Social Prominence Research Articles

The effect of preferential associations on the reproductive performance of group-housed sows

The investigation of social bonds as a measure to improve reproduction in farmed species is an underrepresented research area. This study investigated the effects of preferential associations between group housed sows (average herd size, n = 59) on stillborn and crushed piglet numbers. Preferential associations were described as resting within < 1 m of a conspecific in which the proximity was tolerated > 60 s. The study occurred over 63 consecutive days, broken down into three 21-day periods referred to as cycles. The 21-day cycles represent the time between reintegrating events. Seven days per cycle were selected for observations providing 63 h of footage covering the functional areas of the barn. Production data were taken from one farrowing that occurred after a sow had been transferred from the barn to the farrowing house during the study period. For group-level analysis, the sows were categorised as socially prominent or non-socially prominent. Social prominence is defined as an individual that engages in significantly higher levels of interactions than their sub-group conspecifics. The subgroups were determined by our previous work that identified assortment by social connectivity within the same study herd. Each subgroup was defined as a k-core, in which the k-value represents the level of connectivity of those in the group (i.e., subgroup K1 means sows are connecting with at least one other conspecific). For individual-level analysis, sows were categorised as a sow with stillborn (at least one stillborn piglet) or a sow without stillborn (no stillborn piglets) and as a crushing sow (at least one crushed piglet) or a non-crushing sow (no crushed piglets). Degree centrality was applied to determine the number of interactions that individuals initiated and received. Results showed no overall effects of social prominence on live-born piglets (p = 0.436). Socially prominent sows demonstrated a lower mean rate of stillborn than non-socially prominent sows. Sows with stillborn had significantly lower degree centrality than sows without stillborn (p < 0.05). The numbers of crushed piglets between socially prominent and non-socially prominent sows were variable with crushing sows demonstrating significantly higher degree centrality than non-crushing sows (p < 0.05). Overall, the evidence does not provide a clear relationship between social prominence during gestation and the reproductive outputs of sows. Therefore, further work is required to validate the effects of social position in affiliative networks on the production indices of farmed pigs.

Pierit-au avarii? O privire dinspre Europa de răsărit / Have Avars gone? A view from Eastern Europe

The presence of the Avars in Eastern Europe, particularly in the lands between the Carpathian Mountains and the river Dnieper, has so far been a matter of concern for historians. Archaeologists are skeptical: with the exception of a couple of finds from Budureasca, there are no Early Avar belt fittings anywhere to the north, east, and south from the Carpathian Mountains. In Poland, Avar-age finds cluster in the south (Silesia and Lesser Poland) and are dated after AD 700. The vast majority of those finds, however, are from the very end of the 8th or even the early decades of the 9th century. The sudden interest in things Avar in the lands north of the Sudeten and Carpathian Mountains may signal a desire of local elites to employ the modes of status (and, supposedly, power) representation inside the Avar qaganate. It is however truly surprising that such an interest coincides in time with what historians believe to be a period of decline of the Avar polity. The symbolism of the Avar belt fittings was also harnessed by members of communities who buried their dead in cemeteries excavated in southern Romania. By contrast, there are no Avar-age belt fittings anywhere in the lands to the east from the Carpathian Mountains. During the second half of the 8th and the early 9th century, this region experienced something of a demographic boom, as indicated by the large number of settlement sites. There are also hillforts, but a true concern with marking social status in the material culture cannot be dated before the mid-9th century. When such markers of social prominence became necessary, the language of representation was completely different from that employed earlier by elites in southern Poland who wanted to emulate the Avars. In Eastern Europe, after 850, elites emulated the Khazars, not the Avars.

Who Is Worthy of a Name? Identity, Naming, and Social Difference in News Images’ Captions

This study examined news images and captions published by The Associated Press ( N = 7,455) between 2018 and 2022 to ascertain whether names were more frequently included for certain groups of people. The analysis found that people depicted in the Global North are named far more frequently than in the Global South, and that sports, entertainment, and political images include names more often than news and feature images. These pervasive patterns suggest naming has a discursive function that constructs an Other by excluding familial and cultural connotations inherent in names, forming a hierarchy through opposition, and extending social prominence for certain groups.

