Anton Dumitriu,the ‘Axiomatic Culture’ and the ‘Crisis of the West’

Anton Dumitriu (1905–92) was a Romanian philosopher and logician who attempted to develop the more or less consistent theory of an ‘axiomatic’ tradition, referring to culture and civilisation in the ‘East’ (defined actually as Far East) vs. the ‘West’ (mainly Europe, both Western and East-Central) especially in the inter-war and post-war periods. Dumitriu's essays on Romanian culture or on Eastern vs. Western culture as published in his book Eleatic and Heraclitic Cultures (1987) will make the object of this study. This work is a revised version of his East and West (1943). It should be noted that most of the material discussed here is actually still available only in Romanian since Dumitriu's work on Logic is already translated into English, but his musings on culture and civilisation are available only in Romanian and are, consequently, almost unknown outside the country. This study attempts to make up for that and also to connect Dumitriu's views on culture and civilisation or East and West both to earlier Romanian views and currents in defining culture as well as to contemporary general European trends, while also taking into account the context of the Communist regime in which the second edition of his book was issued.     

Ardent Service: Female Eroticism and New Life Ethics in Gertrude Dix's The Image Breakers (1900)

Gertrude Dix's socialist-feminist novel, The Image Breakers (1895) has perplexed twentieth-century critics by its brief, short-circuited representation of homoerotic affection between the two female protagonists. In answer, this essay roots the women's relationship in the wider social, historical context of New Life politics and ethics in the 1890s. Members of the Fellowship of the New Life heralded not merely a variety of alternative lifestyles including vegetarianism and co-education, but also extensive discussion about sexual mindfulness and generosity. The charismatic seer and inspiration for the FNL, James Hinton, preached that utopia could be achieved by practicing an erotically-charged altruism. If, as Sharon Marcus has claimed, such female mutual devotion was common and perceived as normative, it was particularly affirmed by ethical-socialist culture. In the novel, Leslie Ardent's loving service to Rosalind is fuelled by her political mission and desire for self-realization. Through this female intimacy, Dix evokes the initial phase of New Life socialism as Hinton and his followers had espoused it. By contrast, the women's heterosexual relationships are more troubling, as male comrades pressure them respectively into heterosexual marriage and free love. In order to discredit heterosexual free love, Dix paints its proponent as a disturbed anarchist, rather than admit that historically some in ethical-socialist circles had advocated polyamoury. Nor does she acknowledge the philosophical convergences between collective anarchism and ethical socialism at the fin de siècle, though she herself was engaged in radical communities. Through her indictment of free love, Dix punctures the utopian vision of a pure, selfless, erotic affection flowing between individuals; figuratively, the novel re-enacts the collapse of Hinton's own reputation from seer to seducer. Echoing scenarios by other female ethical-socialist writers, the early intimacy between Rosalind and Leslie then serves the function of nostalgia, symbolizing a now-lost stage of New Life optimism and association.     

Model Evaluation and Causality Testing in Short Panels: The Case of Infrastructure Provision and Population Growth in the Brazilian Amazon

In this paper we examine the relationship between infrastructure growth and population growth in the Amazon using a panel of 293 municipalities over the period from 1975 to 1985. Contemporaneous cross-section analysis confirms a strong positive correlation between infrastructure and urban population but does not indicate direction of causality. Thus, we employ a modified form of the traditional Granger causality tests to suit the short time series that we have available. Based on out-of-sample forecasting tests we conclude that the empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that growing urban populations lead to more infrastructure development, rather than vice versa.     

Gender and Sanctity in the Middle Ages

This review essay examines recent trends and developments in the study of medieval sanctity and gender, looking at the range of approaches which have been and are being taken by both historians and literary scholars to a wide variety of hagiographic texts. Two recent studies of medieval hagiography are reviewed, John Kitchen, Saints' Lives and the Rhetoric of Gender: Male and Female in Merovingian Hagiography and the collection Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters edited by Catherine Mooney. These works are representative of differing approaches to the issue of male authors' representations of female sanctity and concomitant issues of gender ideology.     

Place-based corporate hegemony: General Electric in Tell City, Indiana, 1943–1947

This paper examines the dynamics behind the selling of a federally owned World War II factory in Tell City, Indiana in 1946 and 1947. The federal agency charged with disposing of wartime plant, the War Assets Administration, reversed its decision to sell the factory to a small innovative company, Electra-Voice, selling it instead to the giant electrical equipment manufacturer, General Electric. What would make federal administrators who were part of a powerful liberal state apparatus committed to economic competition and anti-monopoly change their mind? The answer lies in what I call place-based corporate hegemony. Probing the material consequences of everyday action, place-based corporate hegemony revolves around the formation of alliances based on axiomatic values, the continued appeal of these values, the redistribution of symbolic and material resources, and the incorporation of threatening elements. Deploying a range of archival materials I show how the concerted efforts of the community, business organizations, politicians and unions as well as General Electric to question the initial decision forced the state to rethink and change its decision.