Programmatic Statements Research Articles

Remembering the Constitution: The Easter Proclamation and Constitutionalism in Independent Ireland

The phrase “cherishing all the children of the nation equally” in the Proclamation of the Republic in 1916 - understood as referring to the rights and the welfare of actual children - is one that has unparalleled resonance in political, legal and social debates in contemporary Ireland, particularly in the light of the long-standing systematic abuse of children that has been brought fully to light in recent years. The power of the phrase is illustrated by the fact that it has been proposed by an Oireachtas committee as the keystone of a new Article in the Constitution dealing with children’s rights. This rhetorical force seems immune to demonstrations that the phrase was intended by its authors in a metaphorical sense, as a reference to different religious and political identities on the island of Ireland. Other, similar, programmatic statements in Irish constitutional history, such as the Democratic Programme of Dail Eireann (1919) and the Directive Principles of Social Policy contained in Bunreacht na hEireann (1937), have never captured the public imagination in the same way. In regard to the latter, a sharp contrast can be drawn between the Directive Principles of Social Policy and the Directive Principles of State Policy contained in the Constitution of India (1950). Whereas the Irish directive principles languish in obscurity, the Indian directive principles are a frequent point of reference in legal and political argument and channel aspirations for a better, more just society just as, in a more limited fashion, the rhetoric of the Proclamation does in Ireland. This contrast prompts reflection on the power of what ordinary citizens imagine the constitution under which they live to provide and to aspire to and the different roles which constitutions play in the creation and maintenance of national identity. The nature of the “constitutional faith” which is thus manifested is a topic of renewed interest in Ireland, at a time of lively debate as to whether the constitution needs to be renewed and as to what role the rhetorical tropes of the Proclamation should play in that process.

Media Literacy and the Tyranny of the Narrative

Media literacy seeks to address the proliferation of new literacy practices in an increasingly mobile, global, digital world. Broadly analogous to print literacy, media literacy promotes the analysis (reading) and production (writing) of texts in a variety of forms. In practice, conflicting assumptions about the definitions, practices, and impact of media literacy are at the heart of contentious debates about its fundamental aims, purposes, and value. Consequently, as media literacy promotes greater access to a wider range of tools and texts, it is increasingly mired in age-old debates about the uses of literacy to frame, shape, and control public discourse. In the process, it touches on the relationships between media literacy, cultural narratives, and the arts. Since literacy is inextricably linked to storytelling, non-narrative elements of structure and style are seen as peripheral, supportive factors with regard to reading, writing, listening, and speaking in the context of alphabetic literacy. This is especially true in formal schooling, resulting in the deconstruction of media messages as a common media analysis technique in media education. Narrative and documentary filmmaking are most often understood and taught as a craft of storytelling--much like creative writing. The dramatic question, the arc, and the resolution of conflict are the essential ingredients for traditional storytelling. The craft of cinematography and editing are in the service of construction. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Just as an understanding of structure is essential to print literacy, a grounding in the arts is central to both media analysis and production. Without this knowledge, media educators are more likely to create learning environments that echo a narrow range of literal and traditions designed for alphabetic literacy. This is especially prevalent with regard to the uses of media literacy as another channel for the inculcation of values in formal schooling. When used as a vehicle for content delivery, media literacy talks the talk of critical literacy and walks the walk of a traditional do as I say school marm. The inordinate focus on storytelling at the expense of aesthetics represents a of the narrative that privileges content over form. The result is a misguided and stunted vision for media literacy that offers little creative flexibility for experimentation with either aesthetics or and ignores the role of artistic movements in shaping interpretive frameworks and contexts. Outside of school, students produce, distribute, and critique a wide range of media through open source global networks. In the process, some daring and creative experiments with both and form have emerged. Although the work veers from the formalist/structuralist approaches of non-narrative filmmaking in the last century, it is gratifying to know that the spirit of experimental media as a form of play, resistance, and subversion is still alive and well in a digital world. THE GUERRILLA MEDIA REVIVAL The tension between form and content is an age-old debate in artistic circles, but new to many media literacy advocates. In 1974, cineaste Amos Vogel presented an alternative to the tyranny of the in his bestselling book Film as a Subversive Art (1974). He notes that avant-garde artists experiments with both form and content function as a direct challenge to the ideological and political power of mainstream commercial cinema: The avant-garde offers no solutions or programmatic statements, but a series of intricate challenges, hints, and coded messages, subverting both form and content. In this fundamental sense, it is by definition an aesthetic and a political movement ... In its works, film is sacked, atomized, caressed, and possessed in a frenzy of passionate love. (1) As a subversive act. …

