Nias Newsletter 39

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NIAS Newsletter 39

EditorialNIAS is ready for the winter as its main building is stayingunder 88.000 new roofing tiles. The renewed roof islooking really good, even though there was a certainamount of suffering for both fellows and staff during thatperiod. The Research Group 2006/07 left a buildingsurrounded by scaffolding, the grass covered by iron platesand the infernal noise of drills and shattering roofing tileshitting the ground. During the summer the work continuedin spite of thunder, lightning, wind and rain which did, infact, delay the work. This meant that when the new yeargroup arrived they discovered the building still hiddenbehind scaffolding, the grass still covered up and the noiseonly ceased during the five-minute talks and after sixo’clock. But by the end of September we had said goodbyeto the roofers, and within a week new turfs had been laid,and the grass is greener than ever.

It is not only the roof that has undergone a facelift,however. The Newsletter has also taken on a newappearance. As you can see we proudly present to you ournew roof as depicted on the cover. We have also chosen toprint the newsletter on a different kind of paper, so thequality of the pictures will be improved.

In the Rector’s Note you can read all about (new) initiativesat NIAS this year. An introduction to the Research Group2007/08 can be found on pages 24 to 46. Furthermore,there are the contributions by (former) fellows Max Pamand Pieter van der Horst, Eben Venter, Rudie Botha and JanGunneweg for your enjoyment.

NETHERLANDS INSTITUTE FORADVANCED STUDY IN THEHUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

Institute of the Royal NetherlandsAcademy of Arts and Sciences

Meijboomlaan 1,2242 PR WassenaarTelephone: (0)70 - 51 22 700Telefax: (0)70 - 51 17 162E-mail: [email protected]: www.nias.knaw.nl

This year’s NFA Day will be on Friday,13 June 2008.

Contents1 Editorial

2 Rector’s Note

4 From the NFA Chair

5 Minutes of the NFA General Meeting

7 Willem F. Duisenberg Fellowship

NWO Spinoza Prize

8 Interview: Jonathan Israel

12 The Sounds of NIAS

15 Moving from “Windy Talk” to WindowWork in the Study of Language Evolution

19 KB Fellowship

21 Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls

25 Lorentz Fellowship: Crossing Borders

26 Research Group 2007/08

49 ‘NIAS Books’Received March - September 2006

50 NIAS Fellows ‘Found in Translation’

51 Personal News

53 On being as happy as a Fish without aBicycle

55 Workshops and Conferences

NIAS-Lorentz Workshops (backflap)

NIAS Lectures and Seminars (backflap)

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.nias.knaw.nl

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Rector’s Note

refined cooking skills, others have benefittedfrom his passion for French movies and all ofus know of his insatiable thirst for knowledge.As was to be expected, NIAS has yet to find asuitable successor to take over the reins.Luckily, Yves still drops in and visits us fromtime to time.

As has become the custom over the years, thesummer months were used for importantrenovation work. This year the whole roof ofthe main building was removed, insulated andre-roofed with 88,000 elegantly regimentedtiles. In addition, the interior decor of therestaurant has been thoroughly updated to sothat it now matches the high standard of Paul’scooking. The warm colours, the comfortableseats and improved acoustics make lunch timea most pleasurable interlude.

We are also happy to announce the founding oftwo new special fellowships. The Willem F.Duisenberg Fellowship which celebrates thememory of the former Dutch Minister, Presidentof the National Bank and first President of theEuropean Central Bank. This fellowship is thesuccessor to the Jelle Zijlstra ProfessorialFellowship for research on monetaryeconomics. The same sponsors were motivatedto extend their support to this new programmeby the ever active Professor Victor Halberstadt.The first Willem F. Duisenberg fellow isProfessor Tito Boeri of the Bocconi University inMilan. He will deliver his public lecture in theAula of the University of Amsterdam, after anintroductory speech by the current President ofthe ECB Jean-Claude Trichet.

A more recent venture is the founding ofSpinoza Fellowship for a Peace Philosopher,which the City of The Hague has offered tosponsor. The idea is that the presence of aneminent and publicly visible foreign scholarwill emphasize the role of The Hague as theinternational capital of justice, peace andsecurity.

NIAS is currently preparing for the arrival of aninternational evaluation committee, chaired bythe former Rector of the Wissenschaftskolleg in

The most dramatic event in the past months toreport on must certainly be the fact that Yvesde Roo decided to take early retirement. Noteven the most insistent pleas from several ofhis colleagues could persuade him to stay.Over a period of nearly twenty years, Yves hascoaxed NIAS into the computer age. Forgenerations of fellows and staff, he will alwaysbe remembered as the embodiment of theelectronic revolution. He installed successivegenerations of new equipment, even reachingthe sanctuary of the Rector’s office. Hepatiently taught confused scholars how to dealwith rapidly changing techniques; he helped todesign appropriate software for specialresearch tasks and developed programmes onwhich several activities at the Institute are stillbased. Together with the former NIAS directorDirk van de Kaa, he is co-author of an in-depthdemographic analysis of the members of theRoyal Netherlands Academy of Sciences overits two-hundred year existence. Apart from allthese scientific skills, Yves added his ownparticular flavour to the NIAS community.Some of us have been lucky to enjoy his

Yves de Roo

NIAS Newsletter Fall 2007 3

Berlin Dieter Grimm. At the end of the year, thiscommittee will take a close look at how NIAS’sperformance has developed since the previousevaluation in 2000. In preparing our report forthis visit, we had to take a critical look atourselves through the prism of specificindicators which made explicit several aspectsof our functioning that we are normally not soaware of. To make sure we had all the facts atour disposal we asked former fellows to tell usabout their publications and the otherscholarly benefits that ensued from their stayat NIAS. The results are so impressive that Icannot restrain from presenting some of themhere. On average, each year group (equivalentto about 400 working months) delivered• 40 monographs• 17 edited volumes• 76 refereed scholarly articles (taking intoaccount that we only ask for this distinctionsince 2003-4)• 124 other scholarly articles• 61 contributions to collective volumes• 144 scholarly lectures• 28 organised workshops.

I can only congratulate and wholeheartedlythank all our fellows for their truly impressivework, for their co-operation and theircommitment to NIAS in taking the time torespond and send us their publications. Wehope to continue producing such excellentresults and look forward with anticipation to abright future for NIAS.

Wim BlockmansRector

The yearly meeting of the Directors of 'Some Institutes for Advanced Study' was held inBudapest in June 2007. From left to right: Claude Steele, Joachim Nettelbeck (lying), ImreKondor, Mrs. Steel, Wim Blockmans, Gabor Klaniczay, Luca Giulinani, Mrs. Goddard, PeterGoddard (guide), Geoffrey Harpham, Björn Wittrock. Over the last years the group adop-ted The Russel Sage Foundation, The Radcliffe Institute and the Jerusalem IAS as newmembers.

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NFA Day, June 8, 2007A ‘post-Olympic year’ is a common reference insports journalism to explain relatively poorathletic performance and ebbing publicinterest. Fortunately, the NIAS FellowsAssociation does not suffer from any post-anniversary syndrome after last year’s specialNFA day celebrating NIAS 35th anniversary. Asusual, NFA Day drew large numbers of currentand former Fellows, with even some foreignformer Fellows in attendance. And withErnestine van der Wall as this year’s UhlenbeckLecturer, no one had to fear for poorperformance.

True, at the beginning of the afternoon thenumber of participants did not yet lookpromising. Apparently my own re-election asNFA chair (I am most grateful) was notsufficient to prompt many Fellows to arrive intime, but as we moved through the order ofbusiness of the NFA general meeting more andmore Fellows arrived to hear Joop vanHolsteyn’s report from the auditing committee,to elect Peter Kroes and Karin Willemse as thenew auditing committee, to listen to GalenIrwin’s report on the Golestan Foundation, and,most importantly of all, to Rector WimBlockmans’ ‘This year at NIAS’.

The conference building was packed by timeErnestine van der Wall took the floor for the25th Uhlenbeck lecture. Currently a NIASFellow, Ernestine holds the chair in the Historyof Christianity at Leiden University and is aMember of the Royal Academy. Her lecture wasentitled ‘The Enemy Within; Religion, Scienceand Modernism’. Although she focused on theeffect of the Enlightenment on traditionalistChristian religion, the parallels with current

developments were clear from her start with aquote from a recent newspaper ‘Shall theFundamentalists Win?’. This is not the placefor a synopsis, let alone an evaluation, ofprofessor Van der Wall’s lecture, so let me justrecall some of the aspects that struck me most.When looking at the relationship betweenscience and religion, we all too easily think ofthe natural sciences and traditionalist religion’sdifficulty to come to terms with new findingsin that field. Yet, it was Spinoza, more thanDarwin, who presented the biggest challengefor traditionalist religion, as it had to deal withhistorical and philological analyses of religioustexts. The crucial issue was the notion thatreligion cannot be exempt from criticism, andthe crucial conflicts were with modernistswithin the churches rather than withfreethinkers or atheists outside the churches.The importance of understanding theseconflicts for current affairs was emphasizedonce again towards the end of the lecture, witha plea by Ernestine van der Wall for acomparative study of modernity in Judaism,Christianity, and Islam. It was an impressivelecture, followed by a lively discussion onpostmodernism in religion, on the differencesbetween Catholics and Protestants in theirreception of modernist ideas, etc.

As usual, the discussion did not stop when themeeting was formally closed, but it continuedas we drifted outside to enjoy the evening sun,the music, a glass of wine, the delicious buffetdinner, and most of all: the company of old andnew colleagues and friends.

Rudy AndewegChair NFA

From the NFA Chair

On 28 February 2008 Tito Boeri, Professor of Economics at Bocconi University,Director of the Fondazione Rodolfo Debenedetti and Director of DIEM (Degree ofInternational Economics and Management) at Bocconi University, Milan will deliverthe first Willem F. Duisenberg Lecture in the Aula of of the University of Amsterdam.

The fifth, and last Jelle Zijlstra Lecture will be delivered by Martin Hellwig, Directorof the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn, and Professor ofEconomics at Universität Bonn on 27 May at the Free University of Amsterdam.


Minutes of the NFA General Meeting

June 8, 20071. Opening

Rudy Andeweg, Chair of the NFA, opens themeeting and welcomes all those present.

2. Minutes of the NFA General Meeting June 9,2006.

The minutes of the 2006 meeting are approved,and thanks go to Pearl Dykstra for producingthem.

3. Report on the Golestan Foundation

The treasurer of the Golestan Foundation, IrwinGalen, comments on the 2006 FinancialStatement. Expenditures amounted toapproximately € 64,000. Major costs involvedthe appointment of a Golestan Fellow (EugenFischer), and the contribution towards theplaquette honoring Els van Loon. Galenencourages all to have a look at the finalizedplaquette in the garden! Of course there arealso the annual costs for the maintenance ofthe Persian garden and the publication of theUhlenbeck lecture. Over the year 2006 theassets grew by approximately € 49,000yielding a net decrease in assets of € 15,000.Despite the net decrease in assets, the GolestanFoundation is in good financial shape. Thanksto Galen’s concise and clear report, noquestions are asked.

4. Financial Report. Report from the NFAAuditing Committee

Jan Lucassen, treasurer of the NFA, reports onthe finances of the NFA. The past years haveconsistently shown a slight decrease in assets:the NFA is spending more than it is receiving.2006 was no exception: revenues were lowerthan average because several members of the2005 – 2006 year groups have been Fellowspreviously (and thus have already paid theirdues). Expenditures were higher than average,primarily because of the contribution (€ 4,000)to the plaquette honoring Els van Loon.Lucassen expects a change in bank

account(with an interest rate of 3% as opposedto the current 1%) to bring an improvement inthe NFA’s future financial status. Nevertheless,the financial position of the NFA in terms ofreserves is relatively comfortable (€ 7,000).

Andries Sanders (Fellow 1994/95) drawsattention to a request he made in 2005 to lookat the possibilities of a change in bankingarrangements. He wonders why no steps havebeen taken in the past two years. Jan Lucassenregrets the delay, and notes that the NFA Boardtakes full responsibility. The Board willinvestigate whether the NFA account can beincorporated in the larger bankingarrangements of the Royal NetherlandsAcademy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Jo Edema (Fellow 1976/77) inquires into theacceptable financial minimum. In response,Lucassen notes that the purpose of the NFA isnot to save money, but to spend it on usefulactivities. A general rule of thumb is that twotimes the average annual revenue should be inthe bank account, which amounts to between €6,000 and € 8,000. Joop van Holsteijn (Fellow2005/06) reports on the findings of the NFAAuditing Committee (on which he and HenkNellen (Fellow 2004/05) served). Thanks to RitaBuis, the accounts are accurate and in perfectorder. Rudy Andeweg thanks the members ofthe Auditing Committee for their meticulousinspection of the accounts, and dischargesthem from their services.

5. This year at NIAS. Report by the Rector.

Wim Blockmans reports on this year’s activities.Every year group is special in one way oranother, but the 2006/07 group is truly special!

This year stands out because it is the first tohave fellows from the natural sciences,including three Lorentz Fellows (Carel ten Cate,Paul van den Broek, and Mohammad Bagheri).The Lorentz programme was launched in 2006to promote interdisciplinary research thatbridges the gap between the humanities and/orthe social sciences on the one hand and thenatural sciences on the other. The Lorentz

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Fellowship involves, among others, theorganization of a workshop that reflectsinterdisciplinary practice. Bagheri hosted theworkshop Geometric patterns in Islamic art inSeptember 2006, and Van den Broek hosted theworkshop Brain mechanisms and cognitiveprocesses in the comprehension of discourse inMarch 2007. The theme group of Johan vanBenthem on Games, action and social softwareis also exemplary of bridge building in science.The theme group involves experts frompolitical science, mathematics and economics.The “Enlightenment” theme group of Ernestinevan der Wall was not realized as originallyplanned but somehow an informal groupemerged and has been wonderfully successful.This is another exemplar of across disciplinaryboundary scholarship.

The year 2006/07 also stands out because ofthe involvement of scholars from Islamic andAfrican countries (e.g. Mona Abaza, Sadik Al-Azm, and Karim Bejjit). In the past, few scholarswere recruited from these countries.

Visible press coverage of the activities of NIASfellows is another reason why the 2006/07year group is special. Donald Light’s work onthe policies of pharmaceutical companiesreceived ample media attention.

This year’s informal activities have also beendifferent from those of its predecessors: novolleyball, for example, and no cooking in theBlue Room either (last year’s cookbook bringsback fond memories!). The shared activities inthe 2006/07 group have been characterized byhigh levels of intellectualism: a literary saloonwith a reading of Hebrew poetry, an eveningtrek in the dunes aimed at identifying variationsin nightingale chants, movies (e.g. Das Lebender Anderen) followed by discussions, and soforth. It is fitting to have an exhibit on theoccasion of this year’s NFA-Day of the art workof Yael Seggev (spouse of NIAS Fellow YoadWinter), David Holt (spouse of NIAS FellowJudith Newman), and Nigel Langdon (spouse ofNIAS Fellow Annelou van Gijn).

Overall, the 2006/07 year has been like a flyingcircus. A number of fellows enjoyed only shortvisits, others are staying for both semesters.Perhaps the ‘traditional’ 10-month stay requires

a reconsideration, given changing academic lifestyles and career patterns.

Since 2002, NIAS has been involved togetherwith the University of Antwerp, in organizingthe Ortelius lecture series in an effort to furtherDutch-Flemish collaboration in the humanitiesand social sciences. This year, on May 9, thelecture was delivered by Mona Abaza, whospoke on The Dialectics of Enlightenment,Barbarism and Islam.

The lectures of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB)Fellows are a second series of lecturesorganized by NIAS. Jonathan Israel is scheduledto deliver his KB-lecture on June 21. He willspeak on ‘Failed Enlightenment’: Spinoza’sLegacy and the Netherlands (1670-1820).

