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Sports Semiotics applies semiotics (and other disciplines, secondarily) to analyse the social, cultural, economic and psychological significance of sports. It includes a primer on semiotic theory, sections on the analysis of wrestling by Roland Barthes in his book Mythologies, as well as sections on football and the sacred, the Super Bowl, and the semiotics of televised baseball.

Abstract

This book applies semiotic theory to sports, with a focus on the semiotic nature of football and baseball. It also deals with a semiotic analysis of televised wresting by Roland Barthes, as found in his book, Mythologies. It offers a primer on semiotics for those not familiar with the science and then uses concepts from semiotics to examine Fenway Park, home of the Boston Red Sox, baseball, football and the most important football game in America, the Super Bowl. Sports are so interesting to semioticians because of the importance of signs, in the playing of games, and in the interpretation of games by audiences of their televised broadcasts. It is suggested that televised baseball games are turned into psychodramas by the editors of the televised versions of the games. In this book, there are many quotations of interest from scholars and writers that examine important aspects of the games as semiotic texts. There are also many photos and drawings to give the book more visual interest.

In: Sports Semiotics
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In: Journal of Global Slavery

Abstract

In response to critiques of the ‘slavery versus freedom’ binary and its limitations, researchers at the international Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSSwww.dependency.uni-bonn.de) at the University of Bonn tentatively employ the analytical concept of ‘asymmetrical dependency’ in their investigations of coercive social relations, such as slavery, debt bondage, and servitude. In this paper, we discuss some basic theoretical assumptions that undergird this analytical concept. In outlining an approach to asymmetrical dependency that is grounded in social and cultural theory, our goal is to provide a framework within which individual researchers can situate their projects and further develop their theoretical understanding of this phenomenon. To this end, we first introduce the analytical concept of asymmetrical dependency and explore its potential in light of the current state of research of slavery studies and related fields. We then conceptualize asymmetrical dependency as a dynamic relational process and employ a chiefly praxeological methodology to identify and describe some fundamental dynamics of these relations. Finally, we argue that the interdisciplinary study of asymmetrical dependency requires a broad practice of comparative analyses. We, therefore, consider several recent critiques of and models for comparison while relating them to the analytical concept of asymmetrical dependency we propose.

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In: Journal of Global Slavery
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Abstract

In the years 1823, 1829–1830, and 1837, West and West Central Africa had to contend with three devastating yellow fever epidemics that affected both slave dealers who had settled along the coast and anti-slave trade officials tasked with bringing the slave trade to an end. In this paper I argue that these epidemics had a profound impact on the actions of both sets of actors, and eventually on the expansion and demise of the slave trade in the region. By focusing on the actions of a myriad of Atlantic actors, I explore the ways in which cyclical epidemics of yellow fever were dealt with, emphasizing how prophylactic measures, treatments, and more generally, medical knowledge, were challenged, affected, and changed by the arrival of each of them.

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In: Journal of Global Slavery
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In: Journal of Global Slavery
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Abstract

This article revisits the scholarly debate on the profitability of historical slavery. The article examines the case of the antebellum US South, using slave hire rates as a proxy for the net rent on investments in slavery. It employs empirical data and a more advanced methodological approach to the issue than in previous research. The results suggest that the profitability of slavery was much higher than what most previous research has shown, around 14–15 per cent per year on average after adjusting for mortality risk, but that the return also fluctuated over time. It was on average more profitable for Southern capital owners to invest in slaves than investing in many alternatives such as financial instruments or manufacturing activities in the US South, as long as slavery remained a legal institution.

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In: Journal of Global Slavery
History, Societies, Environments and Cultures
A peer-reviewed series of “state-of-the-field” handbooks to provide up-to-date surveys of themes, places, persons, movements, events, and more in the history of the Americas from the earliest times to the present and of the societal, environmental, and cultural forces that shaped them. Written by teams of foremost specialists in their respective fields, these companions aim to offer new approaches to area studies and to open up critical questions to discussion, but also to provide full and balanced accounts and syntheses of debate and the state of scholarship in the field. Each volume is constructed in a similar manner: a small number of introductory chapters to present the current narratives and update recent historiography followed by a larger number of thematic chapters.

Authors are cordially invited to submit proposals and/or full manuscripts by email to the publisher Dr Kate Hammond. Please direct all other correspondence to Associate Editor Alessandra Giliberto.