Precarious Relationship Research Articles

Subliming and Subverting

What is special about the philosophy of history when the history is about science? I shall focus on an impasse between two perspectives – one seeking an ideal of rationality to guide scientific practices, and one stressing the contingency of the practices. They disagree on what this contingency means for scientific norms. Their impasse underlies some fractious relations within History and Philosophy of Science. Since the late 1960s, this interdisciplinary field has been described, variously, as an “intimate relationship or marriage of convenience”, a “marriage for the sake of reason”, a “troubling interaction”, a “precarious relationship”, or one at risk of “epistemological derangement”. My paper has three aims. First, I characterise two idealised perspectives in this impasse: the sublimers and subversives. Then I describe a curious dynamic in which each perspective accuses the other of, simultaneously, claiming too little and too much. Subliming is dismissed for being scholastic, and condemned for being imperialist. Subverting is disparaged for being merely sociological, then criticised for being irrational or relativist. Here I draw on and extend the analyses of science studies in Kitcher (1998), Zammito (2011) and others. Second, I argue that sublimers and subversives often talk past each other. Their mutual dismissals and condemnations arise partly because each perspective misconstrues the other’s claims. Each fails to see that the other is interested in different problems and interprets concepts differently. Third, I suggest that my analysis clarifies some current disagreements and old debates about contingency in science. It may also apply to debates on the contingency of norms in non-scientific realms.

Law and Social Theory: Three Problems

AbstractThis paper explores the relationship between law and social theory through a discussion of the shifting views over the last century. The conversation is framed by the example of publication bias in private-public partnership networks, and the inability of a single social theory, including theories of morality and economic utility, to explain the situation’s complexities. The paper argues that where social theory meets law an added value can be generated in terms of legal doctrine if the precarious relationship between autonomy and interconnectedness is respected in terms of transversality, responsiveness, and self-normativity.

Patients׳ perspectives on how treatment can impede their recovery from depression

BackgroundMore than 50% of all major depressive disorder (MDD) patients experience insufficient improvement from the available treatment options. There is emerging evidence that patients׳ beliefs and experiences about MDD treatment influence treatment outcomes. The aim was to explore patients׳ perspectives on impeding characteristics of professional treatment for the recovery of MDD. MethodsIn-depth interviews in a purposive sample with 27 recovered MDD patients who had received professional treatment. Data were qualitatively analyzed using constant comparison. ResultsParticipants׳ accounts yielded four major impeding themes: lack of clarity and consensus about the nature of the participants׳ MDD and the content of their treatment; precarious relationship with the clinician; unavailability of mental health care; and insufficient involvement of significant others. LimitationsThe external generalizability may be limited due to missed other subgroups within depression. ConclusionsThis study identified a comprehensive overview of impeding characteristics in MDD treatment from patients׳ perspectives. This may help clinicians to understand how patients experience MDD treatment, and to incorporate patients׳ perspectives about treatment into their joint decision-making. This can lead towards increased treatment adherence, motivation and finally success.

Thought Censorship under Totalitarianism: A Precarious Relationship between Thought and Voice in Mandelstam

