Review Essay Research Articles

Decline and Fall, Growth and Spread, or Resilience? Approaches to Studying How and Why Societies Change

Abstract: Academic and popular libraries are filled with works seeking to uncover why some past societies collapsed, or to explain why others flourished, or why a few prove resilient against the major shocks and disasters that have doomed so many others. While we have learned much from this diverse set of scholarship, there are still many questions about how these different aspects of societal dynamics relate to each other and we lack clear consensus on the best approach(es) to provide answers. Further, historical precedents of collapse, growth, and resilience are being sought to help craft effective responses to the forces that threaten our contemporary world, from climate change to the risk of global pandemics to rising inequality and sectarian conflict. This essay reviews recent and prominent approaches to these topics and provides some thought on how broad, holistic approaches to studying societal dynamics can shed light on these pressing issues.

How Did They Build the Free Encyclopedia? A Literature Review of Collaboration and Coordination among Wikipedia Editors

Wikipedia has been the poster child for large-scale online open collaboration while few other online open collaboration initiatives have achieved similar success. How did Wikipedians do it? Besides the technical infrastructure, what social dynamics and processes are critical to its success? This essay reviews 217 articles that examined aspects of the behaviors of Wikipedia editors and the processes through which they coordinate and collaborate. Using the Input-Mediator-Output-Input model (IMOI) as the organizing framework, we summarized the key insights in an integrative review. The input factors include editors, their motivations, and the tools they use to support their work. The mediating factors include coordination, governance, leadership, conflict, newcomer socialization, and roles. The outcome focuses on measuring and predicting contribution quantity and quality. We hope our work serves as a road map for researchers who are interested in Wikipedia to learn about prior research and identify future research directions.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance in Shariah Banks: A Review

This review explores the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and financial performance in Shariah banks. Shariah banks, operating under Islamic principles, face unique challenges and opportunities in integrating CSR into their operations. The essay reviews empirical research on the correlation between CSR initiatives and financial performance in Shariah banks, highlighting studies indicating a positive relationship, potential benefits, and stakeholder satisfaction. Counterarguments and conflicting findings are also addressed, acknowledging challenges and limitations. The review discusses the reputational advantages of CSR, including enhanced brand image, customer loyalty, and attraction of socially responsible investors. Moreover, it explores how CSR initiatives align with Islamic values, strengthening the bank's position within the Muslim community. The essay further delves into the challenges faced by Shariah banks in implementing CSR, ensuring compliance with Islamic principles while meeting regulatory requirements. It also addresses potential conflicts between CSR practices and financial goals, emphasizing the need for careful balance and alignment. Lastly, the review explores resource constraints and cost considerations for smaller Shariah banks and proposes strategies for overcoming these challenges. Overall, this review provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between CSR and financial performance in Shariah banks, offering insights into the significance and implications of CSR integration in the Islamic finance industry.

Statistical Fallacies in Claims about ‘Massive and Widespread Fraud’ in the 2020 Presidential Election: Examining Claims Based on Aggregate Election Results 1,2

ABSTRACT Years after the election, a substantial portion of the electorate, including a significant majority of Republican voters and numerous Republican officials, continue to believe that the 2020 election was stolen. This essay reviews claims of alleged massive electoral fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. These claims are based on analyses of aggregate-level election data, which are universally accepted as accurate. Although the underlying data in each of the thirteen claims we review are accurately described, our review reveals that the interpretations of the election data, which suggest massive fraud, are based on invalid statistical or illogical reasoning. In summary, the conclusions about fraud derived from these statistical analyses are categorically incorrect. We believe this article will serve as a valuable educational tool for the press, the public, and students. It underscores the dangers of misusing statistical inference and emphasizes the importance of accurate statistical analysis in political discourse. By discussing statistical fallacies in a non-technical manner, we aim to make our critiques accessible to a broad, non-specialist audience. This significantly contributes to the understanding of misinformation and its impact on democracy and public trust in electoral processes.

