Violence, Sabotage, and the Mobile Society

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-205
Author(s):  
T. K. Wilson

Dynamite’s illicit political career is a reminder that new technology can be adopted in radically unforeseen ways. Likewise, the revolutions in transport that characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have transformed the patterns and practice of political violence. New means of transport—and the mobility they bring—have been used to facilitate radically new types of violence; and those means of transport have themselves become targets. Indeed, the extent to which modern political violence has become fixated on complex transport networks is one of its most distinguishing features. This chapter focuses on the rise of the motorized society and aviation: the new means of transport that distinguished the twentieth century. Finally, it turns to deliberate tactics of forced immobilism—attempts to use sabotage to attack the mobile society and its processes of production. While sabotage is broader than just attacks on transport, for reasons of analytical convenience I deal with it as an integrated subject area here.

Author(s):  
Christel Lane

This chapter examines the impact of rapid urbanization and industrialization on food and eating out. It draws attention to the growing standardization of food and, with greater class differentiation, to the growing diversity in eating-out venues. Class, gender, and nation are again used as lenses to understand the different eating-out habits and their symbolic significance. Towards the end of the twentieth century, pubs moved more fully towards embracing dining. However, the quality of food, in general terms, began to improve significantly only towards the end of the century, and hospitality venues also moved towards selling food from diverse national origins.


Author(s):  
Michaela Belejkaničová

AbstractIn his Heretical Essays, Jan Patočka introduces the concept of the solidarity of the shaken. He argues that it emerges in the conditions of political violence—the frontline experience (Fronterlebnis). Moreover, Patočka brings into discussion the puzzling concepts of day, night, metanoia and sacrifice, which only further problematise the idea. Researching how other thinkers have examined the phenomenon of the frontline experience, it becomes obvious that Patočka did not invent the obscure vocabulary ex nihilo. Concepts such as frontline experience, sacrifice and the metaphors of the day and night were commonly used by thinkers in the inter-war and post-war eras in their examination of community (Gemeinschaft). This study aims to reconstruct the idea of the solidarity of the shaken as contextualized within a broader scholarly debate on the concept of community (Gemeinschaft). Through the critical dialogue between Patočka’s works and the works of Ernst Jünger and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, this study will portray how Patočka, in his discourse on the frontline experience, follows the usual pattern of overcoming one’s individuality, transcending and opening up to the constitution of solidarity. This paper will argue that Patočka defined the solidarity of the shaken in an attempt to revive the positive aspects of a community and break with the regressive (if not sinister) uses to which it was put in the twentieth century.


1972 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-630 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Caulk

Several centuries after firearms had been introduced, they were still of little importance in Ethiopia, where cavalry continued to dominate warfare until the second half of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, they were much sought after by local leaders ambitious to secure their autonomy or to grasp supreme authority. The first of these warlords to make himself emperor, Tēwodros (1855–68), owed nothing to firearms. However, his successors, Yohannis IV (1872–89) and Minīlik (d. 1913), did. Both excelled in their mastery of the new technology and acquired large quantities of quick-firing weapons. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, possession of firearms — principally the breech loading rifle — had become a precondition for successfully contending for national leadership. Yet the wider revolution associated (as in Egypt) with the establishment of a European-style army did not follow. Nor was rearmament restricted to the following of the emperor. Despite the revival of imperial authority effected by Yohannis and Minīlik, rifles and even machine-guns were widely enough spread at the turn of the century to reinforce the fragmentation of power long characteristic of the Ethiopian state. Into the early twentieth century, it remained uncertain if the peculiar advantages of the capital in the import of arms would be made to serve centralization.


