Search

The climb of Gasherbrum IV's (7,925 m) 'Shining Wall' in 1985 by Voytek Kurtyka and Robert Schauer is considered one of the greatest mountaineering achievements in the twentieth century, even though the two climbers did not reach the summit. The article explores three ways of understanding mountaineering without the objective of reaching the summit. I start with a game-playing approach and then a view on mountaineering that takes its inspiration from deep ecology and argue that while both have the potential for explaining important aspects of mountaineering, neither will fully account for the value of climbing mountains without summiting. Finally, I argue that we can supplement either of these two views with a radically different way of understanding mountaineering, which involves creating and appreciating a work of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Italian economic thought between the 1960s and 1990s provided important scientific contributions and one of its most authoritative representatives was certainly Augusto Graziani (1933–2014). On the international plane, Graziani is mainly known for his monetary theory of production while his theory of development and his analysis of the Italian economic have drawn relatively little debate. The purpose of this work is to illustrate his analysis of development in the light of two main considerations: (i) Graziani was very interested in long-term development issues for a long time. The 1969 collective book Lo sviluppo di un'economia aperta (The development of an open economy), the various editions of his L'economia italiana (The Italian economy) (1972, 1979 and 1989) and his contributions on the economy of Southern Italy (Mezzogiorno) are part of an organic, continuous, detailed and impressive explanatory work of the economic events that affected Italy from the 1950s onward and on which Graziani devoted more than thirty years of his scientific activity. (ii) His analysis of development offers interesting tools for interpreting the effects of some Italian policy choices critically debated by a part of the contemporary literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study scrutinizes the common wisdom concerning Turkey's crucial geopolitical significance and central physical location against the backdrop of four global transformations that are taking place in the twenty-first century. These tectonic shifts include China's rise and the ongoing Sino-US rivalry, trade routes and supply chains favoring the Asia-Pacific, technological changes brought by the fourth Industrial Revolution and finally, the decarbonization process. Based on an examination of these new dynamics, the article concludes that Turkey's geographical location and its traditional 'bridge' status between Asia and Europe no longer provides it the strategic leverage it had enjoyed in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the object of the campaign medal can deepen our understanding of British Second World War veterans’ sense of veteran identity and indicate how far they, as individuals, have related to their wartime experiences over time. Unlike First World War veterans, this generation were required to claim their medals themselves, making them a useful marker to understand veterans’ connections to the conflict. Using interviews with Second World War veterans, newspaper reports and archival evidence, the experiences of individual veterans are traced over time. Situating this study within the fields of veteran identity and embodiment, veterans’ narratives with a focus on medals, uncovers how decisions whether to claim, use and wear their awards can be viewed as symbolic of veterans’ changing identity. These shifts were fuelled by the post-war climate, recollection and comradeship and the changing status of the veteran at the end of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People have power over nonhuman animals. This recognition is central to this paper, which focuses on the history of human and nonhuman animal entanglements in New Zealand between 1900 and 1932. Archival research is used to explore news photographs from this period. In doing so, the paper views how the human leisure activity of hunting was a cultural phenomenon in this place and time. Through this activity, people killed many wild nonhuman animals. The news photographs illuminate the injustices that nonhuman animals faced in early twentieth-century New Zealand due to a lack of recognition of their sentience. This was represented in the news discourse with speciesist principles that reflected the social conscience of the time and place. The paper reflects on this and considers how such a past can inform humanity about its relations with the nonhuman animal Other. It calls for a more animalcentric society in which people have better awareness, respect, and treatment for the sentient natures of nonhuman animals. Such an approach can allow humans to fulfil their obligations, as those in a position of power, to ensure dignity and justice for nonhuman animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early twentieth-century Hong Kong, the development of print media gave rise to the wide-ranging practice of translation and circulation of Western literary stories. Examining the strategy in reframing Western literary narratives of women in Chinese as published in a series of newspapers and periodicals in Hong Kong, sheds light on the uniformity of fictional women’s remolded narratives with women’s historical realities in the sociocultural locus of Hong Kong. This study investigates how literary translations converged with prevalent stereotypes associated with women, and serves as an informative case on the inquiries into the reconstruction of foreign women in early twentieth-century Chinese-language newspapers and periodicals in Hong Kong. It shows that a strategy of rewriting, conditioned by patriarchy and moral norms in the Hong Kong social scenario, was adopted in the literary translation in the Hong Kong newspaper The Chinese Mail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article finds novel evidence on the uncovered equity parity (UEP) condition by employing copula methodology with historical datasets spanning back to 1870. First, across 17 advanced countries over the twentieth century, a higher equity return currency tends to depreciate in real terms at an annual frequency. Moreover, we also find a statistically significant positive tail dependence between the real equity returns differential and the real exchange rate differential. That is, when real currency returns and real equity returns take extreme values, they tend to co-move in the same direction, implying a time-varying UEP condition that is also confirmed by our time-varying Student-t copula estimation. Our novel findings call for richer theoretical explanations on the UEP relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erythritol is a four-carbon sugar alcohol naturally produced by microorganisms as an osmoprotectant. As a new sugar substitute, erythritol has recently been popular on the ingredient market because of its unique nutritional characteristics. Even though the history of erythritol biosynthesis dates from the turn of the twentieth century, scientific advancement has lagged behind other polyols due to the relative complexity of making it. In recent years, biosynthetic methods for erythritol have been rapidly developed due to an increase in market demand, a better understanding of metabolic pathways, and the rapid development of genetic engineering tools. This paper reviews the history of industrial strain development and focuses on the underlying mechanism of high erythritol production by strains gained through screening or mutagenesis. Meanwhile, we highlight the metabolic pathway knowledge of erythritol biosynthesis in microorganisms and summarize the metabolic engineering and research progress on critical genes involved in different stages of the synthetic pathway. Lastly, we talk about the still-contentious issues and promising future research directions that will help break the erythritol production bottleneck and make erythritol production greener and more sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his critique of historicism and utopian social engineering, Karl Popper treats various writers – notably, Plato, Hegel, and Marx – as expounding these mistaken ideas, and as illustrating the threat they pose to ‘the open society’. Among contemporaries, one of those he singles out for criticism is the sociologist Karl Mannheim. While he spends relatively little time discussing Mannheim’s work compared to that of Plato and Marx, I argue that Ideology and Utopia and Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction may have had particular significance for Popper. I examine his evaluation of Mannheim’s work, assessing its accuracy, and what it reveals about the similarities and fundamental differences in the orientations of these two writers, both of whom had a significant impact upon social science in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis paper explores the role of Italian publishers and intellectuals in Buenos Aires during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines how their activities relied on the concept of Latinity to strengthen collaboration between Italy and Argentina. By examining key publishing initiatives, it highlights the close ties between the two countries, forged through Italian immigration and a shared commitment to national development. The paper begins by analyzing the birth of an Italo-Argentine book market and the vital role of Italian associations in fostering bilateral cultural exchanges. It then discusses the influence of Italian publishers and intellectuals like Basilio Cittadini, Giovan Battista Cuneo, and Piero Barbera, whose works sought to promote Italy and Argentine’s transnational identity as sister nations and advocated for international solidarity. The paper concludes by reflecting on the publishing efforts during the Centenary of Argentina’s Independence, which contributed to shaping a transnational and transcultural Italo-Argentine community. This community laid the foundation for enduring cultural connections and dialogue, despite the challenges posed by rising nationalism and political changes in both countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The migration industry consists of actors and organisations (e.g. agents, brokers, agencies, corporations) through which migration is facilitated, organised, and accelerated. Although the migration industry gained prominence in the late 20th century within labour mobility, it has relatively rarely been the subject of historical analysis. This historiographical essay argues that employers' needs and demands for foreign workers, often ad-hoc, have triggered the emergence and development of the migration industry. Rooted in modern historical debates on labour migration, this essay aims to critically assess various forms of cooperation between employers and commercial actors worldwide and place those strategies within the migration industry. Inspired by dichotomous approach to capturing the relationships identified between employers and actors in the migration industry (i.e. agents and partners), this essay investigates the larger spectrum of types of relationships that have taken place historically. We argue that since the mid-19th century, we have witnessed an evolution of these relationships: from acting as a provider of labour (supplier or agent) to a greater professionalisation and consolidation of the relationship between employers and actors in the migration industry (partners and then allies). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lobotomy was a widespread neurosurgical procedure in the first half of the 20th century. It was used as a treatment for various mental disorders. The development of psychosurgeries in Brazil, their indications, effects, consequences, advancements, as well as the social context of the population subjected to it are revised herein. Also, an illustrative case report of an elderly Brazilian bipolar disorder patient who underwent this procedure in the 1940's is described in this paper. The article promotes a critical debate around the ethical and social implications of this practice, contributing to the understanding and reflection on the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and research ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dobe !Kung were a group of foragers living in northern Botswana in the Kalahari Desert. In the second half of the twentieth century, their butchery actions on animal prey were recorded (1968–1975) and their abandoned camps from 1944–1976 were excavated to retrieve faunal remains from butchered prey animals. Here we test the hypothesis that bone surface modifications on these excavated faunal remains accurately reflect these butchery observations. We find that despite a few exceptions, the observed bone surface modifications follow the expectations derived from observations of butchery of different sized animals. This supports the idea that past butchery actions, based on the location and presence of bone surface modifications on modern bones, can be confidently linked to past butchery behaviours. We also suggest that bone surface modifications can provide information about past hunter-gatherer processing behaviours, cooking styles, and use of hides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's playgrounds became part of the urban planning and evolution of Western cities at the turn of 19th and early 20th centuries. The overall objective was to improve urban children's well-being and enhance safety by