In closing, Blockmans comments on thecreative atmosphere that has and continues toexist at NIAS. He recommends the art exhibitionto all attendees, and notes that the pieces ofHolt and Seggev can be purchased. Analternative NIAS memento for the scarves, tiesand t-shirts?

6. Composition of the NFA Board

According to the membership rules, Chair RudyAndeweg is due to resign in 2007, but he canbe re-elected. All are in favour of Andeweg’s re-election.

7. Appointment of a new Auditing Committee

The Board proposes Peter Kroes (Fellow2006/07) and Karin Willemse (Fellow 2005/06)to serve on the new Auditing Committee. Bothcandidates are appointed by acclamation.

8. Other business

None.

9. Closing

Rudy Andeweg adjourns the meeting at 15:25hours, after thanking those present for theirdemonstrated interest.

Pearl DykstraSecretary


Willem F. Duisenberg Fellowship

The Willem F. Duisenberg Fellowship is aninvitational fellowship offered to researchersfrom abroad who have an outstanding recordin the field of applied monetary economics,macro economics or public finance. The Fellowdelivers a public lecture at the University ofAmsterdam.

The Fellowship was set up in June 2007 inhonour of Willem F. Duisenberg and builds onNIAS's successful Jelle Zijstra Fellowshipprogramme.

Willem Duisenberg (1935-2005) succeededJelle Zijlstra (1918 - 2001) as President of DeNederlandsche Bank (the Dutch Central Bank)in 1981. During his career Duisenberg workedat the International Monetary Fund, asProfessor of Macro-Economics at the Universityof Amsterdam, as Minister of Finance, asPresident of De Nederlandsche Bank, and from1998 to 2003 as first President of the EuropeanCentral Bank. In this latter capacity he wasinstrumental in the introduction of theEuropean Monetary Union and the Euro.

The Willem F. Duisenberg Fellowship issponsored by De Nederlandsche Bank, theDutch Ministry of Finance and several majorDutch financial institutions: the ING Group,Rabobank Nederland, ABN-AMRO, Fortis andAEGON.

The first Willem F. Duisenberg Fellow, Tito BoeriProfessor of Economics at Bocconi Universitywill stay at NIAS from 1 December 2007 to 29February 2008 and will deliver the firstWillem F. Duisenberg Lecture What happenedto European Mass Unemployment? on 28February 2008 in the Aula of the University ofAmsterdam.

Last June NIAS fellow2007/08 Professor DeirdreCurtin has been awardedthe prestigious NWO SpinozaPrize, Netherlands’ highestdistinction in scientificresearch. Deirdre Curtin isProfessor in European andInternational Governance andhas received the SpinozaPrize for her pioneeringcontribution to European andconstitutional law andgovernance. On 28 November2007 she received the prize inthe Nieuwe kerk in The Hague.

NWO Spinoza Prize

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His eyes twinkle with irony but he speaks withthe solemn intensity of a true academic.“Holland”, says the British historian JonathanIsrael, “didn’t produce any great philosophersof its own, but it was the best place for aphilosopher to work.”

“People like Spinoza and Descartes”, he saysenthusiastically, “were giants, but we mustn’tforget their close associates! Spinoza had acircle of philosophers around him. Many of hisfollowers were Dutch. It is these people whowere responsible for the success of theEnlightenment. Ordinary men, but veryinteresting people, embraced the RadicalEnlightenment, for example a doctor fromZwolle. These people had a great deal ofinfluence locally and it is they who created anintellectual environment in the Netherlandsthat made the publication of all thoseenlightened books possible. Many historians,including myself, have failed to notice just howmuch these people of the Netherlandscontributed to the dissemination of Spinoza’sideas at the end of the 17th century.”

Jonathan Israel (1946), is not just one of themost important cultural historians of our time,he happens to be fascinated by theNetherlands and Dutch history. His widelyacclaimed seminal work The Dutch Republicattests to this. During this work he becamegripped by the Enlightenment: thephilosophical and political movement aboutwhich he would go on to write twomonumental monographs The RadicalEnlightenment and Enlightenment Contested.The third volume, which looks mainly at thelater Enlightenment period, is the reasonJonathan Israel, took time out from his post asProfessor at the Princeton Institute forAdvanced Study to come to NIAS onsabbatical.

According to Israel there is a fundamentaldifference between the Radical Enlightenment,

Interview: Jonathan IsraelBy Pieter W. van der Horst and Max Pam

Theologist Pieter van der Horst and writer Max Pam interviewed historianJonathan Israel while they were fellows at NIAS. The interview was publishedearlier in De Volkskrant. Jonathan Israel stayed at NIAS as KB-fellow anddelivered KB Lecture 4 ‘Failed Enligthenment’: Spinoza’s Legacy and theNetherlands (1670-1800) in June 2007.

Jonathan Israel and his partner Annette Munt

as it emerged in the second half of the 17th

Century among those surrounding Spinoza,and the much more moderate formof Enlightenment that was willing toaccommodate religion and tradition.Nevertheless, it was the hard-won values ofthe Radical Enlightenment - such as equalityand public morality based on reason - thatwould eventually form the basis for Westerndemocratic constitutions.

Last year Jonathan Israel openly attacked theDutch government and educationalistsbecause they had allowed the Dutchenlightened past to fall into neglect. Heexpressed hope that the Minister for Education– Ronald Plasterk would be able to turn thisaround because the “the scale of stupidity andneglect still continued to grow”. He was alsoconcerned that secondary school pupils in theNetherlands were never examined on theirknowledge of Spinoza. However, he realisedthat he was too far removed from the world ofpolitics to be in a position to have any impacton Plasterk through tough words alone. Heunderstood that a minister, who considershimself an atheist, and who has to occupy aseat alongside Christian colleagues has to bediplomatic.

How did your career start?

“In 1974, I went to University College London,where the Dutch Government established aChair in Dutch History in 1919. Geyl was thefirst appointee and I was the first non-Dutchnational to hold the post. Koen Swart was mymaster there, and we became firm friends. Wehad long discussions about the Eighty-YearsWar. At that time, Dutch historians were not yetmaking use of the Spanish Archives, whereastheir British colleagues were. Because my firstbook was on a Spanish topic, I already knewmy way around and it was through theseSpanish sources that I became so enthusiasticabout Dutch history.”

Do you speak Dutch?

“I learnt it 30 years ago. My spoken Dutch isnot very good, but I can read it fluently.”

Where were you born?

“I was born in an area of London that thesatirical magazine Private Eye jokinglydescribed as the place where the thickestpeople came from. I escaped, because myparents moved away when I was just two. Igrew up in Kilburn in North London. Mysecondary school was located exactly betweena Jewish and an Irish community, althougheighty-percent of the teachers were English.There was always sense of tension betweenteachers and pupils.”

Were you raised in the Jewish tradition?

“My father wasn’t very religious. We only wentto shul on holy days. Rituals are a part ofcultural tradition; you see this among theCalvinists, Muslims and Buddhists alike. Youdon’t have to be a believer to appreciate thevalue of ritual.”

So you are one of those Jews who say: thereis only one God and we don’t believe in Him.

Jonathan laughs and answers: “You could saythat.”

Are you an atheist?

“I would prefer to call myself a Spinozist.Spinoza always denied that he was an atheist.Of course it would have been dangerous forhim to admit such a thing. That is why hewanted to redefine atheism. The word atheismstill has negative connotations, but in his timeatheism implied a complete rejection of allvalues. He wanted to redefine atheism, just ashe also wanted to redefine what true belief is,or true religion. True belief is usually not thesame as what most followers practice. Forexample, Spinoza was of the opinion thatJesus’ aspirations were totally corrupted by hisfollowers. True belief teaches respect for thetruth and justice; for moral vigour and charity,but theology is not necessarily based on suchvalues. Ultimately, religion is not necessary inorder to establish values. You can see Spinoza’sphilosophy is still extremely relevant.”


So, you see Spinoza and Pierre Bayle as thearchitects of the Radical Enlightenment?

“Yes, because they systematically underminedthe authority of the Bible. For both of them theOld and the New Testament lost the status ofGod’s Word. If you openly doubted the truthand authority of the Holy Book you had to fearfor your life. This is still the case today amongMuslims. In the seventeenth and eighteenthcentury, this debate was not played out in thepublic domain. It was discussed at smallinformal gatherings attended by just a fewpeople. Spinoza was not only a greatphilosopher; he also possessed a keenawareness of how his insights couldundermine an authoritarian mentality. Hedeveloped a network of freethinkers. Thisstarted on a small scale through personalcontacts. He then made deliberate attemptsto convert academics. The universities, inparticular, played a subversive role.”

When people think about the Enlightenment,Voltaire is always the first name thatsprings to mind.

“Voltaire cannot be seen as part of the RadicalEnlightenment; this is hard for some people tounderstand. If morality is not based ontheology, then equality must be the basicprinciple. But if that is the case then the voiceof a Bishop can never be worth ten times morethan that of an ordinary believer. Only then canyou establish a secular morality. You treatothers as you wish to be treated by them. ‘I amthe Bishop, I have the final word, so you musthold your tongue’ – such a view means the endof any discussion. Only if you can overcomethis, if all opinions count equally, only then willyou be able to establish a secular morality.There is no God given social or politicalhierarchy. There is no justification for anaristocracy that is in possession of the mostwealth.”

“This is the radical, the revolutionary aspect ofthis philosophy, and in this respect Voltairewas an anti-Spinozist. He did not support amassive campaign against the Church. He wasagainst enlightening the masses and he alsosupported the monarchy. He still believed in a

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social hierarchy and morality ordained by God.Voltaire was a literary giant, a master ofhumour, but an original thinker he was not. Asa philosopher he was not particularlyimportant either. He certainly had a hugeimpact on public debate, but socially andpolitically speaking he was a conservative. Ifequality is the underlying principle, as it is inthe Radical Enlightenment, inequality willeventually be a problem. Diderot andd’Holbach began to see the reprehensible sideof social inequality, but such thoughts did notbother Voltaire at all.”

“This was the issue in the battle with Diderot,who had difficulty getting his Encyclopaediapublished in France. People suspected that thepublishers were using the Encyclopaedia as afront. Although the foreword claimed that theauthors were loyal to the Monarchy and theChurch, people soon realised that this was afaçade of moderation. If you look more closely,you find all manner of subversive strategies.That is why it is essential to make a distinctionbetween the Radical Enlightenment and theModerate Enlightenment. Without thisdistinction, which is still relevant, you willnever truely understand what the battle wasabout.”

What does the term Enlightenment entail?

“It is, of course, rather a vague concept. Ibelieve there are two forms of Enlightenmentthat have always been in conflict sincethe seventeenth century: the RadicalEnlightenment which was primarily dominantagainst the, what I call, ModerateEnlightenment. Current views consider theRadical Enlightenment as more important,because it connects universal human rightswith the idea of unity. There is one singlehuman race, and this is why all people havethe same rights. This is why there the sexesand races are all equal. This is a typical RadicalEnlightenment concept; a democratic principlethat also automatically rejects colonialism. TheRadical Enlightenment only accepts reason asthe guiding principle.”

“The liberal foundations of Western cultureare directly derived from the Radical


Enlightenment, but by the eighteenth centurythis was no longer the dominant ideology,certainly not in Holland. At that time, Dutchsociety was split in two. The Orangists withtheir patriotic ideas said: we accept that reasonis of vital importance, however natural rightsdo not exist and that is why we are againstdemocracy. And there is also tradition andreligion. There has to be a balance betweenreason and belief.”

Why has the distinction between the Radicaland the Moderate Enlightenment beenignored for so long?

“In the nineteenth century anti-republican andanti-democratic sentiments reigned. Peopleeverywhere wanted autocracy and monarchy,even in Holland which didn’t even have aMonarchy. They then imported one. That theRadical Enlightenment was almost successfulproduced an enormous shock in Europe.Especially the British and Russian governmentswere fearful. Following the Greek revolution in1821, the English demanded that at least aMonarchy should be established there. We willfind you a King. A Prince from Bavaria –unbelievable! The people would never be ableto run their own state – that was the commonconviction. The French Revolution was stillbeing denounced at the end of nineteenthcentury. That was the worst atheism!”

In the US, atheists are at the bottom of theladder in terms of being trusted.

“In the nineteenth century, this was also truein the whole of Europe. Take d’Holbach, whowas extremely radical and democratic; a pureatheist but also a highly original andunderestimated philosopher. He is simplyignored even though he is one of the mostsystematic thinkers on democracy and secularmorality.”

Are the achievements of the RadicalEnlightenment currently under pressure?

“An awareness of the value of the RadicalEnlightenment has disappeared, even among

intellectuals. This is very dangerous. Educationis needed to encourage and nurture the valuesof equality, democracy and tolerance,especially about the history of theEnlightenment. Before the Second World Warthe governments of Britain and the US wereparticularly opposed to the values of theRadical Enlightenment. My father believed thatthe British Monarchy was more important thandemocracy. Churchill, who was initiallyopposed to democracy, believed that Ghandibelonged in prison. Even now I see the filmimages before me of Washington Station:American soldiers, waiting to go to the front inEurope – black soldiers segregated.”

“People forget how recent this was. In 1946racial segregation was normal practice in allthe bars in Washington. President Truman senta letter to the City Administration, complainingabout the Soviet accusation that Americanswere hypocrites. Fighting battles forequal rights in other countries whileperpetuating segregation at home. The RadicalEnlightenment was never completed defeated.”

What position should we take with respect tothe Freedom of Speech?

“That is a freedom we must defend. The simplefact that religious followers find somethingoffensive is not a reason to say nothing. There

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I am staying at the NIAS campus in Wassenaar.At night in my studio apartment – I’ve sincelearnt that fellows in larger apartments refer tothese little ones as ‘cells’ – silence is all I canhear. It reminds me of Joseph Conrad’s line: Thesilence of the land went home to one’s veryheart – its greatness, the amazing reality of itsconcealed life.

Of course, the NIAS campus in no wayresembles the gloomy landscape Conrad had inmind. Here, close to the Wassenaarse slag,majestic beeches line the road leading to the1920’s main building. Cheerful fellows from so

many countries of the world enter through thefront door on their way to warm, well-lit offices.Not a worry in the world, you could say: neitherabout money – the stipendium is generous –nor about any of the responsibilities associatedwith life back home like rushing the dog to thevet or staying in your partner’s good books.

Moreover we are all fed well – the first herringsof the season, snap fresh asparagus, rare blackangus fillets. When a book is required thelibrary staff helps gladly, instantly, and beforeyou know you’re back in your studio, readingaway. Alone again, the silence is deafening.

The Sounds of NIASBy Eben Venter

The prominent South Afrcan writer Eben Venter (1954) stayed as writer-in-residence at NIAS from February till June 2007, where he has been working onhis novel Prins Albert. Eben Venter studied philosophy and worked as ajournalist in Johannesburg. His novel Ek stamel, ek sterwe was rewarded withthe prestigious W.A. Hofmeyr-price. Recently he returned to South Africa fromMelbourne, where he lived for almost twenty years.

is always someone going to be offended bysomething.”

What is offensive?

“That needs to be defined. I am not arguingthat anyone can say whatever they want. Nordo I agree with Aryeh Neier who supportedNazi-demonstrations and wrote the famousbook: Defending my Enemies. He said: ‘we Jewsmore than anyone else must protect freedomof speech’. However, I do think that preachinghate and violence must not be tolerated.”

Why do you think the Radical Enlightenmenthad so many followers in the Netherlands inparticular?

“Dutch society made it possible. Books wereallowed to be published here. The State not theChurch controlled the Universities. The clergywas influential, but they did not have directcontrol. Moreover, the Netherlands was dividedamong several Churches. This made it possiblefor a circle of freedom thinkers to develop andflourish around Spinoza.”

