Inaug. diss.--Bern.

Inaug. diss.--Bern.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 341-347). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

The study of International Relations (IR) emerged in the context of transnational networks of scholars, politicians, and philanthropists who sought to devise a peaceful world order in the face of international conflict. Prompted by the Great War, the pioneers of IR argued that international politics should be subject to public and academic investigation. In order to generate the required expertise, they established a range of university-based as well as policy-oriented institutions during the 1910s and 20s. Rather than studying political theory or advancing scientific methodology, however, early IR scholars focused on current affairs and became involved in foreign politics themselves. Throughout the formative period of IR, from 1914 to 1940, its protagonists oscillated between understanding and making international politics. This dissertation examines the formation of IR from about 1914 to the Second World War, with particular emphasis on the range of international actors and institutions that shaped the discipline. Based on multi-archival research in Austria, Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States, it explores the key venues for the study of IR. In particular, the dissertation reflects how IR scholars used transnational forms of exchange, such as the organs of intellectual cooperation at the League of Nations. It also incorporates women and feminist approaches to IR. Contrary to conventional historiography, the dissertation argues that IR was neither founded in 1919, nor dominated by coherent schools of thought during the inter-war period. Instead, it demonstrates how the discipline was formed by an eclectic group of scholars and practitioners, men and women, English-speaking and international. By building on recent revisionist literature and by re- integrating neglected actors, the dissertation reveals the complex and sometimes inconsistent ways in which issues of international politics became the subject of academic study.

No description available.

Bien que l’histoire environnementale soit devenue un champ d’études en pleine effervescence pour interroger la constitution historique des catégories par lesquelles nous pensons nos rapports à ce qui nous entoure, l’apport capital de Canguilhem et de Foucault à une telle démarche a été jusqu’à maintenant totalement sous-estimé. A partir des indications de ces ceux penseurs qui ont opéré une histoire conceptuelle et généalogique des rapports entre les hommes et leur « milieu », ce travail tente de montrer comment il apparaît en Occident, au cours du 18ème et du 19ème siècle, une série de savoirs et de pratiques consistant à gouverner les hommes par l’aménagement de leur entourage. De manière intrinsèque à l’élaboration d’une panoplie de savoirs biologiques, géographiques et sociologiques concernant le rapport des hommes à leur milieu, semble émerger en effet une biopolitique environnementale dont nous ne sommes pas encore affranchis. A l’âge des grandes conférences intergouvernementales sur « la protection de l’environnement », l’étude de cette biopolitique environnementale pourrait servir à changer de perspective en matière d’écologie et à se demander comment les savoirs environnementaux de l’Occident se sont formés au sein d’une rationalité consistant à gouverner les hommes par leur milieu. / In the recent years, environmental history has become a blooming field of study. It examines the historical formation of the categories through which the Relationship between Man and his environment is apprehended. Canguilhem and Foucault’s crucial contribution to this domain of knowledge has been totally neglected until now. Drawing on the conceptual and genealogical history these two authors have developed, this thesis attempts to bring to light how a domain of knowledge and practices aiming at governing Man through the planning of their surroundings, has emerged in the Western World during the XVIIIth and XIXthcenturies. Intrinsic to the development of a range of biological, geographical and sociological knowledge about Man and his milieu, an environmental biopolitics emerged, and from which we are not yet emancipated. While intergovernmental conferences on the “protection of environment” multiply, the study of such an environmental biopolitics could help change our perspective in the field of environmental politics (ecology) in order to raise the question of how environmental knowledge (savoirs environnementaux) came to develop within a political rationality that entails the governing of Man through his milieu.

