Cornell University Press Research Articles

Bandits in Print: “The Water Margin” and the Transformations of the Chinese Novel By Scott W. Gregory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023, xii + 179 pp. $130.00 (cloth), $29.95 (paper)

Bandits in Print: “The Water Margin” and the Transformations of the Chinese Novel By Scott W. Gregory. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2023, xii + 179 pp. $130.00 (cloth), $29.95 (paper)

Unexpected Revolutionaries: How Central Banks Made and Unmade Economic Orthodoxy, by ManuelaMoschella (Cornell University Press)

Unexpected Revolutionaries: How Central Banks Made and Unmade Economic Orthodoxy, by ManuelaMoschella (Cornell University Press)

Rotem Kowner / Iris Rachamimov (Eds.), Out of Line, Out of Place. A Global and Local History of World War I Internments. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press Services 2022

Rotem Kowner / Iris Rachamimov (Eds.), Out of Line, Out of Place. A Global and Local History of World War I Internments. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press Services 2022

Paul Freedman, The Splendor and Opulence of the Past. Studying the Middle Ages in Enlightenment Catalonia. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press Services 2023

Paul Freedman, The Splendor and Opulence of the Past. Studying the Middle Ages in Enlightenment Catalonia. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press Services 2023

A poetics of “Wind in a Box”

Abstract This essay is a re-application of the language codes of Roland Barthes and Jonathan Culler’s concept for Structuralist Poetics. The approach I use explores the codes demonstrated in Barthes’ well-known text, S/Z with slight modifications for their application to poetry. The concepts borrowed from Mr. Culler are from his book of the same title: Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (Cornell University Press, 1975). Culler’s main argument is that there must be other, un-attempted strategies combined with conventional approaches in literature of that time period. His answer to this problem was to develop a set of linguistic-based concepts to compensate for the reader in the analysis of literary works. I have applied in this essay my approach based on Culler’s methodology and the language codes of Roland Barthes: semantic, symbolic, cultural-referential, actional and hermeneutic. I apply Culler’s concepts to a reading of poetry followed by an application of the language codes as a further development of my work in revitalizing this never-before applied method.

Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, Big Business, and the State by EveWarburton, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2023, xiv + 233 pp.

Resource Nationalism in Indonesia: Booms, Big Business, and the State by EveWarburton, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2023, xiv + 233 pp.

Рец. на кн.: Xenia A. Cherkaev. Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice. Ithaca, NY; L.: Cornell University Press, 2023. XV+189 p.

The book Gleaning for Communism: The Soviet Socialist Household in Theory and Practice by Xenia A. Cherkaev analyzes the concept of socialist property and its impact on grassroots economic practices. By analyzing how the “Soviet” appears in the narratives of workers and employees of former Soviet enterprises recorded during fieldwork in St Petersburg in the 2010s, Cherkaev offers us an anthropological view of Soviet everyday life through political economy and ethics. According to Cherkaev, the major periods of Soviet history (War Communism, NEP, Stalinism, the Thaw, and Perestroika) can be viewed through the prism of an ethical understanding of socialist property embedded in changing legislation. To understand how Soviet society emerged and how the Soviet state suddenly vanished into thin air, she examines the evolution of these regimes from 1917 to the early 1990s. At the same time, Cherkaev makes an important contribution to the history of ideas and intellectual history as she consistently traces the emergence, development, transformation, and decline of the concept of “socialist property” (“socialist economy”) from the early post-revolutionary years to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Cherkaev’s work will be an important contribution to scholarship on late-Soviet social and economic history.

Taxonomy and systematics of the Neotropical primates: a review and update

The database of the IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group currently (December 2023) registers 218 species and subspecies of Neotropical primates in 24 genera and five families. In the early 1960s, the diversity of Neotropical primates was estimated to be around 200 species and subspecies. From then, through the 1970s to the mid-1990s, however, the perception of the region’s primate diversity dropped, and reached an all-time low at 83 species and subspecies in 1980 (A World List of Mammalian Species, G. B. Corbet and J. E. Hill, British Museum (Natural History), Comstock Publishing, Cornell University Press, London and Ithaca). Interest in taxonomy and primate field research in the Neotropics was subdued up to the late 1970s. Change was sparked by the burgeoning capture of primates for biomedical research in the 1950s and 1960s, and the increasing destruction of the Amazon rainforests from the late 1970s. The numbers increased, at first slowly, but then, in 1995, they leapt back to the 200s in anticipation of a book by C. P. Groves (2001, Primate Taxonomy, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC). The species’ counts (not including subspecies) rose due to the adoption of the Phylogenetic Species Concept over the Biological Species Concept, the former favoring the category of species over subspecies. In this article, we discuss the changes in species and subspecies numbers in the classification of the Neotropical primates, and report on the taxonomic changes resulting from taxonomic research ongoing since 2012. We emphasize the importance of taxonomic research for an understanding of the diversity of primates, and for conservation planning, not least in identifying the populations that are threatened.

Intimate strangers: Commercial surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine and the making of truth By VeronikaSiegl, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023. 306 pp.

Intimate strangers: Commercial surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine and the making of truth By VeronikaSiegl, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023. 306 pp.

