Targeting the educated, the New Quarterly commented on literary and theatre criticism and Continental journalism from Portugal to Russia.

1. Latouche, John [Oswald Crawfurd]. “Notes of Travel in Portugal.” 2 (1874): 443–65, 667–705; 3 (1874–75): 399–415.

Part of a series quoted Charles Dana that ocean travel, by depriving people of “their daily dose of newspaper reading,” left them little to say. Agreed that he was correct about the English and Americans but not others, who “seldom read newspapers.”

“The newspaper fills but a small part of the life either of Spaniards or Portuguese. Religious, literary, scientific, legal, and social life in Portugal are hardly reflected at all in the journals.” People only read the newspapers for politics, but the parliamentary speeches were “scantily reproduced,” and “deliberate discussion of home politics” was rare. The gazettes were replete with “rumours that fill the columns of European journals.” The Portuguese tribunes were tiny, about the same size as early “English News Letters” and “Flying Mercuries,” and like those sheets, concentrated on foreign events and appealed to the emotions. The Portuguese aped the French, reporting everything, even the weather, “with literary artifice.” Obituaries were “exquisitely pompous and stilted,” probably because relatives paid for them. Critics earned money for puffs. By contrast, the British press had news and views. Thanks to a “free and cheap press” the British press was immense, whereas in Portugal, “newspapers are scarce and small.”

Poverty in Indonesia declined significantly during the two decades prior to the 1997 Asian financial crisis (AFC), when the poverty rate surged. The poverty rate has again been decreasing steadily since the crisis. Geographical disparity is an important aspect of poverty in Indonesia, with the poverty headcount rate for Maluku, Papua, and Nusa Tenggara remaining about three times that for Kalimantan. Another important feature of poverty in Indonesia is the dense cluster of population around the poverty line, indicating the vulnerability of Indonesian households to poverty. These observations underline a need for enhancing inclusive growth in order to reduce poverty and inequality. This chapter identifies potential constraints to the inclusiveness of growth using the conceptual framework outlined in Chapter 1.

Trends in Poverty and Inequality

Poverty

Indonesia's poverty fell significantly during 1976–1996, with the poverty incidence declining from about 40.1% to 11.3% (Figure 4.1). In 1996, the methodology for poverty estimation was revised, and the poverty incidence was estimated at 17.7% based on the new definition. The poverty incidence then shot up to 24.2% in 1998 due to the 1997 AFC. Six years elapsed before the poverty incidence moved below the pre-crisis levels. The poverty incidence then again rose, from 16.7% in 2005 to about 17.8% in 2006 due to the surge in rice prices (World Bank 2006a).

With a multicultural bent, the British and Foreign ranged from domestic press taxes to European press censorship.

1. [Bird, Christopher]. “Introduction.” 1 (1835): 5–16.

Declared that the British and Foreign planned “as much to learn as to teach” about many topics from an international perspective in contrast to other reviews “conducted with partial and limited views.”

2. [Brougham, Henry]. “Lord Brougham's Speech: Taxes on Knowledge.” 1 (1835): 157–72.

Brougham repeated his ideas that the high cost and pre-payment of a newspaper stamp deprived the public of essential knowledge. The established press ignored the subject or warned that repeal would bring “seditious and blasphemous papers.” Owners of top metros feared that cheap papers would rob them of advertising profits. Because London gazettes “give a tone in good measure to the Provincial Press,” readers thought repeal was unimportant or dangerous. London papers also influenced MPs, particularly those from rural areas. However, “the respectable and intelligent middle classes” thought for themselves and read country papers that were “less tainted.” Since illegal malicious and treasonous papers already existed, new inexpensive ones would be an improvement. Pleaded also for lowering the paper duty. See New Monthly Magazine 44: 485.

3. “France.” 1 (1835): 492–512.

Deplored recent French “laws against the press,” laws violating Louis Philippe's principles and promises at accession.

4. “Lord Bolingbroke.” 2 (1836): 209–32.

Alluded to the writing style of Henry St. John in the Craftsman.

This study is about how religion and, in particular, Christianity, is influencing both the economic practices and the orientations of Overseas Chinese Christian entrepreneurs in China. The topic and primary focus of this study clearly pay tribute to Max Weber's work on the economic ethics of world religions in general and The Protestant Ethic in particular.

