Although much has been written on agrarian reforms in India, there are few in-depth studies of specific states and none concerning the relevance of agrarian reforms to the economic development and political stability of Bihar— a state containing one-tenth of the people of India, a population comparable in magnitude to that of the United Kingdom or France. F. Tomasson Jannuzi's field research in Bihar, beginning with village-level surveys and interviews in 1956 and extending through repeated visits through August 1970, has enabled him to provide a unique perspective on events and issues associated with the continuing struggle to transform Bihar's agrarian structure.
Agrarian Crisis in India is at once a history of post-independence agrarian reforms in an important state of India, a detailed critique of the statutory loopholes that have frustrated successive land-reform measures, and a penetrating analysis of the economic, political, and social implications of the failure of agrarian reforms to be implemented in twentieth-century Bihar. The author's analysis of the case of Bihar provides insights not only into the agrarian crisis in Bihar but also into other agrarian societies in the midst of social and economic transformation.
Experts in the field of economic development traditionally have held that the goals of increased production and distributive justice must be approached in sequence. It has been considered almost axiomatic that economic growth will result initially in growing inequalities among classes within a region and among regions within a country. Professor Jannuzi suggests that in Bihar a compelling alternative to this conventional wisdom is an economic-development strategy based on the recognition that the agricultural-production and distributive-justice goals are inseparable and must be addressed simultaneously. He suggests that economic growth in rural Bihar may become impossible if distributive justice continues to be denied to significant sections of the peasantry and, conversely, that distributive justice will prove an illusory target unless economic growth can be assured. Professor Jannuzi recommends the implementation of specified agrarian reforms in Bihar as the prerequisite for meeting the agricultural-production and distributive-justice goals.
The years 1945-1965 saw heavy partisan conflict in the rural areas of Colombia, with at least 200,000 people killed. This virtual civil war began as a sectarian conflict between the Liberal and Conservative parties, with rural workers (campesinos) constituting the majority of combatants and casualties. Yet La Violencia resists classification as a social uprising, since calls for social reform were largely absent during this phase of the struggle. In fact, once the elite leadership settled on a power-sharing agreement in 1958, the conflict appeared to subside.
This book focuses on the second phase (1958-1965) of the struggle, in which the social dimensions of the conflict emerged in a uniquely Colombian form: the campesinos, shaped by the earlier violence, became social and political bandits, no longer acting exclusively for powerful men above them but more in defense of the peasantry. In comparing them with other regional expressions of bandolerismo, the authors weigh the limited prospects for the evolution of Colombian banditry into full-scale social revolution.
Published originally in 1983 as Bandoleros, gamonales y campesinos and now updated with a new epilogue, this book makes a timely contribution to the discourse on social banditry and the Colombian violencia. Its importance rests in the insights it provides not only on the period in question but also on Colombia's present situation.
During the 1920s, the "black decade" of British steel, nearly everyone agreed that the industry's revival depended on replacing obsolete equipment and instituting modern technologies that would increase production and decrease costs. Despite consensus, these goals were not reached and, even after wartime and postwar reconstruction needs were met, the industry continued its steady decline. Steven Tolliday advances three hypotheses for this stagnation.
First, the problems of British steel, Tolliday suggests, were embedded in the structures of individual firms and of the industry as a whole—both unchanged since the prosperous years of the nineteenth century—and after World War I fractured by conflicting interests (share holders, managers, family members, bankers, creditors). Second, the two external institutions that might have enforced reorganization and modernization—the banking system and the government—were overcautious, had complex and contradictory goals, and lacked the management skills to exploit their potential financial leverage. Third, the many attempts at reform by banks and government collapsed because these establishments, like the industry itself, were constrained by traditions and antiquated structural rigidities.
This excellent example of a new direction in business history—analysis of a given industry by conveying the interaction of technology, markets, companies, financial institutions, and government—brings many important theoretical questions into focus and also contributes substantially to the scrutiny of specific problems, such as why the British economy appears to be in irrevocable decline.
Case Marking and Grammatical Relations in Polynesian makes an outstanding contribution to both Polynesian and historical linguistics. It is at once a reference work describing Polynesian syntax, an investigation of the role of grammatical relations in syntax, and a discussion of ergativity, case marking, and other areas of syntactic diversity in Polynesian. In its treatment of the history of case marking in Polynesian, it attempts to specify what counts as evidence in syntactic reconstruction and how syntactic reanalysis progresses. It therefore represents a first step toward a general theory of syntactic change.