Yet Another Turn? The Evolutionary Project in Economic Geography

What does the economic in economic geography stand for? For much of the 1990s up to the more recent past, answers to this pertinent question frequently referred to the embeddedness-network paradigm of the new economic sociology. At the same time, economic geography more and more drew inspiration, metaphors, and practices from an increasingly diverse range of schools. In terms of the disciplinary orientation, economic geography, on the one hand, remains firmly engaged with sociology, although interest seems to expand from the Granovetterian paradigm to the poststructuralism of Latour and Callon. On the other hand, economic geography’s interest in heterodox economic geography is gaining new momentum. Above all, evolutionary approaches have attracted considerable attention that most recently culminated in a range of programmatic statements to develop a distinct evolutionary economic geography. It is these attempts to develop a collective agenda that Danny MacKinnon, Andrew Cumbers, Andy Pike, Kean Birch, and Robert McMaster take issue with. Subsequently, Ron Boschma and Koen Frenken, Jürgen Essletzbichler, and Geoffrey Hodgson comment on this “sympathetic critique.” A rejoinder by Andy Pike and his coauthors concludes this symposium.

Evolution in Economic Geography: Institutions, Political Economy, and Adaptation

Economic geography has, over the past decade or so, drawn upon ideas from evolutionary economics in trying to understand processes of regional growth and change. Recently, some researchers have sought to delimit and develop an “evolutionary economic geography” (EEG), aiming to create a more systematic theoretical framework for research. This article provides a sympathetic critique and elaboration of this emergent EEG but takes issue with some aspects of its characterization in recent programmatic statements. While acknowledging that EEG is an evolving and pluralist project, we are concerned that the reliance on certain theoretical frameworks that are imported from evolutionary economics and complexity science threatens to isolate it from other approaches in economic geography, limiting the opportunities for cross-fertilization. In response, the article seeks to develop a social and pluralist conception of institutions and social agency in EEG, drawing upon the writings of leading institutional economists, and to link evolutionary concepts to political economy approaches, arguing that the evolution of the economic landscape must be related to processes of capital accumulation and uneven development. As such, we favor the use of evolutionary and institutional concepts within a geographical political economy approach, rather than the construction of some kind of theoretically separate EEG—evolution in economic geography, not an evolutionary economic geography.

Wirklichkeit und Literatur: Strategien dokumentarischen Schreibens in der Weimarer Republik by Matthias UeckerRealistisches Schreiben in der Weimarer Republik. (Schriften der Ernst-Toller-Gesellschaft, 5) by Sabine Kyora, Stefan Neuhaus

