Break In History Research Articles

Les territoires occidentaux et la construction identitaire en Pologne 1900-200 [...

The mental mapping of an ideal territory for the nation is a classical aspect in the ideas of the modern state. The elasticity of the Polish boundaries and the general instability of Polish sovereignty during the 20th Century may explain the remarkable regional specificity in the building of a national identity in Poland.While its chronology follows the great historical breaks of the period, the article gives a perspective not only on the changes, but also on the continuities and traditions in the political culture, the emotional connexions and the geographical imagination that can be seen through the analysis of the Polish Western territories and the German-polish neighbourhood since 1900.

Intraspecific phylogeographic mitochondrial DNA (D-loop) variation of Gelada baboon, Theropithecus gelada, in Ethiopia

The genetic variations among four populations of gelada baboon, Theropithecus gelada, from the southern and northern highlands of the Rift Valley in Ethiopia were analysed, using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of mitochondrial DNA (D-loop). Two haplotypes localized geographically with sequence divergence of 9.8% (±2.3% S.E.) distinguished the southern and northern allopatric populations, showing a historical break in the geographic distribution of the species and an impediment to gene flow. No variations were detected within or between the local populations. This marked divergence is concordant with recent nuclear DNA study. The most conspicuous barrier to gene flow is the Rift Valley, formed more than 2.5 million years ago. Considering the significant nuclear, mitochondrial, morphological, and behavioral differences, we believe that the newly found gelada population is a distinct subspecies.

Europe and the Arab World

Concise, succinct, and informative, this book skillfully elucidates andassesses the patterns, prospects, and complexities of Arab-European relationscontextualized in a globalizing (read “Americanizing”) world. It alsoidentifies the ambiguities and limitations of social movements and struggleswithin the Arab world, as well as their implications for mutual relationships(p. vi). The authors’ main thesis is that both global capitalism and theAmerican determination to construct a “new” Middle East in its own imagehave undermined the possibilities of domestic reforms and external realignmentsin most Arab countries. American hegemonic influence, together withthe growing sway of politicized Islam on public life, have added more limitationsand constraints to other failures to transform the underlying economicand political structures defining the relations between members onboth sides of the Mediterranean.The book comprises four chapters: three written by Amin (chapters 1, 2,and 4), and one (chapter 3) by El Kenz. The first chapter is a critical surveyof conditions in the Arab world in general and that of the Arab “state” in particular.Amin designates the latter structure as a manifestation of “mamelukepower,” reflecting a complex traditional system that has merged the personalizedpower of warlords, businessmen, and men of religion (p. 3). The Arabstate, he argues, has never really embraced or understood modernity. Egypt,Syria, and the Ottoman Empire underwent a first phase of ineffective modernizationduring the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The secondphase was associated with the populist nationalism of Nasserism, Baathism,and the Algerian revolution between the 1950s and 1970s. With the end ofthis phase, a multiparty system gave way to a paradoxical regression into themameluke type of autocracy (pp. 10-12). Whereas Europe broke with itspast, which allowed for its modern progress, the Arabs have not. Amin identifiesmodernity with such a historical break as well as with secularism, thedifferentiation of religion and politics, the emancipation of women, and therest of the term’s conventional elements (pp. 2-3).He criticizes currents “claiming to be Islamic” (p. 6), particularly thoseof the Wahhabi type, viewing Islamic militant groups as manifestations of arevolt against “destructive” capitalism and “deceptive” modernity (p. 6),more interested in sociopolitical issues than in matters of theology. Amin dismissesIran as being no different, although he provides no details (p. 8), and ...