2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McCargo

Thailand's ‘southern border provinces’ of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat – along with four districts of neighbouring Songkhla – are the site of fiery political violence characterised by daily killings. The area was historically a Malay sultanate, and was only loosely under Thai suzerainty until the early twentieth century. During the twentieth century there was periodic resistance to Bangkok's attempts to suppress local identity and to incorporate this largely Malay-speaking, Muslim-majority area into a predominantly Buddhist nation-state. This resistance proved most intense during the 1960s and 1970s, when various armed groups (notably PULO [Patani United Liberation Organization] and BRN [Barisan Revolusi Nasional]) waged war on the Thai state, primarily targeting government officials and the security forces. In the early 1980s, the Prem Tinsulanond government brokered a deal with these armed groups and proceeded to co-opt the Malay-Muslim elite. By crafting mutually beneficial governance, security and financial arrangements, the Thai state was able largely to placate local political demands.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Robert Myers

Study level/applicability Applicable to both undergraduate and graduate courses in managing technology or sustainability. Subject area Technology strategy. Business Model evaluation. Sustainable technologies. Case overview In this case study, gas and electric utility holding company Southern Company has embarked on an ambitious experiment to learn more about energy usage at a household level, as well as community scale microgrids. Every minute, 62 homes in Reynolds Landing upload appliance and electrical outlet level data to Southern Company. How can Southern Company use this vast amount of data to promote energy efficiency? Are microgrids a key to creating a more sustainable and resilient energy future? At a higher level, how can microgrids impact or change traditional power generation business models like those used by Southern Company? Expected learning outcomes 1. To explore why companies develop technologies that are counter to current business models. 2. To understand how new technology can lead to new business models for existing businesses. 3. To understand the drivers of company led R&D. 4. To discuss “technology push” applications. Where technology is developed and then a market or markets are sought. Supplementary materials Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email [email protected] to request teaching notes. Social implications Two parts here. The first is looking at sustainable energy solutions such as solar farms and micro-grids. The second is this case challenges students to ask how this research helps the 45% of consumers making less than $40,000/yr. Subject code CSS 11: Strategy.


Author(s):  
Luiz M. A. Santos

Abstract In the modern industrial scenario, the technological assets of new working methods and machinery in factory plants grow rapidly. Nevertheless, a reverse situation occurs in terms of availability of trained personnel within the subject area. Moreover, even the most experienced technician is faced with a continual need to update his/her skills. In respect to the training activities, more realism and a greater effectiveness could be achieved if the trainee could learn a new technology directly in the real working place. In this paper, considerations are presented for the use of an innovative hardware and Augmented Reality as platform components for the learning material to this training scenario. Both components are described with emphasis on their suitability to the target activity. The proposed platform encompasses a body-worn and wireless-networked computer, and software with specific features to assist the computer user in his/her task by enriching the content of the application environment. The software component, which addresses the application goals and required adaptations to the platform, is presented.


Author(s):  
GRAHAM OLIVER

The chapter focuses on the commemoration of the individual in ancient and modern cultures. It argues that the attitude to individual commemoration adopted by the War Graves Commission in the First World War in Britain can be linked to the commemorative practices of ancient Greece, emphasising the importance of the part played by Sir Frederic Kenyon. The chapter draws on examples of commemoration from classical Athens, twentieth-century Britain and the Soviet Union in order to explore the different roles that the commemoration of the individual has played in ancient and modern forms of war commemoration.


Author(s):  
Karen R. Roybal

This chapter examines the short story, "Shades of the Tenth Muses," the novel, Caballero: A Historical Novel, and a master's thesis – each narrative written by Tejana folklorist and author, Jovita González – to reveal how she contributed to an alternative archive about the Texas/Mexico borderlands. As a member of the Texas folklore society, González participated alongside what were considered prominent Texas folklorists and historians (mainly Anglo males) of the twentieth century, in an effort to (re)tell her own version of Tejano history. The chapter argues that González uses her literary and academic work to create an alternative archive about gender and race relations along the Texas/Mexico border in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her work contributes to an ever-growing body of Chicana/o work that recuperates Mexicana/o cultural memory.


Author(s):  
Kate Nichols ◽  
Sarah Victoria Turner

This introductory chapter explores and establishes the Sydenham Crystal Palace in relation to existing scholarship on the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Sydenham Palace combined education, entertainment and commerce, and spans both nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We resituate it as an important location within the London art world and establish the broader connections it had with rival ventures such as the South Kensington Museum and the numerous international exhibitions in the period. We set out the new possibilities for the analysis of both nineteenth- and twentieth-century visual and material cultures opened up by this unique venue, problematising the periodisation of art works and attitudes into discretely ‘Victorian’ and ‘Edwardian’ categories.


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