Breadth Of Scholarship Research Articles

The “leaning song” – a weapon in organizational conflict

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to present an insider ethnographic account of a series of social confrontations between two mutually opposed groups of officers that took place in an officers’ mess in a remote military garrison in the 1980s. The identity of one of these groups was expressed in a particular song that was sung frequently and noisily in the mess. The analysis of these incidents and their precursors provides an understanding of the social processes in which they were embedded, and the conclusions drawn are generalized into the wider context.Design/methodology/approach– The paper is based on insider ethnography, using rich description to present the incidents and their background. Analysis is conducted using other research by the author on the organizational culture of Service officers and wider scholarship not specifically related to the Military.Findings– The paper finds that in-groups and out-groups in joint Service populations do not necessarily run along traditional, Service, lines, and that cultural change in the groups concerned was associated with the rapid turnover of their members as they were replaced in the normal postings cycle. It demonstrates that a socially powerful shared cultural element can, if only temporarily, bring unity between rival groups. It also contributes to the scholarship on the power of song as a proclamation of group identity and the intensification of that identity.Originality/value– The main strength of this paper is that it provides an insider’s view of a British military social group, which is extremely rare in the literature, describing social processes that connect to the wider scholarship on song, in-group and out-group behaviour, and cultural change.

Looking Back on Our Scholarship: Some Paths Now Abandoned

This short essay surveys the breadth of scholarship published in the Quarterly Journal of Speech since its beginnings in 1915. I argue that many of the areas once regularly published in QJS have slowly—and rightly—migrated to other journals or other fields entirely. However, there are four areas that have only recently disappeared from the pages of QJS, and these areas—translations of key texts, studies in textual authenticity, rhetorical history, and studies of non-academic rhetorical practitioners—need to be recovered. By recuperating these four areas, QJS will better represent the breadth of rhetorical scholarship and incorporate important voices into the ongoing conversation about the nature and practice of rhetoric.

Exploring Care and Protection Offered to OVCs in Care Institutions with Examples from South Africa and Botswana

Globally, regionally and in national contexts, institutionalised care has been receiving wide scholarship, debates, discourses and criticisms, with some various scholars questioning the relevance, appropriateness and effectiveness of this option to children's care and protection. South Africa and Botswana are perceived as two success stories in Southern African region in terms of championing children's rights, especially those relating to the care and protection of OVCs. This study has, through an immense literature review analysis explored: the role of OVC care institutions; policy environment of care and protection of OVCs; care of OVCs in institutional care in both South Africa and Botswana; and the experiences of OVCs in care institutions. The research has also debated gaps inherent in care institutions such as psychosocial need gaps, poor infrastructure, developmental damage and care giving challenges generally. The research recommended to governments, NGOs and care friendly bodies to consider upgrading the standards of care institutions and exploring alternative ways of care besides institutional care.

English

'Classical Presences', a radical if sometimes uneven series from Oxford University Press, has done much in recent years to open up the horizons of the discipline of Classics. The latest in the series by Phiroze Vasunia ought to be considered a valuable contribution. In a nutshell, Vasunia explores how the discipline of Classics and the British Empire in India profoundly shaped one another. This complex and shifting relationship is traced through the study of institutions and individuals. The imagination and breadth of scholarship on display here promise many further lines of enquiry. The qualms expressed in this review are therefore minor and should not detract from the overall recommendation to anyone interested in the history of the British in India or the history of Classics to consider carefully the material and arguments presented here.

A Review of Text Messaging (SMS) as a Communication Tool for Higher Education

Since 2011, The Limerick Institute of Technology (School of Applied Science Engineering & Technology) has actively engaged in a course of research to determine if SMS can be used to (1) increase student’s preparation for class, (2) increase their motivational levels towards learning and (3) to assist with memory retention. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of the technology and to summarise the academic arguments that have been made both for and against the use of such technology for teaching and learning activities in higher education. A full quantitate and qualitative analysis of the research will take place in 2014. The project forms part of a school wide Scholarship of Teaching & Learning approach (SoTL). This paper will be of interest to academic managers, program managers, e-learning support staff, administrators and lecturers.

