Etymological Origins Research Articles

Problems of Korean Education in the Chinese Etymological Origins and Devices for the Chinese Etymological Origins Database Establishment

Problems of Korean Education in the Chinese Etymological Origins and Devices for the Chinese Etymological Origins Database Establishment

The Aesthetic Body: Passion, Sensibility, and Corporeality in Seventeenth-Century France

Erec R. Koch. The Aesthetic Body: Passion, Sensibility, and Corporeality in Seventeenth-Century France. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2008. Pp. 390. The title of Erec R. Koch's stimulating and erudite work puts the problem front and center by bringing back together two words that history has driven apart. For since Kant and Hegel, aesthetic appreciation, disinterested and spiritualized, has been construed as the very opposite of bodily experience; art for the senses might as well be pornography. Following in the footsteps of Ernst Cassirer, many scholars have tried to uncover the early modern roots of aesthetic disinterestedness. Koch proposes something more like the contrary--to examine the aesthetic that lost out, one that, true to the word's etymological origins, proposed a science of sensation that linked all manner of external stimuli (artworks among them) to the production of embodied passions. Just as we have five senses, The Aesthetic Body has five chapters, each devoted to seventeenth-century speculation regarding sight, hearing, taste, touch, and--smell having apparently attracted little philosophical interest--Cartesian physiology. This last subject is where Koch begins, as he must: in displacing classical physiology, which insisted on the body's organic unity with the soul, in favor of a mechanical model, Descartes effectively sets the stage for the century's contributions to discourse on the senses and the passions. The author returns throughout the study to the link between the new physiology and passion: thinking of the body as a machine (as opposed to a site where spiritual or occult forces play themselves out) does not imply that it is somehow robotic or unfeeling. On the contrary, the innovation consists in considering how passions are produced in the body, how they affect the mind, and how the mind in turn might alter--but not exactly master--them. Koch does a marvelous job elucidating the stakes of the new physiology, while along the way firmly refuting ill-informed but common attacks on Descartes's denial of the body. Two additional chapters follow the Cartesian body, mechanical but feeling, into other domains. New views on the workings of sound on the ear alter traditional rhetorical theory by providing, in the work of Mersenne and Lamy, an account of the material efficacy of the voice's communication of passion; Hobbes, Nicole, and Pascal all think of the civil and political sphere as a place where bodies collide, and where order is achieved through the power of custom and ceremony to modify behavior. The two remaining chapters concern subjects that while less explicitly Cartesian in their underpinnings nevertheless share the concern with the sensitive body. In a chapter on taste, Koch emphasizes the extent to which the oft-remarked shift from a literal (i.e., culinary) to a figurative (socially distinguishing) understanding of the term does not imply an eclipse of the body; on the contrary, in Mere or Morvan de Bellegarde, le bon gout is never divorced from a superior disposition of the organs. Finally, in the only chapter to concern art specifically, the author offers a persuasive reading of Corneille's Cinna, a tragedy that displays the ability of political authority to produce affective response in its subjects; the implication is that the theater at the time could not be a space of aesthetically pure enjoyment, but instead was necessarily part of a political program (Richelieu's) that put the spectacle's manipulation of bodily passion in the service of power. …

Punch Drunk on Research Impact: A Critical Analysis of Textual Power Politics

Defined by Research Councils UK as ‘the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy’, impact is a measure of achievement. Academics are required to predict impact as part of the process of obtaining funding for research, so it is now a measure of the value of research. This article outlines the linguistic and etymological origins of the word ‘impact’ in order to highlight and investigate the power basis of meanings embedded in a word that tends to be used as if it were a neutral term. The article employs a narrative style in order to investigate for whom, particularly within the academic world, impact functions. It discusses how the power politics in play relate to the ways in which funding operates in higher education and the ways in which that is governed by medical science and industry world views, which have become part of managerial institutional culture. It locates the shock of ‘impact’ as a symbolic marker of a postmodern crisis, a collision point within universities between positivist managerial values, science-and-technology-based funding frameworks, research and teaching, which is largely ignored. Impact reproduces elitist structures that could ultimately damage the values held within higher education as communities of learning and practice.

Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

In this article, we report on a phenomenological study of experiences of recovery of 7 women with histories of childhood maltreatment. We propose a model that recalls the Anglo-Franc etymological origins of rekeverer: to regain consciousness, health, or strength. Dimensions include development of a selfhood; tasks of connection and separation; regulation of overwhelming emotions; management of choices; and internalization of therapeutic relational dynamics. Based on the findings, we suggest that theory and research need to extend concepts of healing, add methodologies privileging victim/survivor voices, and revisit concepts such as neutrality and resistance as they apply to dissociative disorders. Practitioners should have specific training in trauma models, although they need to hold these theories lightly because therapeutic goals and pathways of change might well differ for each client. Integrated whole-of-government initiatives need to identify those at risk of abuse as early as possible, and provide response funding beyond assessment services.

Music education and human flourishing: a meditation on democratic origins

This philosophical essay is a meditation on the multiple and contested meanings of the concept of democracy with the aim of redirecting dominant discourses in music education practices and building new capacities for democracy's practical use in music classrooms. Inspired by philosopher John Dewey's travels to China, and his influence on major Chinese thinkers like Hu Shih and Tao Xingzhi, the author plays with the etymological origins of the term ‘democracy’, finding limited value in its Greek origins, but inspiration in the many ways of referring to democracy in Chinese [Minzhu: 民 主 / Pingmin: 平 民 / Shumin: 庶 民 / Minben: 民 本] each of which has the potential to direct and enlarge contemporary instructional practices in formal music education settings.

Conference report: Planning Resilient Communities in Challenging Times, UK/Ireland Planning Research Conference, Birmingham, 12–14 September 2011

The 2011 UK/Ireland Planning Research Conference (UK/I PRC), jointly organised by the University of Birmingham and Birmingham City University, was held at the Birmingham Business School, located in the pleasant university surroundings of the city's leafy Edgbaston district (Figure 1). The conference came at a time when the Coalition Government's proposed changes to the English planning system had been experiencing substantial coverage in the national press, and so this left no shortage of topics for discussion. The 2011 conference theme was based around the increasingly vogue subject of 'resilience'. The University of Birmingham is currently running a major crossdisciplinary initiative on resilience and urban living, and so the conference theme is partially an outcome of a continuing research focus at the university. The organisers hoped the concept of resilient communities in the face of changing contexts would provide a broad thematic overview for discussions around various current issues in planning. As usual, the UK/I PRC brought together researchers with a wide variety of interests related to planning, governance and the environment. The participant list for the conference contained 203 names from a variety of institutions (Figure 2). Thirtynine of the delegates had travelled from outside the UK and Ireland, coming from 14 countries, including Russia, Canada, South Africa and Australia. Opening session The 2012 conference was opened by the geographer Adam Tickell, in his role as Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Birmingham. In a short welcoming address he drew upon Birmingham's industrial development history in advocating the suitability of the city as the location for a planning research conference. Mel Lees (Head of the Faculty of Technology, Engineering and the Environment, Birmingham City University) also welcomed delegates, referring to the 'great post-industrial city that is Birmingham'. Peter Lee (University of Birmingham) spoke of the 'very deep' foundations of Birmingham's local governance. Bringing the discussion closer to the present, he cited the city's current major regeneration projects - a new central library and a revamped New Street railway station, including the proposed HS2 high-speed rail line to London. However, recent riots and the dropping of the city from the Lonely Planet series of guidebooks (which had in previous years featured Birmingham as a contemporary 'chic' destination) were indications of the challenges still being faced. Plenary keynote addresses Simin Davoudi (University of Newcastle upon Tyne) gave the first keynote address, opening her presentation by suggesting that planners in England were currently experiencing a 'particularly heightened sense of [...] uncertainty', with attacks on the value of their professional contributions to society, and contended that planning is facing a crisis. She then explored the specific theme of the conference and delivered a scholarly exploration of the concept of 'resilience', its etymological origins, definitions and role in contemporary public policy debates. Resilience has recently begun to replace 'sustainability' as the latest planning 'buzz' word, she suggested - indeed, citations in the social sciences literature increased by 400 per cent between 1997 and 2007. But, like its predecessor, the precise meaning of 'resilience' when used in such a context remains 'slippery'. Drawing upon the conceptual apparatus of complexity theory, Davoudi then highlighted how resilience often implies the ability of something (or somewhere) to 'bounce back' from negative external perturbations. But this is often seen as a 'return to normal without questioning what normality entails'. Drawing a contrast to this common view, she outlined the concept of 'evolutionary resilience', where there is not a 'return' to a pre-defined normality, but instead an ability to adapt, transform and evolve in response to disequilibrium. …