channelling play activities away from city streets towards designated play spaces. This article zooms in on the process of creating recommendations, norms and standards related to playgrounds. The subject under scrutiny is the standardization of childhood in Finland during the 1960s and 1970s, a period characterized by the most intense phases of urbanization, the establishment of welfare state institutions and the evolution of legislation pertaining to children's play spaces as well as vigorous discussions concerning children's environments. These planning discussions, norms and standards have had far-reaching consequences. They are not only prominently evident in today's Finnish cities but have also significantly influenced our contemporary perception of children's place within urban contexts. This study brings a social history approach to the academic discussion of the role of standardization in urban planning. Simultaneously, it examines the development of the increasingly standardized urban childhood in Finland in the 1960s and 1970s and asks what kind of childhood this standardization aimed to promote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to outline Dorothy Emmet's (1904–2000) account of perception in The Nature of Metaphysical Thinking (published in 1945). Emmet's account of perception is part of a wider attempt to rehabilitate metaphysics in the face of logical positivism and verificationism (of the kind espoused most famously by A. J. Ayer). It is thus part of an attempt to stem the tide of anti-metaphysical thought that had become widespread in British philosophy by the middle of the twentieth century. Emmet does not fit neatly into the traditional story of twentieth-century British philosophy. She draws on figures like A. N. Whitehead and Henri Bergson much more extensively than figures like Russell or Moore – and thus straddles the so-called 'analytic-continental divide.' My aim in this paper is to put Emmet on the map of twentieth-century British thought by outlining her philosophy of perception, highlighting her proposals for a way forward for metaphysics in a time of crisis, and identifying the ways she preempts movements in contemporary philosophy of perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical scholarship on Britain's 1990s is in its infancy. Historians have not yet produced the volume of rich empirical work which has transformed recent understandings of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, an absence which this special issue begins to address. This introductory essay outlines existing frameworks for historicising the decade of the 1990s, from the influential 'Holiday from History' metanarrative to the idea of a neoliberal consensus, before setting out alternative stories and trajectories. In the political sphere, these include a heightened focus on questions of rights, citizenship and democracy, whilst in the arena of social and cultural change emphasis is placed on new forms of chosen community and the complex effects of digital technologies on selfhood and identity across the decade. The essay concludes with a discussion of the archive available to historians of the 1990s, encompassing the increasing prominence of the 'born-digital record'. Rather than constituting a coherent periodisation, 'the nineties', we suggest, offers a useful lens for thinking more broadly about change and continuity at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Yangtze River basin plays a crucial role in China's economy, and the impacts of drought and flood in the basin are becoming more uncertain due to climate change. Thus, a study was conducted to analyse the flood–drought rating sequence for the Yangtze River basin in 1470–2022. The frequency of flood and drought occurrences during the flood season followed a normal distribution. Extreme drought and flood accounted for 2–4% of occurrences. Partial and extreme floods increased notably in the 19th and 20th centuries, while droughts became more frequent after the 20th century. Furthermore, the Three Gorges Reservoir area's storage capacity did not significantly impact flood season precipitation in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the reservoir area. This comprehensive study serves to uncover evolutionary patterns and trends of drought and flood, providing valuable insights for effectively managing water resources in the basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay investigates and describes the political regime that dominated much of Irish political life in the twentieth century. It was marked by the rise, and eventual fall, of Fianna Fáil as the nation's government party. It charts the creation of the Fianna Fáil regime – the building of a government party to manage a state deliberately cast in its own terms – and then identifies and explores the long decade that saw the slow collapse of both. In the aftermath, the fragmentation of national political competition, and the challenges to the constitutional framework, have left a political regime bereft of the party and constitutional frames that long defined its core political moorings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical photographs are commonly available in landscape archaeology; however, they are rarely used systematically for the maximum benefit in terms of spatial and temporal information. In the framework of the al-ʿŪla Cultural Oasis Project (funded and steered by the French Agency for AlUla Development on behalf of the Royal Commission for AlUla), photographs taken at ground level by the Dominican Fathers Antonin Jaussen and Raphaël Savignac in the early 20th century a.d. were geolocated by identifying mountain peaks in the background and comparing distance ratios (on the photos) with angle ratios (on GIS). These locations were then visited in the field to re-take the photographs. This work demonstrates the value of recontextualized ground-level photographs to improve our knowledge of archaeological landscapes when cross-referenced with data from a systematic archaeological survey. We also propose a reproducible methodology for geolocating historical photographs in similar or other contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to better understand how French refereeing and its elite-level referees accomplished the transition from amateur to semi-professional during the second half of the twentieth century. We will endeavour to evaluate this through the analysis of its structural evolution while also reflecting upon the careers of several elite referees active during this transitionary period. This research will also discern the manner in which FIFA progressively exerted its authority over the federations and in particular over the Fédération Française de Football with regard to the administration of their referees. From 1955 to 1970, French refereeing was