphabetically organized entries covering all aspects of communal societies from colonial times to the present. Featured are descriptions of over 40 major utopian communities, both religious and secular. Entries are organized in terms of their histories, belief systems, leadership, economics, daily life, and the reactions they drew from mainstream society.

Using the works of Bacon, Hobbes, and Adam Smith as well as historical examples drawn from the last two centuries, Busch shows how the ideas initially proposed by these thinkers became reified as scientism, statism, and marketism-- systems of belief that a single mode of ordering could solve the riddle of society, and thereby supplant moral responsibility. Busch contrasts this approach with concrete examples of successful attempts to extend democracy into these areas--to create multiple orderings-- so that moral responsibility is neither crushingly heavy on individuals nor unbearably light on society.

In this paper I argue that cosmopolitanisms, as visions of living with difference, and race and racisms, as political regimes of subjection and subjectification, are mutually constitutive. Although scholars have made similar claims regarding earlier versions of cosmopolitanisms, developed largely from the work of Immanuel Kant, recent proponents have conceptualized their renewed formulations, detached from Eurocentric histories and newly expanded to include the migrant, refugee, and subaltern, as promissory visions of conviviality and often as an antidote to racisms. Despite efforts to expand cosmopolitanisms to include racial subjects previously excluded, these visions may be productive of new, renewed, and changing forms of racial subjection. Specifically, I argue that racisms are an immanent and organizing logic manifest in the production of racial heterogeneities and differentiations upon which cosmopolitical visions depend and also generative of the cosmopolitan outlook these encounters are thought to require. To situate and develop these claims, I open with a 1907 sketch published in the Illustrated London News which depicts Vancouver, Canada both as “the most cosmopolitan city in the world” (Begg, 1907, page 476) and as a site of anti-Asian violence. Approaching this image both as a historical example and as an opening for critical inquiry, I untangle the constitutive relations between racisms and cosmopolitanisms through the labor demands of global capitalism and in the cultivated indifference that is frequently identified as the hallmark of a cosmopolitan disposition. While the conjoined forces of colonialism and capitalism effectuated the historico-material basis of ethnoracial difference, what some have termed an ‘ordinary cosmopolitanism’, these conditions did not lead to conviviality alone. Rather, in racially charged colonial Vancouver, the indifference that Europeans putatively expressed in their encounters with migrants from China, Japan, and later India, commonly erupted into racial enmity and violence. What might this historical example afford to contemporary discussions regarding the present and future of the new cosmopolitanisms?

The paper reviews recent approaches to the evaluation of education quality. The critical view of education quality in Ukraine today and its phenomenal success in the age of baroque is represented. Considerations for characteristic features of the education philosophy are founded on the analysis of Ukrainian and foreign authors’ works. The conclusions concerning the reasons of the complications with the correct approach to evaluation of education quality on one hand and disadvantages of highly specialized education and its consequences on the other, outline the main issues of the article. The phenomenon of education quality of baroque age was reviewed from the position of the European educative system of Septem Artes Liberales. The Kyiv Mohyla Academy in XVII–XVII centuries was chosen as the most specifically Ukrainian historical example. The article indicated the importance of the formation of kinship of ideological foundations in the environment of educated aristocracy and the problems of both assessment of education quality and the degree of conformity of education to different social requirements. The comparison of cooperation of nowadays and baroque epoch erectors (as the architect and the customer) confirms big gap in their worldviews. Baroque’s education, its phenomenon, or rather the phenomenon of its quality, and calling things in terms of the industrial age – efficiency and effectiveness, is the topic with enormous practical potential in terms not only and perhaps not so much of the historical point of view, when the purpose of the researcher is to study the past in search of «white spots», but also in terms of searching for the ways of preparing the successful «golden age» educators. The model suggested is suitable for realisation in modern Ukrainian education process.

A balanced understanding of anti‐Catholicism requires an appreciation of its diverse and multifaceted nature. This article draws on the author's extensive research on anti‐Catholicism in the English‐speaking world to propose a four‐fold categorisation: constitutional‐national, theological, popular and socio‐cultural. Each category is illustrated by historical examples drawn primarily from nineteenth‐century Britain and the United States, but also ranging more widely across time and space. They are fluid and interlinked but nevertheless provide a useful basis for analysis. It is shown how an awareness of the diversity of anti‐Catholicism enhances understanding of its widespread influence, and also of its long‐term patterns of fluctuation, persistence, and decline. In particular, whereas since the later nineteenth century theological anti‐Catholicism has become marginal and popular anti‐Catholicism highly localised, the relative resilience of constitutional‐national and social‐cultural anti‐Catholicism is explained by their mutation from a primarily Protestant to a primarily secular ideological foundation.

