Privileged Class Research Articles

“Непременные государственные законы” в России второй половины XVIII в. (опыт Begriffsgeschichte)

In this paper, I attempt to analyze the idea of law as a concept of paramount importance in eighteenth-century Russia. This approach is meant to shed light not only on the mechanism and effects of social control exercised by the throne, but also on the self-identification of the authorities and the priorities governing the values and the daily life of the privileged classes. This project entails clear definitions of both the word law as it is used in official sources, and the social practices associated with it.

Bir harita olarak görsel kültür, sınırları ve çizdiği arka sokaklar

Current media studies canalize us to take viewers who make “alternative readings” seriously. On the other hand, economy-politics approach still emphasizes the role of media in meaning construction as the “ideological state apparatus” or “tool of privileged class”. In this article, television production is seen as a part of “visual culture”. Starting point of this anthropological journey is a setting of a Tv serial (Back Streets/Arka Sokaklar) and it ends with the viewers. Viewing culture occurs beside the dynamics of production and alternative “viewings” requires a knowledge more than the map of visual culture. This journey also makes it clear that symbolic representation of the serial legitimates the violence of police during the whole process.

Recompensar servicios con honores: el crecimiento de la nobleza titulada en los reinados de Felipe IV y Carlos II

During the seventeenth century, the nobility titled ceased to be a select and limited group for to open up gradually to new members, even without a noble origin, who were able to achieve a nobility title trough diverses systems that were established for it. Although there are few studies about the creation of these honors during this century, it seems that until the reign of Philip IV, the nobility titles were granted mainly to firstborns and younger sons of the main noble Houses. However, since then and especially in the reign of Charles II, the policy of creating nobility titles varied significantly by the large increase they experienced, and because in large part they were awarded to whom offered the money as the main merit. In this study, based on existing studies and consultation of unpublished documents, we analyze, among other things, the change that the top of the privileged class experienced during this period, the merits that were rewarded with grants so precious, and the new elites who managed to get this honors. Although there were new graduates who responded to the traditional concept of nobility, there were also nobility titles that were granted to people with dark or uncertain origins, who had served to the Crown only with the «merit» of money.

Labor Divided

Zak Cope, Divided World Divided Class: Global Political Economy and the Stratification of Labour Under Capitalism (Montreal: Kersplebedeb, 2012), 387 pages, $20.00, paperback.[Zak] Cope argues that the seemingly pervasive racism and cultural chauvinism in the global North is not the result of false consciousness, misinformation, indoctrination, or ignorance (at least to the extent that much of the political left assumes). Rather, racism and cultural chauvinism are the expression of economic interests shared by a variety of social strata in the global North, all of whom have an interest in exploiting the global South. Central to this argument is the idea that the labor aristocracy—the relatively privileged global North working class—developed as a result of the exploitation of the global South, and therefore has a material interest in continuing this exploitation.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Bastions of White Privilege? Reflections on the Racialization of Alternative Food Networks

It is something of an accepted truth that alternative food networks (AFNs) are bastions of the affluent middle and upper classes. No one else, it is assumed, could afford the premium prices routinely attached to organic, fair trade and other ethically produced foodstuffs. In Alternative Food Networks: Knowledge, Practice and Politics, David Goodman, Melanie DuPuis and Michael Goodman ask us to think beyond income-based inequality and to consider how a range of other social cleavages may be reflected in and shape AFNs. They argue that race, in particular, has been inadequately problematized both by alternative food movements and by the scholars that study them. Certainly, many have argued that the social standards embedded within various eco-certifications are too weak, allowing, for example, the exploitation of migrant labour on organic farms in the US (e.g. Allen, 2008). But few have looked seriously or critically at the racial composition or dynamics of AFNs. To put it rather crudely, AFNs are not simply the domain of the affluent middle classes, the authors argue, they are the domain of the privileged white middle classes.

