Agenda In Mind Research Articles

Swedish consuls in Galicia: the economic function of consuls in turbulent times (1793–1806)

ABSTRACT This article is about the creation of a Swedish network of consuls in Galicia during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Contrary to previous findings that show consuls with weak positions vis-à-vis the host authorities or the merchant community could do little to aid merchants and ships, the paper demonstrates that consuls could provide economic functions despite having no jurisdiction or official recognition from the receiving state. In contrast to those who view self-interest as something that hindered consuls from executing economic functions, the paper demonstrates a synergy between self-interest and public goods. The paper also shows a growth in Swedish trade with Galicia, but it is unclear if the network members facilitated this development. Lastly, the article argues that the creation of the Swedish consular service, contrary to previous research, cannot be seen as driven by the Swedish central authorities with a mercantilistic agenda in mind. Instead, the process was rather dynamic and involved various actors and agendas.

Striking (Up) Interspecies Collaborations with Crows and Falcons

This essay discusses two different kinds of human collaboration with wildlife. First, I consider the short non-fictional text Krähengekrächz (2016) by German author Monika Maron. Second, I look at young artist Hara Walther’s body of work, including her falconry, work she performs with her animal companion Sicilia.1 I deem both creative engagements to be two distinct yet related cases of zoopoetics (more on this below).2
 Maron’s text is an incomplete and tentative account (in German Erzählung) of her attempts at striking up a friendship with a crow in the Berlin neighbourhood where she lives. As the writer announces at the outset, her experiment in interspecies companionship is initially in the service of a planned novel featuring a crow among its main characters.3 However, as I shall argue, while explicitly conceived with such an agenda in mind, precisely by following the crow’s movements, Maron’s text strays from such a goal –or map– but rather follows what Thom van Dooren might call the crow’s “interjections”. For Van Dooren, an interjection involves an interruption of the status quo, a getting in between what is and what might be, whether verbally or bodily, in an effort to realize something different, to propose an alternative configuration of how we may get on together.4 Indeed, Maron’s text functions as one such interjection itself, for, in being “recruited” by the crows, the narrative breaks away from any specific genre. As I hope to make clear below, this story or rather collection of stories is less the result of the author’s intention than a meandering response to the crows’ own experimental gestures in the emergent interspecies contact zone where woman and crows meet.5
 Walther’s art is the offspring of her long partnership with Sicilia. For example, Walther has created colouring books for children, books she uses to teach falconry in her school Falconette, as well as watercolour paintings and assemblages with materials acquired during her hunts with Sicilia.6 Her art is made of markings that, as is the case in Maron’s text, are neither authorial nor authoritative. In contrast, her art follows the trail left by her wild animal companion and collects the traces as gifts. Issues of creativity, vulnerability, and impermanence punctuate the joyous gestures of cobecoming in Walther’s work. For this artist, therefore, falcon and human are creatively joined in the everyday practices of falconry, teaching, and art.

The travellee-translator and cultural memory: Thomas Nugent’s Travels through Germany (1768) and its German editions

ABSTRACT Taking as its focus three different German editions of Thomas Nugent’s Travels through Germany (1768), this article investigates how translation and re-translation enable travelogues to be circulated internationally at specific historical moments and thus intervene in debates around national images, (self-)representations and stereotypes. More specifically, it examines how the act of (re)translation can also be understood as a form of travellee response undertaken with a particular socio-political agenda in mind. By focusing on the figure of the travellee-translator as a transcultural mediator, editor, and commentator, this article explores how the temporal gaps between different translations highlight various aspects of the tension between individual and collective memory. It also explores how (re)translation can be used over time as a compelling way for the travellee culture to renegotiate the relationship between cultural memory, identity and place.