Epistemic infinitism is certainly not a majority view in contemporary epistemology. While there are some examples of infinitism in the history of philosophy, more work needs to be done mining this history in order to provide a richer understanding of how infinitism might be formulated internal to different philosophical frameworks. Accordingly, we argue that the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas can be read as operating according to an ‘impure’ model of epistemic infinitism. The infinite obligation inaugurated by the ‘face to face encounter’ with the Other yields an approach to the ethics of belief that accords with infinitism. This reading of Levinas brings his ethical thought into dialogue with contemporary epistemology as well as provides an historical example of infinitism within the current debates.

Nation states need a constant re-affirmation of their ideological foundations by invocating important historical events and persons. Since the independence of the Indonesian nation-state its governments have worked out an intricate set of holidays and rituals around the dead and the fallen as symbols of the anti-colonial struggle. They created and maintained a common consciousness of being a nation among Indonesian citizens. Over the years the public veneration of dead persons became an important feature of Indonesian political culture during the periods of Sukarno’s Guided Democracy and Suharto’s New Order. The paper first analyses the spatial dimension of veneration of the dead, i.e. the many hero cemeteries and monuments. It goes on to interpret the ceremonial activities carried out on the respective holidays. By recurring to concepts such as “ancestor veneration” and “secondary burial” the paper investigates the cultural and historical background of the present form of veneration of the dead and its mode of functioning. Two case studies focusing on the monuments of Lubang Buaya and Kalibata and the rituals pertaining to them explain the structure of historical commemorations and their usage in contemporary Indonesia. The analysis culminates in the main thesis that the public veneration of important dead, be they ancestors, heroes, or revolutionary fighters, creates “national ancestors”. These ancestors are functional in shaping the ideologically desired historical consciousness of a national Indonesian past.

This article will explore 'maternalistic' forms of governance in a 19th century female reformatory. The ideological foundations and operational practices of the reformatory movement have predominantly been analysed within a theoretical framework that prioritises their paternalistic construction. Yet overwhelmingly it was female matrons who took daily custody of these institutions. I argue here that an examination of this female presence disrupts the notion of paternalistic supremacy with regard to institutional power relations. However, this is not to suggest the complete elimination of paternalistic primacy. Rather, the paper will highlight how the matrons attempted to negotiate and manage the complex relations that emerged for themselves in their roles as both 'governing' and 'governed' women. The paucity and nature of the data available poses particular methodological issues and therefore the paper will also advocate a more 'imaginative' contextualised approach which embraces the 'art' as well as the 'science' of archival excavation.

The book «Four Theories of the Press» (1956) by F. Siebert, T. Peterson, and W. Schramm launched a normative typology of media systems based on the interrelations between the press, authority, and society. For over sixty years, this approach to media analysis has retained its relevance due to the simplicity of its structure, its philosophical grounding, its scope, and the pertinence of the issues it raises. At the same time, the typology reflected the ideological coordinates of the Cold War era and has been criticized for its political bias and insensitivity to transformations in the global information environment and to local specificities. Nevertheless, it laid the groundwork for normative media discourse and brought attention to the boundaries of press freedom and responsibility. The aim of this article is to trace the conceptual origins and evolution of the normative approach as a tool for understanding the role of the press in society. The methodology includes a historical-genetic analysis of the intellectual context in which the typology emerged, a historiographical analysis of scholarship on the normative approach, a contextual analysis of its reception in contemporary academic discourse, and a systematic analysis of the historiographical structure of scholarly interpretations. The findings show that the normative approach developed as a dialectical intellectual trajectory: from attempts to adapt and expand the original typology – through critiques of its historical and ideological limitations – to a rethinking of its epistemological potential and its interactions with critical, post-normative, and historiographical approaches. Despite criticism, the normative approach continues to play a key analytical role by combining empirical analysis with the conceptualization of a media system relevant to a particular type of society, encompassing political, sociological, cultural, and ethical dimensions of press studies. The novelty of this article lies in its integral analysis of the normative approach to press studies, including the reconstruction of its intellectual and ideological foundations, its contextual emergence, the history of its reception and critique, and contemporary interpretations. Keywords: normative theories of the press, systemic analysis of the press, media system, history of press theory, political regime.