中流 Chūryū /Middling

中流 Chūryū/Middling Jordan Sand (bio) The “middle class” is a cultural formation manifesting economic conditions but not tied to them in any fixed way. This makes it inherently impossible to pin down. The word “bourgeois” in Marxist language is more easily anchored theoretically, yet it too can be made to float when treated as a cultural category. We can trace the lives of these two keywords, “bourgeois” and “middle class,” in two registers: the vernacular and the language of political economy. Marx’s “bourgeoisie” is part of a theoretically tidy dyad defined in objective terms: either one owns the means of production or one does not. The Anglo-American liberal alternative to Marx’s dyad of bourgeoisie and proletariat posits three classes, and thereby makes the objective rooting of class in the means of production impossible. Social scientists have tried repeatedly to devise objective criteria for quantifying middle-class membership, but the criteria differ with each study. All are plainly porous. In the words of Pierre Bourdieu, “Social class does not exist….What exists is a social space, a space of differences, in which classes exist in some sense in a state of virtuality, not as something given but as something to be done.”1 The fact should be noted (obvious as it is) that Marx did not coin the word “bourgeoisie.” When he chose to use it rather than “capitalists” or some other locution, he could rely on immediate recognition among his European intellectual audience. In vernacular language, both “middle class” and “bourgeois” are slippery terms, because both function as cultural signifiers for bundles of habits and appearances. While the influence of Marx has often given “bourgeois” undesirable nuances, capitalist society makes middlingness inherently desirable. Where social status is believed to be something that properly must be achieved rather than inherited, to be “middle class” sets one apart from the failed lower orders as well as from the hereditarily privileged (and thus potentially undeserving) upper class, making it the preferred location to claim. Whoever [End Page 67] can claim this position then takes on the task of fleshing it out with a set of manifest traits. But “bourgeois” too as a cultural category calls forth a broad field of connotations. Cultural historian Peter Gay, for example, was able to write his five volumes on “the bourgeois experience” because he could draw upon a rich array of nineteenth-century people’s narratives of their own bourgeoisdom—self-identifications, contemporary stereotypes and normative claims—as well as on other historians’ retrospective categorizations. He could thus analyze bourgeois people and their lifestyles without being compelled to denote precisely who was in and who was out on the basis of direct, literal ownership of the means of material production. Nineteenth-century Europeans spoke of what it meant to be bourgeois (or burger, etc.) in diverse ways without reference to Marx.2 Marx himself, a consummate stylist (in contrast to the “scientific Marxists” among his heirs), read his audience with a canny sense of how they would read him. Middlingness emerged in late nineteenth century Japanese popular discourse under the name chūryū (also chūtō shakai, chūkyūmin). It was most of all a normative moral term. Advocates frequently stressed that the middle was the backbone (chūken) of society. The middle class was described as the productive class.3 As a cultural category, chūryū is found particularly in women’s magazines. To be chūryū in the Meiji period (1868-1912) was to be a Westernizing progressive. Yet dominant class legitimacy and broader chūryū respectability relied equally on appropriation and reinterpretation of native cultural practices. The critical thing was mastery, demonstrating knowledge of both the native and the Western, rather than merely emulating Westerners. The middle-class home (chūryū katei) was managed by a mistress whose secondary education had taught her a vocation devoted to imported disciplines of hygiene and efficiency, and to the education of her children. In material terms, many of the lifestyles shown as “middling” in women’s magazines like Jogaku sekai (Women’s Education World) and Fujin gahō (Ladies’ Graphic) actually belonged to people who would have to be judged upper class in...

Marcia J. Carlson and Paula England: Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America