Review: Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital

Review: <i>Architecture, State Modernism and Cultural Nationalism in the Apartheid Capital</i>

Constructing media reality with an agenda in mind

In the world of virtual reality, it becomes quite difficult for the recipient of information to understand how much the image he uses, created in media reality, corresponds to the phenomenon of social reality, of which it is a reflection. The construction of media reality in the media is of particular interest for research in the field of sociology, cultural studies, psychology, linguistics, advertising, PR. The study of the genesis of media reality in the paradigm of mass media is the basis for identifying the main trends in the development of communication science. Of interest is the interdependence of the agenda and the means of influencing consumers of information used in the media. The relevance of the work is associated with the understanding that the construction of media reality turns into a media process. The allocation of priority information in the media stream becomes problematic: the consciousness of the recipient is significantly overloaded the individual does not have time to analyze the information received, but only gives him a superficial emotional assessment. The article analyses mass media materials that reflect the agenda and affect the construction of media reality. The practical significance of the study of the potential of mass media in the construction of media reality is to identify priority topics for the agenda of publications that affect the consumer of information content.

The EU’s Green Deal: A Third Alternative to Green Growth and Degrowth?

In December 2019, the European Union introduced its Green Deal in which the ecological crisis is prioritized. In doing so, the EU seems to be breaking with its traditional green growth discourse. Does it? In this article, we seek to find out whether and to what extent the EC indeed has such a revolutionary cultural, economic and political agenda in mind with its Green Deal. While the green growth discourse presumes a growth-based economy that must become greener, the degrowth discourse questions the growth model and perceives it as ecologically irresponsible. If the European Green Deal represents a third alternative, then it will somehow succeed in prioritizing ecology without welfare loss. To ascertain to what extent the European Green Deal is that third alternative, three preliminary steps need to be undertaken. The first step consists in a brief exposition of the key features of the traditional green growth discourse, as propounded by the EC and its various allies. Thereafter, the overlaps between the green growth discourse and the European Green Deal are noted. In the third section, the latter’s divergences from that previous model are highlighted. In the final section, the main question of the article is answered. It is also suggested that specific interpretations and implementations of the European Green Deal could possibly turn the original communication into an alternative to both green growth and degrowth.

Blacker , Uilleam Memory, the City and the Legacy of World War II in East Central Europe: The Ghosts of Others (review)