Previous articleNext article FreeReflections CollectionRaising New Orleans: Historical Analogs and Future Environmental RisksCraig E. ColtenCraig E. Colten Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreSince 2015, I’ve been involved in a project to formulate an adaptive course of action for New Orleans as it faces rising sea levels, the unmentionable subject in Louisiana’s slow-moving coastal crisis with huge climatic implications.1 Although the state is embarking on an ambitious plan to invest over $50 billion to restore the coast by 2067, the threat of rising ocean water may offset this audacious effort and still imperil its largest city. Structures, like levees that currently protect New Orleans and are integral to the restoration planning, have design limits that will become obsolete with rising sea levels, and the risk reduction they were intended to provide will degrade over time. I am the lone humanities scholar in a group of scientists, architects, and engineers who have been contemplating an alternative to the state’s coastal plan that relies heavily on levees and other structural techniques.2 Our project considers raising the grade of New Orleans within its ring of levees while also adding forested wetlands on the city’s north shore. There are precedents for such projects, and my role was to consider the historical analogs to this endeavor. The manipulation of Louisiana’s coastal region has taken place over several centuries, and the project leader recognized that a long-term view was vital to account for this protracted process and to identify solutions. He saw environmental historical geography as a complementary expertise to the skills of the other participants.Proposals to raise the grade of New Orleans have been around since the mid-nineteenth century, although none has significantly altered the city’s landscape. Similar plans arose in Chicago and Galveston, where city leaders elevated the land surface to reduce future risks in response to tragedies in the 1850s and in 1900, respectively. Although underlying environmental factors and social, economic, political, and cultural conditions differed in these three situations, they nevertheless offer historical analogs and add value to integrative multidisciplinary research on climate change and rising sea levels.While science has provided the primary set of tools to project climate change and its potential impacts, those engaged in studying how society will respond to changing environments often mention historical analogs as a device for gauging how humans will adapt to new conditions. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Policy Analysis carried out one of the earliest exercises in this vein in the 1980s. It issued a report with the subtitle “Forecasting by Analogy.” Its editor, Michael Glantz, observed that analogies, or “case scenarios,” relying on experienced-based historical examples had far more credibility than scientific models of projected human behaviors. While the set of case studies did not actually predict specific futures, Glantz suggested that “forecasting the future by analogy can be a fruitful approach to improve our understanding of how well society is prepared to cope with the presently unknown regional characteristics of a potential climate change some decades in the future.” He offered the caveat that “we must not expect analogues to tell us what the future will be.”3While avoiding the temptation to seek a crystal ball, Glantz’s project builds on countless examples of using past records to project future risks. Indeed, the entire specialty of risk assessment is based on inventories of past events and projections of the probability of their return. Flood, earthquake, and extreme weather risks all are calculated based on historical experiences, even if not presented as history. Projecting risk of biophysical events is extremely complicated, but extending our risk assessment to include human decision making and long-term responses to potentially unforeseen social conditions magnifies the complexity.Historians, while reticent to use the term, have noted the value of historical analogs. Boyd Shaffer offered this cautionary observation in 1960: “Even if a historian arrives at objective interpretation of evidence, he cannot with certainty use this interpretation for the purpose of prediction.”4 In one of the few extended treatments of the use of historical analogy, Bruce Mazlish notes that this tool serves three fundamental purposes: (1) to isolate one element in a particular time and place for study, (2) to trace a historical element over an extended period of time, and (3) to study the impact of a particular innovation.5 Joel Tarr, writing about the value of historical analogs in energy policy formulation, argues that past transitions from one fuel to another could provide policymakers with a “device of anticipation” to aid in successful policy formulation—again not predicting the future.6 Writing specifically about the role of historians in the climate change discussion, Paul Sabin notes that “historical narratives also provide some of the only guides that we have for the future,” but not a cartographically precise road map to the future.7 While touting the benefits of history in coping with the future, historical scholars assiduously avoid claiming it can serve as a forecasting tool.In recent years there have been several appeals for the inclusion of humanities and sound historical scholarship in considering