Marcia J. Carlson and Paula England have compiled and edited a number of important chapters that explore changing family patterns and how they adapt to a more unequal America in their book Social Class and Changing Families in an Unequal America. Each chapter addresses a different aspect in the changing formation or behavior of families within the United States. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, families have undergone a diverse and complex change that has led to a larger socioeconomic divide than ever before. Inequalities continue to be recognized most notably in education, social class, and in the financial health of families. Carlson and England have chosen topics on how family life has changed and adapted in light of the socioeconomic divide that infects the United States. Some changes are a product of the growing inequalities in education or the difficulties of social mobility, while other changing family patterns seem to have contributed to the growing divide. Not surprisingly, Carlson and England have concluded that family life in the United States remains unequal, and the chapters in their book highlight how family patterns have adapted in light of those inequalities. In the first chapter, ‘‘Birth Control Use and Early, Unintended Births,’’ the authors begin their discussion by acknowledging the changes that have occurred between the current generation and generations past. While young adults traditionally married early and had their first birth shortly after, this trajectory has changed drastically, causing unanticipated consequences. More than anything the change has been due to what the authors term the ‘‘retreat from marriage,’’ which has occurred at all socioeconomic levels, but has hit the poor or less privileged classes hardest. Many young adults are getting married later, no matter their socioeconomic status, but those adults coming from middle or upper class families tend to have less unplanned births prior to their marriages. Furthermore, the authors go on to state that youths from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are waiting longer before their first time having sex as well as having greater access to birth control, which only further contributes to the difference between youths born into wealthier backgrounds compared to youths born into less privileged homes in terms of unplanned pregnancies. Also of note is the impact a parent’s education and social status has on whether a youth will engage in sex or even whether a youth will have an unintended birth. Those youths who have parents with a college education or more financial resources tend to have less sex, less unplanned births, and greater access to contraceptives. The chapter concludes by effectively saying social class begets social class. Those born to educated and financially stable parents will more than likely go on to get an education themselves, while those whose parents do not have more than a high school education are more likely to have sex earlier and with that earlier, unintended births. The second chapter, ‘‘Thinking about Demographic Family Difference,’’ examines the link between ethnicity, race, religion, and socioeconomic status and fertility differentials. In order to understand and interpret the demographic information that is in abundance, the author first explores a theory that he and his colleagues created called the ‘‘Theory of Conjunctural Action’’ (TCA). The basic idea behind the TCA is that individuals store stimuli and experiences called schemas. Many of these schemas are experiences that are shared or reinforced among communities and social groups, which lead the author to conclude S. Briles (&) Maurer School of Law, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, USA e-mail: sbriles@indiana.edu

Sequence length determinants for self‐assembly of amphipathic β‐sheet peptides

Amphipathic peptides composed of alternating hydrophobic and hydrophilic amino acids are a privileged class of peptide, which have a high propensity to self-assemble into β-sheet fibrils. The Ac-(FKFE)2-NH2 peptide has been extensively studied and forms putative β-sheet bilayer fibrils in which the hydrophobic Phe side chains are organized to a single face of each constituent sheet; upon bilayer formation, these hydrophobic benzyl groups are sequestered in the hydrophobic core of the resulting fibril. In order for the Phe side chains to be uniformly displayed on one face of Ac-(FKFE)2-NH2 β-sheets, an antiparallel packing orientation in which one amino acid residue is unpaired must be adopted. Based on molecular models, we hypothesized that truncated seven amino acid derivatives of Ac-(FKFE)2-NH2 in which either the N-terminal Phe residue (Ac-KFEFKFE-NH2) or the C-terminal Glu residue (Ac-FKFEFKF-NH2) is eliminated should readily self-assemble into β-sheet bilayers in which all hydrogen bond and hydrophobic/charge interactions are satisfied. We found, however, that these minute changes in peptide sequence have unanticipated and dramatic effects on the self-assembly of each peptide. Ac-FKFEFKF-NH2 self-assembled into fibrils with unique morphology relative to the parent peptide, whereas the Ac-KFEFKFE-NH2 peptide had a strongly reduced propensity to self-assemble, even failing to self-assemble altogether under some conditions. These findings provide significant insight into the effect of sequence length and strand registry as well as hydrophobicity and charge on the self-assembly of simple amphipathic peptides to illuminate the possibility of tuning self-assembly processes and the resulting structures with minute changes to peptide sequence.

