Xii Xiii Research Articles

Introduction—Rights, Space, and Homelessness: Part II

… All in all, the new law-and-order geste transmutes the fight against crime into a titillating bureaucratic-journalistic theatre that simultaneously appeases and feeds the fantasies of order of the electorate, reasserts the authority of the state through its virile language and mimics, and erects the prison as the ultimate rampart against the disorders which, erupting out of its underworld, are alleged to threaten the very foundations of society. (Wacquant, 2009, p. xii–xiii) Americans have never had so many rights … and so little power to shape collective justice and national aims. (Brown, 2004, p. 459) Wacquant’s provocative interpretation of how American justice has become a vehicle for punishing the poor, and Brown’s lament for the countervailing force of rights, are powerfully illustrated in three articles that constitute the second part of the special issue on Rights, Space, and Homelessness. 2 As noted in our introduction to the previous installment, the articles capture a multitude of activities, connections, places, and tendencies that explicate myriad instances of growing hostility and exclusion for North Americans marginalized by virtue of their lack of a permanent residence, as well as acts of resistance and reaction to these circumstances. Here, three fine-grained case studies focus on the experiences of those caught in the crosshairs of interactions between law, space, and the state. The manner in which marginalization is perpetrated both directly and indirectly is explored with the help of qualitative research and in two cases, the words and thoughts of the homeless. All three studies also illustrate how awareness of the imbrications of law, space, and the state help to identify multiple points at which repressive outcomes might be challenged.

Mental Maps in the Era of Two World Wars

The past two decades have witnessed the rise of an exciting ‘cultural turn’ in the history of international relations. Much greater attention is now focused on the beliefs and practices of actors in international politics. Diplomacy is often understood as a ‘cultural encounter’ as well as an institution for the exercise of power in the international system. This fine collection of essays on the ‘mental maps’ of key statesmen during the inter-war period makes an important contribution to this new approach. Its focus is on political élites responsible for the making of policy rather than the diplomatic or military officials who advised them. The end result is an unusually rich and varied collection that will be of interest for both students and specialists of international relations between the two world wars. The aim of this volume is by no means to resurrect the outdated fixation on what a few (usually male) policy élites thought and said—the history of ‘what one clerk said to another’. The concept of a ‘mental map’, the editors argue, is useful not only for better understanding the fundamental assumptions shaping policy decisions, but also to help ‘uncover’ the ‘underlying political and social environments in which various leaders developed and rose to influence’ (pp. xii–xiii). It therefore holds out the promise of a more sophisticated analysis of the relationship between agents and structures in the making of policy. This promise is certainly borne out in several of the essays that follow. While the quality of the chapters is a little uneven, all of the contributions are worth reading. The most effective outline the understandings, expectations and political visions of their subject systematically at the outset and then link these ‘mental maps’ to the evolution of policy-making.

Meeting the Challenge from Totalitarianism: The Tennessee Valley Authority as a Global Model for Liberal Development, 1933–1945

Meeting the Challenge from Totalitarianism: The Tennessee Valley Authority as a Global Model for Liberal Development, 1933–1945

Social Class in the Writings of Mary Hallock Foote (review)

