Introduction

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
Strong Sense ◽  
The Core ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
Party Loyalty ◽  
Soviet Experience

This introductory chapter discusses the poetry of Ol′ga Berggol′ts. Unable to pretend to accept the values of the Stalin era without reservation, Berggol′ts combined in her poetry idealistic enthusiasm and Party loyalty with feelings of doubt and disillusion which question everything the Soviet establishment purported to stand for. The chapter then sets out the purpose of the book, which is to explore ways in which the poet sets her own individual emotions and experience at the core of her writing, while retaining a strong sense that those emotions and experiences were shared by her readers. The study contends that Berggol′ts succeeds in giving voice to the complexities of the Soviet experience, and that her engagement with these complexities has contributed to critical neglect of her writing.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Tallberg ◽  
Karin Bäckstrand ◽  
Jan Aart Scholte
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Sociological Approach ◽  
The Core ◽  
Governance Institutions

Legitimacy is central for the capacity of global governance institutions to address problems such as climate change, trade protectionism, and human rights abuses. However, despite legitimacy’s importance for global governance, its workings remain poorly understood. That is the core concern of this volume, which engages with the overarching question: whether, why, how, and with what consequences global governance institutions gain, sustain, and lose legitimacy. This introductory chapter explains the rationale of the book, introduces its conceptual framework, reviews existing literature, and presents the key themes of the volume. It emphasizes in particular the volume’s sociological approach to legitimacy in global governance, its comparative scope, and its comprehensive treatment of the topic. Moreover, a specific effort is made to explain how each chapter moves beyond existing research in exploring the book’s three themes: (1) sources of legitimacy, (2) processes of legitimation and delegitimation, and (3) consequences of legitimacy.

On the Sociology of Latin America

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liliana Rivera-Sánchez ◽  
Xóchitl Bada
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
The Core ◽  
Research Fields

In this introductory chapter, we develop a brief history around the institutionalization process of sociology in Latin America. At the same time, we revisit some of the core debates and contributions of the sociology of Latin America, identifying some of the topics and fields in which sociology from this region has made key contributions to the discipline. The chapter is divided into three sections: development and institutionalization of the discipline, selected debates and contributions to sociology from Latin America, and, finally, the roadmap to this Handbook, which covers eight research fields.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Joshua Teplitsky
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Life ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
The Core ◽  
Local Courts ◽  
Life Politics

This introductory chapter provides a background of David Oppenheim and his Jewish library. At the core of Oppenheim's identity and activity as a rabbi, intellectual, and communal leader stood his library. His library gained renown among Jewish colleagues and Christian contemporaries. It thus informed the decisions of local courts and distant decisors. He possessed highbrow scholarly material alongside popular pamphlets and broadsides, and he preserved diplomatic exchanges and communal ordinances in manuscript—an archive of contemporary Jewish life. Oppenheim's intellectual authority made him a much-sought-after source for endorsements for newly written books. This book then tells the story of premodern Jewish life, politics, and intellectual culture through an exploration of a book collection, the man who assembled it, and the circles of individuals who brought it into being and made use of it.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Devin Caughey
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Regime ◽  
The South ◽  
Southern Politics ◽  
The Core ◽  
Racial Issues ◽  
Congressional Representation ◽  
The One ◽  
Partisan Competition ◽  
The New Deal

This introductory chapter lays down the groundwork for the argument that the white polyarchy model provides the best account of congressional representation in the one-party South. This framework characterizes the South as an exclusionary one-party enclave, which departed from normal democratic politics in three major respects: its exclusion of many citizens from the franchise, its lack of partisan competition, and its embeddedness within a national democratic regime. Each of these features had important implications for Southern politics. The argument here is that white polyarchy provides the best description of congressional politics in the South, but this argument also rests on a number of empirical premises. To that end, the chapter outlines a focus on the issues of regulation, redistribution, and social welfare at the core of the New Deal agenda, largely bracketing explicitly racial issues except insofar as they intersected with economic policymaking. Finally, it outlines the major implications set out by this argument for our understanding of the character and persistence of the South's exclusionary one-party enclaves.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Mitchell A. Orenstein
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Political Polarization ◽  
Delayed Response ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The West ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
The Core ◽  
Hybrid War

This introductory chapter outlines the core argument of the book: that as Russia ramped up its hybrid war on the West starting around 2007, politics in Western countries has become more similar to politics in the vulnerable “lands in between.” Russia’s hybrid war on the West has contributed to political polarization by promoting extremist parties and creating a sense that every election presents voters with a “civilizational choice” between Russia and the West or authoritarianism and democracy. Paradoxically, many of the leaders that rise to the top in these conditions are those who find ways to profit from both sides. They benefit from the sponsorship of pro-Russia and pro-Western interests to enrich themselves in the process. The plan of this book is simple. It starts with exploring the nature of Russia’s hybrid war on the West and the West’s delayed response. Then it shows how this conflict shapes the politics of the lands in between, Central and Eastern European member states of the European Union, and core Western countries.

