The Modern State,the Question of Genocide,and Holocaust Scholarship

This review article asks: what defines mass violence in the twentieth century as particularly modern and how does the Holocaust figure in this history? The article compares the work of two path-breaking historians—Mark Levene and Timothy Snyder—while also discussing recent research by other scholars. It argues that the emergence of nation-states, together with technology and scientific knowledge to alter the environment, created the conditions for distinctly modern violence aiming to destroy diversity in societies and the environment. The article examines the relation between genocide, including the Holocaust, and the rise of twentieth-century nation-states. It follows the persistent idea that the Holocaust is unique in a way that establishes a hierarchy of Holocaust/genocide/other mass violence. As Levene argues, the contextualization of the complex set of events and processes called the Holocaust within the violent history of ethno-national and ethno-religious “homogenization” of nation-states challenges this framework. The article then turns to Snyder’s argument that, since Hitler’s worldview of racial struggle over land and food rejected agricultural science, genetic engineering in agriculture is one way to heed the Holocaust’s warning. A discussion of the devastating impact of genetic engineering in agriculture—in the frame of the violent implications of modern “development”—underscores how the destruction of societies perceived as “backward,” particularly indigenous groups in the Global South, follows the destruction of their biodiverse habitats and agriculture to make way for monoculture genetically engineered crops. A focus on case studies of such mass violence and the responses by indigenous groups facilitates, finally, a discussion of the recent turn to microhistories in Holocaust scholarship. These offer another contextualized view: of the societies that faced the assault of nation-states. The article concludes that the complexities on the social level, each rooted in specific circumstances and histories, challenge the analytical value of the general term “Holocaust.”     

Beyond Holocaust Studies: rethinking the Holocaust in Hungary

This article argues that the ideological and emotional meanings of the terms ‘Holocaust’ and ‘antisemitism’ have obstructed their use as analytical concepts in Holocaust scholarship. It claims, specifically, that they frame the persecution and annihilation of Jews during World War II as unique, placing these events and processes apart from essential historical and political contexts. The destruction of Jews in wartime Hungary underscores how histories of state and nation building—in this case the drive to realize ‘Greater Hungary’ with a marked Magyar majority—generated multi-layered mass violence against non-Jews as well as Jews. Focusing on the multi-ethnic borderland of Subcarpathian Rus’ before the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944 illuminates the links in the state's multi-layered attack against the region's society and sheds new light on the particular victimization of Jews, also after March 1944. Almost all the scholarship on the Holocaust in Hungary has addressed the period after the German invasion, dealing with ghettoization and deportation to Auschwitz. This perspective has provided important insight, but it has also overshadowed significant dimensions in the history of wartime Hungary. The histories of the state's borderlands, which have received limited attention, challenge this account of ‘the Holocaust’ in Hungary. This article uncovers how anxieties about disloyalty and foreignness played crucial roles in the exclusionary campaign against Jews, Roma and Carpatho-Ruthenians in Subcarpathian Rus’. The Hungarian authorities planned and carried out discriminatory and violent measures against them and, whenever national and international opportunities permitted, mass deportations. The examination of these related processes of mass violence lays bare the meaning of ‘antisemitism’ in a specific political context, highlighting connections between anti-Jewish policies and the persecution of other groups. Viewing this violence as it unfolded, rather than backward from the ‘final solution’ and Auschwitz, opens new paths to rethink ‘the Holocaust’ in Hungary.     

A Monkey Figurine from Tel Beth Shemesh

This paper presents a unique clay figurine found at Tel Beth Shemesh, Judah, in a late Iron Age II context. The figurine portrays a monkey-faced horse, a combination that is rare in the ancient Near East and unknown, so far, from Judah. Comparisons are sought, followed by a discussion of the Monkey in small representations in the ancient Near East and Mesopotamia. Monkeys were exotic, held as pet animals by the higher classes and related to sex, music, ugliness, lack of intelligence, and various other human characteristics. It is suggested that the significance of this figurine lies in such 'secular' connotations, rather than in a religious realm     

Was cultural deprivation in fact sensory deprivation? Deprivation, retardation and intervention in the USA

In the 1950s, the term "deprivation" entered American psychiatric discourse. This article examines how the concept of deprivation permeated the field of mental retardation, and became an accepted theory of etiology. It focuses on sensory deprivation and cultural deprivation, and analyzes the interventions developed, based on these theories. It argues that the controversial theory of cultural deprivation derived its scientific legitimization from the theory of sensory deprivation, and was a highly politicized concept that took part in the nature-nurture debate.     

Middle Bronze Age Burials in the Southern Levant: Spartan Warriors or Ordinary People?

Intermediate and Middle Bronze Age tombs with weapons (mainly daggers) in the southern Levant were often interpreted as ‘warrior graves’. Taking into consideration new data from Rishon Le‐Zion (Israel), recent work on early warfare and warriors, and a study of so‐called ‘warrior graves’ in Mesopotamia (Rehm 2003), we suggest that most of these graves are not graves of elite warriors, but typical male burials. We also discuss the assumed ‘burial kit’ and the decline in numbers of weapons per burial, which is in our view related to the shift from individual burials (in the Intermediate Bronze and Middle Bronze IIA periods) to multiple shaft burials (in the Middle Bronze IIB period).     

Tuned Mass Damper Positioning Effects on the Seismic Response of a Soil-MDOF-Structure System

Tuned mass dampers (TMDs) are effective structural vibration control devices. However, very little research is available on the experimental investigation of TMDs and their performance in systems undergoing dynamic soil-structure interaction. Geotechnical centrifuge tests are conducted to investigate story positioning effects of single and multiple TMDs in a soil-MDOF-structure system. The criteria for optimal story positioning will be established, and it is shown that story positioning influences TMD performance more than the number of TMDs used. Non-optimal story positioning was found to have the potential of reducing damping efficiency, amplifying peak structural response, and inducing lengthier high-intensity motion.     

Water from a Rock: Archaeology,Ideology, and the Bible

In a series of studies over the last decade, Avi Faust suggested that several ideologies of ancient Israel could be identified on the basis of archaeological features (four-room houses, tombs, certain pottery vessels, etc.), namely, egalitarianism, simplicity, unity, and purity. The aim of this paper is to review these studies, asking what ideology is and if it can be retrieved from archaeology. While “there are multiple dangers when walking into the field of ideology” (Vincent 2010:21), avoiding discussion is not an option. In my view, most of the things identified by Faust are not ideologies. To the extent that they have an ideological content, it is based not on archaeological remains, but on a conservative reading of the Hebrew Bible. The identified “ideologies” are described as static, valid for the entire society, and eternal (from the Iron Age I until the end of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah). They turn ancient Israel into an ideal society, a model for our times—but an unrealistic one.