This thesis focuses on Lombard Southern Italy during the early middle ages and it analyses the history of political and social conflicts between the eighth and ninth century, taking into account the transformation of Lombard political power and social practices in this area. Starting from the eight-century judicial sources, this work explores political and social competition in the Beneventan region by taking into account its geographical position at the center of the Mediterranean see. Southern Italy was considered as a periphery, and sometimes as a frontier, by both the Carolingian and Byzantine empires, and endured almost a century of Muslims' attempts to conquer the peninsula. The first chapter focuses on the ducal period and investigates the formation and consolidation of the duke of Benevento's political authority before 774. During the seventh and eight centuries, the dukes developed a military and political autonomy in Southern Italy. This was due to the geographical position of the Duchy of Benevento in the Lombard Kingdom: it was far from Pavia, the king's capital city, and it was relatively isolated from other Lombard territories. Since a dynasty was established here as early as the seventh century, these dukes developed a strong and precocious political consciousness. As a result, they were particularly concerned with the formal representation of their authority, which is early attested in both coinage and diplomas. In this chapter, the analysis of the eight-century judicial records opens two important perspectives on the duke of Benevento's practices of power. Firstly, judicial assemblies were one of the most important occasions for the duke to demonstrate and exercise his authority in a public context. In contrast to all other Lombard dukes, who rendered judgement together with a group of officers, the duke of Benevento acted alone before the competing parties. By behaving exactly as the Lombard king would in Pavia, the duke was able to utilise the judicial domain as a sort of theatre in which to practice, legitimise and represent his own public authority in front of the local aristocracy. Secondly, the analysis of seven judicial case-studies suggests that the duke was not simply the sole political authority in Benevento but also the leading social agent in the whole Lombard southern Italy. Almost all the disputes transmitted by the twelfth-century cartularies implied a ducal action, donation or decision in the past, which became the main cause for later conflicts between the members of the lay élite and the monastic foundations of the region. Consequently, the analysis of judicial conflicts reveals more about the duke of Benevento's strategies and practices of power than about the lay and ecclesiastical élites' competition for power. Since there are no judicial records between 774 and the last decade of the ninth century, both conflicts and representations of authority in Lombard Southern Italy are analysed through other kinds of sources for this period. Chronicles, hagiographies, diplomas, and material sources are rich in clues about political and social competition in Benevento. By contrast, the late-ninth-century judicial records transmitted by cartularies and archives are quite different from the eighth-century documents: they have a bare and simple structure, which often hides the peculiarities of the single dispute by telling only the essentials of each conflict and a concise final judgement. In contrast to the sources of the ducal period, the ninth- and tenth-century judicial records often convey a flattened image of Lombard society. Their basic structure certainly prevents a focus on the representation of authority and the practices of power in southern Italy. On the contrary, these fields of inquiry are crucial to research both competition within the Beneventan aristocracy during the ninth century, and the relationship between Lombards and Carolingian after 774. After the fall of the Lombard Kingdom in 774, Charlemagne did not complete the military conquest of the Italian peninsula: the Duchy of Benevento was left under the control of Arechis (758-787), who proclaimed himself princeps gentis Langobardorum and continued to rule mostly independently. The confrontation and competition with the Frankish empire are key to understanding both the strengthening of Lombard identity in southern Italy and the formation of a princely political authority. The second account the historiography on the Regnum Italiae, the third section of this chapter focuses precisely on the ambitions of Louis II in Southern Italy and it analyses the implication that the projection of his rulership over this area had in shaping his imperial authority. Despite Louis II's efforts to control the Lombard principalities, his military and political experience soon revealed its limits. After the conquest of Bari in 871, Prince Adelchi imprisoned the emperor in his palace until he obtained a promise: Louis II swore not to return to Benevento anymore. Although the pope soon liberated the emperor from this oath, he never regained a political role in Southern Italy. Nevertheless, his prolonged presence in the region during the ninth century radically changed the political equilibrium of both the Lombard principalities and the Tyrrhenian duchies (i.e. Napoli, Gaeta, Amalfi). The fourth section focuses firstly on the competition between Louis II and Adelchi of Benevento, who obstinately defined his public authority in a direct competition with the Carolingian emperor. At the same time, the competition within the local aristocracy in Benevento radically changed into a small-scale struggle between the members of Adelchi's kingroup, the Radelchids. At the same time, some local officers expanded their power and acted more and more autonomously in their district, such as in Capua. When Louis II left Benevento in 871, both the Tyrrhenian duchies and the Lombard principalities in Southern Italy were profoundly affected by a sudden change in their mutual relations and even in their inner stability. The competition for power and authority in Salerno and Capua-Benevento also changed and two different political systems were gradually established in these principalities. Despite the radical transformation of internal competition and the Byzantine conquest of a large part of Puglia and Basilicata at the end of the ninth century, the Lombard principalities remained independent until the eleventh century, when Southern Italy was finally seized by Norman invaders.

Social theorists have long argued that literacy is one of the principal causes and hallmark features of complex society. However, the relationship between literacy and social complexity remains poorly understood because the relevant data have not been assembled in a way that would allow competing hypotheses to be adjudicated. The project set out in this thesis provides a novel account of the multiple origins of literate behaviour around the globe, the principal mechanisms of its cultural transmission, and its relationship with the cultural evolution of large-group human cooperation and complex forms of socio-political organisation. A multi-method large-scale cross-cultural approach provided the data necessary to achieve these objectives. Evidence from the societies within which literate behaviour first emerged, and from a representative sample of ethnographically-attested societies worldwide (n=74), indicates that literate behaviour emerged through the routinization of rituals and pre-literate sign systems, eventually spreading more widely through classical religions. Cross-cultural evidence also suggests that literacy assumed a wide variety of forms and socio-political functions, particularly in large, complex groups, extending evolved psychological mechanisms for cooperation, which include reciprocity, reputation formation and maintenance systems, social norms and norm enforcement systems, and group identification. Finally, the results of a cross-cultural historical survey of first-generation states (n=10) reveal that simple models assuming single cause-and-effect relationships between literacy and complex forms of socio-political organisation must be rejected. Instead, literacy and first-generation state-level polities appear to have interacted in a complex positive feedback loop. This thesis contributes to the wider goal of transforming social and cultural anthropology into a cumulative and rapid-discovery science.