Reviewed by: Social Class in the Writings of Mary Hallock Foote James H. Maguire Social Class in the Writings of Mary Hallock Foote. By Christine Hill Smith. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2009. 248 pages, $34.95. Christine Hill Smith's preface gives a clear outline of the rest of her book: "Using terminology and concepts of class defined by historians, sociologists, political scientists, and literary critics, I analyze Foote's fiction and nonfiction, addressing how she came to think and write as she did. I compare Foote with other writers of her age, delve into her upbringing and literary tastes, and scrutinize how being a woman affected her attitudes toward class" (xii–xiii). Smith sheds light on Foote's novels, stories, letters, and children's literature and also explains how class affected frontier society in the American West. To prepare her readers for her detailed analysis of Foote's writings, Smith's introductory chapter starts with some of the key facts of Foote's life and then briefly discusses topics such as western American stratification, the realism and naturalism of the period, female and male roles, and the controversy over Wallace Stegner's use of Foote's life and writings in his novel Angle of Repose (1971). Although Smith sometimes mistakenly slips into reading Angle of Repose as nonfiction biography instead of as a novel, her comments on the controversy are otherwise fair and sensible. Then, in chapter 1, she extends the discussion of social class to explain Foote's elitist views and "the tensions between her old and new contexts" (26). Smith makes a good guess that Foote's personal insecurity probably reinforced her sense of social exclusivity to such an extent that it "ruled out interaction as peers with people of a different color" and with most people of an ethnic background different from her own (48). Chapters 2 and 3 focus, respectively, on literary allusions and gender roles in Foote's Leadville novels. These earlier novels have received somewhat more attention than Foote's later works. Nevertheless, Smith's discussion adds significantly to our understanding of social tensions in early Leadville. Foote's children's literature is the subject of the fourth chapter; and Smith's perceptive analysis shows that the treatment of social class in Foote's children's stories is very similar to how it appears in her adult fiction. The last two chapters make a major contribution to our understanding of Foote's work and her times. First, Smith says, "The term New Woman came to be used in the 1890s and early twentieth century to describe women who avoided or reinvented marriage and family life and strove to create autonomous lives for themselves working outside the home" (117). Then, by showing that an important character in The Ground-Swell (1919) is a New Woman, Smith gives a new and illuminating reading of Foote's last novel. Smith's closing chapter is about the early correspondence between Foote and her close friend Helena de Kay Gilder. Except for the letters Stegner used and often [End Page 298] altered in Angle of Repose, very little of that correspondence has been published. Smith uses her knowledge of all the letters to advance our understanding of Foote's attitudes and writings. She achieves what she set out to do, and she thereby makes possible a more informed reading of Foote's writings and of Angle of Repose. [End Page 299] James H. Maguire Boulder, Colorado Copyright © 2009 Western Literature Association

Solomon: Israel’s Ironic Icon of Human Achievement (review)

Reviewed by: Solomon: Israel’s Ironic Icon of Human Achievement David S. Williams Solomon: Israel’s Ironic Icon of Human Achievement, by Walter Brueggemann. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005. 301 pp. $44.95. Willa Cather wrote that “some memories are realities,” which leaves room to suggest that some memories are not. In this book, Walter Brueggemann explores the collective Israelite memories of the singular personage, Solomon, whom Brueggemann deems “a complex interpretive construct” (p. xii). Thus, though Brueggemann does deal initially, in his first chapter, with the question of the historical Solomon, that question is not the main subject of his study. Finding Solomon to have been “a modest historical character from the tenth century who presided over a modest court, a modest economy, and a temple apparatus in Jerusalem” (p. 21), Brueggemann instead turns the bulk of his attention to “canonical Solomon,” the “Solomon of faith,” who is “surely a product of interpretive imposition, that is, of ideology” (p. 22). Unlike the modest historical personage, “canonical Solomon” is triumphant, and becomes a symbol of power and wisdom. Yet this very image is subverted in the canon by “the ironic exposé of his would-be success” (p. 22). Brueggemann shows that an ironic point about the limits of human power pervades the whole: “On the surface, Solomon is as fully absolute as any ruler in Israel could ever [End Page 166] be. . . . The narrative presentation of Solomon, however, is given in literature that has a distinct, deliberate theological edge, that is, an awareness that the power of YHWH—variously enacted by direct or hidden means—serves to deabsolutize every human claimant to power and to render such claimants penultimate” (pp. xii–xiii). The “key narrative” about Solomon is found in 1 Kings 3–11, and Brueggemann appropriately devotes much attention to this foundational depiction. Thus, in chapters two through eight he explores “how a modest Solomon became a large narrative Solomon” (p. 66). Brueggemann lays out how “the articulation of Solomon as temple builder, wise king, and economic genius is an act of sustained, constructive imagination” (p. 139). However, he also constantly reminds the reader that the matter of irony “is of great importance in reading the Bible alertly” (p. xii), for it exposes contradictions that may be overlooked. In this case, the “surface” reading suggests that Solomon is a great and faithful king. An attentive reading of the text that is attuned to irony, however, reveals that this view is systematically undone. Indeed, on all counts of his celebrated reputation, “Solomon ends exposed as failure: A temple for presence becomes a house of absence for the deported; the gift of wisdom is transformed into distorted foolishness; and the accumulation of wealth culminates in disastrous loss” (p. 156). Because the key narrative about Solomon is located at the beginning of 1–2 Kings, it drives home the main point about human power: “By placing the failed Solomon of temple absence, foolish wisdom, and lost wealth at the beginning of the narrative, the story shows how Solomon is a key contributor not only to the failure that immediately surfaces for his son Rehoboam, but to the ultimate failure, the termination of the dynasty in 2 Kings 24–25” (p. 157). In chapters nine through fourteen, Brueggemann extends his, and our, view by examining further depictions of Solomon in Chronicles, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and Psalms. Brueggemann does not stop with canonical depictions, but also takes up some fascinating extra-canonical depictions in the Wisdom of Solomon, the Qur’an, Ethiopic traditions, and Freemasonry traditions, as well as the New Testament. In so doing, Brueggemann underscores the point that “the memory of Solomon has continued to feed and energize the interpretive imagination of ongoing communities of faithful interpretation” (p. 225). [End Page 167] As can be seen, while carrying the sparse title Solomon, this book actually traces the multiple “Solomons” of biblical tradition. The result is a highly readable and provocative study, which is easily accessible by general readers. David S. Williams Director of the Honors Program University of Georgia Copyright © 2008 Purdue University

