Global cities, glocal fauna: animals and the urban British Atlantic, 1660–1800

Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Andrew Wells
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Global City ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Global Cities ◽  
British Atlantic ◽  
Reciprocal Influence ◽  
Human Animal

Abstract This article has two principal aims. The first is to assess the usefulness of ‘glocalization’ as a concept in the study of early modern global cities, using human–animal interactions as a test case. The second is to explore the reciprocal influence that human–animal interactions and the development of global cities had on each other. Exploration of these two issues interrogates the frequently contradictory, often ambiguous and always contested nature of the early modern global city itself.

In Defense of Geomancy: Šaraf al-Dīn Yazdī Rebuts Ibn Ḫaldūn’s Critique of the Occult Sciences

Arabica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 64 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 346-403
Author(s):  
Matthew Melvin-Koushki
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Test Case ◽  
14Th Century ◽  
Original State ◽  
Opposing Camp

Abstract The late 8th/14th century saw a renaissance of high occultism throughout Islamdom—a development alarming to puritan scholars. This includes Ibn Ḫaldūn (d. 808/1406), whose anti-occultist position in the Muqaddima is often assumed to be an example of his visionary empiricism; yet his goal is simply the recategorization of all occult sciences under the twin rubrics of magic and divination, and his veto persuades more on religious and social grounds than natural-scientific. Restoring the historian’s argument to its original state of debate with the burgeoning occultist movement associated with the Mamluk sultan Barqūq’s (r. 784/1382-791/1389 and 792/1390-801/1399) court reveals it to be not forward-thinking but rather conservative, fideist and indeed reactionary, as such closely allied with Ibn Qayyim al-Ǧawziyya’s (d. 751/1350) puritanical project in particular; and in any event, the eager patronage and pursuit of the occult sciences by early modern ruling and scholarly elites suggests that his appeal could only fall on deaf ears. That it also flatly opposed the forms of millennial sovereignty that would define the post-Mongol era was equally disqualifying. I here take Šaraf al‑Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī (d. 858/1454), Ibn Ḫaldūn’s younger colleague and fellow resident in Cairo, as his sparring partner from the opposing camp: the Timurid historian was a card-carrying occultist and member of the Iḫwān al-Ṣafāʾ network of neopythagorean-neoplatonic-monist thinkers then gaining prominence from India to Anatolia via Egypt. I further take geomancy (ʿilm al-raml) as a test case, since Yazdī wrote a tract in defense of the popular divinatory science that directly rebuts Ibn Ḫaldūn’s arguments in the Muqaddima. To set the stage for their debate, I briefly introduce contemporary geomantic theory and practice, then discuss Ibn Ḫaldūn’s and Yazdī’s respective theories of occultism with a view toward establishing points of agreement and disagreement; I also append a translation of Yazdī’s tract as a basis for this comparison.

scholarly journals "Unaccomodated Man": Dismodernism and Disability Justice in King Lear

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine M. Gottlieb
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Disability Studies ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Significant Disability ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Important Site

King Lear's exploration of what it means to be human has significant Disability Studies implications that have not yet been examined. Through the course of the play, Lear gains awareness of interdependence, bodily vulnerability, and human-animal kinship, and his new worldview unsettles the shared ground of ableism and anthropocentrism. Analyzing three of Lear's significant speeches, I argue that King Lear's exploration of what it means to be human anticipates Lennard Davis's recent theoretical concept, dismodernism. Both Lear and Gloucester express concern for Poor Tom in ways that link disability to community and social justice. Through considering King Lear in relation to early modern contexts and current Disability Studies theory and activism, I argue that the play is an important site for developing a socially conscious Shakespearean Disability Studies.

scholarly journals “None of Them Could Say They Ever Had Seen Them, but Only Had It from Others”: Encounters with Animals in Eighteenth-Century Natural Histories of Greenland

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 2024
Author(s):  
Helen Parish
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Christian Mission ◽  
Modern Natural ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Nuanced Understanding ◽  
Natural Histories