how society will cope with future climates. Two articles in a leading climate change periodical spotlighted the glaring need to insert cultural and humanistic considerations into this pressing subject. Neil Adger and associates point out that culture is central to any consideration of procedures to mitigate climate change and aid human adaptation. Human consumption patterns, belief systems, and technological capabilities are all rooted in culture and also are deeply connected to place. Human decisions are framed by culture that guides how society responds to pending change.8 Noel Castree and his colleagues argue that much of the global environmental change research currently is missing human dimension considerations that recognize “humans as diverse, interpretive creatures who frequently disagree about value, means, and ends.”9Historians have also weighed in on this issue. Scott Knowles makes the related point that risk taking is based in human values, which underscores the need to include this social dimension in addressing how we prepare for and respond to changing climates.10 Matthias Heymann goes a step farther and argues that a reliance on science-framed terms, like resilience and vulnerability, narrows research and thereby places historical variety and complexity outside the bright light of science inquiries. Typically these concepts frame humans as part of human–environment systems or just so many cogs in complex machinery. These terms, as human constructs, can pose more problems than solutions when applied outside the culture hearth of their origin. They become normative and do not always portray culture–environment relations as mutually dependent. Thus they can diminish our ability to infuse climate change discussions with the rich texture and particularity that historical sources provide, at least when defined by typical proxy measures.11 A failure to fully balance global environmental change research with humanistic ideas and a comparable level of scholarship tragically undermines the power of science. While not providing predictive power, historical analogs, when used with care and built on solid historical evidence, can both provide guidance for the future and transcend the limits of disciplinary boundaries.There are, of course, problems with applying lessons from historical analogs to current questions. Among the shortcomings, according to William Easterling and colleagues, are the absence of analysis of temporal and spatial variability of climate, oversimplification of regional resources and economics, and inadequate consideration of adaptive responses.12 Nevertheless, historical analogs can add temporal and geographic texture and reveal the complexity of past human decisions in the face of changing environmental conditions. These historical insights can benefit those individuals shaping policies for the future.My work on the New Orleans project foregrounds some of the benefits while also exposing some of the problems associated with historical analogs. My task in this interdisciplinary effort was to discover and report on past efforts to raise the actual elevation in whole or parts of existing cities.13 I turned to two prominent examples in the United States: Chicago and Galveston. Each was brash in its own right and fundamentally changed the landscape of its respective city. Both shared an impetus for land raising based in tragedies that inspired efforts to mitigate future risks. Chicago endured calamitous epidemic disease outbreaks in the mid-nineteenth century when summer rains overwhelmed the city’s drainage system leaving the streets as open cesspools and also flushed the sewage-laden Chicago River into Lake Michigan, the city’s drinking water supply. Galveston suffered massive hurricane damage and loss of life in 1900. The origins and directions of the land-raising efforts in these two cities were distinct, but the followthrough in each produced enduring landscapes that offered a means to trace the procedures employed to enact such sweeping changes. And it is the cumulative institutional context, framed by culture and history, that offer value for analogs.In the summer of 1854, more than sixteen hundred of Chicago’s residents (5.5 percent) died from cholera or typhoid that ravaged the city. Seeking to eliminate a recurrence of such a massive tragedy, the city brought in the respected engineer Ellis Chesbrough to design a safer sewerage system. In short, he advocated installing large sewers that would collect the city’s effluent and transport it into a dredged and deepened Chicago River where it would be released into Lake Michigan. The city’s topography provided a modest gradient between its high point and the river, and hence little grade to enable gravity to propel the sewage. To overcome this topographic challenge, Chesbrough proposed laying sewer lines on the existing streets and then raising the streets as much as 8 feet to entomb the new infrastructure. To conform to the new street grade, structures in the city center and nearby neighborhoods also required raising. Over the course of several years, business and homeowners, at their own expense, had to elevate their structures. Although private property owners challenged the imposition of the costs, local courts sided with the city and a two-level city arose. This effort began in the wake of a local disaster and unfolded during a period of rapid economic expansion that supported business and individual expenditures, when available