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This essay is written on the following premises and argues for them. "Enlightenment" is a word or signifier, and not a single or unifiable phenomenon which it consistently signifies. There is no single or unifiable phenomenon describable as "the Enlightenment," but it is the definite article rather than the noun which is to be avoided. In studying the intellectual history of the late seventeenth century and the eighteenth, we encounter a variety of statements made, and assumptions proposed, to which the term "Enlightenment" may usefully be applied, but the meanings of the term shift as we apply it. The things are connected, but not continuous; they cannot be reduced to a single narrative; and we find ourselves using the word "Enlightenment" in a family of ways and talking about a family of phenomena, resembling and related to one another in a variety of ways that permit of various generalizations about them. We are not, however, committed to a single root meaning of the word "Enlightenment," and we do not need to reduce the phenomena of which we treat to a single process or entity to be termed "the" Enlightenment. It is a reification that we wish to avoid, but the structure of our language is such that this is difficult, and we will find ourselves talking of "the French" or "the Scottish," "the Newtonian" or the "the Arminian" Enlightenments, and hoping that by employing qualifying adjectives we may constantly remind ourselves that the keyword "Enlightenment" is ours to use and should not master us.

During the years following the application of its economic liberalisation policy, Vietnam experienced a dramatic growth in rice production permitting to reach food self-sufficiency at the national level and also to become a major rice exporting country. This article emphasis the importance of an historical approach to agricultural development to fully understand the rapid and tremendous effects of this relatively recent agricultural policy. A comprehensive study of the long- term evolution of rice production systems in the Mekong Delta, the largest rice bowl of Vietnam, was conducted to differentiate between past and more recent reasons of the rapid growth in rice production. This study which is based on an historical analysis of key agrarian changes that occured during the last century proposes a review of the available literature, especially old reports and monographs, and also relies on original data collected during many semi-structured farmer's interviews carried out in a small region of the central plain of the Mekong Delta, the Omon district. Particularly, the interviews addressed the characterization of major technical, economic, social and institutional changes in the farm environment that occured during the last five decades [Extrait].

"As all aspects of our social and informational lives increasingly migrate online, the line between what is "real" and what is digitally fabricated grows ever thinner-and that fake content has undeniable real-world consequences. A History of Fake Things on the Internet takes the long view of how advances in technology brought us to the point where faked texts, images, and video content are nearly indistinguishable from what is authentic or true. Computer scientist Walter J. Scheirer takes a deep dive into the origins of fake news, conspiracy theories, reports of the paranormal, and other deviations from reality that have become part of mainstream culture, from image manipulation in the nineteenth-century darkroom to the literary stylings of large language models like ChatGPT. Scheirer investigates the origins of Internet fakes, from early hoaxes that traversed the globe via Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs), USENET, and a new messaging technology called email, to today's hyperrealistic, AI-generated Deepfakes. An expert in machine learning and recognition, Scheirer breaks down the technical advances that made new developments in digital deception possible, and shares behind-the-screens details of early Internet-era pranks that have become touchstones of hacker lore. His story introduces us to the visionaries and mischief-makers who first deployed digital fakery and continue to influence how digital manipulation works--and doesn't--today: computer hackers, digital artists, media forensics specialists, and AI researchers. Ultimately, Scheirer argues that problems associated with fake content are not intrinsic properties of the content itself, but rather, stem from human behavior, demonstrating our capacity for both creativity and destruction"--

This article charts the historical stability and continuity of participatory and crowdsourcing practices. Theoretically, it suggests that the blurring of the boundaries between audiences and producers, with the ensuing result of user-generated content, is by no means solely the upshot of new media technological affordances but largely a function of relatively stabilized, genre-specific formal and functional properties, or 'genre affordances'. Certain referential and performative genres enable interaction between audiences, texts and producers independently of new media technologies because these genres constitute what matters for both producers and audiences in specific historical circumstances. Genres make available shared cultural, social and pragmatic resources for appropriate and desirable being, doing, feeling and thinking. Empirically, this article builds upon an archival study of co-production related to the specific genre of travel guidebooks. It investigates (a) audience feedback in the form of handwritten letters sent to John Murray, a venerable 19th-century British publishing house, and (b) the ways in which John Murray's yesteryear guidebook producers actively solicited and implemented reader-authored content in professional production practice.

Europe's mythical origins lie in Zeus' abduction of the Asian princess Europa. Down the real centuries, Asia has played a crucial role in the making of Europe - as an object of Orientalist fantasy and colonial desire, but also of the spread of the liberating values and humane letters associated with the continent. In this book, a lifelong admirer of Europe casts a critical yet loving eye on the continent to ask what it means to him. The book revolves around a series of personal encounters. These range from following his father to Cambridge, and meeting two Bengali lovers in Calcutta who cherish Eros with classical Greek purity, to watching his wife recover in a Polish hospital that lavishes care on her for almost free. These encounters are intertwined with passionately argued essays on the Holocaust, the Soviet ideal and the Berlin Wall as keenly-contested sites of the European imagination. A chapter on Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's historical novel, The Leopard, combines literary and political analysis to peer into the heart of Italy, while an essay on champagne in France discovers the France in champagne. An analysis of secularism in the post-9/11 world defends one of the abiding legacies of Europe. Finally, a chapter on postmodern Europe upholds the European Union as perhaps the most exciting international project on offer today. The literary flair of this scholarly book captures the vividness of the intellectual engagement between Asia and Europe

1. The racial roots of property -- 2. Looting emancipation -- 3. All cops are bastards -- 4. White riot -- 5. Looted bread, stolen labor -- 6. No such thing as nonviolence -- 7. Using guns non-violently -- 8. Civil riots -- 9. The inhumanity of looters -- Conclusion: Out of the flames of Ferguson.

The article explores the hydropolitics of Lake Chad. Scientific and popular views on the fate of Lake Chad differ widely. The supposed 'disappearance' of the Lake through water abstraction and climate change is a popular myth that endures because it serves a large set of heterogeneous interests, including those supporting inter-basin water transfers. Meanwhile scientific investigations show substantial and continuing Lake level fluctuations over time, and do not support its projected disappearance. The task is to understand how the myth of the disappearing Lake has been engendered and used, by studying the discourses and the strategies of the main stakeholders involved. The Lake has been protected so far from massive water abstraction, and inter-basin transfer projects, due to the fragmentation of its political management, new security threats, and the piecemeal nature of the interests in play.Key words: Lake Chad; environmental myths; hydropolitics; political ecology; inter-basin transfers

This book examines the history of policewomen from 1880 to 2012, particularly in the United States. It looks at the problems women had being accepted into the male police establishment and at the harassment and discrimination they often suffered from male officers. For women in policing there were three distinct phases. First was acceptance into forces as police matrons, starting in about 1880 in a serious way. Second came their acceptance as policewomen (when that title was officially bestowed on them by employing forces), starting around 1910-1916. Third was the acceptance of female police a

"Cool Shades provides the first in-depth exploration of the enduring appeal of sunglasses in visual culture, both historically and today. Ubiquitous in fashion, advertising, film and graphic design, sunglasses are the ultimate signifier of 'cool' in mass culture; a powerful attribute pervading much fashion and pop cultural imagery which has received little scholarly attention until now. Accessible and highly engaging, this book offers an original history of how sunglasses became a fashion accessory in the early twentieth century, and addresses the complex variety of meanings they have the power to articulate, through associations with vision, light, glamour, darkness, fashion, speed and technology in the context of modernity. Cool Shades will be of great interest to students of fashion, design, visual and material culture, cultural studies and sociology, as well as general readers fascinated by this iconic fashion staple"--