602 Reviews insights into the relationship between literature and media technology and should open further avenues for reading Kafka's work in the context ofmedia studies. University of Miami Markus Zisselsberger Wirklichkeit und Literatur: Strategien dokumentarischen Schreibens inderWeimarer Republik. ByMatthias Uecker. Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang. 2007. 567 pp. 87.20; ?51. ISBN 978-3-03911-057-5. Realistisches Schreiben in der Weimarer Republik. Ed. by Sabine Kyora and Stefan Neuhaus. (Schriften der Ernst-Toller-Gesellschaft, 5) Wurzburg: Konigshausen & Neumann. 2006. 340 pp. 39.80. ISBN 978-3-8260-3390-2. The issue of realism in literaturewas far from new in theGermany of the 1920s, but it was debated with particular intensity in thatperiod for reasons which are clearly connected to the circumstances of the time. 'Sachlichkeit', with itswide range of semantic resonances, became a focal term fordiscussions about attitudes to lifeand political issues in thewake of the First World War, aswell as forconceptions ofwhat cultural activity and artistic representation ought to be about. In a literary context this trendwas associated with a complex and ideologically inflected proliferation of programmatic statements as well as a strong tendency among younger authors to favour documentary approaches towriting.While thepractice of documentary writ ing continued during the 1930s, not least as an instrument of political propaganda both forand against National Socialism, theprogrammatic positions associated with Neue Sachlichkeit were vehemently challenged from a variety of perspectives from the late 1920s onwards, and the debate about them had effectivelyexhausted itself by the time theNazi regimewas installed in 1933. Matthias Ueckers book conducts a methodical review of the issues associated with Neue Sachlichkeit as a literary phenomenon. It closely examines the terms of the debate about documentary writing and its role in challenging traditional conceptions of literature,and itgives thorough accounts of the impact of documen tary approaches on the plays and novels as well as on the literary reportage of the Weimar period. It also relates these phenomena to parallel developments in film, in the production of illustrated books, and in journalism. In places the exposition of key ideas isperhaps over-dependent on a narrow range of authors (Egon Erwin Kisch, Erik Reger, Siegfried Kracauer, and Joseph Roth are particularly favoured). But Ueckers close attention to the precise nuance ofmany aspects of the polemics and thepractice ofwriters in the 1920s makes itthe sort of book that scholars would be well advised to consult in futurewhen checking their own thinking about what was really at stake in the literarydebates of the time. The book does, however, have limitations. The absence of an index makes it difficult to use in a targeted way; and given its focus on factors that prompted debate about the nature and function of literature, it isunfortunate that it makes no reference to thework ofHarro Segeberg on how authors of the period interacted creatively with such new media as radio (Segeberg, Literatur imMedienzeitalter: Literatur, Technik und Medien seit 1914 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchge MLR, 104.2, 2009 603 sellschaft, 2003)). But themost serious constraint on the effectiveness of Uecker's analysis arises from his choice ofmethodological orientation. Some twelve pages of his opening chapter, inwhich he reviews possible theoretical approaches to his subject, are given over to an admirably cogent account of the limitations ofNiklas Luhmann's systems theory as an instrument foranalysing the functions of literature (Luhmann speaks of art ingeneral as a 'system', rather than literature inparticular; when applied to literature,his thinking is liable to generate tautological definitions; it makes no allowance for the role of the author as an individual; and itsfundamental conception of a system stabilizing itself 'autopoietically' in response to challenges from its environment is of limited value when considering the nature of literature as a system of communication with open and diffuse boundaries towards other domains of social activity). And yet Uecker cleaves to the notion of literature as a 'system' defending itself against encroachment by other 'systems'. The reason for this appears to be that themodel of 'literature' he has adopted is firmlybased on the notion of 'truth' rather than 'reality' as the hallmark of literarywriting, as arti culated in the aesthetic thought of Schiller and Hegel. A sense of binary opposition between thismodel of'literature...

Devious Truths

This essay invokes one of Dickinson's better-known programmatic statements, "Tell all the truth but tell it slant - " (Fr1263), to explore the narratological and antinarratological aspects of truth-telling. The exploration is further pursued through a reading of the poem "Tell as a Marksman - were forgotten" (Fr1148) based on the story of William Tell. Incorporating an acknowledgement that there are different kinds of truth, Tell's story helps to explain why Dickinson celebrates both circuitous speech and the utter straightforwardness of a cry. Further, Dickinson's manner of retelling Tell's story helps to explain why circuitous speech must be conceived of as a broad category encompassing even the didacticism of her friend J. G. Holland. Holland's moralizing essays, often criticized for their banality, bear comparison with Dickinson's pedagogical manner in "Tell as a marksman," and provide an apposite model for the slant speech of "Tell all the truth."