Book review essay

Book review essay

Das Paradox der Solidarität: Rezension zu Lea Susemichels und Jens Kastners Unbedingte Solidarität

This essay reviews Lea Susemichel and Jens Kastner's co-edited book Unbedingte Solidarität (Unconditional Solidarity), which was published in 2021. Countering identitarian notions of "community solidarity," the contributions to the volume rethink solidarity based on the concepts of alterity, difference, and inequality. The editors' own conceptual proposal of unconditional solidarity does not, however, determine the relation of the unconditional to the conditions of solidarity. Picking out four articles, we show that, as a result, two readings of the concept of the unconditional are possible, which differ in their respective potential for democratization: the (a) moderate reading attempts to conclusively establish unconditional solidarity; the (b) radical reading understands unconditional solidarity as that which urges us to rework the field of the conditional again and again, without there ever being an end to this process.

Ukraine and Russia, Ireland and Britain: Quasi-colonial subjugation, anti-imperial nationalism and conflict, end of empire, and ‘the lost peace’: A review essay

This essay reviews new books on the fraught relationships between Ukraine, Russia and North Atlatic Treaty Organization countries since 1990, and on comparative studies of quasi-colonial subjugation, the development of anti-imperial nationalism and conflict, and protracted and violent transitions to full national independence in Ireland and Ukraine. There are comparisons of the ways in which four centuries of recurrent tension, conflict and divergence between Ukraine and Russia either resembled or differed from the five centuries of fraught relationships between Ireland and Britain. Ireland’s Great Famine (1846–1849) is compared with Ukraine’s Holodomor (1932–1933). The essay also assesses conflicting attributions of responsibility for ‘squandering’ the opportunity to enhance European security and global peace during the 1990s, and for bringing about dramatic escalations of Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2014 and 2022 – initiating a ‘Second Cold War’ from 2014 onward.

New Reference Books on Romanian Historiography. A Review Essay

A review of Doru Radosav, ed., Istoriografia românească (București: Editura Academiei Române/ Univers Enciclopedic Gold, 2019), xi + 404 pp. + illustrations; and Victor Spinei and Dorina N. Rusu, eds., Enciclopedia reprezentanților scrisul istoric românesc, five volumes (Suceava: Editura Karl A. Romstorfer al Muzeului Național al Bucovinei, 2021), Vol. I (A–C), XL + 699 pp.; Vol. II (D–K), XXVII + 588 pp.; Vol. III (L–N), XXVII + 443 pp.; Vol. IV (O–R), XXVII + 431 pp.; Vol. V (S–Z), XXVII + 553 pp.; and Victor Spinei and Dorina N. Rusu, “Addenda la Enciclopedia Reprezentanților Scrisului Istoric Românesc,” Memoriile Secției de Științe Istorice și Arheologie a Academiei Română, Seria V, Vol. 41 (2022), pp. 195–250.

Emerging perspectives and contemporary debates: assessing the landscape of online media communication research in Central Asia

Abstract This review essay offers an exhaustive examination of the multifaceted role of online media within the Central Asian context. Comprising 11 sections, the essay scrutinizes diverse facets of online media’s impact, spanning from its role in political dynamics to its implications for society, governance, national identity, cultural expression, and e-learning. By identifying recurring patterns, spotlighting ongoing debates, and revealing lacunae in extant scholarship, the essay aims to catalyze further research. Serving as an indispensable resource for scholars, policymakers, and those with an interest in the transformative potential of online media in Central Asia, the review underscores the complexity and dynamism inherent in the influence of online media within the region, fostering a more profound appreciation of this rapidly evolving field of study.

Outlook of Equality in Love - Review of Pride and Prejudice Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, published in 1813

This article is mainly a book review, aiming to discuss the inequality and equality in love reflected in the novel based on the psychology of the characters and plots in Pride and Prejudice mainly through literature analysis. This book review essay first introduces the background of the novel Pride and Prejudice in order to lay a clear foundation of this article, then analyzes how and what factors breed the feelings of pride and prejudice between the two protagonists. And finally, discusses the reality reflected by marriages between some characters in the novel as well expresses author's personal views and feelings.