Thought Censorship under Totalitarianism: A Precarious Relationship between Thought and Voice in Mandelstam Takayuki Yokota-Murakami “Brain-washing” technology became known for the first time during the Korean War. In the Chinese hospital where war captives were held, attempts at “thought reform” were regularly performed. Many of them had been converted to communism, which alerted American society. This led to an investigation and findings concerning “communist mind control.” Studies have been made, of which Brain-Washing in Red China: The Calculated Destruction of Men’s Minds by Edward Hunter, which popularized the term “brainwashing,” is probably best known. Although it was the Chinese military service that gave the practice its name of “brain-washing,” the prototype of the technique had been developed in Soviet Russia in the 1930s. Let me quickly note, though, that it has been debated whether the science of brainwashing had been studied and developed in Communist Russia, which subsequently transmitted the knowledge to China, or whether China developed its technique independently. The historical relationship has never been sufficiently established. It is, however, largely acknowledged that the trial procedures used by the Stalin regime were essentially what one might call “mind control” or “brain-washing” in the broad sense from today’s standpoint, and so was the tradition introduced by the secret police of the post-Stalin Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe. The psychologist Lifton argues in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: The Russian Communist contribution to thought reform is immediately apparent in much of the content and many of the forms of the process: the allegedly scientific Marxist-Leninist doctrine; the stress upon criticism, and confession as features of ‘ideological struggle’; the organizational techniques of iron discipline; the demands for purity of belief and absolute obedience; and the practice of informing upon others in [End Page 43] the service of the party. Certainly, many of the pressures used to extract confessions in penal thought reform [in China] closely resemble techniques used by the Russians during the great Soviet purge trials of the late 1930’s....Eastern European Communist nations have employed similar confession methods. (389)1 The difference between Russia and China is that while the Soviet totalitarian regime was interested in deleting thought and memory from a “culprit” and coaxing “confession,” China went further. China wanted to transform human personality completely with new beliefs, ideas, logic, etc. The purpose of this paper, however, is to explore the nature of thought and non-thought vis-à-vis language through the life and works of Osip Mandelstam in his confrontation with Soviet mind control and in relation to the psychologist/linguist Lev Vygotsky. I will limit my scope of analysis of brainwashing to its Soviet version, but not to the Chinese. Lifton in the above-mentioned book lists the fundamental principles of the techniques of “brain-washing.” The first stage is termed a “struggle,” in which a captive is confined to a small cell and is under constant and disturbing interrogation that combines “hint, threat, and promise.” The threat often concerns people who are close to the “convict”: family members, relatives, close friends, and so on. Isolation is an important part of the technique. It is accompanied with humiliating treatment in the prison cell, normally in solitary confinement, often without a guard, which gives a greater sense of isolation, and with the deprivation of sleep. In this process of “struggle,” the interrogated can wipe out his/her own pre-existing thought and become a tabula rasa, into which any new memory or doctrine can be overwritten. Thus, the whole procedure may lead to a wild confession, not based on any fact. Mandelstam was one of the victims of the interrogation of Liubianka during the Great Terror. On the very early morning of May 16, 1934, the officers of the GPU (Joint State Political Directorate; formerly Cheka, the Central Committee) visited him and after a lengthy house search that lasted for six hours, Mandelstam was arrested.2 The charge was for his composing a satirical poem referring to Stalin, a copy of which was in the possession of the authorities. The poem reads: We live, not feeling the ground under our feet...

Speaking Without Voice: Participatory Planning, Acknowledgment, and Latent Subjectivity in Barbados

As elsewhere, participatory planning in Barbados aims to give more people a say in planning. Yet, there is a difference between people having the opportunity to speak and them having discovered a voice. This article examines the precarious relationship between voice, acknowledgment, and latent subjectivity in Barbadian fisherfolk during participatory planning. It is influenced by Stanley Cavell, pragmatic planning traditions, and postcolonial literature. Structurally, the analysis is split into four sections. First, the theme of fisherfolk exclusion from the west coast of Barbados is contextualized. Attention is given to the Folkestone Marine Park and Reserve (FMPR) participatory planning initiative. Second, the article analyzes how fisherfolk express alienation. A series of examples demonstrate how fishers become victims of their own words, because the signature of their linguistic authority always seems to lie elsewhere, with something or someone else. The causes analyzed include discourses of development and modernity; the culture of Barbados's political independence from the United Kingdom in 1966; a lack of political alternatives; the nature of creolization; Afrocentrism and negritude; how civil servants behave during participatory planning projects; and perceptions of fishing communities. A coherent story builds as the article progresses, of the linguistic authority of fishers' words being beyond their control. Finally, the article analyzes how empirical research influenced pragmatic solutions developed by fisherfolk with the author. These involved working with British High Commissions to change thinking about what Caribbean development consultancy means.