Regional Governance and Rural Development in Germany: the Implementation of LEADER+

This article deals with the currently widely discussed concept of regional governance and investigates the roles this concept actually plays within rural development policy and its implementation in Germany. The main question is whether or not ‘regional governance’ is just a fashionable scientific term. Can we really observe impacts of the regional governance discussion on policies for sustainable regional development in rural areas in Germany? To answer this question the programmatic statements of the EU community initiative LEADER+ are analysed against the background of the most important regional governance criteria. Subsequently, a deeper look into the implementation of LEADER+ in six German regions shows that regional governance still needs some forms of hierarchical co‐ordination by higher levels of state. Some major problems for the implementation of regional governance in LEADER+ as well as some important positive impacts of the programme are identified. These show that, despite all potential problems, the concept of regional governance has the potential to make a significant contribution to the successful development of rural areas.

Argumente für die ‘Gestalt’ des ‘neuen Soldaten’? Musils Mann ohne Eigenschaften und Jüngers Der Arbeiter im sprachlich-rhetorischen Vergleich

The study of literary modernism continues to be faced with a recurring methodological deadlock: Whereas literary scholars tend to explore the aesthetic and epistemological potential of the models of language and identity advanced and practiced by modernist writers, interpreters ranging from disciplines as diverse as cultural studies and the history of science and technology point out (especially in more recent times) the passive complicity of these writings with more mundane contemporary ideologies. In the specific case of Musil’s magnum opus, this claim is often reinforced by the suggestion that the man without qualities displays affinities with Junger’s (politically problematic) position during the interbellum. This claim is loosely based on shared terminological backgrounds (the psycho-technical method of experimental psychology, the pervasive “Gestalt”-terminology) and on a vague sense of similarities in the biographical profile (the support of and active participation in World War I). This article argues, however, that such ‘history of ideas’-reconstructions need to be supplemented by a rhetorical analysis of the way in which concepts and ideas are mediated in narrative and argumentative structures. The article hence reassesses the Musil-Junger comparison thoroughly. But beyond that it also advances a terminology that is able to explore the way in which programmatic statements (concerning the new speeds and intensities of post-war modernity and the experiment to grasp their epistemological consequences) are framed argumentatively so as to constitute different discourse tactics.

Genealogy and Governmentality

AbstractThe essay aims at an assessment of whether and to what extent the history of governmentality can be considered to be a genealogy. To this effect a generic account of core tenets of Foucauldian genealogy is developed. The three core tenets highlighted are (1) a radically contingent view of history that is (2) expressed in a distinct style and (3) highlights the impact of power on this history. After a brief discussion of the concept of governmentality and a descriptive summary of its history, this generic account is used as a measuring device to be applied to the history of governmentality. While both, the concept of governmentality and also its history retain certain links to genealogical precepts, my overall conclusion is that particularly the history of governmentality (and not necessarily Foucault's more programmatic statements about it) departs from these precepts in significant ways. Not only is there a notable difference in style that cannot be accounted for entirely by the fact that this history is produced in the medium of lectures. Aside from a rather abstract consideration of the importance of societal struggles, revolts and other forms of resistance, there is also little reference to the role of these phenomena in the concrete dynamics of governmental shifts that are depicted in the historical narrative. Finally, in contrast to the historical contingency espoused by genealogy and the programmatic statements about governmentality, the actual history of the latter can be plausibly, albeit unsympathetically, read in a rather teleological fashion according to which the transformations of governmentality amount to the unfolding of an initially implicit notion of governing that is subsequently realised in ever more consistent ways. In the final section of the essay I turn towards the field of governmentality studies, arguing that some of the more problematic tendencies in this research tradition can be traced back to Foucault's own account. In particular, the monolithic conceptualisation of governmentality and the implicit presentism of an excessive focus on Neoliberalism found in many of the studies in governmentality can be linked back to problems in Foucault's own history of governmenality. The paper concludes with suggestions for a future research agenda for the governmentality studies that point beyond Foucault's own account and its respective limitations.