In Search of the Amazon: Brazil, the United States, and the Nature of a Region by Seth Garfield (review)

Reviewed by: In Search of the Amazon: Brazil, the United States, and the Nature of a Region by Seth Garfield Brian J. Godfrey In Search of the Amazon: Brazil, the United States, and the Nature of a Region. Seth Garfield. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013. xiii + 343 pp., maps, tables, photographs, notes, bibliography, and index. $26.95 paper (978-0-8223-5585-4) or $94.95 cloth (978-0-8223-5571-7). Long before construction of the Transamazon Highway across northern Brazil captured the world’s attention in the early 1970s, Amazonia had already been subject to large-scale regional development efforts. The most famous of the extractive cycles was the historic “rubber boom,” which lasted from approximately 1850 to 1910, when native Amazonian rubber (primarily Hevea brasiliensis) became a valuable primary commodity in industrial processes. This classic period of Amazon rubber extraction has been the subject of influential studies by Barbara Weinstein, Warren Dean, and others. Seth Garfield’s In Search of the Amazon resumes the region’s environmental history during the transformative, but often overlooked period of World War II. Although competition from more productive rubber plantations in Southeast Asia – born of rubber seeds smuggled out of their native region by a British adventurer – ended Amazonian supremacy in the early twentieth century, a resurgence of extraction occurred during World War II. Given the sudden wartime disruption of trade with Asia, the United States embarked on a frantic search for new sources of rubber to support the Allied war effort. This mid-century period has previously lacked the scholarly attention of the earlier classical period of Amazonian rubber extraction, but recent works have begun to address this gap in the literature. Greg Grandin’s Fordlândia (Picador 2010) recounts the saga of Henry Ford’s not-so-excellent adventure with rubber plantations on the Tapajós River between 1928 and 1945, which ended in total failure. Garfield’s book covers the same period, but broadens the regional framework to link the Brazilian Northeast to Amazonia through wartime recruitment and migration of rubber tappers. While lacking the sharp focus and high personal drama of Fordlândia, Garfield’s work provides a meticulous environmental history and systematic analysis of Amazonian political ecology in the context of swirling regional, national and international forces. As a result, the recent works by Grandin and Garfield complement each other and together provide essential references on Amazonia in the mid-twentieth century. In Search of the Amazon examines an important, if often ignored period of regional change. Brazil’s modern transformation from a regional South American power to a developmental state with industrial aspirations and rising international significance can be traced to the Revolution of 1930, which brought Getúlio Vargas to power. Vargas ruled as a populist with increasingly authoritarian tendencies after the proclamation of the Estado Novo in 1937. By the time that Vargas stepped down in 1945 at the close of the Second World War, which Brazil entered on the side of the Allies, the country had undergone profound changes in the state’s political-economic role, official recognition of labor unions, broadened electoral representation (including female suffrage), and the growth of industrialization. While the national politics and policies of Vargas have been the subject of wide scholarship, the Estado Novo’s role in promoting more effective integration of Amazonia has received relatively little scholarly attention. [End Page 233] Against a national background of institutional reorganization, state planning, and political conflict, Garfield analyzes Amazonian environmental debates and regional policies of the period. The book’s early chapters situate the geopolitical and developmental contexts of the Vargas regime’s “March to the West” and the creation of new governmental agencies to pursue Amazon integration. This campaign led Vargas in October 1940 to deliver a dramatic “Speech of the Amazon River” in Manaus, which put the leader’s personal prestige behind a strong national presence there. Geographers will be particularly interested in the creation of a regional identity through governmental programs, institutional definitions, and regional planning designations. The approach to political ecology – “…as a study in conflicts over the use, rights, and definition of territory and resources among distinct social groups” (p. 3...

Knut Hamsun: A Review of Peter Sjøyst-Jackson's 2010 Study through the Lens of Recent Hamsun Scholarship

ABSTRACT: This review article goes beyond a traditional book review in that it places Peter Sjølyst-Jackson’s 2010 study of the legacies of Knut Hamsun in the context of the wider scholarship on Hamsun. At the same time, it provides a thorough reading and analysis of Sjølyst-Jackson’s seven chapters, highlighting instances where Sjølyst-Jackson missed important opportunities to engage in the existing scholarship as well as other moments where his analysis and insights contribute significantly to the scholarship on this remarkable writer.

