“Direct action” emerged as a central concept in labour-movement politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article traces and explains that process of invention. In doing so, it seeks to settle three currently unresolved historical problems: the problem of the meaning of direct action; the problem of its relative novelty; and the problem of its relationship to nation. The article draws upon pamphlets and newspapers published on four continents in English, French, Spanish, and German. It argues that the concept of direct action was used in several analytically distinguishable ways: categorical; performative; and strategic. While aspects of direct action were evident in many nations over several decades, French activists played a decisive and catalytic role in the development of the concept. They welded the categorical, performative, and strategic together. They assembled key performances into an agreed repertoire. And they underlined the revolutionary significance of this combination. This new assemblage was then widely taken up across the global labour movement.

In colonial Hispanic America, widows and widowers were in an unfavorable position if their spouse died without a will, only inheriting from them if the deceased left no blood relatives to the 10th degree of kinship. This article examines the extent to which the intestate position of the surviving spouse improved in the new civil codes of the sixteen republics, and how their approaches were influenced by the circulation of ideas. It finds that in all except one the spouse came to be favored over the extended family. If the deceased left children, two approaches developed with respect to the inclusion of spouses: where they obtained an unconditional right to an inheritance share equal to a child, and where their inheriting depended on their relative poverty or need. These reforms took place in concert with the rise of the centrality of the conjugal unit as the focus of affection, loyalty, and responsibilities, and prior to such reforms in Europe. The countries that went furthest in elevating the position of spouses, Venezuela and Argentina, were those most deeply influenced by the ideas and changes fostered by liberalism.

The longstanding practice of building opera librettos on stories from classical antiquity (especially Greece and Rome, and, to a lesser extent, Egypt, Persia and Babylonia) waned in the early 1800s, as impresarios began to favour plots with more obvious current-day resonance (though sometimes set a few centuries in the past, to skirt objections from government censors and, in some lands, church authorities). Still, imaginative librettists and composers found ways of rejuvenating an ancient setting and producing an opera that spoke to the day's audiences instead of feeling stuffy or academic. One of the biggest successes in French serious opera of the 1850s was Félicien David's Herculanum, set to a text primarily by the renowned playwright and poet Joseph Méry. Widely hailed, not least by composer-critics Hector Berlioz and Ernest Reyer, the work freshened the ‘ancient Rome’ conventions by locating the action far to the south, near what is today Naples, and by including, as the main characters, two powerful aristocrats from the Euphrates valley, and two young adepts of the nascent Christian movement – and a fifth character, Satan himself, come to wreak havoc in the world. All of this would seem a stewpot of a librettist's wild imaginings were it not for the quality and impressive variety of David's music – and the opportunities that libretto and music together give to imaginative performers, as has been demonstrated in the work's three major revivals beginning in 2014 (in Belgium/France, Ireland and Hungary).

This article analyzes Hungary’s kin-state policy starting from the premise that the concept of collective narcissism most succinctly captures its emotional foundations. I look to substantiate this claim by examining at a wide range of sources on how Hungary feels toward neighboring states and show the preponderance of emotions connected to collective narcissism. The real-life consequences of collective narcissism are demonstrated through a case study of the relationship between Hungary and Ukraine before and after the Russian attack of 2022. Overall, I find that anger is the master emotion of Hungary’s kin-state policy, resulting in a lack of solidarity and characteristic self-centeredness in Hungary’s foreign policy, which cannot be explained by rational factors alone.

Adolescents, particularly those in multiethnic, multilingual communities, have become central to sociolinguistic research in the variationist tradition (Cheshire, Nortier & Adger 2015). In several studies of adolescent speech in European urban centres, the same set of Arabic-derived epistemic phrases, namely wallah, wallahi and related phrases meaning ‘swear’, appear to be in use (see, e.g., Quist 2005; Opsahl 2009; Lehtonen 2015). In this article, we document how these phrases are used in the speech of adolescents from a borough of West London and demonstrate the functional similarities between the current data and studies of adolescents in other West European contexts. Using a distributional analysis, we also draw several comparisons between our data and data collected in previous studies of adolescent speech in London. We find functional and distributional similarities and contrasts in both cases. We then discuss the consequences of these findings for the study of epistemic markers and their relevance in adolescent speech.