Knowledge Management and Cryptocurrencies: review and reflection

In this paper we try to reflect on how one of the financial phenomena of the last twenty years, namely cryptocurrencies, has been analysed by the scientific community of the Knowledge Management (KM) field. The issue is relevant because the raise of cryptocurrencies as an economic asset has been occurring in a time in which KM gained social prominence. And also because the evolution of cryptocurrencies should be also related to knowledge about their own value. Within this context, we present a literature review on papers that exist in the SCOPUS database about cryptocurrencies and KM. After analysing those papers, the general idea is that KM is very far away from the cryptocurrency phenomenon; the reason may be that it is very difficult to use the more common models available on KM to analyse cryptocurrencies; also the economic and social agents that might be interested in KM are not those who invest in cryptocurrencies; finally, the data available on cryptocurrencies are mostly speculative, and it is very difficult to make any scientific study on them. These conclusions may be of interest for the KM community at large, because they indicate a new subfield of research, and for practitioners, because they mean that there is not much science in the evolution of cryptocurrencies themselves. Finally, for policymakers, the findings mean the expanding the possibility of use of cryptocurrencies in societies may be extremely risky given their volatility and the lack of precise scientific knowledge about them. The paper is original because it relates to concepts that have only very seldom and scarcely put together.

Moral beacons: Understanding moral character and moral influence.

We introduce the concept of moral beacons-individuals who are higher in moral character than their peers and prominent within their social environment-and examine the degree to which moral beacons increase the moral awareness of their peers. Using data from cohorts of students in graduate business education across two universities, we applied theory and methods from organizational behavior, personality psychology, and social networks analysis to test two research questions about moral beacons. We used latent profile analysis of data from personality questionnaires and social network surveys completed by graduate business students at two universities (N = 502) to identify individuals classified as moral beacons. We used peer nominations and an in-class business case discussion exercise to assess moral influence. Latent profile analysis identified a latent class of moral beacons in our sample. These individuals received more nominations from their peers in end-of-class surveys as guides for moral thought and action and positively impacted the moral awareness of their peers in a discussion of a difficult business case about possible lead poisoning of employees, but did not significantly change their counterparts' moral awareness in a different case. These results provide promising initial evidence that moral beacons can be distinguished from their peers by both moral character and social prominence and can act as guides for others, at times encouraging greater consideration of the moral aspects of situations and decisions. As these results are the first of their kind, we encourage further replication and investigations of moral beacons and moral influence in other settings.

Fashion Design and Art

Observing the 20th century, it becomes clear how much the definition of fashion as an inferior reflection of art is definitively outdated, in favour of a more complex and equitable relationship of mutualistic inference that places fashion within the ranks of the arts of modernity. Fashion has always utilised art in its rhetoric and draws on an innumerable series of expressions and idioms, contending with art for the esteem and social prominence accorded to high culture. The granted and denied relationship with time appears central in the definition of similarities and differences, essential to understanding mutual inferences and distinctive qualities in today’s increasingly complex and nuanced picture. While fashion constantly seeks (otherwise risking its very existence) a vector of engagement with the real experience of the public and with time (“con-tempo-raneo”), art lives on visionary paradoxes, on a higher spiritual need, translated into form.

French Merchants in Buenos Aires (1816-1825): Economic Opportunities and Difficulties during the Wars of Independence

Unlike other foreigners, the French merchants who migrated to Hispanic America in the 19th century have received little attention, partly because they are supposed to have been few. With the emancipation of the River Plate, the Declaration of Independence in 1816 and the end of the Spanish commercial monopoly – and despite many difficulties due to revolutionary turmoil – some French merchants saw the legal opening of the rioplatense market as an opportunity and became more present in Buenos Aires, although less than their British counterparts. Building upon the Buenos Aires commercial court’s records and data from censuses, this paper sheds light on the French commercial presence in Buenos Aires during the Independence and civil wars, which hampered the circulation of credit instruments, the fluidity of credit relations, and business activities. It shows the importance of merchants’ private initiatives in consolidating the French presence, and how they coped with wartime consequences. Whereas those who were poorly integrated into local society were vulnerable in these times of crisis, others benefited from close relations within the local society and acquired economic and social prominence. Such integration may have contributed to making them key interlocutors for French authorities as they manifested an increased interest in the River Plate in the context of the post-1815 imperial reconfigurations, when international and European rivalries continued in Hispanic America, particularly between France and Britain.