The Cambrian explosion: the construction of animal biodiversity

In 1909 Charles Walcott discovered the remarkable soft-bodied animal fauna of the Middle Cambrian age Burgess Shale in British Columbia. These fossils have become the iconic representation of the astonishing expansion of animal diversity during the Cambrian, including the first appearance in the fossil record of essentially all living phyla, known as the “Cambrian explosion.” Although the Burgess Shale biota is the public face of the Cambrian explosion, even appearing on a 1995 cover of Time, it is only a small part of the story (and somewhat late in the tale). Most readers will be familiar with the Cambrian explosion through Stephen Jay Gould’s 1989 book Wonderful Life (1989) or perhaps Martin Brasier’s more recent Darwin’s Lost World (2009). Both of these books were written to reach a general audience. What has been lacking to date is a more technical book, aimed at students and professionals, which summarizes and introduces the tremendous amount of research that this episode of earth history has received in the last 25 years. The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity by Douglas H Erwin and James W Valentine more than fills this need. It will become required reading for anyone who wants to understand the multiple lines of evidence, from geology, geochemistry, paleontology, genetics, phylogenetics, comparative morphology, and ecology, that have to be integrated to understand one of the most important episodes in the history of life. The authors, both paleontologists, are deeply respected authorities on evolution and the Cambrian fossil record, with a welldeserved reputation for innovative approaches. This book necessarily covers a tremendous amount of ground; the forty-two pages of references demonstrate the depth and breadth of scholarship that the authors summarize. The first section covers the geological context of the explosion, stretching back to the Snowball Earth episodes of the Cryogenian. This includes summaries of the current status of the absolute and relative time scales for this period and what geochemical proxies reveal about ocean chemistry, including oxygenation states and changes in the carbon cycle. The latter is unfortunately the weakest part of the book; there is very poor integration between figures (which come from external sources) and text; the figure captions and labels are inadequate. The book hits its stride in the next section. It begins with a brief review of phylogenetics and of living metazoan morphology and relationships, a subject Valentine explored in more depth in his comprehensive earlier book, On the Origin of Phyla (2004). This is followed

The Sabbath Soul: Mystical Reflections on the Transformative Power of the Holy Time by Eitan Fishbane (review)

Reviewed by: The Sabbath Soul: Mystical Reflections on the Transformative Power of the Holy Time by Eitan Fishbane Dan Shevitz (bio) The Sabbath Soul: Mystical Reflections on the Transformative Power of the Holy Time, by Eitan Fishbane. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights; 2012. Spiritual writing is a difficult genre. How do you say simple things in elegant and moving ways, avoiding enigma, tropes, complexities, and bromides? It is the marriage of poetry and prose, with the minefields of each. Do you wish to explain or evoke? To bring it to the reader, or invite the reader to reach it for him or herself? A lapidary style may evoke but not explain well, and prolixity may dull the brilliance of a diamond. Professor Eitan Fishbane has attempted to provide a hybrid in The Sabbath Soul. He gives us eleven selections from classical Hasidic texts on the mystical nature of the Sabbath in its various aspects in English translation, plus some lovely prayers and meditations from the Bratzlav tradition (also in English translation) to introduce each chapter. Each selection is accompanied by the author’s notes on the facing page, and footnoted references (though too few of them) in the back of the volume. The chapters take us through the Sabbath experience. The selections include texts dealing with candle lighting, preparation for Shabbat, the garments (white) of Shabbat, immersion, Kiddush, Sabbath meals, the symbol of ḥallah, Sabbath rest, Sabbath consciousness, and music, inter alia. The book begins and ends with the author’s meditations on the beauty and power of the seventh day. The facing notes, while sometimes merely referential, serve as another vehicle for the author’s excurses. Though they may take us rather far from the text, they sometimes can focus on a particular moment or difficulty and help the reader through it. For example, when one Hasidic master deals with the fact that Sabbath desecration is a capital offense, Fishbane does not retreat from the difficulty this poses for a modern reader but helps place the text in a spiritual and more accessible context. The translations of the Hasidic and other mystical texts are the author’s own, but although they are quite literal and therefore difficult to read, Fishbane uses his notes to aid the reader in interpretation. The selected texts are obscure in their original Hebrew (or Yiddish), and the literal translation preserves their opacity. A looser translation would have allowed the author to focus more on interpretation and less on explanation. Occasionally, some of the Hebrew text is interpolated into the translation; Hebrew speakers might wish for more of this, especially when the original texts rely on punning or homonymous language. When the Hasidic texts rely on talmudic, midrashic, or zoharic antecedents, Fishbane provides the context in his notes. Since the texts rely extensively on quotations from this material, a careful [End Page 123] reader must go back and forth between text and commentary. Fishbane’s notes are more than commentary, though. He regularly departs from explication of text to claim a lectern, and sometimes a pulpit, to present his own meditations and reflections—not always related to the Hasidic text on which it is ostensibly based. We end up learning as much of Fishbane’s spiritual journeys as those of the masters he has brought to us. Fishbane demonstrates both breadth of scholarship and great depth as a spiritual thinker. But in assuming both roles at the same time, he has asked too much of the reader. If the author wished to present a volume of his original thought, then the selections from the Hasidic masters could have been much shorter and easier to read. Had he chosen to teach more of the method and meaning of the rebbes, he could have reserved his personal reflections for the front and end pieces. As it is, the author intersperses scholarly explanation with homiletics and apologia. He often addresses his collective readership with a proleptic “we”; such a cohortative tone would be better suited to an oral presentation. These misgivings notwithstanding, this volume is a welcome contribution to students seeking a window into the arcane Hasidic style. As a rabbi serving a congregation, I am particularly appreciative...