Functional democracy and mass media: a critique

This paper comprises two parts. The first part defines democracy and attempts an examination of the role of the media in a functional democracy. In an attempt to explain issues in the media and public opinion within the realm of democracy, the paper explores etymological origins of media, arguing that what the media ought to be differs from what is obtainable.Part two examines the media’s role in various African countries when they were under colonial rule and the continent’s push for self-rule, observing that post-colonial Africa witnessed a bifurcated partisan media.The paper, with specific reference to the role of the media in present day South Africa and Nigeria, concludes that, for the proper role of promoting a healthy culture of democracy in society, today’s news media needs to reflect society’s concerns and the media’s interest in democratic equity.

A seleção conceitual na organização de domínios de conhecimento nas ciências humanas e sociais: o caso da cultura

Aborda o aspecto da seleção conceitual na organização de domínios de conhecimento nas ciências humanas e sociais, tomando como foco o conceito de cultura e sua complexidade peculiar. A seleção conceitual é uma etapa inicial da construção de sistemas de organização de conhecimento e mostra-se importante para um resultado final de qualidade, quanto à recuperação da informação. Para evidenciar a complexidade do domínio cultura, são analisadas as origens etimológicas das palavras amazônicas, onde se revelou uma grande diversidade cultural em línguas não-nativas originárias de continentes africano, europeu e asiático. Foi sugerido, como fundamento teórico-metodológico, para lidar com domínios complexos dessa natureza, a Teoria da Classificação Facetada, de Ranganathan e a Teoria dos Níveis Integrativos, do Classification Research Group.

Savage barbecue: race, culture, and the invention of America's first food

This book describes America's first food as an invented tradition.Barbecue is a word that means different things to different people. It can be a verb or a noun. It can be pulled pork or beef ribs. And, especially in the American South, it can cause intense debate and stir regional pride. Perhaps then, it is no surprise that the roots of this food tradition are often misunderstood.In Savage Barbecue, Andrew Warnes traces what he calls America's first food through early transatlantic literature and culture. Building on the work of scholar Eric Hobsbawm, Warnes argues that barbecue is an invented tradition, much like Thanksgiving - one long associated with frontier mythologies of ruggedness and relaxation.Starting with Columbus' journals in 1492, Warnes shows how the perception of barbecue evolved from Spanish colonists' first fateful encounter with natives roasting iguanas and fish over fires on the beaches of Cuba. European colonists linked the new food to a savagery they perceived in American Indians, ensnaring barbecue in a growing web of racist attitudes about the New World. Warnes also unearths the etymological origins of the word barbecue, including the early form barbacoa; its coincidental similarity to barbaric reinforced emerging stereotypes.Barbecue, as it arose in early transatlantic culture, had less to do with actual native practices than with a European desire to define those practices as barbaric. Warnes argues that the word barbecue retains an element of violence that can be seen in our culture to this day. Savage Barbecue offers an original and highly rigorous perspective on one of America's most popular food traditions.

The importance of the concepts of disaster, catastrophe, violence, trauma and barbarism in defining posttraumatic stress disorder in clinical practice