The pages of early modern natural histories expose the plasticity of the natural world, and the variegated nature of the encounter between human and animal in this period. Descriptions of the flora and fauna reflect this kind of negotiated encounter between the world that is seen, that which is heard about, and that which is constructed from the language of the sacred text of scripture. The natural histories of Greenland that form the basis of this analysis exemplify the complexity of human–animal encounters in this period, and the intersections that existed between natural and unnatural, written authority and personal testimony, and culture, belief, and ethnography in natural histories. They invite a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which animals and people interact in the making of culture, and demonstrate the contribution made by such texts to the study of animal encounters, cultures, and concepts. This article explores the intersection between natural history and the work of Christian mission in the eighteenth century, and the connections between personal encounter, ethnography, history, and oral and written tradition. The analysis demonstrates that European natural histories continued to be anthropocentric in content and tone, the product of what was believed, as much as what was seen.

scholarly journals Comparisons of the City Brand Influence of Global Cities: Word-Embedding Based Semantic Mining and Clustering Analysis on the Big Data of GDELT Global News Knowledge Graph

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 6294
Author(s):  
Chenyu Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
News Media ◽  
Clustering Analysis ◽  
Global City ◽  
Word Embedding ◽  
Knowledge Graph ◽  
Global Cities ◽  
City Brand ◽  
Semantic Mining ◽  
The City

Global cities act as influential hubs in the networked world. Their city brands, which are projected by the global news media, are becoming sustainable resources in various global competitions and cooperations. This study adopts the research paradigm of computational social science to assess and compare the city brand attention, positivity, and influence of ten Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) Alpha+ global cities, along with their dimensional structures, based on combining the cognitive and affective theoretical perspectives on the frameworks of the Anholt global city brand dimension system, the big data of global news knowledge graph in Google’s Global Database of Events, Language, and Tone (GDELT), and the technologies of word-embedding semantic mining and clustering analysis. The empirical results show that the overall values and dimensional structures of city brand influence of global cities form distinct levels and clusters, respectively. Although global cities share a common structural characteristic of city brand influence of the dimensions of presence and potential being most prominent, Western and Eastern global cities differentiate in the clustering of dimensional structures of city brand attention, positivity, and influence. City brand attention is more important than city brand positivity in improving the city brand influence of global cities. The preferences of the global news media over global city brands fits the nature of global cities.

scholarly journals “Paltrie Vermin, Cats, Mise, Toads, and Weasils”: Witches, Familiars, and Human-Animal Interactions in the English Witch Trials

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 134
Author(s):  
Helen Parish
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Witch Trials ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Witch ◽  
Causal Theories ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

This article explores the role played by the relationship between witch and familiar in the early modern witch trials. It positions animal familiars at the intersection of early modern belief in witchcraft and magic, examining demonologies, legal and trial records, and print pamphlets. Read together, these sources present a compelling account of human-animal interactions during the period of the witch trials, and shed light upon the complex beliefs that created the environment in which the image of the witch and her familiar took root. The animal familiar is positioned and discussed at the intersection of writing in history, anthropology, folklore, gender, engaging with the challenge articulated in this special issue to move away from mono-causal theories and explore connections between witchcraft, magic, and religion.

The trans-imperial biography of César Falliet: a life between global cities

Urban History ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Kristie Patricia Flannery
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social World ◽  
Global Cities ◽  
Colonial Power ◽  
Spanish Colonial ◽  
The City

Abstract César Falliet's trans-imperial biography sheds light on the dynamics of belonging in early modern Manila, a city that was both a cosmopolitan centre of trade and a stronghold of Spanish colonial power. Falliet's integration into Manila's social world depended on his ability to convince elites that he was Catholic, loyal to the Spanish king and useful to his empire; attributes that he proved by fighting Islamic and Protestant pirates. These credentials were ultimately tested in five theatres: Manila, Batavia, India, the Americas and the Sulu Zone. Manila's inter-Asian and transpacific ties profoundly shaped foreigners’ lives in the city.

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