The 2006 election: more than ever,a Berlusconi-centred campaign

Abstract

The article offers a review of the most salient events of the 2006 electoral campaigns. It argues that with exception of 1994, the recent 2006 electoral campaign has been more focused on Berlusconi than the previous campaigns. As a matter of fact, Berlusconi, trailing in the polls, made all possible efforts to set the campaign agenda. He resorted to a massive overexposure of himself on the television stage and gave rise to a number of ‘media events’ that have dominated the electoral narratives, like the Vicenza speech at the Confindustria conventions and his final announcement of abolishing the municipal tax on homeowners. All that was not enough to gain re-election, but his frantic campaign activity allowed him to re-acquire a clear leadership of the House of Liberties, which had been previously challenged by his own coalition partners. The article analyses also the Berlusconi – Prodi debates, and the reasons why electoral debates promise to become a fixed feature of the Italian politics.     

Silvio Berlusconi and the myth of the creative entrepreneur

Berlusconi became a high‐profile entrepreneur in the course of the 1980s, founding his empire on construction, television and department stores. His transformation of AC Milan into a powerful force in football and popular culture set the scene for his entry into politics in 1994. Berlusconi presented himself as an outsider and a possible saviour of the nation in crisis. With his appealing image and constant repetition of his personal success story, he conveyed to the electorate a reassuring message of future prosperity. However, he lacked the visionary energy of the true charismatic leader. Instead he was a corporate politician who filled the personality vacuum left by the removal of the old élite.     

Italy's foreign policy toward China: missed opportunities and new chances

Abstract

This essay provides an account of the erratic and troubled history of the relations between Italy and the People's Republic of China since the 1950s. After reaching their highest point in the two years immediately following the Tiananmen events – when Italy, more than any other Western country, worked to break China's international isolation – they have considerably frozen for a long time. The reason has to be found not only in the crisis that, since 1992, has overcome the Italian political system, but even more so in the structural limits of Italy's economic foreign policy and in the lack of a coherent strategy aimed at promoting Italian goods in world markets that provide huge opportunities – opportunities mostly neglected by the political-economic Italian establishment. The Berlusconi government replaced this negligence with fear-mongering behavior and recurring and outspoken protectionist remarks of various centre-right leaders, who feared the potential damage caused by China's increased competitiveness (which represented, in their opinion, an unfair trade practice) to the national industry. Though too recent to say if it will bear fruit, Prodi has made a desperate attempt for Italy to make up lost ground by leading to China what has been emphatically defined ‘the greatest institutional and business mission ever organized by Italy’ just a few months after his comeback to Palazzo Chigi.     

“AND DAVID PERCEIVED” (2 SAMUEL 5,2)

Abstract

2 Samuel 5,12 is shown to be important. It does not merely repeat verse 10 and is not an addendum that is poorly integrated into the literary unit.

Its importance is that it presents David's inner world: he ascribes his success to the Lord, Who acts for the benefit of His people. This alludes to two aspects of the monarchical covenant in Israel: king-the Lord and king-people. In both realms David is perceived as embodying the book's criteria for the ideal leader.

In addition, the language of the verse is examined against the background of the entire book of Samuel. The verse suggests that David is Saul's successor (whereas verse 10 suggests that he is Samuel's heir).     

Silvio Berlusconi and the traditions of Italian foreign policy: a comment on Ambassador Romano's presentation

Abstract

While open to criticism on many levels, the foreign policy of Italy under Silvio Berlusconi does not deviate in many significant ways from traditional approaches, especially on its management of Italy's relations with the United States and the European Union. Italy's ‘exceptionalism’ is also similar to that of many other European states.     

The temptations of William Pascoe Crook: An experience of cultural difference in the Marquesas, 1797—1798

Abstract

The missionary William Pascoe Crook was the first European to make an extended residence in the Marquesas. He failed to make a single convert in the two years he was there but instead risked a ‘conversion’ of sorts in everyday compromises between fitting in with, and preserving his independence from, a way of life he found to be abhorrent. This paper reconstructs the quality of Crook's experience during his sojourn in the Marquesas and reflects on the ethnographic ‘Account of the Marquesas Islands’ compiled on his return to London in 1799. It emphasises the processes by which Crook came to a partial understanding of tapu and the role of mimicry in his adaptation to lapu as a force that will make sense of him, but that he himself does not comprehend. The paper relates Crook's experience of cultural difference to problems in the anthropological concept of culture.     