Thinking politically about HIV: political analysis and action in response to AIDS

AIDS has a uniquely political history. Its early association with stigmatised homosexual behaviour and more liberating gay identity activism set the precedent for highly effective mobilisation. The results were unparalleled in global health. AIDS was briefly treated as high politics and attracted increased funds to achieve the ambitious goal of universal access to HIV prevention and treatment. If AIDS is to maintain its visibility and contribution to global solidarity, human rights and dignity, its politics must evolve to reflect the profound geo-political, economic and social transformations currently underway. ‘Thinking politically about HIV’, an initiative of UNAIDS and the International AIDS Society, was convened in recognition of the need to better understand these politics and consider how the political sciences can further engage. This paper, and the edited volume it introduces, provides some insights into the Thinking Politically discussions as well as the wider scholarship on the challenges facing the AIDS response. The authors argue that while mainstream political science has largely ignored the epidemic, other disciplines and traditions provide rich accounts of the exceptional response. Given the changing context, the authors present an agenda of practically oriented, politically informed research to identify the levers that can be used to maintain the viability of the response.

Print Without Borders:

The University of Delaware recently hosted an interdisciplinary “Mediamorphosis” symposium on modernist print cultures. Organized by Ann Ardis and Patrick Collier, the conference assembled a diverse group of researchers from several fields, whose breadth of scholarship proved essential to encompassing the sprawling, overlapping, and transnational nature of modernist periodical networks. The symposium continued work begun by its 2007 predecessor “Transatlantic Print Culture, 1880–1940: Emerging Media, Emerging Modernisms,” while also offering a welcome forum for new scholarship. Speakers were organized into nine panels over two days, and the weekend concluded with an open-forum discussion held over dinner and drinks. The conference was accompanied by a print exhibit Mediamorphosis: Periodical across the Pond curated by Mark Samuels Lasner and Timothy D. Murray, which featured rare periodicals drawn from the University of Delaware's special collections. The organizers scheduled no concurrent panels, and as a result participants developed a shared context for discussing current and future concerns in periodical research. These discussions pursued the roles of digital humanities in print culture research; relationships between mass culture and marginal publics; the politics of bridging global and local concerns in periodical circulation, layout, and content; and finally, questions of attribution and ownership. This review offers an overview of the conference and some key papers, situating the scholarship on display within broader discussions about institutional responses to more expansive approaches to print culture and emerging research methodologies.

The California School Psychologist becomes Contemporary School Psychology: CSP Continues to Link Theory and Practice

This first volume of Contemporary School Psychology marks yet another important milestone in the efforts of the California Association of School Psychologists (CASP) to provide its members and the profession with timely and practical scholarship. As we celebrate this accomplishment, it is important to acknowledge that this inaugural issue builds on the significant accomplishments of The California School Psychologist and the work of past editors and associate editors Shane Jimerson, Michael Furlong, Brent Duncan, Stephen Brock, Kristin Powers and Marilyn Wilson. Their efforts have provided the foundation on which this inaugural issue of Contemporary School Psychology builds. In June of 2010, the current editorial team, Kelly Kennedy, Brian Leung and I, proposed that CASP change the name of The California School Psychologist to Contemporary School Psychology. The goal was to give the journal a name that would both reflect its breadth of scholarship - many authors outside of California have often contributed articles - and enhance the ability of the journal to attract high quality scholarship from a wider pool of authors. Ultimately, this is in service of the journal's prime goal of continuing to be, as Shane Jimerson put it in his introduction to the 2009 issue of the California School Psychologist, an "...invaluable resource for faculty, students, and practitioners in school psychology across the state of California." (Jimerson, 2009, p.3). Our new name communicates our commitment to continue this tradition and our aspiration to become a valuable resource for faculty, students, and practitioners nationwide. Contemporary School Psychology is devoted to current issues in school psychology with the goal of publishing high-quality articles that make explicit the connection between theory and practice. The journal seeks to provide a venue for articles that: (1) critically review research on topics of general interest to school psychologists nationwide, (2) report research relevant to practicing school psychologists, (3) present promising practices or programs that address the needs of children and youth, and (4) critically reflect on the profession of school psychology and the challenges faced by the profession. As before, the intent of the journal is to highlight the diversity of viewpoints in the field and of the students, parents, and communities we serve. This first issue of Contemporary School Psychology begins with a special topic section that includes five articles that address innovative applications of a public health approach to school psychology practice. These innovations include how directors of special education view Response to Intervention (RtI) at the secondary level, applications of RtI to promoting mental health and positive behavior, prevention and treatment of selective mutism, and applications of a problem-solving model to struggling readers who need intense interventions. …

Editorial

This special edition of the International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies highlights the work of emerging scholars in the field of Indigenous Studies. The five featured authors were all finalists for the prize awarded by the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) to the best post-graduate student paper at the NAISA meeting held in 2010 in Tucson, Arizona. While the breadth of scholarship encompassed by the term 'Indigenous Studies' and the global representation of Indigenous peoples at NAISA mean that the topics and approaches vary widely, a common thematic of fraught post-colonial relations can be discerned within all five articles.