From Cities of Things to Cities of Signs: Urban Spaces and Urban Subjects in Sister Carrie and Manhattan Transfer

However the city may really be, beneath this thick coating of signs, whatever it may contain or conceal, you leave ... without having discovered it. --Italo Calvino (14) While architecture has always been in part a semiotic art, the twentieth century saw an unprecedented convergence of signs and architecture across America. (1) Since the early 1920s, the architectural spaces of American cities have been awash in texts and images--advertising, street signs, newspaper headlines, political posters, graffiti, etc. These signs have arguably become the dominant constituents of phenomenal urban space, filling our perceptual fields, obscuring the streets and buildings that once comprised the city. (2) The emergence of this textualized city of signs marks a historical break from the previous formation, which might be called the city of things, and it is this transformation and its effects on the inhabitants of the city that this essay will explore. One can, I will argue, see this shift from the city of things to the city of signs represented in Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie (1900) and John Dos Passos's Manhattan Transfer (1925), novels that depict, respectively, these two formations of the phenomenality of the city and the different types of urban subjectivities they produce. (3) These two formations of the city and of their corresponding subjectivities correlate with two different stages of American capitalism: the industrial capitalism of mass-produced consumer goods, a capitalism of things, which dominated the late nineteeth and early twentieth centuries; and the emergence, as early as the 1920s, of what was to become the postindustrial capitalism of the late twentieth century, a capitalism of signs. The capitalism of signs developed in part as a consequence of the unparalleled success of industrial capitalism's mass production, which spurred the increasingly sophisticated development of marketing devices as producers sought to generate demand for an unprecedented volume of consumer goods. Advertising (including signs identifying shops) and marketing in a broad sense have of course been around as long as marketplaces. It was in the twentieth century, however, that advertising and marketing became major urban industries. As these industries and the new media (radio, film, television, the internet) that depended on them for financial support developed one after the other throughout the twentieth century, the character of the city was transformed. The city of things gave way to the city of signs, and the emphasis of the actual economies of major cities largely shifted from the production of goods to the production of signs, including advertising. Most crucially, the consumption of commodities, while never without some semiotic function, became primarily the consumption of signs. By the twenty-first century, this transformation might be seen to be nearly complete in the hypertextualized postmodern city, with its postindustrial economy based largely on the production, manipulation, and exchange of signs (in print and broadcast media, finance, marketing, etc.). This transformation of urban spaces, like the transformation in the economic base that it reflects, was complex and uneven. The modern city becomes the postmodern city only gradually, over decades. There are signs in Dreiser's depictions of Chicago and New York (notably the lights of Broadway and the billboards featuring Carrie), and there are vast quantities of things in Dos Passos's Manhattan (the novel opens with a detailed description of the detritus floating around the bow of a ferry). The two novels, however, mark a fundamental shift in the balance, from the dominance of things to the dominance of signs. Things are, of course, an inherent part of any capitalism, though today they are generally not made in the American city but in foreign cities that structurally resemble the industrial cities of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America. …

Penser la paternité contemporaine dans le monde occidental : quelles places et quelles fonctions du père pour le devenir humain, sujet et citoyen des enfants ?

The function of the symbolic oedipal third party is undergoing an unprecedented fragilisation. This is to be heard in consultations as a disorder in relationships, poorly differentiated genealogical places, a lack or a fragilisation of the paternal function. The deeper reasons for this are to be sought not in the way the concrete and social fathers assume their paternity, but in what institutes fathers and paternal filiations. Three historical breaks have over the last hundred years dislocated the field of paternity. The anthropological and subjective issues at stake in these dislocations are specific in each case. Whence the question: what new logic of the paternal's place? Who secure today the function of the symbolic oedipal third party between the child and his mother?