The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century (review)

Reviewed by: The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century Richard D. Burbank The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century. By Alex Ross. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007. [xiv, 624 p. ISBN-13: 978-0-374-24939-7. $30.] Illustrations, bibliographic references, discography, index. Music librarians have a treasure in this wonderful new book: unlocking the treasure chest itself is best accomplished by reading the index first. That way, names you might want to see in the text but that do not appear there will not surprise you. The index provides a detailed overview of just who and what are discussed in the book. Next, read the preface. That is where Alex Ross reveals his purpose: “Each chapter cuts a wide swath through a given period, but there is no attempt to be comprehensive: certain careers stand in for certain scenes, certain key pieces stand in for entire careers, and much great music is left on the cutting-room floor” (p. xiv). Ross emphasizes in his preface that he “chronicles not only the artists themselves but also the politicians, dictators, millionaire patrons, and CEOs who tried to control what music was written; the intellectuals who attempted to adjudicate style; the writers, painters, dancers and filmmakers who provided companionship on lonely roads of exploration; the audiences who variously reveled in, reviled, or ignored what composers were doing, the technologies that changed how music was made and heard; and the revolutions, hot and cold wars, waves of emigration, and deeper social transformations that reshaped the landscape in which composers worked” (p. xii–xiii). After reading the book itself, the reader may want to read the endnotes to find out just where all of these bits of information came from, and to see how artfully Ross has woven them into his text. Ross freely admits that “portions of the book originally appeared, in different form, in The New Yorker.” He also states that his subtitle is meant literally: “this is the twentieth century heard through its music” (p. xiii). He informs the reader that the book is the result of fifteen years of work as a music critic. He also occasionally reiterates the purpose of the book as the text unfolds, as, for example, when he writes that the book illuminates “the cultural predicament of the composer in the twentieth century” (p. 185). These interjections make the book an excellent lesson and a wonderful ride. Finally, near the end of the book, Ross once again highlights his intent: “This has been a book about the fate of composition in the twentieth century” (p. 514). As the text on the book jacket points out: “The end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.” Here, then, are some composers the reader will not find in Ross’s book. It is important to list these names so that, in case the list contains some of your favorites from the twentieth century, you will be able to calm down and allow Ross to shine his own lights on that century: Isaac Albéniz, Dominick Argento, Arthur Benjamin, Richard Rodney Bennett, Lennox Berkeley, Arthur Bliss, Ernest Bloch, William Bolcom, Henry Brant, Havergal Brian, Samuel Taylor-Coleridge, Michael Colgrass, Roque Cordero, Chou Wen-Chung, Mario David-ovsky, Frederick Delius, Edison Denisov, Jacob Druckman, Gottfried von Einem, Gerald Finzi, Elena Firsova, Michael Finnissy, Arthur Foote, Alberto Ginastera, Umberto Giordano, Rheinhold Gliere, Alexander Gretchaninoff, John Harbison, Elizabeth Lutyens, Bruno Maderna, Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, Victor Herbert, Alun Hoddinott, York Höller, Vagn Holmboe, Jacques Ibert, Vincent d’Indy, Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov, Andre Jolivet, Joseph Jongen, Dmitri Kabalevsky, Jean Langlais, Paul Lansky, Benjamin Lees, Ton de Leeuw, Alan Jay Lerner, Gian Francesco Malipiero, Jules Massenet, Nicholas Maw, Thea Musgrave, Andrzej Panufnik, Vincent Persichetti, Astor Piazzolla, Bernard Rands, Einojuhani Rautavaara, Ottorino Respighi, Wolfgang Rihm, Edmund Rubbra, Aulis Sallinen, and the Tcherepnins. Ross divides the twentieth century into three parts: 1900–1933; 1933–1945; 1945–2000. He uses the two world wars as major [End Page 75] points of demarcation after writing about Vienna (prior to World War I), then Hitler and Stalin, then New York...

Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit

Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit. By Joshua Foa Dienstag. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 314p. $35.00.This stimulating book has two aims, one descriptive and one normative. Its first goal is to provide an “appraisal” of pessimism and recover it “as an important tradition in the history of political thought” alongside more familiar -isms. Its second goal is to offer an “endorsement” of this neglected tradition and “reanimate” it by presenting its “appeal” in such a way as to “recreate it” in us (pp. ix, xii–xiii, 265, 271).

Memory's Guilted Cage: Delany's Dhalgren and Gibson's Pattern Recognition

Memory’s Guilted Cage:Delany’s Dhalgren and Gibson’s Pattern Recognition Jason Haslam (bio) In 1996, American expatriate William Gibson—the "father" of cyberpunk, living in British Columbia after moving to Canada to evade the Vietnam draft1 —wrote an introduction to the re-release of the novel Dhalgren, originally published in 1974, written by Samuel Delany, often described as a precursor to or inspiration for later authors of cyberpunk.2 In his introduction to Delany's eight-hundred-page opus, Gibson writes that he "place[s] Dhalgren in history," a history he then specifies: No one under thirty-five today can remember the singularity that overtook America in the nineteen-sixties, and the generation that experienced it most directly seems largely to have opted for amnesia and denial. But something did happen: a city came to be, in America. (And I imagine I use America here as shorthand for something else; perhaps for the industrialized nations of the American Century.) The city had no specific locale, and its internal geography was mainly fluid. […] The city was largely invisible to America. If America was about "home" and "work," the city was about neither, and that made the city very difficult for America to see. […] I would not suggest that Dhalgren is any sort of map of that city, intentional [End Page 77] or otherwise, but that they bear some undeniable relationship. (Those who would prefer to forget the city say that it produced no true literature, but that too is denial.) […] When I think of Dhalgren, I remember this: A night in Dupont Circle, Washington, D.C., amid conditions of civil riot, when someone, as the police arrived with their staves and plastic shields, tossed a Molotov cocktail. (xii–xiii) Gibson implies, or intones, that Dhalgren is a novel not just about American civil unrest, but that it is an encapsulation of that unrest, "the unmediated experience of the singularity […], free of all corrosion and nostalgia" (xiii). Gibson thus places Dhalgren at the crux of memory and nation, suggesting that what Toni Morrison has elsewhere called the "national narrative"—the "official story [that] obliterates any narrative that is counter to it" (xvi, xviii)—has either intentionally "forgotten" the civil unrest of the 1960s or rendered it nostalgic, while Dhalgren stands not just as a final testament to, or reflection of, but a nearly magical incarnation of those events. Delany's postmodern, circuitous, self-reflexive, exploration of the fictional city of Bellona represents, for Gibson, the recent radical, if not revolutionary past which has been subsumed by the "long slough" (xiii) of the national narrative which, in turn, is created for and by what is so often referred to as "middle America." Little wonder, then, that Gibson revisits issues of amnesia, denial, and their relations to American national identity (again figured by him as "shorthand for something else; perhaps […] the American Century" of globalization) in his 2003 novel, Pattern [End Page 78] Recognition, possibly the first literary, fictional exploration by an (ostensibly) American author of the position of 9/11 within an American and global history—and future.3 Gibson's and Delany's novels construct a similar tension related to the past and to a largely unspoken sense of a guilt that concerns memories (personal and cultural) of inaction in the face of (cultural and personal) moments of violence. The past becomes a space of both individual neuroses and communal guilt. I argue that both Delany and Gibson use a thematic focus on a past that has gone missing (the protagonist's amnesia in Delany's text, a missing father in Gibson's) to discuss the ways in which the American national narrative, in order to maintain a self-cohesive vision of the nation, needs to repress its very creation of and relation to a silenced other (represented through the inner city by Delany, and the history of global conflict by Gibson). Following the mechanics of ideology, this decontextualization or a-historicizing transforms a given historical moment, with its specificities (of a given system of power relations, for example) into a universalized myth and therefore into a supposedly unassailable truth—in Barthes's terminology a "global sign, the final...