A Review of Paul A. Rahe's Against Throne and Altar

A Review of Paul A. Rahe's Against Throne and Altar John Dunn (bio) Paul A. Rahe, Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic (Cambridge University Press, 2008). Paul Rahe is no believer in concision. For someone of such remarkable energy and breadth of scholarship, it is very striking that Against Throne and Altar should be only his second real book. His debut volume, Republics Ancient and Modern, published by the University of North Carolina Press more than fifteen years ago, was a work of extraordinary scope and confidence. Written on the amplest of scales, Republics Ancient and Modern aimed to recapture the history of republicanism from the influence of J.G.A.Pocock's masterwork The Machiavellian Moment (Princeton University Press, 1975) and put it instead in the hands of Leo Strauss's intellectual progeny. Against Throne and Altar covers more of the same ground than its subtitle suggests and does not noticeably prescind from the viewpoint of its formidable predecessor. But it does have a sharper focus and handles a briefer passage of time over which much ink has recently been spilled. Much of the point of his book is to correct the plethora of errors and misapprehensions that Rahe discerns in this recent literature. But the tone of his discussions of others' views is often curt and dismissive. This not insubstantial element in the book is therefore likely to prove largely an exercise in preaching to the converted. Against Throne and Altar presses a robust thesis of keen interest on a momentous and thrilling topic. It is written with animus and some intermittent wit. It conveys a great deal of compelling judgment, is evidently the work of a very clever person, and must clearly have required an unnerving amount of work. What remains a trifle elusive is its intended audience. The book has two levels, one narrowly scholastic and the other of pressing concern for anyone seriously interested either in modern politics or in modern history. The second of these levels is genuinely ecumenical, while the first tends to the parochial. In mid-17th-century England politicians and soldiers who claimed to speak for the people of England put on trial and executed their monarch and for a few hectic years established an English republic. The political turmoil that swirled around these dramatic events unleashed a flood of thinking and writing unprecedented in any country in the world. In those few [End Page 27] years a range of idiosyncratic and adventurous thinkers reimagined the basis and terms of political community in ways that have marked the world's dispersed political intelligence ever since, and, as Rahe sees the sequence, promise to mark it ever more deeply in centuries to come, unless throne or altar somehowmusters the resources to strike back. In that stark perspective, the political thinking of England's republic lived on long after Charles II's Restoration. It is still unremittingly alive today, and in an even longer run, it may yet inherit the Earth. In these years, as Rahe sees them, at least two very different temporalities intersect. A very lengthy and deeply ambiguous intellectual past enters a maelstrom of political energy and adventure and is permanently altered by the experience. What is left behind, as the storm subsides, is something durably different. If Rahe is right (and he is too painstaking a scholar and too pertinacious a thinker to be simply and decisively wrong), the story he has to tell is as dramatic as any in the history of human reflection. The new vision whose birth Rahe seeks to chronicle is republican in that it desacralizes (and even desecrates) monarchy. But it is also liberal, and carefully parsimonious in the lessons that it selects from the political experience of Greece or Rome. It refuses to desacralize monarchy by sentimentalizing a republican alternative. It is liberal, too (unlike its antique republican predecessors), in its disabused vision and unfastidious acceptance of the purposes of most human beings as they actually are. It aspires to design institutions that take accurate account of these purposes and can reasonably be anticipated to operate effectively in the face of them. The modern republic, unlike...

MA in European Regional & Minority Cultures A Novel University Initiative in Dublin

University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland's largest university, offers a one year full time/two year part time taught Magister Artium degree course in European Regional and Minority Cultures. This 90 ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) credit MA is the first of its kind in any European University as it draws together the wide expertise and scholarship of UCD's academic staff across numerous disciplines to provide a comprehensive multi-disciplinary programme focused on European regionalism and minorities in Europe.

Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain (review)

{ 264 } Book Reviews sentence descriptions are readily available on Wikipedia. Along similar lines, some judicious pruning of the articles would have ameliorated the book’s turgidity (do we really need, for instance, a description of George C. Scott’s ­ living room?). Finally, Senelick reports that Edith Isaacs, one of the journal’s editors, dedicated “the August 1942 issue of Theatre Arts to ‘the Negro in Ameri­ can theatre’” (xvi). This important issue was later expanded into a book published by Theatre Arts in 1947. Why, then, were none of the comments about African Ameri­ can acting made in the 1942 issue reprinted in this collection? Other than Young’s essay on Mei Lan-­ Fang, the anthology lacks contributions beyond the white establishment. Despite misgivings, the significance of this collection is evident, and Laurence Senelick has done a great service to the scholarly and professional community. David Krasner — Emerson College \ \ Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain. By Scott K. Taylor. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. 320 pp. $55.00 cloth. Scott K. Taylor’s Honor and Violence in Golden Age Spain offers a fresh approach to understanding the Spanish concept of honor and its prominence in the cultural landscape of seventeenth-­ century Spain. Although Taylor is an early mod­ ern historian, his work is interdisciplinary in its breadth of scholarship as it touches on literary criticism, cultural anthropology, legal studies, and theatre history. In this book, he challenges the dominant theory that Spanish honor was a rigid social code based on shame and cultural anxieties as depicted in early modern Spanish drama and literature. In contrast to the strict “code of honor” traditionally ascribed to Spanish culture, Taylor introduces his concept of the “rhetoric of honor,” which he defines as “the conscious use of phrases, gestures, and actions—including elements of the duel—to convey information about the issues in contention while simultaneously advancing a violent confrontation”(21).Finding the term“code” too limiting in its implication of a formal process, Taylor’s “rhetoric” creates a loose template of action that establishes an accretion of shame which can then rise to violent confrontations—a fluid and performative approach to honor as a construct in early modern society and literature. Taylor presents his theory in juxtaposition to the previously published { 265 } Book Reviews theories of social anthropologists Julian Pitt-­ Rivers, J. G. Peristiany, and Jane Schneider, who have explained honor as a strict code that supported a family-­ centered morality, acting in and influenced by a larger sense of community. Taylor asserts that their concept of honor developed in part by using the“honor plays” of Lope de Vega and Pedro Calderón de la Barca and discussions of dueling in fencing manuals as examples of actual behavior. Taylor contends, however , that social interactions involving violence in dueling manuals, law books, and “honor plays” of the period do not accurately depict Spanish behavior. For him, these printed accounts of violence depict Spanish life in an imagined or idealized form where two wronged parties duel in accordance to a strict code of actions. He therefore places de Vega, Calderón, and other Spanish playwrights in the ranks of early modern moralists and an “elite culture” of Spanish authors . Rather then relying solely on dramatic and other literary representations, such as novels or dueling manuals, to illuminate the workings of “honor” and “violence” during the era, Taylor focuses on legal documentation of actual historical events. He does employ the plays, however, as tools for an intellectual discourse of honor contrasted with the factual events documented in legal records , by introducing each chapter with a dramatic scene treating the chapter’s topic, followed by an explication of the topic gleaned from his research into the courts. Through this methodology he deconstructs the romanticized anthropological and artistic concepts of honor by comparing them with descriptions of real-­ life confrontations involving civil matters of “honor” in early modern Spain. For example, in chapter 4, titled “Men,” which explores the anxieties of masculine honor and its dependency on the behavior of others, Taylor pre­ sents the opening scene of Calderón’s El pintor de su deshonra (The Painter of His Dishonor). He then contrasts the...

Magia e superstizione: viaggio nel tempo

Michael D. Bailey’s Magia e superstizione in Europa dall’Antichità ai giorni nostri (Magic and Superstition in Europe: A Concise History from Antiquity to the Present) is a useful work for a wide audience. Based on a wide scholarship of the history of magic and witchcraft, it gives readers a comparative perspective on how different Western societies viewed and categorized magic and superstition, and how magical traditions changed and adapted to different historical conditions. Bailey looks at the reactions of society to them, almost always suspicion, prosecution and persecution. Prudently declining to give abstract definitions of magic and superstition, he allows them to appear as categories of separation and refusal in many different historical contexts. Bailey’s analysis covers two millennia: it begins in the depths of antiquity and proceeds to the twenty-first century. The focus is on Europe in the medieval and early modern eras, although sections do cover the ancient Near East, classical Greece and Rome, and the spread of magical systems – particularly modern witchcraft or Wicca – from Europe to the United States. Although conceptions of magic have changed over time, Bailey shows that magic has always been, and continues to be, an important aspect of European history. Particularly, he explains how magic has almost always served as a boundary marker separating socially acceptable actions from illicit ones, and more generally the known and understood from the unknown and occult.