SEER, 98, 4, OCTOBER 2020 788 for most of shistdesiatnytstvo’s history there were significant linguistic and cultural barriers to communication and collaboration. Outside the Eastern bloc, on the other hand, the Ukrainian diaspora played an important and distinctive role in disseminating information about the movement and its brutal suppression. Although the movement was thus sui generis and largely limited to the domestic and international Ukrainian community, it is still striking and rather regrettable how rarely the book draws it into comparison with currents of the Thaw, samizdat and dissidence elsewhere, even where those comparisons are potentially productive. To take one striking example, the shestidesiatnik personality type, often used to describe the Thaw’s key protagonists, is not compared with the Ukrainian ‘sixtiers’; neither is the key Thaw trope of ‘sincerity’, which has obvious relevance to the ideas emerging in Ukrainian literary culture of the 1950s and 1960s. Overall, the account only engages to a limited degree with the recent wave of scholarship on the Thaw and dissent, and it privileges historical detail over a more incisive conceptualization of Soviet and dissident subjectivity, despite a wealth of material about shistdesiatnyky ideas of the soul and individuality. Nonetheless, this thorough account of intelligentsia post-Stalinist life in Ukraine should long remain a key reference work for Ukrainian and Soviet historians. University College Oxford Polly Jones Blacker, Uilleam. Memory, the City and the Legacy of World War II in East Central Europe: The Ghosts of Others. BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies. Routledge, London and New York, 2019. vi + 241 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. £120.00. Memory Studies is a prolific scholarly field notable for its cross-disciplinary character and normative agenda. Studies of collective remembering, in particular regarding Europe in the twentieth century, are typically guided by the imperative of remembering the tragic past and assumptions about the desirability of an inclusive, non-manipulative approach to memory. In this respect, Uilleam Blacker’s study of the post-war Central and Eastern European cities haunted by ‘the ghosts of others’ certainly meets the reader’s expectations. Blacker provides a well-balanced account of ‘mnemonic polyphony’ (p. 108) and the contradictory commemorative practices in the region. As he argues, ‘while […] it is important not to pathologize memory cultures in east-central Europe, it is also important not to be complacent about the specific problems the region experiences’ (p. 209). With this agenda in mind, Blacker explores how residents of several Eastern European cities have addressed memories of lost population groups REVIEWS 789 in the wake of World War Two, with Blacker’s own on-site observations contributing interesting subjective detail. The book’s theoretical approach is based on conceptualizations suggested by Hirsch (postmemory), Connerton (forgetting), Rothberg (multidirectional memory) and Landsberg (prosthetic memory), among others. In Blacker’s view, memory is something people make, feel and do, rather than something they simply have and experience, which allows him to distinguish quite intense memory work among post-war urbanites, primarily among cultural and political elites. The book consists of six well-written chapters that bring together the politics and poetics of urban memory in East-Central Europe. Chapter one sets up the conceptual framework of the study. Taking inspiration from works by Benjamin, Hyussen and de Certau, it approaches urban memory as an imaginative and ethically aware practice of reading the cityscapes which can be experienced by post-war residents with no first-hand knowledge of the urban past. Rather than establish a historical or political context for his analysis in a separate chapter, Blacker’s commentary focuses directly on the cities of Warsaw, Wrocław, L’viv and Kaliningrad. This approach has both its advantages and shortcomings. For readers with a good knowledge of the history of the region, Blacker’s selection and analysis of several mnemonic cases is insightful and thought-provoking, but those less familiar could lose orientation in the kaleidoscopic set of examples that he gives from different periods and political contexts. Chapter two examines the handling of the ruins of Jewish and German quarters and architectural landmarks. In some contexts, Soviet-controlled post-war restoration gave impetus to combative national martyrologies. Thus, as Blacker argues in chapter...

Temporal-magnitudinal construal coding

Abstract This article looks into the interface of temporality and quantification. Drawing on the principles of Cognitive Linguistics, we use experimental as well as corpus methods to provide evidence on how the conceptual organisation and linguistic coding of content can play a role in meaning construction. With that broad agenda in mind, a major objective is to shed light on the construct of conventionalisation. For that purpose, construal coding variants are examined with a focus on nominal phrases that express time quantities. The examination involves two construal types (termed “cumulative” and “fractional”) that differ primarily in their prominence configurations, across three granularity levels of time conceptualisation. Our main finding – that the fractional and cumulative constructions are asymmetrically conventionalised – is contextualised through a qualitative analysis of naturally-occurring data to identify additional language use patterns and offer explanatory hypotheses.

Potentiality made workable – exploring logics of care in reablement for older people

ABSTRACTIn the face of population ageing, Western health-care systems are currently demonstrating an immense interest in mobilising older people's potentials. With this agenda in mind, several countries have introduced reablement: a type of home care aimed at mobilising older people's potentials for independence by means of short-term training programmes. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Denmark's home care sector, this paper explores how elder-care professionals translate the abstract notion of ‘potentiality’ into practice. Theoretically, the paper draws on Annemarie Mol's term ‘logic of care’. I demonstrate that professionals draw on two co-existing logics of care: a logic of reablement encapsulating ideals of successful ageing and life-long development; and a logic of retirement, which in contrast allows people at the end of life to retreat and engage in enjoyable activities. Professionals manage to balance these logics in order to live up to policy obligations while at the same time complying with moral standards of good care. However, very little is achieved in terms of increased independence. I argue that by narrowly focusing on bodily and quantifiable potentials, the ‘potentiality paradigm’ holds the risk of deeming older people to lack potential. In conclusion, I therefore encourage a more inclusive approach to elder-care and ageing that recognises the complexities of ageing, including older people's potentials for retreat and leisure.