Solidarity happens: Corriente Sindical de Izquierdas, radical trade unionism in democratic Asturias

ABSTRACT In the aftermath of the Franco dictatorship, a pole of workers’ militancy was forged in the city of Gijón around a critical current of Comisiones Obreras, the main Spanish trade union, called the Corriente de Izquierdas (Left Current). This group of workers was the driving force behind some of the most important conflicts of the new democracy, including a strike of strict solidarity that lasted almost three months. Expelled from their union in 1982, the Corriente Sindical de Izquierdas became the main reference point for radical trade unionism in Asturias. Despite its small size and limited presence, for forty years it has been at the forefront of many of the most notorious and agonising conflicts against the deindustrialisation of the city and the region, with trade union methods characterised by their radicalism, but above all, by their strong commitment to solidarity. Such has been its trade union history that the organisation has earned a notable place in Asturian and even Spanish popular culture. Here we will review its evolution as a trade union and what have been the signs of identity that have made it possible for an admittedly small organisation to accumulate such remarkable social prominence and symbolic capital.

Kaura-Zaria Railway: A Desertion of Contemporary Potent Economic Contingencies

Transportation is a prominent infrastructure for sustaining economic momentum especially in areas of diversification of production base, valuable trade expansion network and intimating resources and markets into a coherent and cohesive economy. Nigerian economic diversification is centrally focused on resuscitation of minerals, agriculture and manufacturing development. This quest is securable with development of rail transportation which is precursor for regional productivity by integrating different regions resulting in increased mobility of labor forces, nominal and economical exchange of commodities and enterprises and productive interaction among the national industries. Furthermore, railway transportation system is esteemed to be the key component in business efficiency in the level of proficiency and accessibility it provides to the customers, markets, labor and materials by providing effective information about the capacity of existing transportation infrastructure in enhancing economic momentum. Railroad abandonment is economically disastrous due to its undesirable consequences on the region which lose such services and such deprivation can lead to an adverse effect on economic and social prominence of the region and utterly inhibit the economic expansion and development of a nation. This paper highlights the deterioration of economic activities of geographical north-western states of Nigeria due to abandonment of Zaria-Kaura Namoda railroad terminal as one of the significant infrastructural systems in the country.

Traditional knowledge of land management in Maybrat District, West Papua Province, Indonesia: implication for agriculture development

Abstract. Sagrim M. 2022. Traditional knowledge of land management in Maybrat District, West Papua Province, Indonesia: implication for agriculture development. Biodiversitas 23: 4145-4152. Traditional concepts of land management have been part of the local people in Maybrat, West Papua, Indonesia for generations. On the other hand, the governments, either at central, provincial, or local levels, promote agricultural development to enhance the well-being of the community in Maybrat and Papua in general. Thus, it is interesting to look at whether traditional knowledge and practices of land management in Maybrat can be aligned with development policies enacted by the governments. This research aimed to investigate the traditional knowledge of land management in Maybrat District to support agricultural development using an application of the socio-cultural approach. A semi-structured interview was applied for data collection representing communities of 24 sub-districts in Maybrat District. In total, 200 informants were selected purposively to obtain perceptual knowledge of the land-use system. The results showed that the local people benefit from natural resources in terms of social prominence, ecological prominence, economic prominence, medicinal prominence, energy prominence, and construction prominence. Agriculture is the main land use in Maybrat where it supports the livelihood of local people, especially in terms of economic benefit. Furthermore, the local people in Maybrat have been conducting their local wisdom to preserve the natural resource by using the traditional concepts where the local people have realized the function of vegetated land. Hence, development programs in the agricultural sector promoted by the regional or national governments could accommodate the local knowledge in land management. Yet, assessing the biophysical factors is necessary to monitor the dynamic of land management to achieve sustainability in socio-cultural, economic, and ecological aspects.

