In the article, the social structure of mountain-plant serf population of fief and seasonal plants in the Southern Urals in the first half of the 19th century is studied. It is noted that due to the kind of their activity, all mountain-plant population was in this or that way connected with plant work; according to their social structure they were peasants, bought for the plants, or were the owners’ private serfs. It is shown that because of the variety (...) of industrial work at a plant, the serfs of the plant-owners were categorized and differed according to the working conditions and possibilities of their own management. The Southern Urals is noted to have become the arena of private mining industry activity as compared to other areas of the country. The fact predetermining the social composition of factory population. The sources of formation and growth of the group of factory peasants of the Southern Urals are shown. In the article, the social structure is analyzed and social groups of factory peasants are described for three different mining areas of the region. (shrink)

The author studies with the problems of formation of the tenancy institution, the social composition and land tenure by the tenants. The obligations, share and territorial location of the peasants - tenants in the Southern Urals are analyzed. Complicated land relations between the tenants and Bashkir’s are revealed. The results of the undertakings by the government in land relations rights regulation of Bashkir’s and their tenants are analyzed. The purposes, the main content of the decrees of 1830-1850s on (...) land arrangement of the tenants are distinguished. It is emphasized that the activity of Russian authorities on land tenure had not liquidated the uncertainty of land relations between Bashkir’s and their tenants. (shrink)

The authors present the results of studying migration processes as one of the factors that determine the transformation of the regional social space. Applying migration indicators to assessing prospective spatial changes presupposes a multivariate analysis of developing complex heterogeneous systems. The version of applying problem-oriented visualization tools presented by the authors significantly expands the possibilities of such an analysis. Assessment, systematization and subsequent classification of migration characteristics are considered within the framework of a multi-stage graphical digital analysis procedure. The problems (...) of migration dynamics characterize a number of problems of the incipient deformation of social space. The main provisions and results of the study are presented as exemplified by the five largest urban areas of the Chelyabinsk region. The key contradictions generated by the processes of regional migration are presented for various urban areas of one of the leading industrial regions of the Urals. These are contradictions: dynamics of population inflow — outflow; the ratio of the balance of migration and migration flows, etc. The results of the study make it possible to proceed to more complex models of spatial reconstruction and sustainable development of territories. Considering such models lays the groundwork for passing on to a controlled transformation in the spatial development of territories and reducing the signs of social space deformation. (shrink)

The physiological blind spot corresponds to the optic disc where the retina contains no light-detecting photoreceptor cells. Our perception seemingly fills in this gap in input. Here we suggest that rather than an active process, such perceptual filling-in could instead be a consequence of the integration of visual inputs at higher stages of processing discounting the local absence of retinal input. Using functional brain imaging, we resolved the retinotopic representation of the physiological blind spot in early human visual cortex and (...) measured responses while participants perceived filling-in. Responses in early visual areas simply reflected the absence of visual input. In contrast, higher extrastriate regions responded more to stimuli in the eye containing the blind spot than the fellow eye. However, this signature was independent of filling-in. We argue that these findings agree with philosophical accounts that posit that the concept of filling-in of absent retinal input is unnecessary. (shrink)

The instrumentalization of news media resulting in advocacy reporting and the heavy use of commentary is a quintessential characteristic of mediascapes deeply informed by press-party parallelism, m...