But isn’t the Netherlands such an ordinarycountry?

“There is nothing ordinary about Dutch Society,but I recognize the Dutch tendency to beingdisparaging about themselves. A historiancolleague of mine rightly observed that theNetherlands is too important to leave to theDutch.”


Gül Ozyegin and Eben Venter, in the background Barbara Wolfe

Where is everybody, is their a concealed lifesomewhere that I’m not aware of?

Gradually I learn to prick up my ears anddistinguish sounds: they are around. Duringthe night I hear the melancholic hoot of an owl,also a disturbing crowing repeated at regularintervals until dawn. When I consult our birdcall expert, fellow Carl ten Cate about thelatter, he says he can only identify the bird ifI’m able to imitate its call. It is like the sexualact, you know it so well when you’re at it, yetonce it’s over and done with, it becomes trickyto describe its exact inner workings. I hear thedisturbing crowing again one night, but I won’tremember how to imitate it.

At the end of spring Carl takes a group offellows on a nightingale excursion. There isexcited talking and much speculation, very fewhave heard the magical bird before. The duskyair of the Berkeheide, an exquisite dunereserve boardering NIAS, is laden with thescent of warm pine needles and heather andragosa roses. We hear birds with wonderfulsounding names like the tjiftjaf and thegoudvink. And as it’s getting dark – thenightingale sings at last. The lone male sits allby itself in a shrub, its call distinctly differentfrom all the birds we’ve heard so far and fromall the birds I’ve ever heard in my life. Not veryloud and never as crass as the Australianparrots, not even as melodious as theblackbird, but refined, practised and varied.Calls, all 150 of them, that grow on you. Wecome to adore the nightingale, it is the mostmesmerizing song bird of all. It is lovepersonified.

jiftjaf goudvink nightingale

Yet all through its song cycle some of thefellows keep chatting away, making jokes,proffering observations. The voices of thefellows: it is to become the most dominant ofall the sounds at NIAS.

My days are filled with many languages:around table at lunch, fast Dutch, raucous andconfident. During a smoke break in the gardenthe fellow from Moscow, Mikhail B., conversesin a convivial sounding Russian with a painterand his son from the Ukraine. Next to my officeon the top floor is Christine’s, a fellow from theUSA. I can always tell when she entertains avisitor from her country – the sound of theirvoices seep right through the wall into myoffice. I can’t discern words or meanings, but

14

their voices are particularly Americansounding, a local colour of English whichChristine wouldn’t have been able to sharewith a Brit or any other speaker of English.

Back in my studio apartment, nicely set upwith Wieckse white beer and some sweet andsalty Dutch liquorice from Albert Heijn, Iimmerse myself in Peter Brook’s Reading forthe plot – design and intention in narrative.Then, from the lawns down below and out oftune with the convoluted, overtly complexsentences of Brooks, the laughter of GülOzyegin rings out. She’s returned to thecampus from somewhere, maybe she and afew other fellows had a glass of merlot at CaféBroeders. Gül relishes the stay at NIAS, herlaughter is full of mirth. To me it is impossibleto associate the sound of her voice withVirginia, America where she lives and teaches,she is essentially Turkish even if she doesspeak English.

Thus it is with the sounds that fill my days. Itisn’t so much languages I hear, but the lightand shadow, the timbre and pitch giving thelanguage its specific character, stamping itsuser with its unique sound.

One afternoon Yoad Winter presents a salon onHebrew poetry. He attempts an overview andreads Samuel Hanagid from the Jewish GoldenAge in the eleventh century right to thecontemporary, confronting work of Dan Pagisand Daliah Ravikovich. Behind his glassesYoad’s eyes sparkle, through the poetry of hiscountry he reveals an inner persona. Heinterprets the poets, he explains what theymean to hím.

When my residency at NIAS ends, I travel toIstanbul. One night in the Tünel area myfriends and I eat at one of the top meyhanerestaurants of the city. A meyhane is a loungysort of eating place where you go to drink raki.As the evening, and drinking, progresses, arange of small dishes are served. The dishescomplement the raki perfectly and you end upon a raki high without ever getting drunk.Tender sage green okra is served, also limabeans with garlic and virgin olive oil, creamy,lightly salted peynir (feta cheese), anddelicious halibut with fennel and olive oil. And

into the excited atmosphere of the meyhanerolls thick waves of laughter. The mood iselevated, it is a celebration of life.

That afternoon at NIAS Yoad’s salon dragged ontoo long, yet I came to understand somethingabout him through the way he read andinterpreted and loved the poets of his country.Similarly, after our evening at the meyhane Iwas sure I understood something of the culturewhich brings forth a voice, and laughter, likethat of Gül Ozyegin’s.

Night time at NIAS and the owl hoots in one ofthe tall beech trees. In the apartmentimmediately below mine the wife of SeiichiSuzuki, the fellow from Hirakata, breaks outinto a Puccini aria. Then more silence. Now thesilence is rich and textured, filled with theechoes of all the words and languages I’veheard and come to know. Yet I have moved on,I am beyond listening to all the different tones.I have started listening to the silence.

The NIAS staff hosts a spring brunch withchampagne and Dutch pancakes. I am at thetable with, amongst others, Leonid Zhmudfrom St Petersburg. He’s spoken to me beforeand I know the tone of his voice: slow,measured, and with a twinkle of permanentirony in his eye. He has expressed his dismayat the term ‘Caucasian’ used so freely in thewest to indicate a person with European

Leonid Zhmud


your own mind. It shows a certain respect forthe person and the idea, maybe even somecompassion. At most it is a gift, the gift ofsilence, presented to the speaker while talking.I would like to assume thát is how the fellowslistened to one another. And even if they didn’t,at least they held back on interrupting thespeaker.

One morning we wake up and all hell hasbroken loose. Scaffolding has been erectedaround the main building and the roof is beingdismantled. Workmen march around andinstructions are shouted out from a cranecubicle. The antique, moss covered terracottatiles are dislodged and tumble at ear-piercinglevel into a large container. The sound ofsilence that I, all of us, treasured so much atNIAS has been shattered. It is time to pack upand leave.

features. To him a Caucasian is first andforemost a person hailing from the region ofthe Caucasus.

Today the conversation at the table is about theconflation of a writer’s own political convictionswith that of the protagonist. Leonid saysnothing. Yet I can tell (I’m almost sure) how anelectric jab runs through his body. His facelights up and becomes animated, it’s anindication of high frequency activity in hisbrain. Later he would ask me whether there is‘revolt’ in my prose, as he put it, but on thát dayhe mostly listened in silence.

And so did many fellows on many socialoccasions and during all the lectures presentedunder the auspices of NIAS: it is the skill oflistening to a speaker from beginning to end.To listen in the true sense of the word is tohear without constructing counter thoughts in

Moving from “Windy Talk” to Window Work in theStudy of Language Evolutionby Rudie Botha

Rudie Botha is Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Stellenboschand Honorary Professor at Utrecht University. He was a fellow-in-residence atNIAS in 2001−2002 and again in 2005−2006, when he co-ordinated a researchgroup on “Restricted linguistic systems as windows on language genesis”. Sinceit is not possible to give in a few pages a technical overview of the work that hasbeen done by the various members of the group, this article aims to explain ingeneral terms how the evolution of language was approached in this work.

Modern humans are unique in having acapacity for language. To this day our closestand cleverest cousins, the big apes, remainunable to learn and use language in the waywe do. Language sets us apart, too, from ourdirect ancestors – the creatures who roamedthe earth before our appearance, human-like

but language-less, for hundreds of thousandsof years.

Indulging in “windy talk”So it is natural for us humans to speculateabout the earliest beginnings of language –

16

about the time when, the place(s) where, thepurpose(s) for which, the circumstances underwhich, and the way in which language firstemerged and subsequently evolved. Down thecenturies, these matters have been speculatedon by all sorts of scholars.

Earlier speculations often were distinctly“creative”, as is clear from examples cited ina survey by William Stam: Christoph Voigtman’scontention that all the beauties and subtletiesof language began in the throats of singingfowls; Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s belief thatlanguage originated in primitive song, the firstlanguage having been a love song; andJohannn Gottlieb Herder’s view that languagebegan with ancestral humans imitatinganimals.

Later in the nineteenth century, however, suchspeculations became the object of ridicule.Thus in 1873, the eminent Americanphilologist William Whitney characterized themdepreciatingly as

…mere windy talk, the assertion of subjectiveviews which commended themselves to nomind save the one that produces them, andwhich are apt to be offered with a confidence,and defended with a tenacity, that are ininverse ratio to their acceptableness. This hasgiven the whole question a bad repute amongsober-minded philologists.

What was wrong with the speculations scornedby Whitney? Essentially three things. First,there is the problem Whitney referred to as“mere windy talk”: these speculations were“windy” in not being supported by evidenceof an objective sort. The scholars whopropagated them were not constrained by therequirement that claims about what happenedin a distant past have to be supported by suchevidence. Second, it is futile to speculate aboutthe origin and evolution of something if itsnature and properties are not well understood.And when these speculations were putforward, nobody had a good idea of whatlanguage is or of how other human capacities– mental, physical, behavioural, etc. – areinterlinked with language. Third, there is thenature of the events and processes that arelikely to have played a role in the origin and

evolution of a thing such as language. Unless itis understood what these events andprocesses may have involved, there is littlehope of giving an adequate account of howlanguage may have emerged and evolved. Inthe absence of this understanding,speculations about the origin of language werebound to be overly creative.

Dispensing with the “wind”In the wake of such appraisals by Whitney andothers, any attempt to work on the origin orevolution of language was considereddisreputable, or at best, futile – an exercise intrying to unravel something that inevitablywould be shrouded in mystery forever. Butperceptions have changed dramatically.Witness the rapid growth in the volume ofwork done on this subject in the past twodecades. In addition, up-beat assessments ofrecent work on the evolution of language notesignificant advances in quality. The followingassessment made in 2003 by MortenChristiansen and Simon Kirby illustrates thepoint:

… the field of language evolution finallyemerged from its long hiatus as a legitimatearea of scientific enquiry during the lastdecade of the twentieth century.

If this view is correct, then what has made thedifference? What has made it possible to movefrom “windy” talk to do work on languageevolution that may be considered “legitimate”?The short answer is that scholars working onlanguage evolution today have a significantlybetter understanding of (a) what language is,(b) what may be involved for a thing such aslanguage to emerge and evolve, and (c) howone can provide appropriate justifications foraccounts of language evolution. To expandslightly on (a): language is widely consideredto be a cognitive capacity that has its basis inthe brain and is acquired and used in a socio-cultural context. This view of language assomething that is a part of human biology issuggestive, in turn, of forces or processes thatmight have been involved in the firstemergence of language and in its subsequentevolution: forces or processes that are


generally involved in biological evolution.Other forces or processes involved will besocial and/or cultural, or relate to the waylanguage is acquired by children. Theseplausible assumptions help form a frameworkwithin which principled accounts of languageevolution can be constructed.

We are still left, though, with the question ofwhat can be done to keep accounts oflanguage evolution free from the “windy talk”so pointedly ridiculed by Whitney. What sort ofobjective evidence can be used to supportaccounts of language evolution? This is avexing question since such accounts must, bytheir very nature, express claims of a historicalsort. And, it is of the essence of these claimsthat they are put forward in the absence ofdirect evidence – contained in natural or man-made records – of the events and factors thatmay have been involved in the evolution oflanguage. Language does not fossilize. Inmodern work, however, scientists have comeup with various means of ameliorating thisproblem of evidential paucity. One approachproceeds from the assumption that languageevolution can be studied by examining otherphenomena about which we have directevidence. These other phenomena are thentaken as offering windows on the evolution oflanguage. The contention is that features oflanguage evolution can be “seen” as we “lookat” it through windows provided by variousother phenomena – for instance: prehistoricstone tools; shell beads and carved ochre fromthe Middle Stone Age; fossilized (fragments of)

ancestral skulls; prehistoric sea crossings; birdsong; motherese or baby talk; pidginlanguages; “language” genes; music and song;and Indian mantras. A couple of examples ofputative windows may help to clarify theconcept of a “window on language evolution”:

The Shell Bead Window: By “looking at”some Middle Stone Age shell beadsexcavated at Blombos Cave (near Still Bay inSouth Africa), it can “be seen” that thehumans who inhabited the cave some 75,000years ago had so-called fully syntacticallanguage, according to ChristopherHenshilwood and his team of archaeologists.

The Music Window: By “looking at” certainsimilarities between modern language andmusic, it can “be seen” that language andmusic evolved from a common precursor,referred to as “musilanguage” by StevenBrown or “Hmmmmm”, by Steven Mithen.

To describe a window on language evolution interms of expressions such as “looking at” or“seeing” is to use metaphorical language with“windows” of course representing the rootmetaphor. So what would such a window be innon-metaphorical terms? Non-metaphorically,a window on language evolution is aconceptual construct for making inferencesabout language evolution. That is, to –metaphorically – “see” a property of someaspect of language evolution by –metaphorically – “looking at” a property ofsome other phenomenon is – non-metaphorically – to infer the first propertyfrom data or assumptions about the secondproperty. It is not the case that windowinferences are somehow sound by their verynature; they need to meet various conditions,a point that I will return to.

Engaging in window workThere is a certain category of linguisticsystems that is regarded as havingconsiderable window potential. Amongst otherthings, the category includes incipient pidginlanguages, homesign systems constructedspontaneously by deaf children of parents whodon’t use sign languages, the linguistic

Rudie Botha

18

systems acquired by adults who attempt tolearn a second language without instruction,and historically early language with fewgrammatical categories or none at all. Theselinguistic systems are restricted or simple inthat they lack some of the linguistic means –lexical and structural – used by full languages.In addition, some of these systems are used foronly a limited number of purposes, one ofwhich is basic communication. Thus, simplepidgin languages were created and used incolonial times by people who did not have alanguage in common but who needed tocommunicate verbally for purposes of trade orwork. Linguists of various orientations nowbelieve that inferences about languageevolution can be legitimately drawn from dataabout certain properties of restricted linguisticsystems. These data are about the conditionsunder which restricted linguistic systems comeinto being, the functions in which suchrestricted linguistic systems are used, theirlexical and structural properties, the capacitiesof the people by whom they are created andused, the processes and stages through whichthey develop into fuller systems, and so on.Some examples may illustrate how inferencesabout language evolution have been drawnfrom such data.

Let us start by considering Agent First, ameaning-based principle for the order of wordsin sentences. What the principle says is that, ina given string, the Agent (representing the“doer of an action”) is expressed in the subject

position. In terms of this principle the string hitFred tree, for instance, means “Fred hit thetree” and not “the tree hit Fred”. There are datashowing that Agent First is used in variousrestricted linguistic systems, includingincipient pidgin languages, homesign systems,and what is referred to as the “Basic Variety”,a restricted linguistic system acquired byadults learning a second language withoutinstruction. And it has been inferred from thisby Ray Jackendoff, amongst others, that AgentFirst was used by the evolutionarily early stageof language known as “protolanguage”.

The second example concerns the linguisticexpression of temporality, i.e., of time- relatedaspects of situations. In modern languages,this involves three basic semantic operations:(a) localizing situations in time with the aid ofdeictic expressions such last week andtomorrow and anaphoric expressions such aslater and before; (b) expressing thedistribution of situations over time with the aidof aspectual expressions such as repeatedlyand habitually; (c) ordering situations withrespect to each other in time, with the aid ofexpressions such as before, simultaneouslyand after. In the development of restrictedlinguistic systems such as pidgins andhomesign systems, the operation of localizingsituations in time emerges earlier than that ofexpressing the distribution of situations overtime. And from this, Sandra Benazzo hasinferred that in ancestral language, likewise,the localizing operation emergedevolutionarily before the distributingoperation.

