Time Of Possibilities Research Articles

Anticipating Place in the Emergent Darkness of the Urban Night

This paper explores the unfulfilled spatial potential of the darkening urban nightscape. And more specifically, how critical concepts of possibility might provide urban theorists access to a night that has yet to take form. In doing so, I build on the presumption that global movements to decrease energy consumption and light pollution will lead to a reduction in nighttime uses of artificial illumination. And that as cities transition to sober lighting technologies, nocturnal darkness can take a more active role in shaping urban space. To what extent this transition will be deployed, in what forms and with what outcomes, are open questions. The urban night remains a space and time of possibility. Its situation is fluid, and its parameters not yet fully drawn. In this state, I suggest that the darkening night lends itself to ontological considerations of what Ernst Bloch termed the anticipatory, or an analysis of what is both in process and on the way. It is an analysis that is firmly situated in the realities of the present urban night, while encouraging the projection of alternate imaginaries for a more sustainable future. Through the analysis of possibility, we can anticipate new ways of composing, and being in, nocturnal urban space.

Acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease: updates in diagnosis and treatment.

To summarize the latest developments in rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease (RHD) prevention, (early) diagnosis, and treatment. The revised Jones criteria have demonstrated increased sensitivity and specificity for rheumatic fever diagnosis in high-risk populations. The management of rheumatic fever remains symptom-based, with no treatment options proven to alter the disease course or prevent chronic RHD. The revised World Heart Federation (WHF) guidelines for the echocardiographic diagnosis of RHD encourage task-shifting of RHD screening, extending reach in endemic regions. These guidelines also present an A-D classification of RHD and provide recommendations for the management of early disease. Integrated models for RHD screening within existing health structures are emerging and automated intelligence is showing potential to support RHD screening and diagnosis. Innovative strategies to foster adherence and equitable access to secondary prophylaxis, such as re-examination of the efficacy of oral penicillin, trials of longer acting penicillin formulations and implants are underway. There is renewed interest and investment in a well tolerated and effective GAS vaccine. We are living in a time of possibility with global acceleration to address the prevailing burden of RHD. Together, we can ensure that RHD does not once again fall off the global health agenda, until equitable elimination has been achieved.

Possible Futures

Possible Futures

On Improvisational Islam: Indonesian Youth in a Time of Possibility, by Nur Amali Ibrahim

On Improvisational Islam: Indonesian Youth in a Time of Possibility, by Nur Amali Ibrahim

Improvisational Islam: Indonesian Youth in a Time of Possibility

The book entitles Improvisational Islam: Indonesian Youth in a Time of Possibility by Nur Amali Ibrahim describes about unconventional and unexpected ways of being a Muslim in Indonesia. As the author argues, the case study of Indonesia occurred in a heightened political context in which the life of Muslims is portrayed to be a practitioner of Islamic religion by observing their scriptures. At the same time, Muslims also draw on the non-traditional ideas and practices that originated from the West that circulate in their society. In some ways, these two groups of organizations are trying to envision alternative ways of being Muslims to make them independent from the established religious and political authorities. The former observes the Islamic scriptures alongside the Western human sciences. While the latter utilizes the methods originating from the business world to promote religious understanding and spiritual rebirth, including self-help, accounting, and auditing. However, both groups argue that they have a great degree of improvisation and creativity in their interpretations of Islam. In general, the book contains five main chapters. They are discussed under the topics: The Tremblingness of Youths, Religion Unleashed, Accounting for the Soul, Playing with Scriptures, and From Moderate Indonesia to Indonistan. Based on the nature of its discussion, they can be categorized in the subjects of anthropology, religion, and sociology. Published by Cornell University, Ithaca, this book is a good read in its field.

Young Adults' Perceived Purposes of Emerging Adulthood: Implications for Cohabitation

ABSTRACTThe authors investigated associations between young adults' perceived purposes of emerging adulthood and their attitudes toward and participation in cohabitation. In a sample of 775 never married individuals, ages 18–29 (69% female, 69% white) from the United States, young people's perceptions of this period of life were associated with their acceptance of cohabitation, their reasoning for accepting cohabitation, and the likelihood of cohabiting. Results showed that the perception that emerging adulthood is a time to prepare for future family roles was negatively associated with acceptance of cohabitation whereas the perception that emerging adulthood is a time to take risks was positively associated with acceptance of cohabitation. The perception that emerging adulthood is a time to prepare for future family roles was associated with an increased likelihood of having cohabited while the perception that emerging adulthood is a time of possibilities was associated with a decreased likelihood of having cohabited. Implications for future research are discussed.