Becoming citizens in late modernity: a global-national comparison of young people in Japan and the UK

The experiences of young people in developed societies such as Japan and the UK have undergone considerable change in the last 30 or so years. Our starting point is that such developments are associated with the globalization of institutions and an individualization of experience, which destabilizes life-course transitions and cultural transmission between generations. However, we continue to assert the importance of the national framework, defined by national cultures and territorial jurisdictions, in mediating global processes. Adapting Connolly's (2005. Pluralism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press) differentiation between types of politics in late modernity, we argue for a distinction to be made between being citizens and becoming citizens. Being a citizen involves integration into pre-existing collective identities such as nation-states which increasingly act to restrict membership to the citizen community. With this in mind, we compare the key sites of social recognition in Japan and the UK for young people and identify some fundamental barriers to citizenship. In addition, we discuss the ways in which conventional social and educational policy responses aimed at integrating young people into work and nation perpetuate their precarious relationship to citizenship. These processes are contrasted with becoming a citizen, which is dynamic, intimately connected to cultural learning and the creation of new civic virtues and sources of recognition.

Agricultural Development and Human Welfare: A Precarious Relationship Implicated by Genetically Modified Organisms

Absent further international oversight, the relationship between human welfare and agricultural development will dangerously become inversely related. The inverse nature of the relationship between human welfare and agricultural development is due to the delicate position of developing nations. Such a delicate position involves agricultural technology, food security, food production, food supply, and food access. The key element of such factors is the debate over agricultural biotechnology, otherwise known as genetically modified crops (“GM crops”). Such genetic modifications have been scientifically created with the aim of enhancing their productivity. Such productivity is understood as a crop’s yield and tolerance to pests, diseases and drought. Through a complicated series of steps, GM crops ultimately result in seed development and technological licensing. The debate, fueled by agricultural biotechnology, stems from the market domination of GM crops by multinational corporations such as Monsanto. Multinational corporate dominance in the global markets has brought forth power structure shifts and allegations of monopolies. Such a shift has required the implementation of national biosafety policies and laws. Beyond national polices, agricultural biotechnology has also fueled institutional shifts. The largest of such institutional shifts is in the field of intellectual property. Due to the fact that the multinational corporations essentially own the seeds and rights to produce the food byproduct, farmers or other seed companies cannot reproduce the seeds freely. Many critics argue that such companies are controlling the global food supply. Beyond controlling the global food supply, GM crops have also posed possible threats to the “environment through gene flows and to human health through ingestion of toxic substances.” Such an impact questions whether the risks outweigh the benefits.

The Empire of Things in Eighteenth-Century English Literature: Consumption of the Foreign and Imperial Self-Fashioning

The paper is devoted to exploring representations of colonial things in early eighteenth-century literature. In numerous literary and economic texts of this period, colonial luxuries come to represent the main objectives of imperialism. Literary representations of colonial things are engaged in negotiating the precarious relationship between England and its colonial others and express many of the uncertainties brought about by the emergence of imperialism and mercantile capitalism. Social positionings, class and gender relations were acted out in and through the world of objects, thus fashioning the imperial subject as a possessor of colonial goods. What is constructed in literature is, therefore, not so much a narrative of a specific colonial thing but rather a narrative of a subject's relation to that object. It is shown that the role of things in establishing an imperial ideology raises related questions about gender and thus provides an opportunity to consider the correlative workings of gender and empire.

Literature and Theology From a North American Perspective

Abstract The ‘non-confessional’ stance of Literature and Theology, together with its embrace of ‘theology broadly understood’, has allowed the Journal to carve out a unique niche in the academic terrain of North America, for the Journal affords a forum for theologically inclined scholars to pursue the enterprise traditionally, and perhaps still most often, associated with its title, that of seeking transcendent meanings manifest or concealed within the immanence of literary texts, while also welcoming contributions that represent perspectives at odds, sometimes quite emphatically, with any traditional, strictly literalist, etymological construal of ‘theology.’ This article considers the rather precarious relationship that ‘theology’ has historically had to American culture, before concluding with some reflections on why the specific association of ‘theology’ with ‘literature’ in this Journal’s purview has proven so alluring and fertile a subject in America over the past twenty-five years, and why this same association promises to make the Journal all the more crucial a forum for critical reflection in the coming decades.