Review Article: Global Governance in a Complex World

This essay reviews the literature on international regime complexity and international institutional complexity published in three high impact journals between 2009 and 2022. The analysis identifies conceptual ambiguities as it discusses the definitions of complexity proposed by the scholarship. The goal is to highlight indicators of complexity in international politics, with a focus on global governance. These indicators are observable, subject to measurement and comparison. Based on some of these indicators, the essay explores the relationship between complexity and compliance -- or to what extent states implement the legal commitments that they adopted internationally, in light of the literature. The essay makes an original contribution when it chronicles and organizes the scholarship on complexity in terms of agency, scope, and effectiveness. It also analyses the presence and levels of a hierarchical relationship amongst the elements that make up a complex regime or institution. The Scholarship reviewed here constitutes essential reading for any researcher that is interested in global governance, international law, and compliance.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT FASCISM

ABSTRACTBruce Kuklick's Fascism Comes to America: A Century of Obsession in Politics and Culture offers a compact, accessible, and broad‐reaching survey of “the linguistic career of fascism” in the United States. The book charts the widespread use of the term “fascism” across US political, cultural, and intellectual discourse from the early 1920s up through the present, arguing that rampant, uncritical overuse, outright abuse, and other hyperbolic deployments of the term have purged “fascism” of its analytic value and effectively negated its meaningful critical capacities. Moreover, Kuklick contends that this US “addiction to fascism” as a way to malign ideological and political enemies and express anxieties about the fragility of US democracy impedes accurate assessment of legitimate problems with the country's political system and traditions. This review essay offers a critical assessment of Kuklick's approach, interrogating what his narrow analytic focus on rhetoric and ideas misses and what nuance gets lost in declaring “fascism” a “political swear word” and little else. This thoroughly researched accounting of fascist invectives succeeds in showing that the term has consistently lacked reliable and substantive meaning, but as a survey, the book falters in collapsing its contexts, treating each and every usage of the term as equal and equally meaningless. Engaging with new scholarship on fascism, antifascism, and the modern US Right, as well as with Black radical political thought on fascism since the 1930s, this review essay challenges Kuklick's conclusion that the term “fascism” should be purged from public and intellectual discourse. In turn, it proposes a set of approaches for how we might continue our engagement with greater precision and analytic care.

Contributions to a New Enlightenment: The Ecological Condition

My review essay on the outline of a reconfiguration of the trajectory and task of the humanities presented by the New Institute strives to critically situate and supplement some of the key concepts addressed by the authors. In particular, I draw attention to the question of what a humanist orientation toward futurity could mean in the context of the increasing predominance of prognostic forms of knowledge. Only after addressing the question of the temporalization of the humanities do I delve into the authors’ core concern: the configuration of a “New Enlightenment” and its claim to sever the link between reason and domination in order to escape the violent disposition of its historical predecessor. From this complex entanglement, I arrive at the foundation of a new conception of universality suggested by the authors, and endeavor to determine its processual conditions. Lastly, my essay discusses the ecological condition of humankind as a potential horizon of possibility for a modified approach to universality.

The Talented Tenth Meets the Twenty-First Century: Young, Gifted and Diverse in the Post-Affirmative Action Era

Abstract In the wake of the Supreme Court's dismantling of affirmative action policies in higher education in its SFFA v. Harvard ruling, this review essay offers a detailed explication of the relevant themes Camille Z. Charles, Rory Kramer, Douglas Massey, and Kimberly C. Torres analyze in “Young, Gifted, and Diverse: Origins of the New Black Elite.” Taking DuBois's conceptualization of the “Talented Tenth” as their starting point, the authors present a combination of quantitative and qualitative research to examine the experiences and aspirations of Black students who matriculated to elite colleges over a decades-long period. This analysis expands Charles et al.'s intersecting themes of social mobility, colorism, and model minority discourses, situating them within a broader discursive field that includes the relevant historical and contemporary sociopolitical contexts as reflected in the Court's majority and dissenting opinions.

“An Enlightened Twenty-First Century?”

