Conflict and Violence in Medieval Italy 568-1154

This collection of essays from both established and emerging scholars analyses the dynamic connections between conflict and violence in medieval Italy. Together, the contributors present a new critique of power that sustained both kingship and locally based elite networks throughout the Italian peninsula. A broad temporal range, covering the sixth to the twelfth century, allows this book to cross a number of ‘traditional’ fault-lines in Italian historiography – 774, 888, 962 and 1025. The essays provide wide-ranging analysis of the role of conflict in the period, the operation of power and the development of communal consciousness and collective action by protagonists and groups. It is thus essential reading for scholars, students and general readers who wish to understand the situation on the ground in the medieval Italian environment.

Allen Ginsberg’s Jeremiad

“Howl” continues to capture popular and academic imaginations. This article explores the categorical fault lines between modernist and postmodernist epistemologies as they are applied to Ginsberg’s poetic project. Reframing “religion” in postmodern terms, this article argues that even dominative categories and processes might be refashioned and deployed in the service of emancipatory and (counter)normative ethics and politics.

Examination of Structures Built with Tunnel Formwork in Terms of Strength and Cost according to the Earthquake Regulations of 2007 and 2018

Turkey has always been exposed to active fault lines passing through and unpredictable seismic activities. These ground movements have always been one of the important issues in our country, which have led to great destruction and loss of lives and property in its past. For this reason, our earthquake regulations, which aim to design more accurately against earthquake movements, are continuously made improvements. In this study, the analysis of structures built with tunnel formwork system which is popular today with the new earthquake regulations entered into force in 2018, and the strength and cost according to the old earthquake regulation in terms of what differences will occur. In addition to the study, we investigated how the number of floors and regular floor plans affects the results. For this purpose, two types of structures were covered with 5, 10, and 15 storey models created, first in the 2007 earthquake regulation; then, in the 2018 earthquake regulation, design analysis was carried out. As a result, the new earthquake regulation, which came into force in 2018, led to more realistic results as it provides more accurate environmental inputs used in design analysis. Earthquake loads affecting floors increased by 3.9% for 5 storey in regular structures, decreasing by 38.4% for 10 stories and 43.3% for 15 stories. More irregular structures increased 7.3% for 5 storey, 10-storey structures decreased by 38.9%, and 15-storey structures decreased by 43.6%. In terms of cost, there was a 0.07% increase in total cost in 5-storey buildings, 2.45% in 10-storey buildings, and a 3.91% reduction in 15-storey buildings. In addition to these results, an empirical formula that estimates m2 prices depending on the number of floors was obtained.

Seismic Shifts: The COVID-19 Pandemic’s Gendered Fault Lines and Implications for International Law

The Covid-19 pandemic and related shutdowns created seismic shifts in the boundaries between public and private life, with lasting implications for human rights and international law. Arriving just as the international legal order was wobbling in the wake of a populist backlash and other great challenges, the pandemic intensified fault lines of marginalisation and state action, amplifying the forces that had already left the liberal international order in crisis and retreat. This article examines the pandemic’s impacts on the international legal order through a gendered lens. It argues that in the short-term, the pandemic has reinforced public-private divides in international law, reinvigorating previous debates over the role of the state in protecting its people from harm. It argues that in the long-term, these developments threaten to unravel the most recent gains in international law and global governance that have supported and expanded the recognition of human rights to marginalised groups. Left unaddressed, this unraveling will further entrench such divides and contribute to the further retreat of the liberal international order. Examining these fault lines and their implications can help us re-imagine a post-pandemic international legal order that offers more protection for human rights, even as multilateral institutions and cooperation sputter or fail.

The Dialectic of Civil and Uncivil Society—Fragility, Fault Lines, and Countervailing Forces

In light of the experience of the past three decades—1989 to 2020—the civil society appears as a fragile institution that seems capable of giving rise to the overthrow of dictators as well as to their ready installation; to engender movements of solidarity and inclusion as well as of hatred and violence. To understand what allows these different tendencies to arise from within the civil society requires that we move past a pre-occupation with the structural and socio-economic dimension of the civil society and recover a conception of the civil society as an inherently moral institution. In this regard, the tradition of social analysis pioneered by Alexis de Tocqueville remains singularly instructive. The cultivation of civility, we can learn, is not an automatic by-product of tamed markets, limited government, and vibrant associational life—necessary and important though these are. The dispositions needed to maintain the civil society do not arise with causal necessity even where associations flourish, markets are tamed, and institutions are well-designed. By facing more squarely the deep moral fault-lines of the civil society we can develop a keener sense of the countervailing forces needed to keep the project of the civil society on track.

Paya Soup

This short story set in Mumbai imagines the enduring legacies of pandemic sickness and immunity. Everyday labors, pleasures, demands, and relations must be navigated across the fault lines of health, illness, and state surveillance.

Gitanjali: Song Offerings

<p>New Zealand lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire – the belt of vulnerable, unpredictable fault lines which are the primary cause for earthquakes in this country. Most recently, as evident in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake -the destruction of the city centre led to the emergence of sub centres in different parts of the city each with different, desperate needs. The lack of preparedness in the wake of an earthquake hence, exacerbated this destitution. This research explores architecture’s role in the sub-centre. How can architecture facilitate resilience through this decentralised typology? The design-led approach critiques the implications of architecture as a tool for resilience whilst highlighting the desperate need for the engagement of architecture in planning before a disaster strikes. The resulting response explores resilience through an architectural lens that has a wider infrastructural, contextual and user-focussed need.</p>

Gitanjali: Song Offerings

<p>New Zealand lies on the Pacific Ring of Fire – the belt of vulnerable, unpredictable fault lines which are the primary cause for earthquakes in this country. Most recently, as evident in the aftermath of the 2011 Christchurch earthquake -the destruction of the city centre led to the emergence of sub centres in different parts of the city each with different, desperate needs. The lack of preparedness in the wake of an earthquake hence, exacerbated this destitution. This research explores architecture’s role in the sub-centre. How can architecture facilitate resilience through this decentralised typology? The design-led approach critiques the implications of architecture as a tool for resilience whilst highlighting the desperate need for the engagement of architecture in planning before a disaster strikes. The resulting response explores resilience through an architectural lens that has a wider infrastructural, contextual and user-focussed need.</p>

The Anomaly of ‘Animal’

This chapter uses carters’ strikes led by bullock-cart drivers in late 19th- and early 20th-century Calcutta to explicate the tensions inherent in colonial animal protection legislations. More specifically, it illustrates how a single decisive event – the carters’ strike of 1862 – confronted two parallel and conflicting worlds, that of the poor, uneducated carters and the Calcutta Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (CSPCA). This historic moment is significant not only because it witnessed the meeting of these two worlds, but because by making the animals a mere proxy protagonist, it revealed the complex fault-lines within a colonial society. The human and the nonhuman subalterns – carters and bullocks, found their fates intertwined as the disadvantaged actors in a powerful, but unsuccessful protectionist crusade. Finally, the chapter reveals that while legislations and newer inventions all worked to unburden the overloaded animal, however, in a perfect colonial irony, the meaning of “animal” itself was left vague and amorphous in the British imagination.