1968: Handbuch zur Kultur- und Mediengeschichte der Studentenbewegung by Martin Klimke, Joachim Scharloth

272 Reviews realism and toconnect with thetraditions ofEuropean modernismin which theself appearedasdivided. InShifting Perspectives Tatedrawson recent genretheory toapproachas 'autobio graphical writing'abodyof writing whichscholars havefound surprisingly difficult tograspin itsbroaderpoliticaland aesthetic contours. The first partof thestudy tracesthehistorical development of autobiographical writingin theGDR. Here Wolfs 'Lesenund Schreiben'is thespringboard fora surveythatextendsfrom texts bornfrom writers'engagement inthe19405 withLukacs's theories of realism and subjectivism topost-unification transformations ofsubjective authenticity. The secondpartexamines how theprojectofautobiographical writingshapedthe work of five authors: Brigitte Reimann,FranzFuhmann, Stefan Heym,GunterdeBruyn, andChrista Wolf. What makes the study such a stimulating one is the variable focus that itbrings tobear on itssubject. Tate'snarrative, in thefirst part,of theshifting triangular relationships betweencultural policy in the GDR, literary debates,and therepre sentation ofsubjective experience testifies toa commanding breadth ofscholarship. In thesecond,thechapters exhibita finely tunedsensitivity to theunfolding en gagement of thechosen writers with subjective forms of literary expression and to thecomplexity of individual literary texts. While these chapters place theindividual writersincontext veryeffectively, theyalso offer a judiciousassessment of their legacy from a contemporary perspective thattakesinto accountthefresh versions of texts that haveappearedsinceunification and, whereappropriate, theauthors' own continuations ofor revisions totheir literary projects. Tate'sgrounding inan auto biographical criticism whichhas contested hard-and-fast generic boundariesalso makes thisa compellingly cohesivestudy. By approaching the materialinterms of autobiographical writing, Shifting Perspectives reframes central criticalissues which havesurrounded theliterature ofsubjective authenticity andunlocksnewperspec tives on them. This isawell-researched book that offers an important reassessment of its subject. Itwill be necessary reading for scholars ofGDR and post-unification culture (and for that reason a valuable library acquisition). It is lucidlywritten and shouldbe accessibletoadvancedundergraduate readerstoo. UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL ANDREW PLOWMAN 1968: HandbuchzurKultur-und Mediengeschichte derStudentenbewegung. Ed. by MARTINKLIMKEand JOACHIM SCHARLOTH. Stuttgart andWeimar:Metzler. 2007. vi+323 pp. C49.95. ISBN978-3-476-02066-6. The German Student Movement of the late 196os continues to provide a fertile groundforinterdisciplinary research. Deftlyjuxtaposing'traditional' approaches from history, sociology, politicalscience, andmemoryresearch with the'performa tive turn' in cultural studies,Martin Klimke and Joachim Scharloth argue that the '68er' movementcan be productively understoodthrough itsrepresentations and manifestations. By viewing it as a generator of new forms of expression and alter nativesemioticsystems that had a lasting effect on protest culture, lifestyles, and MLR, 104.1, 2009 273 attitudes, they openupnewavenues ofenquirythat promiseto make senseofa com plex web ofcountercultural practice, alternative valuesystems, and their interaction withmedia that simultaneously reflected andconstructed the movement'sidentity. Designed as a 'handbook', thevolumepresentstwenty-four essays,loosely gath eredaround theheadings 'MedienundOffentlichkeit', 'Performanz und Subver sion','Neuekulturelle Praktiken', 'Gewaltdiskurse', and 'Ruckblicke'. While varying inqualityand scope,eachessayprovidesan interesting aspector case study of the centraltheme, often with helpful photographs and always with a comprehensive bibliography forfurther study. In a contribution based on herground-breaking study Protest-Inszenierungen (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag,2002),KathrinFahlenbachpointsout thatthe GermanStudent Movementencountered a 'medienhistorische Schwellensituation' with thetransition from printtotelevision. Bothmediawere forced toadapttheir modes of reporting infavour ofvisualandemotional criteria, which inturninflu encedthe way the Student Movementorganized andchoreographed its protests. An 'expressiver Proteststil' was createdthatindicated socialdemarcation lines, helped topolarizeandmobilize protesters, and afforded themtheillusionof a 'Kollek tivkorper' (p.14).Thissharedexperience of the'Einheit vonDenken,Handelnund Fiihlen' was theutopianidealof the'Kommune i' in WestBerlin, whosemembers becamebothexpert manipulators andvictims ofthe media. Henning Marmulla'sessayon the Kursbuch rightly stresses the keyroleofthe pe riodical edited by HansMagnusEnzensberger that first appearedin1965andquickly becamethe'zentrale Zeitschrift' for activists andprovedfundamental fortheforma tionandmobilization of the68ers.Severaltimesthe Kursbuch providedthe'Stich worte'for the movement, be itthefocus on international movements (nos1i and13), theinvestigation intotheeventsaroundthekillingofBennoOhnesorgon 2 June 1967 (no.12),or itsfamous questioning of thesocialfunction ofliterature (no.21). Perhapsone of themost originaland instructive contributions comes from MereridPuwDavies,who researches theemphatic function ofgraffiti inthe move ment. While theslogans of1968inParishavebecome museumpieces,their German counterparts remained ephemeral, and survive onlyinbrief allusionsintheliterary representation of the era, e.g. inUwe Timm's Hei,3er Sommer. Davies argues that by reading graffiti in a book, we lose theirmost vital aspects: their radical, public character and their bold,activeintervention in theurbanenvironment. She reads thesurreal, challenging, andhumorous'Spruiche' bytheconcept artist Eiffe as a de velopment of theideasof the Situationist International anda response toalienation ina capitalist world. Joachim Scharloth views theescapadesof the Kommune i through thelensof performance theory. In their regular encounters with the WestBerlinlegalsystem, the 'celebrities' of theKi developeda highlyeffective arsenalof communicative strategies that would unmask/ridicule their opponents...