The Legal Journey from Legal Education to Lawyering in Bangladesh: A Boon or A Menace

Adversarial System of Courts within the legal realm of the Common Law such as in Bangladesh designates lawyers to high social prominence as professionals of law are the primary interpreters of various laws of the land. Lawyers being social engineers principally act as the consciousness and voice of the citizens of the state. These two characteristics are naturally inherited as energizers by lawyers in the early stages of student-hood. However, how long does that very enthusiasm last, and are there any catalysts to further it? Is the question to reckon with? The profession of law like any other occupation circumnavigates a set of etiquettes that dictates the natural course of the profession. The prime rationale of this paper is to contemplate the etiquettes of the profession, the uncompromisable duties of a practitioner, the grounds that coherently result in either suspension or revocation of practitioners’ licenses along with justifying to its readers the social necessity for ethical lawyers.

Unter Freunden. Nähe und Distanz in sozialen Netzwerken der Spätantike by Seraina Ruprecht

Reviewed by: Unter Freunden. Nähe und Distanz in sozialen Netzwerken der Spätantike by Seraina Ruprecht Lisa Brunet Unter Freunden. Nähe und Distanz in sozialen Netzwerken der Spätantike Seraina Ruprecht Munich: C. H. Beck, 2021. Pp. viii + 360. ISBN: 978-3-406-77399-0 A friend in need is a friend indeed. From philosophical treatises to Euripedian tragedies, friendship is arguably one of the most prevalent themes in ancient Greek writings. Thus, it is unsurprising that friendship in Classical and Late Antiquity has long been at the center of scholarly debate. Whereas earlier studies have regarded terms such as philia and amicitia as "weapons of politics" (Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939], 157), recent work has tended to adopt a slightly broader view, highlighting the relationship with patronage as well as taking into account the emotional dimensions of ancient "friendship." Unter Freunden aligns with these contemporary tendencies but focuses more specifically on friendship in Late Antiquity, and relationships among Christians and non-Christians particularly, topics which have often been overlooked, as Ruprecht rightly remarks. Moreover, with her analysis of the letters written by Libanius as well as Christian authors such as John Chrysostom and the Cappadocian Fathers, she attempts to counterbalance the scholarly emphasis on western authors. Overall, three main research questions are formulated. First and foremost, this book attempts to grasp the social concept of philia in the fourth century. Secondly, specific forms of communication among friends are analyzed, with particular attention paid to expressions of proximity and distance. Finally, the question arises how the concept of philia changed through the increasing Christianization of the Roman empire and its relation to the Christian agape. In Chapter 1, Ruprecht defines friendship as "a cluster of social practices" (15) and she stresses the voluntary and interpersonal nature of this relationship between (near-)peers. Furthermore, she explains her preference to denote friendships in terms of "proximity" and "distance" as opposed to "inclusion" and "exclusion" in order to properly present the various gradations of friendship rather than to think of friendship in terms of absolutes. In this chapter, the problematic interpretation of the term philia as denoting friendship already becomes apparent. As she demonstrates throughout the book, philia does not necessarily correspond to present-day notions of friendship. On the contrary, some examples she provides could be described today as communication among acquaintances at best, frenemies at worst. The epistolary exchanges between Libanius and Anatolius of Berytus, praetorian [End Page 306] prefect of Illyricum, could be seen as examples of the latter (74–83). Chapter 2 concerns the extensive corpus of letters written by Libanius, who is described as a representative of the pagan elite. Following Hans-Ulrich Wiemer, Ruprecht argues that Libanius never rose to the rank of honoratus, for which she convincingly cites fragments from Libanius's corpus. His social prominence therefore ought to be explained through his status as a sophist. Indeed, sophists are known to have had considerable influence within the interactions between the cities of the Greek East and Roman authorities. Libanius's letters reveal his sizeable network of relationships among the social and political elites, ranging from Rome to Milan. A strength of this book is its critical analysis of the epistolary corpus that has survived. That is, most of the sources under analysis are Libanius's letters. Although they most likely were published posthumously, some aspects suggest that Libanius already intended a later publication. Particularly convincing is Ruprecht's theory about Libanius's editorial intervention and that he manipulated the evidence handed down to us. Thus, these letters ought to be understood as a conscious representation of Libanius and his contacts. Still, regardless of their reliability, the letters reveal contemporary norms and expectations of philia. More specifically, they reveal a continuing obligation to exchange favors. As a result, philia relationships contributed significantly to the cohesion of the upper classes. Particularly interesting are Libanius's descriptions of close interactions between friends in everyday life, such as private invitations, dinners and baths. Ruprecht reminds us that these details too were deliberately used for the portrayal of a stable philia in letters. In fact, the letters themselves are exemplificatory of the...

