Maritime Worlds Collide: Agents of Transference and the Metastasis of Seaborne Threats at the End of the Bronze Age

Primary sources from the end of the Bronze Age have long been read as suggesting a time of chaotic transition, particularly with regard to threats from the sea that the established powers had no means of combatting. While the scale and severity of seaborne attacks seems to have increased in the late 13th century, these were not in themselves new phenomena, as a state of maritime threat seems to have been a constant for coastal polities and mariners in the Late Bronze Age eastern Mediterranean. However, a combination of internal and external factors in the late 13th and early 12th centuries combined to make these attacks more effective than they had been in the past, and polities more vulnerable to them. These included the rapid spread of improvements in maritime technology, particularly from the Aegean and the Levant, via high–intensity ‘zones of transference’, as well as an increase in the scale of ship­–based combat operations, due in part to the displacement of people during the Late Bronze Age collapse. This paper addresses this in two parts, beginning with the ‘background’ evidence for a constant state of maritime threat in the centuries leading up to the end of the Bronze Age, and concluding with the ‘foreground’ evidence for zones of transference and the transmission of groundbreaking elements of naval technology in the years surrounding the Late Bronze–Early Iron Age transition.     

Everybody Loves a Winner: On the Mutual Causality of Presidential Approval and Success in Congress

A large literature argues that approval affects presidential legislative success, but Washington observers often believe that legislative success leads to higher presidential approval ratings, that is, success and approval may be endogenous. This article tests for the endogeneity of approval and success. After building a theory that links success to higher approval, annual aggregate data from 1953–2011 are used to test for the endogeneity between approval and success. All statistical tests indicate that approval and success affect each other. This article concludes by putting the findings into perspective and suggesting new research directions.     

African-Americans and the French Imagination

Frappé par certains grands succès de librairies récents (notamment Les Bienveillantes, JanKarski et HHhH), on a beaucoup réfléchi, notamment dans le numéro spécial du Débat consacré à « L'Histoire saisie par la fiction », sur la place, la portée et la fonction de l'histoire dans la production de textes littéraires. Nous nous emploierons dans le présent article à apprécier certains aspects littéraires de l'écriture historienne dans « l'enquête » de l'historien Ivan Jablonka, Histoire des grands-parents que je n'ai pas eus. Retraçant l'itinéraire de ses grands-parents, juifs communistes militants qui, fuyant la répression politique, quittent enfin leur shtetl polonais dans l'espoir de trouver refuge en France avant d'être emportés par la guerre et le génocide comme tant d'autres, Jablonka s'y implique pleinement, nous livrant aussi le récit de ses recherches et de sa façon personnelle de vivre ce passé dramatique. En analysant la fonction de cette implication subjective de l'historien dans la poursuite de ses recherches et l'écriture de son récit, nous verrons que Jablonka nous fait voir l'itinéraire tragique de ses grands-parents, mais aussi les grands courants de l'histoire dans lequel il s'inscrit, « comme Elstir peignait la mer », c'est-à-dire à partir de la manière particulière dont ils ont pu vivre ce passé.     

The Anthropology of Virtual Worlds: World of Warcraft

Three recent ethnographies of the well-known massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft demonstrate the health and vitality of the study of virtual worlds. In particular, they emphasize the importance of anthropologists reading ethnographic work done by researchers in other disciplines, and by connoisseurs and cultural practitioners of video games who deserve to be taken as intellectual interlocutors. It may be, however, that less and less work will be done on virtual worlds in the future as scholarly attention focuses on other, more novel forms of technology.