Utopians at the Parliament: The World's Parliament of Religions and the Columbian Exposition of 1893

This article examines the Columbian Exposition and World's Parliament of Religions, both held in Chicago in 1893. While both events drew on nineteenth-century beliefs in the superiority of Western Christianity, they reflect divergent views on technology, social inequality, and urban reform. The Exposition's "White City" offered visitors a temporary, otherwordly escape, whereas the World's Parliament emphasized the importance and possibility of concrete solutions to social problems. As such, these events express radically different forms of utopian speculation in Gilded-Age America.     

Libya and Syria: R2P and the spectre of the swinging pendulum

This article examines recent UN Security Council deliberations over events in Libya and Syria and in particular assesses the extent to which Council members sought to justify their positions and voting behaviour by reference to the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P). It shows how limited invocations of R2P were with regard to Libya, before proceeding to demonstrate how, somewhat paradoxically, R2P‐sceptics such as Russia and China subsequently drew upon concerns over the manner in which NATO implemented its UN‐mandate in Libya to cast doubts over R2P during debates over Syria. Contemplating the implications of the Libyan and Syrian cases for the future of R2P, the article concludes by arguing that the concept's international standing can best be preserved through the excision of its most coercive elements; R2P should be reconstituted as a standard of acceptable sovereign behaviour and a mechanism geared towards the provision of international guidance and support, while decisions over coercive military intervention, inevitably infused with considerations of strategic interest, should be made outside the R2P framework.     

THE CONSTITUTION OF PHILISTINE IDENTITY: ETHNIC DYNAMICS IN TWELFTH TO TENTH CENTURY PHILISTIA

The process and date of the Philistine settlement in Canaan have received a great deal of scholarly attention. As well, scholars have also devoted much attention to the expansion of Philistine interaction with Levantine societies prior to the Philistines' assimilation in the late Iron Age. While most studies view Philistine integration and acculturation as a gradual process, a close examination of the detailed faunal and ceramic evidence suggests otherwise. It appears that due to various processes of boundary maintenance, the Philistines maintained high ethnic boundaries with their neighbours for at least 150–200 years, before (quite suddenly) losing most of their unique traits in the tenth century BC.