Troubled Times Research Articles

Two Documents from the Russian Archive of Jan Sapieha of 1608–1611 of Poshekhonsky and Uglichsky Counties

Introduction. The authors analyze previously unknown documents of the Russian archive of Jan Sapieha dating back to 1608–1611. Methods and materials. In the course of the study such methods as archaeography, paleography, historical and linguistic source studies were applied. The published materials complement significantly the fund of documents of the period and fill the existing “gaps” in available accumulated information in the preserved and previously published materials of the reconstructed archive fund, clarifying the chronology of events in Poshekhonsky and Uglichsky counties in the period from autumn 1608 till spring 1609 and expanding the scientific understanding of clerical practice in the Time of Troubles. Analysis. Two published newly found petitions of the mayors son of the boyar poshekhonets to False Dmitry II and Podorozhny, the only one of its kind that has come down to us, show that the possibilities of studying the archive of Jan Sapieha are far from exhausted. Results. As a result of the multifaceted analysis of the newly found materials, the informative value of the reconstructed archive was expanded, firstly, in terms of researching events that took place in lands that were located at a considerable distance from Sapezhin camps near Trinity and did not always fall into the field of view of the secretaries of the mercenary army leader; secondly, in the aspect of studying the genealogy of princes; thirdly, for the study of clerical documentation, including historical facts of changes in the order of promotion in the civil service of representatives of shabby families of service people during the Time of Troubles and the stages of development of business writing in terms of linguistic and documentary parameters of sources.

Cases of Peasants in the South of Russia in the 20s of the 17th Century

Introduction. Among the materials of the Belgorod Stol of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts (RGADA), there is an extensive set of documents related to disputes over peasants who fled to the South of Russia from uyezds of other regions of the state. These are “cases of peasants” which were created in the 1620s. They are an important episode of the overall picture of the economic development of Southern Russia in the 17th century. These documents are of great interest for the study of the Russian peasantry. Methods. The author uses the problem-historical method and traditional methods of working with historical sources. The focus of the article is an attempt to comprehend this vast complex of records management materials. These important materials are connected with the peasant issue in uyezds of Southern Russia in the 1620s. The question is how peasants, who did not have freedom, could move to the South. Unfortunately, this topic was hardly a subject of study in historiography. However, historian Novoselsky showed the importance of studying “cases of peasants”. In the course of the article, the author shows that peasants did not have legal grounds for the resettlement to the southern outskirts. In the last two decades of the 16th century, peasants were attached to the land. This is a wellknown and proven fact. However, in the Time of Troubles, many peasant families fled to the South. It was a time of anarchy. In the 1620s, the flight of peasants continued and was numerous. This triggered the emergence of “cases of peasants”. The author has studied 58 cases of this kind. Results. The study of these documents shows that the governmental policy regarding the flight of peasants was not harsh. The state allowed the possibility of the flight of peasants. The authorities did not consider landowners who accepted fugitives to be lawbreakers. The rules prohibiting the transfer of peasants began to act only if a landowner found his peasant and filed a lawsuit about his return.

TOWARDS HARMONIZING COMMUNICATION OUTWARDS AND WITHIN. AN ON-GOING SHIFT IN PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Considering the current international context, where everybody is affected by the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic and its economic, social and psychological implications, communication has been subjected to complex changes at all levels, that go far beyond what we have managed to understand so far. Nowadays, in these troubled times, obstacles in communication are the norm rather than the exception, often resulting in alienation, anxiety, depression and a deep sense of loss. Loss of what our lives used to be… Loss of the self… This is why, once the impact of this new reality has more or less settled in, we need to work towards harmonizing communication in this new world we are living in. As linguists, we are witnessing an on-going shift in pragmatics and discourse analysis, as we should acknowledge the emergence of complex verbal and non-verbal dimensions to personal and professional communication, where fear of contagion is constantly lurking in the conscious or subconscious background. Special focus should be laid on schools and the entire educational process, with electronic platforms and online teaching/learning causing additional stress to all parties involved (teachers, students, and families of both categories). We have already discovered that the lack of proper human interaction, or the diminished state we are experiencing it in, is literally impossible to replace or fully make up for. Now, we must understand that harmonizing communication must be a top priority, particularly if we need people to stay fully-functional and keep education, society and economy running.

