Historical Detour Research Articles

On the semiotic diversity of language

Abstract Language is complex in many respects. When conceived as a system that is to be analysed at all levels of linguistic structure, it is interpreted as a static and abstract phenomenon in which the rules are disconnected from their context of use. However, the ability to do language, construed as a fundamentally social practice grounded in our in situ face-to-face interactions, does not exclusively rely on knowing the rules that govern the grammatical principles in a given language, nor does it limit itself to understanding the lexical content of utterances. Language is more than that; it is fundamentally social and inherently multimodal in that it enables all humans to create, express, and construe meaningful utterances through their bodies. For a long time, however, linguistic theories have neglected to consider the diverse and rich ways humans do language using their bodies. In this introduction, particular attention is paid to the different roles the body plays across a range of distinct sign languages and contexts. In that respect, a short historical detour into the evolutive stages of sign language research is provided first. Next, the aims and the different contributions of this volume are outlined. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.

THE FORMATION OF A MULTIPOLAR WORLD ORDER IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE XXI CENTURY - REVIEW OF THE BALKANS

The formation of a multipolar world order in contemporary international relations in the 21st century cannot be considered without the geopolitical and geo-economic context in which global processes take place, but also the post-Cold War order in which the germs of world movements towards multipolarism were formed. Ever since the 70s of the 20th century, the modern capitalist system embodied in the power of the Western world has been engulfed in the irreversible process of its resignation after a series of economic, social and moral crises of the neoliberal model of development in the world. In order to avoid the irreversible processes of creating a multipolar world and a fairer world order, the response of the Western (Anglo-Saxon) elite of the United States of America and Great Britain is accordingly long-term planned to preserve the core of their own world domination in the general crisis of the capitalist system and come out even stronger and richer from all the projected processes. Hence the Great Reset - the geopolitical agenda of the World Economic Forum, “green policies” and numerous ideological matrices, which aim to dominate the full spectrum in the system of world relations. In the world context, this means energy poverty throughout the XXI century, food crisis - increase in world hunger, removal of all forms of social control - states that will take care of their own population and manipulation based on engineering and control of media and digital technologies in the creation of a new post-liberal world order. The way out of the historical detour can be in opposing the corporate-technological dystopia and the development of a fairer and safer world order, a multipolar world order, led by the BRICS and SCO countries and the Eurasian powers Russia and China. The solutions for the Balkans are on the trail of major geopolitical transformations in the world, the economic integration of the Balkans and the geopolitical reconstruction of the post-Yugoslav Balkans.

Bodies in Late Romanticism: Two Perspectives

Abstract One of the major themes of discussion in the art and especially the literature of the 18th and 19th centuries was the body rather than the soul. In the beginning this seemed to be the case mostly because of the natural processes related to the transforming events of maturation and death of the human body and mind. However, towards the end of the 18th century and well into the 19th century, a certain shift took place from the common perspective on the body to a rather scientific literary approach. Our attempt is to notice and make the necessary connections between the concepts of nature (both human and external/physical nature) and the innovative technologies implemented in the then society, with a later reference to the new accidental and commercial facets of death felt as destruction of nature especially in the work of the American Romantic writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Being aware that they are highly spoken of in view of their transcendentalism as a particular philosophy dealing with the bond between man and nature, we will slowly come to terms with this type of concerns and connect them to the conflicting reality of industrialization as a sudden and repressive phenomenon within the society of men. Finally our point is that this very phenomenon caused the two writers to make a historical detour and use their formation as naturalist thinkers in order to make sense of their century’s deaths and diseases. This is to say that even from a Romantic perspective, the concern for the body is surprisingly concrete, while these writers’ transcendentalist concerns for the soul are prolix though without substance.

Hen epi pollon. The Origin of Husserl’s Eidetic Variation and the Divide Between Plato and Aristotle on the Universal

It is commonly known that Husserl’s eidetic variation is of paramount importance for phenomenology. For if phenomenology is a science of pure essences and formulates scientific laws about such essences, there has to be something like a method to follow in order to discover and test such eidetic truths; and this method is dubbed as eidetic variation. Now, a crucial aspect of this method has not been under active consideration yet: namely, as Husserl stresses in Experience and Judgment, that the eidetic variation is somehow to be related to the Greek notion of “hen epi pollôn”: the one over the many. An expression first used by Aristotle in the context of his dispute with Plato on the status of intelligible objects as universals. Accordingly, it seems clear that, by using this expression, Husserl wanted to refer his method to this Aristotle/Plato divide. The aim of this paper is to take this claim seriously, and to show, by an historical detour which takes into consideration this dispute, in which sense this method can be considered as a crucial contribution to the tradition to which phenomenology belongs, namely the Platonic-Aristotelian tradition.

