The Baha'i Faith: Distribution Statistics, 1925–1949

A survey of Baha'i global distribution statistics from the time of their first appearance in 1925 up to 1949. No official data for actual Baha'i populations was published at that time, and we have to rely on lists of local Baha'i councils (“spiritual assemblies”) and of places where Baha'is resided to get some sense of Baha'i distribution dynamics. Even this limited data enable us to describe a pattern of overall growth, from a presence in twenty‐nine countries and territories in 1925 to ninety‐two in 1949, from at least 573 localities worldwide in which Baha'is resided in 1928 to 2,315 by 1949, and 102 local spiritual assemblies in 1928 to 595 in 1949. Regional differences in distribution are discussed. The data shows a significant increase in distribution during this period but there is no evidence for any major corresponding increase in Baha'i numbers, such as began to occur from the mid‐1950s onwards.     

A MOST MODERN SUBJECT: THE DISCIPLINE OF HISTORY AND THE FASHIONING OF NATIONALIST AND OTHER MODERN SUBJECTIVITIES

This book takes an ethnographic approach to its topic by endeavoring to observe how social and disciplinary subjects shaped by modernity go on to constitute modern worlds. Specifically, it attempts to “explore modernity as a contradictory and checkered historical-cultural entity and category as well as a contingent and contended process and condition” (1). Most of the subjects considered are intellectuals and academic disciplines (specifically history and anthropology), although the argument occasionally focuses on artists as well. The book particularly recognizes and analyzes the ambiguities, ambivalences, and contradictions generated within modernity not as mistakes or gaps like so many potholes to be fixed over time, but as constitutive of the modern landscape itself. This accepting acknowledgment, in turn, stands central to the book's endeavor to resist the teleological paradigms inherent in many modern metaphors regarding roads that must be traveled to move from what is backward to what is forward, from a superseded past to a promising future. Central to the volume—and its most original contribution—are various deliberations on the productions of time and space by various subjects. To be clear, by “time” the book means history and temporality whereas “space” suggests tradition and culture. It resists the naturalization of modern constructs such as secularized time and cultural traditions, and forces them under an analytic lens. Critical to these investigations is Saurabh Dube's appropriately insistent claim that these temporal and spatial regimes can exist in tandem and coevally, even when they are seemingly in contradiction. Among other outcomes, the volume prompts further reflection on the manner in which historiography plays a role in the formation of nationalist and modern subjectivities among nonhistorians. This essay seeks to think through the history of history as a discipline emerging during the coalescence of a hegemonic European episteme and the emergence of a popularly embraced scientism. Despite its roots in Europe long preceding modernity and its parallels in South Asia preceding British rule, history underwent a transformation when inflected through European modernity, especially the influence of empirical science paradigms. Although its emergence as a discipline promoted and employed by both the empire and the nation-state created professional historians, an expanding public sphere has meant that research into its role in fashioning modern subjectivities (including nationalist ones) must consider its reshaping and redeployment by those resisting European-originated modernity and promoting alternative modernities.     

Opportunities and competition in thick labor markets: Evidence from plant closures

Since Marshall (1890), it has been widely held in urban economic theory that cities insure workers against the risk of unemployment by offering a larger pool of potential jobs. Using a large administrative panel data set on workers displaced as a result of plant closures, we examine whether positive effects from a higher urban job density are offset by more intense competition between workers. When controlling for the sorting of workers between regions, we find robust evidence that the effect of job competition on unemployment duration exceeds that of job opportunities in absolute value. Our results put the idea of urban risk-sharing into perspective and provide an explanation for observed longer unemployment durations in cities.     

Platform Capitalism’s Hidden Abode: Producing Data Assets in the Gig Economy

In this article, we argue that the governance of gig work under conditions of financialised platform capitalism is characterised by a process that we call “dual value production”: the monetary value produced by the service provided is augmented by the use and speculative value of the data produced before, during, and after service provision. App-governed gig workers hence function as pivotal conduits in software systems that produce digital data as a particular asset class. We reflect on the production of data assets and the unequal distribution of opportunities for their valorisation, after which we survey a number of strategies seeking data-centric worker empowerment. These strategies, we argue, are crucial attempts to push back against platform capitalism’s domination, bankrolled by what we term “meta-platforms”. Ultimately, it is the massive wealth and synergetic capacities of meta-platforms that constitute the most formidable obstacle to worker power and social justice in increasingly data-driven societies.     

LATE NEOLITHIC STENILDGÅRD GRAVE: RE-EXCAVATED,RE-ANALYSED AND RE-INTERPRETED

Occasionally, it becomes possible to re-excavate and re-analyse prehistoric monuments. Within the geographical area managed by Vesthimmerlands Museum, this happened in the case of the Late Neolithic Stenildgård grave on the western periphery of the town of Aars, Northern Danmark. The grave was excavated for the first time at the early 1930s and re-excavated in 2015 in connection with the construction of a ring road around the southern parts of Aars. In 2015, a series of state-of-the-art scientific analyses were conducted in relation to this grave. Following a detailed presentation of the original publication and later interpretations, this article presents the results of the new excavation and scientific analyses. The new results include identification of the human bones, the development of the stratigraphy, strontium isotope analysis, pollen analysis, macro-fossil analysis, and the analysis of pitch. Since the 1930s, the Stenildgård grave has been considered a burial, which, to a great extent, deviated from usual practice showing one of the earliest examples of cremation in prehistoric Denmark. Furthermore, the recent investigation revealed that the grave was equipped with a surrounding wooden structure and possibly influenced by West European Bell Beaker Cultures. Also, the grave seems to form part of an extensive Late Neolithic burial and settlement system, where complex rituals were carried out.     

Between friendship and justice: on Lincoln’s political thought

Reading Aristotle and applying his notion of philia, or political friendship, across 26 centuries sheds significant light into Abraham Lincoln’s career. It is precisely in Lincoln’s embodiment of the Aristotelian notion of friendship that we come to understand his unique greatness. Perhaps he alone of all Americans proved capable of such extraordinary feats as leading the Republican party to victory in 1860, holding the Union together through the secession crisis and four long years of bloody civil war, ending slavery without white backlash, and offering reconciliation with the incredible magnanimity expressed in the ringing phrases of the Second Inaugural address. The basis of Lincoln’s preternatural political genius proved to be his ability to comprehend all sides, a comprehension that can only come from a profound belief in the importance of friendship. Americans, Lincoln argued throughout a terrible war as he had his entire life, were not enemies but friends who shared a commitment to nature and nature’s law as expressed in the Declaration.