Robert S. Levine, Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary NationalismDislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Nationalism. Robert S. Levine. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Pp. x+322.

<i>Robert S. Levine</i>, Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Nationalism<i>Dislocating Race and Nation: Episodes in Nineteenth-Century American Literary Nationalism</i>. Robert S. Levine. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. Pp. x+322.

Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade (review)

Reviewed by: Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade Thomas Wien Making the Voyageur World: Travelers and Traders in the North American Fur Trade. Carolyn Podruchny. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. Pp. 416 The plot of Making the Voyageur World unfolds like a journey, following its supremely mobile protagonists from Lower Canada to the farthest reaches of the ‘upper country’ and from the beginning to the end of their careers. The sights along the way are varied indeed. The introductory chapter offers a quantitative portrait of the occupational group over the period of study (1760–1820), discusses characteristic voyageur values, and proposes subversive ways of reading the fur-trade clerks’ and partners’ writings that are the book’s main source. It is here, too, that Carolyn Podruchny presents the notion of liminality, which frames her analysis throughout. Beginning her special kind of traveller’s account at the point of embarkation, she first explores the Lower Canadian setting and the hiring process. Consideration of the voyageurs’ ethic of non-accumulation rounds out this mostly economic chapter. Chapter 3, [End Page 586] much of which first saw print as a prize-winning article in this journal, deals with the ritual aspects – most memorably, mock baptisms – of the voyageurs’ journeys. Podruchny eloquently argues that these rites of passage, as well as the men’s appropriation of landscape and their workplace terminology, show that ‘the journey itself was a social space for the teaching of new values’ (53). Next comes a study of the labour along the canoe routes. Podruchny skilfully weaves material drawn from folksongs into the analysis of the proverbially difficult working conditions. Introduced by a stimulating analysis of maypoles, chapter 5 (‘The Theater of Hegemony’) examines forms of voyageur resistance to masters’ control of their lives. The next chapter is devoted to voyageur sociability – play, camaraderie, rivalry, and the possibility of homoerotic relations. In chapter 7, we arrive at the interior posts, the scene of varied work routines and more intense interaction with Aboriginal groups, notably in trade. That interaction is viewed from a gender perspective in the next chapter, analyzing relations between voyageurs and Aboriginal women. Podruchny depicts a highly sexualized fur trade, stressing reciprocity between the partners and the transitory nature of many relationships. The last chapter briefly surveys the fate of ex-voyageurs, especially those who remained in the interior as freemen. Celebrating fluidity, syncretism, and métissage, Making the Voyageur World is about cultural interaction. Like other ethnohistorians studying the colonial period, Podruchny sets her story in a ‘time of possibility’ in intercultural relations (308) and chooses to emphasize ‘cooperation rather than conflict between European Americans and aboriginal peoples’ (306). The choice serves her well. Probing beneath the carefree, flamboyant, indefatigable folk hero’s attributes, Podruchny portrays men who discovered new ways of experiencing the world, first within the canoe brigade, and then on prolonged or permanent sojourns among Native people. Making sensitive use of a rich collection of fur-trade and travellers’ narratives as well as of her cultural historian’s tool kit (Bakhtin, Gramsci, Turner . . .), the author does not entirely reject the stereotype. Rather, she probes its limits by imaginatively reconstructing the voyageurs’ experience of an inter-cultural space. To her credit, Podruchny is by no means blind to the tensions and the ambiguities accompanying the voyageurs’ explorations. Among the signs of dissonance she notes voyageurs boasting that they were more skilful than Aboriginal people, giving their version of a cliché of European colonialism (11); significant numbers of voyageurs whose contact with Native people was very limited (62); voyageurs expressing [End Page 587] fear that the latter would profane their burial sites (84); the incidence of violence in their relations with the Aboriginal population, including women (230, 252, 283); evidence of the limits of these women’s agency in contact with voyageurs (265) and even of their presence at the posts (275). In a sense, the theme of cultural interaction is built into the very structure of this westward-looking book, with its extended parallel between journey and career. The author’s preferred travelling companions, so to speak, are the men whose intercultural voyage took them (and...

