Cultural History

Liberalism is a term employed in a dizzying variety of ways across the humanities and social sciences. This essay seeks to reframe how the liberal tradition is understood. I start by delineating different types of response – prescriptive, comprehensive, explanatory – that are frequently conflated in answering the question “what is liberalism?” I then discuss assorted methodological strategies employed in the existing literature: after rejecting “stipulative” and “canonical” approaches, I outline a contextualist alternative. On this (comprehensive) account, liberalism is best characterised as the sum of the arguments that have been classified as liberal, and recognised as such by other self-proclaimed liberals, over time. In the remainder of the article I present an historical analysis of shifts in the meaning of liberalism in Anglo-American political thought between 1850 and 1950, focusing in particular on how John Locke came to be seen as a liberal. I also explore the emergence of the category of "liberal democracy". I argue that the scope of the liberal tradition was massively expanded during the middle decades of the twentieth century, such that it came to be seen by many as the constitutive ideology of the West. This capacious (and deeply confusing) understanding of liberalism was produced by a conjunction of the ideological wars fought against “totalitarianism” and assorted developments in the social sciences. Today we both inherit and inhabit it.

This book offers a much-needed new political theory of an old phenomenon. The last decade alone has marked the highest number of migrations in recorded history. Constrained by environmental, economic, and political instability, scores of people are on the move. But other sorts of changes—from global tourism to undocumented labor—have led to the fact that to some extent, we are all becoming migrants. The migrant has become the political figure of our time.

Rather than viewing migration as the exception to the rule of political fixity and citizenship, Thomas Nail reinterprets the history of political power from the perspective of the movement that defines the migrant in the first place. Applying his "kinopolitics" to several major historical conditions (territorial, political, juridical, and economic) and figures of migration (the nomad, the barbarian, the vagabond, and the proletariat), he provides fresh tools for the analysis of contemporary migration.

Sam Harris, in his book The Moral Landscape, argues that “science can determine human values.” Against this view, I argue that while secular moral philosophy can certainly help us to determine our values, science—at least as that word is commonly understood—must play a subservient role. To the extent that science can “determine” what we ought to do, it is only by providing us with empirical information, which can then be slotted into a chain of deductive (moral) reasoning. The premises of such reasoning, however, can in no way be derived from the scientific method: they come, instead, from philosophy—and common sense.

China’s “One Belt One Road” initiative clearly reads as an audacious vision for transforming the political and economic landscapes of Eurasia and Africa over the coming decades via a network of infrastructure partnerships across the energy, telecommunications, logistics, law, IT, and transportation sectors. While such themes have become the subject of intense debate and expert commentary in the past couple of years, one of the Belt and Road’s core “Cooperation Priorities,” that of “people-to-people” connections, has passed largely unnoticed outside China. I focus here on the theme of heritage diplomacy in order to suggest that histories of silk, porcelain, and other material pasts, together with competing ideas about civilizations and world history, will play a distinct role in shaping trade, infrastructure, and security within and across countries in the coming years

This thesis examines the Solomonic grimoire manuscripts between 1400-1800. Grimoires, as books of magic materials, claim an ancient lineage from the time of King Solomon of Israel.  Modern scholarship has attempted to argue either for or against such a claim, but has not adequately addressed the meanings of imagery and alphabetic symbols contained within each grimoire as an indicator of origin. Through comparisons of several manuscript collections, the basic geometric shapes of circles and squares, that repeatedly form the templates for several objects to be constructed by the magus, are here examined, their various scripts deciphered, and their purpose contextualized for the early modern magician and conjuror. This thesis suggests that the genre of the Solomonic grimoires, in manuscript or printed form, possibly originated only from the 16th-century works of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, a conclusion based on use of the Malachim alphabet. Furthermore, the thesis questions grimoire use beyond library transcriptions, the existence of any practice related to them, and the possible origins of the scientific experiment.

