Ostarrîchi Revisited: The 1946 Anniversary, the Millennium, and the Medieval Roots of Austrian Identity

1996 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 21-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Pohl

In1996,Austriawill celebrate its millennium. As in many other cases, the chronological justifications for the anniversary are open to question. Austria has never been “founded,” and certainly not one thousand years ago; its independence is the result of a process that took centuries and cannot be symbolized by a date like July 4 in the United States. Austria's national holiday, October 26, marks the date in 1955 when the Austrian parliament voted permanent neutrality and the last of the Allied occupation troops left the country. Nobody, it is true, would doubt that Austria's history stretches back considerably before 1955, 1945 (the foundation of the Second Republic), 1918 (the birth of the First), or even 1804 (when the Habsburg emperor Francis I declared himself emperor of Austria after the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire). Nothing comparable happened in 996. In a charter dated November 1, 996, Emperor Otto III granted some land at Neuhofen, in the west of the modern province of Lower Austria, to the bishop of Freising. Even the exact date of the charter—whose original has survived—has not always been accepted, for the seal it carries was Henry II's, whose reign began in 1002. Recently, some scholars have even tried to prove, although not very successfully, that it was a forgery.

Author(s):  
John M. Owen

This chapter considers the fourth lesson: a state may be rational and ideological at the same time. Islamism is the ruling ideology of several countries, led by Saudi Arabia and Iran. In non-Muslim countries such as the United States, the question that often arises is whether Islamist states, or their governments, are rational or fanatical. In truth, a state may appear irrational to outsiders, but may be rationally pursuing goals shaped by its ideology. The chapter looks at three such states: the Palatinate, a German estate in the old Holy Roman Empire; the Soviet Union; and the United States. It concludes with an assessment of the rationality of Islamist states by distinguishing their ends from their means.


Author(s):  
Federico Varese

Organized crime is spreading like a global virus as mobs take advantage of open borders to establish local franchises at will. That at least is the fear, inspired by stories of Russian mobsters in New York, Chinese triads in London, and Italian mafias throughout the West. As this book explains, the truth is more complicated. The author has spent years researching mafia groups in Italy, Russia, the United States, and China, and argues that mafiosi often find themselves abroad against their will, rather than through a strategic plan to colonize new territories. Once there, they do not always succeed in establishing themselves. The book spells out the conditions that lead to their long-term success, namely sudden market expansion that is neither exploited by local rivals nor blocked by authorities. Ultimately the inability of the state to govern economic transformations gives mafias their opportunity. In a series of matched comparisons, the book charts the attempts of the Calabrese 'Ndrangheta to move to the north of Italy, and shows how the Sicilian mafia expanded to early twentieth-century New York, but failed around the same time to find a niche in Argentina. The book explains why the Russian mafia failed to penetrate Rome but succeeded in Hungary. A pioneering chapter on China examines the challenges that triads from Taiwan and Hong Kong find in branching out to the mainland. This book is both a compelling read and a sober assessment of the risks posed by globalization and immigration for the spread of mafias.


Author(s):  
Geir Lundestad

There are no laws in history. Realists, liberals, and others are both right and wrong. Although no one can be certain that military incidents may not happen, for the foreseeable future China and the United States are unlikely to favor major war. They have cooperated well for almost four decades now. China is likely to continue to focus on its economic modernization. It has far to go to measure up to the West. The American-Chinese economies are still complementary. A conflict with the United States or even with China’s neighbors would have damaging repercussions for China’s economic goals. The United States is so strong that it would make little sense for China to take it on militarily. There are also other deterrents against war, from nuclear weapons to emerging norms about international relations. It is anybody’s guess what will happen after the next few decades. History indicates anything is possible.


