Napoleon III's 1860s intervention in Mexico mystified some British observers. For many others, however, it raised urgent questions about the duties of European civilization and the future of global order. This article argues that the affair forced attitudes toward other European countries' overseas imperial projects into sharp political focus, and that in doing so it revealed incipient shifts in the center of gravity of Victorian liberalism. France's Second Mexican Empire split opinion in the Liberal Party and press, throwing light on wider disputes about the parameters of legitimate imperial intervention, the reach of the principles of nationality and self-determination, the political needs of disordered multiracial polities in less-developed parts of the world, and Europe's proper relations with Spanish America. But most Liberals who engaged with the enterprise condemned it, a fact that lays bare a changing balance of power between what historians have called “liberal imperial” and noninterventionist arguments in the 1860s. The failure of the intervention, moreover, did much to affirm powerful partisan narratives about French politics, which helped to buttress the electoral ascendancy of the Liberal Party.

From its very conception some thirty years ago, Berlin's Humboldt Forum has been one of contemporary Germany's most controversial cultural initiatives. One aspect of this controversy has been the role of the Prussian past in reunified Germany. Housed in a reconstruction of the Prussian Royal Palace destroyed by the East German communist government in 1950, the visual symbolism of the project spurred a long struggle over the appropriate urban aesthetic for the country's capital city. In the view of many critics, the structure symbolizes the triumph of a particular conservative narrative of national memory that excludes the GDR, downplays National Socialism, and uncritically celebrates the Prussian past. This article traces how public debates about the structure of the Humboldt Forum have served as a vehicle for reflection on Prussian history and its relevance (or irrelevance) for reunified Germany.

It is now well established that algorithms are transforming our economy, institutions, social relations and ultimately our society. This paper explores the question – what is the role of law in the algorithmic society? We draw on the law-jobs theory of Karl Llewellyn and on William's Twining refinement of Llewellyn's work through the perspective of a thin functionalism to have a better understanding of what law does in this new context. We highlight the emergence of an algorithmic law, as law performs jobs such as the disposition of trouble-cases, the preventive channelling and reorientation of conduct and expectations, and the allocation of authority in the face of algorithmic systems. We conclude that the law-jobs theory remains relevant to understanding the role of law in the algorithmic society, but it is also challenged by how algorithms redefine who does or should do what law-jobs, and how they are done.

The Global Financial Crisis of 2008 was followed by an increased volatility in capital flows, posing considerable macro-financial risks, especially for emerging markets. Turkey addressed these macro-financial risks between 2010 and 2011. Principal decision makers at the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey took policy actions by introducing policy mixes that trigger causal mechanisms informing the behaviour of bankers and their customers at the macro level to contain such risks. Utilising insights from causal mechanisms theory, critical realism, and realist evaluation, this article explores how the Central Bank implemented the policy mix. Our central argument is that at the macro level (i.e., structural and institutional contexts), causal mechanisms link actions with micro-level contexts (i.e., perceptions and reasoning of the target audience), whilst at the micro level, multiple causal mechanisms link policy outcomes with actor behaviour through non-linear feedback mechanisms. Our article contributes to the causal mechanisms literature by linking policy mixes and policy outcomes via causal mechanisms that informed agential actions and outcomes containing macro-financial risks.

Over the first two decades of the twenty-first century, John Witte, Jr. has not only carefully documented but also creatively promoted in many ways three very important developments: (1) the almost revolutionary worldwide reawakening of cooperation in the fields of law and religion after the termination of their long, fruitful history of cooperation in the mid-1800s; (2) the efforts to strengthen a justice-oriented legal culture in democratic societies and the legal, academic, and political appreciation of human rights (also in disputes with human rights skeptics); and (3) the reconciliation of traditional values and new needs for freedom in the ethos and law of marriage and family.

Argentine, Chilean, and Uruguayan hinchas (soccer or football supporters) cheer for their teams primarily through contrafacta of popular music. Until recently, chants were mainly composed in stadiums and other physical spaces of fan socialization. However, the increasing dominance of the messaging app WhatsApp has altered these sociomusical relations. Drawing on ethnographic work, I argue that the messaging app has fostered both sociality and anti-sociality within and between fanbases. Hinchas employ its creative affordances to digitally decentre creativity from individuals through the distribution of inventive tasks between different people. However, WhatsApp also contributes to football violence by intimately spreading hate memes, aggressive chants, and videos of torture, among other forms of violent media. In illustrating that the messaging app can immerse and infect subjects in both productive and destructive relationalities, this article ultimately underscores the social and anti-social potentialities of viral media and digital technologies.