The final example is about learning processesthought to be involved in the development ofhomesign systems: systems of communicativegestures created spontaneously by deafchildren who are not exposed to conventionalspoken or signed language. Ann Senghas andsome of her colleagues have maintained forinstance that, in Nicaragua, certain homesignsystems have been transformed fromrudimentary gestural systems into fuller signlanguage systems because children’s minds dotwo things in particular: (a) they dissectgestures into primitive elements and (b) theyrecombine these elements into linearsequences. These processes, it is claimed, are

Rudie Botha during Farewell Diner 2006


used by the minds of successive waves of deafchildren in learning homesign systems. Andfrom this, it is inferred in a tentative way thatthese processes were involved in the formationof the earliest human languages.

The question is, of course: when inferences aredrawn about language evolution fromproperties of restricted linguistic systems, justhow sound are they? First, to be sound, theyneed to be grounded empirically. Andgenerally these inferences are based on factualdata about the properties of restrictedlinguistic systems. This means that theyactually are “wind-free”, to elaborate onWhitney’s phraseology. Second, to be sound,these inferences need to be warranted. Theyneed to be underpinned by an empirical theorywhich asserts how and why restrictedlinguistic systems on the one hand, andevolutionarily early stages of language on theother hand, are manifestations of one and thesame thing at some deep level, despite

appearing to be different things on the surface.This theory – a theory of what is rudimentaryor “primitive” in language – is needed toprovide the bridge for moving inferentiallyfrom the domain of restricted linguisticsystems to that of not fully evolved ancestrallanguage. This theory is still underconstruction at the level of specifics, as isevidenced by forthcoming publications ofscholars who worked at NIAS in 2005–2006 onthe theme of “Restricted linguistic systems aswindows on language genesis”. (Forsummaries of this work, please visit the NIASwebsite.) Meanwhile, there is a general point tobe made here: each and every window onlanguage evolution needs to incorporate abridge theory which licenses the inference offeatures of language evolution from data aboutphenomena other than language evolution.And, crucially, the bridge theory must in eachinstance be an empirical theory; it cannot be aproduct of dogmatic stipulation; it cannot be aproduct of free-wheeling speculation, either.

The KB Fellowship was established toencourage fruitful co-operation betweenlibraries and scientific researchers. Thefacilities provided at both institutes allow theKB Fellow to make the most use of the KB'sunique collections while befitting fromNIAS' international and multidisciplinaryenvironment.

In 2005, NIAS welcomed the first KB Fellow,Peter Burke Professor of Cultural History at theUniversity of Cambridge. He researched the

history of translation. The lecture he deliveredat the KB Lost (and Found) in Translation: ACultural History of Translators and Translatingin Early Modern Europe was published inEnglish and Dutch. He was followed in 2006 byEmmanuel Le Roy Ladurie who researched theeffect of climate on the history of WesternEurope while at NIAS and delivered his lectureWeatherwise: The Impact of Climate on theHistory of Western Europe, 1200-2000 at theKB in February 2006. In June of the same year,Robert Darnton from Princeton University took

KB Fellowship

The KB Fellowship, collaboration between NIAS and the Koninklijke Bibliotheek(KB), the National Library of the Netherlands, is now looking to the future aftera successful start. Over the next few years we will welcome three renownedresearchers who have accepted invitations by the KB and NIAS to take up a KBFellowship: in September 2008 the British Historian, Lisa Jardine will arrive; inthe spring of 2009 the publisher and typographer, Robin Kinross and at the endof 2010 the Belgian Cultural Historian, Jo Tollebeek.

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up his KB Fellowship at NIAS. His public KBLecture, Bohemians before Bohemianism aboutthe Marquis de Pelleport, an influential libellantwhose writings earned him temporaryaccommodation in the Bastille, was publishedin English and Dutch. In the spring of 2007, theBritish Historian Jonathan Israel Professor ofEarly Modern History arrived at NIAS. Hisresearch on the KB’s collections focussed onSpinoza in the Netherlands and radical thoughtand resulted in a KB Lecture entitled ‘FailedEnlightenment’: Spinoza's Legacy and theNetherlands (1670-1800) which was alsopublished in English and Dutch.

Lisa Jardine, who will take up her KBFellowship in the autumn of 2008, combinesher scholarly career with an active role in theBritish Media. She is Professor of RenaissanceStudies at the Queen Mary University ofLondon and Director of the innovative AHRCResearch Centre for Editing Lives and Letters,which brings archival research and newtechniques together. She has studied theintellectual history of the Renaissance andearly modern cultural history. In 1976 shebecame the first woman to be chosen as fellowat Jesus College in Cambridge and she isHonorary Fellow at Kings College at the sameuniversity. Jardine has published on Erasmus,Sir Francis Bacon, Sir Christopher Wren, RobertHooke, the rise of scientific research in Europeand a feminist critique of Shakespeare. Hercurrently research interests are the giftedHuygens family and the ways England and theNetherlands influenced each other in theseventeenth century. This work entitled GoingDutch will be published in Dutch next year by

the Arbeiderspers. During her KB Fellowshipshe intends to make use of the specialHuygens-collection housed at the KB.

Robin Kinross, typographer, publisher, criticand author of many articles on visualcommunication and typography will arrive atNIAS in the spring of 2009 by. In 2004 hepublished Modern Typography, which hasbecome a seminal work on the history ofWestern typography. In this book Kinross notonly analyses stylistic aspects but alsoexplores the ideas, the social context and thetechnological developments that haveinfluenced typography. During his fellowship,Robin Kinross intends to make special use ofthe KB collections to study the development ofstandardized paper sizes in printing andexplore how this has affected the standard sizeof books.

Jo Tollebeek, Professor at the CatholicUniversity of Leuven will take up his KBFellowship at the end of 2010. His researchinterests include Cultural History since 1750,historical writing and nationalism, the historyof the Catholic University of Leuven andHistoriography. During his Fellowship periodhe will be able to make use of the KBcollections to further his research.

The KB Fellows will deliver a public lecture atthe Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) at the end oftheir fellowship and their lectures will bepublished in both Dutch and English. Thelectures of previous fellows can bedownloaded from www.nias.knaw.nl



in ten caves adjacent to the Qumran settlementon the shores of the Dead Sea. The textsinclude the entire Old Testament as we knowit, as well as several scrolls that were not

A remarkable number of books and articleshave been written about the Dead Sea scrollssince they were discovered. The scrolls werefound in the period between 1947 and 1956,

Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls:a Trans-disciplinary Handshake betweenManuscripts and Archaeological RemainsBy Jan Gunneweg

Jan Gunneweg, Professor Emeritus at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,Department of Archaeometry, is staying as Lorentz Fellow at NIAS where hedoes his research on Qumran and the Dead Sea scrolls for ten months. In thisarticle he gives a short description of this extensive topic. In a multidisciplinaryworkshop on Qumran and the Dead Sea scrolls that will take place on 21-25April 2008 in the Lorentz Center in Leiden, new data will be reported.

Jan Gunneweg (left) and Martin Müller (Kiel University) working on the strength of Qumran textiles at the EuropeanSynchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble.

22

included in the Jewish canon of the OldTestament, for example the Books of Enochand Jubilees, and sectarian writings such asthe Rule of the Community, the Temple scrolland other esoteric texts. The content of theseextra-biblical texts may point to a Jewishsectarian group, perhaps the Essenes,described by Pliny the Elder, Flavius Josephusand Philo of Alexandria. The manuscriptremains consist of about 950 scrolls written inAramaic, Hebrew and Greek scripts, and theyinclude complete scrolls, single pages and tinyfragments. Inscribed in black carbon ink onpapyrus and parchment, the scrolls date from300 BC to AD 70, when Qumran was leftdevastated after the 1st Jewish revolt.

When I first started to read the enormousbibliography associated with the Dead Seascrolls, it hit me that the Qumran texts werediscussed and sometimes even interpretedusing archaeological finds at the Qumransettlement, without much attention paid tolinking the archaeological finds in the caveswith those of the settlement and the cemeteryat Qumran. It was clearly important to link thethree components (the texts and thearchaeological finds in the caves and finds atthe settlement and cemetery) to verify thestory of Qumran. Secondly, it was important torelate all three components to the same timeperiod. The lack of a synchronized set of textsand artefacts would change the Qumranhistory into a myth.

Book I of Kings, 11:40 from cave 11 (Q11b)Photograph by Tsila Sagiv, Israel Antiquities Authority

The first aim of my research, begun in 1998,was to establish the relationships that hadexisted between the people who lived inQumran and its surrounding areas, byanalyzing the chemical ‘fingerprint’ ofQumran’s pottery in order to trace it back tothe site of its manufacture. Fingerprintedpottery reveals trade routes and interrelationsbetween people. The ceramics were subjectedto a nuclear flux in a reactor where they wereirradiated by neutrons to enable neutron

Jar 35 with a wine-deposit Scroll jar with lid Pilgrimflask with black, not yetidentified substance


were later sent to the European SynchrotronRadiation Facility in Grenoble, where threesamples were identified as cotton. But cottonwas introduced to Israel during the 7th centuryand would not have been available in Qumranwhen the Essenes lived there, between 60 BCand AD 70. Thus all thirty wooden and textilesamples were sent to the AMS-C14 facility inGroningen for a second opinion. This testingproved the cotton was from the 9th and the17th centuries, whereas wood samples fromCave 11 were as old as two millennia beforeChrist. So we had established that noteverything found in the Qumran caves and the

activation analysis (NAA). This techniquedetermines certain elements, specifically traceelements, from the entire periodic table thatare present in a sample. From these elementsit is possible to constitute the chemicalcomposition of each individually different claysource on earth used in the manufacture ofpottery. Once it was established that the clay inthe jars that stored the scrolls had only fourprimary chemical compositions, it was thenpossible to trace the clay back to itsgeographical source using the large databasewe had assembled in the Archaeometry Unit atthe Hebrew University of Jerusalem. We tracedthe clay to Qumran itself, to Jericho and theMotza clay formation from Hebron, south ofJerusalem. Some of the remaining dailyutensils were traced to the foresaid places, aswell as to Edom in Trans-Jordan.

In order to ascertain whether the finds atQumran could be placed into the same timescheme as the scroll storage jars, samples ofpottery were dated by thermoluminescence,then checked against the radio carbon dates oforganic matter including wood and textilesfrom the caves, wool from the Christmas Cave,linen wrappings around the scrolls, and linenfrom the settlement and from the cemetery.

Microscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy(SEM) techniques were unable to clearlyidentify the textiles, which were then sent tothe Daresbury Synchrotron. The same samples Jan Gunneweg philosophing about Qumran

Wadi Qumran with caves 4 and 5 on the right. In both 531 scrolls were found.

24

disciplinary scientific reports* on thearchaeology of Qumran.

To summarize the investigations: pottery wasanalyzed to establish any regional contactsbetween the alleged Essenes and others intheir environment. Dating techniques wereapplied to organic and inorganic matter todetermine whether they belonged to the sameperiod of time. The scrolls themselves weresubmitted to radio carbon dating and DNAtesting, to determine which hides of goats andibex the inscriptions were made on. Andfurther analysis will be carried out on the inks,and on the degradation processes of theparchment.

A workshop on Qumran and the Dead Seascrolls will take place from April 21-25 in2008, at the Lorentz Center in Leiden. At theworkshop, new data will be reported on therecent find of a new clay source at Qumran.

settlement itself necessarily belonged to theperiod of Essene occupation. To find furtherevidence to support this view, we are focusingon the textile dyes, using High PerformanceLiquid Chromatography (HPLC) in Brussels andthe Synchrotron in Grenoble. We are especiallystudying the use of indigo of vegetalcomposition under Jewish purity laws is stillbeing investigated.

Meanwhile, in the medical faculty at theHebrew University in Jerusalem, experimentsfocused on the DNA of the scrolls, and theparasitology of everything that is connectedwith human and faunal remains in Qumran andits environs. Even the toilet practices of thesect that lived at Qumran were scrutinized, byexamining the helminth eggs that are excretedby humans and that were found outside thesettlement as ordered by the Bible andrecorded by Flavius Josephus.

In 2001, I represented Israel in the EuropeanCommunity’s Cultural Heritage program, COSTAction G8. Through this program, a largegroup of scientists volunteered to collaborateon the Qumran Project using differentanalytical techniques to shed light on thearchaeological question. Since then, 120scientists from 45 institutions in 17 countrieshave collaborated to analyze the biologicalmatter and cultural relics from Qumran. Theresults have been published in two trans-

Gamma-ray spectrum of Qumran pottery by NAA atthe Technical University of Budapest (Marta Balla)

Synchrotron X-ray fluoresencespectrum of Qumran linen textile

Jan Gunneweg sampling jar 35, the winejar, for it's provenance.


meals. When these results are known, newworking hypotheses may be formulated toexplain the unique character of Qumran and itsmanuscripts near the Dead Sea. Whether allthis analysis and new evidence will eventuallyanswer the question of who wrote the scrolls,remains at yet a desideratum.

*http://micro5.huji.ac.il/~msjan/book.html

http://www.esrf.eu/NewsAndEvents/PressReleases/Qumran/

http://micro5.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msjan/archaeom.html

This clay was deposited by torrential rains thatdescended from the Hebron district, locatedhigher up. It has been suggested as havingbeen used for the pottery manufacture ingeneral, and for the scroll jars in particular.Tracing the remains of communal meals isanother option for establishing theinvolvement of the Essene sect in themanuscripts. These remains are presentlyanalyzed by testing the DNA of the remains ofanimal bones and dating them with C14, aswell as establishing by NAA the provenance ofpot shards under which they are buried. Usingthermoluminescence to date the pottery mayor may not corroborate the radio carbon datesof the animal bone remains of communal

The Lorentz Fellowship was launched inSeptember 2006 with the arrival of the firstfellows. The Fellowship was set up by theLorentz Center in Leiden and NIAS to promoteinterdisciplinary research that bridges the gapbetween the humanities and/or the socialsciences on the one hand and the naturalsciences on the other. This collaboration givesscientists the unique opportunity to reap thebenefits of both institutes: the facilities offeredby the Lorentz Center and the internationaland multidisciplinary environment at NIAS.

Since September 2006 NIAS has alreadywelcomed five scientists as Lorentz Fellows. In2006/07 Mohammad Bagheri (Tehran),Professor of History of Science, Paul van denBroek (Minneapolis), Professor in ReadingResearch and Carel ten Cate (Leiden), Professorof Animal Behaviour have worked at NIAS. Thisyear Archeometrist Jan Gunneweg (Jerusalem)and Computer Scientist Hans van Ditmarschwill do their research in Wassenaar. From 21 to25 April 2008 Jan Gunneweg will organize atrans-disciplinairy, international workshop onQumran and the Dead Sea scrolls. Gunneweg’sresearch will bring together archeologicalinsights with the hard data of, for instance,

High Performance Liquid Chromatography.Hans van Ditmarsch’s workshop is plannedfrom 22 to 26 September 2008. Bothworkshops will take place at the LorentzCenter in Leiden.

A Lorentz Fellowship is for ten months from 1September until 30 June, or a shorter period offive months. The reports of former fellows andall additional information can be found onwww.nias.knaw.nl.