This paper critically reviews the current status of the concept of distance in human geography in order to argue that recent experimentally-driven work in construal-level theory offers ample opportunities for recasting distance as a key geographical trope. After analysing the four entangled dimensions of distance revealed by construal-level theory (spatial distance; temporal distance; social distance; and hypothetical distance), the paper articulates this research program from experimental psychology with geographical work on non-representational theory, geographical imaginations/imaginative geographies, learning as a geographical process, TimeSpace theorizing, and ontogenetic understandings of space. It is argued that the subjective understanding of distance afforded by construal-level theory can rescue distance from its entrenched association with positivistic geography and spatial analysis. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2016.07.018

Bismillaahirrahmaanirrohiim,
Buku ini mencoba memaparkan secara rinci akan bagaimana pemikiran-pemikiran modern di dunia islam dengan titik berat pembahasan di wilayah Nusantara (Indonesia). seperti khalayak umum ketahui bahwa awal mula dari pembaharuan Islam itu terjadi di dunia belahan timur yaitu Mesir dengan adanya tokoh-tokoh seperti: Jamaluddin al- Afgani, Muhammad Abduh, Rasyid Ridha dll.
Seiring berjalannya waktu, di permulaan abad ke-20 pembaharuan-pembaharuan dari pelbagai gagasan di Mesir, mulai menyebar ke berbagai penjuru dunia seperti Iran, India dan tentu saja Indonesia yang lebih lengkapnya akan di paparkan secara terperinci di setiap lembarannya.
Dalam penyusun buku, Tim Penyusun menyadari dalam proses pembuatan hingga sampai ke tahap cetak masih terdapat banyak sekali kekeliriun dan kejanggalan. Dikarenakan waktu serta berbagai macam alasan pelik lain. Mohon untuk di maklum.
Tim Penyusun tetap sangat mengharapkan berbagai masukan baik kritik atau saran yang membangun terkait kekelirun yang terdapat dalam buku untuk perbaikan di kemudian nanti.
Akhir kalimat, buku yang masuk dalam kategori “daras” ini, alhamdulillah dapat terselesaikan sesuai tempo yang telah di tentukan.

This report reviews and categorizes the enormous corpus of knowledge produced by American academic and policy institutions about U.S. relations with the Middle East and other Islamic actors in the international arena. The report identifies five epistemic communities – conservatives, neoconservatives, realists, liberals and the left – and analyzes their discourses and policy recommendations. Finally, the policies that these epistemic communities recommended are evaluated and assessed. The author recommends a mixed-paradigmatic approach that will not only make the United States more effective in the Middle East but also underscore its continuing relevance to the security and the stability of the region and the global order.

My doctoral dissertation examines the experiences of the Italian volunteers in the Waffen-SS troops using in-depth interviews with former volunteers as the main primary source. This phenomenon, even if significant in size (depending on the source, some 15 000-20 000 Italian men volunteered in the Waffen-SS), has been hitherto largely unknown to historical research. The available literature on the Italian volunteers, mainly written by military history enthusiast journalists and methodologically weak, concentrates mainly on the combat operations and military organization, and offers a rather stereotypical profile of the volunteers.

My dissertation does not aim to reconstruct the military history of the different divisions of the Waffen-SS in which Italian volunteers operated but instead to examine the subjective, private and intimate experience of the volunteers in order to understand the motivations, attitudes, beliefs and cultural and family background, as well as their political ideas. The main objective of my doctoral dissertation is to discover the ideological precepts of the volunteers’ political credo. As the last phase of fascism and its ideology, often defined as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascism, is still the object of wide academic debate, a better understanding of the volunteers’ ideology also contributes to deepening overall knowledge of the nature of this last phase.

The theoretical frame of my dissertation lies in oral history, in particular in the postmodernist approach to oral history, through which I reconstruct the volunteers’ ideology. In-depth interviews with former volunteers are the main primary source, but multiple data collection methods have been adopted. Phone interviews and correspondence with the volunteers have also been considered as primary sources. In addition to interviews and correspondence, family archives consisting of diaries, correspondence with the volunteers’ relatives and photographic material have also been collected and examined. An ethnographic observation of the volunteers’ domestic spaces has been conducted during the in-depth interviews, and photo self-elicitation techniques have been used in cases where the volunteers were willing to share their photographs.