BackgroundSeveral terms in the scientific literature about posttraumatic stress disorder are used with different meanings in studies conducted by different authors. Words such as trauma, violence, catastrophe, disaster and barbarism are often used vaguely or confusingly, and their meanings change in different articles. The lack of conceptual references for these expressions complicates the organization of literature. Furthermore, the absence of clear concepts may be an obstacle to clinical treatment because the use of these words by the patients does not necessarily point to a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder.DiscussionA critical review of scientific literature showed that stress can be divided in stages to facilitate specific terminological adjustments to the event itself, to the subject-event interaction and to psychological responses. Moreover, it demonstrated that the varying concept of trauma expands into fundamental psychotherapeutic definitions and that the meanings of violence associated with barbarism are an obstacle to resilience. Therefore, this study updates the etymological origins and applications of these words, connects them to the expansions of meanings that can be operated in the clinical care of patients with posttraumatic stress disorder, and analyzes them critically according to the criterion A of DSM-IV and ICD-10.SummaryThe terminology in the literature about posttraumatic stress disorder includes a plethora of terms whose meanings are not fully understood, and that, therefore, limit this terminology. The analysis of these terms suggested that the transformation of the concept of trauma led to a broader understanding of this phenomenon in its psychic dimensions, that a barbarian type of violence constitutes an obstacle to resilience, and that the criterion A of the DSM-IV and ICD-10 shows imprecision and conceptual fragilities.MethodsTo develop this debate article, a current specialized literature review was achieved by searching and retrieving the key terms from two major databases: PubMed and PsycINFO. The key terms included "disaster", "catastrophe", "barbarism", "terrorism", "trauma", "psychic trauma" and "violence", also in combination with the terms "PTSD", "concept" and "conceptual aspects". The data were captured specially from review articles. The included studies were those mostly identified by the authors as relevant by the presence of a conceptual approach in any part of the paper. Researches that relied solely on empirical indicators, like psychopathological, neurobiological or pharmacological aspects, were excluded. The focus here was in conceptual aspects, even when some few empirical studies were included.As it was noted a paucity of medical references related to conceptual aspects of these terms, a wider literature needed to be included, including chapters, books and articles proceeded from the Humanities areas. "Interdisciplinary research is needed in this area to include perspectives from a range of different disciplines" once that "to promote public health (...) new dimensions of such interactions and the implications thereof should be pursued in collaboration with researchers from broader areas" [1].

El español hablado en Cuba : préstamos vigentes, lexicogénesis y variación lingüística

The variety of Spanish spoken in Cuba, which is a Caribbean Spanish dialect, features at the lexical level an abundance of loan words from various etymological origins (indigenisms, afroamericanisms, anglicisms, gallicisms, among others). In the present research we offer an exhaustive sampling of words of this kind and a taxonomy of the phenomena that motivate their integration into the system that has borrowed them. Among such phenomena, which are proof of the morphological and socio-semantic productiveness of these loan words, we have morphological hybridization through derivation, lexicalization, semantic change, and the formation of semantic doublets through the influence of diatopic and diaphasic variation.