They think it’s all over. The face of victory on the British frontier

Abstract

The re-conquest of southern Scotland by the army of the Emperor Antoninus Pius was a political act intended to secure his position on the throne. For this event, he took the acclamation ‘Conqueror’. His soldiers erected large stone slabs to mark their construction of the new frontier and decorated several with triumphal scenes. In these sculptures the soldiers portrayed themselves not only as victorious conquerors but also engineers and builders, celebrating not only the success of their emperor but their own community of soldiers.     

The Epilogue in the Book of Qohelet

Abstract

Various objective reasons have led to the development of a vast and elaborate literature on the Epilogue in the Book of Qohelet. This study presents a Sitz im Leben based approach to the Epilogue, which capitalizes on the known historical reality during the Hellenistic period in which Qohelet lived. It views the Epilogue as an expression of Qohelet’s deep apprehensions of the challenges that faced his people. From this perspective it is natural to consider Qohelet as being the author of the Epilogue. The Epilogue is not about what he says in the book but what he has to say to his people. As a wise man concerned with the welfare of his people he urges them: keep records, though it is wearisome; be aware that secrets would be leaked; fear God; and, obey His commandments. These are his essentials for survival.     

Murphy's Moral Economy of Labor

Abstract

Throughout its history, the institution of the Catholic Church has been at odds with the social and political changes of modernity. However, many scholars claim that after Vatican II, the Church began to accept modernity's political regnancy, and subsequently embraced doctrines such as separation of Church and State and religious freedom. In fact, some scholars go so far as to claim that in recent decades, the Catholic Church has led political crusades that resulted in the political, economic, and social liberation of many, such as its spearhead movement against Communist countries and the liberation theology movements in Latin America. The purpose of this article is not only to examine such claims but to look more closely at the political implications of the thought of Pope Benedict XVI. I propose that Benedict XVI does not simply embrace modernity, but he challenges it from within and presents political society with an alternative foundation for political liberalism. To this effect, I examine the main tenets of his social thought, including his political anthropology and concept of personhood, his idea of secularity, and his understanding of the role of political institutions. I assess whether his ideas can be universally accepted by liberal, secular societies or whether the character of these ideas will appeal only to those who embrace Christianity.     

A Loving Attack on Caputo’s ‘Caputolism’ and his Refusal of Communism

Abstract

For various reasons, John D. Caputo is one of my favorite philosophers. However, one may identify two basic weaknesses or contradictions when it comes to his thoughts on political economy: (1) Caputo insists on capitalism—even if it be a significantly transformed capitalism (what I will be calling here “Caputolism”)—but he does not question whether capitalism can accommodate the required reforms; and (2) Caputo’s refusal to entertain the possibility of communism as a good/better alternative to capitalism, even though he has referred to an earthly “Kingdom of God” composed of a “radical community of equals”—which (strongly) resembles communism, thus rendering his refusal of communism all the more perplexing.     

Sport and society in Italy today

Summary

In ‘Itinerary’ Patrick McCarthy provides an introduction to the four articles that examine the connections between sport, politics, business and contemporary culture in Italy. Noting that mass participation in sport has been closely related to modernization, McCarthy argues that the forms of contemporary mass sport reflect the particular cultural, political and economic conditions of each European society. In Italy these made soccer and cycling the most popular mass sports by 1945.

Patrizia Dogliani’s article ‘Sport and Fascism’ examines the development of mass sport in Italy from the late nineteenth century, showing the critical role played by the Fascist regime, which rapidly expanded public sports facilities while the language of politics and combat permeated the vocabulary of sport in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s. Initially the emphasis was on international competition as a symbol of national virility, but following the success of Germany and the USA in the 1936 Olympics the regime’s search for consensus placed new emphasis on recreational aspects. The institutional and administrative organization of sport established in the 1930s remained in place in Italy, however, until more recendy.

In ‘Itinerary 2’ McCarthy examines the roles of the boxer Carnera from Friuli and the racing driver Tazio Nuvolari as sporting heroes of Mussolini’s Italy and in ‘Itinerary 3’ shows how the struggles between Catholic Italy and Communist Italy were personified in the rivalry between the cyclists Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi in the post-war period.