Solipsism indicates an epistemological position that denies the existence of ‘others’ by asserting that the ‘self’ is the only thing that can be known to exist. For sophist philosophers, the belief that “we can not know anything, and even if we do so, we cannot communicate it” is central to this theory. However, until now there has been little academic scholarship that has tried to provide answers to the pressing issues raised by solipsism. In Solipsist Ontology: Physical Things and Personal (...) Perceptual Space, Ural aims to redefine solipsism by analyzing and elaborating on traditional philosophical problems, such as empiricism and rationalism, as well as discussing problems of language, communication, and meaning. Ural reveals where solipsism has been previously ignored, pseudo-problems have arisen that disguise the sources of the problems with prejudices that concern the philosophical problems in question. Notably, many current, as well as traditional problems of ontology, epistemology, and language are bound up in discourses of solipsism. Ural argues that discarding solipsism as a philosophical discourse hinders new interpretations of traditional philosophical thought. This book offers a fresh perspective to solipsism by defining it in relation to concepts such as ‘physical things,’ ‘personal perceptual space’ and ‘identity.’ Importantly, Ural proposes that an understanding of ‘identity’ is not necessary in order to redefine solipsism. By building a logical system that fashions communication and solipsism as interrelated, it is possible to reject ‘identity’ as a useless concept and thus overcome the classic solipsist dilemma of “we are not able to communicate.” This original piece of research is an important and timely contribution to the field of philosophy that will be of great interest to teachers, researchers, and students. (shrink)

This is the second of the three volumes comprising, Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe. Focussing on the period from c.1090-1212, the volume explores the lives, scholarly resources, and contributions of a wide sample of people who either took part in the creation of the scholastic system of thought or gave practical effect to it in public life. The second volume of a compelling, original work which will redefine our perceptions of medieval civilization, the renaissance and the evolution of (...) modern Europe. Written by a man who was widely regarded as the greatest medieval historian. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to study the structure of interest groups and their role in the EEC decision making process. The paper consists of two parts ; the first deals with the historical pattern of emergence of these groups, white the second part concentrates on the their contemporary participation in the EEC decision making process.In the first part six empirical topics are developed :1. the creation of interest groups at the Community on regional level;2. the chronological study of (...) these groups and their activities ;3. their geographical distribution across the Community's member states ;4. the functional areas covered and interests represented by these groups at the EEC level ;5. the role of national interest groups and their representation in the interest groups operating at the Community level;6. the distribution of leadership posts in regional interest groups by nationality.A s for the second part, it is in turn divided into two sections. The first discusses the participation of interest groups in the EEC decision making process; whereas, the second section deals with the recent trends in the EEC decision making process. (shrink)

Robert Grosseteste was one of the most independent and vigorous Englishmen of the Middle Ages--a medieval Dr. Johnson in his powers of mind and personality. Of humble birth, he lived for many years in obscurity and emerged only late in life as a national figure, deeply conservative and profoundly critical of the contemporary world. As a scientist, theologian, and pastoral leader, he was rooted in an English tradition going back beyond the Norman Conquest. This comprehensive study of one of England's (...) great intellects by the late Sir Richard W. Southern of Oxford University is an important contribution to the history of ideas. (shrink)

This is a study of the intellectual development and influence of one of the most independent thinking Englishmen of the Middle Ages, Ribert Grosseteste. Southern has revised his much-acclaimed study in the light of recent scholarly research, and added an extensive preliminary chapter on the debate over Grosseteste's career and intellectual growth.

Language plays an important role in fashioning the identity of ethnic groups. This article explores a minority language – Irish – in Northern Ireland. Given the society’s longstanding ethnic divisions, matters revolving around the Irish language are capable of generating heated debate. However, unlike some other minority languages, Irish is somewhat peculiar in that it is not used as a form of linguistic communication between speakers on a daily basis. Hence it lacks instrumental (but not symbolic) relevance in this sense (...) and supporters of the language can be observed trying to create rather than maintain a community of speakers. This fact sets Irish apart from some other minority languages which have generated emotive political debate, for example, Afrikaans in South Africa and French in Canada. The article considers the language debate that has emerged in Northern Ireland in the light of such factors. (shrink)