The main concern of the study is not to test or apply Weber's thesis concerning Protestantism and the rise of the spirit of capitalism to China. Nor does it aim to confirm or refute Weber's argument on Confucianism or to search for any equivalent or a Chinese religious ethic analogous to Weber's type case in modern China. The main purpose of this research is instead to apply Weber's motivational approach, that is, to explore the consequences of religious motivations in the realm of economic activity in a study of the Christian ethics of Overseas Chinese Christian entrepreneurs in China. This research is an investigation of the importance of religious values and commitments to gain an understanding of economic actions. Such an approach is rare as most research on Weber and Chinese society is either concerned with refuting or refining the Weberian thesis on Confucianism and China or with searching for equivalents for the Protestant ethic in China. This typical approach has been important in calling attention to the role of Asian religions, especially Confucianism, in promoting economic development in East Asia.

In 1930 Kaganovich became a full member of the Politburo and for the next five years acted as Stalin's deputy in the party. At the same time, he was appointed as first secretary of the Moscow party committee. In this period he acquired a real power base and won a degree of party and public visibility that marked him as a major political figure in the USSR. Moscow, the ‘red capital’, the headquarters of the party and of the world revolution, was of great symbolic importance. Kaganovich's role as party boss of Moscow, which embraced the city and the province, demonstrated the extent to which Stalin's deputies were allowed a degree of latitude in developing policy as well as the limits to that delegated power. The modernization of the capital was a central part of the regime's developmental programme in which ideological goals were to a significant degree subsumed under more pragmatic considerations. Moscow province was economically one of the most important regions of the USSR, having a population of more than 10 million people, including major towns such as Tula, Kalinin, Kolomna, Serpukhov, Podol'sk, Orekhovo-Zuevo, Ryazan' and Kaluga.

The Political Leadership of Moscow

Following the ousting of Uglanov as the secretary of the Moscow party organization in 1928, the post was temporarily filled by Molotov and then by K. Ya. Bauman. Stalin's article ‘Dizzy with Success’ in March 1930, signalled a major retreat with regard to collectivization.

With a penchant for politics, William Tait's magazine denounced press taxes for three decades. Items in which it compared itself to contemporaries included valuable data but disappeared quickly.

1. [Tait, William]. “A Tête à Tête with Mr. Tait.” 1 (1832): 9–16.

Pledged that Tait's would be different from 1832 periodicals of “prosing disquisitions, spoony tales, pointless epigrams, and endless twaddle” and be more like the generation of John Wilkes when serials featured “the livingnesses of the day.”

2. [Lauder, T. D.]. “The Revolution.” 1 (1832): 17–25.

Pleaded for the end of newspaper duties so that knowledge could spread.

3. [Tait, William and Christian Johnstone]. “To Correspondents.” 1 (1832): 139 (verso), 383, 515.

Notified contributors that Tait's failure to publish submissions was not always due to their “inferior merit” but also to tardy arrival, repetition of ones already printed, and unavailable space. Long articles, which “generally proceed from dullness, carelessness, or enthusiasm,” were unsuitable for readers of periodicals. “The readiness of writers of established fame and the eagerness of young volunteers full of talent and enthusiasm” to pen for Tait's was “gratifying.” At the request of the majority of contributors, replies were sent privately.

4. [Tait, William]. “Keep Him Down.” 1 (1832): 220–23.

Understood that in the hierarchy of periodicals there were “many most useful and popular kinds of literature, which the quarterly people would sooner die than acknowledge.”

While introducing itself, the London Review summarized the press of 1829.

1. [White, Joseph Blanco]. “Journals and Reviews.” 1 (1829): 1–9.

Paralleled the contemporary press and the ancient agora or forum because each spread opinion. Newspapers in 1829, issued weekly and daily, disseminated useful advertising of goods and services as well as poetry and stories of the “peculiarly bloody murder” and “domestic intrigue” that distracted readers from opinion columns. The “daily journals” were different from the “dignified periodicals” only in degree. Even the reviews resorted to poems and tales in order to sell. “The love of amusement is the leading tendency of a refined society, and the higher the refinements, the more are men inclined to seek their amusement with the least possible exertion” of the mind. By satisfying this bent, the serious press was weakening the power of concentration “necessary to attain excellence in any one branch of information.” The goals of the London Review were “to stimulate instead of palling curiosity” and to be politically impartial because in calmer social times, readers preferred independence.