Chung first describes the basic syntax of the Polynesian languages, discussing Maori, Tongan, Samoan, Kapingamarangi, and Pukapukan in depth. She then presents an investigation of the grammatical relations of these languages and their relevance to syntax and shows that the syntax of all these languages—even those with ergative case marking—revolves around the familiar grammatical relations subject and direct object. Finally the book traces the historical development of the different case systems from their origins in Proto-Polynesian.
Why women evolved to have orgasms--when most of their primate relatives don't--is a persistent mystery among evolutionary biologists. In pursuing this mystery, Elisabeth Lloyd arrives at another: How could anything as inadequate as the evolutionary explanations of the female orgasm have passed muster as science? A judicious and revealing look at all twenty evolutionary accounts of the trait of human female orgasm, Lloyd's book is at the same time a case study of how certain biases steer science astray.
Over the past fifteen years, the effect of sexist or male-centered approaches to science has been hotly debated. Drawing especially on data from nonhuman primates and human sexology over eighty years, Lloyd shows what damage such bias does in the study of female orgasm. She also exposes a second pernicious form of bias that permeates the literature on female orgasms: a bias toward adaptationism. Here Lloyd's critique comes alive, demonstrating how most of the evolutionary accounts either are in conflict with, or lack, certain types of evidence necessary to make their cases--how they simply assume that female orgasm must exist because it helped females in the past reproduce. As she weighs the evidence, Lloyd takes on nearly everyone who has written on the subject: evolutionists, animal behaviorists, and feminists alike. Her clearly and cogently written book is at once a convincing case study of bias in science and a sweeping summary and analysis of what is known about the evolution of the intriguing trait of female orgasm.
Braun’s in-depth study documents English professors and the challenges they face in both career and classroom as they attempt to gain appropriate value for digital teaching and creation within their field, departments, and institutions. Braun proposes that to move English studies into the future, three main questions must be addressed. First, what counts as a text? How should we approach the reading of texts? Finally, how should we approach the production of texts? In addition to reconsidering the nature of texts in English studies, she calls for crucial changes in higher-education institutional procedures themselves, including new methods of evaluating digital scholarship on an even playing field with other forms of work during the processes for promotion and tenure.
With insightful expertise, Braun analyzes how the new age of digital scholarship not only complements the traditional values of the English studies discipline but also offers constructive challenges to old ideas about texts, methods, and knowledge production. Cultivating Ecologies for Digital Media Work is the first volume to offer specific examination of the digital shift’s impact on English studies and provides the scaffold upon which productive conversations about the future of the field and digital pedagogy can be built.
In 1980 the ZANU/PF government of Robert Mugabe came to power after an extended war of liberation. They inherited a cluster of emergency laws similar to those available to the authorities in South Africa. It was also the beginning of the cynical South African state policy of destabilization of the frontline states. This led to a dangerous period of insurrection in Mashonaland and increased activity by Renamo.
Dr. Hatchard uses the case of Zimbabwe to ask questions about the use of authority in contemporary African states. He examines:
1. Whether and in what circumstances the declaration and retention of a state of emergency is justified;
2.The scope of emergency regulations and their impact on individual freedoms;
3.What safeguards are necessary in order to protect those freedoms during a state of emergency.
The relationship is studied from a political as well as a legal perspective. Dr. Hatchard examines the role law has played, is playing and may play. The author concludes that, even if the state of emergency is justified, this does not necessitate the curtailment of the exercise of individual freedoms.
There are many comparisons with the rest of Africa. The book is of practical importance for members of the judiciary, legal practitioners, politicians and human rights organizations. The difficult questions it poses make stimulating teaching material for students of the Third World who want to understand the reality of the exercise of power in fragile situations.
How can workers retain job security in an industry currently experiencing extensive restructuring and retrenchment? In the United States, massive layoffs in the 1980s in industries like steel have resulted in increased worker demands for job security provisions in collective agreements and legal protections against layoffs. In many Western European countries, where private-sector practices ensuring strong job security and laws regulating layoff practices were well established, the 1980s brought strong pressure from business to relax job security in order to facilitate rapid restructuring.