A Polemic For Why Markets Need Cops

A Polemic For Why Markets Need Cops

Verbatim: From the Bawdy to the Sublime, the Best Writing on Language for Word Lovers, Grammar Mavens, and Armchair Linguists (review)

Reviewed by: Verbatim: From the bawdy to the sublime, the best writing on language for word lovers, grammar mavens, and armchair linguists ed. by Erin McKean M. Lynne Murphy Verbatim: From the bawdy to the sublime, the best writing on language for word lovers, grammar mavens, and armchair linguists. Ed. by Erin McKean. New York: Harcourt, 2001. Pp. xvii, 353. ISBN: 015601209X. $11.20. This collection of ‘greatest hits’ from the Verbatim newsletter covers a wide range of topics from nearly 30 years of quarterly publication. Edited by the current editor, with a foreword by the founding editor, Laurence Urdang, it’s an eclectic mix, and any reader will be as baffled at the inclusion of some items as they are pleased with the inclusion of others. For some of the best articles, follow-up correspondence is included, and as in the newsletter, the spaces between articles are filled with humorous ambiguities and malapropisms from the popular press. Glaringly and frustratingly omitted are the dates of the chapters’ original publication. The book opens with two articles on intolerance of linguistic intolerance—setting the stage for an approach that celebrates creative and precise language use, including the celebration of nonstandard varieties and ‘vulgar’ forms. After a bit of intolerance (of intolerance and of bureaucratic language and pleonasms), other sections of the book include a few articles each on onomastics, varieties of English, dictionaries and lexicographers, specialist vocabularies (slang, jargon), etymologies, the printed word, language-based humor and word play, and rude words, plus a couple of hodgepodge sections labeled ‘Armchair linguistics’ and ‘Other languages: Just the good parts’. Many of the articles are basically lists of words that exemplify some dialect, jargon, slang, derivational procedure, or what-have-you. Others identify ‘new’ linguistic phenomena, like ‘polysemania’ and ‘quasi-malediction’. Each aims for an amusing pace and style, and some are indeed gems, like Richard Lederer’s ‘The world according to student bloopers’ and Peter Sypnowich’s ‘Needless to say’. While the book (like the newsletter) is commendable for its invitation to one and all to celebrate and have opinions on language (particularly English) and its usage, it’s also interesting for its insights into the popular status of the professional linguist. In his foreword, Urdang warns that ‘Professional linguists guard their domain zealously, often forbidding any untrained “amateur” admittance to the secret annual cabals sponsored by such august institutions as the Linguistics [sic] Society of America, the Dialect Society [sic], the American Name Society, and so forth’ (xii–xiii). I can only assume that Urdang’s (or his copyeditor’s) failure to get the names of these organizations right is a clever way of avoiding charges of libel: surely the LSA or ADS have never refused a registration check on the basis of its writer’s [End Page 660] professional status? The amateur/professional status of most contributors is hidden here, with no biographical blurbs or affiliations for the authors—with one interesting exception. While those with degrees in linguistics or related fields are not identified, those with medical degrees carry ‘M.D.’ after their names. Never mind the eggheads, the real doctors are here to save the day—and the language! M. Lynne Murphy University of Sussex Copyright © 2003 Linguistic Society of America

Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography. By William Lee Miller. (New York: Knopf, 2002. xvi, 515 pp. $30.00, ISBN 0–375–40158–X.)

Lincoln's Virtues is an ambitious and elegant intellectual biography of Abraham Lincoln that succeeds admirably in uncovering the “moral meaning” of his life while enhancing “our understanding of Lincoln as a real human being in a real world” (pp. xii–xiii). William Lee Miller challenges a rising tide of cynicism about Lincoln's motives and methods by dissecting the political, social, and intellectual foundations that underlay his key moral judgments. Miller applies Max Weber's distinction between an “ethics of responsibility,” which denies the existence of pure and absolute alternatives, and a contrasting “ethics of abstract purity,” devoted to idealism and even perfection (p. 197). In Miller's estimation, Lincoln was morally as well as intellectually self-educated and developed an intuitive “ethic of responsibility” that recognized the limitations of American society and government. Lincoln eschewed perfection as impossible, proposing “our most intelligent judgment of the consequences” (p. 212) as the best that society can achieve. He therefore framed—and defended—his moral judgments on a foundation of intellect rather than faith. In his youth, Miller demonstrates, Lincoln struggled with essential Christian doctrines, eventually accepting and even celebrating them on the basis of reason rather than belief. The same ethic led Lincoln to reject evangelical religion for assuming too much personal freedom independent of social institutions—the “real world.” Similarly, he never viewed his own moral judgments as absolutes nor imposed them on others.

Chava Weissler. Voices of the Matriarch: Listening to Prayers of Early Modern Jewish Women. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988. xxvi, 267 pp.