characterized by its amateurism, both through its structures as well as through its principal agents. During the 1970s, beginning with the implementation of the 'Statut de l'arbitrage', the Federation adopted a more hands-on policy towards refereeing. Between 1980 and 1995, however, French refereeing would increasingly take on an semi-professional posture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Airship R.38 was on its fourth trial flight before being fully handed over to the US Navy as ZR-2 when it crashed into the Humber just off the waterfront of Hull in August 1921. This project aimed to recognise and elaborate the significance of the R.38/ZR-2 in time for the centenary of the crash in August 2021. The significance of R.38/ZR-2 is framed by its build, use and loss: the crash embodies the history of airship development to that time, but also encapsulates the future of airships and aspects of aeroplane development also. The continued curation of stories and items showed that the profound impact of the crash still clearly resonates down the generations. The project also brought a fresh focus to the crash site of R.38/ZR-2 as a heritage asset: bathymetric data indicate that material from the airship could still be present within the bed of the Humber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the work of the Argentine political scientist Guillermo O'Donnell (1936–2011), one of Latin America's leading intellectual figures of the twentieth century. While previous analyses have concentrated on his legacy in the social sciences, this study offers an intellectual history of O'Donnell's ideas on democracy and inequality. It traces O'Donnell's shifting perspectives, from a structuralist view of global centre-periphery relationships to an emphasis on individual agency concerning inequalities. The article presents, first, an analysis of his early work, in particular his conceptualization of the "Bureaucratic-Authoritarian" State, which was connected to a specific view of inequality characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s. Second, the article focuses on his second major work, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, in relation to the most important political event in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s, namely the various transitions from dictatorship to democracy. Thirdly, the article examines in detail O'Donnell's ideas on the quality of democracy, the state, and inequality in Latin America in the 1990s and 2000s. By exploring O'Donnell's intellectual journey chronologically, the article illuminates the shifts and continuities in his work, thereby highlighting the evolving perspectives on inequality of one of Latin America's foremost intellectuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of social interactions in contract enforcement within the postcolonial Arab world, with a specific focus on Morocco. Through extensive interviews with members of the industrial elite during the import-substituting industrialization (ISI) period, we uncover a significant risk of contractual breaches. Despite this risk, there was a reluctance to use social connections to penalize those who breached contracts. Legal recourse was also rarely pursued. Instead, business leaders leaned on their social networks to assess potential partners and resolve disputes through bilateral channels. This reliance on social ties was facilitated by the close-knit and compact nature of the business community. In the post-ISI era, characterized by a larger and more diverse industrial elite, there was a noticeable increase in contractual disputes, accompanied by a shift towards more aggressive resolution methods. We present a theoretical model that elucidates how these dynamics naturally emerge from an environment where economic and social interactions are intertwined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Nietzschean Übermensch or 'superman' was frequently invoked in sports-writing of the early twentieth century. While the misappropriation of this figure by the Nazis and Fascists in their programmes of national or racial renewal is well known, the superman appeared in other, less familiar contexts too. This article explores the various roles that the 'superman' played in Anglophone as well as German-speaking discourse prior to 1933, as a way of expressing, and interrogating, the ideals that shaped modern athletic culture and of framing long-standing debates in the history of sport: on professionalism and amateurism, national identity, commercialisation and specialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For several decades now, audio-visual artworks have routinely been described as "research" or "research based". However, the relationship between image, research and theory is often unclear, particularly when the artwork in question is produced outside formal academic frameworks like practice-based PhD or MFA programs. This essay asks how we can understand and interpret artworks that use materials and methods that approximate those used by academic researchers but do so through audio-visual means. Four artworks are discussed: Kajsa Dahlberg's Reach, Grasp, Move, Position, Apply Force (2015); Kalle Brolin's I am Scania (2016) and I am the Sun (2018); and Hanni Kamaly's HeadHandEye (2017/2018). All four highlight how image practices establish, reinforce, and subvert specific attitudes, ideas, and practices relating to work or the human body. The author's key argument is that the selected artworks can be understood as examples of the media-theoretical method of analysis known as cultural techniques. Cultural techniques have been defined within media theory as the chains of operations that link humans, things, and media. The scholar who uses this perspective searches for the rules, procedures, and documented practices that preceded and directed the development and formats of specific media technologies. This essay proposes that the four selected artworks show how fragmentation operates as cultural technique in different contexts. Fragmentation is shown to be at work beneath efficiency studies of industrial workers in the early twentieth century and the early twenty-first (Dahlberg); in the relationship between the sugar industry and coal mines in the south of Sweden in the early twentieth century (Brolin); and in the de-subjectification practices among colonial rulers in the nineteenth century (Kamaly). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Dutch-language author Hugo Claus is one of the most celebrated and most translated Flemish authors of the twentieth century. Especially the French translations of his work fulfil an important position in the (inter)national dissemination of his work. Starting in the 1950s, his oeuvre enters the field of World Literature through the French translations and Parisian publications of his work, because French was still very much a lingua franca in the 1950s and Paris the centre of the World Republic of Letters. Even if Paris fulfils a gateway function, Claus's intra-Belgian bilingual francophone-Dutch contacts and networks prove to have been crucial in the coming about of the French translations of his oeuvre and reveal interesting interlingual and intercultural dynamics within the bilingual (multilingual) cultural area of Belgium. In this article, we will explore the position and dissemination of Claus's (early) works within a Belgian and international context, against the background of the mutual interactions between national and international networks and taking into account mechanisms of intercultural exchange, circulation and promotion within the (inter)national literary field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the 1870s and the beginning of the twentieth century, the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope underwent an accelerated elaboration and extension of its bureaucratic, legal, and spatial elements. This was part of a broader high-modern transformation that sought to make human geography ‘legible’ and open to state isntervention. Power over health and sickness formed an important component of this. Few groups of people experienced these changes as rapidly as isiXhosa-speakers in the area between the Kei and Mzimkhulu rivers that became the Transkeian Territories. Communities in the south-western areas closest to the Kei saw the most extensive engagements with colonialist measures regarding land, labour, education, and, of course, health. Their experiences provide useful case studies of this advance. Although historians of medicine and public health in South Africa have hitherto paid scant attention to the development of a colonial medical establishment in this area and its interventions before the twentieth century, a unusually well-documented case of smallpox mitigation shows how biomedical interventions before 1900 changed from accommodation to dictation in this colonial context and highlights some of the ways in which Africans sought to limit this intrusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines what Nelson Mandela’s autobiography alludes to as ‘Xhosa tradition’ and its ambiguous relationship with African nationalism in the first half of the 20th century. I contrast Mandela’s qualified embrace of tradition with the more directly negative attitudes towards ethnic customs in general among the Eastern Cape nationalists of his generation. I argue that, unlike his comrades, Mandela retained a critical embrace of tradition because in it he recognised the seeds of democracy, traces of ‘accumulated suffering’, and the pleasure of celebrating difference. Tradition for Mandela has a critical relation to modernity – a sort of strategic distance from which vantage point modernity can be called out on its failed promise of universal freedoms. I use Hannah Arendt’s notion of citable pasts to argue that the past for Mandela is neither smoothly transmissible nor totally invented in the present, but it is captured in fragments of narrative or citations. To make this argument I offer a critique of both common-sense and constructionist notions of tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hundreds of beads are collected every year on the shores of the island of Mozambique, dating between the 16th and the 20th-century. They are recovered in the sand and strung into neckless to sell for the best offer. More than archaeological artefacts and important historical, social, economic, and cultural items, they have a dominant role in the island’s local economy today. These archaeological materials are dispersed in time but also in space since they originate from Europe, Asia, and Africa. The privileged geographical position turned this African island into a logistical support platform for transoceanic routes, a mandatory crossing point for ships of the Portuguese crown, and for the other European monarchies that traded in the Indian Ocean. The beads are a palimpsest of cultures and trades, not only in the past but also in the present, and they still play an important role in their relationship with local communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pungent odor of thiol compounds has never been an obstacle to researching effective high-yield methods of their synthesis. This is due to the vital roles they play in different areas of manufacturing, medicine, pharmaceuticals and others. This review presents some of the traditional preparation methods that have been developed at the end of the twentieth century together with the modern invented methods of synthesis. An analysis of the literature data on the most researched mercaptans and the most utilized source of sulfur has been made. The advantages and disadvantages of some of the methods have been presented. From the gathered literature data, it is clear that there is an increasing interest in developing efficient thiol synthesis methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between Portugal and South Africa significantly shaped the regional politics of twentieth-century southern Africa. Notably, Exercise Alcora, the military alliance between Rhodesia, Portugal, and South Africa, is a well-documented aspect of Cold War history that has recently garnered increased scholarly attention. The availability of previously classified materials has revealed a more complex and nuanced account of the collaboration between Portugal and South Africa, whose early partnership laid the foundation for a broader supranational alliance in the region. This research delves into the genesis and evolution of South African–Portuguese ties, scrutinising the progressively strengthening connections from the 1950s to the early 1960s. It posits that, before the late 1940s, no substantial or well-defined relations existed between Portugal and South Africa. Establishing these ties was neither straightforward nor effortless; instead, it was a multifaceted and labour-intensive process influenced by critical factors. Both nations were united by shared ideological tenets rooted in nationalism. They concurrently experienced a waning of ties with democratic powers, notably Britain and the United States. Moreover, the apparent indifference of these Western states to the communist threat in Africa catalysed closer bonds between Lisbon and Pretoria, marking a significant shift in their geopolitical alignments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geopolitical situation of a state located on a frontier between two (or more) cultures affects both its foreign policy and its warfare ideologies. Frontier ideologies are inextricably linked to this particular geopolitical situation, and one of the most prominent among these is that of the Bastion of Christianity. It should