Current and historical factors influencing patterns of species richness and turnover of birds in the Gulf of Guinea highlands

AbstractAim The aims of this paper are to: examine how current and historical ecological factors affect patterns of species richness, endemism and turnover in the Gulf of Guinea highlands, test theoretical biogeographical predictions and provide information for making informed conservation decisions.Location The Gulf of Guinea highlands in West Africa.Methods We used multivariate and matrix regression models, and cluster analyses to assess the influence of current climate and current and historical isolation on patterns of richness and turnover for montane birds across the highlands. We examined three groups of birds: montane species (including widespread species), montane endemics and endemic subspecies. We applied a complementarity‐based reserve selection algorithm using species richness with irreplaceability measures to identify areas of high conservation concern.Results Environmental factors influenced richness for all groups of birds (species, endemic species and subspecies). Areas with high and consistent annual rainfall showed the highest species and endemic richness. Species clusters for all groups of birds generally differentiated three major montane regions, which are topographically isolated. Multiple mantel tests identified these same regions for endemic species and subspecies. The influence of historical isolation varied by species group; distributions of endemic montane species and subspecies were more associated with historical breaks than were all montane species, which included widespread non‐endemic species.Main conclusions Our analyses indicated important geographical structure amongst the bird assemblages in the highlands and, therefore, conservation prioritization should include mountains from within the geographical subregions identified in these analyses because these regions may harbour evolutionarily distinct populations of birds.

Shaw shadows: rereading the texts of Bernard Shaw

Peter Gahan argues that George Bernard Shaw anticipated much of what came to be known as poststructuralism. Gahan's path-breaking book rereads Shaw's writing, dramatic and non-dramatic, against the background of recent critical theory in order to reassess its radical influence in both its own time and ours. Though sometimes dismissed today as merely witty, Shaw should be considered one of the progenitors of contemporary literary studies, Gahan says, in that his work actually allows for ideas of theorists such as Derrida and Lacan. Gahan first considers Shaw's poststructuralist pioneering in a general, philosophical way. Taking a fresh and thoughtful look at a wealth of readings, he then examines Shaw's criticism and autobiographical writing, in which questions of authorship and subjectivity were crucial. Gahan looks at essays on music, science, and politics and at Shaw's critique of Darwinian theory, in which he calls for a new metaphysics to be included in the discourse of science. In concentrating on his less familiar plays, Gahan shows how Shaw incorporated themes like writing, language, meaning, and authorship into his playwriting, while acknowledging an awareness of the subjectivity of human experience in general and of the writer's experience in particular. For the first time, the play cycle Back to Methuselah - the work Shaw considered his magnum opus - is examined as central to the oeuvre. This book restores Shaw to his rightful place as a major intellectual figure and as one of the most important authors and dramatists of the early 20th century. It considers the Shaw text as pivotal in the historical break in Western culture between the Victorian and modern world. Its bracing discussion heralds what could be a major shift in the future of Shaw studies.

Vichy in the Tropics: Petain's National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina44 (review)