2. “Social Life of England and France.” 1 (1829): 171–98.

Posited that Joseph Addison in the Spectator set the precedent for addressing “light literature” to both sexes, thus making it purer.

Kara Walker (born in 1969) is a prominent figure in the field of contemporary African American visual arts. She is a distinguished artist who has won several prizes and held exhibitions in different countries all over the world. In her art Walker re-imagines pictorially the past of slavery over and over again, as she represents the horrors of the American South of that period in very specific ways. Walker is best known for her black cut-paper silhouettes displayed on white walls. This choice of colours already underlines the racial division in the antebellum South. Walker's art is generally prized by white art critics, but reviewed more critically by African American audiences.

This essay examines the ways in which Walker's silhouettes have been experienced as threatening. Her art seems to confuse our understanding of the past and the present, by bringing something from the past into the present. This is perceived as a threat, as we tend to understand the past as departed and finalised, and do not expect any of its spectres to haunt the present moment. Walker's art, in its use of a particular pictography, has been condemned as offensive by the African American art community because it brings painful images from the past into the present. Here I read such forms of art, perceived as threatening, in relation to Sigmund Freud's theory of the uncanny, which emphasises the importance of understanding a dreadful element of the present in relation to something old and familiar that has been repressed.

The Agenda of Marxism in the New Century

It would not be perhaps an overstatement if it is argued that the arrival of the twenty-first century, historically speaking, has some striking similarities with how the twentieth century began its journey. The same feelings of anger, protest as well as frustration of the working people, demanding organization, articulation and leadership, which marked the arrival of the twentieth century, constitute to a large extent the scenario of the new century too. The battle lines are being drawn, the fault lines of capitalism are more and more visible, the truth about the ugly face of imperialism is now impossible to hide after Iraq; but the big difference is that the real possibility of providing an alternative to world capitalism had actually emerged in the twentieth century after 1917, which ended with the unceremonious collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. With no immediate alternative in sight in the face of the triumphant claims of imperialism resistance and struggle, however, continue unabated, assuming new forms and, at times, taking uncharted paths. As large sections of the struggling people have become frustrated with socialism's failure in the twentieth century to live up to its expectations, there are many who are looking for radical alternatives to Marxism in their search for what they call a more meaningful intellectual arsenal (i.e. postmodernism, Post-Marxism), while there are others who are engaged in critical rethinking concerning the past, present and the future possibilities of Marxism in the light of the new questions that now it has to confront.

Reaching out to recent autodidacts, the Monthly Chronicle condemned annuals, newspaper taxes, and superficial art and literary criticism.

1. [Bulwer-Lytton, E. G. and Dionysius Lardner]. “Advertisement.” 1 (1838): v–vi.

Pledged that the Monthly Chronicle would not rival competitors because it would focus on topics usually considered of “too grave a nature for periodicals that rather contribute to the amusement of a peculiar class than represent the interests of the general community.” The Chronicle would publish articles on politics of interest to the middle classes and on the arts and science, criticism as a guide to reading, and some fiction.

2. [Bulwer-Lytton, E. G.]. “The Life and Writings of Scott.” 1 (1838): 202–19.

Review of Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, edited by J. G. Lockhart, repeated that Scott's anger about Edinburgh Review criticism of his work motivated him to support the Quarterly Review, intending to challenge the Edinburgh's authority and steal its profits. The Quarterly allegedly welcomed “cutting and severe sarcasm.”

3. [Bulwer-Lytton, E. G.]. “Lord Brougham.” 1 (1838): 249–58.

Briefly probed Henry Brougham's defense of a Durham newspaper editor prosecuted for libel.

4. [Bulwer-Lytton, E. G.] “Letters by an English Member of Parliament to M. De –, of the Chambre des Députés. No. 1: On Public Opinion.” 1 (1838): 337–47.

Insisted that “journals, as they have grown up into their present importance, address a wide range of miscellaneous readers,” primarily families and juveniles.