be noted, however, that this is not the only representative example. This article presents a typology of frontier ideologies, which can be divided into four categories: ideology of unidirectional mediation of culture; bastion ideology; the finger between the doorjamb and the door ideology; and ideology of bidirectional mediation of culture. This typology is supported by Hungarian ideas from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which represent the heyday of Hungarian frontier ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction to the theme issue on the Politics of Voluntariness in Modern History starts by discussing the origins and uses of the liberal discourse on voluntariness in the seventeenth century. It was during this period that philosophers and politicians began to present voluntariness as specific to liberalism. By the same token, voluntariness and authoritarian rule have been declared incompatible. This introduction and the papers in the theme issue critically discuss the exclusive linkage of voluntariness and liberalism – an interpretation that fails to capture authoritarian governing in its entirety, while ignoring compulsory and exclusionary practices in liberal societies. This theme issue shows voluntariness to be essential to policies and political practices in both liberal and illiberal societies. Political practices are at the core of our articles: amid a web of actors, institutions, discourses, and expectations, the individual means and capacity to act voluntarily, make choices, and overcome constraints are historically and socially variable. The introduction and the theme issue explore this variability to illuminate how voluntariness operates as a driving force for political practices in liberal and illiberal societies, drawing on case studies from German, Swiss, and U.S.-American history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The examination of spatial planning in Greece entails a comprehensive analysis of its historical development, contemporary challenges, and prospective trajectories. This investigation delves into the nuanced aspects of the development of the planning framework, elucidates the existing challenges and offers informed perspectives on potential answers and future directions. By presenting a critical overview of spatial planning development in twentieth-century Greece, highlighting current impediments and future possibilities, this study aims to provide a rigorous and authoritative exploration of the spatial planning landscape. Finally, it advocates the introduction of novel mechanisms deemed essential for the effective implementation of a modernised spatial planning system in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the evaluation of males and females in the Corpus of Historical American English within three registers – Fiction, Newspapers, and Non-fiction – spanning the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The aim is to fill a gap there remains in our understanding of how males and females are evaluated in American English across different communicative settings (registers) and historical periods. For this purpose, the study explores gender-specific personality traits, societal importance, physical appearance, appeal, and capacity via linguistic features such as male and female terms, pronoun usage, and adjectives. The results reveal significant differences in the frequency and nature of gender evaluation: while men are consistently evaluated more frequently than women, there are nuanced variations in gender evaluation patterns over time and across communicative settings. The increase in female evaluation towards the late twentieth century seems to correlate with societal changes such as the women’s rights movement and shifting gender norms during this period. The analysis also underscores the significance of linguistic registers in shaping gender evaluation, with, for instance, Fiction displaying less pronounced gender differences compared to Newspapers and Non-fiction. Overall, the findings underscore the complex interplay between language, registers, and sociocultural changes in shaping gender evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timbre, which traditionally was put in the background of musical compositions, now starts to gain a presence in the foreground of contemporary gamelan compositions. It does so to the extent that it dominates other musical parameters; it blurs the distinction between timbre, harmony, rhythm, and many other elements. In this paper, I analyse the rise of timbre as a compositional parameter by looking at new gamelan works after the year 2010. This includes the works of Septian Dwi Cahyo, Irene Tanuwidjaja, Dion Nataraja, Dieter Mack, Putu Septa, Arham Aryadi, Arya Deva Suryanegara, and Yan Priya Kumara Janardhana. Aside from this primary analysis, I also trace the development of the discourse regarding timbre in the gamelan tradition by looking at historical precursors in the twentieth century, such as works by I Wayan Sadra, Pande Made Sukerta, Aloysius Suwardi, Ki Tjokrowasito, and Ki Nartosabdho. I connect my analysis with various critical theories by writers ranging from Bhabha to Derrida to demonstrate that the rise of timbre has brought the gamelan tradition to its breaking point, yet, it is still in relation to that tradition; it is a state of tradition in suspension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses Jalil Mammadquluzadeh’s drama, The Book of My Mother (Anamın Kitabı), to understand Azerbaijani nationalism in the early twentieth century. Under the repression of industrialization and colonialism, Azerbaijani national identity found its expression in literary products. Through Fredric Jameson’s concepts of national allegory and political unconscious, we examine The Book of My Mother as a fictional representation of Azerbaijani nationalism during its formative period. Ultimately, this article addresses a gap in the growing literature on Azerbaijani nationalism by applying Jamesonian critical literary theory to encourage further research in subaltern nationalism for other cases, especially within the Central Asian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of utopia was abandoned over the years, mainly following the tragic events of the twentieth century which led to the rejection of the grand narratives that characterized modernity. But the challenges of our time invite a rethinking of the concept. The purpose of this article is to offer a non-nostalgic understanding of the concept of utopia through an analysis of Ernst Bloch's paradoxical concept of "concrete utopia". My intention is, first, to trace back the genealogy of the concept of the concrete to offer a non-trivial understanding, of it; and, second, to emphasize the importance of the concrete in the creation of the new. I argue that this