Reviewed by: Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940–44 Yaël Simpson Fletcher Vichy in the Tropics: Pétain’s National Revolution in Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina, 1940–44. By Eric T. Jennings. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001. Since the publication of Robert Paxton’s Vichy France: Old Guard and New Order, 1940–44 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), Vichy has not simply been a story of defeat and occupation, of resistance and collaboration, but a crucial period in the political development of twentieth-century France. Marshal Pétain’s “National Revolution,” an amalgam of neoconservative, traditionalist, and fascist concepts, aimed to restructure society along authoritarian, patriarchal, and corporatist lines. In Vichy in the Tropics, Eric Jennings focuses on the overlooked colonial dimension of this project. He argues that a vision of a rejuvenated empire, with colonies and metropole working as one in the furtherance of a “greater” France, was central to Vichy ideology. Drawing on Raymond Bett’s and Alice Conklin’s rethinking of French republican ideas of “association” and “assimilation,” Jennings uncovers the genealogy of Vichy nativist and racial policy in the empire. He goes on to analyze the experiences of metropolitan officials determined to apply the National Revolution in the empire and colonial authorities enthusiastic in their appropriation of the Vichy slogan “Travail, Famille, Patrie.” Vichy in the Tropics is clearly written and elegantly structured, based on extensive research in diplomatic and colonial archives, and makes astute use of interviews and photographs. Inspired by Gwendolyn Wright’s comparative study of colonial urbanism, Jennings investigates Vichy strategies on the ground in three separate colonial sites: Madagascar, Guadeloupe, and Indochina. Considering the isolation of the widely scattered Vichy colonial authorities, Jennings argues that the form taken by the National Revolution depended very much on individual interpretations and local conditions. He nevertheless finds similarities in visions of a “restored” authoritarian and hierarchical order, cooptation of elites, and the severity of repression. Significantly, local nationalists also adapted Vichy rhetoric of tradition, authenticity, and self-reliance in similar ways. Going beyond case studies, Jennings illuminates issues of interest to scholars of Vichy and the colonies. The question of why so much of the French colonial empire supported Vichy, rather than rallying to the Free French and the Allies, is posed particularly sharply by the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar. According to Jennings, hostility towards Britain, the longtime competitor for control of the island, and respect for Pétain overcame the republican loyalties of colonial officials. Notions of a “return” to pre-colonial forms of rule, treating the Merina monarch as the local equivalent to Pétain, and legitimizing forced labor as an immutable tradition effectively “creolized” (53) Vichy colonialism. Making reference to Albert Memmi’s insights into the relationship between colonizer and colonized, Jennings concludes that the extremes of Vichy discrimination and repression, on the one hand, and valorization of Malagasy tradition, on the other, proved a highly combustible mixture for Malagasy nationalists. Like other “anciennes colonies” in the Caribbean, Guadeloupe had been a slave colony. The island’s population shared French citizenship and culture with the metropole, but continued social and institutional discrimination meant that the white and mixed-race elite monopolized political power. Vichy’s attempt at recolonization, with widespread disenfranchisement and the imposition of metropolitan regulations, such as restrictions on women’s work in an environment of labor shortage, exposed the brutal and sometimes absurd underpinnings of the National Revolution. Jennings explains how officials invented local traditions and planned festivities which would foster identification with and inspire sacrifices for France, in a concerted effort to mobilize the population for “a vast imperial civil war” (109). But poverty, racism, and the autarkic and autocratic rule of Governor Sorin, backed by Admiral Robert, drove many Guadeloupeans into the Antillean resistance. A geographical construct bringing together the kingdoms of Cambodia, Cochin China, Annam, Laos,and Tonkin, French Indochina imposed an authoritarian colonial state on an already hierarchical and exploitative pre-colonial order. Departing from the conventional emphasis on the historic break brought about by Japanese occupation, Jennings argues that the Vichy administration made a significant impact on Indochina between 1940 and...

Secret city: the hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945

Although Nazis forced most of Warsaw's Jews into city's famous ghetto during World War II, some 28,000 Jews either hid and never entered Warsaw Ghetto, or escaped from it in what Gunnar S. Paulsson calls the greatest prison break in history. This book tell dramatic story of hidden Jews of Warsaw. Drawing on memoirs, diaries, testimonies, and records of Jewish and Polish organizations that helped fugitives, Paulsson shows that after 1942 deportations nearly a quarter of ghetto's remaining Jews managed to escape. Once in hiding, connected by elaborate networks of which Poles, Germans, and Jews themselves were largely unaware, they formed what can aptly be called a secret city. Paulsson challenges many established assumptions. He shows that despite appalling difficulties and dangers, many of these Jews survived; that much-reviled German, Polish and Jewish policemen, as well as Jewish converts and their families, were key in helping Jews escape; that though many more Poles helped than harmed Jews, most stayed neutral; and that escape and hiding happened spontaneously, without much help from either Polish or Jewish underground. He also suggests that Jewish leadership was wrong to dismiss possibility of escape, staking everything on a hopeless uprising.

