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Abstract
Zuo Si's 左思 [ca. 250-305] "Poems on History" [yongshi 詠史] have often been regarded as a milestone in the development of the poetic subgenre "poems on history." Scholars have noted Zuo's use of historical allusion and description to articulate his personal emotions and ambitions and to criticize the political hierarchy of the Western Jin [265-316]. In addition, they have recognized Zuo's "Poems on History" as representing an alternative to the ornamental style of poetry popular in his time.
This article addresses the way in which Zuo's poems contributed to the "poems on history" subgenre, as well as how they reflected the broader context of Six Dynasties [220-589] society. At the same time, it investigates another purpose for his use of historical figures in his poetry: self-canonization. This paper argues that Zuo used historical figures not only to express his emotions but also to skillfully place himself into the larger context and lineage of exemplary historical figures. Zuo is thus telling later generations that they should remember him with the same reverence—he is invoking history as a force of self-canonization. This self-canonization perspective reveals the complexity of Zuo's appropriation of earlier historical sources. It also deepens our understanding of the purpose of Zuo's "Poems on History" and of the ways in which history is disseminated through poetry in the Six Dynasties period.

"This book analyses the determinants behind the openings in party leader selection rules (leaders' selectorate) in 10 Western European countries and more than 55 parties between the mid-1980s and the mid-2010s. Presenting a novel and revealing theoretical and empirical framework, it tackles the impact of party change and the personalisation of politics, specifically using data coming from the first expert survey on the personalisation of politics in Western Europe; the PoPES. A quantitative analysis is paired with more in-depth explorations of two Italian parties (the Italian Communist Party - Democratic Party of the Left; the Northern League) and the (missed) opening of their leader selectorate. This book highlights the critical importance of studying party leader selection rules against the backdrop of allegedly declining parties and rising party leaders and concludes by placing its findings in a broader discussion about the future of Western European party leaders. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of political parties and party systems, leadership, political elites, elections, democracy, and more widely of Western European politics and comparative politics"--

"May 1990" ; Cover title. ; "B-227394"--p.1. ; "GAO/GGD-90-76" ; Mode of access: Internet.

The organized crime group that dominates much of the socioeconomic life of contemporary Naples, the Camorra, is organized by kin and geography, and it is notoriously the most violent, fractious, and disorganized mafia in Italy. The Camorra controls local extortion rackets, the drug and counterfeit trades, and other legal and illicit activities as well as wielding substantial political influence throughout Naples and its environs. Felia Allum has been researching the Camorra for twenty years, and in The Invisible Camorra she reveals a surprising alteration in Camorra behavior when operatives live outside the Neapolitan base. When gang members move away from Naples, having been forced out by intense policing and gang competition, they are attracted by business opportunities that, on the whole, fit in with their usual activities. When they move to other parts of Western Europe and are therefore no longer criminals simply by virtue of "mafia association" as they are in Italy, they become largely invisible. Gang members avoid the spectacular deployment of violence, they merge quietly into local life, they keep themselves to themselves, and, when necessary, use legitimate local actors such as lawyers and accountants to further their economic well-being. Allum has constructed a meticulous description and analysis of Camorra activities abroad. To build accounts of the Camorra in Germany and the Netherlands, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom, she has interviewed investigating magistrates, police officers, and confessed criminals; done substantial mining of Italian and European police data; and made extensive use of judicial investigations, court records and transcripts as well as of journalistic accounts. The result is the first systematic analysis of the overseas activities of this major criminal organization.

AbstractAcemoglu, Johnson and Robinson have dramatically challenged the tendency of economists to confine their empirical search for the causes of economic growth to the recent past. They argue that the kind of institutions established by European colonialists,eitherprotecting private propertyorextracting rents, resulted in the poorer parts of the pre‐colonial world becoming some of the richest economies of today; while transforming some of the more prosperous parts of the non‐European world of 1500 into the poorest economies today. This view has been further elaborated for Africa by Nunn, with reference to slave trading. Drawing on African and comparative economic historiography, the present paper endorses the importance of examining growth theories against long‐term history: revealing relationships that recur because the situations are similar, as well as because of path dependence as such. But it also argues that the causal relationships involved are more differentiated than is recognised in AJR's formulations. By compressing different historical periods and paths, the 'reversal' thesis over‐simplifies the causation. Relatively low labour productivity was a premise of the external slave trades; though the latter greatly reinforced the relative poverty of many Sub‐Saharan economies. Again, it is important to distinguish settler and non‐settler economieswithincolonial Africa itself. In the latter case it was in the interests of colonial regimes to support, rather than simply extract from, African economic enterprise. Finally, economic rent and economic growth have often been joint products, including in pre‐colonial and colonial Africa; the kinds of institutions that favoured economic growth in certain historical contexts were not necessarily optimal for that purpose in others. AJR have done much to bring development economics and economic history together. The next step is a more flexible conceptual framework, and a more complex explanation. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In Europe, Islam became significant in forming a collective behavior & identity among migrants from the Maghreb, Turkey, Western Africa, & India during the 1970s, who perceived their migration as a lasting exile. In that way, Islam appeared as an instrument for building new identities & transnational solidarities for the purpose of negotiating with the states & societies of settlement. However, this peaceful approach presents an unacceptable challenge to secular societies, which do not consider religious values as a way of collective self-assertion. In a future open Europe that will include 5-6 million Muslims, it will be necessary to establish a new doctrinal framework of cultural pluralism that includes Islam.

In the parliamentary elections of 2001, Poland's ex-communist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) won more than three times the number of votes than any other party, registering its best result since 1989 and simultaneously delivering a crushing blow to the ruling Solidarity-led coalition, which not only lost power but also failed to win any seats in the lower house of parliament. If at the time of communism's collapse someone had gazed into a crystal ball and predicted that Solidarity's heirs would suffer from almost continuous disarray and the SLD would emerge as the country's most successful political party, he would have been dismissed as a crank. For a number of reasons, ranging from the country's strong religious traditions, to a political culture that saw the communist system and its servants as a basically alien force, to a long history of political contestation of communism, culminating in the rise of the Solidarity movement in 1980, Poland was the one East European country in which such a result must have seemed particularly unlikely. Further, given Poland's singularly dismal economic performance under communist rule (hardly conducive to nostalgic feelings), as well as the country's relative success with market reforms in the 1990s, one could not easily explain the ex-communist left's electoral gains as simply the result of a backlash against the consequences of economic transition.

This essay examines Russell's historical writing, views on historical knowledge, and what history meant to him. In addition to frequent historical references in writing on ethics, religion, social issues, education and politics, and some half- dozen works mostly historical in character, he wrote four reflective essays on history and its uses. They are "On History" (1904), "The Materialistic Theory of History" (1920), "How to Read and Understand History" (1943) and "History as an Art" (1954). There are additional scattered, brief examples of historical exposition and interpretation in works for the popular press, but these 80 pages or so stand out from an enormous body of work from about 1895 to 1970.

"The most respected researchers in the social sciences in France were each invited to write an essay presenting a book of interest, significance, and influence in the social sciences for a general readership, addressing its contributions and impact as well as its shortcomings, the lingering questions it leaves, and the work remaining to be done, to offer a new, nuanced portrait of the field's foundations"--