Lorentz Fellowship: Crossing Borders

Hendrik Antoon Lorentz (1853-1928)

http://micro5.huji.ac.il/~msjan/book.html

http://www.esrf.eu/NewsAndEvents/PressRele

http://micro5.mscc.huji.ac.il/~msjan/archaeo


Aken, J. van (Amsterdam) fiction Writer-in-Residence (A)

Bel, J.H.C. Free University, Amsterdam Modern Dutch Literature Fellow

Berger, M.P.F. Maastricht University Methodology and Statistics Fellow

Boeri, T. Bocconi University, Milan Labour Economics Willem F. Duisenberg

Fellow (W)

Bourdillon, M.F.C University of Zimbabwe Social Anthropology Fellow

Casteren, J. van (Amsterdam) non-fiction Journalist-in-Residence (A)

Curtin, D. Utrecht University International and European Fellow

Law and Governance

Ditmarsch, H.P. van University of Otago, Dunedin Computer Science Lorentz Fellow (B)

Eekelen, W.F. van Former Minister of Defence International Relations Guest of the Rector (A)

Former Secretary-General of the WEU

Fasseur, C. ex – Leiden University Modern History Guest of the Rector (S)

Gauthier, A.H. University of Calgary Family Sociology Fellow

Gibson, D.M. University of Western Cape, Bellville Medical Anthropology Fellow (B)

Gunner, E.A.W. University of Witwatersrand, African Literatures Fellow (S)

Johannesburg

Gunneweg, J. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Archaeometry Lorentz Fellow

Hellwig, M.F. Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung Economic Theory Jelle Zijlstra Fellow (B)

von Gemeinschaftsgütern, Bonn

Henten, J.W. van University of Amsterdam Biblical/Jewish Studies Fellow (B)

Hershey, D.A. Oklahoma State University, Stillwater Adult Development Fellow

Hesse, J.J. Freie Universität Berlin Political and Administrative Fellow (A)

Sciences

Hoftijzer, P.G. Leiden University History of the Book Fellow

Hon, G. University of Haifa Philosophy of Science Fellow

Horwitz, A.V. Rutgers University, New Brunswick Sociology of Mental Health Fellow

Igreja, V.M.F. Universidade Pedagogíca, Maputo Medical Anthropology Fellow

Jong, A.F. de Leiden University Religious Studies Fellow

Kapteijns, L. Wellesley College History of Africa Fellow (B)

Kazartsev, E. St.Petersburg State University European Versification Fellow

Koch, J. University of Wrocław / Dutch and Afrikaans Fellow

A. Mickiewicz University, Poznan Literature

Lamberts, E. Catholic University of Leuven Modern History Guest of the Rector (S)

Levillain, C.-E. Université de Lille II British Studies Fellow

Meulen, A.G.B. ter University of Groningen Natural Language Semantics Fellow

Mishra, R.C. Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi Cross-cultural Psychology Fellow

Moch, L.P. Michigan State University, History of Migration Fellow

East Lansing

Patrich, J. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Archaeology Fellow (B)

Pott, H.J. Maastricht University Phenomenology Fellow

Richters, J.M. Leiden University Medical Anthropology Fellow (B)

Rutgers, M.R. Leiden University Public Administration Fellow

Schipper, W.J.J. Leiden University Literary Studies Fellow

Schwartz, D.R. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Jewish History Fellow (B)

Siegelbaum, L.H. Michigan State University, Russian History Fellow

East Lansing

Stieber, N. University of Massachuchetts, Boston Architectural History Fellow (B)

Storm, H.J. Leiden University Cultural History Fellow (A)

Timmermann, J. University of St. Andrews Ethics Fellow

Research Group 2007/08

26


Nucleus: Flavius Josephus – Author, Editor or Historian?J.W. van Henten, J. Patrich, D.R. Schwartz

Nucleus: Coming to Terms with a shattered World: A Multi-Disciplinary Approachto Violence in AfricaD.M Gibson, E.A.W. Gunner, V.M.F. Igreja, L. Kapteijns, J.M. Richters, W.J.J. Schipper, C.L.A. Willemse

Josephus’ works are the basis for our knowledgeof Jewish history during the Second Templeperiod. The periods which saw the expansionand decline of the Hasmonean state, the Romantakeover of Judea, its ups and downs during theRoman civil wars, and then a century of rule byHerod and his sons and Roman governors,would all be documented by no more than a fewscattered literary references, some coins andsome archaeological remains which we wouldhave very little way of contextualizing. WithJosephus’ writings, however, we can puttogether a connected narrative and make senseof the period. Artefacts uncovered by thearchaeologists, or laconic allusions in the texts,can be put into context and allow the real workof the historian to begin, moving from events totheir interpretation. The problem is, however,that Josephus too was an historian. His writingsare not raw material but, rather, they alreadyreflect interpretation. Josephus was a real

person, living in his own context in Rome in thelate first century CE. There is a distance betweenJosephus and the events he describes, and it isnot clear that – to borrow a phrase from SteveMason – we can “read through Josephus” to anyof those events. The problem is that the more weread Josephus the more we may tend toappreciate his contribution as an author and solimit our willingness to assume that his works doindeed map onto events and processes thatoccurred in the real world. But that is what heclaims to be doing, as an historian, and that ishow he has traditionally been read. Can weresponsibly go on doing so? The influence of thepost-modern axiom, that historical writing is nomore than ‘text’ or ‘discourse’, has produced, inthe case of Josephus, a particularly acute set ofconflicts and dilemmas.

J.W. van HentenCo-ordinator

Violence permeates all societies and touchesupon the lives of all people. However, the

history of Africa in the 20th and 21st centuryhas been particularly violent, as is evident

Verschuren, P.J.M. Radboud University Nijmegen Evaluation Methodology Fellow

Wesseling, H.L. Contemporary History Honorary Fellow

Willemse, C.L.A. Erasmus University Rotterdam Cultural Anthropology Fellow (B)

Zwartjes, O. University of Amsterdam History of Linguistics Fellow

(A) : denotes 1st semester (1 September 2007 - 31 January 2008) only

(B) : denotes 2nd semester (1 February 2008 - 30 June 2008) only

(F) : denotes Fall 2007;

(W): denotes Winter 2008;

(S) : denotes Spring 2008

J. van Aken FictionWriter-in-Residence (1 September 2007 – 31 January 2008)

HISTORIC NOVEL: THE APOSTATE

The Apostate is a novel, which is set in the Roman Empire of the4th century CE. The protagonist is a young man exiled from hishome town in Germany. He ends up in a Christian sect inConstantinople, just at the time that the apostate emperor Juliancomes to power. The main story evolves around the events thatlead to and follow the murder of this pagan emperor.

The second part is set almost two decades later. Half a millionGoth refugees cross the Danube River and ask for asylum inthe empire. When the uncontrollable tribal movementsthreaten the stability of the already weakened Roman Empire,the solution turns out to be in the hands of one man: thealmost-forgotten assassin of the Apostate. The protagonist ofthe first part is given an assignment that should save theempire; his adventure culminates in the battle of Adrianople.

Jan van Aken, born in Herwenen Aerdt, the Netherlands, in1961. Novelist and lecturer at

the Schrijversvakschool inAmsterdam.

28

from the histories of the countries central tothe work of the theme group, Congo,Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa,and Sudan. The main focus of the research willbe a variety of mediations of experiences ofdifferent forms of violence. The research willbe conducted by a group of researchers withdiverse disciplinary backgrounds. We aimat sharing a number of disciplinarymethodological-analytical approaches to ourcommon problematic, and at developing a kindof common ‘language’ for understandingmediations of experiences of violence in Africaon the basis of empirical research in differentparts of Africa.

There is an unbridgeable gap between thetheoretical models at our disposal and theunfathomable depths of human suffering dueto violence. This gap informs our approach,i.e., the focus on how a selection of Africanindividuals, groups and nations mediate andhave mediated, expressed, signified,interpreted, contested, resisted, silenced,legitimized, survived, and transformed –experiences of violence. This common focuson African mediations, on insider perspectives

as expressed in illness narratives andtherapeutic interventions, biographicalnarratives, popular literature, songs andpaintings, and political discourses, is the firstcentral common feature of our research. It is inthese African mediations that we hope to findthe creation of viable worlds, the creation ofviable selves, and the creation of new orders ofsignificance capable of challenging thehegemony of the terror of violence. As part ofour attention to context, our second commonfeature, we aim to be careful in applyingpreconceived definitions of what violence is. Inaddition, definitions of related concepts suchas pain, suffering and justice will beapproached as historical products of a certainera, time and place, and where applicable assymptoms of the dominance of a cultural-specific morality rather than sound analyticalcategories. We aim, in short, at a fullcontextualization of the experiences andperpetrations of violence and their mediationsin acknowledgement of their social andcultural embeddedness.

J.M. RichtersCo-ordinator

Jacqueline Bel, born in TheHague, the Netherlands, in

1958. Ph.D. from the LeidenUniversity. Associate Professorof Modern Dutch Literature at

the Free University,Amsterdam.

Martijn Berger, born inSliedrecht, the Netherlands, in

1946. Ph.D. from TilburgUniversity. Professor of

Methodology and Statistics atMaastricht University.

Tito Boeri, born in Milan, Italy,in 1958. Ph.D. from New York

University. Professor ofEconomics at Bocconi

University, Director of theFondazione Rodolfo

Debenedetti, Director of DIEM

J.H.C. Bel Modern Dutch LiteratureFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

LITERARY HISTORY

At NIAS I will be working on a history of the Dutch and Flemishliterature between 1900 and 1945 (volume VI of Geschiedenisvan de Nederlandse literatuur, a large new Dutch-Flemishliterary history from the Middle Ages until the present day). Inline with the general principle of the project (Veelstemmigaccoord 1997), my volume will focus on the functioning ofliterature in the broader context of society. Two world warsand several new ideologies left their mark on the literature ofthe Low Countries. Apart from the study of primary literarytexts and poetics, special attention will also be given to so-called institutions, such as literary magazines, literarycriticism and the publishing world. Literary magazines providethe opportunity to keep track of contemporary poeticalpolemics and show in what way, for example, socialdevelopments played a part in literary life. Literary criticism isa vitally important tool to explore which writers and whattexts were considered ‘important’ at a certain time. Thisprovides a meaningful balance to the usual list of ‘canonized’literary works.

M.P.F. Berger Methodology and StatisticsFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

OPTIMAL DESIGNS FOR SOCIAL, BEHAVIOURAL AND BIOMEDICALRESEARCH

The increasing cost of research means that social, behaviouraland biomedical scientists are in more urgent need of thebenefits of optimal design theory and are required to increasethe efficiency and statistical power of their designs with aminimum sample size. This project aims at filling gaps andsummarizing results on optimal design. The output of thisproject will be an easily accessible textbook on theapplications of optimal designs. In contrast to most textbooksthat require a high degree of mathematical knowledge andfocus more on analytical solutions, this book will aim at aconceptual explanation of the mechanisms and offerguidelines and examples to practitioners.

T. Boeri Labour EconomicsWillem F. Duisenberg Fellow(1 December 2007 – 1 March 2008)

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MASS UNEMPLOYMENT IN EUROPE

Over the last few years several European countries


experienced a strong decline in unemployment in combinationwith a protracted employment growth despite moderateoutput growth. This performance stands in sharp contrast withthe "jobless growth" of the 1980s and mid-1990s whichinstigated a large literature on transatlantic differences inunemployment performance. To date, no satisfactoryexplanation has been offered for this sea change in theresponsiveness of employment to output growth and for thedisappearance of mass unemployment in Europe.

Contrary to common wisdom, EU countries have carried outmany reforms of their labour market institutions in recentyears reducing the overall degree of employment protection,and increasing the rewards from labour market policies. Butmost of these reforms were marginal in that they had to facestrong political opposition. They confined themselves tointroducing new rules for new entrants in the labour market(as in the case of employment protection legislation) oractivation measures and financial incentives which increasethe job finding rates of the unemployed, in the case of reformsof non-employment benefits. While there is an extensiveliterature on the links between labour market institutions andemployment-unemployment performance, much less attentionhas been devoted to analyzing the effects of dual track andmarginal reforms of labour market institutions.

This project will analyse the link between the decline ofEuropean unemployment and marginal reforms of labourmarket institutions. The following key issues are addressed:Are marginal reforms responsible for the decline of Europeanunemployment? Which groups were particularly affected bythese reforms? Are these effects bound to last over time?

M.F.C. Bourdillon Social AnthropologyFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

CHILDREN AND WORK

In co-operation with Ben White, William Myers, and DeboraLevinson, I shall be completing a book on children and work,which examines the place of work in the lives of children in avariety of situations. Reports on the harm that children sufferin working situations, particularly in the developing world,together with interventions intended to protect workingchildren, need to be placed in the context of broadertheoretical constructions of childhood. The project will call onthe growing literature on childhood studies, examiningconstructions and variations of childhood, together withconsiderable recent research on the agency and resilience ofchildren, perceiving them as citizens with rights and withsome control over their lives. The book will develop theoreticalconceptions of childhood to help understand the place of work

(Degree of InternationalEconomics and Management)

at Bocconi University.

Michael Bourdillon, born inKasama, Zambia, in 1942.

Ph.D. from the University ofOxford. Professor Emeritus of

the Department of Sociology atthe University of Zimbabwe.

30

in the lives of children, and thus improve the chances thatinterventions and policies will work for the benefit of children.

J. van Casteren Non-FictionJournalist – in – Residence (1 September 2007 – 31 January2008)

‘DE BEDACHTE STAD’

Lelystad, capital of the Dutch province Flevoland, was the firstcompletely new town to be established in The Netherlands. Itwas named after the famous architect of the Zuiderzee project,Cornelis Lely. Planned right at the centre of the drained land,Lelystad was supposed to be a major city where people couldenjoy the comforts of a brand new urban environment.However, this utopian view was not to be realised. Within adecade of its foundation, Lelystad had become an unpleasanttown with high crime and unemployment rates. In my book,the author, who grew up in Lelystad, analyses what wentwrong. He describes in different journalistic forms how peopleare affected by life in a completely invented city.

D.M. Curtin International and European Law andGovernance

Fellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

I will continue working on a monograph on the evolution ofexecutive power in the European Union and the variousinstitutional and network forms that this takes. This bookexplores both the process of institutionalisation of power atthe level of the EU itself in cooperation with other governancelevels. At the same time it conceptualises public accountabilityin the context of an evolving political and administrativesystem such as the EU and attempts to operationalise it in thatcontext. At the same time I will work on the presentation of myresearch and research plans for the Spinoza prize-giving awardceremony in The Hague at the end of November 2007.

H.P. van Ditmarsch Computer ScienceLorentz Fellow (1 February 2008 – 30 June 2008)

UNCONDITIONALLY SECURE PROTOCOLS

Unconditionally secure protocols investigate how agents whoshare information in a closed system can share secret bits, orperform semi-public computations with such bits in a way thatensures commitment (committed bits), under differentcommunicative restrictions. When there are more than two

NIAS Newsletter Fall 2007

Joris van Casteren, born inRotterdam, the Netherlands, in1976. Journalist for De Groene

Amsterdammer, NRC-Handelsblad and Vrij

Nederland and Writer. Authorof literary non-fiction.

Deirdre Curtin, born in Dublin,Ireland, in 1960. LL.D. from

the National University ofIreland, Galway. Professor ofInternational and EuropeanGovernance at the Utrecht

School of Governance.

Hans van Ditmarsch, born inEindhoven, the Netherlands, in

1959. Ph.D. from theUniversity of Groningen.

Honorary Senior Lecturer,Computer Science at theUniversity of Otago, New

Zealand and researcher atIRIT, Toulouse.

31

Willem van Eekelen, born inUtrecht, the Netherlands, in

1931. Ph.D from UtrechtUniversity. Former diplomatand politician, member of

parliament, Minister ofDefence and Secretary General

of the Western EuropeanUnion. Currently member ofthe Advisory Commission on

European Integration.

Cees Fasseur, born inBalikpapan, Indonesia, in1938. Ph.D. from Leiden

University. Professor Emeritusin the History of South East

Asia (in particular Indonesia)at Leiden University.

players, other players may play the role of eavesdroppers.Unconditionally secure protocols can be contrasted toconditionally secure protocols, where the high complexity ofsome computational feature of the protocol (for example, thehigh complexity of prime factorization) is an essential part ofthe protocol. We investigate whether specific protocols such asthese can be reduced to length-two protocols (one messagefrom sender, and one from receiver), whether it is possible forsender and receiver to achieve (subgroup) common knowledgeof the secret without this becoming public knowledge(including eavesdropper) as well, and certain relations topragmatics and sociology of communication.