Knocking on Hard Science’s Door: Has the Time Come?

Knocking on Hard Science’s DoorHas the Time Come? Mauricio Viotti Daker (bio) The discovery of antipsychotics and anti-depressants occurred when psychodynamic and phenomenological–anthropological approaches prevailed in psychiatry. Roland Kuhn personified that time as being one of the founders of Daseinsanalyse and also the discoverer of imipramine. Influenced by Binswanger and Scheler, Kuhn worked with the concept of “vital depressive disposition,” while emphasizing the preeminence of psychopathology over statistic methods (Kuhn, 1996). Consequently, he could not be satisfied with what he foresaw as “clouds of a coming disaster”: Since that time, there has been a worldwide use of surveys, whose results are “exactly” tabulated with numbers, statistically evaluated, and represented in tables. People are fascinated by the scientific nature of this sort of activity and overlook just how disproportionately slight such gains are in the treatment of patients. (Kuhn, 1996, pp. 434–435) Kuhn was at odds with the patient’s approach only from outside or in the third-person perspective, with positivistic or neo-positivistic contours, which was dominant in what has been called the second biological phase in psychiatry (after the first one that took place in Jaspers’s time). The problem is not with biological psychiatry per se, but rather with the sort of blind epistemological dogma in its self-sufficiency, with the “exact” numbers contributing to a deceptive sensation of certainty. The exaggerated optimism denoting this anti-metaphysical positivistic science was named by Brazilian psychiatrist Nobre de Melo (1981, p. 28) a “Theology without God.” It aims to turn all phenomena into thing-like objects in order for them to be subsumed under natural laws, including—and this is problematic—life, persons, and mind. Standard psychopharmacological investigations follow this reductive materialist and determinist path: medications act on brain chemistry, neurons, or circuits that would explain mind and psycho-pathology. But physical things are by themselves devoid of mind or meaning. Ultimately, this presents a psychopharmacology without the psyche. We really need a much better method or a plurality of methods, a different episteme or paradigm. For example, aspects such as embodiment, enactivism, and affectivity in dynamic living organisms within their environments, viewed as a nonlinear dynamic system, would play a constitutive role concerning the mind (Maiese, 2016, pp. 1–48). Phenomenology is a movement against that simplistic and deterministic—devoid of free will—materialization of life and the mind, as well as a research method that arguably is able to substantially enrich psychology and psychopathology. It is particularly concerned with going beyond (or digging behind) the natural attitude, as if illuminating the ineffable, an attitude in which positivistic science [End Page 143] is also immersed. In this way, phenomenology accesses pre-reflexive or aprioristic (“procedural,” in analogy to memory) structures in consciousness that make human experience possible. Psychopathological phenomenology, an approach of psychopathology that goes beyond the descriptive and the clinical psychopathology (Stanghellini, 2009), is Tamelini and Messas’s (2019) bet to further inform psychopharmaco-logical treatment. Tamelini and Messas seem to have been developing the current theme for years by investigating phenomenological psychopathology in close connection with their clinical practice and teaching activities. Current uncertainties in biological psychiatry, owing to the lack of fulfillment of its optimistic expectations or owing to new challenges, make the task more imperative, although surely a complex one. Tamelini and Messas (2019) also refer to “phenomenological psychiatry.” If we agree with Jaspers (1946, p. 1) that psychopathology is a science and psychiatry a practical occupation, once the goal is pharmacological therapy, that is, clinical practice, it might seem appropriate to speak of “phenomenological psychiatry.” One of the well-investigated phenomenological structures is corporeality, the lived body. Here, I am not fully convinced about the therapeutic effect of weight gain (in a historical detour, one would say in Kretschmer’s time that leptosomic were turned more pyknic by clozapine). I am not confident about such a straightforwardly positive effect of antipsychotics on the lived body. Surely, they act in the living body, a physiological body far more complex than the anatomical Körper, but not equal to the lived body, the body as experienced. How weight gain in the living body could lead to a change in...