An exhaustive portrait of the ideological structure of the volunteers has been obtained, as well as of the cultural and social origins of the values that contributed to the rise and adoption of this ideology. Further, the volunteers’ motivations to enlist have been clearly reconstructed, together with their cultural, political, social and military backgrounds. The results of the research are particularly relevant both for comprehension of the Italian phenomenon of volunteering in the Waffen-SS and for the reconstruction of the ideological dynamics of the last phase of fascism. The volunteers’ political and ideological system, which can be defined as the Italian SS-fascist ideology, disagrees strongly with the vaguely described ideological profile offered by previous studies that describe volunteers as generically “super-fascist”. The research also offers the opportunity for a deeper understanding of the final fascist ideological trajectory, currently defined, not without a certain level of approximation, as the “Germanisation” or “Nazification” of fascist ideology.

L’article a pour sujet la personnalité extraordinaire du kabbaliste le Rabbin Levi Isaac Krakovsky (1891–1966), un des étudiants oubliés du Rabbin Yehuda Leib Ashlag (1885–1955). Krakovsky diffusait l’enseignement de son maître en Amérique en anglais, écrivait des douzaines de livres et essayait d’établir des yeshivot de Kabbalistes. Contrairement à son maître, il présentait un enseignement exotérique et une vision de diffusion de la Kabbale dans le monde entier. Son influence était minime, mais un de ses élèves était Shraga Philip Berg qui continuait son chemin et le complétait de plusieurs points de vue. L’article se base sur de riches matières archivales, parmi lesquelles de longues essays de l’auteur en manuscrit qui sont décrits ici pour la premiere fois. D’une telle façon, nous décrivons le dévelopment de la Kabbale en Amérique du début du vingtième siècle jusqu’ aujourd’hui.

The rising number of non-status migrants is one of the central political issues of our time. This essay argues that if we want to understand the political and philosophical importance of this phenomenon, the contributions of Alain Badiou, his militant group L'Organisation politique (OP), and the struggle of the sans-papiers movement in France are absolutely crucial. This is the case because, I will argue, Badiou, the OP, and the sans-papiers created a new kind of migrant justice struggle in the mid-1990s that in many ways remains at the practical and theoretical roots of much of non-status migrant organizing today. However, this essay also argues that Badiou's theoretical and political work with the sans-papiers also needs to be revised and updated in light of certain developments in more recent migrant justice struggles.

This special issue addresses the possible connections and mutual benefits of examining together two analytic concepts – memory and periphery. These concepts receive much attention in various scholarly discussions, yet they have done so rather independently from each other. The potential applications and utilities of combining memory and periphery and the epistemic insights they provide for various disciplins are presented in the different contributions to this issue.

This book is intended as a commented summary of some of the major trends and most important features that can be encountered when analysing ancient Egyptian society of the Old Kingdom. We have to bear in mind that around 3000 BCE one of the first centralised states in our recorded history rose, and the Old Kingdom represents certainly one of its apogees. Moreover, there is hardly any comparable society that left behind such a wealth of archaeological and literary evidence, a welcome companion for our journey back in time. The goal for writing this book was to outline general trends in the history of the non-royal tomb development of the period. The reason is rather simple and straightforward: ancient Egyptians considered the tomb to be their afterlife residence for eternity. In the afterlife they replicated the life they experienced during the lifetime. Thus the tomb architecture, decoration, inscriptions and equipment paradoxically represent a major tool for our understanding of the everyday life of the ancient Egyptians and enable a better comprehension of the development and dynamics of the Old Kingdom. The book is divided into nine chapters covering, step by step, the development of the Egyptian tomb and society from the Predynastic Period to the end of the first six Egyptian dynasties, a lengthy period of time which covers the Early Dynastic and the Old Kingdom periods. These six chapters are accompanied by three additional chapters on religious aspects of the Old Kingdom society, its economy and environment.