William Byrd: Political and Recusant Composer

Amidst the pendulum of political and religious upheaval that pervaded England throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth century, William Byrd stands as one of the best loved and lauded composers. Byrd succeeded in the secular and sacred realms, contributing great works to the Anglican Church, popularizing the English madrigal and producing prolific amounts of sacred music. However, in a time where one’s religious beliefs were often linked with political loyalty, Byrd defied his monarch’s established and enforced Protestant religion, composing politically charged music for recusant use in clandestine Catholic Church services. His themes were aligned with the Jesuit mission and his texts were often drawn from the lips of martyred Catholics at the gallows; their last words forever immortalized by Byrd for the furthering of the Jesuit cause and the Counter-Reformation. The examination of sources by prominent Byrd scholars, an analyses of Byrd’s ‘political’ compositions and a study of the social and historical background are used to place Byrd within the appropriate context, prove his recusant and political leanings, and analyze his precarious relationship with the English monarch, Elizabeth I. It is shown that Byrd could not have proceeded with his recusant practices, personally or musically, had it not been for his status as a composer, as well as Byrd’s shrewdness in procuring diplomatic relationships with high persons at court and with Queen Elizabeth I through the Chapel Royal. Finally, Byrd’s success at writing for the Anglican Church service and popular secular music showcased his ability to take a moderate stance in situations that benefitted his status with the crown.

Making up exploitation: direct selling, cosmetics and forms of precarious labour in modern Brazil

This paper integrates an analysis of the direct selling system for cosmetics with the debate on precarious labour. Labour flexibility and precarious employment represent very important employment forms in Brazil. The paper focuses on a Brazilian cosmetic company with one million direct sellers. These sellers, nominated as 'consultants', are not publicly recognised as workers. Their activity of selling is highly connected with their own consumption of the products. The paper analyses the growth of this kind of activity over the last 20 years and relates economic transformation to the pattern of labour exploitation. It discusses how the loss of boundaries between work and consumption allows these women to handle all the risks of the distribution of the products. It explores how the contemporary direct selling system benefits from new forms of old precarious labour relations evident in the past.