In 1989, after few decades of Soviet disinformation, a fourth investigation by the state commission finally recognized Bykivnia, located on the outskirt of Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, as being a burial place for victims of the Soviet regime. Later in 1994, the Historical and Cultural Reserve “Bykivnians’ky Graves” was launched at the site, marking the initial point of the state remembrance of victims of Soviet political repressions and consequently indicating the importance of the victimhood narrative when portraying the Soviet past. This article examines the historical recognition of Bykivnia and the development of a martyrological landscape on the site in context with the establishment of state legislative actions and commemorative policies regarding victims of Soviet political repressions. The case study of Bykivnia should provide a basic understanding of domestic and international contradictions when creating a victimhood narrative and will question approaches taken for adapting this narrative in building a national identity.

This article explores representations of south-western speech in nineteenth-century dialect writing. It draws on a selection of specimens from the Salamanca Corpus in order to determine what they can tell us about the language of south-western speakers at this time. By focusing on periphrastic do and pronoun exchange, I argue that representations of south-western dialects can be taken as a missing link in the history of these two grammatical features. In fact, the analysis of their distribution and frequency, which this article explores in dialect writing for the first time, shows that they accord with later evidence to an interesting degree. At the same time, the data are placed within the third-wave sociolinguistic models of enregisterment and indexicality so as to show that the conscious representation of these morphosyntactic features reflects contemporary perceptions about their use in south-western dialects while they reveal indexical associations between place, speaker and speech. This article thus seeks to contribute to the history of south-western dialects, while underscoring the validity of dialect writing as a source of Late Modern English speech where the structural and ideological dimensions of dialect intersect.

Several watershed events preceded the dissolution of Yugoslavia. One of these was the toppling of the Vojvodina autonomist leadership in October 1988. This was preceded by a series of rallies throughout Vojvodina in the summer of 1988, which may have seemed like a spontaneous affair and the work of “ordinary citizens.” It was called “the antibureaucratic revolution.” However, these rallies, including a standing group of demonstrators, continually and always referring to the grievances of Kosovo Serbs, turned out to be supported by the Serbian political elite centered in Belgrade. The elite, still headed by the Serbian Communist Chief Slobodan Milošević, gave thrust and coordination to efforts to organize the rallies. The Vojvodina leadership was toppled for their alleged “failing to understand the plight of Kosovo Serbs.” The overthrow was, further, with a view to achieve the Serbian elite’s pet project, the “united Serbia”—that is, doing away with Vojvodina’s and Kosovo’s autonomy. Written sources (including recollections by Yugoslav leaders of the time) and written sources are considered in research on the events.

This article analyzes the trauma of war present in the collective memory of the inhabitants of the village of Bojszowy. It may transform into a cultural trauma that significantly determines the community’s identity. Combining four strands of literature—memory studies, nationalist studies, historical studies, and psychological studies—the authors argue that in the community under study, the trauma connected with Upper Silesians’ service in the Wehrmacht during World War II constitutes such a collective cultural trauma. Based on the study of the collective memory of the Silesian community and interviews with the Silesian intellectual elite, the article analyzes in detail how the memory of these events has changed the identity of the Upper Silesian community in recent years. This does not mean that we underestimate the importance of the other elements that make up the Upper Silesian tragedy. A combination of local circumstances meant that the service of Silesians in the Wehrmacht was crucial to the occurrence of cultural trauma (in J. Alexander’s terms).

The overall aim of this article is to show that pauper letters are a valuable, but as yet largely untapped resource for historical dialectological research. Offering a case study based on 31 poor-relief applications sent by 10 individuals to parishes in Dorset between 1742 and 1834, the article aims to identify regional variation, especially as associated with Dorset and/or the Southwest of England more generally, by comparing variant spellings and morphosyntactic usages contained in the letters with features listed in modern dialect surveys (mainly Wakelin 1986; Altendorf & Watt 2008; Wagner 2008), as well as in Dorset poet William Barnes’ Dissertation and the reconstruction of his idiolect by Burton (2013). It is possible to isolate 297 occurrences of 52 different phonological and morphosyntactic features in the pauper letters; 11 of these features are salient across the letter selection (i.e. represented by at least three paupers) and are suggestive of the provenance of the letters. The article also offers surprising findings such as the absence of the prototypically Southwestern fricative voicing, features unrecorded by modern synopses (e.g. unmarked possessive), and the presence of a feature (-ind for -ing) which had fallen out of common use in the fifteenth century.