The Ḥôṯam Toḵnît or Seal-ring of Proportion described in Ezekiel 28:12-13, is considered as an archetype of magic rings. Its pattern with three rows and-three columns based on the simplest magic square, which was described as a child-bearing charm since its first literary appearances in the woks of Jābir ibn Hayyān (fl. c. 721– c. 815) and al-Ghazālī (1058–1111). This connection with the female reproductivity makes this signet a precursor of a series of literary examples, like the Draupnir and the Andvaranaut of the Edda and their modern literary interpretations in the works of de la Motte-Fouque, Richard Wagner and J.R.R. Tolkien, who connected it with the invisibility ring mentioned in Plato's Politeia 359d-360b and also with the seal of Solomon (mentioned first in Josephus Flavius, Antiquitates Judaicae 8, 46-49, and in the Testamentum Solomonis, elaborated in Jewish, Islamic and Christian traditions), which gives power over the spiritual beings. They were not pioneers at all, because from the late Antiquity there were several author (e.g. Josephus Flavius, ibn Ezra, Eleazar of Worms, Pliny, the Church Fathers, Marsilio Ficino, H.C. Agrippa, Éliphas Lévi, the various writers of the Antique and medieval lapidaries, kabbalistic works, astro magical tracts and beau-letters, including the Welsh and French Arthurian romans and the Arabian Nights) who provide for this the necessary theological, philosophical as well as literary draw matters. The main aim of this study, which is written in an exceptional form as a last will of a fictional Kabbalist, is to demonstrate a concept of the Ḥôṯam Toḵnît as the Šegal described in Psalm 45, and its erroneous literary interpretations.

The most common definitions of popular culture suffer from a presentist bias and cannot be applied to pre-industrial and pre-capitalist societies. A survey reveals serious conceptual
difficulties as well. We may, however, gain insight in two ways.
1) By moving from a Marxist model (economic/class/production) to a more Weberian approach (societal/status/consumption).
2) By looking to Bourdieu’s “cultural capital” and Danto’s and Dickie’s “Institutional Theory of Art,” and defining popular culture as “unauthorized culture.”

Keywords: popular culture, cultural capital, “institutional theory of art,” Arthur Danto, George Dickie, Pierre Bourdieu, Antonio Gramsci

Los diferentes procesos históricos que se han dado al menos en los dos últimos milenios, es decir desde el inicio de la era Cristiana hasta nuestros días, se han caracterizado por que han sido documentados de alguna forma u otra; a través de códices manuscritos, libros copiados a mano, inscripciones y bajo relieves en edificaciones y construcciones de todo tipo; en fin, la historia de la humanidad reciente se caracteriza por que nuestra especie se ha encargado de plasmar su huella desde las formas más simples (como las pinturas rupestres), hasta la moderna tecnología que ha posibilitado que naves espaciales que fueron lanzadas al cosmos hace treinta años, sigan su curso por el espacio
remoto llevando información de quienes somos; donde vivimos; cuáles son nuestros rasgos físicos y características genéticas como una especie animal viva diferente a las que habitan el planeta; y cómo son nuestras diversas culturas e idiomas; y en general, identifican los rasgos científicos y tecnológicos de nuestra civilización.

Recent research suggests that romantic love may be literally addictive. Although the exact nature of the relationship between love and addiction has been described in inconsistent terms throughout the literature, we offer a framework that distinguishes between a narrow view and a broad view of love addiction. The narrow view counts only the most extreme, harmful forms of love or love-related behaviors as being potentially addictive in nature. The broad view, by contrast, counts even basic social attachment as being on a spectrum of addictive motivations, underwritten by similar neurochemical processes as more conventional addictions. We argue that on either understanding of love-as-addiction, treatment decisions should hinge on considerations of harm and well-being rather than on definitions of disease. Implications for the ethical use of anti-love biotechnology are considered.