Susan Houseman's book presents some of the first hard evidence on the economic effects of providing job security, evidence gathered during the restructuring of the European Community's steel industry in the 1970s and 1980s. The author reviews personnel practices by the Community's leading steel companies, basing her analysis on extensive interviews with employers, workers, and government officials in West Germany, France, Britain, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, and the Netherlands. Drawing on economic theory, she shows that the extent of workers' rights to job security will affect how an industry optimally adjusts to a decline in demand and to a situation of excess capacity.
Using detailed plant data, she shows that job security for workers affected decisions concerning employment, production, investment, and plant closures in the industry, While job security for workers may slow the process of industrial restructuring and result in lower productivity, the author points out that it also generates important social benefits, including community stability and a more equitable distribution of the risks and costs of economic change.
This book will draw the attention of policymakers in government and in international organizations such as the European Community, the OECD, and the ILO. It will also be of interest to scholars in labor economics, industrial relations, public policy, and business.
In 1875 Robert Todd Lincoln caused his mother, Mary Todd Lincoln, to be committed to an insane asylum. Based on newly discovered manuscript materials, this book seeks to explain how and why.
In these documents—marked by Robert Todd Lincoln as the "MTL Insanity File"—exists the only definitive record of the tragic story of Mary Todd Lincoln’s insanity trial. The book that results from these letters and documents addresses several areas of controversy in the life of the widow of Abraham Lincoln: the extent of her illness, the fairness of her trial, and the motives of those who had her committed for treatment. Related issues include the status of women under the law as well as the legal and medical treatment of insanity.
Speculating on the reasons for her mental condition, the authors note that Mrs. Lincoln suffered an extraordinary amount of tragedy in a relatively few years. Three of her four sons died very young, and Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. After the death of her son Willie she maintained a darkly rigorous mourning for nearly three years, prompting the president to warn her that excessive woe might force him to send her to "that large white house on the hill yonder," the government hospital for the insane.
Mrs. Lincoln also suffered anxiety about money, charting an exceptionally erratic financial course. She had spent lavishly during her husband’s presidency and at his death found herself deeply in debt. She had purchased trunkfuls of drapes to hang over phantom windows. 84 pairs of kid gloves in less than a month, and $3,200 worth of jewelry in the three months preceding Lincoln’s assassination. She followed the same erratic course for the rest of her life, creating in herself a tremendous anxiety. She occasionally feared that people were trying to kill her, and in 1873 she told her doctor that an Indian spirit was removing wires from her eyes and bones from her cheeks.
Her son assembled an army of lawyers and medical experts who would swear in court that Mrs. Lincoln was insane. The jury found her insane and in need of treatment in an asylum. Whether the verdict was correct or not, the trial made Mary Lincoln desperate. Within hours of the verdict she would attempt suicide. In a few months she would contemplate murder. Since then every aspect of the trial has been criticized—from the defense attorney to the laws in force at the time. Neely and McMurtry deal with the trial, the commitment of Mary Todd Lincoln, her release, and her second trial. An appendix features letters and fragments by Mrs. Lincoln from the "Insanity File." The book is illustrated by 25 photographs.
Legislative term limits adopted in the 1990s are in effect in fifteen states today. This reform is arguably the most significant institutional change in American government of recent decades. Most of the legislatures in these fifteen states have experienced a complete turnover of their membership; hundreds of experienced lawmakers have become ineligible for reelection, and their replacements must learn and perform their jobs in as few as six years.
Now that term limits have been in effect long enough for both their electoral and institutional effects to become apparent, their consequences can be gauged fully and with the benefit of hindsight. In the most comprehensive study of the subject, editors Kurtz, Cain, and Niemi and a team of experts offer their broad evaluation of the effects term limits have had on the national political landscape.
"The contributors to this excellent and comprehensive volume on legislative term limits come neither to praise the idea nor to bury it, but rather to speak dispassionately about its observed consequences. What they find is neither the horror story of inept legislators completely captive to strong governors and interest groups anticipated by the harshest critics, nor the idyll of renewed citizen democracy hypothesized by its more extreme advocates. Rather, effects have varied across states, mattering most in the states that were already most professionalized, but with countervailing factors mitigating against extreme consequences, such as a flight of former lower chamber members to the upper chamber that enhances legislative continuity. This book is must reading for anyone who wants to understand what happens to major institutional reforms after the dust has settled."