Campbell F. Scribner. A is for Arson: A History of Vandalism in American Education Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023, 224 pp.

Campbell F. Scribner. A is for Arson: A History of Vandalism in American Education Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023, 224 pp.

Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China by JesseRodenbiker, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2023, xiii + 248 pp.

Ecological States: Politics of Science and Nature in Urbanizing China by JesseRodenbiker, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2023, xiii + 248 pp.

Bosnian refugees in Chicago: Gender, performance, and post‐war economies By AnaCroegaert, Maryland: Lexington Books. 2020. pp. 210. $39.99 (pbk).Race‐Ing Fargo: Refugees, citizenship, and the transformation of small cities By JenniferErickson, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2020. pp. 282. $29.95 (pbk).

Bosnian refugees in Chicago: Gender, performance, and post‐war economies By AnaCroegaert, Maryland: Lexington Books. 2020. pp. 210. $39.99 (pbk).Race‐Ing Fargo: Refugees, citizenship, and the transformation of small cities By JenniferErickson, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 2020. pp. 282. $29.95 (pbk).

Order out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and the Rise and Fall of Social Orders in Iraq. By David Siddhartha Patel. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. 240p. $125.00 cloth, $30.95 paper.

Order out of Chaos: Islam, Information, and the Rise and Fall of Social Orders in Iraq. By David Siddhartha Patel. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. 240p. $125.00 cloth, $30.95 paper.

Book Review - The Neoliberal Republic - Corporate Lawyers, Statecraft, and the Making of Public-Private France by Antoine Vauchez and Pierre France. Translated by Meg Morley. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2021.

Book Review - The Neoliberal Republic - Corporate Lawyers, Statecraft, and the Making of Public-Private France by Antoine Vauchez and Pierre France. Translated by Meg Morley. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2021.

Patricia Strach / Kathleen A. Sullivan, The Politics of Trash. How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press Services 2023

Patricia Strach / Kathleen A. Sullivan, The Politics of Trash. How Governments Used Corruption to Clean Cities, 1890–1929. Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press Services 2023

Erika Robb Larkins, The Sensation of Security: Private Guards and Social Order in Brazil Cornell University Press, 2023, pp. viii + 189

Erika Robb Larkins, The Sensation of Security: Private Guards and Social Order in Brazil Cornell University Press, 2023, pp. viii + 189

There are More, or Fewer, Things than Most of us Think

Abstract In Chapter 12 of his book Material Beings (Van Inwagen, Peter. 1990. Material Beings. Ithaca: Cornell University Press) van Inwagen argues that there are no artefacts, or very few, certainly fewer than most people believe. Artisans very rarely create, at least in the sense of causing things to come into existence. The argument in Chapter 12 is a very powerful one. I do not think that it establishes van Inwagen’s conclusion, but it does, I think, given its (plausible) premise, establish that if there are not far fewer material things in the world than we ordinarily believe, then there are far more. In this sense it establishes, as Russell once said, ‘the truth about physical objects must be strange’. Furthermore, I argue at the end, we cannot avoid this conclusion even if we reject van Inwagen’s premise. Thus the defender of our common sense ontology is caught on the horns of a dilemma. So our commonsense ontology is indefensible.

Kyrill Kunakhovich. Communism’s Public Sphere: Culture as Politics in Cold War Poland and East Germany. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022

The enduring interest in exploring the regimes of public spheres within communist societies has not waned in recent years. Much of this can be attributed to communism’s constraints on free expression, rendering cultural domains as almost the sole platforms for public spheres. In his book, historian Kyrill Kunakhovich, who specializes in contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, sheds light on the political role played by cultural spaces under communist regimes. By focusing on Leipzig (former East Germany) and Kraków (Poland) as comparative units of analysis, Kunakhovich traces the evolution of state-society relationships within cultural realms under the communist rule, from the arrival of the Red Army in Eastern Europe in 1944 to the reunification of Germany in 1990. The author explores how these interactions reshaped the sociopolitical landscapes of both countries and brought about transformations in communist politics. Employing a comparative and transnational historical approach, Kunakhovich transcends the mere juxtaposition of national case studies examining them in tandem, a perspective that “inevitably highlights the contrasts between them” (p. 16). Given the limitation of comparative case studies that may not fully encompass the entirety of the panorama, the book seeks to illuminate the dynamics within both countries’ public spheres as they manifested in communist cultural spaces. Text in English

The Redemption of Things: Collecting and Dispersal in German Realism and Modernism By SamuelFrederick, Cornell University Press. 2021. pp. 330. $125 (hardcover), $34.95 (paperback)

The Redemption of Things: Collecting and Dispersal in German Realism and Modernism By SamuelFrederick, Cornell University Press. 2021. pp. 330. $125 (hardcover), $34.95 (paperback)

U.S. Democracy Promotion and Interventionism - Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and U.S. Intervention in the Late Cold War. By William Michael Schmidli. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. Pp. 324. $46.95 cloth; $30.99 e-book.

U.S. Democracy Promotion and Interventionism - Freedom on the Offensive: Human Rights, Democracy Promotion, and U.S. Intervention in the Late Cold War. By William Michael Schmidli. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2022. Pp. 324. $46.95 cloth; $30.99 e-book.