" A refreshing addition to the field of food studies … This book makes an important contribution to food studies by placing food in the foreground of identity formation as well as explaining how various groups have used food at various times." (Journal of Social History)

The contributors to this major intervention into Indian historiography trace the strategies through which Dalits have been marginalized as well as the ways Dalit intellectuals and leaders have shaped emancipatory politics in modern India. Moving beyond the anticolonialism/nationalism binary that dominates the study of India, the contributors assess the benefits of colonial modernity and place humiliation, dignity, and spatial exclusion at the center of Indian historiography. Several essays discuss the ways Dalits used the colonial courts and legislature to gain minority rights in the early twentieth century, while others highlight Dalit activism in social and religious spheres. The contributors also examine the struggle of contemporary middle-class Dalits to reconcile their caste and class, intercaste tensions among Sikhs, and the efforts by Dalit writers to challenge dominant constructions of secular and class-based citizenship while emphasizing the ongoing destructiveness of caste identity. In recovering the long history of Dalit struggles against caste violence, exclusion, and discrimination, Dalit Studies outlines a new agenda for the study of India, enabling a significant reconsideration of many of the Indian academy's core assumptions.


Contributors: D. Shyam Babu, Laura Breuck, Sambaiah Gundimeda, Gopal Guru, Rajkumar Hans, Chinnaiah Jangam, Surinder Jodhka, P. Sanal Mohan, Ramnarayan Rawat, K. Satyanarayana

The most original and shocking interpretation of Lucretius in the last 40 years.

Thomas Nail argues convincingly and systematically that Lucretius was not an atomist, but a thinker of kinetic flux. In doing so, he completely overthrows the interpretive foundations of modern scientific materialism, whose philosophical origins lie in the atomic reading of Lucretius' immensely influential book De Rerum Natura.

This means that Lucretius was not the revolutionary harbinger of modern science as Greenblatt and others have argued; he was its greatest victim. Nail re-reads De Rerum Natura to offer us a new Lucretius--a Lucretius for today.

This study is a preliminary attempt to chart out the manifold ways Ottomans envisioned and imagined the Euro-Christian world during early modern times. Through the study of a selection of various sources ranging from pseudo-historiographic warrior epics to lyric poetry, the main objective will be to expose the multivocality and ambivalence of Ottoman texts dealing – exclusively or partially - with the Western cosmos. By a careful analysis of the narratological structure of specific Ottoman works, the degree to which Euro-Christians had permeated the minds (and souls) of Ottoman-Muslims will be evaluated. The examination of recurrent stock images, stereotypes, and depictions of Euro-Christians will hint at the ways Ottomans constructed and articulated a discourse of alterity based on the juxtaposition of a (pure and ideal) Self against a (reprehensible and threatening) Other. Simultaneously, instances where these seemingly unflinching and fixed boundaries were questioned, challenged, or overlooked will be located and contextualized. All in all, the aim will be to open a vista to the complex and colorful representational world of early modern Ottomans.

Bu çalı
mada cumhuriyet dönemi boyunca gerçekle
tirilen hayat bilgisi öretim
programlarının amaçları ve içerii, toplumun istemlerine uygun düzenlenip düzenlenmedii,
öretim programları arasında bir ilerleme olup olmadıı üzerinde durulmu
ve konuların
seçilmesinde dönemlere göre farklılıkla
an içeriklerin toplu bir analizi yapılmı
tır. Cumhuriyetin
ilanından günümüze hayat bilgisi öretim programları dönemin ihtiyaç ve beklentilerine uygun
olarak zaman zaman dei
tirilmi
tir. Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’nin kurulu
undan günümüze geli
tirilen
ilköretim müfredatlarında olduu gibi hayat bilgisi dersi müfredatları ya Eitim uraları gibi
eitim kurullarının ya dorudan yabancı eitim danı
manlarının ya da dı
sal faktörlerin etkisiyle
yapıla gelmi
lerdir.

The collection "Art and Religion of Ancient Societies" is a continuation of the series of the scientific publications which is devoted to the problems of study of the spiritual culture in the primitive societies. The previous edition "Art and Ritual of Ice Age", that was published in 2005, covered a circle of questions directly connected with the theory and practice of study of the Paleolithic Art. In this collection we also address to the same problematic. However, taking into account that the understanding of the most ancient culture stages of the human society is connected to a wide circle of questions of the study of the traditional communities, we think it is necessity to expand the edition’s subjects. Therefore we have tried to capture not only questions directly connected with field and basic study of the ancient art, but also practical analysis of the cultural and ethnographic facts. The questions of the aesthetics and theory of development of the early forms of art are considered as separately subjects in works. The published materials enable the reader to familiarize with the questions and methods of their analysis more in details, which are submitted in works of the researchers from Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Germany, Canada, USA, Australia.