Publicity for (and laterly increased economic stringency which makes more likely), failures of care in the NHS engender concern for care quality while its assurance remains the subject of a fragmented and unhelpful literature. A selective attempt is made to examine some underlying principles by posing and answering three questions. What is the quality of care? What basic principles must be followed in defining `standards'? How then may quality be assured? Any definition of care must be multi-faceted and in common (...) use pervaded with the patients' pre-occupation with a search for cures. Nevertheless, it is argued that there are gains in restricting the technical use of the term `care' to those systematic processes of health services and their culture which impinge on the personal experience of patients and which fashion their response. In contemporary society care ought to be designed to restore and enhance the independence, dignity and choice of the patient. Although there is a contrary tendency to abandon problems of care to the professionals, standards for care should be judged ultimately not from the specialised professional but from the viewpoint of lay people whose behaviour in the outside world fashions those norms by which independence, dignity and choice are judged. A number of difficulties in identifying and securing improvements in care are discussed. In particular, it is argued that such is the interdependence of the style of management of an institution and the style of care it provides that enforcement of high quality care is likley to be a contradiction in terms. Only trained and sensitive staff can act intuitively and pre-emptively to prevent even incipient deterioration in care. They cannot carefully foster at all times the independence and dignity of their patients unless they are treated in a similar way as professional employees. As an initial step in improving the quality of care a simple start is urged upon implementing an inventory of checks. These are designed to establish the identification and operation of health care policies and practices which give appropriate recognition to the characteristics of care that patients and public expect, coming as they do from a lay rather than professional world. The article concludes with an appropriate inventory of questions to be put to professionals by those laymen who are increasingly imported into health care management through community representation (in CHCs) and staff participation (in joint consultation) and whose interest and concern should be harnessed appropriately. (shrink)

The Southern Key explains the reasons for the failure of the US South to unionize-especially during the 1930s and 1940s-and why this is the crucial to understanding the evolution of American politics since that era. It is argued, primarily, that the failure of the labor movement to fully confront white supremacy led to its ultimate failure in the South, and that this regional failure has led to the nationwide decline in labor unionism, growing inequality, and the perpetuation of white (...) supremacy. (shrink)

"The great value of the book lies in the manner in which May relates the expansionist urge to the "symbolic" differences emerging between the North and the South. The result is a balanced account that contributes to the efforts of historians to understand the causes of the Civil War."--Journal of American History "The most ambitious effort yet to relate the Caribbean question to the larger picture of southern economic and political anxieties, and to secession. The core of this superbly (...) documented book is a detailed description of expansionist ideology and activities during the 1850s."--Civil War History A path-breaking work when first published in 1973, The Southern Dream remains the standard work on attempts by the South to spread American slavery into the tropics--Cuba, Mexico, and Central America in particular--before the Civil War. Robert May shows that the South's expansionists had no more success than when they tried to extend slavery westward. As one after another of their plots failed, southern imperialists lost hope that their labor system might survive in the Union. Blaming northern Democrats and antislavery Republicans alike for their disappointed dreams, alienated southerners embraced secession as an alternative means to achieving the tropical slave empire that they craved. Had war not erupted at Fort Sumter, Confederates might have attempted to conquer the Caribbean basin. May's book serves as an important reminder that foreign policy cannot be divorced from the writing of American history, even in regard to seemingly domestic matters like the causes of the Civil War. Contending that America's Manifest Destiny became "sectionalized" in the 1850s, he explains why southerners considered Caribbean expansion so important and shows how southerners used their clout in Washington to initiate diplomatic schemes like the notorious Ostend Manifesto and presidential attempts to buy the slaveholding island of Cuba from Spain. He also describes southern filibustering plots against Latin American domains, such as the aborted designs on Mexico of the colorful Knights of the Golden Circle and the actual invasions of Central America by native Tennessean William Walker. Walker struck a major blow for the expansion of slavery when he legalized it during his occupation of Nicaragua. Most important, May relates how Caribbean plots affected American public opinion and ignited sectional friction in congressional debates. May argues that President-elect Abraham Lincoln might have saved the Union in the winter of 1860-61, had he agreed to last minute concessions facilitating slavery's future expansion towards the tropics. May's fascinating and often surprising account internationalized the causes of the Civil War. It should be read by anyone who wishes to understand the complex reasons why Americans came to blows with each other in 1861. This reprinting features a new preface by the author, which addresses the latest research on the Caribbean question. Robert E. May is professor of history at Purdue University. (shrink)