After the unanimous endorsement of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) by the Human Rights Council in June 2011, human rights due diligence (HRDD) has become a common currency widely embraced among stakeholders operating in the business and human rights (BHR) field. The UNGPs envisage HRDD to be the primary tool for businesses to identify, prevent, mitigate and account for adverse impacts of their activities on internationally recognized human rights.

The take-up of mandatory human rights due diligence (HRDD) initiatives by states is continuously gaining momentum. There are now numerous states adopting some form of HRDD laws. While corporations being duly diligent in respecting human rights is a positive step towards addressing problems of business and human rights, these HRDD initiatives on their own may only be a form of window-dressing, that is, enabling states to put a smart spin on their efforts to address business and human rights issues without addressing some of the root causes of that predicament. As a result, HRDD laws are likely to be a helpful, but insufficient tool for addressing corporate abuse of human rights. One reason for this is because the root cause of many business and human rights problems is the structural elements and goals of corporate law facilitates corporate violations of human rights. So long as states fail to transform the way in which corporations operate – in part, by reconceptualizing corporate law – even the best drafted HRDD laws will be inadequate to halt corporate harms.

The scale and scope of the climate crisis and its drastically worsening impacts means that even as a ‘climate due diligence’ obligation is increasingly taking shape as a dimension of human rights due diligence, there is also growing evidence of the limitations of this emerging norm. This article provides four critiques of climate due diligence based on its insufficiency, its conceptual ambiguity, its operational limitations, and its structural limitations. It argues that these critiques could be addressed by regulatory reform that draw clear ‘red lines’ based on the need to prevent the development of any new fossil fuel and address the ‘corporate capture’ of regulatory institutions by the fossil fuel industry. Additionally, it calls for reparations to ensure effective access to a remedy for existing and potential future climate-related human rights impacts that business has caused or contributed to.

The goal of this exploratory article is to examine the specifics and networks within and between conservative organizations at the local, regional, and national levels in Poland. By investigating these connections in 2016 using social network analysis and interviews, we contribute to a better understanding of the growth and structure of these groups, which created the base for right-wing organizations as well as led to the success of right-wing parties in Poland and vice versa. We expect to find that the majority of far-right organization networks is vertically structured, linking those organizations at the local level with national organizations; those at the top sustain them financially and offer popularity, access to politics, and other opportunities. However, although right-wing organizations care more about the linkages with their national counterparts, we expect to find that those few local organizations that form links with like-minded local organizations emphasize grassroots activities unrelated to participation in political party activities and are less radical and more civil in their behavior and attitudes.

This article studies human rights due diligence by private corporate creditors in the context of sovereign debt restructurings. First, the legal bases of this specific due diligence are presented and systematized. Then, by providing empirical statistical evidence, the article analyses whether haircuts applied by creditors across countries regularly consider the social and economic human rights situation of the debtor countries in question, as part of creditors’ due diligence. Also, the main characteristics of bond markets that contribute to understanding the asymmetric power relationship between private lenders and sovereign borrowers are described. Finally, Argentina’s latest debt restructurings are studied in depth to determine whether human rights were taken into account when agreeing on the size of haircuts. From quantitative and qualitative data, this article concludes that the haircuts agreed by creditors are regularly not sensitive to the social and economic human rights situation of debtor populations or to the impact that debt agreements could have on them.

Discussing music in Portugal in the nineteenth century, and the digital resources that the country makes available for musicological research on this historical period, requires, first of all, a clarification about the chronological boundaries that limit this temporal unit. One can naturally understand that the periodization to be adopted should be the most obvious, that is, the one that determines the dates 1801 and 1900 as the beginning and end of the century in question. But it is worth asking whether it would not be more appropriate to define a periodization based on the events that unequivocally determined the panorama of music in Portugal in that century.