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Self-Destruction of Complex Systems
This book is the first to provide a general theory of self-destruction in complex systems. The volume suggests a unified theory of systemic self-destruction applicable to natural, social and cultural phenomena.
Beyond 'Hellenes' and 'Barbarians'
Forty years ago, German historian Reinhart Koselleck coined the notion of ‘asymmetrical concepts’, pointing at the asymmetry between standard self-ascriptions, such as ‘Hellenes’ or ‘Christians’, and pejorative other-references (‘Barbarians’ or ‘Pagans’) as a powerful weapon of cultural and political domination. Advancing and refining Koselleck’s approach, Beyond ‘Hellenes’ and ‘Barbarians’ explores the use of significant conceptual asymmetries such as ‘civilization’ vs. ‘barbarity’, ‘liberalism’ vs. ‘servility’, ‘order’ vs. ‘chaos’ or even ‘masters’ vs. ‘slaves’ in political, scientific and fictional discourses of Europe from the Middle Ages to the present day. Using an interdisciplinary set of approaches, the scholars in political history, cultural sociology, intellectual history and literary criticism bolster and extend our understanding of this ever-growing area of conceptual history.
Practices of Comparing
Practices of comparing shape how we perceive, organize, and change the world. Supposedly innocent, practices of comparing play a decisive role in forming categories, boundaries, and hierarchies; but they can also give an impetus to question and change such structures. Like almost no other human practice, comparing pervades all social, political, economic, and cultural spheres. This volume outlines the program of a new research agenda that places comparative practices at the center of an interdisciplinary exploration. Its contributions combine case studies with overarching systematic considerations. They show what insights can be gained and which further questions arise when one makes a seemingly trivial practice - comparing - the subject of in-depth research.
Selling the Story
A literary scholar and investment banker applies economic criticism to canonical novels, dramatically changing the way we read these classics and proposing a new model for how economics can inform literary analysis. Every writer is a player in the marketplace for literature. Jonathan Paine locates the economics ingrained within the stories themselves, revealing how a text provides a record of its author’s attempt to sell the story to his or her readers. An unusual literary scholar with a background in finance, Paine mines stories for evidence of the conditions of their production. Through his wholly original reading, Balzac’s The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans becomes a secret diar...
The Consuming Temple
Paul Lerner explores German anxieties about the department store and the widespread belief that they posed hidden dangers both to the individuals and to the nation as a whole.
Popular Political Participation and the Democratic Imagination in Spain
This book addresses the changing relationships among political participation, political representation, and popular mobilization in Spain from the 1766 protest in Madrid against the early Bourbon reforms until the citizen revolution of 1868 that first introduced universal suffrage and led to the ousting of the monarchy. Popular Participation and the Democratic Imagination in Spain shows that a notion of the “crowd” internally dividing the concept of “people” existed before the advent of Liberalism, allowing for the enduring subordination of popular participation to representation in politics. In its wider European and colonial American context, the study analyzes semantic changes in ...
History as Therapy: Alternative History and Nationalist Imaginings in Russia
This astonishing book explores the delusional imaginings of Russia's past by the pseudo-scientific 'Alternative History' movement. Despite the chaotic collapse of two empires in the last century, Russia's glorious imperial past continues to inspire millions. The lively movement of 'Alternative History', diligently re-writing Russia's past and 'rediscovering' its hidden greatness, has been growing dramatically since the collapse of Communism in 1991. Virtually unknown in the West, these pseudo-historians have published best-selling books, attracted widespread media attention, and are a prominent voice in Internet discussions about Russian and world history. Alternative History claims that Rus...
After Taste. Critique of insufficient reason
After Taste is an inquiry into a field of study dedicated to the reconsideration, reconstruction and rehabilitation of the concept of Taste. Taste is the category, whose systematic, historical and actual dimensions have traditionally been located in a variety of disciplines. The actuality and potential of the study is based on a variety of collected facts from readings and experiences, which materialize in the following features: One concept (figurative Taste), two thinking traditions (analytic and synthetic/continental) and three interrelated dimensions (systematic, historic and actual) are presented in three volumes. As such, the study presents a salient comprehensive companion for wider r...
Writers at Work
The cost of constructing Envy: Iurii Olesha and the Soviet production novel -- How she worked on Hydrocentral: Marietta Shaginian and the changing Soviet author -- Building "Novye Vaiuki": Ilf and Petrov map the production novel -- (Re)constructing the production novel: Boris Pilniak, Mahogany, and The Volga Falls to the Caspian Sea -- Finding space in Time, forward! Kataev and writers at work -- Deconstructing Soviet work: Andrei Platonov and the end of the production novel.
Asymmetrical Concepts after Reinhart Koselleck
Although the asymmetrical concepts have been well-known to scholars across the social sciences and humanities, their role in structuring the human world has never been an object of detailed research. 35 years ago Reinhart Koselleck sketched out the historical semantics of the oppositions »Hellenes«/»barbarians«, »Christians«/»pagans« and »Übermensch«/»Untermensch«, but his insights, though eagerly cited, have been rarely developed in a systematic fashion. This volume intends to remedy this situation by bringing together a small number of scholars at the crossroads of history, sociology, literary criticism, linguistics, political science and international studies in order to elaborate on Koselleck's notion of asymmetric counter-concepts and adapt it to current research needs.