---Bernard Grofman, Professor of Political Science and Adjunct Professor of Economics, School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine
"A decade has passed since the first state legislators were term limited. The contributors to this volume, all well-regarded scholars, take full advantage of the distance afforded by this passage of time to explore new survey data on the institutional effects of term limits. Their book is the first major volume to exploit this superb opportunity."
---Peverill Squire, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Iowa
Karl T. Kurtz is Director of the Trust for Representative Democracy at the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Bruce Cain is Heller Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, and the Director of the University of California Washington Center.
Richard G. Niemi is Don Alonzo Watson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester.
In an era when the value of the humanities and qualitative inquiry has been questioned in academia and beyond, Making the Case is an engaging and timely collection that brings together a veritable who’s who of public address scholars to illustrate the power of case-based scholarly argument and to demonstrate how critical inquiry into a specific moment speaks to general contexts and theories. Providing both a theoretical framework and a wealth of historically situated texts, Making the Case spans from Homeric Greece to twenty-first-century America. The authors examine the dynamic interplay of texts and their concomitant rhetorical situations by drawing on a number of case studies, including controversial constitutional arguments put forward by activists and presidents in the nineteenth century, inventive economic pivots by Franklin Roosevelt and Alan Greenspan, and the rhetorical trajectory and method of Barack Obama.
Social workers produced thousands of case files about the poor during the interwar years. Analyzing almost two thousand such case files and traveling from Boston, Minneapolis, and Portland to London and Melbourne, Miss Cutler and the Case of the Resurrected Horse is a pioneering comparative study that examines how these stories of poverty were narrated and reshaped by ethnic diversity, economic crisis, and war.
In Nabokov and Indeterminacy, Priscilla Meyer shows how Vladimir Nabokov’s early novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight illuminates his later work. Meyer first focuses on Sebastian Knight, exploring how Nabokov associates his characters with systems of subtextual references to Russian, British, and American literary and philosophical works. She then turns to Lolita and Pale Fire, applying these insights to show that these later novels clearly differentiate the characters through subtextual references, and that Sebastian Knight’s construction models that of Pale Fire.
Meyer argues that the dialogue Nabokov constructs among subtexts explores his central concern: the continued existence of the spirit beyond bodily death. She suggests that because Nabokov’s art was a quest for an unattainable knowledge of the otherworldly, knowledge which can never be conclusive, Nabokov’s novels are never closed in plot, theme, or resolution—they take as their hidden theme the unfinalizability that Bakhtin says characterizes all novels.
The conclusions of Nabokov's novels demand a rereading, and each rereading yields a different novel. The reader can never get back to the same beginning, never attain a conclusion, and instead becomes an adept of Nabokov’s quest. Meyer emphasizes that, unlike much postmodern fiction, the contradictions created by Nabokov’s multiple paths do not imply that existence is constructed arbitrarily of pre-existing fragments, but rather that these fragments lead to an ever-deepening approach to the unknowable.
Allen Iverson loved Philadelphia Daily News basketball beat reporter Phil Jasner, calling him “the best” in the world of sports journalism. From 1981 until his death in 2010, Jasner was always “on the case,” going to great lengths to track athletes down for a quote or a story. He was most known for covering the team’s famous players, including World B. Free and Bobby Jones, Julius Erving and Moses Malone, Charles Barkley, and, of course, Iverson. His tremendous output was beloved by players and fans alike, earning him many honors, including inductions into six Halls of Fame.
Phil Jasner “On the Case” collects the best of Jasner’s writing throughout his illustrious career. Jasner wrote about baseball, the Eagles, and the Philadelphia Atoms’ soccer with the same insight and aplomb he showed in his coverage of The Big 5, the 76ers’ championship season in 1983, and the Dream Team. Lovingly assembled—each chapter is introduced by some of the most prominent figures Jasner covered, from Vince Papale, Doug Collins, and Billy Cunningham to Iverson and Barkley—this collection recounts a distinguished sportswriter’s remarkable career.