New Generation Electron Beam Resists: A Review

The semiconductor industry has already entered the sub-10 nm region, which has led to the development of cutting-edge fabrication tools. However, there are other factors that hinder the best outcome of these tools, such as the substrate and resist materials, pre- and postfabrication processes, etc. Among the lithography techniques, electron beam lithography (EBL) is the prime choice when a job requires dimensions lower than 10–20 nm, since it can easily achieve such critical dimensions in reasonable time and effort. When obtaining pattern features in single nanometer regime, the resist material properties play an important role in determining the size. With this agenda in mind, many resists have been developed over the years suitable for attaining required resolution in lesser EBL writing time. This review article addresses the recent advancements made in EBL resists technology. It first describes the different lithography processes briefly and then progresses on to the parameters affecting the EBL fabric...

Photographing a South African form of sudden death

In this article, I examine two press photographs of the same death scene – the bodies of two anti-apartheid activists murdered in Maseru, Lesotho, in 1985, taken as they lay together on the floor of a mortuary. The activists were murdered by an apartheid hit-squad under the command of Eugene de Kock. Extrapolating from a visual analysis of the two photographs – taken by different photographers – I investigate the relationship between particular photographic images of death and trauma, and the national forms such trauma might take. In addressing this question, I ruminate on the relationship between death and photography in general, on the epistemological status of photographs as evidential fields, and on the relationship between global and national image discourses. I focus on the propensity of such images – which may have been produced with a journalistic agenda in mind, to spur the viewer into political or civic action in response to the trauma they depict – to turn into various forms of aesthetic image.

The Spectre of Biafra

Many existing narratives of the Nigerian Civil War remain as contentious as ever. Usually, authors of such accounts of the war where participants n the conflict interested only in soothing their own egos or self-validation. Or else, they have an undisguised ethnic agenda in mind, either as victims or heroes of the war. As such, it is dificult to glean an unbiased picture of what really transpired. Alas, the Nigerian Civil War is a wound that refuses to heal; instead, it becomes really sore at the slightest provocation. It is quite refreshing to read an account by Michael Gould who is obviously not motivated by the all-too-familiar ethnic sentiments. It would seem that, for a Nigerian, it is impossible to think straight once plunged into the murky historical pool of the war. For many Nigerians, writing about the war is still a deeply troubling exercise and there is usually a partisan dimension to it.

University - industry collaborations: models, drivers and cultures.

The way academic institutions and pharmaceutical companies have been approaching collaborations has changed significantly in recent years. A multitude of interaction models were tested and critical factors that drive successful collaborations have been proposed. Based on this experience the current consensus in the pharmaceutical industry is to pursue one of two strategies: an open innovation approach to source discoveries wherever they occur, or investing selectively into scientific partnerships that churn out inventions that can be translated from bench to bedside internally. While these strategies may be intuitive, to form and build sustainable relationships between academia and large multinational healthcare enterprises is proving challenging. In this article we explore some of the more testing aspects of these collaborations, approaches that various industrial players have taken and provide our own views on the matter. We found that understanding and respecting each other's organisational culture and combining the intellectual and technological assets to answer big scientific questions accelerates and improves the quality of every collaboration. Upon discussing the prevailing cooperation models in the university - industry domain, we assert that science-driven collaborations where risks and rewards are shared equally without a commercial agenda in mind are the most impactful.

Pierre Rosanvallon. The Society of Equals.

In light of our current concern with equality and inequality, this is a timely and important book. Pierre Rosanvallon, the director of studies at L'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, has approached the ideas of equality and inequality for the most part historically; indeed, his book may be one of the best histories of the changing notions of equality in the modern Western world ever written. But ultimately his book has a much larger policy agenda in mind. The societies of the Western nations have become so unequal, so riven by divisions of rich and poor, he writes, that something radical must be done. The rationale behind the redistributive welfare state is collapsing and redistributing income will not be enough to create a society of equals. We must, writes Rosanvallon, reconceive the idea of equality in social rather than simply economic or political terms. At the same time we must prevent the enormous differences that exist among individuals from hardening into destructive inequalities. To solve this problem Rosanvallon proposes at the end of his book a preliminary outline of a solution (which he plans to turn into a book) that posits a society of equals based in what he calls singularity, reciprocity, and communality.

