Work-Life Balance Challenges

Within an ever-changing, digitalized world, the working methods have vastly changed over the last few decades. If the effects of a contemporary event such as COVID-19—the global pandemic started in the Hubei region of China at the end of December 2019—are considered, the changes have reached beyond just the practical logistics of working and crossed otherwise untouched social and emotional barriers. As a result of the pandemic, new working ways on an international level have become considerably more prominent. With the post-modern paradigm, organizations have focused on their employees and see them as stakeholders and developed a set of policies and standards under the guise of “an employee-friendly organization.” This chapter sheds light on strategies on how to maintain work-life balance in a virtual environment of remote work, new regulations, and the gaining importance of employee satisfaction, ensuring remote employees feel cared for, valued, and included.

The Past as an Exponent of the Present in Modern Tamil Literature: Story-(re)-Telling and Telling History in Selected Works of Indira Parthasarathy

Indira Parthasarathy is the author of many works that touch upon historical issues but are in fact reflections on contemporary India. Although the narrative of some of them takes place in the past, they cannot be called historical literature. While the author is not really interested in describing the past per se, as is also often the case with other contemporary Tamil writers, clear references to the past and history help him showcase contemporary issues, current problems, and life as it is here and now. The article briefly discusses two plays, whose protagonists are historical figures; a novel based on a contemporary event that has become an integral part of the history of Tamil Nadu; and two other works which came to be written on the basis of writer’s own life experience in Poland and are in a way related to the history of that country.

“Ain’t Nobody Gone Take It from You!”

Dance, in both its historical formulations during the slave trade and its contemporary manifestations in carnival celebrations, has enormous significance for numerous Caribbean cultures. Using some biblical texts to think with (2 Sam 6: 14; Song 6: 13), this paper explores the historical and contemporary event of Junkanoo as a reflection of Bahamian culture and its interaction with colonialism and contemporary tourism. Junkanoo is not explicitly biblical or religious, though it does show the marks and tussles of colonization and hence Christianization. The biblical moments of movement and resistance considered here frame dance in various and interesting ways—as the vehicle for emotional expression, as liberation, as licensed revolt, as the tool of empire—allowing for exploration of dance as a multi-valent, political act, as much as a powerful reflection of affect.

Remembrance of contemporary events: On setting up the Sunflower Movement Archive

In the late evening of 18 March 2014, students and activists stormed into and occupied the main chamber of Taiwan's Legislature. The event set off the Sunflower Movement, signifying a turning point in Taiwan's recent history. Researchers at Academia Sinica arranged to acquire all the supporting artifacts and documentary materials in the chamber before the protest came to a peaceful end. In this article, we discuss the issues in archiving and making available to the public a large collection of artifacts created by thousands of participants during a contemporary event. We demonstrate systems designed to encourage people to identify objects of their own in the archive. We show how an accessible catalog to the archive can help people tell their stories, hence collectively may strengthen the public's recollections about the movement.

Demonic Possessions and Mental Illness: Discussion of selected cases in Late Medieval Hagiographical Literature

During the Middle Ages, demonic possession constituted an explanation for an erratic behavior in society. Exorcism was the treatment generally applied to demoniacs and seems to have caused some alleviation in the suffering of mentally distressed people. We have selected and analyzed some cases of demonic possession from thirteenth-century hagiographical literature. In the description of demoniacs we have been able to find traits of psychotic, mood, neurotic, personality disorders and epilepsy. The exorcisms analyzed in our article are the result of literary invention more than the description of a contemporary event. Nevertheless, the writers were witnesses of their time, transferred their knowledge about exorcism and possession in their narrative and presumably incorporated their actual experience with demoniacs.

De la bigarrure en politique (PlatonRépublique8.557C4–61e7)

This paper deals with Plato's use ofpoikilosand cognates to describe democracy. It does not argue that Plato'sRepubliccontains empirical analyses of some contemporary event, but supposes that an historical reading of the book is possible and legitimate. Post Peloponnesian War Athenian society experienced profound socio-economic changes. Echoing the aristocratic élite's circumspect anxiety when faced with thenouveaux riches, Plato clearly regards obsessive greediness as one of the root causes of the corruption of any political system. Referring to democracy, the philosopher invents thehimation poikilonor ‘embroidered coat of many colours' metaphor. By materializing the multifaceted concept ofpoikilia, this metaphor gives a single and palpable form to the principaltopoiof anti-democratic rhetoric: thehimation poikilonevokes the motley constitution of the Athenian regime, the tyrant's ostentatious opulence, aped by thedemos turannos, the inconstancy of thedemos, the deceitful character of democracy and, last but not least, its penchant for spectacles.

The Drama of Revolution and Reaction: Marxist History and the Twentieth Century

Marx's The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte was written not as a history but as an insight to the present – as a piece of contemporary political analysis. The The Eighteenth Brumaire aims to explain the political turmoil of 1848 to 1849 that ended in Napoleon's coup d' état. It was part of the first genre of historical writing to take as its object the most important political episodes of the century. The The Eighteenth Brumaire seeks to make sense of some contemporary event by constructing a narrative of it informed by the Marxist theory of history. This chapter considers specific cases of the dynamics of revolution, including the processes through which revolution is prevented and reaction institutionalized. It also discusses Marxist interpretations of the twentieth century, with emphasis on the Marxist thesis proposed by Perry Anderson, Eric Hobshawn, and Francis Fukuyama. Within the framework of Marxist historiography, the chapter measures how Marx's theory of history confronts the present as a historical problem.