The Architectural Reuse of Roman Marble and Stone Spolia in the Early Medieval Monte Sorbo Church (Sarsina,Central Italy)

We present the results of a multi‐method archaeometric study concerning the architectural elements reused in Monte Sorbo church (Sarsina, central Italy) between the eighth and ninth centuries AD . The provenance study has focused on classical marbles and stones, which clearly do not originate from the local Apennine geological formations and are thought to come from extra‐regional sources. A large fraction of the tested marbles is from Asia Minor, coming from both the Proconnesian district on Marmara Island and, probably, the Hasançavuslar site near Ephesus (Greco scritto). Of the four remaining marbles investigated, one is from the Carrara district and three are from different Greek quarrying areas, such as Mount Pentelikon (Athens) and the Thasos and Paros islands. The data also highlight the reuse of decorated gravestones made of Pietra di Aurisina as architectonic elements. This limestone is a fossiliferous carbonate stone outcropping in the Trieste Karst region (north‐eastern Italy), which was exploited by both the Romans and the Byzantines. The assignment of all of the columns of the central nave to the same source area provides an argument in favour of their provenance from a single monument, which was probably located in Sarsina or Ravenna, with the ‘colourful taste’ that is typical of the late Antonine and Severian periods.     

On The Grounds Of Post‐Byzantine Greek Icons

The grounds of 51 post‐Byzantine icons (Eastern Orthodox panel paintings) were studied by means of analytical techniques. The artefacts cover the period from the mid‐15th to the mid‐19th century and originate mainly from western (Epirus and the Ionian Islands) and southern Greece (Crete). The findings are examined in the light of technical recipes from related areas and eras, while special insights are gained from the exploration of a gypsum processing recipe by Dionysius of Fourna. A spectrum of ground fabrication practices that is richer than that reported so far or can be deduced from surviving Greek recipes is documented; three instances of ‘grosso‐sottile’ type grounds and a case of ‘inverse grosso‐sottile’ ground are among the reported novel, for post‐Byzantine icons, findings. Moreover, a case of an early icon restoration intervention is documented.     

IN SEARCH OF NEW TIMES: TEMPORALITY IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND COUNTER‐ENLIGHTENMENT

Isaiah Berlin and other representatives of historicism have made the Enlightenment and the Counter‐Enlightenment into opposite cultures. The Counter‐Enlightenment is a criticism of the Enlightenment from within, so in many respects they overlap. However, with regard to perceptions of time they contradict each other. The times of the Enlightenment lean heavily toward chronology and can be labeled as “empty,” whereas the time perceptions of the Counter‐Enlightenment can be called “incarnated” and are identical with historical times. As a consequence the differences between the two temporalities lead necessarily to differences in synchronization.     

CONTEXTS OF COLONIALISM

The contributions to the collection under review offer a wide range of treatments of ways in which German colonialism intersected with aspects of domestic German culture and politics, with particular attention to the larger global setting in which the German colonial empire existed between 1884 and 1918—or was remembered up to 1945. The review situates and critiques the contributions in interpretive contexts based on general suggestions by one of the editors, Geoff Eley. These include a context in which “colonialism” and “imperialism” are recognized as specific discursive constructions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, another in which the causal focus in interpreting colonial phenomena is placed on exchanges that constituted an accelerating globality with which available conceptual modes (including colonialism and imperialism) could not keep pace, a third that complicates the categorical distinctions usually made between types of imperial program, and a fourth that aims at replicating on a much broader and more flexible basis something like the concept of “social imperialism” that forty years ago dominated interpretations of German imperialism. The essay ends with a view of how such an interpretive framework might be constructed.     

Arcangelo Ghisleri and the “Right to Barbarity”: Geography and Anti‐colonialism in Italy in the Age of Empire (1875–1914)

This paper addresses the work of early critics of colonialism and Eurocentrism within Italian geography in the Age of Empire. At that time, a minority but rather influential group of Italian scholars, influenced by the international debates promoted by the anarchist geographers Reclus, Kropotkin and Me?nikov, fumed publicly at Italy's colonial ambitions in Africa. Their positions assumed, at least in the case of Arcangelo Ghisleri, the character of a radical critique of both political and cultural European hegemony. These approaches were linked to a similar critique of “internal colonialism”, both Austrian in the Italian‐speaking regions of Trento and Trieste, and Piedmontese in southern Italy. Based on primary sources, and drawing on the international literature on imperial geography and colonial and postcolonial sciences, this paper conjures up the Italian example to discuss how some European geographers of the Age of Empire were also early critics of racism, colonialism and chauvinism, and how these historical experiences can serve current debates on critical, radical and anarchist geographies.     