Stephen Crane's Refrain

Stephen Crane's Refrain Max Cavitch (bio) Poetry's liberation from the shackles of meter is one of the most important non-events in late nineteenth-century literary history. It's important because it is to this day so commonly invoked, not only to legitimate a particular way of reading poems, as if they were what Theodor Adorno calls "depositions of impulses," but also to celebrate the human subject's liberation from inauthenticity and expressive constipation.1 It's a non-event because the long and complex history of versification in English poetry is poorly suited to teleological narratives of liberation, despite a lot of early twentieth-century fanfare about breaking "new wood" and "insurgent naked throb[bings] of the instant moment."2 Yet the perpetuation of such liberation narratives is powerfully motivated, and deeply inscribed in our scholarship, our course syllabi, and our anthologies and editions. In the history of poetry in English, Walt Whitman is the foremost symbol of metrical iconoclasm, not least because he is also such a powerful symbol of personal idiosyncrasy asserting itself against many deeply entrenched social and sexual norms. The fictive isomorphism of poetry and person, with which Whitman so dearly loved to play, and play off of and against, very understandably tends to get naturalized as the meaning of his achievement: free verse means a free subject. This is a harder equation to derive from the spare, irrhythmic verses of Stephen Crane, alongside which Whitman's seem reassuringly measured, lushly and extravagantly familiar. Turning from Whitman's poetry to Crane's one may feel like [End Page 33] a figure in one of Crane's poems, searching for erotic opportunities in "the ashes of other men's love."3 Crane doesn't deny the personal; he combusts it, like a fossil fuel, and lets the residue trail behind on the page, where it congeals into toxic, post-human landscapes: Behold, from the land of the farther sunsI returned.And I was in a reptile-swarming place,Peopled, otherwise, with grimaces,Shrouded above in black impenetrableness.I shrank, loathing,Sick with it.And I said to him,"What is this?"He made answer slowly,"Spirit, this is a world;This was your home." (P, 17) Like a David Maisel photograph of sewage flows or wasted mines, this untitled poem from The Black Riders and Other Lines (1895) conjures a world both industrial and primordial, a world that is uninhabitable, yet for which there is no alternative. And like a Maisel photograph, Crane's poem exploits form as an index of human artistry in relation to a scene of degradation that makes scant place for the human ("This was your home"). Crane's specifically poetic achievement, however, has less to do with aestheticizing visual blight than with figuring the effort to speak from beyond certain conventional limits of the self, the better to articulate the defamiliarized, depersonalized contexts of its communications. This essay calls to account the sentiment of liberated and liberating free-verse artistry through a reading of Crane's poetry that combines formal analysis (a counting, or measurement) and ethical reckoning (a characterization of the lyric subject). More simply put, it is an effort to interpret, in the work of a very untraditional poet, his use of a very traditional poetic device—the refrain—to measure or mark out a timely sense of a [End Page 34] depersonalized aesthetics. Timely, that is, not in terms of present critical anxieties about the aesthetic, but rather in terms of a late-nineteenth-century preoccupation, in literature, science, philosophy, and beyond, with the phenomenon of repetition, which is, of course, the precondition for any type of measurement and for any concept of the personal. As Andrew Ford observes, the word measure has never shed its etymological origins in the Greek word metron—an evaluative term, Ford reminds us, with moral force.4 We still say a response is "measured" when it strikes us as proportionate and duly limited. When considering measurement in connection with literature, it's natural to think of poetry, which actively displays, through versification, its competence to measure. Poetry, like Crane's, that departs from conventional versification potentially calls prior evaluations...

An Attack of the Clowns: Comedy, Vagrancy, and the Elizabethan History Play

Serious treatment of the relationship between the nobility and the classes dominated by it cannot avoid portrayal of conflict that undermines the premises of the national history play. Dramatists interested in interclass relations but committed to patriotic appeal must accordingly choose between two alternatives, neither of them entirely satisfactory. They must either deny the reality of class struggle and posit social unity instead...or view popular rebellion in relatively unsympathetic light.-Walter Cohen, Drama of NationIn Drama of Nation, Walter Cohen argues that representations of class conflict were threat to the seriousness of the national history play in early modern England (223).1 Contemporary playwrights solved this problem by either eliding the importance of popular action or depicting it in negative terms, as the work of an archetypal mad multitude. On the surface, the history plays written and produced in the last decade of Elizabethan rule appear to fulfill Cohen's hypothesis in that they frequently present their lower-class characters as ignorant, violent, and anarchically opposed to hierarchically ordered body politic. This essay focuses on three such enactments of lower-class rebellion: The Life and Death of Jack Straw, 2 Henry VI, and George a' Greene. Performed between 1591 and 1594, the plays chronicle the reigns of Richard II, Henry VI, and Edward I, respectively, and focus on how weak monarchs, corrupt princes, aggressive foreign powers, and rebellious peasants could endanger the stability of the emerging nation-state. But unlike the first three categories, which focus on the political threat wielded by discontented nobility, peasant rebellion focuses on lower-class grievances, and is most often represented in comic terms. In this essay, I suggest that, instead of disabling class conflict, peasant rebellion's comic framework enabled critique of social and economic inequality within the precincts of the national history play.While recent studies have drawn attention to popular voice in the histories, literary-critical discussion on the subject has, by and large, presented lower-class insurrection as antithetical to articulations of genuine social protest.2 In her investigation of Shakespeare's first tetralogy, Phyllis Rackin writes: Segregated by restrictions, the plebeian characters . . . can rebel against their oppression, but they can never finally transcend the conventions of comic representation that keep them in their social place and mark their separation from the serious historical world of their betters (221). As opposed to the high political demands of the aristocracy, plebeian complaints are disregarded because of their comic tenor. Rackin thus posits generic restrictions as an insuperable obstacle to subversive portrayal of rebellion from below. This critical devaluation of comic characters appears to derive from neoclassical theories that were deeply influenced by Aristotle's brief discussion of comedy in Poetics. In that text, Aristotle traces comedy's etymological origins to dispute between the Dorians and Athenians:For the Dorians say that they call the suburbs comae whereas the Athenians call them demes, and from this fact the Dorians argue that the word comodoi (comedians) came not from the verb comazein (to revel) but from the wandering of the comedians among the comae, since they were held in low esteem and were driven out of the city. (3)Since comic performances were limited to the comae or villages, its practitioners were automatically equated with the lower classes.3 Sanctified in the Poetics, Aristotle's commentary had profound influence on medieval and Renaissance interpretations of the ludic.4In Elizabethan England, the association of comedy and rusticity was embodied in the term clown. Thought to have originated in the Latin colonus, or tiller of the soil, the term was synonymous with a countryman, rustic, or peasant. …