Gesprekken in Genua. Giovanni Costa over het Twaalfjarig Bestand

In early-modern Europe, historiography was often deployed as a political means for addressing internal issues. An example of such a history text written with a local agenda in mind is the tract Ragionamento sopra la triegua de' Paesi Bassi by Giovanni Costa, which was published in 1610 in Genoa. Taking the actual case of the Twelve Years' Truce during the period of the Dutch Revolt, Costa discusses in fact the internal affairs of Genoa, a Ligurian city-state functioning as satellite state of the Spanish Habsburg Empire. This article is centered on the question of why Costa opted for such an abstract and remote topic for this politico-economic backdrop, and also addresses the matter of his intended readership.

European Elections 2014: What Kind of Dish Will the Parties Serve the Electorate? Will it have a National or European Flavour?

European elections via popular vote were introduced in the 1970s to boost popular interest and European integration. However, at the first election in 1979, people voted without consideration for European issues, but instead with the national agenda in mind. This situation has been repeated on all seven occasions, up to the most recent election in 2009. As we head towards the next European elections in 2014 we explore the differences from previous elections and note the financial crisis in the eurozone, the profound politicisation of the EU and the anticipated implementation of the latest treaty, named after the Lisbon summit. In this overall environment we attempt to assess the type of message that political parties on the national level will present to the electorate. Under certain conditions, we will contend, the next European elections may depart from those studied in previous research analyses.

Sustainability, Professionalism and Urban Design; A Learning Process

Sustainable development requires change in who makes decisions as well as in their content. The field theory of behavioural change is used here to structure a discussion of professionalism in urban design for sustainability. Sustainability and professionalism (both concepts defined by their users) are channelled subjectively, there are barriers in cities, designers act as gatekeepers, learning takes place. There follow sections on cities, designers, learning and research. There is more wealth and more poverty. In addition the cultural diversity of the urban population is becoming ever more evident. Sustainability depends on the interaction between designers and users, on new forms of practice and on new forms of urban development. There needs to be more focus on the improvement of participatory decision-making, and on new forms of communication, in design practice. This argues against a too narrow interpretation of academic standards in schools of architecture and encourages the reevaluation and further development of pragmatic approaches and the transmission of practical skills. Business School methods could be used. A good deal of previous research could usefully be looked at again with the sustainability agenda in mind, including a better understanding of skills. In conclusion, professionals need more multi-disciplinary practice and greater participation in it by lay citizens.

The Concept of Law within the EU: Towards a Dual-Purpose Social Contract

The aim of this thesis is to examine how the potential codification of natural rights will affect the content of the concept of law within the EU? First I will establish a certain vision of how the concept of law is conditioned upon the abstract choice of societal form that further leads on to the content of the concept being determined by interpretation of the original choice. Secondly I will argue that the EU was established with a certain collectively aimed societal agenda in mind on the basis of a certain societal form that has affected decisively the content of the concept of law. Thirdly I will argue that the essence of rights have a certain conceptual foundation that exists in its core irrelevant of societal choices and in fact are based on norms that compete with collective societal agendas. Lastly I will argue that the potential codification of the Charter of Fundamental Rights will in a decisive way alter the way the content of the concept of law will be interpreted within the EU, because of the altered societal agenda that follows with the rights based conceptual norms accepted by the Charter. The conclusion to the posed subject question is that; the content of the concept of law within the EU will gain the full dual character of the social contract by adding substantive treaty articles that materialize the human dignity norm in the primary legislation of the Union.