GEOGRAPHIC AND GENETIC VARIATION IN FEEDING PREFERENCE FOR CHEMICALLY DEFENDED SEAWEEDS

Genetic variation in tolerance for seaweed chemical defenses among populations of marine herbivores is poorly described, either because few marine studies have addressed the issue or because the feeding preferences of populations of marine herbivores rarely differentiate. We address this using the polyphagous amphipod Ampithoe longimana (Crustacea), which commonly consumes, and lives on, terpene-rich brown seaweeds in the tropical genus Dictyota. Previous work demonstrated that in areas where the amphipod and seaweeds overlap geographically, these chemically deterrent seaweeds provide the amphipod with spatial refuges from predation by omnivorous fishes that avoid consuming Dictyota. However, the amphipod's distribution extends northward of the seaweed's distribution, making this benefit of association unavailable to more northerly populations of amphipods. On average, populations sympatric with Dictyota have stronger feeding preference for Dictyota species and greater fitness when raised on Dictyota than do populations that are outside Dictyota's geographic endpoint. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that in areas where the amphipods co-exist with Dictyota, selection favors amphipods that tolerate Dictyota's chemical defenses and thereby access its enemy-free space. Amphipods allopatric with Dictyota are unable to tolerate Dictyota's chemical defenses, either because of selection, drift, or some mix of both forces. A trade-off between preference for Dictyota and for the chemically distinct seaweed Hypnea musciformis is suggested by the finding that populations with high preference for Dictyota tended to have lower preference for Hypnea. However, this population-level pattern appears to be the result of independent evolution and not a genetic trade-off: an analysis of full-sib families within a single population detected heritable variation in preferences for Dictyota and suggested this for Hypnea (although the latter was not statistically significant), yet no family-level covariation was detected. Phylogeographic analysis of mitocondrial DNA and nuclear sequences indicates a strong historical break between populations sympatric with Dictyota and populations more than 500 km beyond Dictyota's geographic endpoint. The historical separation of these most northerly populations could have allowed a random accumulation of alleles to effectively degrade tolerance for Dictyota, although selection may also be responsible for the degradation.

The geographical study of myths

In archaic societies, myths gave significance to collective life. Their building relied on the peculiarities of the means of communication in societies that ignored the written word: this absence was responsible for (1) a special form of duration, time immemorial, (2) the special role of the people who had an access to it, and (3) possibilities of decentring based on immanence. The purpose of the paper is to show that all societies produce narratives similar to myths in order to provide general interpretations of their social structures and dynamics, and collective or individual destiny. They rely on specific time categories and ways of decentring that give intellectual power to some social categories: the invention of writing allowed for revelation, which created a major break in history, gave a central role to prophets and introduced transcendence. In ancient Greece, the use of the written word for the construction of new forms of law was conducive to the rise of metaphysics, the emergence of philosophers, and the appearance of another form of transcendency. Modern societies refused to rely on revelation, but used short narratives on the origin of mankind and its organisation to structure time, either individual or collective, and build a new type of immanence; social scientists were, consciously or unconsciously, responsible for this change. Modern communication introduces new turning points in history (the transition from modernity to postmodernity for instance), is responsible for the appearance of middlemen the newsmen and provides a wide access to 'genuine' sources of scientific information and to 'alternative' interpretations of the world. These examples show that all systems of thought have to be explored in a geographic perspective.