Getting Your PhD: On Being a Professor

Getting Your PhD: On Being a Professor

Contextualizing Scientific Discovery from Alchemy to Electrochemistry

Mordechai Feingold. The Newtonian Moment: Isaac Newton and the Making of Modern Culture. (New York: The New York Public Library, 2004). Pp. 218. $22.50. June Z. Fullmer. Young Humphry Davy: The Making of an Experimental Chemist. (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 2000). Pp. 385. $30.00. [End Page 258] William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe. Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Pp. 344. $29.00. Giuliano Pancaldi. Volta: Science and Culture in the Age of Enlightenment. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003). Pp. 381. $24.95. In recent years, the role of context has become a focal point in the historiography of science. Recognizing that scientific theory and practice cannot be unproblematically isolated from the time and place of their creation, historians of science are increasingly challenging the traditional narratives that reduce the production of scientific knowledge to a linear succession of key experiments and theories. The four books reviewed here reflect this trend; while the authors do not all share the same contextual focus, they all seek to present a narrative of scientific discovery that goes beyond the confines of the laboratory. Without minimizing the individual accomplishments of the scientists they are studying, they make skillful use of both primary and secondary sources to situate the works of Robert Boyle, George Starkey (Newman and Principe), Isaac Newton (Feingold), Alessandro Volta (Pancaldi), and Humphry Davy (Fullmer) in the socio-cultural, political, and intellectual climates in which they were produced. In Alchemy Tried in the Fire, Newman and Principe focus primarily on intellectual context, seeking to correct the commonly held belief that seventeenth-century chemistry represented a radical break from the traditions of medieval alchemy. Building upon their earlier studies of the English chemist Boyle, whose Sceptical Chymist is traditionally viewed as one of the first works of modern chemistry, and the American-born Starkey, who penned several alchemical tracts under the pseudonym of Eirenaeus Pilalethes, they argue convincingly that a close examination of "the content and practice of laboratory chymistry in the early modern period" (2) reveals more continuity than rupture with alchemy. The return to the archaic spelling "chymistry" further underscores this continuity; as explained in Newman and Principe's 1998 article, "Alchemy vs. Chemistry: The Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake" (Early Science and Medicine 3 [1998] 32–65), the use of "chymistry" to represent the undifferentiated domain of seventeenth-century alchemy/chemistry enables one to avoid the anachronism and potential arbitrariness resulting from the use of the modern terms. The first chapter introduces Boyle and Starkey, focusing on the differences in their educations and early intellectual interests. Prior to their meeting in early 1651, the two men "were, in more than one way, an ocean apart" (7); Starkey, who was to become Boyle's principal tutor in chemistry, was by then already a highly experienced laboratory chemist while Boyle's experimental efforts were still limited and secondary to his ethical preoccupations. His efforts to improve the moral character of humanity had already resulted in several examples of devotional literature, including a set of fictional letters entitled Amorous Controversies, intended to instill in readers a profound devotion to God. But as the authors note, due to Starkey's influence, "within a very few years his devotion to devotion would be transmuted into a devotion to experimental natural philosophy" (7). The chapter concludes with a discussion of Boyle's presentation of his relationship to the chemistry of his day, which strengthens the book's continuity thesis by demonstrating that Boyle's desire to distinguish himself from his predecessors led him to misrepresent the revolutionary nature of his own work. Chapter Two traces the development of chemistry from the late medieval period to the [End Page 259] work of Starkey's own preceptor, Joan Baptista Van Helmont. The use of quantitative techniques commonly thought to have originated with Antoine Lavoisier's "balance-sheet" method in the late eighteenth...