Behavioral Finance: History and Foundations

Recent evidence suggests that ideology has the potential to affect academic research in economics and that exposure to a wide range of approaches may increase intellectual diversity, eventually leading to better decisions. Therefore, writing a literature review in behavioral finance, in principle, can bring benefits to a wide range of readers, especially since the field of behavioral finance itself has already grown into a complex web of related but distinct sub-fields and reached a stage when it can guide policy decisions. This review differs from the existent ones as it focuses on the history of the field and its psychological foundations. While the review of psychological foundations is necessary to appreciate the benefits of a behavioral approach and understand its limitations, even a brief historical detour may provide a compelling case against a naive dichotomy between behavioral and classical finance.

Duality and ‘particle’ democracy

Weak/strong duality is usually accompanied by what seems a puzzling ontological feature: the fact that under this kind of duality what is viewed as ‘elementary’ in one description gets mapped to what is viewed as ‘composite’ in the dual description. This paper investigates the meaning of this apparent ‘particle democracy’, as it has been called, by adopting an historical approach. The aim is to clarify the nature of the correspondence between ‘dual particles’ in the light of a historical analysis of the developments of the idea of weak/strong duality, starting with Dirac׳s electric-magnetic duality and its successive generalizations in the context of (Abelian and non-Abelian) field theory, to arrive at its first extension to string theory. This analysis is then used as evidential basis for discussing the ‘elementary/composite’ divide and, after taking another historical detour by analyzing an instructive analogy case (DHS duality and related nuclear democracy), drawing some conclusions on the particle-democracy issue.

UNHELPFUL HELP: THE SOCIAL WORK PROFESSION’S RESPONSE TO MASS POVERTY IN SOUTH AFRICA

This article begins by describing poverty in South Africa, examining systemic responses to it, and reflecting upon social work’s role in poverty alleviation. In so doing, it takes a brief historical detour to trace social work’s roots in South Africa, showing that from its inception the profession has been hard pressed to find meaningful solutions to poverty, and make a significant impact on poverty eradication in South Africa. Since social work has always been intimately tied to social welfare, it has been prone to political manipulation, despite its social justice value base. Social work in South Africa drew on foreign theories and models of practice that did not necessarily acknowledge or take into account diverse local realities and indigenous practices (Gray, 2003; Gray & Allegritti, 2002; Gray & Allegritti, 2003; Osei-Hwedie, 2002). Sixteen years after democracy these imperialistic influences (Midgley, 1981) continue to have a profound impact on social work education and practice in South Africa. As a result, social work does little more than manage and maintain poverty at “acceptable” levels instead of constructively contributing to its eradication. The profession has largely failed to adopt a proactive, structural focus in the training of students and the implementation of poverty-alleviation interventions. Instead reactive, ameliorative, remedial and curative approaches that prevent the profession from contributing significantly to the alleviation of mass poverty in South Africa are followed.

Calligraphic Animation: Documenting the Invisible

Calligraphic animation shifts the locus of documentation from representation to performance, from index to moving trace. Animation is an ideal playing field for the transformative and performative qualities that Arabic writing, especially in the context of Islamic art, has explored for centuries. In Islamic traditions, writing sometimes appears as a document or a manifestation of the invisible. Philosophical and theological implications of text and writing in various Islamic traditions, including mystic sciences of letters, the concept of latency associated with Shi‘a thought, and the performative or talismanic quality of writing, come to inform contemporary artworks. A historical detour shows that Arabic animation arose not directly from Islamic art but from Western-style art education and the privileging of text in Western modern art – which itself was inspired by Islamic art. A number of artists from the Muslim and Arab world, such as Mounir Fatmi (Morocco/France), Kutlug Ataman (Turkey), and Paula Abood (Australia) bring writing across the boundary from religious to secular conceptions of the invisible. Moreover, the rich Arabic and Islamic tradition of text-based art is relevant for all who practice and study text-based animation.

What’s Wrong With Sex?