Tautomerism in Bis(oxazoline)s

AbstractBis(oxazoline)s (BOXs) are a privileged ligand class and have found widespread use in catalysis. Herein, the tautomerism of selected BOX ligands was evidenced by X‐ray diffractometry as well as by NMR and IR spectroscopy and supported by DFT calculations. In CDCl3 solution at room temperature, the new 1,1‐bis(4,4‐dimethyl‐1,3‐oxazolin‐2‐yl)‐1‐phenylmethane (Ph,HBOX‐Me2) ligand is present as a 1:1 mixture of the diimine and iminoenamine tautomers. Thermodynamic and kinetic data for the tautomeric equilibrium were determined, which allowed comparison with related bidentate ligand classes. The other BOXs studied, H,HBOX‐Me2, Me,HBOX‐Me2, and tBu,HBOX‐Me2, are largely present in the diimine form under similar conditions. IR spectroscopy was identified as a valuable tool for detecting the presence of the iminoenamine form as a minor component.

Narrative, Rupture, Transformation: Dostoevsky in Prison and on the Road

This essay focuses on narratives that both are and are not fractured or ruptured by what Emmanuel Levinas calls ‘the face of the Other’, by my untransferable responsibility for a unique and irreplaceable other. I shall discuss Dostoevsky’s travel narrative, Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, published in 1863. In this work, Dostoevsky describes his first trip to Europe, a ten-week journey that included visits to Berlin, London, and Paris and that began on June 7, 1862, the year in which Dostoevsky finished his Notes from the House of the Dead. The latter is the first major literary work Dostoevsky published after his four-year prison sentence for political subversion, which was followed by another six years of exile in Siberia. It is a lengthy semi-autobiographical memoir describing the four harrowing but transformative years the author spent in prison, an experience that ruptured the narrative of his own life and inspired much of his later fiction, including his greatest novel, The Brothers Karamazov. The narrator of Notes from the House of the Dead describes his experience of a kind of transcendence in reading these prison memoirs, as if he were reading a travel narrative that was revealing to him an entirely new world: ‘This absolutely new, till then unknown world; the strangeness of some facts; some peculiar observations on these lost creatures’, he says, ‘carried me away’ [uvlekli men /uvlekli menya].1 The staid, self-contained narrator of House of the Dead is ‘carried away’, transported by his reading of the text he has found, written by a certain Alexandr PetrovitchGoryanchikov, that describes the ten years its author spent in prison serving a sentence for the murder of his wife. Dostoevsky was himself deeply transformed by his incarceration. He entered prison as a young radical from a privileged class with advanced, European ideas about social equality, and who thought he knew what was best for Russia but who was, at first, unable to connect emotionally with

Social Stratification in Japanese and Some Other Martial Arts: A Comparison and Discussion of Changes

Abstract Using the humanistic theory of martial arts and martial arts sociology, the author attempts to describe and explain the relationship between social stratification and martial arts. He asks whether a person’s position in the martial arts environment is, today, dependent on social background. He asks: Who could practice with weapons, and which weapons, a hundred years ago? Who can study in the ancient fencing schools today? The analysis includes martial arts in ancient Japan, Europe and Brazil as well as today. He finds that positions originally went to those in the privileged classes or social strata. Today, this does not matter. It can be concluded that there is simply a generational transmission of interest within families. Position in the martial arts, as in many other areas, is part of a person’s long-term effort to determine their own position in society, or “position developed independently”. Martial arts are part of the farreaching democratization and leveling of society. Positions inherited from father to son arise only very rarely. This mainly now happens only in the ancient ancestral schools.

Oddělit a spojit: architektura sociálních nerovností v Benátské republice

The urban space in the Republic of Venice (circa 800-1797) seems to have had a more malleable and variable quality than other towns situated on dry land: its physical space was not merely an 'infrastructure', the precondition for the existence of social space, but rather something that was actively produced and reconstructed by society itself. This is one reason why the authors decided to use the Republic of Venice to study the relationship between the social and physical space and chart the ways in which social inequalities at the dawn of the modern era were reflected in the organisation of the urban space. They present Venice as 'two cities in one': Venice the city built and portrayed from the perspective of the privileged classes, i.e. the viewpoint of those who had themselves transported through the city on gondolas; and Venice the city of the pedestrian traffic of the lower classes, excluded from political life. The authors set out to attain a better understanding of the deep social and political inequalities that existed in Venice on the one hand and of how it endured a thousand years of internal political stability without experiencing a single attempt at revolt, revolution or social uprising on the other. They therefore focus not just on forms of stratification, segregation and exclusion, but also on how Venetian society integrated its marginalised members and how it accorded them social and cultural relevance and recognition.