technologies enabled structures, even large ones, to be raised or altered, and with municipal fiscal and legal backing of the effort. Although the sewers did not eliminate the waterborne disease problem (sewers still delivered bacteria to the city’s drinking water supply), the risk reduction effort did alter the topography of the city.14In 1900 a massive hurricane swept across the low-lying barrier island where Galveston stood on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. The powerful storm devastated most houses and killed some six thousand residents. In the wake of the tragedy, city leaders pushed a plan to build a massive seawall to protect the city from future storm surge and waves. In order to avoid hiding behind a 17-foot-high barrier, officials decided to raise the grade of the city to match the crest of the protective wall. Acting swiftly while there was ample public support, the city enacted policies and established a funding mechanism to push the project forward. Tons of sand were pumped into a series of diked basins to elevate the city well above its former height. Structures had to be raised before filling began, and elevated walkways provided access to homes and businesses during the process. Powerful legal backing required residents and businesses to pay for elevating their own structures or they would be buried in the sand slurry. And general prosperity aided with financing. By 1911, some five hundred blocks of the city stood at a safer height, as much as 16 feet above the previous grade.15New Orleans has endured a lengthy series of floods since its establishment by the French in 1718. Both river and hurricane-induced high water have invaded the city and prompted mitigation efforts that have relied chiefly on levees over the years. Yet the notion of raising the grade of the city is not new. Fearing a limit to the capabilities of levees and drains, a local engineer, Lewis DeRussy, proposed to elevate land in 1859. He argued that building land, rather than the common practice of merely draining it, would enable the city to expand the territory available for habitation while improving the site’s salubrity, and also offer a means to reclaim “useless” wetlands across the state. He called for a series of parallel levees between the river and the lake, and cross levees at the lakefront to create enclosures known as “colmates.” A system of canals, pumps, and drains would provide a means to deliver river water and then remove water after the sediment settled out. He estimated a cost of nearly $2 million, and although the city was prospering, it was a considerable expense at the time. He offered no specific timetable but optimistically observed that the “filling and raising of the swamp land would be much sooner obtained than has been estimated.”16 Government officials were not persuaded of the plan’s efficacy, and they rejected it as they had an even less expensive drainage plan proposed a few years earlier.17 On the eve of the Civil War, the city remained reliant on raised houses built atop the natural levee in tandem with modest levees and ineffective drainage.Revisiting a historical concept for land raising as part of our project in New Orleans draws on both DeRussy’s thinking but also taps newer technologies and experiences that were deployed building new land behind a hurricane protection seawall in the 1930s.18 Landscape architects foresee a multistage process: the first phase will entail dredging sediment from the bed of Lake Pontchartrain, as was done in the 1930s, and restoring a wetland buffer on the city’s northern edge. The second phase will involve using sediments regularly dredged from the river to maintain the navigational channel to widen the levees to the extent that they become elevated residential and commercial zones above flood risks, and the third phase includes the creation of colmates in the low-lying sectors of the city by relocating willing residents from areas targeted for elevation to nearby high-rise housing, allowing the remaining residents to elevate houses within a ring of levees, raising the grade within selected colmates, and ultimately creating a patchwork landscape with flood retention basins and elevated housing.The disaster of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is one driving force for this plan, along with decades of science exposing the coastal land-loss crisis. Land raising will entail massive costs both in terms of building land and disruption to current land uses and ownership. It differs from the preceding efforts in Chicago and Galveston in terms of the larger footprint of the territory to be modified. Both Chicago and Galveston were in prosperous economic cycles when they undertook their projects. The economic situation in New Orleans and the state of Louisiana is less promising. Although land raising on the city’s lakefront in the 1930s provided a stable base and now offers hope for this project, the state’s entire coastal region continues to subside and faces rising sea levels, meaning there will be competing interests for limited restoration dollars. Furthermore, plans to change the city’s topographic height may not keep pace with regional subsidence and sea-level rise.In addition to questions over the plan’s efficacy, there are concerns over the extent of public participation and support. Fierce citizen opposition scuttled a poorly presented plan to reduce the city’s footprint after Katrina. Like that initial post-Katrina