In ‘Itinerary 4’ he asks why soccer had by the 1970s overtaken cycling as Italy’s most popular sport. That theme is examined in greater detail by Nicola Porro and Pippa Russo, whose article reconstructs the ‘hybridization of sport, mass media and politics’ in Italy in the 1990s. Its central focus is Silvio Berlusconi, the self-made media tycoon who founded Fininvest in the 1970s, acquired AC Milan in 1986, and by 1994 controlled a media empire that enabled him to found a new political party (Forza Italia) and become Italy’s Prime Minister albeit for less than a year. Porro and Russo examine the ways in which Berlusconi’s roles in the world of the media and professional soccer have changed both Italian politics and Italian sport.

In ‘Itinerary 5’ McCarthy sets the example of Berlusconi in the context of the integration of soccer and mass media, the commercialization and politicization of sport at a global level in the last decade. These issues are developed in greater detail in Emanuela Poli’s article, ‘The revolution in the televised soccer market’, which emphasizes the critical role that has been played by soccer and soccer clubs in the development of the new media empires based on digital pay-per-view TV and the sale of sporting events in the 1990s. This has left control of the sport (in terms of who can watch and when) in the hands of major international communications moguls like Berlusconi and Rupert Murdoch.

‘Itinerary 6’ links the fragmentation of collective myths like the national soccer championships to the decline of the nation state, and surveys the situation of other sports in Italy (the Americas Cup, skiing, rugby football. Formula 1 motor racing and the gymnasium). The latter is the subject of the final article by Roberta Sassatelli on ‘The commercialization of discipline: keep-fit culture and its values’ which explores the social and cultural meanings attached to the growing vogue for fitness clubs and the shaping of the ideal body in contemporary Italy.     

Tocqueville: Democratic Politics and the Modern Soul. Introduction

Abstract

This paper explores Prince Hal's relationships with his great friend Falstaff and his great enemy Hotspur, who dominate the young prince's life as he prepares to rule England and conquer France. Hotspur and Falstaff could not be more different, and seem deliberately drawn by Shakespeare to represent distinctive and opposing points of view: Hotspur is an honor-loving and courageous warrior who covets danger and fame, Falstaff a selfish and dishonorable rationalist who has no regard for danger or fame. I will argue that the lessons Hal learns from Hotspur and Falstaff, especially concerning honor, are the key to his stunning political success. While Hal seems to stand somewhere between these two extremes, and so might be characterized as moderately attached to honor, I will question this conclusion and suggest another.     

Cropsey on Plato and the Unity of Philosophy

Abstract

Cropsey's book, Plato's World, contains his longest and most sustained reflections on a set of Platonic dialogues, but it is not the first work he published on Plato or the last he intended to write. His last collection of essays, On Humanity's Intensive Introspection, shows that in his writings on Plato Cropsey was attempting to answer a broader question: What is philosophy?     

‘The Epitheatrical Cartoonist’: Matthew Somerville Morgan and the World of Theatre,Art and Journalism in Victorian London

This article examines the vibrant cultural milieu inhabited by one of Victorian Britain's most famous cartoonists, Matthew Somerville Morgan. Morgan is well-known as the cartoonist who attacked Queen Victoria's withdrawal from public life (and her associations with John Brown), and the lifestyle of Albert, Prince of Wales, in the short-lived rival to Punch: the Tomahawk. Likewise, his post-1870 career in New York as cartoonist of the ‘Caricature War’ over the 1872 Presidential elections, and involvement with ‘Buffalo’ Bill Cody have been well-studied. However, his involvement with the world of the 1860s Victorian stage – and the social circles in which he moved – have not been given close attention. This broader social, cultural, and economic context is essential to understanding Morgan's role as a cartoonist-critic of politics, class, gender and art in Victorian Britain. Special attention is given to the ways in which Morgan's work as a theatrical scene-painter informed his other pursuits, including his political cartoons for Fun, the Comic News and the Tomahawk. So central was the theatre to Morgan's life story that he may be appropriately described as an ‘epitheatrical’ figure. Indeed he is one of the most spectacular exemplars of the interconnected worlds of journalism, high art and theatre in Victorian London. The theatre provided him with the artistic and journalistic connections needed to raise himself above his lower-class origins; to move in ‘clubland’ and fashionable bohemian society; and to win an influential place in the key political and cultural debates of his age.     

