List of recent publications submitted by our members.
2020 |
Schoots, John Padgett; Katalin Prajda; Benjamin Rohr; Jonathan F Political discussion and debate in narrative time: the Florentine Consulte e Pratiche, 1376–1378 Journal Article Poetics, 78 (101377), 2020. Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: 2020 @article{Padgett2020, title = {Political discussion and debate in narrative time: the Florentine Consulte e Pratiche, 1376–1378}, author = {John F Padgett; Katalin Prajda; Benjamin Rohr; Jonathan Schoots}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2019.101377}, year = {2020}, date = {2020-09-24}, journal = {Poetics}, volume = {78}, number = {101377}, abstract = {The Florentine Consulte e Pratiche is the oldest recorded series of speech-by-speech policy discussion by political elites in European history, over one hundred and fifty years in length. This article is the first of an extended two-article sequence on political discussion in the Consulte e Pratiche, during the 1376–1378 period of the War of Eight Saints, which led up to the famous Ciompi Revolt. Our interest is in discovering both the semantic-network (article 1) and the factional-network (article 2) mechanics of this unexpected spillover from foreign-policy conflict into domestic revolt. Our central finding at the semantic level, in this first article, is that the spillover from war to revolution was mediated through the ceremonial and political-economy sides of religion. The methodology in this first article is to uncover the evolving narrative-network structures exhibited in Florentine political discussion – namely, changing inter-correlations among keywords about topics, through chapters and subplots. “Narrative-network analysis” for us means (a) uncovering changing topological portraits of how subplots interlink through time, and (b) discovering interlocking linguistic “hinges” through which new historical trajectories of subplot combinations become defined. In our case, the linguistic hinges between foreign policy and domestic revolt were rooted in religion. How the evolving issues and topics discussed in this article express themselves in domestic (and eventually violent) political conflict between the anti-war Parte Guelfa faction and the pro-war Civic ‘faction’ will be the subject of the second of this complementary pair of articles.}, keywords = {2020}, pubstate = {published}, tppubtype = {article} } The Florentine Consulte e Pratiche is the oldest recorded series of speech-by-speech policy discussion by political elites in European history, over one hundred and fifty years in length. This article is the first of an extended two-article sequence on political discussion in the Consulte e Pratiche, during the 1376–1378 period of the War of Eight Saints, which led up to the famous Ciompi Revolt. Our interest is in discovering both the semantic-network (article 1) and the factional-network (article 2) mechanics of this unexpected spillover from foreign-policy conflict into domestic revolt. Our central finding at the semantic level, in this first article, is that the spillover from war to revolution was mediated through the ceremonial and political-economy sides of religion. The methodology in this first article is to uncover the evolving narrative-network structures exhibited in Florentine political discussion – namely, changing inter-correlations among keywords about topics, through chapters and subplots. “Narrative-network analysis” for us means (a) uncovering changing topological portraits of how subplots interlink through time, and (b) discovering interlocking linguistic “hinges” through which new historical trajectories of subplot combinations become defined. In our case, the linguistic hinges between foreign policy and domestic revolt were rooted in religion. How the evolving issues and topics discussed in this article express themselves in domestic (and eventually violent) political conflict between the anti-war Parte Guelfa faction and the pro-war Civic ‘faction’ will be the subject of the second of this complementary pair of articles. |
Lee., Liam Downey; Elizabeth Lawrence; Micah Pyles; Derek Power, Hegemony, and World Society Theory: A Critical Evaluation Journal Article Socius, 6 , 2020. Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: 2020 @article{Downey2020, title = {Power, Hegemony, and World Society Theory: A Critical Evaluation}, author = {Liam Downey; Elizabeth Lawrence; Micah Pyles; Derek Lee.