This article offers a fresh critique of the work of political scientists and historians who have propagated the Eurocentric history of democracy. The paper argues that such work can be dissected and critiqued along several key lines: their reliance on a distinctly patriarchal discourse riddled with prejudices; the assertion that one can understand the history of democracy via the etymology of the word itself; and the deeply Eurocentric
roots of the study of democracy’s past embedded in the canon of Western political thought. The paper concludes by calling on contemporary political scientists and political historians concerned with the history of  democracy to be careful in re-iterating this deeply flawed history of democracy and to instead work towards a history of democracy that retrieves the silenced histories and the forgotten democratic moments that lay behind the roar of Western power.

HISTORICAL UNFOLDING OF THE CONCEPTS AND PRACTICES OF YOGA
For the purpose of understanding the development of this great Yogic spiritual tradition, one may divide its unfoldment into three time frames:
I    : PRE-HISTORIC: Teachings transmitted orally from Guru to disciple in forest hermitages. Before the written word.

II : THE HISTORIC: Teachings transmitted from Guru to disciple in forest hermitages, using both oral and written traditions.

III : MODERN: Spiritual teachings gleaned from many sources, indiscriminately, often only through the written word and without the guidance of Guru.

Scholarship on Buddhist and Muslim interactions has long proposed that Islam was largely responsible for the decline of Buddhism in its homeland of India during the medieval period. The popularity of the idea that Islam not only injured by actually killed off Indian Buddhism c. 1200 CE far outstrips the historical evidence for such a proposition. Nonetheless, this narrative of an antagonistic, fatal relationship between Islam and the Buddhist dharma on the subcontinent is widespread and oft repeated in modern scholarship, especially introductory-level textbooks. This paper considers the sparse historical sources that undergird the “Islam killed Indian Buddhism” narrative and traces how this storyline has nonetheless been resilient and embellished over time. I argue that the notion that Islam finished off Indian Buddhism endures in both premodern and modern sources because of its rhetorical force and assumptions about the life cycles of religious traditions. Prejudices about both Buddhism and Islam are also partly responsible for the persistence of this narrative in contemporary scholarship. The paper closes by analyzing the difficulties of reframing the question of what happened to Indian Buddhism and suggests some shifts that may better position future scholars to move beyond the tired and largely ahistorical approach of crudely blaming Islam and more accurately capture the elusive end (or near end) of Indian Buddhism.

La scuola italiana è un volume che ripercorre le tappe fondamentali dell’istruzione scolastica e universitaria dalle origini dello Stato unitario fino alla recente riforma della “Buona Scuola”. Le due sezioni del volume analizzano in particolare sia l’aspetto giuridico delle varie riforme, sia l’aspetto amministrativo, con particolare riguardo al corpo docente e alla sua immissione in ruolo. Il volume comprende inoltre i più recenti aggiornamenti analitici e statistici dell’Ocse (Settembre 2017) e del Censis, fornendo un quadro documentale completo ed esauriente della realtà educativa italiana nel più ampio contesto internazionale.

"This volume contains a collection of eleven essays dealing with aspects of the society of southern Italy and Sicily from the 11th through to the 13th centuries. It covers the evolution of the social structures, the aristocratic family; the agrarian economy; regional differences across the South Italian Peninsula and Sicily; Norman-papal relations; charters and chanceries; Latin- and Greek-rite Churches; religious conversion, and the position of Greeks, Arab-Christians and Muslims within the Norman Kingdom of Sicily.