Several psychiatrists and psychologists have recently made important criticisms of specific diagnostic innovations proposed by the DSM-5’s Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group (DeClue, 2009; Frances, 2010; Green, 2010; O’Donohue, 2010). As a historian and philosopher of science, my goal here is more general: I want to show that what this Work Group is trying to accomplish undermines the definitions of ‘‘paraphilia’’ and ‘‘mental disorder’’ that have been operative since the DSM-III. If the revisions proposed by the Work Group are implemented, the DSM-5 will be closer to the DSM-I and DSM-II than to their successors. In order to understand why this is so, we need first to take a short historical detour and to look at how ‘‘mental disorder’’ and ‘‘paraphilias’’have traditionally been defined. Only then will we be in a position to grasp the magnitude of what the DSM-5 is trying to accomplish. As is well known, the DSM-I (American Psychiatric Association, 1952) and DSM-II (American Psychiatric Association, 1968) did not define ‘‘mental disorder.’’ In the DSM-II, the paraphilias (called ‘‘sexual deviations’’) were simply described as sexual interests directed‘‘primarily toward objects other than people of the opposite sex, toward sexual acts not usually associated with coitus, or toward coitus performed under bizarre circumstance’’ (American Psychiatric Association, 1968, p. 44). Needless to say, it is rather bizarre to use‘‘bizarre’’as a nosological criterion, and probably not the best way to make psychiatry look like a serious science. In 1973, however, psychiatrists voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM, and at that point the need arose to spell out what a mental disorder is. According to the DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association, 1980), a mental disorder must meet two criteria: (1) it must cause harm, either to oneself (in the form of distress or disability) or to others; (2) it must be a dysfunction. The fact that both criteria have to be met is a guarantee that doctors cannot transform every problem into a disease. Childbirth, for instance, is not a disease even when it causes harm, because it is not dysfunctional. Nor is homosexuality a disease since, even if it were dysfunctional (as some have claimed), it is not harmful. Theweaknessofthisunderstandingofmentaldisorderhinges mostlyontheideaofdysfunction,which,aslongasit isnotbetter defined, can easily be interpreted in sociocultural terms. The following example clearly illustrates how this can have troublesome consequences. In 1851, Dr. Samuel A. Cartwright described a condition that he called ‘‘drapetomania,’’ a disease that made slaves try to flee captivity (Cartwright, 1851). Is ‘‘drapetomania’’a real disease? If we apply the DSM-III definition of mental disorder and use a sociocultural understanding of function,theanswermustbe‘‘yes’’:slaveswhotrytoescapefrom theirmastersindeeddonot‘‘function’’inaracistsociety(andthey harm their masters by depriving them of their property). ‘‘Function’’ must therefore be clearly distinguished from sociocultural values, lest psychiatry be exactly what antipsychiatrists have for decades accused it of being: a mere instrument of social control. This is why some of the psychiatrists who in the past have been in charge of the DSM, such as Robert L. Spitzer and Michael B. First, have recently pushed for a narrower understanding of ‘‘function’’ (Spitzer, 1999; Wakefield&First, 2003).Theywant tomakepsychiatry intoascience whose job would not be to mirror and to fuel social prejudices, but to cure genuine diseases. They have usually relied on the influential work of Wakefield (1992). According to Wakefield, a function should be understood as an internal mechanism selected by evolution. The theory of P. Singy (&) The Bioethics Program, Union Graduate College, 80 Nott Terrace, Schenectady, NY 12308, USA e-mail: pbsingy@gmail.com

Kontinentalisierung. Das Europa der Schrifststeller (review)