plan, the new land-raising concept is not citizen inspired or driven and will likely face scrutiny by a skeptical population that is weary of more than a decade of hurricane recovery. Moreover, there is historical precedent for citizen opposition. Past projects in south Louisiana have deflected the major environmental alterations to areas beyond the city’s limits. For example, suburban citizens on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain opposed hurricane protection for New Orleans in the late 1960s fearing levees would redirect storm surge into their parish.19Several discongruities among the Chicago, Galveston, and New Orleans cases expose the weakness of these particular analogs. The past examples were relatively swift responses to tragedies. Local leaders took bold steps while there was ample public support for actions as dramatic as the disasters they followed. General economic prosperity in the respective locations supported the massive expenditures. The elimination of legal barriers to construction provided a means to proceed with little public opposition. And the geologic platforms on Galveston’s barrier island and Chicago’s lakefront site were relatively stable ensuring a durability to the investment in raised lands. Finally, both the Chicago and Galveston projects were largely internal to one civic administrative territory. Greater New Orleans straddles multiple parish (county) boundaries, and the land-raising project would involve state coastal restoration funds, shifting the political decisions beyond the city limits.No analog is perfect, of course, but the process can still provide valuable perspective on past adaptations to environmental change. The finer the texture of the historical reporting and the more complete the inclusion of the full range of social and ecological relationships, the more effective an analog can be, but this also exposes the particularity of each past event in relationship to contemporaneous concerns. At the most fundamental level, history may not be a reliable tool for projecting future risk, but the case studies mentioned here reveal that a more robust incorporation of historical evidence of past social-ecological relationships can offer cautionary signposts as we chart our path into future climates.Notes Craig E. Colten is the Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University. He is the author of An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature (2005) and Southern Waters: The Limits to Abundance (2014).1. C. E. Colten, “Raising Urban Land: Historical Perspectives on Adaptation,” in Mississippi Delta Restoration: Back to the Future, ed. John W. Day (Amsterdam: Elsevier, forthcoming).2. The most recent version of the state’s plan is Coastal Protection and Restoration Agency of Louisiana, Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast (Baton Rouge: Coastal Protection and Restoration Agency of Louisiana, 2017).3. Michael H. Glantz, “Introduction,” in Societal Responses to Climate Change: Forecasting by Analogy, ed. Michael H. Glantz (Boulder: Westview Press, 1988), 1–8; quote, 4.4. Boyd Shaffer, “History, Not Art, Not Science, But History: Meanings and Uses of History,” Pacific Historical Review 29, no. 2 (1960): 159–70; quote, 162.5. Bruce Mazlish, “Preface,” in The Railroad and the Space Program: An Exploration in Historical Analogy, ed. Bruce Mazlish (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1965), vii–xv.6. Joel A. Tarr, “Changing Fuel Behavior and Energy Transitions: The Pittsburgh Smoke Control Movement, 1940–1950,” Journal of Social History 14, no. 4 (1981): 561–88; quote, Paul Environmental a for in the Climate and Energy Environmental History no. quote, W. Neil of Climate and Adaptation,” Nature Climate Noel Castree “Changing the Nature Climate 4 quote, Scott from The History of and the Future of and no. 2 Matthias Environmental for the of presented to the Nature and in Environmental History 2015, William E. and to the the of and a Historical of Climate and A History of in MIT Press, and and The of on in for a Metropolis: The of Chicago Press, and H. Galveston and the 1900 of Press, Lewis DeRussy, of the on Lake Pontchartrain (Baton Rouge: quote, H. on to the Orleans: “Raising New Orleans: A New in Mississippi Delta Restoration: Back to the Future, ed. John Day Craig E. Colten, Powerful Hurricane Protection in Coastal Louisiana of Previous articleNext article by for the for Environmental History and the History on this site are from on this site are from The the articles this Land raising as a to An analysis of coastal on an island in the Journal of E. Colten Transitions: The on in Coastal Review

Wolfgang Wildgen presents three perspectives on the evolution of language as a key element in the evolution of mankind in terms of the development of human symbol use. (1) He approaches this question by constructing possible scenarios in which mechanisms necessary for symbolic behavior could have developed, on the basis of the state of the art in evolutionary anthropology and genetics. (2) Non-linguistic symbolic behavior such as cave art is investigated as an important clue to the developmental background to the origin of language. Creativity and innovation and a population's ability to integrate individual experiments are considered with regard to historical examples of symbolic creativity in the visual arts and natural sciences. (3) Probable linguistic 'fossils' of such linguistic innovations are examined. The results of this study allow for new proposals for a 'protolanguage' and for a theory of language within a broader philosophical and semiotic framework, and raises interesting questions as to human consciousness, universal grammar, and linguistic methodology. (Series B)