Memórias sobre a infância no meio rural: a escola e os outros espaços de sociabilidade (Minas Gerais — Brasil, 1920-1950)

Este trabalho analisa as representações sobre a infância por mulheres originárias de comunidades rurais do estado de Minas Gerais, na primeira metade do século XX, que migraram para Belo Horizonte quando adultas e que residem num bairro periférico da capital mineira. Utilizou-se entrevistas realizadas com 13 mulheres, dados demográficos e a legislação educacional do período. Nas entrevistas, a recorrente afirmação "eu não tive infância" pode ser compreendida pela contraposição feita por elas a uma suposta vivência infantil ideal, relacionada aos meios socialmente privilegiados, e à infância da atualidade, da qual elas se excluem. As memórias evocadas se referem à intensa rotina de trabalhos na roça e nas casas dos outros, à dificuldade em frequentar a escola, à precariedade das roupas, à ausência de brinquedos, mas também a momentos alegres de brincadeiras e à participação nas comemorações religiosas. Família, trabalho e religião concorrem com a escola como importantes espaços de sociabilidade.Palavras-chaveInfância; Escola rural; Mulheres; Espaços de sociabilidade

Isothiourea‐Mediated One‐Pot Synthesis of Functionalized Pyridines

Isothiourea‐Mediated One‐Pot Synthesis of Functionalized Pyridines

Founding a Balkan State: Albania’s Experiment with Democracy 1920-1925, by Robert C. Austin

Founding a Balkan State: Albania's Experiment with Democracy 1920-1925, by Robert C. Austin. Toronto, Ontario, University of Toronto Press, 2012. xi, 237 pp. $48.00 US (cloth). In the last twenty or so years since the end of Enverist communism in Albania there has been a considerable increase in work on late nineteenth-century and twentieth-century Albanian history. Pioneers such as Peter Prifti and Nicholas Pano have been joined by many other scholars and authors. With the crisis in the Albanian transition from communism, and its protracted nature which culminated in near state collapse in the armed uprising in 1997, scholarly interest has perhaps naturally turned towards issues of state formation and development. Albania has always had a fragile state, since independence, and this applies as much in the recent contemporary period as a hundred or more years ago. The late exit of the small country from the Ottoman Empire and its extreme economic backwardness has meant that the progressive middle class was always very small; seeking somehow to govern and modernize a profoundly conservative rural and mountainous hinterland. At the same time, ever since 1912, unfriendly neighbours, principally Greece and Serbia, have attempted to destabilize the new capital in Tirana and impose their territorial ambitions on parts of the infant nation. It was not surprising that the Italian fascists found it easy to assimilate Albania as a dependency in the 1930s. The period immediately after the First World War has not, though, had the same attention in the historiography as the period leading up to independence. The Canadian scholar Robert. C. Austin, in this new study has sought to remedy this, and in a clear and convincing account centred around the brief period of rule of the American Orthodox priest Fan Noli, shows how tribal chieftain Ahmet Zogu--with his base in the central Mati region where large landowning Bey domains continued after 1918--was able to destabilize the country and secure his rule with Serbian and White Russian help. The strongest parts of Austin's study are those which situate Fan Noli as a product of the established and progressive Albanian Diaspora in the United States, with its centre of gravity in and around New England, and in the city of Boston in particular. Noli is often seen in a stereotypical way, as an ambitious careerist politician, who basically used the Orthodox Albanians and their church for his own ends; however, Austin presents a much more nuanced and convincing picture of both the man and his intellectual and social orbit. The great disadvantage of a Diaspora background, one shared by many well-meaning, modernizing politicians in the Balkans throughout the twentieth century was that ideas which were part of the natural assumptions of the Diaspora world meant little or nothing to the inhabitants of the country, and they also threatened the old privileged classes. …