Reviewed by: Kontinentalisierung. Das Europa der Schrifststeller Azade Seyhan (bio) Kontinentalisierung. Das Europa der Schrifststeller [Continentalization. The Europe of Writers]. By Paul Michael Lützeler. Bielefeld: Aisthesis Verlag, 2007. 293 pp. $24.80. Paul Michael Lützeler’s Kontinentalisierung. Das Europa der Schrifststeller looks at the idea(l) and reality of a unified European continent through the lens of continental (predominantly German-speaking) writers of modernity. Leading the procession of scribes, famous and familiar as well as obscure and forgotten, is the poet of freedom, Friedrich Schiller, whose dramatic work and historical writings analyze with profound insight the political clashes that tore European lands and cultures apart for centuries. In the writings of visionary German and French thinkers, the hope for peaceful coexistence in a Europe riven with conflict lay in the possibility of a shared culture that could forge a strong European identity. In late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century Germany, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Heinrich Heine, and Friedrich Nietzsche, who were weary and mistrustful of the pronounced nationalist tenor in German life and politics, defined themselves not as German but as European writers. From the work of Europe’s many cosmopolitan writers, Lützeler abstracts an Europadiskurs [discourse of Europe] that emerges as the literary archetype of the idea of Kontinentalisierung. In Lützeler’s treatment of continentalization, the concept presents itself as a transnational union of nations on a continental scale that not only evades the economic and cultural downside of globalization but also resists the provincialism of regional revivals that attempt to halt the tide of globalization. In the preface, “Kontinentalisierung und Globalisierung” [continentalization and globalization], Lützeler offers both a rationale for the viability of continental unions and a detailed history of the formation of the [End Page 552] European Union. Citing such organizations as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the African Union, and the Organization of American States as the prototypes of continental unions, Lützeler narrates the history of the EU from its beginnings in the European Coal and Steel Community, formed in 1951, through its expansion by the two treaties signed in 1957—the European Economic Community that established a customs union and the European Atomic Energy Community for developing nuclear energy—its consolidation in 1967 by the Merger Treaty that joined these three communities to form the so-called European Community, and the 1993 Maastricht Treaty that constitutes the present structure of the organization. The idea of (European) continentalization for purposes of a lasting peace had been the focus of numerous European writers and intellectuals who believed that in Europe there was “eine ontologische Tiefenstruktur, ein kulturelles Sediment, eine Traditionsbasis” [an ontological deep structure, a cultural sediment, a foundational tradition] (16) that could be remembered in times of crisis. However, the European Union did not correspond to the “utopian” peace project of the writers who had been championing peace and unity on the Continent for centuries. In the first chapter, Lützeler reviews the criticism directed at the cultural and moral shortcomings of the European Union by three contemporary authors, Reinhold Schneider, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and Adolf Muschg. While supporting the idea of a transnational European cooperation, these writers reject the solely economic interest of the European Union. Muschg, who has always been a champion of “der kulturellen Anerkennung des Anderen” [the cultural acknowledgement of the Other] (45), goes even further to assert that without opening its doors to Turkey, the European Union cannot hope to achieve the status of a global player. This chapter offers arguably the most thought-provoking and original insights of the book into the problematic question of universalizing discourses and the misguided ambition of a European universalism. It is impossible to give a full account of Lützeler’s long journey with its numerous and prolonged stops through European literary history. The space of this review can only accommodate a brief docent’s tour. Beginning with the second chapter on Schiller, Kontinentalisierung takes a historical detour through a mini encyclopedia of European authors who have variously contributed to the Europadiskurs. With the exception of the preface and the afterword, the book is about the “Europe of Writers,” as its subtitle suggests. Thus, it does not...

A Canadian Copyright Narrative

Copyright policy, like other major areas of public policy, requires a solid anchoring in fundamental principles. The perceived need to anchor copyright debates in a solid policy context and, hence, to develop a coherent (and hopefully convincing) narrative has been the subject of excellent contemporary research. We are indebted to a number of scholars for their work in this area. The attempt to find normative applications from a historically derived model for copyright is not either. However, the research thus far tends to provide a blurred picture, by espousing justiflcatory theories based on one or many of the following: commercial and personal Interests of authors, understood as property and/or liability rules; commercial interests of publishers and other “rights holders”; and/or the social costs of overprotection and the related economic‐driven search for an optimal point of protection. This article looks at pieces in the Canadian narrative puzzle and tries to present a faithful picture of its current stage of evolution. To do so, however, a detour via England is required, because that is whence the soil from Which the Canadian narrative comes. This historical detour will be the focus of Part 1. Part III will suggest a path for the next stages of the Canadian narrative that is both consistent with international norms and hopefully useful in moving the debate forward. The part ends with a brief look at the impact that the linkage with trade rules may have on copyright.

