Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party, also known as the GOP ("Grand Old Party"), is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States. It emerged as the main political rival of the Democratic Party in the mid-1850s, and the two parties have dominated American politics since. The GOP was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists who opposed the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which allowed for the potential expansion of chattel slavery into the western territories. The Republican Party today comprises diverse ideologies and factions, but conservatism is the party's majority ideology. The Republican Party's ideological and historical predecessor is considered to be Northern members of the conservative Whig Party, with Republican presidents Abraham Lincoln, Rutherford B. Hayes, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison all being Whigs before switching to the party, from which they were elected. The collapse of the Whigs, which had previously been one of the two major

L’espace-Obama : une victoire des réseaux sur les territoires

Luc Guillemot, Jacques Lévy

Spatial characteristics are more relevant than socio-economic features to distinguish Romney and Obama’s electoral bodies. A cartographic representation at county level that uses a population cartogram as a base map makes the opposition between both geographies obvious. As in 2008, big cities and other places interfacing with the outside world favoured Barack Obama, whereas outskirts and small cities primarily voted for Mitt Romney. This spatial dichotomy is not surprising considering the parties’ opposing views on the idea of society : whilst the Democrats support the idea of a society of individuals linked by solidarity, the Republicans remain based on the idea of communal groups knit by conservative norms. Obama’s geography, as well as the reforms he carried out as president, show that he is the candidate for those who reject the moral order supported by the Republicans and those who want to establish post-communitarianism in the United States of America.

2012

Historicist aesthetics of architectural image: Mimesis and memorial in public space

Sila Karatas Basoglu

Turkey has been facing an aesthetic revivalism of Ottoman and Anatolian Seljuk architecture within public space, a phenomenon which is having been observed not only in the construction of new public buildings but also the renovation of historical housing districts as part of the so-called “urban transformation” being implemented by the state-owned institution, TOKİ. Seemingly realized as a result of the neoliberal spatial practices of 'urban transformation' in place through destruction and concomitantly reconstruction, the historicist revivalism within state-owned architectural production in Turkey also metamorphoses the collective public memory by the manipulation of the image of urban public space which is mostly characterized by the aesthetic appearance of Ottoman and the Republican architectural heritage of Turkey. Justified or not by a renowned debate on the conflict between modernity and tradition, today, the aesthetical production of contemporary architecture is defined by suggesting the use of historically negotiated architectural types and elements in newly-built contemporary buildings as a means of 'Ottoman and Anatolian Seljuk aesthetics in favor of tradition.' However, this mimetic reconstruction phenomenon is being realized by the contradiction of the relative notions of context and content since the conflict in between the destruction of the Ottoman and Republican architectural heritage, in company with the reconstruction of replicas of buildings, in reality, affiliated with Ottoman architectural types and aesthetics results in a shift in the spatio-temporal perception of public memory. Characterized by the cumulative aesthetical experience of the architectural production, urban public spaces are internal to the collective memory of the society, the image of which has formed out of the social, economical and political context, and thus of the architectural culture through time. Accordingly, the mimetic expression of the classical ages of the Ottoman Empire in the architectural image of public space, manipulates public memory by reconstructing a new manner of time-space which is identified by only the Islamic culture, and out of the plural identities of spatio-temporal experiences inherited from the late Ottoman and Republican period by negotiation. In this sense, this paper aims a critical study on the historicist transformation of urban spectacle through current architectural practices in Turkey.

2013

Apprenticeship in Early Modern Venice

Giovanni Colavizza

The desire of the Republican state to regulate the production and sale of food led to the establishment, during the twelfth century, of the Giustizia Vecchia, a magistracy which later developed an authority over the majority of the city’s guilds. The further decision to set a public register of contracts of apprenticeship reflects the ambition of Venetian authorities to regulate and control both vocational training and access to the urban job market, acting as a guarantor between masters and young apprentices. This chapter presents an historical overview of apprenticeship in early modern Venice, examining the development of the city’s legislation on the matter, and analysing a new sample of contracts recorded in the city’s apprenticeship registers during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In particular, we discuss the complex relationship between the general legal framework established by Venetian public authorities and the particular set of norms detailed in guilds statutes. Our analysis reveals that apprenticeship contracts were used to accommodate a variety of situations, including paying for intense training to masked working contracts, while following the general framework provided by state and guild regulations. We then present an in-depth study of apprenticeship contracts from three crafts (goldsmiths, carpenters and printers), chosen for their economic importance, and because they possibly represented different realities in terms of technological specialization, capital (or labour) intensiveness and typology of market. This highlights yet another aspect of apprenticeship in Venice: the influence of guilds. Some guilds such as the Goldsmiths, were more closed to foreigners, favouring Venetians instead. Apprenticeship in early modern Venice is an institution which, despite appearing as highly regulated and formalized, accommodated a variety of realities with remarkable flexibility.