Focusing on the nineteenth century, this book explores the conceptualization of corporations within the Anglo-American legal tradition. It delves into how the legal framework and societal perceptions of corporations evolved during this period, highlighting their enduring significance and impact on modern legal thought. Through historical analysis, it reveals the interplay between law, culture, and the emerging identity of corporations in society.
The classic Western film is characterized by the tension of open and enclosed spaces as well as by the lone hero’s exposure to the vastness of both tempting and dangerous spaces. John Ford’s cinematography in particular has contributed to a specific spatial iconography that is premised on this tension and that survives, albeit transformed, in contemporary (Neo-) Western films. While scholars of the Western genre have long acknowledged a connection between space and violence – beginning with Frederick Jackson Turner’s famous description of the Western frontier – the essays in this collection provide a fresh perspective. Taking Norbert Elias’ ‘The Civilizing Process’ (1939) and its insights into the interdependence between habitus formation, spatial reorganization and the emergence of a state monopoly of violence as their point of departure, they analyze contemporary visions of open and bounded spaces as well as of the liminal spaces between them in recent films and TV shows.
After decades of research into the role of memory, trauma, and historiography in her work, to say that Toni Morrison's novels deal with the presence of the past may seem like a truism. But the complexity of Morrison's vision originates in her understanding of the nature of this past as both individual and collective. This study approaches Morrison's more recent novels on the basis of both literary analysis and sociological theory: drawing on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Norbert Elias, it shows that the presence of the past in her work unfolds not only in images of memory and trauma, but in her portrayal of a past that is active in bodies, minds, and social institutions. In 'Paradise' (1998) and 'Love' (2003) this active presence of the past threatens to undermine the African American community from within; in 'A Mercy' (2008), Morrison takes us to the symbolic beginnings of structural inequality in the United States. Taking its cue from Pierre Bourdieu's definition of habitus as 'presence of the past', this study shows that in writing about the past Toni Morrison really is exploring the conditions of possibility for the present.