When does reputation lie? Dynamic feedbacks between costly signals, social capital and social prominence.

Performing a dramatic act of religious devotion, creating an art exhibit, or releasing a new product are all examples of public acts that signal quality and contribute to building a reputation. Signalling theory predicts that these public displays can reliably reveal quality. However, data from ethnographic work in South India suggests that more prominent individuals gain more from reputation-building religious acts than more marginalized individuals. To understand this phenomenon, we extend signalling theory to include variation in people's social prominence or social capital, first with an analytical model and then with an agent-based model. We consider two ways in which social prominence/capital may alter signalling: (i) it impacts observers' priors, and (ii) it alters the signallers' pay-offs. These two mechanisms can result in both a 'reputational shield,' where low quality individuals are able to 'pass' as high quality thanks to their greater social prominence/capital, and a 'reputational poverty trap,' where high quality individuals are unable to improve their standing owing to a lack of social prominence/capital. These findings bridge the signalling theory tradition prominent in behavioural ecology, anthropology and economics with the work on status hierarchies in sociology, and shed light on the complex ways in which individuals make inferences about others. This article is part of the theme issue 'The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling'.

Beauty and Power: Beauticians, the Highlander Folk School, and Women’s Professional Networks in the Civil Rights Movement

Abstract In January 1961, fifty-two African American beauticians gathered at the Highlander Folk School, a tiny bastion of racial integration perched in the mountains of Tennessee. They had come to discuss their role in the struggle against American racism. While historians have long acknowledged the importance of gendered networks and women’s organizing within the African American freedom struggle, the history of the beauticians who gathered at Highlander demonstrates the importance of professional networks as a bridge between different local struggles. In their skill at building networks, and their attention to the patient labor required of such building, beauticians were emblematic of the organizing prowess demonstrated by women throughout the civil rights movement. But unlike most African American women, beauticians had the economic independence and social prominence to gain positions of power usually reserved for men. The intersection of their class status and their gendered identity magnified the liminal status of beauticians—and gave that status special power. As they debated their role in the movement, the beauticians who gathered at Highlander struggled to navigate between autonomy and connection, and between participatory democracy and institutional hierarchy. Their struggles reveal the inevitable tension that marked social networks within a movement that challenged not only the forces of white supremacy, but also the inequalities of status and economic power that transcended the color line.

Mentoring Migrants for Labor Market Integration: Policy Insights from a Survey of Mentoring Theory and Practice

AbstractThe vast majority of international migrants from developing countries are of working age. And yet, their integration in the formal local labor market of their host countries continues to be a challenge. This paper reviews the scope of mentoring programs as a more systematic policy instrument to facilitate the integration of migrants into the labor market. It synthesizes the multidisciplinary academic research on mentoring. The review highlights the diversity of outcomes indicators and the relevance of context in the choice of mentoring program design. Determinants of success include the personal characteristics of the mentee and of the mentor and the efforts to match them but also the efforts made to account for the human, institutional, financial, and political context in the overall design of programs. Despite the significant progress achieved in understanding the determinants of mentoring effectiveness, the survey shows that there are still many sources of uncertainty on the optimal design of mentoring programs. This justifies a research agenda in a field with growing and significant political and social prominence of direct relevance to both developed and developing countries.