Agendas, Arguments, and Political Theory

If teaching is not the oldest profession, it certainly has a long historical pedigree. The frustrations teaching evokes likely have an equally long pedigree. One sees in Plato's Republic, for example, Socrates' frustration in trying to convey to Glaukon the aims of the educational scheme he is presenting to his interlocutors in Book 8. His evident difficulties relaying this information have doubtless struck sympathetic chords in the breasts of countless generations of teachers. Frustration has certainly been the case for the present authors, particularly in teaching the analysis and understanding of secondary commentary on classic texts; when reading such articles, students express puzzlement about the long debate over seemingly trivial points. Many come away from such classes convinced it is not worth investing time in understanding classic texts because the discussion of them centers on apparently arcane and obscure grammatical, historical, or technical questions. This essay presents an approach with which the authors have had some measure of success in helping students “see the point” of this especially difficult dimension of analyzing and understanding texts and authors. Our approach teaches students to identify and appreciate the “agenda argument” often put forward by such commentators. An “agenda argument” is a contemporary scholar's effort to address a current problem or issue through critical reflection on an iconic text or author in the field. The term “agenda” is appropriate because it clarifies that the scholar has an interest in an underlying general claim through discussion of the technical points being debated. In other words, the scholar has a larger agenda in mind that guides the selection of issues and determines the use of points in the text.

Pamela Michael, Care and treatment of the mentally ill in North Wales 1800–2000, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2003, pp. ix, 252, illus., £14.99 (0-7083-1740-5).

This scholarly and sensitive history of the Denbigh mental hospital in North Wales makes a valuable contribution to the history of psychiatry in its British context. It is not a study that makes a fanfare about its arguments, though briefly in the introduction it is acknowledged that the encounter with this institution has steered the author away from expectations fostered in a reading of Foucault towards an admiration for humanitarian effort and achievement in the face of considerable odds. Thereafter, it slips into a primarily descriptive mode. But this is not to denigrate: it is here that genuine insight and new understanding does constantly emerge, often springing from the smallest detail. With obvious sympathy for history from below, Pamela Michael frames her approach to the history of an institution as one that will place the patient at the centre of things. And there is the intriguing and original ambition to demonstrate how the culture of the patients helped to shape the institution. She does get some way in achieving such objectives. Intriguing stories of patients and their lives are scattered throughout, though often at the end of chapters rather than as central or even integral parts of the main story. Instead, at the centre, animating and holding together the narrative, is what one might call the character of the institution itself. Sitting in its archives, immersing herself in its architecture, and getting to know a staff past and present, who are committed historians in their own right, Pamela Michael has developed an empathy and quality of historical imagination that is often lacking in this type of institutional history. So it is her ability to describe the noise of asylum, for instance, her attention to the minute detail of the “daily round” and “underlife”, not the patient narratives for all their interest, which saves this from being another empty asylum. The coverage of such a long period, from nineteenth-century roots to twentieth-century dissolution, means that we also have here in miniature a history of modern British mental health care. Since no historian of recent years has managed to put this whole story together, and since Pamela Michael's command of this long sweep of history is so convincing, the value of the book goes beyond that of a mere case study. This is particularly so when it comes to the less familiar territory of the twentieth century where there are a series of important findings and the demonstration of what policy meant in practice. To some extent, this runs counter to what initially appears to be the book's central claim for significance: its development of what one might call a Welsh way in lunacy. Such an agenda follows a body of work over the last decade that has qualified an Anglocentric vision of British mental health care with work on Scotland and Ireland, but until now very little on Wales. Denbigh is certainly a good choice with this agenda in mind, not least because of the importance of the Welsh language in the North. Throughout, there is an attempt to probe the significance of the Welsh context, with the opening up of a Welsh social epidemiology shaped in particular by religion perhaps most intriguing. But for much of the time it is far from clear that this was a “Welsh system”, rather than a case study for thinking about provinciality more generally, and it would certainly be a shame if the study were neglected as having a value in relation to the Welsh context alone. Indeed, anyone wanting a clear story of how the British way in lunacy changed over the course of two centuries and what this could mean for a single institution would not be being misdirected if they ended up, as they should from now on, in remote North Wales.