Franz Boas: cultural history for the present, or obsolete natural history?

Recently, some neo‐Boasian anthropologists have portrayed Boas as an anthropologist with a deep sense of history, of the individual, and of agency. Focusing on Boas's ethnographic practice rather than his theoretical and programmatic statements, I first find an ‘atomistic’ (opposite of holistic) ethnographer, and a deep convergence between this atomism and Linnaean‐type natural history. In Foucault and Jacob's interpretation of natural history, this means studying socio‐cultural phenomena through their external manifestations, and removes historicity, and even individual cultures, from Boas's ethnography. Reviewing possible counter‐evidence from the holistic Boas (his work on style, meaning, the ‘genius of a people,’ texts, secondary explanations, and psychology), I retrieve the same natural historian, and the same atomism. All these facets of his practice thus appear as surface manifestations of this underlying épistémè, which provides a single interpretative framework making it possible to integrate most of his ethnographic work. Overall, this worldview leaves little, or no, room for individuals and their agency.

THE EARLY SOCIAL SCIENCE OF W. E. B. DU BOIS

Using the critical tools of social science, W. E. B. Du Bois challenged the White supremacism of his era. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he presented his views on social inquiry in various programmatic pieces (e.g., “The Study of the Negro Problems” and “The Atlanta Conferences”), all the while conducting empirical research on the conditions and experiences of African Americans. This essay examines the ways in which Du Bois's programmatic statements were elaborated in his early works of social science, notably: his goal of scientific truth, the specificity of his research scope, and the research topics for investigation. Three of Du Bois's projects—The Philadelphia Negro; The Negroes of Farmville, Virginia; and the Atlanta University Publications—are detailed. In addition, this essay derives several insights from Du Bois that address issues common to debates in the philosophy of social science, such as the controversies over researcher neutrality and the rigor of politically engaged scholarship.

Lost in Quotation: Nuances behind E. T. A. Hoffmann's Programmatic Statements

E. T. A. Hoffmann spoke with the conviction of one who thought to reveal the essence of music. However, the bold and emphatic character of his words masked the subtleties and the variations of his positions. This article examines their nuances from two perspectives. It first examines the literary techniques he used to present his ideas and to give them substance. He presented his ideas in alternately enthusiastic and satirical tones. He used words connotatively, and he dealt different positions to different narrators and characters. Second, the article discusses the course of his career and the cast of his writings. After he received critiques of his high-handed attitudes in the Fantasiestucke (1814) and after he rejoined the Prussian bureaucracy, he changed the tenor if not the foundations of his positions. In its appendix, the article offers the first English translation of the most striking of the critiques: Jean Paul's preface to the Fantasiestucke.

Goal attainment in urban ecology research: A bibliometric review 1975–2004

We analyze a core literature of urban ecology (all articles published in Urban Ecology and Urban Ecosystems from 1975–2004, n = 261) to support a reflexive analysis of the field. We structure this critical analysis based on criteria derived from programmatic statements made by scientific societies, research funding organizations and academic institutions regarding what urban ecology should be. Specifically, we assess the extent to which the literature reflects, and has evolved to reflect, a commitment to strengthen and expand the discipline of ecology create a transdisciplinary enterprise, and contribute to social and ecological wellbeing through applied research and policy engagement. Findings indicate that the literature strongly reflects these commitments, as these three tenets usefully describe the field and its evolution. We do, however, identify a tendency over time toward a more strictly disciplinary orientation. Ecological science is increasingly dominant and threatens to crowd out other scientific perspectives. This trend suggests that the field is maturing in the institutional sense, but perhaps at the cost of intellectual diversity, which many believe to be the basis of innovative solutions.

