Introduction

In Figure 9.1, we see a meme made by the Brazilian far-right portraying the president Jair Messias Bolsonaro (2019–2022) as a crusader. How to interpret the engagements with history embodied by images like this one?* Is it a traditional use of the past for a coherent ideological project, or is it something else? We believe that this image and, more broadly, Bolsonarist engagements with history reveal certain dimensions of contemporary historicity – by which we mean the articulation of the past, the present, and the future. In this chapter, we thus analyse how the populist movement embodied by Bolsonaro engages with history in a way that activates its heterogeneous political base. These engagements seem to be different from some aspects of modern chronosophies, such as their abandonment of synchronization and coherent presentation of a national history. Instead, the new Brazilian far-right populist historicity relies more on emotional attachment, a pragmatic and highly fragmented historical performance that, as we claim, is more akin to a historicity that we call ‘updatism’, meaning this historicity in which an empty and self-centred present is loosely and pragmatically related to the past, whereas the future is desired as a reserve for the linear expansion of an updating – and sometimes upgrading – present (see Araujo and Pereira 2019).

To demonstrate the affinity between ‘updatism’ and the specific Bolsonarist version of populism, this chapter is divided into three sections. First, we introduce the concept and the theory of updatism. Next, we characterize the populist dimensions of Bolsonarism – that is, the cultural and political movement represented by Jair Bolsonaro. Then we analyse the new Brazilian populism in its engagements with history, especially the performances of history by the three secretaries of culture of Bolsonaro's government and how the defactualization of reality gains momentum, creating the conditions of possibility for the past to be like a large wardrobe full of prêt-à-porter images and templates. Taken together, we can conclude that the affinities we see between Brazilian populism, or Bolsonarism, and updatist historicity are the following: both flourish in a communicational environment characterized by a shared and simulated reality that defies modern authorities and institutions; both tend to dissolve historical synchronization and thus lead to dispersion and agitation; and both have a more pragmatic engagement with historical content.

As the remnants of Picchi Hannan's gang failed to retake control at Kawran Bazaar, the more egregious aspects of his reign calmed. Kidnappings no longer plagued the business community and threatening demands for payment became less frequent. The severity of crossfire and widespread arrests made it clear that the ruling party and state would no longer patronise and tolerate the likes of Hannan. Those who wished to emulate him would face the same fate. The decline in such santrashis brought about a power vacuum, which for local leaders and cadres of the then ruling BNP represented an opportunity. As long as Hannan had been dominant, the various official wings of the ruling party had been largely sidelined locally, weak by comparison. Yet the condition of the party at the bazaar was still too fragile and politics too uncertain to take advantage. The years of fights and killings had taken their toll on the likes of Siddiq, and the resources of local leaders were depleted from violence and competition.

This power vacuum was prolonged by national politics, with an extended caretaker government in the period 2006–2008. It was widely alleged that during their term in office the BNP were attempting to have a favourable caretaker official in place for the 2006 election, prompting widespread protest. It furthermore seemed obvious to some that the democracy this system held together was one of the most corrupt on earth. In response, the military backed a new caretaker government in early 2007. Rather than calling a general election within ninety days as mandated, it extended its rule to almost two years in a failed attempt to bring radical reform and rid the country of political corruption. At Kawran Bazaar this was portrayed as a period of comparative calm, where businesses ran largely unimpeded and flagrant criminality and violence were minimised by the significant presence of security agencies in everyday life, which continued to arrest, imprison and allegedly ‘crossfire’ santrashi figures. Yet neither Hannan's death nor two years of a caretaker government cleaned Kawran Bazaar of crime and violence.

Chapter 1 introduces the scope and organization of the study. It traces the history of scholarship on Italic architectural terracottas and highlights a number of lingering problems and uncertainties that will be taken up in the subsequent chapters.

Introduction

Ancient epics have played a significant role in the growth of modern nationalism. At the time of their conception, epics possessed no notion of nationalism. However, over the past three centuries, they have been routinely invoked in many parts of the world for fulfilling modern nationalist claims and aspirations. Political and cultural unity, key features of modern nationalism, were found to be described in ancient epics. Therefore, epics were routinely invoked either as repositories of a nation's past frozen in time (as with Homer or Virgil) or as a genealogical exercise meant to reconstruct an unbroken national–cultural lineage (as with the Ramayana and the Mahabharata). Both processes helped in nationalist revival.