For more than a decade, Chava Weissler has called on readers to listen to the voices of matriarchs. Her numerous articles on tkhines—Yiddish prayers for private devotion typically recited by women of early modernity—have appeared in a wide variety of academic and, to a much lesser extent, popular publications. At once folklorist, ethnographer, literary critic, and student of classical Jewish texts and mysticism, Weissler has time and again applied her training in elite fields of learning to non-elite sources. While initially interested in merely “recover[ing] women's religious experience and contrast[ing] it to men's,” her objectives have broadened over the years to include “understanding the tkhines within the matrix of Ashkenazic Judaism” (pp. xii–xiii). Most recently, Weissler has turned to interpreting how tkhines influenced twentieth-century Jewish religious life in communities as diverse as Conservative Jewry and feminist ritual groups.

Approaching Dialogue: Talk, Interaction and Contexts in Dialogical Perspectives (review)

Reviewed by: Approaching dialogue: Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives by Per Linell Maurice Nevile Approaching dialogue: Talk, interaction and contexts in dialogical perspectives. By Per Linell. (Impact: Studies in language and society 3.) Amsterdam Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1998. Pp. xvii, 331. This book is well-timed and ambitious. Linell describes his primary interest as the theoretical understanding and empirical analysis of talk-in-interaction (xi), and his second interest as exploring ‘the possibilities and limitations in dialogism as a general epistemology for cognition and communication’ (xi). [End Page 621] After more than twenty years of detailed study of naturally occurring talk-in-interaction, within or arising from the traditions of conversation analysis and ethnomethodology, the time is right to explore theoretical concepts for analyzing spoken interaction. The book has fourteen chapters divided into three parts. Part 1, ‘Monologism and dialogism contrasted’ (3–63), includes Chs. 1–4 and provides background to the two paradigms of monologism and dialogism, covering the basic assumptions of monologism (Ch. 2, 17–33) and the historical development of dialogism (Ch. 3, 35–54). According to L, monologism is the dominant framework in studies of communication. It tends to identify ‘the speaker alone as the origin of an utterance’ (xii) and adopts theories of ‘cognition as individually-based information processing, communication as information transfer, and language as code’ (xii–xiii). Dialogism views utterances as produced by speakers who are always ‘in dialogue’ with interlocutors and contexts (xiii). Part 2, ‘Interacting and making sense in contexts’ (67–259), has eight chapters and forms the bulk of the book. This part is concerned with describing dialogue and talk-in-interaction. It presents a dialogistic understanding of speaking as a situated and communicative activity. ‘Communicative projects’ are accomplished by the collaborative action of all participants in the interaction. So, for example, dialogism does not favor simple distinctions like speaker/hearer but instead considers the role of the speaker’s partner in authoring the utterance. Cognition and communication are social and contextualized. Other chapters are Ch. 5 ‘The dynamics of dialogue’ (67–89); Ch. 6 ‘Speakers and listeners’ (91–109); Ch. 7 ‘Sense-making in discourse and the situated fixation of linguistic meanings’ (111–26); Ch. 8 ‘Contexts in discourse and discourse in contexts’ (127–58), which presents aspects of a theory to explore how utterances can both shape and be shaped by context; Ch. 9 ‘Elementary contributions to discourse’ (159–80), Ch. 10 ‘Episodes and topics’ (181–205); Ch. 11 ‘Communicative projects’ (207–34); and Ch. 12 ‘Situation definitions, activity types and communicative genres’ (235–59). Part 3, ‘Monologism and dialogism reconciled?’, has just two chapters. In Ch. 13 ‘Dialogism: Opportunities and limitations’ (263–76), L looks at how dialogism can be extended to look at other forms of communication and cognition, including written texts, and considers methodological issues such as coding and quantification in studying spoken interaction from a dialogistic perspective. Ch. 14 ‘Reconstructing monologism as a special case’ (277–87), is the final chapter and describes a place for monologism while retaining dialogism as ‘the most basic and comprehensive theory of cognition, communication and language’ (278). The book draws on a range of traditions in discourse study, making it both more rewarding and more challenging to read. On the whole, L is to be commended for developing a dialogical theory of discourse while remaining firmly grounded in the study of authentic spoken interaction. Maurice Nevile Australian National University Copyright © 2001 Linguistic Society of America

Events

Research Article| March 01 1999 Events Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology-Aqua (1999) 48 (2): xii–xiii. https://doi.org/10.2166/aqua.1999.5 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Permissions Search Site Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAll JournalsThis Journal Search Advanced Search Citation Events. Journal of Water Supply: Research and Technology-Aqua 1 March 1999; 48 (2): xii–xiii. doi: https://doi.org/10.2166/aqua.1999.5 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex This content is only available as a PDF. © IWA Publishing 1999 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World (review)