Introduction

Introduction Alistair Black (bio) and Charles van den Heuvel (bio) In presenting this collection of essays in honor of W. Boyd Rayward—“Boyd” to those who are on first-name terms with him—we are not simply drawing attention to the work of a consummate historian but also celebrating someone who is deeply respected for his approachability, humility, and genuine interest in the lives of the many friends he has gathered around him over the years. Not all academics, by any means, combine intense intellectual labor with a human touch, but Boyd does this in spades. He is a true gentleman scholar (in applying the word “gentleman” in this context, we relieve it of its use to designate a person of leisure from the privileged classes; rather we emphasize that part of its connotation that signifies someone who is well-mannered, sociable, and considerate—in short, someone who manifests a true gentillesse d’esprit). Boyd is best known, and revered, as the scholar who rescued Paul Otlet (1868–1944) from obscurity, thus implanting him as the “father of documentation” into the disciplinary consciousness of library and information science. Otlet’s grand, bibliographic/internationalist project, to which he devoted himself for over half a century, is considered to be a prime precursor of the Internet. It is to Boyd’s enduring credit that a quarter of a century before the Internet became a popular technology, and at a time when the term “information society” had yet to enter our vocabulary, he recognized the great significance of Otlet and his visionary ideas. Following his 1975 book on Otlet, The Universe of Information, Boyd went on to become the leader of an academy of historians interested in exploring not only Otlet’s thoughts and schemes but also those of his “information” contemporaries who together formed what can be called the modernist information (or documentary) movement of the period from around 1890 to World War II. Through his research he maintained this leadership role even while undertaking demanding managerial tasks as dean of schools of library & information science in the United States and Australia. [End Page 261] Lately, Boyd has supported the proposition that it is possible to conceptualize a field labelled “information history,” encompassing the history of the modernist information movement but going well beyond it temporally and thematically. Indeed, we are fortunate to be able to include in this Festschrift an (until now) unpublished essay by Boyd on this very subject. For Boyd, the history of information—of its systems of management, organization, and dissemination—is not confined to the Otletian era. Boyd’s own research topics have spanned the centuries, from the seventeenth-century Republic of Letters to the late twentieth-century convergence (not simply amalgamation, he would argue) of library science and information science. It is in the nature of history and the humanities that its scholars often find themselves leading a “solo” life (although collaborations have undoubtedly been on the increase in recent decades). Following in this tradition, Boyd has cultivated his own strip of land, and with tremendous results. But he has also offered his services to those who labor in nearby plots. Being the primary node in the Otlet scholarly network has automatically plugged him into networks that overlap it, and he has pursued links within these networks energetically. Boyd has won the reputation of being a great facilitator, running or helping to run academic events, passionately and carefully corresponding with colleagues, and editing the work of others. Regarding the latter—as the hundreds of scholars who have experienced the flourish of his meticulous corrective pen would no doubt testify—Boyd is rightly regarded as a supremely gifted editor, most recently of this very journal but also of other journals, including Library Quarterly, as well as of a number of books, many of these arising from conferences he has organized or co-organized. In short, Boyd brings people together, and brings people on. When we approached authors to see if they were interested in contributing to this Festschrift, we were overwhelmed by the wave of goodwill that rebounded. Such was the scale of the response that it has been necessary to divide the Festschrift into two parts...