The article reveals the destruction by the Soviet command-repressive system of the economic freedoms of the Ukrainian rural producer, the prosperous peasant (kulak), a middle-class representative in the village – the guarantor of the socio-political and economic stability of the state. Since the late 1920s, a command-repressive system of governance was formed in the Ukrainian village, implemented by the Soviet communist political regime. In the context of the problem, it is important to study the dynamics of the destruction of prosperous producers (dekulakisation), which is a component of the criminal genocidal policy of the Soviet totalitarian regime against the Ukrainian nation. During 1918–1920, the Bolsheviks’ periodic invasions of Ukraine were marked by the introduction of a policy of «war communism», when «military communist» methods ensured the non-fixed collection of taxes. In March 1921, the Soviet political regime radically changed the taxation system in the village. Instead of the pre-tax system, a fixed food tax was implemented, and the New Economic Policy was introduced. The years 1928–1929 proved to be a crucial turning point in the relations between the peasant producer and the Soviet state. Since the late 1920s, an overall offensive by the Soviet political regime against the Ukrainian village affected several important segments for the village: the church, economic and political repression of the prosperous producers, forced grain procurement, and forced collectivisation. In 1929–1931, the article examines the example of the village of Zaruddia in Poltava region to demonstrate the formation of a command and repressive system of governance. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the destruction of the spiritual, ethical, socio-economic foundations of the traditional Ukrainian peasant by the Soviet political regime is studied on a specific historical example. The Soviet political communist regime, forming a command-repressive system of governance since the late 1920s, violated human and civil rights and humiliated human dignity. Such actions caused irreparable spiritual, ethical, socio-economic damage in the traditional Ukrainian village.

The Taliban’s seizure of the reins of power in Afghanistan has a significant impact on regional and international political processes. During years negotiations between US and regional States with Taliban was aimed at involvement of the moderate part of Taliban in the political life of the country. Taliban’s return to power went dramatically differently from the planned agreement. Along with the accelerated withdrawal of the international coalition forces, Taliban conquered almost all the provinces of the country without a fight. They took the presidential palace and returned to power. The new reality created in Afghanistan led regional and international actors to change their positions more or less. The Iranian government is actively involved in the ongoing events in neighboring Afghanistan. After the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul, Iran has adopted a flexible policy toward the group, the elements of which are non-confrontation, pragmatism, necessary cooperation and opposition to rapid recognition. During the Taliban’s first reign in power Iran was among the group’s key adversaries. Iran and Taliban were almost led into war in 1998 following the killing Iranian diplomats and journalist by the group after the capture of Mazar-e-sharif. In 2001 Iran supported the overthrow of the Taliban by the US-led international coalition. Iran is concerned about the presence of ISIS on its eastern border and Tehran’s major reason in relation with Taliban is to counter the threat posed by IS-K. Taliban’s current cabinet largely excludes minorities and Iran supports the formation of an inclusive government in Afghanistan with the participation of all ethno-religious groups. Tehran seems to be supporting the National Resistance Front led by Ahmad Massoud. After Taliban’s return to power negotiations were held between Taliban and Ahmad Massoud in Tehran. There is a problem of refugees – Iran already hosts about 3, 5 million of Afghans. They are not popular in Iran, they are suspected of terrorism. Islamic Republic’s harsh behavior has stirred controversy in Afghanistan, protests erupted outside the Iranian consulate in Herat. The issue of drug trafficking is not a new problem. The Taliban officially banned the production and export of opium, but it has continued. The water problem also has important influence on Iran-Afghanistan relations. For years Iran has accused Afghanistan of violating 1973 water-sharing treaty. This problem is relevant under the Taliban. In early 2022 Protesters in Iran’s southeast attacked Afghan trucks due to the alleged lack of water. Iran’s relations with the Taliban became more conciliatory in past decades. Nowadays Tehran is trying to maintain balance in bilateral relations with the group. The Continuation of the current pragmatic relations between Iran and Taliban depends on the way the Taliban decides to rule. The strengthening of radical elements within Taliban’s ranks makes serious confrontation with Iran possible on ideological grounds.