The two epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, were used by Indian subcontinental nationalists during the colonial and post-colonial periods to imagine a politically and ethnically (Hindu) unified image of the country. The study of Indian epics was facilitated by modern European Indology and the ‘discovery’ of India's ancient (largely Hindu and Buddhist) heritage during the late eighteenth century. Therefore, unlike the absolute devotional reverence and eschatological infallibility accorded to the epics during pre-modernity, Indians were open to investigating their historical context and using them for didactic–political purposes. History, coming to the aid of religious reverence, produced a strange concoction of nationalist rectitude and a strong antidote to colonial cultural hegemony. The fratricide depicted in the Mahabharata was seen as an act of reclaiming the unjust seizure of territory, rendering the epic's moral lesson ‘analogous to the colonial occupation of India’.

Epic studies developing during the nineteenth century drove European Indologists’ primary interest – namely, determining the remote antiquity of the Mahabharata, deciphering the urtext from latter recensions, and granting it lesser value in comparison to the Greco-Roman classics. European Indological discourses posited India as the opposite of ‘the West’ and hence inferior in character. Indian thought was presented as mythical and symbolic and therefore unworthy of the cold rationality articulated through logical arguments.

Indians attached multifarious significance to its epics. If the Ramayana was the adi-kavya (the original poem), the Mahabharata was varyingly rendered as an itihasa (history) and the ‘fifth Veda’ and even garnered equivalency to a Dharmashastra text. The Mahabharata also carried a powerful moral sermon on righteous violence (the Bhagavadgita), delivered by Krishna, the personification of the Absolute.

This book is structured broadly into psychological, mathematical, and neurobiological theories of prediction to reflect the dominant focus or type of approach of the individual theory. Psychological theories are sets of statements, systems of ideas, or models of human mind and behavior that are constructed to explain aspects of this complex interaction. Psychological theories offer a kind of explanation at a level of description that provides conceptual foundations, or conceptual redescriptions, of mathematical formalizations and neurobiological implementations. Knowledge of psychological theories is also a great way to understand the history of the mind sciences and to understand the myriad of ways researchers have thought about scientific issues such as prediction. Even theories that may be now considered outdated were once considered reasonable ways of how the mind might work and hence are a useful tool to get a deeper grasp of the human mind and to better understand the background and advances of contemporary theories.

The ancient Romans have been so domesticated that many modern western men (fewer women, perhaps) have been able to imagine themselves, their rusty Latin refreshed, easily adapting to life in the time of Cicero or the younger Pliny. But language is not the only barrier which separates us from the Romans. Entire vocabularies of gesture differ from one culture to another. For Romans, a particular physical movement could have a meaning quite at variance with one a modern Briton might attribute to it – even indicating a category of behaviour for which we have no close equivalent.

In this chapter, I pursue two main goals. First, I argue for a new empirical generalization: An external argument in German passive constructions is accessible from positions below it but inaccessible from positions above it. The evidence for downward accessibility comes from control into adjunct clauses, secondary predicates, and complement clauses, binding of reflexives and reciprocals, and disjoint reference effects. In contrast, the evidence for upward inaccessibility comes from long-distance binding in impersonal passives and standard passives, accessible subjects for control infinitives, criterial movement constraints, minimality of movement effects, and intervention for anaphoric binding. Second, I present a new theory of passivization from which this generalization can be derived: The elementary operation Remove accounts for both accessibility and inaccessibility of external arguments in the passive in German, by correctly predicting a short life cycle. After this, the chapter addresses the question of how variation in the area of passivization can be accounted for in the new model. Next, there is a brief extension of the analysis to adjectival passives, invoking external Remove. The chapter concludes with a discussion of alternative approaches that either maintain strict accessibility or postulate strict inaccessibility, as well of hybrid approaches.