Abolition and empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia

Abolition and Empire in Sierra Leone and Liberia. By Bronwen Everill. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Pp. vii, 232; maps, photographs, bibliography, index. $85.00There are just a few comparative studies on Africa's pioneer colonies for erstwhile enslaved Africans in Great Britain and the United States. This dearth makes Everill's book special. It is a rare analysis of British and American anti-slave trade campaigns in Sierra Leone and respectively. Her central argument is refreshing. Contrary to the historiography that traces anti-slave trade strategies directly to London and Washington, D.C., Everill contends that Sierra Leoneans and Liberians adapted those policies to specific, perceived realities. These policies, she asserts, constitute British and American imperialism, as they involved territorial annexations and the diffusion of British and American ideas and material cultures. This nuanced interpretation-stemming from what is obviously the connection between imperialism and humanitarianism-makes Everill's comparative study thought provoking.The book's seven chapters, along with an Introduction and an Epilogue, are well knit. Chapter 1 reviews the transatlantic interconnections that gave rise to and Sierra Leone. The next two chapters focus on the core of the anti-slavery strategy-Civilization, Commerce, and Christianity-and the evolutions of privileged classes in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Unsurprisingly, in both cases the colonists showed strong attachment to the material cultures in their former homes. Everill makes an interesting contrast here. One result of the 3C's was that the Sierra Leonean elite became more incorporated into the British Empire, thereby consolidating that cohort's British identity; however, this was hardly true of Liberians. Institutions that pulled Sierra Leoneans into the British imperial orbit-commercial, religious, educational, etc.-seem to have alienated Liberians from their American Empire. Everill notes that this was so because Liberia had fewer ties to American 'strategic interests' (p. 147). For example, while Sierra Leone's imperial connections provided access directly to various British businesses, Liberia's merchants generally carried out their American transactions through special contacts via the American Colonization Society, founder of Liberia. Research into Liberia's nineteenthcentury sugar industry fully supports Everill's findings. Sale of sugar to the United States, along with acquisition of sugarcane mills by prominent Liberian planters, was conducted essentially through friends of colonization. …

Maria Collier de Mendonça and Patrícia Fonseca Fanaya speak to Jacqueline Pitanguy and Iáris Cortês

This ‘in conversation’ aims at exploring some voices reflecting recent decades of feminism in Brazil and how women’s rights activism has been experienced in this context. For this purpose, we have interviewed two Brazilian women whose careers have contributed extensively to the Brazilian feminist movement. The two interviewees, Jacqueline Pitanguy and Iáris Cortês, belong to a privileged class in terms of education and socioeconomic brackets in Brazil. They both have held powerful positions as public policies makers, in the State bureaucracy, during the late 1980s. Jacqueline Pitanguy and Iáris Cortês were members of the National Council for Women’s Rights (CNDM - Conselho Nacional de Direitos da Mulher), a committee that worked to ensure the implementation of women’s rights during the elaboration of the new Brazilian Constitution of 1988. After the 1980s, an important period marking Brazil’s re-democratisation, they have been working with feminist non-governmental organisations dedicated to a wide range of feminist issues and women’s rights agendas.

Structures and Interligand Interaction Pattern of Phosphoramidite Pd Complexes by NMR Spectroscopy: Modulations in Extended Interaction Surfaces as Stereoselection Mode of a Privileged Class of Ligands

During the last decade, phosphoramidites have been established as a so-called privileged class of ligands in various transition metal catalyses. However, the interactions responsible for their favorable properties have hitherto remained elusive. To address this issue, the formation trends, structural features, and interligand interaction patterns of several trans- and cis-[PdLL'Cl2] complexes have been investigated by NMR spectroscopy. The energetic contribution of their interligand interactions has been measured experimentally using the supramolecular balance for transition-metal complexes. The resulting energetics combined with an analysis of the electrostatic potential surfaces reveal that in phosphoramidites not only the aryl groups but the complete (CH)CH3 Ph moieties of the amine side chains form extended quasi-planar CH-π and π-π interaction surfaces. Application of the supramolecular balance has shown that modulations in these extended interaction surfaces cause energetic differences that are relevant to enantioselective catalysis. In addition, the energetics of these interligand interactions are quite independent of the actual structures of the complexes. This is shown by similar formation and aggregation trends of complexes with the same ligand but different structures. The extended quasi-planar electrostatic interaction surface of the (CH)CH3 Ph moiety explains the known pattern of successful ligand modulation and the substrate specificity of phosphoramidites. Thus, we propose modulations in these extended CH-π and π-π interaction areas as a refined stereoselection mode for these ligands. Based on the example of phosphoramidites, this study reveals three general features potentially applicable to various ligands in asymmetric catalysis. First, specific combinations of alkyl and aryl moieties can be used to create extended anisotropic interaction areas. Second, modulations in these interaction surfaces cause energetic differences that are relevant to catalytic applications. Third, bulky substituents with matching complementary interaction surfaces should not only be considered in terms of steric hindrance but also in terms of attractive and repulsive interactions, a feature that may often be underestimated in asymmetric catalysis.