Revisiting The Classical German Idea of the University

The aim of the paper is to provide a philosophical and historical background to current discussions about the changing relationships between the university and the state through revisiting the classical model of the university as discussed in classical German philosophy. This historical detour is intended to highlight the cultural rootedness of the modern idea of the university, and its close links to the idea of the modern national state. The paper discusses the idea of the university as it emerges from the philosophy of Wilhelm von Humbold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Schleiermacher, as well as - in the 20 th century - Karl Jaspers and Jurgen Habermas. More detailed questions discussed include the historical pact between the modern university and the modern nation-state, the main principles of the Humboldtian university, the process of the nationalization of European universities, the national aspect of the German idea of culture (Bildung), and the tension between the pursuit of truth and public responsibilities of the modern university. In discussing current and future missions and roles of the institution of the university today, it can be useful to revisit its foundational (modern) German idea. In thinking about its future, it can be constructive to reflect on the evident current tensions between traditional modern expectations of the university and the new expectations intensified by the emergence of knowledge-based societies and market- driven economies. From the perspective of the tensions between old and new tasks of the university, it is useful to look back at the turning point in its history.

Raf kinases: Oncogenesis and drug discovery

Raf kinase signaling has been thoroughly investigated over the last 20 years. A-Raf, B-Raf and C-Raf, the 3 mammalian members of the Raf family, are involved in a variety of cellular processes such as growth, proliferation, survival, differentiation and transformation. The detection of B-RAF mutations in a wide variety of human cancers, the description of wildtype and mutant B-RAF as tumor antigens in melanoma and the promising outcome of clinical trials evaluating the Raf inhibitor Nexavar (Sorafenib, BAY 43-9006) have sparked a broad interest in the scientific community. After a short historical detour and an introduction into Raf kinase signaling, we are going to discuss here recent outcomes of Raf kinase research with respect to tumor formation and give an overview on current efforts to develop anticancer therapies interfering with aberrant Raf kinase signaling.

Newton's colour circle and Palmer's “normal” colour space

Taking the real Newtonian colour circle – and not the one Palmer depicts as Newton's – we don't have to wait 300 years for Palmer to say no to the Lockean aperçu about the inverted spectrum. One of the aims of this historical detour is to show that one's commitment about the “topology” of the colour space greatly affects Palmer's argument.

The relations between genetics and epigenetics: a historical point of view.

I have tried to unpack the polysemy of the word epigenetics by adopting a historical point of view and by focusing on the models that were proposed at the beginning of the 1960s to explain variations in gene activity during cell differentiation and development. Most of the questions that were or are at the core of epigenetics were posed in this period. This was due to the fact that the regulatory models and their extension to the notion of the genetic program were proposed as genetic answers to the questions raised by Waddington when he defined epigenetics in the 1940s. Studies of DNA methylation and chromatin structure, which became increasingly important in the 1960s and 1970s, were seen as alternative explanations to the regulatory mechanisms that had been previously proposed. This historical detour shows that epigenetics cannot be defined per se, but only as an evolving opposition to the piecemeal, reductionist approach of genetics.

Poverty and Equality

This review essay questions whether the recent focus on moral virtue in poverty reform is true to the history and values of our democracy. Joel Schwartz's FIGHTING POVERTY WITH VIRTUE: MORAL REFORM AND AMERICA'S URBAN POOR (Indiana University Press, 2000) reminds us that current reform welfare efforts, designed to encourage self-virtue, have strong origins. However, while Schwartz describes much of the war on poverty as a historical detour, his account forgets the and conceptual role that equality plays in our democrat system. For example, the heroic efforts of Mary Jones, as described in Elliott J. Gorn's MOTHER JONES: THE MOST DANGEROUS WOMAN IN AMERICA (Hill & Wang, 2001), was inspired by a commitment to the belief that inequality represents a failure of American democracy. Present focus on questions of poverty may more closely track Schwartz's account than Mother Jones', but Mother Jones' vision of the call of American democracy challenges us to aspire not to forget about equality.

The Bible and the American Temperance Movement: Text, Context, and Pretext

Following the failure of national prohibition, the temperance movement came to be regarded as an alien blight that had afflicted the American landscape. Richard Hofstadter spoke for many historians when he suggested that the story of prohibition seems “like a historical detour, a meaningless nuisance, an extraneous imposition upon the main course of history.” Rather than being viewed as somehow integral to and indicative of developments in American society and culture, the temperance movement has more commonly been exploited as a quarry for providing colorful instances of human folly and fanaticism. The tendency is natural for, unlike other leading reform movements such as antislavery and women's suffrage, which have legacies most historians are eager to affirm, the crusade against drink seems odd and misplaced to contemporary minds. But this approach has overlooked important features of the movement, failing to show why it did not strike its many advocates as a pseudo-concern or do justice to its widespread support and distinction as the longest continuous reform movement in American history.