The Quiet Rites and Riotous Hopes of a Graduate Student

The rites of passage that have most changed me as graduate student have been the hallways, crevices, secret alleys, and long passages of texts that I have been asked to read and write. I have had the best conversations of my life in graduate school. Reading the noise and necessity of Emily Dickinson's dashes, I have considered how one is able to communicate with silence. I have pondered the precarious relationship humanity has formed with our environment, amazed at Virginia Woolf's ability to write world where time passes without the intrusion of humans. I have thought about how democracy proceeds during an Indian election that is fraught with sectarian violence and whether or not the subaltern can ever speak. Is letterpress more radical technology than eBooks on iPads? What is beauty and why is it valued? Can changing the point of view of novel change the point of view of its reader? In graduate school my colleagues and I have asked these questions and so many more. My backpack has been full with the Exeter Riddles, Margaret Cavendish's A Description of New World Called the Blazing World, Plato's Symposium, Slavoj Zizek's Love Your Symptom! all tucked together at once. Yet, looking over the past seven years of my life and the $27,000 of debt incurred while pursuing graduate studies, one might ask what I have tangibly gained. Experience? Conversation? Nothing more than what everyone is given in this life: intangible and fleeting passages of time. My graduate scholarship has encouraged me, however, to ask what I want to do with this time. Images of mortarboards and gowns sprawled across Maclean's reports of Top Rated Universities miss the academic rites of passage that are most elusive and transformative. Quite simply--and far less glamorously than what is depicted in any glossy magazine spread--a graduate education has gifted me with the means to think: room in which to work, access to the greatest works of literature ever written in the history of civilization, and time to write. Oftentimes the rites of passage for graduate student occur in the silent hours of late nights. They have been induced by the panic of deadline (and uncountable cups of fairly traded locally roasted coffee) and have been accomplished with unreasonable dedication (at the cost, minimally, of missing movie; maximally, of watching as my non-graduate-school friends begin to own homes, have babies, put away for their retirements, while I still qualify for discount on my transit pass because, at the age of thirty-three, I am in the same category as high school students--a discount for which I am unbelievably grateful). My work as scholar is quiet. It is slow. It is often done in sweat pants and without makeup. I assure you that the real work of doctoral student is not the stuff of photographic montage taken by the marketing department of my university. Pursing graduate studies in the Humanities is the choice to spend good percentage of my life engaged in asking questions about how to live meaningful life, what the role of an individual is within society, and why humans create things that are beautiful. If I'm lucky this apprenticeship will give me the chance to be professor with my own students, to continue asking difficult questions about what we want our civilizations and communities to look like. As an idealist and novice (joyful positions I hope never to lose as an academic), to ask these sorts of questions is what I believe to be the role of scholarship in the Liberal Arts. How my federal government defines the role of scholarship is the transfer [of] knowledge into economic advantage with focus on industry-academic partnerships (Government of Canada np). To meet these federal demands for funding, tangible, consumer-based model of education has been established in nearly all of the universities across Canada. Students are called consumers. A degree is referred to as credential. To be an instructor is to be student's employee: a grammar janitor as professor Laura Penny words it, a language waitress (102-03). …

A Precarious Relationship: The Alevi Minority, the Turkish State and the EU

Over the last decade, the political significance of the Alevis, the largest sectarian Muslim minority in Turkey, has notably changed. This article aims to evaluate the Alevi community's changing stance as a sectarian minority within an increasingly conservative Turkish society facing European Union (EU) membership negotiations. We first of all summarise the characteristics of the Alevi community and contextualise the changing role of the Alevi minority in Turkish politics. We focus on Alevi demands as part of the EU adjustment reforms and negotiation process, and present the official responses from the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government as well as the EU authorities.

Monsters, gender, and sexuality in medieval English literature

Monsters abound in Old and Middle English literature, from Grendel and his mother in Beowulf to those found in medieval romances such as Sir Gowther. Through a close examination of the way in which their bodies are sexed and gendered, and drawing from postmodern theories of gender, identity, and subjectivity, this book interrogates medieval notions of the body and the boundaries of human identity. Case studies of Wonders of the East, Beowulf, Mandeville's Travels, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and Sir Gowther reveal a shift in attitudes toward the gendered and sexed body, and thus toward identity, between the two periods: while Old English authors and artists respond to the threat of the gendered, monstrous form by erasing it, Middle English writers allow transgressive and monstrous bodies to transform and therefore integrate into society. This metamorphosis enables redemption for some monsters, while other monstrous bodies become dangerously flexible and invisible, threatening the communities they infiltrate. These changing cultural reactions to monstrous bodies demonstrate the precarious relationship between body and identity in medieval literature. Dana M. Oswald is Assistant Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Parkside.