On trust, good, and evil

AbstractThis article deals with a basic concept informing the work of Elliott Jaques: trust which is the social glue that binds people together and has consequences for all social domains. The etymological origins of “trust” connect with major normative concepts, including truth and relying upon others. These are vitally connected with the psychoanalytic approaches of Sigmund Freud and Melanie Klein as well as the nature of requisite and anti‐requisite practices throughout society. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Culture in International Relations: What Is It Good for?

Culture and International Relations: Narratives, Natives, and Tourists. By Julie Reeves. London: Routledge, 2004. 240 pp., $115.00 (ISBN: 0-415-31857-2). The past decade has seen a proliferation of scholarly literature analyzing the role of culture in international relations. Although Samuel Huntington's (1993)“The Clash of Civilizations” has provided the most notorious and controversial portrayal of the role of culture in world affairs recently, countless other works—including edited volumes by Jongsuk Chay (1990), Lapid and Kratochwil (1996), Gienow-Hecht and Schumacher (2003), along with the works of many constructivists—have also contributed to this growing body of literature. In Culture and International Relations: Narratives, Natives and Tourists , Julie Reeves follows a path that is slightly different from this mainstream literature. She traces the evolution of the concept of “culture” in international relations from its Italian etymological origins up to the present. Moreover, she looks at both the intellectual context and the corresponding practice of culture at the international level. Her argument is that, since the establishment of the discipline, students of international relations have variously employed two competing versions of culture in their narratives: humanist and anthropological. According to Reeves, the scholars of international relations first based their analysis on the humanist understanding of culture, which was slowly replaced by an anthropological understanding. Reeves defines the humanist understanding of culture mainly in terms of artistic productions—such as literature, visual arts, and so on—that can be found in any community. The anthropological definition of culture, on the other hand, is the notion of culture based on Margaret Mead's dictum: “we are our culture.” Reeves finds the anthropological version of culture quite troubling because, according to Reeves, it creates …

Rivers Viewed through Names and Epithets

There is something fascinating about river names and epithets ~characterizing phrases!. At one time or another, everybody must have wondered about the meaning of names like Atchafalaya, Irrawaddy, Murrumbidgee, Po, Winnipeg, Yangtze, and Zambezi. Such names roll melodiously off the tongue, and epithets, like “mother of waters,” “the purifier,” “river of fire,” and “scourge of the sons of Han,” conjure intriguing images. But what do the names and epithets mean, and of what relevance are they to hydraulic engineering? This forum article views rivers through the names and epithets that people have applied to rivers. Though it may seem to be a perspective of little connection to hydraulic engineering, its relevance emerges while looking back—before the advent of hydraulic engineering—to when a river’s behavior was explained in largely metaphysical terms rather than in the hydraulician’s lingo of open-channel flow and sediment transport. Initially, rivers were viewed as a landscape feature that facilitated life and occasionally threatened it. Over time, many rivers came to be viewed as hallowed places, the abode of deities, or even as deities. Indeed, the word “river,” or something about a river, often is at the etymological root of a name by which a deity is known; the Ganges, Rhine, and Clyde are three such rivers. River names and epithets often express a systematic understanding of rivers and their behavior, an understanding that predates hydraulic engineering. Rivers not only flow through the belief systems of peoples, they also flow through language and are embedded in the names of peoples and places. In an informal and somewhat blithe way, this forum article briefly traces these and other views associated with river names and epithets. This article delves only lightly into the etymological origins of river names. The obscure and largely oral origin of many names makes river etymology an inexact science, with the names of some rivers open to multiple interpretations. Numerous reference sources were used to gather the river names and epithets mentioned here. Though some references are given, most are not; the full list would extend well beyond the article’s page limit, and make the article a stodgy read. Useful references include Fenimore Cooper ~1880!; Gilmore ~1914!; Room ~1974!; Stewart ~1975!; Rand McNally ~1980!; Evans ~1981!; Brewster ~1997!; and Kalyanaraman ~1999!. The Internet is an especially fertile reference source—e.g., www. wikipedia.org, www.theoi.com, www.geocities.com, and www. linquistlist.org.