Revolutionary Suicide in Toni Morrison's Fiction

[On slaveships, some Igbos] wished to die on idea that they should then get back to their own country. The captain in order to obviate this idea, thought of an expedient viz. to cut off heads of those who died intimating to them that if determined to go, they must return without heads. The slaves were accordingly brought up to witness operation. One of them by violent exertion got loose and to where nettings had been unloosed in order to empty tubs, he darted overboard. The ship brought to, man was placed in main chains to catch him which he perceiving, signs which words cannot express expressive of his in escaping. He then went down and was seen no more. (qtd. in Cowley and Mannix 108) In this recollection of 1788 slaveship, Dr. Ecroide Claxton admits inadequacy of language to convey escaping man's happiness: He made signs which words cannot express. Suicide often provokes rhetorical impasse here encountered; sign is clear but incommunicable. Claxton cannot translate joy of man who, flying to place of escape, found way out of horror and defied captain's command that Africans remain onboard. During Middle Passage, some people fought back physically; others survived in more covert ways; still others jumped overboard. On several ships, was an epidemic of suicide at last minute (Cowley and Mannix 111). [1] Although this leap to freedom, and death, haunts African American literature (Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones, James Baldwin's Another Country, Suzan-Lori Parks's The Death of Last Black Man in Whole Entire World, Dawn Turner Trice's Only Twice I've Wished for Heaven, Shay Youngblood's Shakin' Mess Outta M isery), act of suicide often goes unnamed. And potential of Africans and African Americans as an imagistic and thematic trope has generated far more critical discussion than its metonymic twin, suicide. [2] Despite number of self-inflicted deaths in Toni Morrison's novels and fact that she wrote her master's thesis on alienation and suicide in William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf, there has been little critical attention given to repetition of self-destruction in her own work. [3] In Beloved (1988), woman jumps overboard during Middle Passage; in Jazz (1992), Violet's mother, Rose Dear, climbs into well, drowning herself in 1892; in Sula (1973), shell-shocked veteran Shadrack institutes National Suicide Day on 3 January 1920; on opening page of Song of Solomon (1977), Robert Smith leaps from top of Mercy Hospital on 18 February 1931; in The Bluest Eye (1970), Pecola Breedlove wills self-disappearance through longing to possess eyes of another face ('Please God . . . Please make me disappear' [59]). These bodies do not tell of capitulation to dominant powers but comprise one part of larger multivalent narrative of black survival in North America. The act of self -destruction overtly participates in racial and class struggles, revealing, to borrow phrase from Michel Foucault, a body totally imprinted by history (148). [4] A dual impulse toward erasure and survival, corresponding to happiness of man who leapt off ship in 1788, distinguishes Morrison's thematic. In A Taste of Power, Elaine Brown traces Black Power Movement in United States to African insurrections and to the first Africans who had leaped from slave ships in suicidal rejection of slavery (355). In Morrison's work, suicide operates on two revolutionary levels: Within story, it functions as political form of resistance--a break in history--and within narrative structure, it comprises discursive strategy, an organizational axis around which meanings revolve--a break in textual time. First, I want to discuss difficulty of talking about suicide and its ontological relevance to revolutionary struggles. …

Social Inequality in Post-communist Russia: The Attitudes of the Political Elite and the Masses (1991-1998)

ON 1 MAY 1998 much of the Russian population acknowledged International Labour Day, traditionally one of the most important holidays of the year. Demonstrators were on the streets of several major Russian cities, demanding their long-overdue wages. Backed by an ever-strengthening Communist Party and dissatisfied with the so-called liberal political and economic establishment, the people called for more social equality. On the same day, 'Vremya', a popular Moscow television programme, ridiculed the demonstrators, belittling their efforts with sarcastic references to the passe ideal of 'social equality'. In view of this extreme ideological contrast, one cannot help but draw comparisons with the past. The young Bolsheviks' fanatical egalitarianism reverberates through the decades, emerging in an inverse form among their 'grandchildren' who believe that social inequality plays an integral part in Russia's economic and social development. While the 'old guard' preferred the austere life-or at least concealed any 'deviation' from the masses-their 'descendants', including President El'tsin and his entourage, along with leading journalists and prominent businesspeople, openly and without reservation lead extremely lavish lifestyles. The liberal establishment of the 1990s virtually discarded such words as 'equality' and 'parity' from its lexicon. These words were almost completely absent from the speeches made by El'tsin and his premiers in 1992-98, nor were they present in the multitude of articles and essays which lauded the regime during this period.1 This disdain for social equality marks a historical break from Russia's cultural traditions. The elite mentality, for example, is deeply at odds with classic Russian literature. After the times of Alexander Radishchev, one would be hard pressed to find a single Russian writer imparting sentiments with even an inkling of admiration for wealth and the privileged lifestyle. Adoration for the privileged class never appeared in the works of Russia's traditional literary giants: Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and, of course, Maxim Gorky.2 Following the early years of the reforms, the El'tsin regime demonstrated very little real concern for the plight of the poor. Instead, the liberal reformers preached to the poor about the bright possibilities of capitalism. Between 1992 and 1998 Egor Gaidar, the architect of Russian liberalism, consistently justified social polarisation. As prime minister, he spoke, amidst the chaos of 1992, about the new potential for those who

