Search

Scholars of agrarian change have long debated the nature of capitalist transition in the countryside, including whether the deepened interlinking of local, national, and transnational economic activities make past trajectories of agrarian transformation unlikely to reoccur in the present. This essay makes the case that Giovanni Arrighi's work has much to add to our understanding of the agrarian question in global historical perspective. We focus in particular on Arrighi's research on trajectories of change in the Calabrian region of southern Italy, and his essay “Capitalist Development in Hostile Environments.” In this piece, Arrighi and co-author Fortunata Piselli develop two key insights. The first is that the pathways to capitalism are diverse, non-linear, and historically contingent such that within one country—or, in the case of Italy, a single subnational region—multiple trajectories can be found. The second is that the outcomes of capitalist transition vary based on a country's position in the international hierarchy of wealth, meaning that agrarian transformation is compatible with both economic development and underdevelopment. We describe the three methodological principles that enabled Arrighi to develop his analysis of capitalist transition and explain how the papers collected in this special issue reflect and extend the Arrighian approach to agrarian political economy.

Historian Herbert Mehrtens sought to portray the history of turn-of-the-century mathematics as a struggle of modern vs countermodern, led respectively by David Hilbert and Felix Klein. Some of Mehrtens' conclusions have been picked up by both historians (Jeremy Gray) and mathematicians (Frank Quinn). We argue that Klein and Hilbert, both at Gottingen, were not adversaries but rather modernist allies in a bid to broaden the scope of mathematics beyond a narrow focus on arithmetized analysis as practiced by the Berlin school. Klein's Gottingen lecture and other texts shed light on Klein's modernism. Hilbert's views on intuition are closer to Klein's views than Mehrtens is willing to allow. Klein and Hilbert were equally interested in the axiomatisation of physics. Among Klein's credits is helping launch the career of Abraham Fraenkel, and advancing the careers of Sophus Lie, Emmy Noether, and Ernst Zermelo, all four surely of impeccable modernist credentials. Mehrtens' unsourced claim that Hilbert was interested in production rather than meaning appears to stem from Mehrtens' marxist leanings. Mehrtens' claim that [the future Brigadefuhrer] Theodor Vahlen... cited Klein's racist distinctions within mathematics, and sharpened them into open antisemitism" fabricates a spurious continuity between the two figures mentioned and is thus an odious misrepresentation of Klein's position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Juvenile polyposis (JP) is an inherited condition predisposing to upper gastrointestinal (UGI) polyps and colorectal cancer. Two genes are known to predisose to JP, SMAD4 and bone morphogenetic protein receptor type 1A ( BMPR1A). The object of this study was to determine the differences in phenotype of patients with SMAD4 or BMPR1A mutations (MUT+) compared with those without (MUT-). DNA was extracted from 54 JP probands and used for polymerase chain reaction of all exons of SMAD4 and BMPRIA. Products were then sequenced and analyzed for mutations. Medical record data were used to create a JP database, and statistical analysis was performed using Fisher's exact and unpaired t-tests. Nine of 54 patients had germline SMAD4 mutations, 13 had BMPR1A mutations, and 32 had neither. There were no significant differences between SMAD4+ and BMPR1A+ cases in terms of clinical factors examined, except for a family history of UGI involvement ( P<.01). There was a higher prevalence of familial cases in MUT+ patients ( P=.09),>10 lower gastrointestinal polyps ( P=.06), and frequency of family history of gastrointestinal cancer compared with MUT-patients ( P=.01). Patients with germline SMAD4 or BMPR1A mutations have a more prominent JP phenotype than those without, and SMAD4 mutations predispose to UGI polyposis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]