W.F. van Eekelen International RelationsGuest of the Rector (1 September 2007 – 28 February 2008)

EUROPEAN SECURITY AND DEFENCE POLICY

At NIAS I shall continue my work on the security debate withinthe European Union, with particular reference to theimprovements envisaged in the upcoming revision of the EUTreaty, such as the merger of the functions of HighRepresentative of the CFSP and that of Commissioner forExternal Relations, as well as the implementation of a‘permanent structural cooperation’ among countries withadequate military capabilities and the will to enter into morebinding commitments with regard to each other. A secondtopic will be civil / military relations in Turkey and the need forfurther alignment with Western practice.

C. Fasseur Modern HistoryGuest of the Rector (1 April 2008 – 30 June 2008)

A PORTRAIT OF A ROYAL MARRIAGE

The story of the faith healer, Miss Margaretha Hofmans, the so-called 'Rasputin' at the Dutch court in the 1950s, has beenretold many times. No wonder Greet Hofmans appeals to theimagination of the reader. She was a middle-aged, stern, pious,plain-dressing former factory worker who claimed God hadcome to her in a vision and offered her supernatural powers.By using these powers (although with little success) on theyoungest daughter of the Queen, Princess Marijke, who wasborn with cataracts on both eyes in 1947, she pulled QueenJuliana under her spell. The Prince Consort, Bernhard, opposedthis influence but mostly in vain. Finally, this led to an acute

32


Anne Gauthier, born inMontreal, Canada, in 1964.Ph.D. from the University of

Oxford. Associate Professor inSociology at the University of

Calgary.

Diana Gibson, born inZebediela, South Africa, in

1955. Ph.D. from theUniversity of the WesternCape. Associate Professor,

Department of Anthropologyand Sociology and Medical

Anthropology at the Universityof the Western Cape.

marriage crisis in the Royal Family and a Committee of three'wise' men was formed to solve the question. The report andother documents of this so-called commission-Beel are stillsecret and remain part of the Royal Household Archives. Withspecial Royal Consent, these documents will be made publicfor the first time in my forthcoming book on the affair.Publication of the book is planned for the beginning of 2009.

A.H. Gauthier Family SociologyFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

SOCIO-ECONOMIC DIFFERENCES IN PARENTAL TIME INVESTMENT INTOCHILDREN

The project aims to understand the daily realities of family lifeand to examine how parents spend time and employ practicesand strategies in order to protect and nurture their childrenand to contribute to their healthy development. We know fromearlier studies that the time parents devote to their childrenand the quality of parent-child interactions are majordeterminants of children’s cognitive and emotionaldevelopment. Playing with the child, reading to the child, andshowing interest in the child’s academic achievement are allactivities, among many others, that can stimulate children’sdevelopment, increase their self-esteem, and help youngchildren reach their full potential. My objective here is toexplore how families’ socioeconomic status influences theircapacity to invest in their children, and to explore the extentto which the impact of socioeconomic status varies acrosscountries with different welfare regimes.

D.M. Gibson Medical AnthropologyFellow (1 February 2008 – 30 June 2008)

UNTOLD STORIES AND STIGMATIZED IDENTITIES IN SOUTH AFRICA

The study focuses on Afrikaans speaking South African maleex-conscripts who saw active combat during a ‘border’ war onNamibian and Angolan soil. The project addresses experientialnarratives of ex-combatants. These are analysed against thebackground of the TRC and difficulties experienced by ex-conscripts to deal with subjective memories and trauma froma war in which they experienced and committed violence.They are viewed as being complicit in apartheid and asreminders of a war the government would rather forget. Thestudy explores culturally informed ways of dealing with or notbeing able to deal with trauma and disconnectedness – withwider society, family, friends, colleagues, the dead, one’s ownfeelings - resulting from being a violator and being exposed torepeated violence or its threat in the heterogeneous setting ofSouth Africa. Here complex processes and efforts to restore

33

Liz Gunner, born in Colombo,Ceylon (Sri Lanka), in 1941.

Ph.D. from University ofLondon. Honorary AssociateResearch Professor at WISER,

University of theWitwatersrand, South Africa.

Jan Gunneweg, born in Kethelen Spaland, the Netherlands,

in 1939. Ph.D. from TheHebrew University of

Jerusalem. Recently retired asProfessor at the Institute ofArchaeology at The Hebrew

University of Jerusalem.

individual and societal healing followed after the TRChearings, yet ex-conscripts remain largely excluded from it.

E.A.W. Gunner African LiteraturesFellow (1 March 2008 – 30 June 2008)

GENDER, THE GENERATIONS, POPULAR CULTURE AND THE SEARCH FORA NEW MASCULINITY IN SOUTH AFRICA, 1994 TO THE PRESENT

My NIAS proposal will be part of a larger study which focuseson the reshaping of masculinity in post-apartheid South Africathrough the production of a specific musical activity, a well-established form of choral music known as isicathamiya,“nightsong” or imbube’.

What I will draw on is three years of fieldwork conducted whileI was based at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and carried outamong youth choirs and older choirs both in Durban and in thedistricts on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg whichexperienced severe violence in the pre-1994 decade. From thevolume of interviews and songs recorded and filmed I willexplore questions such as how men define themselves now,how they define relations with young and older women, howthe topics of rape, child-abuse, marriage, work, love, HIV andAIDS, fatherhood, leadership, political responsibility, memoryand tradition are inscribed in song and performance.

In addition to the archive of film, photography and recordingsthat I have built up with my research team, I will be using thearchives of radio programmes from uKhozi FM the Zulu-language radio stations which regularly feature isicathamiya.This acts as an additional source of evidence in the search tounderstand how an important strand of contemporary popularculture plays its part in defining, redefining and contestingmasculinity in a new state, post-apartheid South Africa.

J. Gunneweg ArchaeometryLorentz Fellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

TRANS-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH REGARDING QUMRAN’S BIO- ANDMATERIAL CULTURES, INCLUDING THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS’CONSERVATION

Qumran and the Dead Sea scrolls, considered one of the mostimportant discoveries of the 21st century for Jew, Christianand Muslim alike will be subjected to a provenance study bymeans of instrumental neutron activation analysis andThermoluminescence of its ceramics.

Furthermore, new Synchrotron evidence will be presented toshow that the layers of dust, fat, salt, gel and ink on the Dead

34


Sea scroll parchment can be of importance in indicating wherethe scrolls were written, where they were stored and whetherthey are decayed or can be saved. New DNA analyses will beperformed on the mysterious Qumran ‘common meals’: uniqueremains of animal bones buried beneath pot shards. In theframework of the Lorentz fellowship, a workshop entitled: “Aholistic trans-disciplinary view of the Dead Sea scrolls” willtake place at the Lorentz Center in May 2008.

M.F. Hellwig Economic TheoryJelle Zijlstra Fellow (1 April 2008 – 30 June 2008)

CROSS-SUBSIDIZATION AND STAND-ALONE REQUIREMENTS IN PUBLIC-SECTOR PRODUCTION

I want to develop an integrated framework of analysis forassessing the pros and cons of cross-subsidization betweendifferent parts of the public sector. An example would be thepractice, which is prevalent in Germany, of having local publictransport subsidized by profits from municipal electricitydistribution. We know that cross-subsidization can reduceallocative distortions from public-sector pricing and that cross-subsidization reduces incentives for efficiency. However, wedo not as yet have an encompassing framework in which thetwo effects are commensurate so that one can compare thecosts and benefits of cross-subsidization. Going beyond astudy of merely the trade off between allocative effects andincentive effects, the analysis will have to encompass thegovernance structures which “harden” budget constraints andmake stand-alone self-financing requirements credible. Doesprivatization serve this purpose? What are the costs andbenefits of relying on privatization for this purpose?

J.W. van Henten Biblical/Jewish StudiesFellow (1 February 2008 – 30 June 2008)

JOSEPHUS – AUTHOR, EDITOR OR HISTORIAN?

The works of Flavius Josephus constitute the main source forJewish history of the Graeco-Roman period. Accounts of theperiod have usually been written on the basis of his testimony– as if it were possible simply to see through his writings tothe sources he used and the events to which they relate.Recently, however, an important question has been raisedbecause of the methodological debates in the study of historyas well as the result of composition-critical scholarship intoJosephus that has pointed out just how far Josephus was anauthor who had agendas of his own: Whether, how, and towhat end can Josephus be read as evidence for things outsideof and prior to himself?

Martin Hellwig, born inDüsseldorf, Germany, in 1949.Ph.D. from the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology.Director of the Max PlanckInstitute for Research on

Collective Goods, Bonn, andProfessor of Economics at

Universität Bonn.

Jan Willem van Henten, bornin Alkemade, the Netherlands,

in 1955. Ph.D. from LeidenUniversity. Professor of NewTestament, Hellenistic-Jewishand Early Christian Literature

at the University ofAmsterdam.

35

Douglas Hershey, born inBerkeley, California, USA, in

1959. Ph.D. from University ofSouthern California. AssociateProfessor of Psychology at the

Oklahoma State University,Stillwater.

Joachim Hesse, born in Berlin,Germany in 1942. Ph.D. fromUniversität zu Köln. Professorof Political and AdministrativeSciences at Freie Universität

Berlin, Director of theInternational Institute for

Comparative Government andEuropean Policy (ISE).

My contribution to this collective project concerns Josephus’descriptions of the period of Herod the Great and his sonArchelaus (40 BCE - 6 CE).

D.A. Hershey Adult DevelopmentFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

PSYCHOSOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF ADAPTIVE RETIREMENT PLANNINGDECISIONS

My research focuses on the social, economic, andpsychological forces that motivate individuals to plan forretirement and old age. I am particularly interested in whysome people make better retirement-planning decisions thanothers, and how certain life-planning decisions lead todifferent quality of life outcomes. While at NIAS, I will pursuetwo projects. The first, conducted in collaboration with DorlyDeeg and her colleagues at Vrije Universiteit, will explore thestructural and psychological factors that motivate individualsto leave the workforce. The second project, conducted withHenkens and Van Dalen at the Netherlands InterdisciplinaryDemographic Institute, will focus on the development of aholistic, interdisciplinary model of financial saving forretirement. From an applied perspective, the lessons learnedfrom these studies should help to inform future interventionefforts aimed at encouraging individuals to appropriately timetheir departure from the workforce, and adaptively plan andsave for old age.

J.J. Hesse Political and Administrative SciencesFellow (1 November 2007 – 28 February 2008)

NATION STATE – EU RELATIONSHIPS

The process of constitution-giving in Europe highlights anumber of underestimated problems in the relationshipbetween the European Union and its Member States. In theattempts to agree on the recommendations of the Conventionand during the process of convincing the Peoples of Europe toaccept a document drawn up by the political elite, severalnormative as well as functional problems came to the fore. Theyranged from questionable institutional and regulatoryprovisions to an obvious crisis of acceptance and legitimacy (asillustrated by the French and Dutch referenda). The project triesto identify the underlying dynamics of this process, followingthe hypothesis that the alleged sui generis -character of the EUstands in the way of a Europeanisation that ought to betterincorporate the positive traditions, cultural preconditions andtried practices within the European nation-states.

36


P.G. Hoftijzer History of the BookFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

THE LEIDEN BOOK TRADE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

This project aims to investigate the role of printing, publishingand bookselling in scholarly communication in Leiden duringits heyday, the period 1575-1730. The success of the Leidenbook trade is closely connected to the presence of LeidenUniversity (founded 1575) which, during the seventeenthcentury, ranked among the foremost academic institutions inEurope. The central question of the project, which shouldresult in a monograph to be written during the NIAS year, is towhat extent Leiden printers, publishers and booksellerscontributed to the international exchange of knowledge andideas and which factors – political, economical, social,intellectual – played a part in this. Among other things,attention will be paid to the relation between authors andpublishers, book production and distribution, the internalorganisation of the trade, the mis-en-livre (typography,illustration, binding) of Leiden books, and book consumptionby private readers and institutional libraries.

G. Hon Philosophy of ScienceFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

FROM SUMMETRIA TO SYMMETRY: THE EMERGENCE OF ASCIENTIFIC CONCEPT

This project traces the evolution of the concept of symmetryfrom its inception in Greek antiquity to the end of the 18thcentury when it was transformed into one of the pillars ofmodern science. Despite claims to the contrary in thesecondary literature, it will be demonstrated that there is notextual evidence before the 1790s of a usage of summetria (inGreek), or its cognates in Latin and other European languages,which corresponds to the modern concept of symmetry.Indeed, the Greek idea of symmetry – constraints onproportionality or suitability – was consistently maintained invarious domains (including mathematics, physics, astronomy,and architecture) in antiquity, the Middle Ages, and earlymodern times. The main goals are to collect the relevantsources; to analyze them, elucidating the conceptual unityunderlying the invocation of symmetry in this period; and thento present the results in the form of a monograph.

A.V. Horwitz Sociology of Mental HealthFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

BIOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL ASPECTS OF NORMAL EMOTIONS ANDMENTAL DISORDERS: A STUDY OF ANXIETY

Paul Hoftijzer, born inVoorburg, the Netherlands, in1954. Ph.D. from the RadboudUniversity, Nijmegen. Professor

of the History of the DutchBook during the Early-Modern

Period at Leiden University.

Giora Hon, born in Afula,Israel, in 1950. Ph.D. from the

University of London.Professor of Philosophy at the

University of Haifa.

Allan Horwitz, born inMinneapolis, Minnesota, USA,

in 1948. Ph.D. from YaleUniversity. Professor II of

Sociology at Rutgers

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Anxiety is a normal emotion that evolution has programmed toemerge naturally in dangerous situations. Individuals are bothdesigned to become anxious when fearful stimuli are presentand not to be anxious when these stimuli are not present.Anxiety is also the source of the most common forms ofmental disorder. Neurobiological studies have mapped themechanisms that underlie clear cases of both normal anddisordered forms of anxiety. Yet, there is a large zone ofindeterminacy between clear cases of species-typical and ofpathological anxiety. Social and cultural forces, rather thanbiology, are largely responsible for drawing the line betweenwhat is considered to be normal and what is defined asabnormal forms of anxiety. This project examines the shiftingclassifications of normal anxiety and anxiety disorders indifferent historical periods and across societies and exploresthe way that interest groups become involved indistinguishing anxiety disorders from normal anxiety.

V.M.F. Igreja Medical AnthropologyFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

COMMUNITY STRATEGIES TO RESTRAIN VIOLENCE IN THE AFTERMATHOF THE PROTRACTED CIVIL WAR IN MOZAMBIQUE

This research aims at analyzing community strategies topromote peace, social stability and reconciliation in theaftermath of the Mozambican civil war. One of the outcomesof the peace negotiations was the grant of politico-legalamnesty for everyone directly or indirectly involved in theperpetration of war crimes against civilians. The outcome ofthe peace settlement consisted in victims and formerperpetrators sharing the same shattered social world. Thispredicament gives rise to intriguing questions related to thecapacity of victims and former perpetrators in achieving asustainable peace. This research will help better understandthe strategies individuals and communities apply to dealeffectively with the legacies of civil war. By analysing howindividuals, families and communities set-up their prioritiesand decide on individual and collective choices and actionscan broaden our understanding of what it takes to restrainviolence in communities that lived for several years underdeep divisions.

A.F. de Jong Religious StudiesFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

PARTHIAN AND ARMENIAN ZOROASTRIANISM

The Parthian Arsacid dynasty ruled the Near East and Iran foralmost five centuries, but this period (247 BCE - 224 CE) is themost problematic one in the history of Zoroastrianism. No

University, New Brunswick.