In this article, I focus on the work of the South Asian Network for Gender Transformation to show how it goes beyond the current turn to the Global South in much contemporary transnational feminisms. It does so in two ways. One, as evident in the name, it defines a regional imaginary, which is place-based and informed by the long history of interactions in the area beyond the colonial, postcolonial, and recent global forces, as well as in conversation with discourses and (...) practices from the North. Second, its praxis connects activists across borders in a process of mutual learning that acknowledges power inequalities and draws upon local as well as transnational feminist theories and methodologies to enable sustainable collaborations for social and gender justice in the region. Thus, rather than reproducing the North/south binaries with its attendant erasures SANGAT seeks to go beyond them to develop place-based yet connected ‘solidarities of epistemologies’ and praxis. (shrink)

The present essay deals with the fabrication of the imperial genealogy of the Southern Tang state. A means of linking the Southern Tang founder Li Bian to the Tang, it helped establish Southern Tang claims to the Tang heritage. Though no original fabricated genealogy survives, variant forms have been handed down through a number of texts starting in the early Northern Song period. These are discussed in terms of their plausibility, marking the Jiang- nan lu by Xu (...) Xuan as the officially accepted description and the Zizhi tongjian version as the most “believable” of all fake Southern Tang genealogies. (shrink)

(Statement of Responsibility) by Timothy S. Huebner.

In this paper the astronomical explorations of the southern celestial sky by Dutch navigators at the end of the sixteenth century are investigated. It is shown that the main motivation for this scientific enterprise stemmed from Dutch cartographic tradition and interests, represented first and foremost by Petrus Plancius and the competing globemakers Hondius and Blaeu. It is shown, too, that at the time actually two surveys were carried out. We have investigated the results of the two surveys by analysing (...) the data presented on celestial globes by Hondius and Blaeu, and in the star catalogue published by De Houtman in 1603. It appears that only after the first survey was it recognized that the stars of the well-known Southern Cross constellation could be matched with stars already recorded by Ptolemy. (shrink)

It is widely believed that gender role attitudes are more traditional in the southern United States than elsewhere in the nation. We examine this notion, using eight gender-related questions from the NORC General Social Survey data. Responses to these questions suggest that Southerners tend to hold more conservative opinions on questions about women in politics and employed women. On questions of whether employed women can be good mothers, however, Southern and non-Southern opinions are very similar. An examination (...) of how Southerners and non-Southerners answered the gender questions over time shows that attitudes in both regions have become more egalitarian. (shrink)