Speaking of Human Rights: Narrative Voice and the Paradox of the Unspeakable in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe and Disgrace

Speaking of Human Rights:Narrative Voice and the Paradox of the Unspeakable in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe and Disgrace Jennifer Rickel (bio) Human Rights discourse recognizes storytelling as a technology of both empowerment and subordination. It situates literature as an important site from which to assert one’s rights and plots individuals within a narrative of universal humanism. In order to lay claim to human rights, individuals must write themselves into the humanist narrative by successfully articulating themselves as fully developed human persons. In this article I analyze narrative voice in J.M. Coetzee’s Foe and Disgrace. Both novels acknowledge the implications of speaking and being spoken in a story: Foe conceptually and historically in relation to structures of imperialism and patriarchy and Disgrace in the contemporary, ethically and politically complicated context of post-apartheid South Africa. I frame my reading of these texts through the problematics of testimony and discuss how this discursive apparatus for achieving the “right to have rights” structures the way stories addressing political violence and inequality may and may not be told.1 I elaborate on the way each of these novels rejects a testimonial function for literature by declining to make silenced voices speak and by forcing the reader to dwell within the unsettling paradox of the unspeakable. Both novels depict fragments and offer glimpses of voices that cannot be fully articulated within current discursive structures. Rather than [End Page 160] forcing the encapsulation of a voice that is made to speak according to a fixed rights framework, Foe and Disgrace call attention to the inadequacy of the testimonial narrative voice to transform the conditions about which it speaks. Coetzee’s writing in these two novels aims not to develop and introduce subaltern voices so as to supplement or broaden a narrow humanist universal, but instead to interrogate this universal and appeal for a posthumanist articulation of political violence. Foe reveals the ultimate futility of attempting to insert new narrators within the framework of human rights to expand the notion of the universal human. The novel suggests it is necessary instead to question the way narrative functions within this framework. As it encounters the limitations of the postcolonial project of writing back to master narratives, Foe casts doubt on the cathartic and political potential of articulating one’s experiences of oppression and trauma. In refusing to conform to the universal humanist framework that Foe challenges, Disgrace demonstrates the need for a posthumanist implementation of justice. Rather than concentrating on developing and integrating hitherto silenced narrative voices to inflate the humanist universal, the posthumanist approach toward which Disgrace gestures problematizes the application of narrative voice as a determinant of one’s right to have rights. It thereby rejects the humanist ideal of personality development as a way to define proper subject formation.2 Written in late-apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, respectively, Foe (1986) and Disgrace (1999) not only comment on the power dynamics of storytelling but are also caught up in arguments over the political responsibilities that literature should fulfill. In fact, the most prominent debate that structures analyses of Coetzee’s fiction is whether or not it appropriately addresses apartheid. As Brian Macaskill and Jeanne Colleran explain, “The charge most commonly leveled against Coetzee by South African critics is that of political quiescence, of producing novels that neither sufficiently address nor affirm the contiguities between the literary domain and historical-economic political realities” (432). Michael Marais seconds this evaluation, specifying, “During the 1980s, a perennial criticism of Coetzee’s fiction was that it did not engage with the depredations of apartheid” (“From the Standpoint” 229).3 A considerable amount of scholarship is also devoted to responding to this contention.4 Samuel Durrant insists the fiction Coetzee writes is in conversation with the political [End Page 161] reality of apartheid. He suggests, “Coetzee’s novels testify to the suffering engendered by apartheid precisely by refusing to translate that suffering into narrative” (430–1). As a white South African of a relatively privileged class, Coetzee perhaps self-consciously does not attempt to narrate the perspectives of black or coloured South Africans. Instead, he presents metanarratives that comment on the complications of trying...