}, url = {https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2378023120920059}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023120920059}, year = {2020}, date = {2020-05-07}, journal = {Socius}, volume = {6}, abstract = {World society theory has been one of the better published theoretical paradigms of the past 30 to 40 years. But despite its publishing successes, world society theory and research are beset by a number of theoretical and empirical problems that call into question the theory’s ability to accurately describe and explain the global diffusion of government practices, policies, and structures. The authors summarize world society theory’s key claims, demonstrate that the theory has trouble explaining a set of diffusion outcomes that it needs to be able to explain, and show that a key reason for this is that the actors highlighted by the theory are embedded in hierarchical and power-laden organizations, networks, and fields that strongly limit the kinds of actions these actors can take and the kinds of cultural scripts they can follow.}, keywords = {2020}, pubstate = {published}, tppubtype = {article} } World society theory has been one of the better published theoretical paradigms of the past 30 to 40 years. But despite its publishing successes, world society theory and research are beset by a number of theoretical and empirical problems that call into question the theory’s ability to accurately describe and explain the global diffusion of government practices, policies, and structures. The authors summarize world society theory’s key claims, demonstrate that the theory has trouble explaining a set of diffusion outcomes that it needs to be able to explain, and show that a key reason for this is that the actors highlighted by the theory are embedded in hierarchical and power-laden organizations, networks, and fields that strongly limit the kinds of actions these actors can take and the kinds of cultural scripts they can follow. |
Padgett., Jonathan Schoots; Benjamin Rohr; Katalin Prajda; John F Conflict and revolt in the name of unity: Florentine factions in the Consulte e Pratiche on the cusp of the Ciompi Revolt Journal Article Poetics, 78 (101386), 2020. Abstract | Links | BibTeX | Tags: 2020 @article{Schoots2020, title = {Conflict and revolt in the name of unity: Florentine factions in the Consulte e Pratiche on the cusp of the Ciompi Revolt}, author = {Jonathan Schoots; Benjamin Rohr; Katalin Prajda; John F. Padgett.}, doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2019.101386}, year = {2020}, date = {2020-02-05}, journal = {Poetics}, volume = {78}, number = {101386}, abstract = {We analyze public-policy speeches in the Florentine Consulte e Pratiche, immediately prior to the Ciompi Revolt, for signs of elite factional conflict, in the context of self-proclaimed unity. We employ three statistical analyses of these speeches in Latin: namely, scatterplots of word frequencies, Wordfish scaling, and regressions on speech-similarities. Plus we employ two qualitative analyses: a case study of the speeches of Lapo da Castiglionchio, leader of the Parte Guelfa faction, and a close examination of the rhetoric of unity in three important sets of meetings. Our main finding is this: The runup to the Ciompi Revolt was crystalization of “unity of citizens” in the room of the Consulte e Pratiche and, among the same actors, crystallization of “unity of Guelfs” in the room of the Parte Guelfa, with a lack of recognition in the multivocal speeches in the former of the obvious contradiction with actions in the latter. In our opinion, the tragedy of “the valiant failure of republicanism” in Florence was that intense wishful yearning for unity in speech induced, under background conditions of deep social-class contestation about “Who is Florence?,” an intensification in action of the very revolutionary forces that it most desperately wanted to suppress. }, keywords = {2020}, pubstate = {published}, tppubtype = {article} } We analyze public-policy speeches in the Florentine Consulte e Pratiche, immediately prior to the Ciompi Revolt, for signs of elite factional conflict, in the context of self-proclaimed unity. We employ three statistical analyses of these speeches in Latin: namely, scatterplots of word frequencies, Wordfish scaling, and regressions on speech-similarities. Plus we employ two qualitative analyses: a case study of the speeches of Lapo da Castiglionchio, leader of the Parte Guelfa faction, and a close examination of the rhetoric of unity in three important sets of meetings. Our main finding is this: The runup to the Ciompi Revolt was crystalization of “unity of citizens” in the room of the Consulte e Pratiche and, among the same actors, crystallization of “unity of Guelfs” in the room of the Parte Guelfa, with a lack of recognition in the multivocal speeches in the former of the obvious contradiction with actions in the latter. In our opinion, the tragedy of “the valiant failure of republicanism” in Florence was that intense wishful yearning for unity in speech induced, under background conditions of deep social-class contestation about “Who is Florence?,” an intensification in action of the very revolutionary forces that it most desperately wanted to suppress. |