Sweetpotato-pig production is an important system that generates income, utilizes unmarketable crops, and provides manure for soil fertility maintenance. This system is widely practiced from Asia to Africa, with many local variations. Within this system, pigs are generally fed a low nutrient-dense diet, yielding low growth rates and low economic efficiency. Our project in Vietnam went through a process of situation analysis, participatory technology development (PTD), and scaling up over a seven-year period to improve sweetpotato-pig production and to disseminate developed (...) technologies. The situation analysis included a series of pig production assessments in several provinces in northern and southern Vietnam, and pig supply-market chain identification was conducted in 13 provinces. The analysis of these studies informed the project of the following: (1) appropriate locations for our activities; (2) seasonal available feedstuff and farmers’ feeding practices; (3) market fluctuation and requirements; and (4) feeding and management improvement needs based on which the subsequent phase of PTD was designed. The PTD involved a limited number of farmers participating in sweetpotato varietal selection, sweetpotato root and vine silage processing, seasonal feeding combination, and pig feeding with balanced crop-feed diet and silage. Six years of multi-location and multi-season sweetpotato selection resulted in a few promising varieties that yielded up to 75% more dry matter and have since been formally released. The most significant results of silage processing and feeding trials include improved growth, higher feeding efficiency, increased year-round local feedstuff, and considerable labor reduction from eliminated cooking and vine cutting. Once these technologies were developed, a farmer-to-farmer training model was designed for scaling up the adoption and impact. Farmer trainers from seven communes in seven provinces received training in these technologies. In turn, they undertook the responsibility of training other farmers on sweetpotato selection, processing, and feeding. An impact study was also administered to monitor and evaluate (M&E) the dissemination process and to document the impact of the new technologies and farmer-to-farmer training model on pig growth and farmer income generation. The results showed that both participating and non-participating farmers have taken up the technologies, although the former demonstrates higher rates of adoption than the latter. The participants also generated more income and saved more labor from the adoption of the technologies. While the scaling up and M&E activities are on-going, the project has since broadened from a sweetpotato-pig system perspective to a pig-cropfeed system perspective based on farmers’ needs. It has included other crop feeds such as cassava and peanut stems in the research portfolio. New technologies based on on-going PTD will continuously be incorporated into the future training curriculum. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationships between Christianity, Englishness, and ideas about the southern English landscape in the writings of the 1930s and 1940s rural commentator, H.J. Massingham. The paper begins by looking in general terms at the conjunction of religious and national identities in the context of national landscapes before moving on to consider in more detail one particular instance of this in the writing of H.J. Massingham. Massingham's understanding of a divine natural order, his construction of a kind (...) of 'divine Englishness' and the way in which he relates this to particular English landscapes is explored. In particular, the paper investigates the natural, social and political power relationships which are embedded in Massingham's work, and suggests that his writing provides an interesting example of one way in which theological reasoning can reflect and reinforce concepts of a naturally ordered national identity. (shrink)

Lying in an area bounded by the Wabash, Ohio, and Mississippi rivers, the Southern Illinois country is rich in history, folklore, scenery, and natural resources. At about the latitude of southern Virginia, and extending from the flat prairie farmland of central Illinois to the rugged "Illinois Ozarks,” the area is the natural terminal boundary for hundreds of plant species reaching out to all points of the compass. It is also the oldest and most sparsely populated part of Illinois, (...) a region of small towns and independent people, typical of the vast heartland of the U.S.A. Surveying the area in words and pictures the authors sensitively and appreciatively portray the region’s special qualities. An uncommon portrayal of American life in a distinctive region, the book provides a memorable journey both in time and place. (shrink)

The epistemic problem of assessing the support that some evidence confers on a hypothesis is considered using an extended example from the history of meteorology. In this case, and presumably in others, the problem is to develop techniques of data analysis that will link the sort of evidence that can be collected to hypotheses of interest. This problem is solved by applying mathematical tools to structure the data and connect them to the competing hypotheses. I conclude that mathematical innovations provide (...) crucial epistemic links between evidence and theories precisely because the evidence and theories are mathematically described.Keywords: J. N. Lockyer; Gilbert T. Walker; ENSO; Models; Bayesianism. (shrink)

Forthcoming, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science Abstract: The epistemic problem of assessing the support that some evidence confers on a hypothesis is considered using an extended example from the history of meteorology. In this case, and presumably in others, the problem is to develop techniques of data analysis that will link the sort of evidence that can be collected to hypotheses of interest. This problem is solved by applying mathematical tools to structure the data and connect it (...) to the competing hypotheses. I conclude that mathematical innovations provide crucial epistemic links between evidence and theories precisely because the evidence and theories are mathematically described. (shrink)

In this article I argue that among the southern Betsileo slave descendants are essentialised by free descendants. After explaining how this striking case of psychological essentialism manifests in the local context, I provide experimental evidence for it and discuss the results of three cognitive tasks that I ran in the field. I then suggest that slaves were not essentialised in the pre-colonial era and contend that the essentialist construal only became entrenched in the aftermath of the 1896 abolition of (...) slavery, which paradoxically triggered the historical process of essentialisation. (shrink)