High Art: Charles Baudelaire and the Origins of Modernist Painting

The great poet Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was also an extremely influential art critic. High Art relates the philosophical issues posed by Baudelaire's art writing to the theory and practice of modernist and postmodernist painting. Baudelaire wrote in an age of transition, David Carrier argues, an era divided by the Revolution of 1848, the historical break that played for him a role now taken within modernism by the political revolts of 1968. Moving from the grand tradition of Delacroix to the images of modern life made by Constantin Guys, this movement from high to low, from the unified world of correspondences to the fragmented images of contemporary city life, motivates Baudelaire's equivalent to the post-1968 turn away from formalist art criticism. Viewed from the perspective of the 1990s, Carrier argues, the issues raised by Baudelaire's criticism and creative writing provide a way of understanding the situation of art writing in our own time.

Amathus During the First Iron Age

Amathus appears as a true city in Cypro-Geometric IB, at the dawn of the Iron Age, but its origins may date from the beginning of the 11th century B.c. Its prosperity in the Iron Age may be due, at least in part, to its location, which allowed it to control the Kalavassos mines. Its religion blended scarcely Hellenized Cypriot tradition with Syro-Palestinian tradition. From the Cypro-Geometric IB period on, the tombs contain many Phoenician, and later Euboean, imports attesting to increasing foreign relations. A Phoenician necropolis confirms the presence ofa sizable Phoenician colony. At the end of the Cypro-Geometric and in the Cypro-Archaic period, goldsmith shops produced remarkably cosmopolitan work. The existence of a Near Eastern type royalty, shown by recent excavations of the palace, reflects these influences. Despite the Greek names of the earliest kings, the politics of the kingdom was almost constantly proPersian, so the Archaic period saw greatly improved economic life, exemplified by the local goldsmith industry and rich deposits of local and imported ceramics. A mathus appears at a break in history, at a time when writing-which had existed in Cyprus since the 15th century B.C.-seems from the documents in our possession to have disappeared for a long period, although it may have continued on perishable materials. We can thus reconstruct the picture of the earliest times only through the study of ceramic or terracotta objects and works of later ancient writers.

Preparing for the Political: German Intellectuals Confront the "Berlin Republic"

The German word Begriindung has a double meaning. It signifies not only foundation, but also providing a rationale. We are now approaching the Begriindung of what has been variously called the new Federal Republic, the Third Republic, or, most commonly, the Berlin Republic. Of course, one could argue that the real historical break already occurred eight years ago, with the unification of the two Germanies in October 1990 as its official completion. But while 3 October 1990 might have been a formal foundation, there was arguably insufficient time for the other dimension of Begriindung in the rush to unity.l More importantly, the federal government's move to Berlin, scheduled for 1999, is a highly symbolic, almost constitutional Begriindung of the Berlin Republic in a way that the anticlimactic unification in 1990 never was.2 Moreover, 1999 is the official starting date for European Economic and Monetary Union. Consequently, we can speak of a looming double foundation that poses the challenge of establishing normative foundations and creating public meaning. In this paper, I want to analyze the public interventions of German intellectuals who have attempted to lay down normative foundations for the future polity of the Berlin Republic. Because of the relatively