Reviewed by: The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World Thomas A. J. McGinn Robert Garland. The Eye of the Beholder: Deformity and Disability in the Graeco-Roman World. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. xviii + 222 pp. 64 pls. Cloth, $39.95. Recent years have witnessed increased attention among ancient historians in the subject of marginal types. What is new is not so much the unearthing of evidence, most of which has long been available though not always easily accessible in the works of antiquarians, but the sophistication of method and the vigor of approach spurred by developments in the social history of more recent periods. An incomplete notice might include the studies devoted to gladiators (Wiedemann) and actors (Leppin, Ducos), Roman slaves (Bradley), so-called humiliores (Rilinger), leistai, mercenaries, and traders in fourth-century Greece (McKechnie), blacks in the Roman world (Thompson), and dwarfs in Egypt and Greece (Dasen). What is common to most or all of these efforts is a tight focus limited to one society, a narrowly-framed period of time, and/or a well-defined group. This narrow approach is not at all surprising, given the fact that the sources are scattered and composite, and demand a wide range of expertise in their treatment. A general study of the situation of the deformed and disabled in antiquity is then an all the more welcome addition to this trend in scholarship, though the true test of its usefulness will be its ability to confront successfully this central challenge posed by the sources. The book under review deserves praise for attempting to fill this need. There are undeniable advantages to the panoptic approach. The book calls attention to the value of evidence that is easily ignored: two prominent examples are the visual arts and physiognomy. Among its other virtues is a valuable demonstration of how ridicule is employed as a “marginalizing” device. The introduction is in some ways exemplary for its lucid emphasis on the difficulties of the enterprise. Unfortunately, such caution is fully justified by the result. This review argues two points: that a synthesis of this subject is as yet premature and that future studies should avoid wedding themselves as directly to modern concerns as this one does. A list of the chapter-headings shows that the book is organized thematically: “Survival of the Weakest,” “Half-Lives,” “The Roman Emperor in His Monstrous World,” “The Deformed and Divine,” “Deriding the Disabled,” “The Physiognomic Consciousness,” “Images of the Deformed,” “Medical Diagnosis and Treatment,” “Towards a Teratology,” and “Racial Deformity.” The chapters are bracketed by an Introduction and Conclusion, and followed by a Glossary, Notes, Bibliography, Index Locorum, and General Index. Plates with sixty-four illustrations complement the presentation of visual evidence in the text. The author sets himself a double aim (xii–xiii). One goal is to study the social [End Page 667] and economic conditions governing the existence of the deformed and disabled, and further to attempt to establish to what extent the ancients developed a teratology—the study of the causes of congenital deformity. The other purpose lies in the author’s desire to contribute a personal perspective, one avowedly shaped by the passage in 1990 of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The forthright assertion of modern—and deeply personal—concerns is a hallmark of this work. As the title suggests, this is a subjective evaluation of the ancient evidence. It will come as no surprise that, when measured by the author’s standard, that of the ADA, the Greeks and particularly the Romans fall short of the mark. Unfortunately, the successful pursuit of this second goal spoils the fruits of the first. In brief, the author displays a pronounced inclination to moralize, which reduces the power of his work. In a similar way, the breadth of approach ultimately defeats its own purpose. The challenge of the sources—confronted with honesty by Garland in his introductory chapter—is exacerbated to an unacceptable degree by his refusal to define carefully what he means by “deformed” and “disabled” (see 5–7). There are also various infelicities of treatment, especially though not exclusively on the Roman side, which might have been avoided...