‘ACCEPTABLE TRUTHS’ DURING THE FRENCH RELIGIOUS WARS

AbstractThis paper seeks to provide some historical perspective on contemporary preoccupations with competing versions of the truth. Truth has always been contested and subject to scrutiny, particularly during troubled times. It can take many forms – judicial truth, religious truth, personal truth – and is bound up with the context of time and place. This paper sets out the multidisciplinary approaches to truth and examines its role in a specific context, that of early modern Europe and, in particular, the French religious wars of the sixteenth century. Truth was a subject of intense debate among both Renaissance and Reformation scholars, it was upheld as an absolute by judges, theologians and rulers. Yet, it also needed to be concealed by those who maintained a different truth to that of the authorities. In the case of France, in order to advance their cause, the Huguenots used subterfuge of various kinds, including the illicit carrying of messages. In this instance, truth was dependent on the integrity of its carrier, whether the messenger could be trusted and, therefore, their truth accepted. Both sides also sought to defend the truth by countering what they presented as the deceit of their opponents. Then, as now, acceptance of what is true depends on which side we are on and who we are prepared to believe.

Courts and Court Hierarchy in Novgorod the Great in the Late 16–Early 17th Centuries

Abstract Daily legal practice in local centers of Muscovite Rus’ before the publication of the Law Code of 1649 (Sobornoe Ulozhenie) has been poorly studied. This article uses comparative analysis to study two groups of sources about the legal process and law enforcement in Novgorod the Great in the late 16th–early 17th centuries. The analysis illuminates a complicated hierarchy of legal levels. At the same time, the competences of the courts at each level were not always clearly defined, which corresponds to the ideas formulated by N.S. Kollmann in her study on crime and punishment in Muscovy. In the late 16th–early 17th centuries, the Novgorod Court Chancellery was a middle level of the judicial system. The highest instance was the court in Moscow, which passed judgment on behalf of the tsar and was provided by central chancelleries in the Kremlin. During the Time of Troubles, the hierarchy became simpler: the communication with Moscow disappeared and only two levels prevailed in Novgorod. The city administrator’s court (voevoda) dealt with political crimes and landowners’ disputes, while the City Court and other lower level courts dealt with civil and petty criminal cases. The courts were ruled by both codes and customary law: the existing law codes (Sudebniki) did not cover all the diversity of legal cases.

Geographic diversification and credit supply in times of trouble: Evidence from microlending

This paper investigates the impact of geographic diversification on the provision of credit during a financial crisis. We analyse in particular the microlending crisis that occurred in Nicaragua from mid-2008. We find that during the crisis, lenders reduced overall credit provision but to a lesser extent to those geographic areas that contributed most to geographic diversification in the boom period. This mitigation effect was greater for those lenders that were more geographically diversified before the onset of the crisis. Furthermore, we discover that lenders with major loan monitoring problems, that is lenders with larger credit officers’ portfolios, cut lending relatively less to those geographic areas that contributed most to geographic diversification. Overall, our results suggest that geographic diversification can support lending when a credit boom ends in a crisis.

The Promise of Behavioral Energy Efficiency in Times of Trouble: Oracle Utilities Opower’s normative comparison insights

In May, 2020, unemployment rates had grown to levels last seen during the Great Depression and some utilities proactively suppressed their normative comparison (NC) insights in their home energy reports to customers. The Oracle Utilities Opower research team found that the NC algorithm continued to persist savings for utilities in aggregate and to individual customers in various regions of the country. In fact, the personalized insights could provide a much-needed way to lower energy costs for consumers.

Developing a COVID-19 emergency airway team

The COVID-19 disease pandemic has changed the world of medicine as we know it, with inevitable long-standing repercussions. The impact to the anesthesiologist is profound, resulting in modification to multiple areas of practice. With the high contagiousness of the disease from droplets, but also aerosolization being a significant factor, the whole process of airway management carries significant risk to the health care provider. During troubled times, response teams for acute events are often developed. We focus this short piece on the development and implementation of an airway response team for COVID-19 patients.