Boundary-Thinking in Theories of the Present

Theories of the present have converged on changes in spatialization or the spatial order of societies. This article discusses the focus on borders and boundaries in programmatic statements on reflexive modernity or remodernization (RM) by Latour and Beck. It is insufficient to say that boundary-marking and border-making become simply more fraught or obvious. There is an historicity and dynamic quality which are central to these analyses which are best understood in terms of the intangible aspects, or virtuality, of borders and boundaries. A dynamic, four-part ontology is advanced to elucidate the functioning of borders as interfaces and liminal zones with their own internal semiotics and emergent meanings and effects. This is the basis of a critique of RM. Further, a more diverse set of methods than might be supposed is required to research boundary phenomena, which social sciences are ill-equipped to undertake.

The Modern Restoration: Re-Thinking German Literary History 1930-1960 by Stephen Parker, Peter Davies, Matthew Philpotts

592 Reviews The Modern Restoration: Re-thinking German Literary History I930-I960. By STE PHEN PARKER, PETER DAVIES, and MATTHEW PHILPOTTS. Berlin: de Gruyter. 2004. x+393 pp. E98. ISBN 3-II-OI8II3-4. This revaluation of German literary history in the middle decades of the twentieth century is long overdue. It represents the culmination of a collaborative three-year project funded by the AHRB in which Stephen Parker and his colleagues set out to scrutinize the I930-60 periodization for the first time. This takes forward the pioneering work of Hans Dieter Schifer and Frank Trommler, who, in the 1970s, both questioned the significance of political date boundaries (933, I945) for the development of German literature at the time and posited instead a period of artis tic conservatism or 'restoration' between 1930 and I960. Their work importantly revealed aesthetic continuities across the political caesuras of I93 3 and I945, and be tween writers across the geographically and politically fragmented literary landscape of the Nazi era. Parker, Peter Davies, andMatthew Philpotts characterize their 'restorative' period model with two key parameters that are set against the background of an ongoing crisis from the late I920S onwards (economic depression, the rise of Nazism, exile and dictatorship). The first parameter is the 're-assertion of the conventional bour geois institution of literature', which sees a broad shift from 'Sachlichkeit' towards 'Innerlichkeit', from the mere 'Schriftsteller' or 'Journalist' to an elitist notion of the 'Dichter', and a renewed emphasis on the importance of literary tradition. The second is the 'search for stability of meaning' which seeks to resecure the relationship between author, text, and reader that had been partially undone by certain avant garde movements. This periodization thesis isexplored in two complementary parts. The first presents a highly illuminating synchronic study of three sets of literary journals between 1930 and I960: at 1930 (Die Kolonne, Die Linkskurve, Die literarische Welt), between 1933 and 1945 (Das innere Reich, MaJ3 und Wert, Das Wort), and after 1945 (Der Ruf, Merkur, Sinn und Form, Aufbau). The authors uncover similarities between the aesthetic programmes of a range of journals in the period and show how these publications reflected and helped shape an ostensibly 'restorative' literary climate around I930, which persisted into the following decades. By taking account of the ideological agendas within the journal corpus and their role in shaping literary historical change, the authors guard against the excessive privileging of aesthetic criteria-a criticism that has been levelled against Schiifer. The second part offers a diachronic dimension to the project, tracing the development of five authors whose literary careers traverse the I930-60 period and who hail from a range of ideologies and backgrounds: Gottfried Benn, Johannes R. Becher, Bertolt Brecht, Giinter Eich, and Peter Huchel. Eich and Huchel convincingly fit the restorative paradigm, since they belonged to the young generation of 'non-Nazi' writers at the centre of Schafer's thesis. Becher, Benn, and Brecht accord less comfortably with it. There seems to be an over-reliance on the programmatic statements of editors, critics, and writers alike as evidence of the 'restorative dominant', with too little empirical proof derived from the literature itself. More fundamentally, the underlying dialectic between 'conservation' and 'innova tion' in the period model seems too rigid and broad-brush. It assumes engagement with tradition to be a restorative gesture and obscures more subtle and complex rela tionships between poets and tradition. The analysis of the journals frequently yields contemporary evidence of amore nuanced understanding of the interplay between tradition and innovation; examples are the contributions byWilly Haas inDie litera rische Welt (p. 63), Thomas Mann inMaJ3 und Wert (p. 96), and Hans Paeschke and Hans Egon Holthusen in Merkur (pp. 147 and I50). Philpotts in fact argues that T. S. MLR, IOI.2, 2006 593 Eliot's reconciliation of tradition and originality is 'paradigmatic for the pOst-I930 consciousness' (p. I5 I), but without taking this insight further. If Eliot's position is representative of the period, then its (in)compatibility with the restorative paradigm needs explaining, as do the clear historical continuities with the pre-I930 period. These tensions suggest that the binary model of literary evolution used by Parker, Davies...