Music podcasts have proliferated as public discourse about popular music. A significant part of the expanding podcast industry, music podcasts include titles such as All Songs Considered, Switched on Pop, Song Exploder, Sound Opinions, New York Times Popcast, and Lost Notes. These podcasts often feature a combination of conversation and musical selections, which highlight aspects of the music for podcast listeners. In this article, I argue that we should think of music podcasts as persuasive demonstrations of music consumption. Music podcasts present music as a subject for discussion and also implicitly model listening techniques, convincing podcast listeners to adopt specific approaches to music recordings. I explore three podcasts: All Songs Considered, Switched on Pop, and Disability Visibility. I examine how these podcasts present music as their subject, while advancing particular theories of listening that can serve or subvert privileged modes of music reception.

In May 2021, Brazilian pop-funk superstar Anitta released ‘Girl from Rio’. The song was based on the melodic foundation of the bossa nova song ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ that became a huge international hit at the end of the 1960s bossa nova craze. ‘Girl from Rio’ features trap beats on top of the familiar melody with a clear lyrical message that critiques international stereotypes of women from Brazil. When Anitta attempted to capture the US market through TikTok and a high-profile remix, much of her critique disappeared. This article employs the concept of ‘digital fatigue’ to explore how viral musical content loses crucial aspects of its meaning through circulation and endless embodied repetition. By focusing on how the repetition of viral musical media perpetuates stereotypes, it shows how the environment for transnational success requires easy associations to spread.

This article analyses the rise of YouTube in India between 2008 and 2018 by focusing on two central themes: first, shifts in digital infrastructure that enabled the widespread consumption of streaming media; and second, the importance of music-media aesthetics in supporting the platform's predominance. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and close readings of videos by significant early Indian YouTube performers, I trace how an ‘aesthetics of intimacy’ facilitated the practices of ‘engagement’ that drove YouTube's expansion and monetization. The article thus highlights the infrastructuralizing capacities of musical aesthetics as they have allowed YouTube to become the predominant online platform for the circulation of videos and attention in India and beyond. Ultimately, I suggest that scholars of digital music cultures must attend to the intertwining of aesthetics and infrastructure to gain insight into the corporate industry imaginaries that guide platform expansion in emerging digital markets.

In this article, I analyse the implications of autoplaying video as a driver of ‘audile techniques’ in the 2010s digital ecosystem – in particular, techniques that respond to the realities of the separability of image and sound, even in media that contain both elements. I then examine a number of strategies through which this audio/visual split has been negotiated, monetized, and creatively bridged by consumers, creators, and corporate personnel – from the creation of new audiovisual genres and aesthetics, to the rise of particular platform pricing models, to the adoption (and, potentially, exploitation) of accessibility features. Ultimately, I seek to show how negotiations of sound and listening factor deeply into contemporary attempts to harness and monetize ‘attention’ as a commodity in a digital economy of platforms, advertisements, and data.

This article explores the strategies employed by user-creators as they listen to, sense, make, and share digital audiovisual memes of musicking non-human animals on social media. Memes, reels, and other forms of audiovisual social media posts are a form of cultural expression that reveals the varied ways humans relate to, connect with, and represent non-human animals – especially their pets – through sound, music, and the moving image. By listening to the plurality of musicking animals circulating on social media platforms and networks, I argue that user-creators conspicuously use music and performance to express alternative ideas of what it means to be musical, to feel closer to and connect with the important animals in their lives, and to explore the ways they can represent non-human animals using sound and music to explore musical concepts. Using a varied selection of viral musicking animal memes shared across social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter, I frame musicking animal participatory media as a creative space for exploring different approaches to listening, performing with, and scoring sound and music to the behaviour, movement, and acoustic communication of the non-human animal. Non-human animal musicking takes a variety of forms across this particular kind of participatory media making by online user-creators.

In 2011, Alex Heitlinger, a senior at New England Conservatory, uploaded the video ‘The Lick’ to YouTube. The 1′34″ compilation excerpted a range of performances that each deployed the same seven-note ‘lick’. This article explores the digital dissemination of videos and memes that feature the Lick, suggesting its function as a mimetic device users can deploy to signal their belonging and individuality within a larger jazz community. The Lick, in its formulaic deployment within these ‘insider’ spaces, moves away from improvisation and becomes a calling card for performers and listeners alike to determine a legitimate participant, on and offline. The Lick's online proliferation becomes a gimmick through its repetition, pointing to its hyper-presence and complaints about the excessive posts of the Lick becoming recycled into over-repeated jokes. I argue the Lick serves as the basis for a study of humour and gimmickry in jazz identity formation.