Muscular Jews: Young England, gender and Jewishness in Disraeli's “political trilogy”

In Tough Jews, a recent study of the sexual politics of Zionism, Paul Breines describes the genesis of Jewish nationalism as uthe historic break with the culture of Jewish meekness and gentleness and the beginnings of a tough Jewish counterculture." Breines sees the context of "the emergence of a tough Jewish imagery at the turn of the century [as] an extension of the Jewish nationalist awakening of the period [and]... a logical outcome of the larger nationalist dynamic" sweeping contemporary Europe. He argues that it derives from a reaction against as well as a reflection of European nationalisms: "The racial and bodily dimension of much of turn-of-the-century nationalist anti-Semitism was a decisive factor in the emergence of Jewish ideals of toughness, courage and physicality. Modern, postreligious, racial anti-Semitism presented a double image of the Jew: first, as the wielder of immense economic power and, through it, of secret but extensive control of the world's political systems, and second, as physically weak, repulsive, and cowardly."1 Breines is right to locate the invention of a new masculinized Jewish body within the context of widespread aspirations towards the body politic at the end of the nineteenth century. In this essay, however, I would like to trace some of these currents back to an earlier moment in discussions about national identity in nineteenth-century England. Examining the writings of Benjamin Disraeli in the 1830s and 40s, and in particular his representations of "tough Jews," I will be looking at connections between masculinity, Jewishness and English national identity.

Typographica: The medium and the medieval-to-modern transformation

There is an emerging consensus among a growing body of scholars that the present era is one in which fundamental change is occurring. Among International Relations theorists, for example, John Ruggie has argued that we are witnessing ‘a shift not in the play of power politics but of the stage on which that play is performed’. Similarly, James Rosenau contends that the present era constitutes a historical break leading to a ‘postinternational politics’, while Mark Zacher has traced the ‘decaying pillars of the Westphalian Temple’. This belief in epochal change is mirrored outside of the mainstream of International Relations theory in, for example, pronouncements of the emergence of ‘the information age’, ‘post-industrialism’, ‘post-Fordism’, or, more generally, ‘postmodernism’. While these analyses differ widely in terms of their foci and theoretical concerns, there is at least one common thread running through each of them: the recognition that current transformations are deeply intertwined with developments in communications technologies, popularly known as the ‘information revolution’.

Die italienische Krise

The article discusses the economic, political and cultural factors which led to the transformation among the parties and in the Italian democracy. The sudden outbreak of the crisis in 1992 is described as a conjunction of external and internal crisis factors. International adjustment constraints, economical missmanagement, the inefficiency of the central govemments, social and political movements in Northern and Southern Italy, as well as the resolute action of judges and public prosecutors against the corrupt political elite, finally made the historical break with the traditional conditions in Italian politics possible. But only in Southem Italy the political caesura was accompanied by social transformations. Finally, this continuity of social conditions explains the rise of Berlusconi.

Rethinking rights and responsibilities: the moral bonds of community

Introduction Part I: Conception of Rights ReexaminedHistorical and Contemporary Views that Undermine Communal Bonds 1. RightsA Historic Break with the Past2. From Natural Rights to Calculated Rights 3. Natural RightsAutonomy vs. Interdependence Part II: Rights ReconceptualizedGrounding Rights in Responsibilities, Community, and Moral Knowledge 4. Moral Bonds as Requisites of Community 5. Rights ReconceptualizedJustice, Nurture, and Divorce in Western Law6. Requisites of Morality, Freedom,adn Community7. Moral Knowledge Experiential Bases of Responsibilites and Rights 8. Moral Knowledge Loving Impartiality9. Moral Knowledge Ideal Companionship Part III: Reconceptualized RightsHomicide Law and Health Care 10. The Moral Bases of Homicide LawThe Case against Assisted Suicide 11. Justice and NurtureRescue and Health Care as Rights and Responsibilities EpilogueBibliographyIndex