On the evening of January 24, 2015, I was in the midst of Baba Shah Jamal's urs festival at his shrine in Lahore. Stationed just outside the main entrance, I observed a succession of devotees approaching their saint in groups of different sizes. All of a sudden, a commotion erupted a few yards away, where some men seemed on the verge of a physical altercation. Along with other onlookers, I also rushed to this scene and soon discovered that a group of devotees had taken offense to a handful of teenage boys who had attempted to join their dhamal. All evening, I had been witnessing similar scenes in which small bands of teenagers would infiltrate circles of devotees and join in their dhamal by unfurling an array of Bollywood-inspired dance moves. So far, such incursions had been tolerated in the festive spirit of the occasion. After all, urs in South Asia, which are enacted annually on the occasion of a Sufi saint's death anniversary, are not just a ritual commemoration of saints but also a popular celebration. However, this particular group reacted differently. Two of the men violently grabbed the teenagers and literally tossed them aside. Given the serious intent and intimidating appearance – large and muscular build emphasized by an exaggerated swagger and aggressive manner – of these men, the rest of the teenagers beat a hasty retreat. Quite quickly, a circular space was cleared for the group to continue their dhamal uninterrupted. The message that these devotees took their dhamal very seriously and were not going to tolerate any interference in it had been delivered loud and clear.

As an audience started building around this circle, the devotee group promptly launched into a dhamal to the insistent beat of the dhol. Within a matter of seconds, their scowls had melted into expressions of joy. Driven on by one of the devotees (let us call him Pehalwan), who appeared to be the group leader, the men's movements began to pick up pace. They extended their arms with palms outstretched toward the tomb of their saint as if asking for supplication and stomped their feet with a thudding noise.

Chapter 8 looks for evidence of tournaments in the decisions of voters in Japan to turn out and vote in Lower House elections, 1980–2014. Under a tournament, decisions to vote are expected to hinge on where in the ranking a given municipality is expected to end up. All else equal, it expects that voters will be systematically more likely to go to the polls when they live in municipalities that are projected to place highly. Moreover, among municipalities projected to place highly, projections of further increases in rank are expected to bring about an even larger impact on turnout. The chapter presents three sets of empirical tests of these two hypotheses. The first two look within electoral districts and examine how turnout varies as a function of where municipalities are expected to place in the ranking. The third set of tests leverage variation in competitiveness across electoral districts, which we know impacts turnout, and variation in competitiveness and ruralness, which we know impacts turnout in Japan. The tests reveal support for both hypotheses and shed new light on determinants of political participation across time and space.

In the Rich Man and Lazarus parable, a privileged rich man suffers after death while the suffering Lazarus, after death, is comforted in heaven. The tale conveys the urgent necessity of repentance. The parable portrays a form of divine justice not available to Esau in Genesis 25, who, when in a reduced state, had to beg his brother Jacob for food for which the deceived Esau, under duress, exchanged his birthright.

Introduction

Indian cities are especially vulnerable to climate change due to their rapid population growth, high levels of socioeconomic inequality, and the general inability of infrastructure and public services to adapt to projected impacts (Revi 2008; Sharma and Tomar 2010). Although the neoliberal reforms introduced in India since the early 1990s have enabled the broader participation of non-state actors in decision-making, an ideological preference for entrepreneurial approaches to urban governance have largely led to the withdrawal of the state from delivering basic services (Datta 2015). Revenue shortfalls and lack of administrative capacity have further decreased the ability of cities to deal with climate impacts and risks (Cook and Chu 2018; Sharma et al. 2014). These effects are felt most acutely by the urban poor, who are disproportionately exposed (Michael and Vakulabharanam 2016; Satterthwaite et al. 2007).

Since the 1990s, there has been a growing awareness of climate change among government officials. For the next two decades, governmental interventions in Indian cities were confined to climate mitigation and targeted select manufacturing, construction, and energy sectors (Dubash et al. 2018). To be fair, climate adaptation was still a relatively nascent priority for India, and its policy focus was on furthering its geopolitical role in global climate negotiations. As a nation that saw itself as a rapidly industrializing global power, India aggressively pushed for the country's ‘right to development’ despite its significant exposure to climate change impacts (Gupta 2010). Indian negotiators highlighted how industrialized nations could support India through technology, resource, and capacity transfers that will allow it to ‘leap frog’ from fossil-fuel-intensive to more sustainable forms of development. Widespread awareness of climate adaptation only emerged in the late 2000s, spearheaded by transnational, civil society, and national scientific bodies that documented changing climatic patterns and advocated that subnational governments play a role in addressing climate risks (Khosla and Bhardwaj 2019b; Sharma, Singh, and Singh 2014; Sharma et al. 2014). Since then, and as climate adaptation has moved from the policy to the implementation space, there have been growing concerns that structural inequalities in urban development in India may dilute or even redirect the intended benefits of climate adaptation.