“I found the truth in Foot Locker”: London 2011, Urban Culture,and the Post‐Political City

The article begins with an overview of what is implied in the notion of the “post‐political” before looking closely at post‐political interpretations of the 2011 London riots. It presents a critique of the restricted sense of political subjectivity in such accounts. It demonstrates how participation in the riots and their aftermath may be seen as indicative of an embryonic form of urban politics that works with and against the post‐political city. This discussion is illuminated by an analysis of the discursive space of London hip‐hop which reveals an ironic, complex and reflexive dialogue about identity, justice and politics that is far removed from the caricature offered by “strong” interpretations of the post‐political subject. This is then linked to readings of the post‐political city that place a welcome stress not only on the evacuation of the political dimension from the city, but also on the opportunities for the re‐emergence of the proto‐political.     

Decolonizing Food Justice: Naming,Resisting, and Researching Colonizing Forces in the Movement

Over the past 15 years social movements for community food security, food sovereignty, and food justice have organized to address the failures of the multinational, industrial food system to fairly and equitably distribute healthy, affordable, culturally appropriate real food. At the same time, these social movements, and research about them, re‐inscribe white, patriarchal systems of power and privilege. We argue that in order to correct this pattern we must relocate our social movement goals and practices within a decolonizing and feminist leadership framework. This framework challenges movement leadership and scholarship by white people who uncritically assume a natural order of leadership based on academic achievement. We analyze critical points in our collaboration over the last four years using these frameworks. Doing so highlights the challenges and possibilities for a more inclusive food justice movement and more just scholarship.     

How not to build a world wireless network: German–British rivalry and visions of global communications in the early twentieth century

Abstract

Edward Snowden’s revelations laid bare an unprecedented scale of state influence on communications technology. But government elites have frequently shaped technological development through their beliefs about potentially nefarious uses of communications. This article argues that beliefs about how other states or groups might use a technology can shape innovation. In particular, German visions about the British use of cables spurred German investment in developing wireless telegraphy. Germans imagined that the British were using cable technology to damage Germany’s reputation, spy on Germany and ‘poison’ neutral countries against the Central Powers. The German government and military at first created a colonial wireless network to bypass British cables. In World War I, however, they sought to establish a world wireless network. In the end, innovation was significantly shaped by how Germans imagined their enemies’ uses of communications technology.     

Introduction: Biographies Between Spheres of Empire

ABSTRACT

Biographical research offers a promising approach to the study of empire, imperialism and colonialism. The careers and life stories of individuals and generations show particularly clearly the disruptions and constraints, but also the new possibilities and mobilities, that were created by colonial rule. This special issue focuses on practices and experiences of boundary crossing in imperial and colonial history. It explores how ‘ordinary’ individuals and groups navigated between the different imperial spaces and spheres into which they were categorised according to the ideologies and regulations of the well-ordered colonial world. Africa offers particularly interesting cases for studying these issues because, first, it was a field of particularly rigid colonial distinctions and, second, different colonial empires overlapped and competed there with particular intensity. This introduction outlines briefly the relevance of biographical research for new approaches in imperial, colonial and African history, and highlights the major themes of the five articles comprising this special issue. It is argued that these new biographical approaches tell us much not only about life in Africa on the eve of and under colonial rule, but also more generally about both the power and the permeability of imperial domination and of colonial categories.     

After Empire: Karl Renner's Danubian model of pluralism

This article argues that Karl Renner's multinational model for the Austrian‐Hungarian Empire is an alternative model for contemporary a‐territorial, multinational and federal arrangements. Nations, in his view, should act as intermediary bodies between the relevant communities and the state. His concept of ‘subjective public law’ combines principles that most authors find mutually exclusive: individual rights, choice over one's national cultural membership, non‐territorial administration of national communities and overseeing of equal collective rights by the state. Neither Staatsnation nor Kulturnation, the model is a combination of the two under the auspices of a federal state combined with a strong theory of individual and collective rights. I provide the reader with a comprehensive intellectual biography of Karl Renner, as I argue that an understanding of the man himself, his political pragmatism and his statism are crucial to comprehending this theoretical position. Throughout his life, Renner was a German nationalist, held a strong nostalgia for the Habsburg Empire and voted in favour of the Anschluß. His concurrent careers as a scholar and as a politician account for a series of contradictions. I argue however that these can be reconciled and explained by a careful comparative reading of his scholarly work and his political statements.