This collection revisits A Theory of Literary Production (1966) to show how Pierre Macherey’s remarkable—and still provocative—early work can contribute to contemporary discussions about the act of reading and the politics of formal analysis. Across a series of historically and philosophically contextualized readings, the volume’s contributors interrogate Macherey’s work on a range of pressing issues, including the development of a theory of reading and criticism, the relationship between the spoken and the unspoken, the labor of poetic determination and of literature’s resistance to ideological context, the literary relevance of a Spinozist materialism, the process of racial subjectification and the ontology of Blackness, and a theorization of the textual surface. Pierre Macherey and the Case of Literary Production also includes three new texts by Macherey, presented here in English for the first time: his postface to the revised French edition of A Theory of Literary Production; “Reading Althusser,” in which Macherey analyzes the concept of symptomatic reading; and a comprehensive interview in which Macherey reflects on the historical conditions of his early work, the long arc of his career at the intersection of philosophy and literature, and the ongoing importance of Louis Althusser’s thought.
Recent translations of Macherey’s work into English have introduced new readers to the critic’s enduring power and originality. Timely in its questions and teeming with fresh insights, Pierre Macherey and the Case of Literary Production demonstrates the depths to which his work resonates, now more than ever.
Naito Konan's periodization of Chinese history is responsible for shaping the twentieth-century Western view of China. Naito was a journalist in the vibrant Meiji press for twenty years, during which he became recognized as Japan's leading Sinologist. He then assumed a chair in China Studies at Kyoto University, where he taught for twenty years, remaining all the while a prolific writer on public affairs. Joshua Fogel's biography treats Naito holistically, pointing up the intricate connections between his Sinological and political interests.
As a part of an ongoing tradition based in jitsugaku (concern with the practical applications of knowledge), Naito focused on what he took to be Japan's mission, after its own Meiji reforms, to help China implement comparable reforms. His emphasis on Chinese history and culture as the central influence in East Asia strengthened his Pan-Asian political convictions.
Fogel's study offers a penetrating look at a scholar-journalist whose influence, fifty years after his death, is still powerful.
Former FBI agent Jim Fisher upends the genteel racket of fee-based literary agents and vanity publishers in this searing look at the rise and fall of one bogus entrepreneur who systematically swindled thousands of would-be writers out of millions of dollars with promises of having their work turned into salable books. In divulging the details of this colossal and shocking confidence game, Ten Percent of Nothing: The Case of the Literary Agent from Hell exposes a growing and serious crime against writers and a dark, ugly secret about the American publishing industry.
In 1989, Dorothy L. Deering, possessing a high school degree, a recent embezzlement conviction, and no experience as a professional writer, editor, or publisher, began operating a fee-based literary agency out of her garage in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Over the next ten years, she racked up a fortune in reading and marketing fees, learning the business of sham publishing as she went along. Later, as the owner of a vanity press, she bilked 1.5 million dollars out of her clients, masterfully manufacturing dreams of literary success until she was brought to justice by Fisher’s investigative journalism, an FBI probe, and the retaliation and testimonies of numerous victims.
Deering never sold a single manuscript to a major publisher. With the money in her pocket and her clients’ hopes and hard work wrapped up in fraudulent contracts, Deering produced a few copies of four cheaply printed, poorly edited paperbacks. These she used as bait to hoodwink more clients. She was abetted by her husband, Charles, a former car salesman; his son, Daniel, a drug user with a ninth-grade education; and her brother, Bill, a fugitive from the law at the time he headed her vanity press.
By successfully impersonating a literary agent for ten years, Deering operated one of the longest-running confidence games in American history. The financial loss for her clients was devastating, and the heartbreak was extreme. Drawing on victims’ experiences and documents recovered from the Deering venture, Fisher shows how Deering engineered and executed her scam, emphasizing the warning signs of sham agents, crook book doctors, and mendacious publishers.
Ten Percent of Nothing provides essential information for aspiring writers and publishing professionals. Fisher’s findings also prompt new inquiries into the potential licensing of literary agents and the prosecution of interstate scam artists. The volume’s gallery of illustrations includes reproductions of correspondence, newsletters, and advertisements used by the Deering operation.
This landmark volume chronicles the history of laws banning interracial marriage in the United States with particular emphasis on the case of Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and a black woman who were convicted by the state of Virginia of the crime of marrying across racial lines in the late 1950s. The Lovings were not activists, but their battle to live together as husband and wife in their home state instigated the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that antimiscegenation laws were unconstitutional, which ultimately resulted in the overturning of laws against interracial marriage that were still in effect in sixteen states by the late 1960s.
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