understanding, coupled with a nuanced way of thinking about the relationship between the present and the future, allows us to reject the simple metaphysical dichotomy between the two. This does not mean sacrificing the present for the sake of the future or vice versa but perceiving the present as containing future possibilities within it. In this way, we can think of utopia as neither a hypothetical ideal (no-where) nor an empirical fact (now-here), but as the no-where of the now-here. That is, as a process of becoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As World War I raged across the Atlantic from 1914 to 1918, industrial development in the Midwest drastically restructured communities. The rapid industrialisation of the Calumet Region, comprising South Chicago and Northwest Indiana, led the region to be dubbed the 'Arsenal of America'. Due to labour shortages brought about by new immigration restrictions and the United States' involvement in the war, businesses turned southward to Mexico as a source of labour. Fleeing violence from the Mexican Revolution, these migrants shaped the region's development and, in turn, found themselves shaped by their new surroundings. Representing a second great migration to the region, ethnic Mexican labourers resulted in a significant demographic change to the polyglot of immigrant communities in the region. The article will explore early ethnic Mexican settlers from the pre-war era and culminate with the exponential growth stemming from their importation as strikebreakers shortly after the war. Utilising the definitive study by Paul S. Taylor, Mexican Labour in the United States, newspaper accounts, and industrial histories, this article will argue that the growth of the industrial complex laid the foundation for ethnic Mexican settlement, and their settlement, in turn, aided the region's industrialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of the First World War on immigration into New York from 1914 into the 1920s. From the nineteenth century onwards, New York had become the destination for global migration as individuals sought to settle in the city or the wider United States. Millions had passed through the immigration points in New York by the beginning of the twentieth century but the outbreak of war in 1914 suddenly brought this flow to a halt. Naval blockades, restrictions on civilian movement and mobilisation of economies in Europe ended what had been one of the most significant migration routes in modern human history. The impact on the city of this curtailment brought fear and anxiety to the streets. New York's population was overwhelmingly made up of first or second-generation immigrants in 1914 and a concern that the war could be 'exported' to the United States through New York created anti-immigrant concern amongst the city and federal authorities. This created a wartime culture in New York that – at least for the duration of the conflict – removed its status as a city of immigrants and instilled a sense that the metropolis should be remade as 'American'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

David Hume was a great philosopher of religion and of common life. In this essay, I interpret him as making extreme religious skepticism one part of his overall rhetorical form. In all his religious writings, however, Hume always takes a step back from Pyrrhonian style results to a position that is more compatible with common life. The great twentieth-century religious studies scholar, Ninian Smart, offers seven dimensions of religion which show the extent to which it is thoroughly entwined with the practices and beliefs of ordinary human life, and this connection to ordinary life makes Smart's divisions a nice match for Hume and his philosophy of common life. I elucidate the ways in which Hume's philosophy contributes to our understanding of religion in terms of Smart's dimensions, and in each case, I argue that Hume treats religion not from the perspective of a hostile enemy, but as a student of religion who grounds it in common life and seeks to correct it from that vantage point. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay traces the unlikely affinities between Bram Stoker's novel The Lair of the White Worm (1911) and David Rudkin's television play Penda's Fen (1974), showing how both involve the mythopoeic reinvention of Anglo-Saxon Mercia as a heartland of visionary change. These texts resist alien beliefs and defend territorial integrity, but also extend a welcome to outsiders or incomers. Stoker and Rudkin turn the storied landscape of ancient Mercia into a crucible of difference, a sinuous entanglement or coiling of hybrid origins and affiliations. Their narratives constitute intense meditations on nation and belonging at different moments of imperial and post-imperial uncertainty in the twentieth century, when the continuity of Englishness as an identity formation is challenged by shifting relationships within and beyond the British and Irish Isles. Whereas The Lair of the White Worm seeks to delimit the transformative power of these middle lands, however, Penda's Fen unleashes its potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social identity theory argues that conflict between groups diminishes if they discover they have something important in common, and if they can build a new hybrid identity together. With this premise in mind, the article demonstrates how present-day experiences of refugees, displaced ethnic groups, political exiles, foreign-born workers, diasporic populations and other migrants may be incorporated into the existing body of predominantly national historical landscapes and stories addressing expulsions, exile and forced displacement experienced by European populations in the twentieth century. It is argued that we should look closer at the compositional processes and orchestration of migrant heritage in Europe as an inherently political concept that may both amplify and interfere with social cohesion. The article discusses the compositional strategies (grafting, bifurcation and suture) that loosen up the structure of representations and have been used experimentally by four cultural institutions in Italy, Spain, Germany and Poland. The article maintains that series of hands-on small- and middle-scale experiments and compositional adjustments may be highly instrumental in enhancing the value of the heritage of forced migrations, not only as a domain of conflicting academic interpretations, but also as a factor of intercultural cohesion in a broader perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the Japanese-Australian debates over immigration and racial exclusion over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. By examining the development of collective national identity in Japan and by drawing on archival materials in Japan and Australia, including