Iain Sinclair's Excremental Narratives

Iain Sinclair's Excremental Narratives

Goethe und der Islam (review)

Goethe Yearbook 199 own mini-universe with interacting and nurturing layers of existence/signification . ActuaUy, it could have served as the motto for his study, Doctor's Orders, if only he had been interested in the etymological origins of Bildung and in Goethe's own morphological signification of that famous signifier. But, as Tobin acknowledges at the conclusion of his study, the signifier and the signified in general became increasingly disconnected in the early nineteenth century (cf. 189). Similarly, Tobin's own use oÃ- Bildung is disconnected from its origins in Goethe's study of nature. Useful in justifying his approach is Goethe's other maxim about everything in nature being interrelated, even those actions which seem contrary to nature. But Tobin does not refer to it either. AU of the above deserves some recognition by Robert Tobin as relevant to his reading of WUhelm Meister as a mirroring of medical constructs, diagnosis and treatment. Surely, Goethe did not invest so much of his time and energy over almost a half century just to provide the reader with a compendium of medical facts? Many fans of Uterature will want to know what role form plays Ui conveying the message of a novel. Tobin scarcely addresses that question. If the work of Uterature is merely an Abdruck of reality, why not just read a history book? I suppose what I am really asking here is: a German studies approach to the analysis of Uterature is great. But what role does Uterature play in the process other than that of an instrument of healing in the hands of doctors? Thus, whüe I can recommend Doctor's Orders as a significant and stimulating contribution to eighteenth-century and Goethe scholarship, I cannot endorse it wholesale. It needs to address Goethe's concept of reaUsm in literature as a frame for its own thesis of the interconnections between medicine and Uterature here. I wUl, however, recommend it to students and use it in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses with deUght. Vanderbilt University John A. McCarthy Katharina Mommsen, Goethe und der Islam. Frankfurt am Main: Insel Verlag, 2001. Katharina Mommsen's Goethe und der Islam is a revised edition of her earlier work, Goethe und die Arabische Welt, published Ui 1988. Like the original , Mommsen's most recent text meticulously traces many of Goethe's Divan poems to specific verses of the Koran or to an array of Arabic and Persian poetry. HappUy, in the new edition the footnotes have become endnotes. This structural change makes for a more hospitable text Ui that the footnotes no longer dominate the page, as they so often do in the original. In addition, Mommsen has made a considerable number of editorial changes, including the deletion and consolidation of certain chapters and the addition of new ones, as well as the reorganization of some sections of the text. Her book is now divided into numbered chapters and she has reworked some of the headings. Perhaps most importantly, Mommsen has changed the title from Goethe und die Arabische Welt to Goethe und der Islam, which caUs attention to her more focused emphasis on Goethe's life-long interest Ui and preoccupation with the Koran and Islam. Mommsen locates traces of Koran verses in such early works as Götz von Berlichingen (1772), stresses Goethe's positive evaluation of Mohammed in the Mahomet-Fragment and the poem Mahomets Gesang (1773), originaUy intended to be part of the drama, and 200 Book Reviews finaUy focuses on Goethe's intensive study of the Koran, Hafis' Divan, biographies of Mohammed, and a variety of Persian and Arabic poetic texts during the composition of the West-Östlicher Divan (1814-1819)· Mommsen emphasizes the potentiaUy iconoclastic significance of Goethe's project. She provides an overview of the west's almost exclusively negative reception of both Mohammed and Islam, which began not long after the birth of Islam and lasted weU into the nineteenth century. She cites Friedrich Megerlin's translation (1772), the first German edition of the Koran, as representative of the general pejorative attitude toward Islam prevalent at that time. Megerlin entitled his work, Die Türkische Bibel, referred to the Koran as a...