Illusions and Conceptual Flaws

Debate: Democratic ConsolidationIllusions and Conceptual Flaws Guillermo O’Donnell (bio) In their rejoinder, Richard Gunther, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, and Hans-Jürgen Puhle (henceforth “the authors”) discuss several issues: those pertaining to my critique of their use of “democratic consolidation”; those related to my doubts about the idea of democratic consolidation more generally; and their own critique of the alternative criteria sketched in my essay. The first set of issues is most relevant to this exchange, although I will briefly discuss the others as well. The authors define democratic consolidation as “the achievement of substantial attitudinal support and behavioral compliance with the new democratic institutions and rules of the game they establish.” 1 Since “full consolidation” is an ultimately unattainable “ideal type” (p. 5 and rejoinder), it suffices that “all politically significant groups” (p. 7) provide such support and compliance. When this is the case, a democracy is “sufficiently consolidated.” The authors locate the “dividing line” between “consolidated and unconsolidated democratic regimes” where “democratic regimes are sufficiently consolidated so as to survive and remain stable in the face of such serious challenges as major economic or international crises, or even serious outbreaks of terrorist violence” (p. 8, italics in original). This approach has several flaws. It fails to distinguish between survival and stability as a definitional component of sufficient consolidation and as a consequence of the consolidation resulting from the attitudinal and behavioral acceptance of the regime (p. 3). It also fails to distinguish between democratic consolidation as a process and as a regime attribute achieved after “successful completion” of the former (p. 389). Lastly, if “all politically significant actors” accept a regime’s [End Page 160] “rules of the game,” it is not astounding news to assert that, other things being equal, this regime is consolidated—or likely to endure, or stable, or any equivalent idea. 2 The authors view consolidation as a several-stage process. It begins, and may overlap, with the transition from an authoritarian regime (pp. xii–xiii; we are not told how to distinguish processes pertaining to the one or the other). The democracy resulting from the transition may be simply unconsolidated, but it may also be “partially consolidated,” or “substantially consolidated”; or it may be consolidated at the national but not the regional level—all this before eventually reaching “sufficient consolidation.” 3 In turn, partial consolidation may mean that only some of the “partial regimes” 4 have consolidated (p. 410), or it may refer to a stage between nonconsolidation and sufficient consolidation. Nor need the latter stage be the end, for then may come “the stage of democratic persistence” (p. 413), which “represents the end product of a long democratization process” (p. xiii). Surprisingly, we read that at this stage “entirely new theoretical and practical concerns move to center stage, as the imperatives of transition and consolidation fade into the background of social inquiry” (p. 412). Presumably this applies in the cases of “Greece, Portugal, and Spain [which] are examples of consolidation and continuing [sic ] democratic persistence” (p. 413). Still other possibilities exist: a consolidated or even a persistent democracy may deconsolidate and break down, or it may deconsolidate and reequilibrate, as in contemporary Italy (p. 15), or, in a different interpretation of this same case, see some of its partial regimes deconsolidate (p. 394)—in these cases we are not told if regimes are just reconsolidated or if they can return directly to the stage of persistence. Additionally, in categories even more casually drawn, a consolidated democracy may be “mired in its own contradictions and, hence [ sic ], become frozen” as a result of pacts (p. 406), or there may be “consolidated limited democracies” (p. 413), or even democracies that, puzzlingly, are “by and large consolidated” (p. 25). I find all this confusing. How can we know when a democracy is substantially consolidated (i.e., no longer simply unconsolidated but not yet sufficiently consolidated), or substantially but “not yet” sufficiently consolidated, or partly consolidated, or when some of its partial regimes have consolidated or deconsolidated, or when it has moved from consolidation to persistence? Now I examine how the authors treat cases. Cases and Indicators Beyond their own assertions, the authors give no...

Conwy falls fish pass tunnel : R. Byles, New Civil Engineer (NCE), 1103, 1994, pp xii–xiii

Conwy falls fish pass tunnel : R. Byles, New Civil Engineer (NCE), 1103, 1994, pp xii–xiii

XVI. The Persian Manuscripts of the late Sir Albert Houtum-Schindler, K.C.I.E.

It is doubtful whether there has existed in our time any European who possessed so extensive and so profound a knowledge of Persia as the late Sir Albert Houtum-Schindler, who died at his house at Fenstanton, Hunts, in his 70th year, on June 16, 1916. And he was one of those generous scholars who, while seemingly taking more pleasure in the acquisition than in the publication of knowledge, waa ever ready to place at the disposal of all students the rich stores of his learning. To this generosity Lord Curzon, in the Preface to his valuable work on Persia (London, 1892, vol. i, pp. xii–xiii), bears eloquent testimony in the following words:—“Of these coadjutors the first, alikein authority and in the extent of his assistance, has been General A. Houtum-Schindler, a gentleman who, after filling many important posts in the Persian Service, is now acting as adviser to the Imperial Bank of Persia in Teheran. To the advantage of long residence in the country he adds the erudition of a scholar and the zeal of a pioneer. He has personally revised nearly every page of these volumes, besides supplying me with much of my original information; and I tremble to think how many errors they might have contained but for his generous and never-failing cooperation. Few men so excellently qualified to write a first-rate book themselves would have lent such unselfish exertion to improve the quality of another man's work.”

Names of Members who Joined the Institution between the 26th June and 31st December, 1873

"Names of Members who Joined the Institution between the 26th June and 31st December, 1873." Royal United Services Institution. Journal, 17(sup1), pp. xii–xiii