Indonesia has experienced sharply fluctuating fortunes for the last half century. In the early 1960s, the economy was stagnating, and hyperinflation threatened to further erode living standards. The country, described in the leading development economics textbook as a “chronic economic dropout,” was disengaging from the international economic community. Then, in a remarkable turnabout following the regime change of 1965–1966, the new administration signaled a return to economic orthodoxy, and economic growth accelerated. Over the next three decades the economy quadrupled in size, and poverty incidence fell rapidly. However, Indonesia's socioeconomic progress was threatened again by the Asian financial crisis of 1997. It was the worst aff ected country during the crisis period, principally because it experienced twin crises—both economic and political. In 1998, not only did the modern financial sector and the exchange rate collapse, but there was also a brief episode of hyperinflation and the very real possibility of territorial disintegration.

However, Indonesia navigated these crises with great success. It is now the world's third most populous democracy, having completed two rounds of nationwide elections for the national government and the approximately 500 subnational units of government. The new institutional arrangements for government are in place and are becoming firmly embedded through enthusiastic democratic participation. The country survived the global financial crisis of 2008–2009 with little growth deceleration and is currently enjoying record terms of trade.

Established by William Blackwood with a Tory bias, Blackwood's contained myriad essays on the press, especially its influence everywhere. Other themes were literary criticism and newspapers' quality.

1. N., C. [J. G. Lockhart]. “Note on the Quarterly Reviewers.” 15 (1824): 83–85.

Reckoned that the last number was the Quarterly's “very best” notwithstanding the departure of editor William Gifford and was especially satisfying, as the “cowardly ruffians” at some other periodicals had predicted that the review would suffer without him. The Quarterly “seems to have paid-off a host of heavy worthies…a dead-weight upon the spring of intellect” and turned to new writers, “people of the world.” Aside on an Edinburgh Review contributor as “an inferior scribe.”

2. [Maginn, William]. “Letters of Timothy Tickler, Esq. to Eminent Characters. To C. North, Esq., Etc. No. XIII: Mr. Theodore Hook.” 15 (1824): 90–93.

Expressed “contempt for the people connected with the London newspapers” except those associated with John Bull.

3. [Lockhart, J. G.]. “Letters of Timothy Tickler, Esq. to Eminent Literary Characters. No. XIV: To Francis Jeffrey, Esq. on the Westminster Review, Etc.” 15 (1824): 144–51.

Described writers in the Westminster as “clever, determined, resolute, thorough-going,” some as educated as Edinburgh Review authors and as “well skilled…in the arts of communicating,” and the neophyte review as “written well, with distinctness and vigour almost throughout, and occasionally very considerable power and eloquence.”

In the twenty-first century Manuel Rivas becomes the most promising Galician author at the commercial level not only in Spain but worldwide. His position in the Galician literary panorama is consolidated as the result of the well merited awards received for his work, his cultural and political participation in Galicia, as well as his efforts in educating citizens abroad from countries all around the world. Through his works he has known how to take Galician culture to the world by-passing the boundaries of language/culture without forfeiting his assessment of Galicia as a culturally indigenous country that deserves a position and recognition within the Spanish literary canon. If in fact, his major works present the traditional history of life in Galicia during the Civil War; one not only encounters the intellectual figure but also the marginalised: the mother, the guerrillas or maquis, the prostitute, the poor, the defeated and the homosexuals.

In its brief career, the Oxford and Cambridge alluded to literary journalism.

1. [Heeley, Wilfred L.]. “Mr. Macaulay.” 1 (1856): 173–84.

Opined that T. B. Macaulay wrote well from his youth, as his work in Knight's Quarterly Magazine showed. Aside that the British “newspaper press…evolved out of chaos,” namely the Civil Wars.

2. [Lushington, Vernon]. “Carlyle: As A Writer.” 1 (1856): 193–211, 292–310, 336–52, 697–712, 743–71.

Believed that Thomas Carlyle was not ordinarily interested in “single combats” with other periodical contributors.

3. [Morris, William and Edward Burne-Jones]. “Ruskin and the Quarterly.” 1 (1856): 353–61.

Reacted to Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake's review, in the Quarterly Review (March 1856), of John Ruskin's Modern Writers by accusing her of “malice and petty spite, utterly unaccountable, even in the lowest man.” Her article demonstrated the “reckless, somewhat meaningless, and utterly untrue things, with which critics are in the habit of fishing for praise for originality.”