For an extensive preview:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=1IBspuVRwnUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+society+of+noman+italy&ei=e_WTSsnbBojUMq3b1ZgH#v=onepage&q&f=false"

Disgusted with ISIS, some Kurds turned away from Islam following the fall of Mosul in 2014. Many became atheists, while others sought comfort in Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism, according to converts, was the “original” religion of the Kurds before they embraced Islam. In 2015, two Zoroastrian centers opened in Sulaimani, both of which are recognized by the Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. Notably, neither has tried to recreate Zoroastrianism the way it is currently and has been historically practiced in Iran and South Asia. Instead, they have created their own versions of Zoroastrianism, which is nationalist, postmodern, and liberal. Kurdish Zoroastrians argue that the reason Kurds are “backward” is Islam. They seek to rectify the present situation through a Kurdish “authenticated” and “original” form of Zoroastrianism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork at these two centers, the present article examines this new religious movement in Sulaimani, an important city in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq. It analyses the rise and distinctiveness of Kurdish Zoroastrianism looking at how Zoroastrian Kurds articulate their views on Islam, women’s rights, human rights, and Kurdish independence.

The identification of deviant burials as those of ‘vampires’ is a feature of excavated skeletons from sites across Eastern, Central and Southern Europe as well as the Balkans. Based on a close reading of historic and folkloric sources researchers have sought to match features of excavated sites with narrative descriptions drawn from vampire legend and myth. This study critically reviews the recent claims based on sites in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Italy, Poland and Slovakia. Whilst it is found that there was a widespread belief in vampires across Europe, it is argued that it is difficult to make absolute claims for ‘vampire’ burials on archaeological grounds as in most cases there are alternate and equally compelling interpretations of the data.

KEYWORDS
ARCHAEOLOGY, HISTORY, SIXTEENTH CENTURY, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY, VAMPIRE, DEVIANT BURIAL, PLAGUE, BLACK DEATH, FOLKLORE, PAGAN, BURIAL, WITCH, BALKANS, EASTERN EUROPE, CENTRAL EUROPE, SOUTHERN EUROPE, BULGARIA, CZECH REPUBLIC, POLAND, GREECE, ITALY, SLOVAKIA, LESBOS, VENICE, APOTROPAIC, VAMPIRIDZHIJA, PERPERIKON, SOZOPOL, PROSTEJOV, CELAKOVICE, DRAWSKO, GLIWICI, SOUTHWELL, KILTEASHEEN, LAZZARETTO NUOVO, NACHTZEHRER, KAMIEN POMORSKI

I define Cultural Analytics as “the analysis of massive cultural data sets and flows using computational and visualization techniques,” I developed this concept in 2005, and in 2007 we established a research lab (Software Studies Initiative, softwarestudies.com) to start working on practical projects. The following are the examples of theoretical and practical questions that are driving our work:  What does it mean to represent “culture” by “data”? What are the unique possibilities offered by computational analysis of large cultural data in contrast to qualitative methods used in humanities and social science? How to use quantitative techniques to study the key cultural form of our era – interactive media? How can we combine computational analysis and visualization of large cultural data with qualitative methods, including "close reading”? (In other words, how to combine analysis of larger patterns with the analysis of individual artifacts and their details?)  How can computational analysis do justice to variability and diversity of cultural artifacts and processes, rather than focusing on the "typical" and "most popular"?

This paper presents a methodological framework for addressing variation and change in mythology within a cultural environment. Mythology is approached in terms of a ‘symbolic matrix’, which provides a semiotic context for mythic discourse. Different formal ‘integers’ of mythology are distinguished. ‘Dialects’ and ‘registers’ of mythology are introduced along with an approach to ‘positioning’ within the symbolic matrix.

Collective identity in the so-called Byzantine Empire is a much-debated issue that has drawn a lot of attention over the years. The current paper attempts a critical assessment of the hitherto main lines of thinking about Byzantine identity, focussing on the period between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries. By proposing an alternative view on source material based on a comprehensive theoretical framework, I argue that a conceptualization of the collective identity of this medieval imperial social order with its constantly fluctuating geopolitical and cultural boundaries needs to be disconnected from essentialist and reifying views on perennial ethnicity as well as from the modern phenomenon of the nation-state.