Gerd Schwerhoff and Alex Kästner, eds., Göttlicher Zorn und menschliches Maß: Religiöse Abweichung in frühneuzeitlichen Stadtgemeinschaften (Constance: UVK, 2013)

This book presents six essays by researchers associated with the Technological University of Dresden’s collaborative research centre, Transzendenz und Gemeinsinn, on the interesting theme of religious deviance in early modern cities. As Gerd Schwerhoff and Alexander Kästner make clear in the introduction, early modern religious deviance is a broad concept, and one difficult to delimit, particularly because most early modern secular crimes—theft, adultery, witchcraft and magic, blasphemy—were also sins. Should such offences fall under the rubric of secular or religious deviance? Historians have traditionally approached these offences as secular (and indeed, they were commonly prosecuted in ‘secular’ courts), but one cannot help but see their religious roots. Moreover, religious deviance also encompassed divergence over confessional practices and doctrinal beliefs among Catholics, Protestants, Anabaptists, Calvinists, and so on. To try and demarcate this broad field, Schwerhoff and Kästner advocate using the ‘labelling approach’, drawn from sociology and previously used in Schwerhoff’s work: that is, behaviour only becomes deviant when contemporaries classified (or labelled) it as such (p. 27).

Alex Trier

C. O.

Organic geochemistry of sediments from North Alex Mud Vulcano

Hydrocarbon seeps are ubiquitous at gas-prone Cenozoic deltas such as the Nile Deep Sea Fan (NDSF) where seepage into the bottom water has been observed at several mud volcanoes (MVs) including North Alex MV (NAMV). Here we investigated the sources of hydrocarbon gases and sedimentary organic matter together with biomarkers of microbial activity at four locations of NAMV to constrain how venting at the seafloor relates to the generation of hydrocarbon gases in deeper sediments. At the centre, high upward flux of hot (70 °C) hydrocarbon-rich fluids is indicated by an absence of biomarkers of Anaerobic Oxidation of Methane (AOM) and nearly constant methane (CH4) concentration depth-profile. The presence of lipids of incompatible thermal maturities points to mixing between early-mature petroleum and immature organic matter, indicating that shallow mud has been mobilized by the influx of deep-sourced hydrocarbon-rich fluids. Methane is enriched in the heavier isotopes, with values of d13C ~-46.6 per mil VPDB and dD ~-228 per mil VSMOW, and is associated with high amounts of heavier homologues (C2+) suggesting a co-genetic origin with the petroleum. On the contrary at the periphery, a lower but sustained CH4 flux is indicated by deeper sulphate-methane transition zones and the presence of 13C-depleted biomarkers of AOM, consistent with predominantly immature organic matter. Values of d13C-CH4 ~-60 per mil VPDB and decreased concentrations of 13C-enriched C2+ are typical of mixed microbial CH4 and biodegraded thermogenic gas from Plio-Pleistocene reservoirs of the region. The maturity of gas condensate migrated from pre-Miocene sources into Miocene reservoirs of the Western NDSF is higher than that of the gas vented at the centre of NAMV, supporting the hypothesis that it is rather released from the degradation of oil in Neogene reservoirs. Combined with the finding of hot pore water and petroleum at the centre, our results suggest that clay mineral dehydration of Neogene sediments, which takes place posterior to reservoir filling, may contribute to intense gas generation at high sedimentation rate deltas.

Libertad y participación política en Alex de Tocqueville

Tocqueville identifica las bases sociales de la democracia moderna con el afán asociativo. Advierte que sin asociaciones voluntarias de carácter secundario no hay democracia sino tiranía de la mayoría, aquéllas, contribuyen a la creación de un equilibrio social caracterizado por la existencia de círculos sociales de interés capaces de frenar el poder y tutelar la libertad.

Alex Garvie. Aeschylus' Supplices. Play and Trilogy, Bristol Phoenix Press, UK, 2006, i-xxiv + 279 pp.

Fil: Fernández Deagustini, María del Pilar. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

Alex Garvie. Aeschylus' Supplices. Play and Trilogy, Bristol Phoenix Press, UK, 2006, i-xxiv + 279 pp.

Fil: Fernández Deagustini, María del Pilar. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina.

Ibarra Peña, Alex. Filosofía chilena. La tradición analítica en el período de institucionalización de la filosofía. Bravo y Allende, 2011, Prólogo de José Santos Herceg. 136 pp. ISBN 978-956-307-049-1

Fil: Karczmarczyk, Pedro. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (UNLP-CONICET); Argentina.

Ibarra Peña, Alex. Filosofía chilena. La tradición analítica en el período de institucionalización de la filosofía. Bravo y Allende, 2011, Prólogo de José Santos Herceg. 136 pp. ISBN 978-956-307-049-1

Fil: Karczmarczyk, Pedro. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación. Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (UNLP-CONICET); Argentina.