This National, dedicated to Conservatism, scrutinized journalism and journalists at length. Among those in its spotlight were magazine editors and war correspondents.

1. Austin, Alfred. “‘Above All, No Programme.’” 1 (1883): 24–39.

Promised that the National Review would “promote deliberation, not…multiply opportunities for dogmatism” in pages that would be a “glass hive of Conservative thought.” Aside that the Paris Temps was “the most able, the most moderate, and the most independent Liberal journal published on the Continent.”

2. Carnarvon, [H. H. M. Herbert, 4th Earl]. “The First of March, 1711.” 1 (1883): 40–50.

Marked the birth of the Spectator after 271 numbers of the Tatler. The Spectator used “gentle satire” compared to the 1883 leader, which “abounds in research and ability” but was often sarcastic. The Spectator reflected the move from a “rough to a more refined society.” Its daily circulation reached 14,000 in an era when “the Press had become a formidable engine of political warfare.” Joseph Addison was the genius behind its success with his style that was “a model of English writing.”

3. Balfour, Arthur James. “Bishop Berkeley's Life and Letters.” 1 (1883): 85–100, 299–313.

Review of A. C. Fraser's book on George Berkeley mentioned that he penned for the eighteenthcentury Guardian and Examiner and that Daniel Defoe was paid for political writing but Joseph Addison and Richard Steele were not.

It is generally believed that the relations between Soviet Marxism and the Frankfurt School are non-negotiable. The reason is simple. While Soviet Marxism has been considered as an expression of a unilinear view of Marxism, which in the name of science has refused to accommodate the element of subjectivity, the Frankfurt School, deeply anchored in the tradition of German idealism, has focused on consciousness and humanism. This, at least, has been the standardized understanding of the interrelation of Soviet Marxism and the Frankfurt School and one has viewed the other with deep suspicion and animosity.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, as a new atmosphere of free thinking gradually began to clear the mist of dogmatism and regimented thinking, which had dominated the Soviet era for decades, it was now possible to unravel a new dimension underlying this relationship. Following the research findings of a number of Russian and German scholars, after the opening of the Soviet archives, one can now arrive at an altogether different, yet complex, understanding of the relationship between Soviet Marxism and the Frankfurt School whereby one can reach a quite different conclusion. This refers to an untold story that unfolded itself in the 1920s, which is associated with Moscow's Marx-Engels Institute, headed by the internationally acclaimed Marx scholar, David Ryazanov, its first director, who had succeeded in establishing a great relation of cooperation and friendship with the Frankfurt School in Germany.

The annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association took place on April 1–4, 2010 in New Orleans, Louisiana attracting over 2,000 scholars from around the world. Using the Hotel Monteleone as its official conference base, seminars were organised across New Orleans at the hotels Astor, Bienville and Monteleone, as well as Arnaud's Restaurant in the French Quarter. A number of the panels focused on the subject of contemporary cinema and the visual arts. The panels from which the papers in this volume were assembled were: ‘Being-in-the-World: Chinese Cinema and its Cosmopolitan Perspectives’, ‘Berlin's Imagined Geographies’, ‘Just Memory: Utopian Fiction and Abraxian History’, ‘National Traumas, Diasporic Encounters: Violence, Memory, and Literary/Visual Culture’, ‘Post/colonial Film: Imaging Identity and Resistance’, ‘Made in Hong Kong: Language, Literature and Film from a City in Search of Itself ’, ‘Affectivity and Aesthetics of the Postnational across Literature, Cinema, and Theory’, ‘Comparative Literature: From Practice to Theory’, ‘Reading Between the Arts: Multi-Media, Aisthesis, and Interart Studies’, ‘Intermediality after 1900’, ‘Re-defining art: Artistic genres in literary works’, and ‘The Hidden Voice: Cross-Cultural Women's Autobiographical Novels’.

Following the conference, and thanks to the assistance of the principal conference organiser, Dr Elizabeth Richmond-Garza, a call for papers was facilitated, from which the editor selected the best abstracts thematically for their relevance to contemporary cinema and the visual arts, and these consisted of the most excellently written and most suitable taking into account principally three criteria: argument, structure and theme.