Lord Bingham: Of Swallows and International Law

This paper forms part of a festschrift on the retirement of Lord Bingham as the Senior Law Lord of the United Kingdom's House of Lords. The focus lies with the contribution made by Lord Bingham to the jurisprudence of international law and to its application in English law. Lucid judgments, economy of style and rigorous assessment of the law have been characteristic of Lord Bingham's contribution as a jurist. He has adopted a restrained approach to the exercise of judicial power and deep respect for parliamentary sovereignty and the rules of statutory interpretation. As a national judge, Lord Bingham has influenced our understanding of the role of international law in domestic law. His judgments on sovereign immunity, waging aggressive war, extraterritorial application of national human rights legislation, derogations from treaty obligations and admission of evidence obtained by torture provide a scholarly body of international legal research that will influence the development of the law in the future. Lord Bingham's leading judgment in the Belmarsh cases in 2005, for which he is arguably best known to the public, shows a commitment to human rights and a willingness to consider the principles of international law to identify the domestic rule. Other decisions, such as Jones and Saudi Arabia, confirm that Lord Bingham has not been a judicial activist. Rather, he has insisted upon credible evidence of any purported rule. Lord Bingham's legacy to international law lies in his breadth of scholarship, methodology for identifying the rule and clarity of judicial thinking.

A Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic * BY ARNE A. AMBROS and STEPHAN PROCHAZKA * The Nouns of Koranic Arabic Arranged by Topics: A Companion Volume to the 'Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic' * BY ARNE A. AMBROS and STEPHAN PROCHAZKA

Written in English, published in Germany with some Qurʾānic quotations in German, a dedication in Latin, and references to Syriac, Hebrew, Aramaic, Ethiopic and Persian, this is clearly the work of a linguist of remarkably wide scholarship. The late Arne Ambros (may he rest in peace) took his D.Phil in quantum physics, but studied Arabic as a hobby. He must have been good at it, because his career led him to become Professor of Arabic and Islamics at Vienna University, writing course materials on many other languages too, including Nabatean. In addition to his Arabic and Semitic linguistics and philology he was particularly interested in Persian, (Ottoman and Modern) Turkish and several other European and non-European languages (inter alia Irish, Modern Greek, and the Romance languages). He sometimes uses Greek grammatical terms in his explanations. The emphasis in his (altogether 392-page) Concise Dictionary of Koranic Arabic is on the ‘Concise’. A long list of abbreviations on p. 3 sets the tone and in the Foreword (p. 1) he explains that he has omitted any Arabic script because it would have increased the size of the book considerably while possibly inconveniencing some users ‘with only limited knowledge of the Arabic language’. He is thus dependent on transliteration for his (relatively rare) examples in the text, and this is done according to the German Oriental Society system (p. 7) that adds diacritical marks to single roman letters rather than representing the sound with two letters. This has its uses but means that a single letter (h, g or t for example) can be read as several different Arabic (and other Semitic) letters depending on the minute marks above and below it, which inconveniences those without a magnifying glass. Without the text, he is also very dependent on verse numbers, and he admits to using Flügel's concordance (critically) as a guide, as well as a CDROM of The Holy Qur’an with search facilities, so the references could well be confusing. While concentrating on words that occur in the Qurʾān he includes some (marked) classical Arabic words that do not. He also praises for its thoroughness (p. 11) Rudi Paret's German translation of the Qurʾān and admits that, apart from this, ‘only the translation by Richard Bell into English … was consulted … which gives more room to the translator's schooled intuition’ although ‘rather archaic’ in style. As most of the examples of translation in the Dictionary are extremely short, this does not seem to present much of a problem.