The stability of social prominence and influence in a dynamic sow herd: A social network analysis approach

Social network analysis has developed as a valid technique in animal behaviour; despite an increase in the number of social network research in this field, comparatively few studies have focused on commercial animals. This study investigated a dry breeding sow herd (average = 69) as a model species for identifying socially prominent sows, individuals engaging in significantly higher levels of direct interactions than their conspecifics and socially influential sows, individuals with significantly higher levels of indirect interactions than their conspecifics. Animals were frequently added and removed from the herd during the study, creating a dynamic unstable social environment. In total, 63 h of video observations were obtained over three production cycles. Each production cycle covered 21 days, and behavioural observations occurred on days 1, 2, 3, 7, 14, 20, 21. The social network metrics of degree centrality (number of interactions), betweenness centrality (number of times an individual falls along the shortest path between two individuals) and centralisation (the extent to which a single individual dominates a network) were analysed to assess the stability of aggressive behaviour and preferential associations between production cycles. Preferential associations refer to lying behaviour <1 m from selected partners. Agonistic interactions included biting, thrusting, chasing and displacement behaviour. The results identified subgroup formations within the herd, based upon connectedness. Socially prominent and influential sows were identified within the subgroups, a result unaffected by low centralisation in the preferential association networks and substantial centralisation variance between the aggression networks. Sows quantified as socially prominent in the preferential association and aggression networks did not generally hold this position between production cycles, showing significant changes in degree centrality. Sows also demonstrated inconsistency in social influence in the preferential association networks, again with significant differences in betweenness centrality between production cycles. However, in the aggression networks, betweenness centrality was found to be a stable individual social network metric, with no significant changes in behaviour. Knowledge of the stability of social influence in the aggression networks could improve levels of agonistic interactions as it becomes possible to make predictions of future response to aid and inform intervention or management strategies. These findings highlight betweenness centrality as a powerful alternative tool that extends beyond the traditional methods of analysing dyadic interactions to identify critical animals.

Signs of Reincarnation: Exploring Beliefs, Cases, and Theory by James Matlock

James Matlock’s Signs of Reincarnation discusses important issues related to the belief in reincarnation. These include the historical and social prominence of this belief in various cultures around the world, especially its place in spiritual and religious communities. Matlock also explores data seemly suggestive of reincarnation and attempts to develop a theory of reincarnation that can account for the data collected by parapsychological investigators and researchers. In this way, Matlock aims to show that belief in reincarnation is defensible as a conclusion drawn from what he calls “signs” of reincarnation.&#x0D; Matlock does a good job mapping out the wide range of beliefs about reincarnation across time and culture. His description of various case studies and their salient features is highly informative. And his effort to develop a theory of reincarnation—what he calls a “processual soul theory”—is a laudable attempt at trying to accommodate the various details of interesting case studies and a core idea of reincarnation in the spiritual traditions of the world.&#x0D; Unfortunately, this is where my praise ends. Like many other books on the topic, Matlock’s book suffers from a variety of serious defects. The cavalcade of poor scholarship, conceptual confusion, and impoverished argumentation is particularly egregious given that Signs is allegedly based on the lecture notes for Matlock’s course on reincarnation pitched at the advanced undergraduate or Masters-level graduate seminar. In what follows, I’ll explain why Matlock’s book is paradigmatic of nearly everything that’s wrong with survival research over the past thirty years.

Social Networks in Fifth Grade Classrooms: Who Reports being in a Group and Who Does Not?

The present study examined the behavioral and affiliative differences between 2403 fifth grade students (1307 female, 1096 male) who reported that they belonged to a social group on social cognitive map (SCM) procedures and those who did not even though their peers viewed them as members of a peer group. Students who did not report their affiliations were more often classified as victims of bullying, have lower peer preference, have more peer-assessed internalizing symptoms, and have lower prosocial behavior and social prominence than students who reported their peer affiliates. Females with higher self-reported levels of aggression were more likely to report their peer affiliations. Males with higher self-reported levels of internalizing symptoms were less likely to report their affiliations. Implications and future directions are discussed.