Globalized water challenges in troubled times

Globalized water challenges in troubled times

Science unites a troubled world: Lessons from the pandemic

European Journal of Pharmacology has published a special issue entitled Therapeutic targets and pharmacological treatment of COVID-19 that contains more than 30 manuscripts. Scientists from around the world contributed both review articles and original manuscripts that are remarkable in their diversity. Each contribution offers a unique perspective on the current approaches of the discipline called pharmacology. Yet the contributions share an enthusiasm to put forward a fresh viewpoint and make a positive difference by the exchange of ideas during the troubled times of this pandemic. What other enterprise but science can unite so many diverse cultures and nationalities in global uncertainty and discord, and mobilize an effective response against a common enemy. The efforts of science are in stark contrast to those of populism that has introduced division and a self-serving attitude that are not simply ill-matched to tackle the pandemic, but foster its spread and severity. We trust that the readers of European Journal of Pharmacology will discover new ideas and concepts in our special COVID-19 series as members of the scientific community and shared world.

Response to the COVID-19: Understanding implications of government lockdown policies

The rising number of COVID-19 cases and economic implications of lockdown measures indicate the tricky balancing act policy makers face as they implement the subsequent phases of 'unlock'. We develop a model to examine how lockdown and social distancing measures have influenced the behavioral conduct of people. The current situation highlights that policy makers need to focus on bringing awareness and social restraint among people rather than going for stringent lockdown measures. We believe this work will help the policy makers gain insights into the troubled COVID-19 times ahead, and based on the estimates, they can frame policies to navigate these wild waves in the best possible way.

Swedes Studying Abroad – as Tourists?

The number of students temporarily studying in another country to receive a post-secondary education has grown significantly since the 1970s. This study aims to learn more about what attracts Swedish outbound students when studying abroad. What are the popular study destinations? Can data reveal touristic preferences? Descriptive statistics from the Swedish Board of Student Finance are used, making it possible to scrutinize studying abroad on an aggregate level over a period of two decades. The results show that English-speaking countries are attractive to Swedish outbound students. Places growing in popularity are the countries of Poland, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, Singapore, and China, as well as the region of Hong Kong in particular. However, more than 50 percent of outbound students study in Europe. In these troubling and uncertain times, we are living in, with COVID-19 and other crises hampering worldwide travel, it is difficult to predict the long-term effects on mobility.

Selfobject Psychology for a Troubled World

ABSTRACT The role of self-psychology in establishing a transformational humanity and even in saving the continued existence of our world—is a very modest one, yet, at the same time, a uniquely crucial opportunity. We, as a community committed to psychoanalytic self-psychology, are being required to respond to the summons of a serving leadership. The task ahead of us all is not less than that of creating a supra-contextual web of empathy that will embrace the personal and the general, the similar and the different, the multiplicity and the oneness. Only such an ethical matrix of universalism will constitute a total solidarity. Such an immeasurable task calls upon us to uplift the Kohutian legacy to its final destination, to the shores of selfobject psychology. This proposal aims at refining self-psychology into a psychology of transformation, defining the humane narcissistic journey from self-cherishing attitude to other-cherishing attitude, and, perhaps even beyond, to a stance of all-embracing ethical commitment to the realization of awakened awareness. Selfobject psychology thus opens up for psychoanalysis a spiritual horizon that will buttress the unceasing quest for the tremendous goal of withstanding our troubled times and of securing a future for humankind and its cosmic habitat.

Rise: Emergent Strategies for Reclaiming Joy and Agency Against Neofascist and White Supremacist Assaultive Speech

Since the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, there has been an uptick in the number of faculty reporting that they have been the subjects of harassment and intimidation by organizations and individuals espousing views consistent with ideologies of the alt-right, neofascism, and global White supremacy. In this new virulent environment, verbal assaults and threats of violence against progressive scholars are increasingly common, particularly in the case of women academics, minoritized professors, and those whose writing deals critically with racism and other forms of supremacy. This essay, informed by critical race theory, presents a phenomenological narrative and critical analysis of actual events in which an art education scholar was the target of assaultive speech and threatened physical harm following the publication of a book chapter critical of Whiteness. Understanding assaultive speech as an attempt to replace joy with affects of fear, paranoia, and hate, the authors examine the events that occurred in the course of performing one’s duties as teachers, researchers, or concerned citizen-scholars, in detail to reveal (a) the overarching structure and life cycle of these all-too-common attacks and (b) how they affect the targeted person’s mindbody. This combination of structural and embodied forms of knowledge can inspire new liberatory projects as a part of an emergent strategy for scholars, teachers, and activists interested in justice, critical pedagogy, or transformative practices to rise and reclaim joy and agency in troubled times.