Regulating Blockchain

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philipp Hacker ◽  
Ioannis Lianos ◽  
Georgios Dimitropoulos ◽  
Stefan Eich
Keyword(s):  
Financial Markets ◽  
Data Protection ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Core ◽  
Legal Evolution ◽  
Blockchain Technology ◽  
Law And Politics ◽  
Core Points

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the main legal and policy implications of blockchain technology. It proceeds in four steps. First, the chapter traces the technical and legal evolution of blockchain applications since the early days of Bitcoin, highlighting in particular the political ambitions and tensions that have marked many of these projects from the start. Second, it shows how blockchain applications have created new calculative spaces of financial markets that seek to challenge existing forms of money. Third, it discusses the core points of friction with incumbent legal systems, with a particular focus on the regulability of decentralized systems in general and data protection concerns in particular. Fourth, the chapter provides an outline to the contributions to the volume, which span a wide array of topics at the intersection of blockchain, law, and politics.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Benedict Morrison
Keyword(s):  
Complex Form ◽  
Complex Character ◽  
Art Cinema ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Aesthetic

This introduction explores—and questions—how art cinema’s enigmatic characterization and unconventional forms have often been interpreted as a series of puzzles to which criticism can provide the answers. Since David Bordwell’s seminal 1979 essay, one of the core approaches to explaining and resolving art cinema’s challenges has been through the logic that complex character explains complex form. This logic has resulted in reductive critical statements that have dismissed the intricate achievements of untidy form, sweeping them aside with the statement that disturbed form is simply the articulation of disturbed character. This introductory chapter argues that art cinema is eccentric, and that character-centric criticism overlooks the aesthetic and political challenges of complicatedly articulated form. The introduction interrogates the critic’s theological role in resolving art cinema’s fascinating complexities and offers a new ethics of criticism which acknowledges more fully the discrete achievements of characterization and form.

The Open Future: Introduction to a Classical Approach

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Patrick Todd
Keyword(s):  
Classical Approach ◽  
Future Contingents ◽  
Open Future ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Open Future ◽  
Core Idea ◽  
Patrick Todd

In this introductory chapter, Patrick Todd introduces the core idea defended in this book—the idea that future contingents are all false. He clarifies what the book simply presupposes but does not defend, and then provides brief chapter-by-chapter summaries of the book.

Voicing the Soviet Experience

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharine Hodgson
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
Personal Integrity ◽  
Stalin Era ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Conflicting Discourses ◽  
Soviet Experience

This book is an examination of a poet whose career offers a case study in the complexities facing Soviet writers in the Stalin era. Ol′ga Berggol′ts (1910–1975) was a prominent Russian Soviet poet, whose accounts of heroism in wartime Leningrad brought her fame. This book addresses her position as a writer whose Party loyalties were frequently in conflict with the demands of artistic and personal integrity. Writers who pursued their careers under the restrictions of the Stalin era have been categorized as ‘official’ figures whose work is assumed to be drab, inept and opportunistic; but such assumptions impose a uniformity on the work of Soviet writers that the censors and the Writers Union could not achieve. An exploration of Berggol′ts's work shows that the borders between ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ literature were in fact permeable and shifting. This book draws on unpublished sources such as diaries and notebooks to reveal the range and scope of her work, and to show how conflict and ambiguity functioned as a creative structuring principle. The text discusses how Berggol′ts's lyric poetry constructs the subject from multiple, conflicting discourses, and examines the poet's treatment of genres such as narrative verse, verse tragedy and prose in the changing cultural context of the 1950s. Berggol′ts's use of inter-textual, and especially intra-textual, reference is also investigated; the intensively self-referential nature of her work creates a web of allusion that connects texts of different genres, ‘official’ as well as ‘unofficial’ writing.

Introduction—Conflicts of Rights in Theoretical and Comparative Perspective

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stijn Smet
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
European Convention ◽  
The Core ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Winner Take All ◽  
Conflicts Of Rights ◽  
Take All ◽  
Rights Conflicts

This introductory chapter frames the book’s debate by delineating the extent of persistent reasonable disagreement on both the existence and resolution of human rights conflicts in the context of the European Convention on Human Rights. Drawing on the core arguments of the book’s substantive chapters, the introduction highlights the central cleavages in the debate. The chapter first discusses arguments deployed to deny the very existence of conflicts of rights, as well as available counterarguments. It goes on to provide insight in different strategies aimed at minimizing the occurrence of conflicts. It finally suggests that the resolution of genuine human rights conflicts runs along four axes: balancing versus non-balancing; compromise versus winner-take-all; ad hoc balancing versus definitional balancing; and substantive reasoning versus procedural checks. Where useful, the chapter provides linkages to broader scholarly and judicial debates by accentuating relevant theoretical approaches and comparative materials.

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