A Review Essay of Towards a New Enlightenment: The Case for Future-Oriented Humanities, by Markus Gabriel, Christoph Horn, Anna Katsman, Wilhelm Krull, Anna Luisa Lippold, Corine Pelluchon, and Ingo Venzke. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2022 (published simultaneously in both German and English).

Law's Numbers

Abstract Albert Woodfox's Solitary, a memoir of four decades in solitary confinement, is a painful testimony of the violence of criminal justice and dramatic evidence of survival. This review essay considers Woodfox's account and contends that today African Americans live in a suffocating state displayed in law's numbers: high incarceration rates, police brutality, and summary killings. It argues against viewing Woodfox's testimony as a redemption story so as not to undermine its transformative power. To bring solitary confinement to an end, one must acknowledge that there is no reversal to the damage caused by law's numbers.

L’état Naissant: On Celan's Microliths They Are, Little Stones: Posthumous Prose

Abstract Microliths They Are, Little Stones: Posthumous Prose (2020) represents the culmination of Pierre Joris's fifty-year effort of translating the work of Paul Celan into English. The book contains a small library: aphorisms, fiction, dialogues and notes for dramatic works, theoretical prose, interviews, as well as illustrations. This review essay primarily focuses on notes and drafts toward an unfinished essay called “On the Darkness of Poetry.” It is a major statement of Celan's poetics and still stands as an unmet challenge to poets writing today. Its unfinished state should not be considered a liability but read instead as a formal argument (albeit unintended) that “the alleged thought- or language-scheme of the poem is never ‘finished.’”

Postmortem: Explanations for the Consolidation of the Hungarian Authoritarian Turn after 2010

Abstract This book review essay builds on previous analysis that appeared in Hungarian Studies Review (vol. 48, no. 2, Spring 2021), as it recognizes the past three years and compares a new set of six recently published scholarly monographs that provide explanations of the causes and consequences of the consolidation of authoritarian rule in Hungary since 2010. Together, the otherwise diverse thematic and disciplinary foci of these books converge in establishing the interlocking historical, economic, and political factors that have allowed for the emergence and deepened the hegemony of thus far four consecutive Orbán governments.

8 Greek art: recent developments and current trends

This review essay focuses on recent developments and trends in the study of ancient Greek art. The publications covered date primarily to the period beginning in 2017–2018, though selected earlier works have been included where considered to be of particular merit or importance. Examples have been chosen to span and represent the long Archaic to Hellenistic phases (eighth–first century BC), and a full range of artistic categories and media have been featured in the discussions. In order to structure the large quantity of bibliography available, the presentation is divided into several broad categories according to themes (e.g. sites, reports, guides; exhibitions, conferences, Festschriften) or materials (e.g. sculpture and terracottas; metals, coins, gems, and jewellery). Where possible, digital resources applicable to the discipline have also been mentioned and cited. By way of conclusion, some general observations are made about the subjects of Greek art that seem not only to be the most prevalent in recent scholarship, but also transcend artistic medium, style, and scale – among them the body and adornment, senses and emotion, aesthetics and beauty, religion and performance, and archaeological contexts and intercultural connections.

Noising Creole Abroad: Chatting about Voice; Some Thoughts on Belinda Edmondson’s Creole Noise

This essay reviews Belinda Edmondson’s literary yet cross-disciplinary study Creole Noise: Early Caribbean Dialect Literature and Performance (2022), which questions the Blackness of orality versus the Whiteness of narrative in the growth of Caribbean literature. Caribbean language history and discourse analysis have much to contribute to the exploration of ventriloquist beginnings of the regional narrative as well as to the nuancing of interpretation, and the review calls for such exchange across the relevant disciplines. The review also welcomes comparisons between literary developments of Black American and Caribbean literature that highlight the cross-cultural relevance of Edmondson’s analysis. Creole Noise is timely and useful in contributing positively to such matters as border disputes on Caribbeanness, with regard to regional and diasporic writing, and to challenges that face writers who are native speakers of Caribbean Creole as they convey local voices to foreign readers.