Paulo Freire, or Pedagogy as the Space and Time of Possibility

Paulo Freire, or Pedagogy as the Space and Time of Possibility

Women's History as French History

Review Essays Women's History as French History Michèle Riot-Sarcey. La Démocratie à l'épreuve des femmes: Trois figures critiques du pouvoir 1830-1848. Paris: Albin Michel, 1994. ISBN 2-22606791 -4 (pb). De la Liberté des femmes. "Lettres des dames" au Globe (1831-32). Textes recueillis et présentés par Michèle Riot-Sarcey. Paris: côté-femmes, 1992. ISBN 2-907883-50-X. Une Correspondence Saint-Simonienne. Angélique Arnaud et Caroline Simon (1833-1838). Textes recueillis et présentés par Bernadette Louis. Avant propos de Monique Rouillé. Paris: côté-femmes, 1990. ISBN 2-90788318 -6. Clarisse Vigoureux. Parole de Providence. Préface de Jean-Claude Dubos. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1993. ISBN 2-87673-169-X. Karen Offen Michèle Riot-Sarcey's "The Women's ChaUenge to Democracy: Three Figures Criticizing Power 1830-1848" is a tour-de-force; it exemplifies women's history as French history. By combining meticulous detective work in primary published and archival sources with careful attention to chronology, events, and issues of cause and effect, the author chaUenges recent accounts of nineteenth-century French political history by leading male historians including François Furet and Pierre Rosenvallon. Focusing on the intersecting Uves and ideas of three individual women—Jeanne Deroin, Eugénie Niboyet, and Désirée Gay—Riot-Sarcey succeeds brilliantly in placing the "Woman Question," and women as significant players in it, at the very center of the debate over democracy and dtizensJup in France at two key points: during the early years of the July Monarchy and again during the Revolution of 1848. The author, now maître des conférences at the University of Paris VLÕ Õ , argues that historians have not properly addressed the "construction" of women's exclusion from democratic dtizenship in France. She critiques the "history of mentaUties" approach pioneered by the "Annales" school as one that masks the power relations of the sexes. Riot-Sarcey is spedficaUy interested in how "mentaUties" and "representations" are created, in relation to particular contexts, events and with regard to the realities specific women are experiencing, and their diverse responses to situations that confront them. She argues convincingly that notions of representation © 1996 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 8 No. ι (Spring) 148 Journal of Women's History Spring as such can be subverted by incorporating the biograprdes and observations of individual women. The book is structured in three parts. The first part deals with the period 1831-34, "The Time of Possibilities, the Time of Liberty." Here the author focuses on the debate about dtizenship and primary education following the July Revolution of 1830, which brought a new monarchy and a new set of male political figures to power. Riot-Sarcey convincingly argues that this period was a founding moment in French democracy, one that definitively marked citizenship as a male preserve. All three women whom Riot-Sarcey has chosen to examine were involved with the Saint-Simonian movement, but she argues that to see them only within this context is to miss much about their contribution to the debate about liberty and equality. Their aspirations to liberty were thrashed out within the pages of the Saint-Simonian women's publication , L'Apostolat des femmes, and they aspired convincingly to become what we have come to call the subjects of their own lives, not merely embodiments of "La Femme." The important issue in 1833 was the national law on public instruction , enaded July 28, which mandated the establishment of a network of publicly funded primary schools for boys throughout France. This act generally gets one or two celebratory Unes in most treatments of French history, and only more rarely a note that mentions the omission of schools for girls. What is lacking from these accounts is the fact that the debate on this measure made explicit the links between pubUc education and male citizenship (which had already been forged in 1791). The debate, to which Riot-Sarcey's three women contributed significantly, was not merely "discourse" but embodied a set of power relations that resulted (once again; we know that this had also happened in 1792) in the deUberate exdusion of women from citizenship...