Author(s):  
Celine Parreñas Shimizu

Transnational films representing intimacy and inequality disrupt and disgust Western spectators. When wounded bodies within poverty entangle with healthy wealthy bodies in sex, romance and care, fear and hatred combine with desire and fetishism. Works from the Philippines, South Korea, and independents from the United States and France may not be made for the West and may not make use of Hollywood traditions. Rather, they demand recognition for the knowledge they produce beyond our existing frames. They challenge us to go beyond passive consumption, or introspection of ourselves as spectators, for they represent new ways of world-making we cannot unsee, unhear, or unfeel. The spectator is redirected to go beyond the rapture of consuming the other to the rupture that arises from witnessing pain and suffering. Self-displacement is what proximity to intimate inequality in cinema ultimately compels and demands so as to establish an ethical way of relating to others. In undoing the spectator, the voice of the transnational filmmaker emerges. Not only do we need to listen to filmmakers from outside Hollywood who unflinchingly engage the inexpressibility of difference, we need to make room for critics and theorists who prioritize the subjectivities of others. When the demographics of filmmakers and film scholars are not as diverse as its spectators, films narrow our worldviews. To recognize our culpability in the denigration of others unleashes the power of cinema. The unbearability of stories we don’t want to watch and don’t want to feel must be borne.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-27
Author(s):  
Irus Braverman

Our special issue provides a first-of-its kind attempt to examine environmental injustices in the occupied West Bank through interdisciplinary perspectives, pointing to the broader settler colonial and neoliberal contexts within which they occur and to their more-than-human implications. Specifically, we seek to understand what environmental justice—a movement originating from, and rooted in, the United States—means in the context of Palestine/Israel. Moving beyond the settler-native dialectic, we draw attention to the more-than-human flows that occur in the region—which include water, air, waste, cement, trees, donkeys, watermelons, and insects—to consider the dynamic, and often gradational, meanings of frontier, enclosure, and Indigeneity in the West Bank, challenging the all-too-binary assumptions at the core of settler colonialism. Against the backdrop of the settler colonial project of territorial dispossession and elimination, we illuminate the infrastructural connections and disruptions among lives and matter in the West Bank, interpreting these through the lens of environmental justice. We finally ask what forms of ecological decolonization might emerge from this landscape of accumulating waste, concrete, and ruin. Such alternative visions that move beyond the single axis of settler-native enable the emergence of more nuanced, and even hopeful, ecological imaginaries that focus on sumud, dignity, and recognition.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4_suppl3) ◽  
pp. 2325967120S0024
Author(s):  
Tyler B. Hall ◽  
Max J. Hyman ◽  
Neeraj M. Patel

Background: A number of surgical options are available for sizeable articular cartilage lesions of the knee. These include osteochondral autograft (OAU) or allograft (OAL) transfer, or autologous chondrocyte implantation (ACI). In the pediatric population, there is little data on the patients undergoing these procedures or evidence to support one technique over another, which may lead to variation in preferred practice. Hypothesis/Purpose: The purpose of this study is to analyze the epidemiology of children and adolescents undergoing OAU, OAL, and ACI in the United States, with attention to variation along the lines of demographic and geographic factors. Methods: The Pediatric Health Information System, a national database consisting of 49 children’s hospitals, was queried for all patients undergoing OAU, OAL, and ACI between 2012 and 2018. Demographic information was collected for each subject. United States Census guidelines were used to categorize hospitals geographically into regions. Univariate analysis was followed by purposeful entry multivariate regression to adjust for confounding factors. Results: A total of 809 subjects with a mean age of 15.4±2.4 years were included in the analysis. Of these, 393 (48.6%) underwent OAL, 339 (41.9%) underwent OAU, and 77 (9.5%) underwent ACI. The most common diagnosis at the time of surgery was osteochondritis dissecans in 360 patients (44.5%) followed by an associated cruciate ligament injury in 126 (15.6%) and patellar instability in 98 (12.1%). After adjusting for confounders in a multivariate model, ACI was more 3.4 times more likely to be performed in patients with private insurance than those that were publicly insured (95% CI 1.5-7.5, p=0.002). Furthermore, a patient in this Northeast was 29.3 times more likely to undergo ACI than in the West (95% CI 4.0-217.4, p=0.001). OAU was performed most frequently in the West and Midwest (52.4% and 51.8% of the time, respectively; p<0.001). Univariate analysis also revealed differences along the lines of race, but these findings did not maintain statistical significance in multivariate analysis. Conclusion: In the United States, there is substantial variation in the procedures performed for cartilage restoration in children and adolescents. Though ACI is the least commonly selected operation overall, it is significantly more likely to be performed on patients with private insurance and those in the Northeast. OAU is the most commonly performed procedure in the West and Midwest.


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