Victor Igreja, born in Manica,Mozambique, in 1972. Ph.D.

from Leiden University.Program officer and

researcher at MozambicanNGO “Associação Esperança

para Todos (AEPATO)”.

Albert de Jong, born inKrimpen aan de Lek, the

Netherlands, in 1966. Ph.D.from Utrecht University.

Lecturer in Religious Studies atLeiden University.

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Lidwien Kapteijns, born in St.Michielsgestel, the

Netherlands, in 1951. Ph.D.from the University of

Amsterdam. Professor ofHistory at Wellesley College.

Evgeny Kazartsev, born in St.Petersburg, Russia, in 1972.Ph.D. from the St. Petersburg

State University. SeniorScientific Researcher on

Philology, Comparative andTheoretical Linguistics,

Structural and QuantitativePoetics at the St. Petersburg

State University.

overview of the religious history of the Iranian world in thisperiod exists to date, and the subject suffers from a number ofenduring misconceptions that need to be reconsidered. It isgenerally agreed that the Arsacid period is a crucial one, notonly for the development of Zoroastrianism, but for Iranianand Near Eastern culture and religion generally, including thehistory of Christianity and of Judaism in the regions belongingto the Parthian Empire. The project will result, partly on thebasis of the Nachlass of Professor Mary Boyce (London), in thefirst ever comprehensive treatment of Parthian culture andreligion, from its origins in North-Eastern Iran to the end of theArsacid period.

L. Kapteijns History of AfricaFellow (1 February 2008 – 30 June 2008)

SOMALI POPULAR CULTURE AND THE CHANGING NATIONALIMAGINARY, 1960-2005

This history of Somali popular cultural production will analyzethe changing Somali self-understandings, self-expressions,and cultural norms at three moments of history: the nationalistmoment during which a national culture was activelyfashioned (1960-1991); the sectarian moment of civil strifeand clan violence (1991-present), and the moment of diasporicreconstruction, in which Islam and Islamism have gainedprominence (1991-present). The sources for this researchconsist of a wide range of genres of popular culturalproduction: Somali popular songs, plays, poetry, novels, shortstories, radio programs, sitcoms, and submissions to theflourishing Somali websites.

E. Kazartsev European VersificationFellow (1 September 2007– 30 June 2008)

THE INFLUENCE OF THE SYLLABO-TONICS REFORM IN THE DUTCHVERSE ON THE SUBSEQUENT FUTURE OF EUROPEAN VERSIFICATION

Syllabo-tonic versification appeared during the 17th and 18thcenturies in the literary poetry of most European countries. Itsmain principle is the regular alternation of strong and weakpositions within a line of verse. This new system ofversification replaced the earlier syllabic and purely tonic versesystems. This project is intended to study the formation ofsyllabo-tonicism in Dutch poetry at the end of the 16th and thebeginning of the 17th centuries, as well as its developmentthrough the first quarter of the 18th century. Dutch syllabo-tonicism undoubtedly affected the appearance of a similarsystem elsewhere in European verse. An important componentof my research at NIAS is the study of Dutch sources, with afocus on the iambic hexameter and its influence on the spread

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of this meter in European verse. The project includes studyingthe formal characteristics of the ways in which the theory andpractice of Dutch versification influenced German and possiblyRussian verse. The main objective of this project is to study thetypology of the mechanisms in the formation of syllabo-tonicism in closely related languages, such as Dutch andGerman, and more distant languages, like German and Russian.

J. Koch Dutch and Afrikaans LiteratureFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

THE HISTORY OF SOUTH AFRICAN LITERATURE – AFRIKAANSLITERATURE. 20TH CENTURY

The aim of the project is to continue my research and composethe second volume of a history of South African literaturewritten in Afrikaans/Dutch. In accordance with the approachpresented in the first volume (which covers the period 1652-1900), the history of literary writing will focus on severaldiscourses among which: the discourse of the earth, thediscourse of encounters with the Other and the discourse ofthe emancipation of language will be the most relevant topics.The proposed compendium will constitute the first history ofSouth African literature written outside South Africa by aresearcher not of South African descent that aims to reach anon-South African reader. For this reason I try to take intoaccount the different cultural competences of potential readersfrom Europe, wider cultural contexts, and South Africa.

E. Lamberts Modern HistoryGuest of the Rector (1 April 2008 – 30 June 2008)

THE STRUGGLE WITH LEVIATHAN. A QUEST FOR THE HISTORICALROOTS OF THE PRINCIPLE OF SUBSIDIARITY

This research project investigates the historical roots of theprinciple of subsidiarity in the European Union, which in factdeveloped in opposition to the omnipotence of the State. It ischaracterized by a pursuit of a state-free space in which thecitizens can develop themselves freely through a multitude ofassociations and organizations. To a considerable extent, itgoes back to antiliberal and antisocialist positions of theChristian Churches and especially of socio-politicalCatholicism at the end of the 19th century. This study aims atdemonstrating that it had even earlier origins and that it hasbeen influenced by a specific variant of Conservatism. This willbe clarified by an elucidation of the role played by traditionalelites in the development of socio-political Catholicism at theend of the 19th century.

Jerzy Koch, born in Wrocław,Poland, in 1958. Ph.D. from

the Catholic University ofLeuven. Tenured Professor atthe University of Wrocław andAdam Mickiewicz-University,

Poznan.

Emiel Lamberts, born inLonderzeel, Belgium, in 1941.Ph.D. from Catholic Universityof Leuven. Professor Emeritusof Modern European History at

the Catholic University ofLeuven.

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C.-E. Levillain British StudiesFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

THE RISE OF WILLIAM III. WAR, POLITICS AND STATE-BUILDING INENGLAND AND THE DUTCH REPUBLIC (1667-1688)

Since the completion of my doctoral thesis in 2003, I havebeen doing further research in order to write a book on theimpact and perception of Louis XIV’s foreign policy on Anglo-Dutch politics (1667-1688), hence moving away from theAnglo-centred vision of my original project. The main purposeof my work at NIAS will be to look at the way Louis XIV’ssupposed aspirations to universal monarchy changed thenature of political debates and the functioning of practicalpolitics in England and the Dutch Republic. Careful attentionwill be paid to the transfer of economic, religious and politicalideas between the two countries. The ultimate goal of thisproject is to reflect on William III’s rise to power on theEuropean stage.

A.G.B. ter Meulen Natural Language SemanticsFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

REASONING IN TIME ABOUT TIME

Extracting information about temporal relations betweenevents described by English texts constitutes a core researchissue in human cognition. The interaction of inflected verbswith aspectual adverbs, quantification in noun-phrases andrhetorical relations is studied in dynamic logical models ofinterpretation and inference. Special attention is given toprosody in marking information structure and subjectiveassessment of the actual course of events, contrasted withcounterfactual expectations or other attitudes of the speaker.The role of aspect in dialogue and presupposition projection isanalyzed in this dynamic theory of meaning andinterpretation, where given information may be revised andgeneric information may be inapplicable to specificexceptions. The results will be reported in refereedinternational journals and at major professional conferences inphilosophy, linguistics and cognitive science. MIT Press is topublish the results of this research project in a monograph'Reasoning in time' in its Bradford Books series.

R.C. Mishra Cross-cultural PsychologyFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

CULTURE AND COGNITION: LANGUAGE AND SPATIAL CONCEPTDEVELOPMENT

This book project focuses on the relationship between spatial

Charles-Edouard Levillain,born in Deauville, France, in

1971. Ph.D. from theUniversité de la Sorbonne

Nouvelle – Paris III. Lecturer inBritish Studies at theUniversité de Lille 2.

Alice ter Meulen, born inAmsterdam, the Netherlands,in 1952. Ph.D. from Stanford

University. Professor ofStructure and Meaning of

Natural Language, especiallyits Logical Aspects at theUniversity of Groningen

Ramesh Mishra, born in UttarPradesh, India, in 1952. Ph.D.

from Allahabad University,India. Professor of Psychology

at the Banaras HinduUniversity, Varanasi.

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language and spatial concept development. Westernpsychological theories posit that children first build up spatialconcepts in relation to their own body, following the sequenceof topological, projective and Euclidean space. My studies withrural and urban children in India and Nepal, and also withadults carried out over the last few years cast doubt on theuniversality of Western theoretical propositions. They indicatetwo alternative pathways of development, namely egocentricand geocentric, depending on the way people’s lives areorganized in different ecological and cultural settings. Duringthe period of my stay at NIAS I would like to organize my datasets, subject them to sophisticated statistical analyses, discussthe findings with other European colleagues, and write amonograph in co-authorship with Professor Pierre Dasen of theUniversity of Geneva, Switzerland.

L.P. Moch History of MigrationFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

BRETONS IN PARIS: A HISTORY OF INTERNAL MIGRATION, NATIONALINTEGRATION, AND INCLUSION/EXCLUSION

I am writing the history of Bretons in Paris during the FrenchIII Republic (1871-1940) – a study that will be a vehicle for theinvestigation of internal migration, the process of integrationof national minorities, and the state’s inclusionary andexclusionary policies. In some ways, this history of nationalmigration and integration is a precursor to today’s strugglesover the integration of post-World War II newcomers in Europe.This book relates studies of internal migration to those ofinclusion and exclusion from the nation. Attitudes toward andbehaviour of internally-distinct minority groups like theBretons (distinct by language, religious practice, pheotypicaltraits, economic activities, and/or self-identity), set them apartin certain historical moments and at such times, distinctinternal groups have much in common with newcomers fromoutside the nation-state. Moreover, a profoundly genderedprocess of migration and integration was at work for Bretons,as it is for today’s transnational migrants.

J. Patrich ArchaeologyFellow (1 February 2008 – 30 June 2008)

ASPECTS OF REALIA IN THE WRITINGS OF JOSEPHUS – HERODIANURBANISM

Studying the realia in the writings of Josephus may serve as atool to assess their historicity. My large scale excavations inCaesarea Maritima, held in the years 1993-2002, serve as mypoint of departure. Observations on a specific group ofHerodian structures, set in a wider Herodian and Greco-Roman

Leslie Moch, born in Seattle,Washington, USA, in 1944.

Ph.D. from the University ofMichigan. Professor of Historyat Michigan State University,

East Lansing.

Joseph Patrich, born in TelAviv, Israel, in 1947. Ph.D.

from The Hebrew University ofJerusalem. Professor of

Archaeology at The HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem.

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context, are discussed in my: "Herodian EntertainmentStructures", in: D. Jacobson and N. Kokkinos (eds.), Herod andAugustus (forthcoming).

In many previous studies dealing with the Herodian buildingprojects, the emphasis was mainly on the literary evidence, oron describing the building projects per se. My purpose is tocompare the urban projects with Hellenistic and Augustanurbanism on the one hand, and emphasize their impact on thelater development of Roman architecture and town planning,on the other hand. There are already some achievements inthis direction, but there is still a lot to be done. In the seconddirection – assessing the Herodian impact on later Romanimperial architecture - almost nothing has been done.

H.J. Pott PhenomenologyFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

THE RETURN OF WILLIAM JAMES. REDISCOVERING THE BODY INEMOTION, REASON, AND THE WILL

Over the past ten years, new findings in neurobiology havechanged the face of studies on emotion. The standardassumption that cognition is a necessary component ofemotions has undergone considerable criticism. In oppositionto the ‘cognitive’ view, a growing number of researchers arenow claiming that emotions are constituted by ‘gut feelings’,unique physiological profiles for every basic emotion.(Damasio 1999, 2004; Prinz 2004)

In my book I will investigate the recent dispute between‘cognitive’ and (neuro) physiological ‘feeling’ theories.Reinterpreting William James’ account of emotional feelings, Iwill put forward an embodied approach to cognition, reasonand emotion, and examine its implications for emotion theory.The aim of the book is to provide a new conceptual frameworkfor interdisciplinary emotion research that gives weight to thephenomenology of emotional experience, while at the sametime focussing on the details of empirical research in cognitive& evolutionary psychology and affective neuroscience.

J.M. Richters Medical AnthropologyFellow (1 February 2008 – 30 June 2008)

SOCIOTHERAPY IN RWANDA: ITS CONTRIBUTIONS TO RECONCILIATIONAND HEALING

My contribution to the research group, “Coming to terms witha shattered world: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Mediationsof Violence in Africa” focuses on the description andevaluation of sociotherapy as practised in Byumba, Rwanda.

Heleen Pott, born inRidderkerk, the Netherlands,

in 1952. Ph.D. from theUniversity of Amsterdam.Socrates-Professor at the

Erasmus University Rotterdamand Assistant Professor at

Maastricht University.

Annemiek Richters, born inLaren, the Netherlands, in1945. Ph.D. from the Free

University, Amsterdam.Professor of Culture, Health

and Illness at Leiden UniversityMedical Center.

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The main objective of sociotherapy is to address psychosocialwell-being and social connectedness among its beneficiaries,thereby staying in the here-and-now, and not memorizing theviolent past so much as is done in, for instance, traumatherapy. The goals, methods and impact of the Byumbasociotherapy project will be compared with those of otherinterventions aimed at alleviating individual and socialsuffering resulting from the violence of political conflict, inRwanda and in various other post-conflict countries in Africa,in particular Mozambique.

In looking at the pressures individuals and communities facein specific socio-cultural contexts and the local responses tothese pressures I apply global discourses on trauma, healing,human rights, justice, truth and reconciliation.

M.R. Rutgers Public AdministrationFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

‘THE OATH OF OFFICE’

Although the ‘oath of office’ is an ancient, widely known andhighly respected concept it is a rarely studied phenomenon,and is often even entirely absent from discussions on ethics inthe public setting. But why is there an oath of office? Are theredifferent kinds of oaths? What makes an oath special? What isits function, and under what conditions is an oath effective?This project will be comparative over time and place andinterdisciplinary in approach. The aim is to bring together andreflect upon the fragmented insight ranging from disciplinessuch as history, ethics, logic, law, sociology, politics,philosophy, psychology, as well as anthropology and theology.A possible integrative concept for this conglomerate ofperspectives is provided by the concept of a social symbol asa substantive social phenomenon.

W.J.J. Schipper de Leeuw Literary StudiesFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

CRISIS NARRATIVES IN CONGOLESE PAINTINGS

As a participant in the Group Research Project “Coming toterms with a Shattered World: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach toMediations of Violence in Africa”, I will work on Africannarratives in the visual arts. Over the past twenty years therehas been a growing production of Congolese paintingsreferring to the ongoing crisis and violence in the country. Mycontribution will consist of an analysis of visual narratives incontemporary paintings referring to violence.

HOW MAN AND WOMAN CAME INTO BEING: A COMPARATIVE

Mark Rutgers, born in Almelo,the Netherlands, in 1958.

Ph.D. from Leiden University.Professor of Public

Administration, in particularthe Philosophy and Ethic of the

Public Sector at LeidenUniversity.

Mineke Schipper, born inPolsbroek, the Netherlands, in

1938. Ph.D from the FreeUniversity, Amsterdam.

Professor of InterculturalLiterature Studies at Leiden

University.

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Daniel Schwartz, born inSyracuse, New York, USA, in

1952. Ph.D. from The HebrewUniversity of Jerusalem.

Professor of Jewish History atThe Hebrew University of

Jerusalem.

Lewis Siegelbaum, born in NewYork, New York, USA, in 1949.Ph.D. from the University of

Oxford. Professor of History atMichigan State University, East

Lansing.

APPROACH TO CREATION AND ORIGIN STORIES FROM AROUND THEWORLD

My individual project focuses on How do cultures imagine thefirst humans in their origin myths? All over the world, creationmyths provide intriguing answers to that question. I amwriting a book about how the first humans become men andwomen, physically and socially, in stories of the beginning ofthe world.