William Temple: Christianity and the Life of Fellowship

Abstract

William Temple is best known for his contribution to the forging of a social consensus that resulted in the foundation of the post-war British welfare state following his untimely death in 1944 after only two years as Archbishop of Canterbury. Widely regarded as the most theologically gifted holder of that office since Anselm, his pioneering contribution to the elucidation of a methodology for Christian social ethics which emphasized the role of ‘Principles’ that should inform Christian social action and reflection reinvigorated the Church of his generation in the task of bringing to bear the Christian message on social problems. What is less well appreciated is how he was not only the spokesperson for the most advanced Christian witness in the inter-war years, but that he also provided a basis for Christian ethics that brought together the strengths of the Anglican incarnational theology stemming from F. D. Maurice with the British tradition of philosophical social idealism. Often moving from the circumference to the centre, he sought to relate philosophical questions and insights to the richness of the revelation of God in the person of Jesus Christ. He was as at home in this task as he was in leading a mission on a Blackpool beach and the British public loved him for it. He was, as Winston Churchill said at the time of his elevation to Canterbury, "the half-crown article in a penny bazaar."     

Politics and Public Policy

Abstract

Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others has been widely praised as the first German film to confront the horrors of the East German communist regime. But the film's politics may be ambiguous. As critical as it is of East Germany, it does not offer a ringing endorsement of West Germany. For example, the film's playwright-hero seems to have artistic problems in the West, just as he did in the East. The film's equivocal attitude toward communism is epitomized by its apparently positive view of the Marxist author Bertolt Brecht. This essay compares The Lives of Others with Brecht's play The Good Person of Szechwan in an effort to understand Donnersmarck's attitude toward his East German predecessor and what it means for his larger view of communism and its relation to art.     

George Thomson and the Dialectics of Hellenism

Abstract

When I think of G. Thomson one question which immediately springs to mind is: why was he, and why is he still, so popular in Greece, a country he visited only four or five times? Was it his scholarly work, his Marxist beliefs or his emphasis on the continuity of Greek culture that bestowed on him respect and acclaim among Greeks? It seems to me that it was a combination of all these three factors which resulted in the fact that Thomson is one of the few classical scholars whose major studies have been translated into Greek and enjoyed wide publicity. He is now considered in Greece not only an exception among classicists but an exception among those who have studied the historical development of Greek culture and vehemently stressed its continuity. Despite the fact that his views were largely ignored during the debate of the 1960s and early 70s concerning the question of continuity, and which centred around Byzantium, Thomson's views on the subject must seriously be taken into account.     

A Public Faith—but for Everyone and Every Public?

Abstract

Miroslav Volf’s sets out a strong, good thesis about the freedom religious people ought to have to participate in public as fully themselves, as religious people. This thesis is in tension with the fact that some people seek to harm others, or to radically compromise public life itself, in the name of their religion. Along the way, Volf makes a number of points that seem puzzling, at least overstated, but perhaps even incoherent with other claims he makes or with data that he likely also knows. I raise the possibility that the author’s social location may help to explain at least some of these debatable features of his otherwise salutary book.     

Important Natural Dyes of History

Abstract

Samuel Brown, born January 1774, was one of a number of pioneer engineers who have until recent years been overshadowed by their more eminent contemporaries and been forgotten. Brown did not acquire his engineering expertise in the usual manner; initially he served with some distinction as a Naval officer during the Napoleonic wars. Before being retired on half pay he actively promoted the use of chain cables for securing ships at anchor. This proposal was soon taken into use and it was from his position as a manufacturer of chain cables that he gained his experience in the use of wrought iron and the financial independence to allow him to turn his attention to the development of bar-chain suspension bridges. In 1820 the Union Bridge, the first of its type in the United Kingdom and designed by Brown, was constructed across the river Tweed. From then on he became one of the main promoters of suspension bridges, either designing them or acting as contractor for the supply of ironwork. In the period 1828-32 he constructed four bridges in NE Scotland which are the subject of this paper.     

Yahweh's divorce in Hosea 2 — Who is that woman?

Abstract

The proposal that Yahweh's wife being divorced in Hos 2 is Asherah fails all tests that one puts to it. The monotheistic prophet would not have dignified the Canaanite Goddess with such a recognition. Nor would the Israelites have claimed the Canaanite mother of the Gods as their own mother. The city of Samaria is the only bride/divorcee around. (Israel, being masculine, is son m not wife — of Yahweh). Hosea does not create the idea of the city as woman; the usage is an ancient West‐Semitic way of speaking of cities. Hosea is simply one of the first Israelite prophets to use the Canaanite imagery for cities, but his utterance was preserved. He probably is distinctive as the first to have Yahweh divorce his city‐wife. Thus, Hosea in Chap 2 proclaims the future demise of Samaria.