official correspondence between the two countries and policy-related primary source materials such as internal government correspondence and parliamentary debates, it shows how the local discourse on national identity in both Japan and Australia was an important factor in what would be Japan's heated response to the issue of Japanese exclusion under the auspices of White Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the reserve areas in both the genesis and implementation of segregation and apartheid is an especially well-worn topic in South African historiography. But much less attention has been given to the impact of the implementation of racial segregation in society in the areas set aside as rural locations and reserves in the ninteeenth and early twentieth centuries. The experiences of the Winter family of the Sekhukhuneland area provides an illuminating case study of the processes at work in the interregnum between the 1913 and 1936 Land Acts. Their family history highlights the emergence in reserve areas of networks of interconnected families spanning both old and new elites and the racial boundaries a segregationist ideology sought to entrench. It also shows how rapidly, profoundly, and painfully these emergent social forms were dismembered after 1936, long before the enforcement of apartheid policies after 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a stylometric analysis of the writings of four famous Turkish authors: Abdülhak Şinasi Hisar, Refik Halid Karay, Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, and Halit Ziya Uşaklıgil. Our aim is to internally analyse the shifts in their writing styles and examine the differences between them. First, we evaluate the changes in word lengths in the writers' novels over time and observe that they do not necessarily follow the pattern of writing with longer words as time passes, which was common for 20th-century Turkish literature. We then employ a sliding text window approach to capture the shift in writing styles in novels, by focusing changes in word lengths throughout the entire text. Based on this analysis, we hypothesize a relationship between changes in word lengths and meaning shift within a novel. Next, we investigate the stylochronometry and authorship attribution problems for these four authors and show that their styles change with time and that their works are distinguishable from each other. Finally, we analyse differences in their vocabulary richness within close contexts and demonstrate a strong relationship between poetic writing and lower vocabulary richness in the running text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In September 1977, all of France's middle schools implemented the so-called "collège unique" reform in the seventh year, i.e. the elimination of tracking (or streaming) and the mixing of all pupils and teachers for the first year of secondary education. This article examines the genesis and implementation of this reform from the point of view of the budgetary issues it raised and which shaped it. Drawing on the political economy of education, the article sheds a new light on the introduction of comprehensive education, of which different variants can be observed in Western countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, far from being anecdotal, budgetary issues very concretely shaped the practical conditions of implementation of this educational reform, putting political and economic considerations ahead of any concern for pedagogical coherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores some of the ways in which queer women living in country houses have used their economic privilege and class leverage for their own purposes, disrupting and reshaping country house living to make space for their own independent endeavours. It takes as its case study the life of Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie (1895–1985), an innovative woman potter in the early British studio ceramics movement who rejected aristocratic, familial and societal expectations of duty and lineage to self-fashion an identity as an artist. Pleydell-Bouverie created a separate household on her family estate of Coleshill where she prioritised pleasurable domesticity with her female partners alongside creative expression and productivity. This essay investigates Pleydell-Bouverie's use of the estate – both the conditions it afforded her and its ecological materiality – as a resource in her experimental artistic practice and in her alternative, non-heteronormative mode of living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British high society in the interwar years was led by a small group of hostesses who were instrumental in heralding consistency after the upheaval of the Great War. Yet, they were also beacons of change, introducing the famous names of the day to each other. Likewise, the country house was entering a period of adjustment as many changed hands or were utilised more often due to the advent of the motor car and quicker travel. This article analyses the role of two hostesses who were at the centre of two of the greatest scandals of the 1930s and argues that the seclusion of the country house was significant to events. Wallis Simpsons role as de facto hostess at Fort Belvedere is explored through the writings of her contemporaries and analysed in the context of the Abdication Crisis. Nancy Astor's role as chatelaine of Cliveden House is explored in relation to her involvement with the Cliveden Set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Old Vienna is today mostly associated with Klimt and coffeehouses, Freud and the fin-de-siècle. This article explores an entirely different aspect of Old Vienna, today mostly forgotten except on a series of public artworks haunting the façades of modern housing complexes. On the basis of a vast collection of photographic, artistic, and documentary materials preserved in the local district museum, it explores the complex entanglements between urban modernization and romantic mythologization that accompanied the gradual demolition of the old neighbourhood of Erdberg in Vienna's third district in the early twentieth century, as ramshackle old hovels barely fit for human habitation were razed to make room for massive modern housing complexes. It is guided by the two-pronged question of why this neighbourhood was romanticized after it was deliberately demolished, and why a neighbourhood deemed worthy of romanticizing was demolished in the first place. Employing a microhistorical approach in marked contrast to the antiquarian sentiments expressed through the district museum's materials, the article shows how the myth of Old Erdberg paradigmatically embodies the powerful tensions between urban modernization and romantic nostalgia for a vanishing Heimat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]