From the Preface: The purpose of this book is to
explain the Western's popularity. While the Western itself may seem
simple (it isn't quite), an explanation of its popularity cannot
be; for the ...Western, like any myth, stands between individual human
consciousness and society. If a myth is popular, it must somehow
appeal to or reinforce the individuals who view it by communicating
a symbolic meaning to them. This meaning must, in turn, reflect the
particular social institutions and attitudes that have created and
continue to nourish the myth. Thus, a myth must tell its viewers
about themselves and their society. This study, which takes up the
question of the Western as an American myth, will lead us into
abstract structural theory as well as economic and political
history. Mostly, however, it will take us into the movies, the
spectacular and not-so-spectacular sagebrush of the cinema. Unlike
most works of social science, the data on which my analysis is
based is available to all of my readers, either at the local
theater or, more likely, on the late, late show. I hope you will
take the opportunity, whenever it is offered, to check my findings
and test my interpretations; the effort is small and the rewards
are many. And if your wife, husband, mother, or child asks you why
you are wasting your time staring at Westerns on TV in the middle
of the night, tell them firmly-as I often did-that you are doing
research in social science.
My paper maps the most important representatives of the occult and esoteric currents in twentieth century Hungary. Their works and tes- timonies encompass the genesis of modern esotericism in ...Hungary, but their careers also demonstrate the catastrophic watershed caused by fascism and the Second World War, only to be continued (however mostly secretly) during the communist era. The paper first provides an overview of the development of major esoteric trends in modern Hungary (from the late nineteenth century to the time of the regime change in 1989), then focuses on three outstanding seekers of holistic enlightenment: Ervin Baktay (1890‒1963), Béla Hamvas (1897‒1968), Mária Szepes (1908‒2007). All three developed their philosophy after WWI; all were influenced by Theosophy and Indian mysticism; all were scholars of various fields of the humanities, at the same time as being writers of “belle lettres” – poetry as well as fiction. After WWII, all three were looked at with suspicion and were silenced; however, they also found ways of expressing themselves and gathering disciples in various interesting ways.
The article is dedicated to Antanas Olis (1898–1958), a Lithuanian American public and political figure, lawyer. It analyses the key moments of his life and activities, his influence in the ...political, public and cultural life of the émigré community. The article investigates the activities of Antanas Olis after Lithuania’s occupation by the Soviets when he actively joined political activities and made a special contribution in organising and participating in various political campaigns which sought to bring up the issue of Lithuania among Americans. Through his ties with Americans and his work in the national Republican Party group, Olis won his way to the broader horizons of the US politics in the attempt to draw attention to the case of the freedom of Lithuania.
Most historical events support the construction of ontological relations based on domain relations and conceptual relationships. On this basis, we aim to generate an operational desktop related to ...the reconfiguration process in Central and Eastern Europe in the period following the Great War using ontology architecture. The purpose is to extract explanations with a broad sense of the complexity related to the historical events that are studied. For this approach, I construct ontologies based on a projection of the descriptive framework of the history of the Versailles system in a dedicated knowledge-base. This makes it possible to extract candidate relations and then map them into a meaningful representation meant to facilitate ontology analysis. The paper discusses this prospection in terms of probabilities distribution from a Markov process as an image of the postwar historical reality.
Situated in a zone of great strategic interest, the Straits have represented in the course of time an important asset for those who possessed them and a permanent object of the Great Powers’ desire ...to control them. The Turkish Republic sought, as was only natural, to consolidate her control of the Straits at the Lausanne Conference. As to the Straits, the treaty stipulates that: “its purpose is to ensure the opening and to grant the passage liberty through the Straits of all peoples’ commercial transactions.” Turkey and implicitly the ussr, as main powers at the Black Sea, alongside with the neighboring states, agreed to assign the preparation of the final statute of the Black Sea and of the Straits to a subsequent conference of delegates of the neighboring states, “excluding the possibility that the ensuing decisions jeopardize Turkey’s absolute sovereignty and security.”
This paper conducts a system review of Ottoman state legislation from 1867 to 1868 concerning the establishment and organization of the Council of State (ura-y Devlet) ofthe Ottoman Empire. In ...particular, the contents of the Organic Ordinance of the Councilof State and source materials concerning the reasons for the establishment of the Councilof State, including Sultan Abdülazizs speech (Nutk- Hümâyûn) and La Turquie et le Tanzimâtby Edouard Engelhardt, were analyzed. The present analysis of the history of the OttomanCouncil of State until 1868 also provides an overview of the most important system of stateinstitutions in the Ottoman Empire, which were responsible for the legislative processas well as for the quasi-administrative judiciary in the period before the establishment ofura-y Devlet.
In 1572–1668 the Sejm of the Commonwealth of Two Nations underwent constant evolution. The greatest changes occurred at the time of the first interregnum (1572–74) after the death of the last ...Jagiellonian monarch – Zygmunt Augustus (1572). This was the time of the emergence of two types of new Sejms (convocation and election ones), functioning exclusively during the interregnum. The Henrician Articles (1574) resolved that the Sejm was to debate only for six weeks, and that the monarch was compelled to convoke it at least once every two years. The extraordinary Sejm was established in 1613 – it could be convened in cases of urgent needs and it sat for two or three weeks. The Parliament was composed of three estates: the king, the Senate, and the deputies as well as two chambers. The upper chamber (Senate) consisted of senators nominated by the monarch on a lifelong basis, and the lower chamber (Chamber of Deputies) – of deputies of the noble estate elected at pre-Sejm sejmiks (Polish: sejmiki). An integral part of the Parliament was composed of the Sejm court, both appellant and trying gravest crimes. The Crown and Lithuanian Tribunal, established in 1578–81, assumed appellation competences from the Sejm court. Tribunal judges were elected every year for a year-long term of office at special sejmiks known as deputational or deputy (judicial), which constituted a forum; here deputies presented to the voters accounts of their parliamentary activity. At the turn of 1591, post-Sejm or relational (debriefing) sejmiks were convened after the closure of the Sejm debates; here deputies presented reports concerning their parliamentary activities. The growing composition of the Parliament was associated with an expansion of state territory as a result of victorious wars waged against Muscovy. New bishoprics, voivodeships, and sejmiki were established. There were 140 senators in 1572, and 150 during the 1630s. Analogously, the number of deputies grew from 166 to 180. The Sejm acted upon the basis of a consensus, and thus was obligated to take into account the stand of the minorities. In 1652, the protest of a single deputy for the first time rendered further Sejm debates impossible. From then on, the Polish-Lithuanian Parliament constantly succumbed to a degradation process.
This paper comments on two Mesopotamian bricks belonging to collections of the Asiaand Pacific Museum and the National Museum in Warsaw. Both bricks bear cuneiforminscriptions. The first was ...fashioned during the reign of the Ur king Amar-Suen(c. 2046–2038 BC) while the second is to be dated to the reign of the Neo-Assyrian kingShalmaneser III (858–824 BC). They commemorate building projects commissioned bythese two Mesopotamian kings.
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