Baudelaire's literary criticism

In the current debate on republicanism the relationship between republicanism and democracy is an aspect whose historical dimension has thus far hardly been investigated. It offers instead also the chance to clear up ambiguities on the opposition between republicanism and liberalism. In this sense, recent research on the radical Enlightenment, on the link between economics and politics, by a new reading of physiocracy as political discourse, and on the foundations of political representation represent some of the most important advances made by historical research over the last few years. This essay wishes to trace these results back to a long line of research on a modern republicanism that had already been investigated many decades ago by a historian of the Enlightenment interested in republican tradition, Franco Venturi, the author of Settecento riformatore and of Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment, to which John Pocock dedicated the first volume of his recent Barbarism and Religion. By means of a successful integration of three recent essays by John Israel on the uniqueness of Dutch republican discourse, by Richard Whatmore on the economic roots of French republicanism and by Nadia Urbinati on the foundations of representative democracy in Condorcet, it is possible to isolate the characteristics of a democratic republicanism. Among the various threads that have been followed up, the theme of equality has surfaced in various ways in the search for the characteristics of modern republicanism. These highlight the idea of the emergence in the early modern age of an European political culture and of a democratic and egalitarian republicanism that was encouraged by the contribution from various national situations within which it forged its identity, against the model of an Atlantic republicanism.     

"That Admirable Italian Gentleman": The View from America (and from Italy)

Review in this Article
David F. Schmitz. The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922–1940 . Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. x + 273 pp     

Belittled America

Martina Marazzi (1997) Little America: Gli Stati Uniti e gli scrittori italiani del Novecento. (Milan: Marcos y Marcos), 22,000 lire, ISBN 88–7168–181–9.     

Hierarchy in America

Religious commitment, support for the military and free-market capitalism, and aversion to the welfare system, homosexuality and ‘big government’ are all attitudes widely shared among conservative Americans. Apparently unrelated, these views reflect an unrecognized but real ideological embrace of hierarchical understandings: to wit, power comes from above, exchange relations with powerful entities are the means for bettering one's circumstances and such relations are predicated on differences among parties. God, military and political leaders and the captains of industry all constitute personalized nodes of power to whom subordinating oneself offers chances for advancement. Government, by way of contrast, constitutes an impersonal force liable only to take someone's liberty and money and give no return. Adherence to hierarchical assumptions explains support for illiberal leaders in the US and beyond.     

America after Iraq

America won an asymmetric war in Iraq and lost an asymmetric peace. Translating material power advantage into favourable political outcomes has been a challenge for great powers down the ages—what makes this bridge even more difficult to cross today is the raised expectations on the part of liberal publics about the moral purpose of US‐led interventions. In this sense, Iraq is part of the explanation for why influential liberals believe there is a ‘crisis’ in America's world leadership. ‘America after Iraq’ subjects this claim to analytical scrutiny—in particular it addresses whether Iraq was simply a chapter in a longer book detailing American power and purpose in the post‐9/11 world? In answering this question the article is drawn to consider conceptual debates about a shift in the international system from anarchy to hierarchy with the US as the hegemonic power. While it rejects strong versions of the hierarchy thesis that imply the Washington is the new Rome, it is nevertheless drawn to an understanding of a hierarchical form of ordering where the US oscillates between a hegemonic role and an imperial outlaw. Seen through this lens, the Iraq War was an intervention that happened because it could, and not because it was just or necessary. Public opinion and the weakness of domestic institutions are also critical factors in explaining how it was possible for a previously status‐quo oriented hegemonic power to act recklessly and put the rules and institutions of international society under strain.     

America in denial

The recent publication of State of denial, by veteran Washington journalist Bob Woodward, created firestorm of controversy over its central claim that the Bush administration is in denial over the severity of the unfolding crisis in Iraq. But one of the most revealing aspects of the book is its portrayal of the American policymaking process as dysfunctional, incompetent and beset by personal rivalries and ambitions. Woodward's account of the Bush administration's handling of Iraq reveals that bureaucratic necrosis, cronyism and internecine warfare between the Pentagon and the State Department are now the signature features of the American government. Thus an alternative reading of Woodward's book suggests that American people are no longer in denial about Iraq, but have yet to reckon with the deeper problem: the deterioration of their foreign policy establishment.     

The anthropology of Latin America

Dwight B. Heath, ed. Contemporary Cultures and Societies of Latin America: A Reader in the Social Anthropology of Middle and South America [Second ed.]. New York: Random House, 1974. xvii + 572 pp. Charts, tables, figures, and bibliography. $11.95 (cloth).     

熊出没的美国自驾游

怀描着这样那样的梦想,飞越太平洋,来到了昼与夜的对面。电影中的大都会,教科书中的车轮上的国家,明信片上的国家公园,一一展现在我们的面前,旅行即将开始。     

Bowling Regions of North America

The five indoor bowling games of the Anglo-American culture realm and French Canada—tenpins, fivepins, duckpins, candlepins and rubberband duckpins— all occupy specific regions. Tenpins is played everywhere except in the Canadian Maritimes. Fivepins is an exclusively Canadian game, strongest in western Canada. Candlepins is restricted to Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and parts of the Maritimes. Duckpins occupies two regions, one around Baltimore/Washington and the second in southern New England. Rubberband duckpins is the dominant game in Quebec and dying out in its region of origin around Pittsburgh. The four small-ball games developed in the late 19th and early 20th century as innovators in Worcester, Massachusetts (candlepins), Toronto (fivepins), Pittsburgh (rubberband duckpins) and an unknown location (duckpins) changed the equipment and rules of tenpins to find a less strenuous and technically more challenging game. All the games quickly won local converts and some succeeded in expanding their region of play as population moved and organizations were founded to spread the games. Today tenpins and fivepins dominate bowling in the United States and Canada, but in the East small-ball games still exist as a case of persistent regional variation within a national popular culture.