Breathing Space for Experience

This paper examines the precarious relationship between artist, artwork and curator in contemporary curatorial practice and identifies a number of problematical issues in the context of material thinking concerns, embodied experience and current artistic practice. For the purpose of this discussion, curatorial practice is defined as exhibition production and design. It is differentiated from those activities normally associated with permanent collections and museums. Constructing meaning through art exhibitions is a process largely dependent on the essential roles of artist and curator but also influenced by the physical environment and the various contingencies of installation practice. The core premise underlying this investigation is that a curatorial intervention should be no more or less than an opportunity to work with a designer, an artist, a collection or a group, to create a transitory moment in which an idea is proposed and conditions are set up for people to react to it. The focus of the investigation is on the increasing level of misinterpretation and perplexity that seems to surround so many curatorial interventions, prize exhibitions and international biennial ventures. Since the early 1990's, the group exhibition emerged as the leading platform for curatorial experimentation. It opened a new and ideological discursive space where the individual, private concerns of artists were displaced and flattened under the artificial conceptual frames imposed by the curatorial concept. Individual artistic vision has been relegated to a minor position under a curator's propositional or speculative stratagem. Increasingly, the unique, reflective unfolding of an artist's philosophical, political or artistic intentions and the relating of that thinking to a contemporary or historical context has almost become an irrelevant curatorial endeavour. The contemporary institutional demand is for local versus global comparisons, public concerns, disparate juxtapositions and trans-cultural contexts. In conversation with artists and curators, several themes have been identified and issues analysed for improving future strategies for making meaning through exhibition.

Matrimonio, transgresión y conflicto en la región de Concepción. Chile en el siglo XIX

This article maintains that family relations until the second half of the 19 th century in the region of Concepcion maintained strong ties of dependency on the community, within the frame of an early modernization process and the decline of traditional society. By the beginning of the 20 th century these ties tended to disappear, and both family and conjugal relations and conflicts were to establish a precarious relationship with the community and, especially, with the State. Family conflicts in the second half of the 19 th century thus evolved in the period of transition from religious forms of control under the Catholic Church, towards secular practices administered by the State, both of which were constrained by community control and sanctions.

The Reconfiguration of Expertise in Oncology: The Practice of Prediction and Articulation of Indeterminacy in Medical Consultations

Evidence-based medicine has enhanced the predictive capacity of biomedicine in population terms, but it has also introduced new challenges for patient care and biomedical expertise. In this article we examine the negotiation of prediction and indeterminacy by oncology clinicians, exploring the ways in which they report delivering prognosis and engaging with indeterminacy in conversation with their patients. We examine oncologists' strategies for delivering "news," the technological mediation of uncertainty, and reported conversational turns toward a focus on indeterminacy and individual response. Drawing from these accounts, we argue that, although predictive capacity remains central to oncological expertise, notions of individualism, subjectivity, and self-determination are being heavily drawn on by clinicians. Rather than presenting a challenge, such ideas might be becoming increasingly central to oncological expertise. Interviews with cancer nurses illustrate their precarious relationship with evidence, uncovering tensions in their approach to patients and in their attempts to traverse diverse paradigms of care. We argue for an understanding of oncological expertise as evolving within the context of potentially competing contemporary cultural shifts, and against a simplistic notion of indeterminacy as necessarily eroding expertise.

Germany 1989: in the aftermath of the Cold War

Introduction. I. Division through Zoning. II. Cold War Confrontation. III. Ostpolitik: Putting the East at Ease. IV. A Precarious Relationship. V. The People's Revolution. VI. The Diplomatic Process. VII. An Expensive Take-Over Business. VIII. The Long Hangover. IX. A Crisis of Identity. X. Attempts at Explanation. APPENDIX. 1. Select Bibliography. 2. Chronology. 3. (Charts). 4. (Cartoons).