Book Review: Histoires d’Enfance”: French Children in Troubled Times (Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries)

Book Review: Histoires d’Enfance”: French Children in Troubled Times (Eighteenth to Twentieth Centuries)

The future airport A conversation between Claus Lassen and Thomas Woldbye

ABSTRACT Contemporary international hub-airports are undergoing major changes. New business models, the individualisation of air travel, the increased societal focus on climate change, new flying technologies and the increased use of information technology, together with geopolitical changes, create the future context for international airport development. In a conversation between mobility researcher Claus Lassen and Thomas Woldbye, CEO of Copenhagen Airport – Scandinavia’s largest hub airport, with more than 30 million annual   air travellers – the importance of such changes is addressed. Having been CEO since 2011, Woldbye has great insight into the challenges associated with operating large mobility- and infrastructure-based organisations such as airports during troubled times. In addition, he is a board member of ACI Europe and has 27 years of experience from A.P. Moller-Maersk, especially management of A. P. Moller’s worldwide container business, Maersk Line. This interview is in three parts. First, in the conservation we attempt to identify what specifically characterises the airport as a mobility-driven organisation. Second, we more closely examine the historical development of airports and the chancing societal role of airports. Third, the conversation examines how the “future” is handled at Copenhagen Airport and elaborates on the particular future challenges faced by the airport.

Call for Papers for the Special Issue of Literacy: Storytelling in troubled times: multimodal, multilingual and multimedia

Call for Papers for the Special Issue of Literacy: Storytelling in troubled times: multimodal, multilingual and multimedia

Racial burdens, translations, and chance

Racial burdens, translations, and chance

Delivery of urological services (telemedicine and urgent surgery) during COVID-19 lockdown: experience and lessons learnt from a university hospital in United Kingdom.

Background and aimsOur departmental planning for COVID-19 was actioned a week before the lockdown (13th March 2020). We look at a 7- week lockdown activity for all scheduled outpatient clinics and urgent procedures.Methods and resultsA total of 2361 outpatient clinic slots (52.6% oncology slots and 47.4% benign urology slots) were scheduled during this period. The oncology slots included 330 (26.5%) flexible cystoscopy, 555 (44.7%) prostate cancer and 357(28.8%) non-prostate cancer slots. The benign urology slots included 323 (28.8%) andrology, 193 (17.2%) stones and 603 (54%) lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) slots. Of the total oncology outpatient slots (n = 1242), 66.3% were virtual consultations, 20% were face-to-face and 13.6% were cancelled. Of the total benign outpatient slots (n = 1119), 81% were virtual consultations, 9.7% were face-to-face and 9.3% were cancelled. A total of 116 anaesthetic surgical procedures were carried out, of which 54 (46.5%) were oncological procedures, 18 (15.5%) were benign urological procedures, and 44 (38%) were diagnostic procedures.ConclusionsHospitals and urologists can benefit from the model used by our hospital to mitigate the impact and prioritise patients most in need of urgent care. Reorganisation and flexibility of healthcare delivery is paramount in these troubled times and will allow clinical activity without compromising patient safety.

Troubling troubled school time: posthuman multiple temporalities

Inspired by the philosophies of Donna Haraway and Karen Barad, the aim of this paper is to stir up trouble and to double trouble time in education. We trouble how certain views of childhood shape our experience of school time and secondly, we trouble the way in which time as experienced in school, affects how adults relate to childhood. A particular relationship to and experience of time is nowadays prominently fostered and cultivated in educational institutions. We propose that ‘time’ and ‘childhood’ are intrinsically entangled concepts and logically connected, in the lived experience of educational contemporary institutions, with colonialism and capitalism. Decolonisation requires a troubling of the experience of time as it involves the subordination and denigration of children and childhood (‘mysopedy’). We do this through a genealogy (a political reading of ‘the’ present) of the concepts time, childhood and school. Inspired by Karen Barad, we adopt Kyoko Hayashi’s idea of ‘travel hopping’. Travel hopping as methodology is a transindividual commitment to undo the injustices committed to those who are (also) no longer there (as well as our ‘own’ childhood ‘selves’), without any pretense that the past can be made undone. Drawing on Barad’s queer reading of Quantum Field Theory, we produce decolonising insights by diffractively tunneling through boundaries between human and nonhuman bodies in our writing, thereby unsettling the current relationship to time, the adult/child binary and adult temporality.