Artificial Intelligence: The Next Twenty-Five Years

Through this collection of programmatic statements from key figures in the field, we chart the progress of AI and survey current and future directions for AI research and the AI community.

Imagining The Sociological Imagination: the biographical context of a sociological classic.

Charles Wright Mills's arguments in The Sociological Imagination are very popular and this paper focuses on the biographical context in which his programmatic statements were occasioned. This breaks new ground by locating The Sociological Imagination and earlier programmatic statements in the professional and personal travails that motivated them. This approach is adopted in order to display the intersection between biography and sociology in Mills's life and career, a feature that he made a central part of sociology's promise. The paper utilizes this approach to reflect on the reasons why The Sociological Imagination became so popular and was able to transcend Mills's general unpopularity at the time of his death; and as part of the explanation of why the dismissal of the book on its publication contrasts with the contemporary view, enabling it to transpose successfully to a time significantly different than at its writing.

Institutional Shaping of Cultural Memory: Digital Library as Environment for Textual Transmission

The emerging trends in digital(ized) collection development from 1997 are examined using a sample of projects accessible through Web‐based registries of the Association of Research Libraries and the Digital Library Federation. The analysis focuses on thematic repertoire, narrative structuring, underlying historiographic principles, presentation, and the context of institutionalization, combining empirical and interpretive approaches to understand how digital libraries are involved in the production of knowledge and how memory institutions are currently shaping this record in the digital environment. Digital collections are presently showcasing material previously restricted to scholarly uses, making it available for broader educational purposes. Nevertheless, they resemble the sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐century Cabinets de curiosites in their limited ability to support scholarship or address information needs of defined communities of users. Programmatic statements for developers in the conclusion of the ...

Adding Machines and Logarithms

Sociologists of earlier eras had much more limited computational tools available, but even in the founding era, there were slide rules and printed tables of mathematical functions, mechanical calculators were becoming more common, and punched card tabulating equipmentwas being developed. This article focuses on one particular founder, Franklin H. Giddings, and the kind of computations he did or did not do, using or not using various computational devices then available. Giddings’s reputation, as the leading quantitative sociologist among the founders of the discipline, is compared with his published work. Giddings himself, although a prolific author, did very little original quantitative research. His main contribution to quantitative sociology consisted of his programmatic statements, which helped provide legitimation for subsequent scholars who actually performed quantitative research.

Confessionalization: Reformation, Religion, Absolutism, and Modernity

AbstractThis article describes the theoretical aspects of forty years of research on confessionalization, the dominant idea for interpreting the later German Reformation (1555–1649). It describes programmatic statements, important debates, and research that supports and challenges the paradigm in the area of political and social history. It suggests cultural and intellectual history as strong possibilities for further research on the late Reformation.