Humanistic Psychology and the Mental Health Worker

This article discusses the precarious relationship of humanistic psychology to the mental health worker in our current managed care, empirically based, behaviorally focused, excessively medication-oriented mental health system. Some of the challenges, frustrations, and potential successes of bringing real and nurturing human relationships in the context of humanistic psychology into the day-to-day involvements with clients for the mental health worker are described. Some of the particular ethical dilemmas of the mental health worker attempting to work in this context of humanistic psychology are discussed, inclusive of the enormous difficulties of bringing humanistic psychology into the all pervasive medical model that controls mental health practice in our society. Through a series of case descriptions, the author provides a narrative account of his own experiences in attempting to bring the authentic nurturing relationship context of humanistic psychology into his various mental health worker jobs. The author reaches the conclusion that this relationship context of humanistic psychology is in actuality being practiced by many mental health workers without knowing it by name. He further concludes that in spite of the challenges and frustrations of engaging in real and nurturing relationships with clients as part of the mental health worker’s job in our current society, the core ingredients of empathy, authenticity, and realness of bond between client and mental health worker, which are the hallmarks of humanistic psychology, are apparently being practiced with partial success through the cleverness, flexibility, and humane-ness of mental health workers despite the enormous obstacles against this kind of humanistic practice.

Spalding's World Tour: The Epic Adventure That Took Baseball around the Globe—And Made It America's Game (review)

Reviewed by: Spalding’s World Tour: The Epic Adventure That Took Baseball around the Globe—And Made It America’s Game Harry Jebsen Mark Lamster. Spalding’s World Tour: The Epic Adventure That Took Baseball around the Globe—And Made It America’s Game. New York: Public Affairs Press, 2006. 283 pp. Cloth, $26.00. Late-nineteenth-century baseball was a dynamic institution. Persons attracted to it recognized both an opportunity for personal profit as well as the adulation of the public. It became a road to wealth and status in which the public was generally supportive. Baseball in the 1880s was actively defining, as was much of American industry, its precarious relationship between management and labor. Baseball was similar to the rest of industry except that the worker—that is, the player—had, at least to their own perception, a more integral role in the production of the game than a typical industrial worker had in the production of an ingot of steel. By the late 1880s, labor and management were contesting for a greater percentage of the fruits of the game of baseball. Early magnates such as Albert Spalding found baseball to be a glamorous and profitable venture. Using the reserve clause and other restrictive means, the owners maintained a strong grip on the game and on the players. To further his hold on baseball and to foster his expanding empire in the sporting goods business, Spalding came up with an ingenious idea in 1888. He would take the Chicago White Stockings and a cooperative team of All Americans to Australia and New Zealand with the intention of converting the game of baseball into a global sensation. His hopes included being able to sell bats, balls, and other equipment globally; being recognized as the most important emissary for the game; being able to control players by fostering favor with important individuals whom he included on the trip; and generally being considered the most important person in the game. [End Page 132] Lamster's account of the trip, which went well beyond the Antipodes coming back to the United States via India, Egypt, and Europe, is sprightly written with significant detail on each stop and with valid consideration of Spalding's goals and aims as he came in contact with cultures that differed significantly from the United States. Lamster is quite effective at looking into the byplay between Spalding and his magnate-focused management of the National League and contrasting it with the perceptions of John Montgomery Ward and players who believed strongly that they were being shorted in salary and respect. Spalding's trip had carried with it a hope that it might head off labor discontent. The round-the-world jaunt turned out to be a domestic public relations success. It kept baseball in the press for the entire winter period when it normally received only miniscule coverage. Though The Sporting News disparaged the trip, they covered it. Following the maxim of marketing, the trip made the news steadily, if not always approvingly, throughout the winter months of 1888 and into 1889, climaxing with the early-April return to New York and barnstorming back through the east to Chicago right before the 1889 season opened. However, the expensive venture did not successfully internationalize the game. Spalding would leave equipment agents in New Zealand and Australia to promote his game and his sporting goods, but India and Egypt were not successful sites. European countries found the game an interesting spectacle, but never accepted it as their own. The internationalization of the game, displayed in recent years with the World Baseball Classic and other international tournaments, had to wait at least another fifty years before it found fertile soil in Latin America and in Asia. Ventures like Spalding's trip placed the game squarely within the context of American culture. This trip further cemented America's love affair with baseball. As it turned out, the game was entering one of its rockiest social and economic eras, the 1890s. While Spalding's tour neither prevented the dark period of an enlarged and unwieldy National League in the 1890s nor prevented other elements from financing competing leagues...