In Stone and Story: Early Christianity in the Roman World by Bruce W. Longenecker

Reviewed by: In Stone and Story: Early Christianity in the Roman World by Bruce W. Longenecker Michael F. Bird bruce w. longenecker, In Stone and Story: Early Christianity in the Roman World (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020). Pp. x + 292. $32.99. This colorful volume by Bruce Longenecker interrogates the material remains of ancient Pompeii—its inscriptions, graffiti, frescoes, villas, tombs, and statues—to explain historical and cultural features of the Roman world with a view to plotting their relevance for understanding early Christianity and the NT. L. attempts to use Pompeii as a window into “the Greco-Roman context in which Jesus-devotion was getting its initial foothold” (p. 6) since the Vesuvian town “intersects with themes and issues evident in the New Testament” (p. 24). After some preliminary explanations of his project and its terminology, L. proceeds to explain various “protocols” in the ancient world related to popular devotion (deities and temples, sacrifice and sin, peace and security, genius and emperor, mysteries and knowledge, death and life), social prominence (prominence and character, money and influence, literacies and status, combat and courts, business and success), and household effectiveness (households and slaves, family and solidarity, piety and pragmatism, powers and protection, banqueting with the dead). L. combines his expertise in the NT and the early church with a captivating comparison of features of life in ancient Pompeii, not just among the literary elites but also among the slaves, freedmen, and plebeians of the city. The volume is incredibly pictorial and amounts to a truly stunning visual display of artefacts from ancient Pompeii. The discussions of slavery, honor/shame, deities, temples, and wealth are as good as one can find anywhere. L. also deploys some imagination in saying things like, “Paul’s rented workshop may well have had frescoes of deities on its wall. Instead of getting paint and covering them over in disgust, Paul probably used those frescoes as conversation starters in his interaction with local people” (p. 48). In sum, L. has written an informative and visually stimulating volume, an ideal companion for survey courses on NT, Christian origins, and early Christianity. Even the most seasoned scholar of the NT can expect to learn something from the various vignettes left in graffiti and inscriptions that L. notices with his keen eye. Given that Pompeii is situated in the western Mediterranean, one wishes we had similar volumes about prominent cities in the eastern Mediterranean that had large Christian concentrations such as Ephesus, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem. Michael F. Bird Ridley College, Parkville Victoria 3052 Melbourne, Australia Copyright © 2021 The Catholic Biblical Association of America

&lt;em&gt;Fortress Besieged&lt;/em&gt;: Cynicism and Qian Zhongshu's Narrative of the Modern Chinese “Self”

As a means of national salvation and mass education, modern Chinese literature gained its cultural and social prominence during the May Fourth Period. However, although one of the most celebrated modern Chinese novels, Fortress Besieged has long been ignored by critics after 1949 and only began to receive renewed attention in the 1980s, largely due to the relaxing political milieu. The novel's marginalization following 1949 occurred largely because Qian did not align himself with his more reform-minded contemporaries and represents a different strand of literary modernism. With a soul significantly enriched by his cosmopolitan visions and literary sensibilities, Qian can be said to possess an alternative understanding of modernity, one which makes this novel a counterdiscourse during an age when literature of the War of Resistance and the Revolutionary Literature constituted the hegemonic narrative modes. Most notably, in Fortress Besieged, Qian de-idealizes the "new women" who are often portrayed as active forces in various progressive projects during and after the May Fourth Movement. Moreover, by calling into question the lofty ideals and taken-for-granted conceptions lauded by his contemporaries, Qian also reveals a profound cynicism, which is itself another factor that made the novel's acceptance politically untenable during the revolutionary period. Thus, in reconsidering the literary space carved out by Qian, we can deepen our understanding of not only the formation of the author's own subjectivities, but also the development of modern Chinese literature more generally.