D.R. Schwartz Jewish HistoryFellow (1 February 2008 – 30 June 2008)

READING THE FIRST CENTURY: ON READING JOSEPHUS AND STUDYINGJEWISH HISTORY OF THE FIRST CENTURY

The first century CE, which saw the destruction of the SecondTemple, the birth of Christianity, and the rise of rabbinicJudaism, laid the groundwork and created the parameters formost that is significant in subsequent Jewish history. Thewritings of Flavius Josephus constitute our main source for theperiod. But how, and to what extent and with what degree ofconfidence, can we learn from Josephus’ writings whathappened in first-century Judaea? This project, which focusesupon Books 18-20 of Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities and theparallel narrative in the second book of his Judaean War,attempts to find a responsible middle path between themodern swing of the scholarly pendulum to compositioncriticism, which urges us to view Josephus as an author, on theone hand, and the pursuit of Josephus’ sources and of whatreally happened, on the other.

L.H. Siegelbaum Russian HistoryFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

CARS FOR COMRADES: THE LIFE OF THE SOVIET AUTOMOBILE

This study extends what we know about cars, car culture, andautomobility to an environment not generally associated withor considered hospitable to such objects and practices. Ittraces the arc from official adulation for technologiesassociated with automobile production (assembly lines,standardization of parts) and the construction of auto factoriesand towns ("Soviet Detroits") to efforts to overcome"roadlessness," the gradual expansion of car use, and theeventual partial accommodation of a consumer culture inwhich car ownership played a significant role. My studydemonstrates that the relationship between Sovietcommunism and automobiles was complex and changed overtime. Beyond what it can tell us about the adaptability ofautomobiles and those driving them, it offers new insights into

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Nancy Stieber, born in Boston,Massachusetts, USA, in 1949.Ph.D. from the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology.Associate Professor of Art at

the University ofMassachusetts, Boston.

Eric Storm, born in Hoogeveen,the Netherlands in1966. Ph.D.

from the University ofGroningen. Assistant Professor

in General History at LeidenUniversity.

Soviet attitudes towards individuality and physical mobility,the often blurred line between the public and the private and,more generally, the dimension of everyday life under Sovietsocialism. It also provides a gendered analysis and historicalcontext for understanding the car mania that has swept theformer Soviet republics since the demise of the USSR in 1991.

N. Stieber Architectural HistoryFellow (1 February 2008 – 30 June 2008)

MODERNISM AND MODERNITY IN THE NETHERLANDS: BUILDINGS,HOUSING, URBANISM, LANDSCAPES

The first histories of modernism in architecture were writtenby apologists for the Modern Movement whose historiographydescribed a teleological process culminating in the creation ofan international style. In recent decades, architecturalhistorians have challenged that historical model. Mostrecently, local history has emerged as a fertile ground for re-examining modernism and its relationship to modernity. Thisstudy recasts the history of Dutch architectural modernismbetween 1890 and the present in light of local and nationalconditions. While taking into account cross-cultural influences,it examines institutional practices, disciplinary organization,and socio-political and cultural factors that enabled theNetherlands to operate continuously as a laboratory for designexperimentation. While the buildings and the theory ofindividuals such as Berlage, Van Eesteren, and Koolhaas will beexplored, the narrative is not driven by style, but rather by thechanging structure of the modern condition and architecturalresponses to it.

H.J. Storm Cultural HistoryFellow (1 September 2007 – 31 January 2008)

THE VISUALISATION OF THE REGION: NATIONAL AND REGIONALIDENTITIES IN ART AND ARCHITECTURE IN FRANCE, GERMANY ANDSPAIN, 1890-1939

The research project will focus on the process of regionalidentity formation in three major European countries (France,Germany and Spain) in the period 1890-1939. This process willbe studied by means of an analysis of the debates that tookplace in these three countries on the question how the regionhad to be visualised in art and architecture, and atinternational exhibitions. In this way the formation of regionalidentities and its shifting relation with the correspondingnational consciousness can be analysed as an internationalphenomenon that profoundly affected the sense of belongingof people all over Europe. Furthermore, it will show that theregionalist discourse, with its stress on Volksgeist and popular

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traditions, was omnipresent in almost all areas of culture, andwas – at least initially – a highly influential reformist trend.

J. Timmermann EthicsFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

DEFINING MORALITY

Philosophers often concern themselves with moraljudgements of the concepts of right and wrong, with problemsof their metaphysical or epistemic status, or with the questionof what is required to act on them. However, it seems aworthwhile task to ask whether there is anything that unitesthese judgements and distinguishes them from other practicalmatters. Is there a special claim that morality makes on us?Does it perhaps trump competing – and otherwise perfectlylegitimate – concerns a person might have? If so, howdemanding is morality? Where is the line between ethics andjustice to be drawn? Who are the subjects of morality? Andwho – other human beings, agents themselves, animals, futuregenerations – are its proper objects? I shall pursue thesequestions from a broadly Kantian perspective.

P.J.M. Verschuren Evaluation MethodologyFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

HOLISTIC AND CAUSAL INFERENCE IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

In this study, I intend to contribute to the development of thecase study as a methodologically well codified researchstrategy within qualitative and holistic cause-effect research.Two areas will be explored. (1) The holistic approach, whichfocuses on the analysis of the relation between parts and thewhole, and patterns, structures, configurations, mechanismsand processes, instead of separate variables. (2) Qualitativecause-effect research (causal analysis), with the developmentof a gradual explanatory design, an extension of Pawson &Tilley’s idea of generative causation, an explorativeexperimental design, the use of an impact and a processmodel, and strategies for case-comparison. This researchstrategy will be useful in the field of evaluation research thatis focussed on an assessment of the effectiveness of publicpolicy in public administration and of strategic management inbusiness administration.

H.L. Wesseling Contemporary HistoryHonorary Fellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

FRENCH HISTORY (NINETEENTH-TWENTIETH CENTURY)

Jens Timmermann, born inMinden, Germany, in 1970.Ph.D. from the Universität

Göttingen. University Lecturerin Moral Philosophy at theUniversity of St. Andrews.

Piet Verschuren, born in ’sHertogenbosch, the

Netherlands, in 1944. Ph.D.from Tilburg University.Professor of Research

Methodology at RadboudUniversity Nijmegen.

Henk Wesseling, born in TheHague, the Netherlands, in1937. Ph.D. from Leiden

University. Professor Emeritusof Contemporary History at

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Leiden University and formerRector of the Netherlands

Institute for Advanced Study(1995-2002).

Karin Willemse, born inHeemskerk, the Netherlands,in 1962. Ph.D. from Leiden

University. Assistant Professorof History of Africa, and of

Gender and Islam at theErasmus University Rotterdam.

Otto Zwartjes, born inAmsterdam, the Netherlands,

in 1958. Ph.D. from theRadboud University Nijmegen.

Associate Professor inRomance Linguistics, Spanish

Linguistics and LanguageAcquisition of Spanish at the

University of Amsterdam.

This year at NIAS, I will carry on with my project on Frenchcultural history of the nineteenth century, focussing on thelives of three generations of artists, philosophers and writersbelonging to the Scheffer-Renan-Psichari family. Before turningback to that project I shall first try and complete my book Sonand father. Father and Son. This is a combination of my ownpersonal memoirs and a biographical sketch of my father, C.D.Wesseling (1875-1947) who played a minor but not whollyuninteresting role in Dutch politics during the 1920s and1930s. As there is no one still living from that period I shall,as a true historian, have to reconstruct events from theoriginal source materials.

C.L.A Willemse Cultural AnthropologyFellow (1 February 2008 – 30 June 2008)

VIOLENCE, GENDER AND RELIGION: CONSTRUCTIONS OF CITIZENSHIP INSUDAN

This project will analyse the relationship between mediationsof violence, gender, and religion with reference to theconstruction of citizenship in the Sudan. The analysis is basedon the current war in Darfur, which has been the scene ofmounting violence since 2003 and where racism has becomethe main legitimating discourse within the conflict.Oppositions between Black, non-Muslim, farmers and Arab,Muslim, nomads have been articulated by the perpetrators tolegitimize the violence. It is the goal of this project tounderstand to what extent forms of overt and direct, as wellas covert and indirect violence, constitute a necessary part ofthe way citizenship is constructed in the post-colonial nation-state of the Sudan: to what extent is violence an intrinsic partof a political, socio-economic and cultural process ofdependency and transformation in the context of building a‘modern’ nation-state?

O. Zwartjes History of LinguisticsFellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)

REVITALIZING OLDER LINGUISTIC DOCUMENTATION

The project aims to produce a book-length study on colonialgrammars written within the Portuguese tradition, with specialattention to two unrelated native Brazilian languages, Tupi andKipeá (Kiriri). The book will offer the reader, for the first time, asurvey of existing literature in as far as it pertains to history ofgrammar writing in the 16th and 17th centuries with particularattention to the nature of non-European languages. Moreover,the specific (meta) linguistic tradition guiding the analyses

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typically conducted by missionaries is a subject largelyneglected until now, especially with respect to the Portugueselanguage of the period. This project also intends to take intoconsideration the Portuguese grammatical tradition as a whole(i.e. east and west), covering languages such as Japanese,Konkani (India), Kumbundu (Angola), Kipeá and Tupi (Brazil).The monograph will offer useful methodological guidance toresearchers in the field of the analysis of indigenous languages.

‘NIAS Books’Received March - September 2007

Benbassa, Esther (2007). Lasouffrance comme identité.Paris, Fayard.

Boomgaard, Peter (2007).Southeast Asia: anenvironmental history. SantaBarbara [etc.], ABC-CLIO.

Burger, Christoph (2007).Marias Lied in LuthersDeutung: Der Kommentarzum Magnifikat (Lk 1, 46b-55)aus den Jahren 1520/21.Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck.

Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate(2007). The most arrogantman in France: GustaveCourbet and the nineteenth-century media culture.Princeton, PrincetonUniversity Press.

Ciulisová, Ingrid (2006).Paintings of the 16th centuryNetherlandisch Masters.Bratislava, VEDA.

Emmelkamp, Paul M.G. andEllen Vedel (2006). Evidence-

based treatment for alcoholand drug abuse: apractitioner's guide to theory,methods, and practice. NewYork, Routledge.

Emmelkamp, Paul M. G. andJan Henk Kamphuis (2007).Personality disorders. Hove &New York, Psychology PressTaylor and Francis Group.

Giere, Ronald N. (2006).Scientific perspectivism.Chicago, The University ofChicago Press.

Golec, Agnieszka andKrystyna Skarzynska, Eds.(2006). Understanding socialchange: political psychologyin Poland. New York, NovaScience Publishers, Inc.

Grada, Cormac Ó., RichardPaping and Eric Vanhaute,Eds. (2007). When the potatofailed: causes and effects ofthe 'last' Europeansubsistence crisis, 1845-1850.Turnhout, Brepols.

Lademacher, Horst (2007).Phönix aus der Asche?:Politik und Kultur derniederländischen Republik imEuropa des 17. Jahrhunderts.Münster [etc.], Waxmann.

McKitterick, Rosamond (2006).Perceptions of the past in theEarly Middle Ages. Notre Dame,Indiana, University of NotreDame Press.

Narud, Hanne Marthe andHenry Valen (2007). Demokratiog ansvar: politiskrepresentasjon i etflerpartisystem. [Oslo], Damm.

50

NIAS Fellows ‘Found in Translation’

Henk Wesseling (Honorary Fellow)Verdeel en heers; de deling van Afrika1880-1914

Poel, Ieme van der (2006).Congo-Océan: un chemin defer colonial controversé /textes choisis et prés. parIeme van der Poel. Paris [etc.],L'Harmattan.

Tokarz, Marek (2006).Argumentacja, perswazje,manipulacja. Gdansk,Wydawnict Psychologiczne.

Tov, Emanuel (2001). Textual

criticism of the Hebrew Bible:second revised edition.Minneapolis [etc.], FortressPress.

Waldis, Barbara and ReginaldByron (2006). Migration andmarriage: heterogamy andhomogamy in a changingworld. Zürich, Lit Verlag.

Ziolkowski, Jan M. (2007).Fairy tales from before fairy

tales: the Medieval Latin past ofwonderful lies. Ann Arbor, TheUniversity of Michigan Press.

Mineke Schipper (Fellow 2007/08)Trouw nooit een vrouw met grotevoeten


Anita Bakkenes, NIAS Staffmember from 1973 to 1979,died on 5 October 2007,following a short illness, justfive days after she had turned61. Before coming to NIAS sheworked for the travel agencyLissone Lindemann. At NIASshe was appointed asassistant to Director HenkMisset. It soon became clearthat she had a special talentfor figures and bookkeeping.

She took bookkeepingcourses in the evening and indaytime did NIAS’s financialadministration. In 1979 sheleft NIAS for a position at thebook distributors ICOB. From1982 until her retirement in2004 she worked for Shell infinancial departments atdifferent locations in theNetherlands. After herretirement Anita becametreasurer of the association offormer Shell employees.

Mineke Bosch, NIAS Fellow2006/07, delivered herinaugural address entitled“De last van de overlevering.Gender en de herinnerings-cultuur in de wetenschap”on 4 October 2007 atMaastricht University, where

she was appointed ProfessorExtraordinary of Gender andScience. Her lecture markedthe opening of theinternational congress ofWISER, Women in Science,Education and Research. Oneof the speakers in theopening session was RonaldPlasterk, Minister ofEducation, Culture andScience.

Leonard Blussé van Oud-Alblas, NIAS Fellow1999/2000, was honoured by H.M.the Queen with the award ofKnight in the Order ofOrange-Nassau in recognitionof his efforts to improveinternational academicrelations between Europe andAsia. This decoration wasbestowed on him by the Deanof the Faculty of Arts on 4September 2007, the openingday of the academic year atLeiden University. LeonardBlussé has been very active inpromoting mutual knowledgeand understanding betweenChina and the Netherlands. Ofhis many projects TANAP(Towards a New Age of

Partnership) should bementioned, which aims topreserve and restore thearchives of the Dutch EastIndia Company (VOC) inseveral Asian countries, andto improve the accessibility ofthose archives.

Wouter van der Brug, NIASFellow 2005/06, wasappointed Professor ofGeneral Political Science atthe University of Amsterdam.He gave his inaugural lectureon 28 November 2007, whichwas followed by a party heldat Felix Meritis in Amsterdam.

Graham Bush, NIAS Fellow1989/90, became aCompanion of the Queen’sService Order in the June2007 New Zealand Queen’sBirthday Honours List forhis services to historicalresearch, especially localgovernment.

Floris Cohen, NIAS Fellow1979/80 and member of theNIAS General Board 1984-88,was appointed ProfessorExtraordinary of ComparativeHistory of the NaturalSciences at Utrecht University.He delivered his inauguraladdress entitled “Krasse taalin Utrechts aula. Christendomen Islambeschaving in hunverhouding tot het ontstaanvan de moderne natuur-wetenschap” on 19 October2007. Previously, FlorisCohen was Professor at theUniversity of Twente inEnschede.

Jaklien Gillis, former NIASStaff member, gave birth to a

Personal News

52

Thomas Mertens, NIASFellow 1995/96, wasappointed Professor of HumanRights and Human Obligationsat Leiden University as of 1September 2007. ThomasMertens also holds the Chairof Philosophy of Law atRadboud University Nijmegen.

Gert Oostindie, Guest ofthe Rector 2005/06, wasappointed Professor ofCaribbean History at LeidenUniversity. He gave hisinaugural lecture entitled“Slavernij, canon en trauma”on 19 October 2007. From1993 to 2006 he wasProfessor of CaribbeanStudies at Utrecht University.Gert Oostindie is Director ofthe Royal NetherlandsInstitute of Southeast Asianand Caribbean Studies (KITLV)in Leiden.

Jürgen Osterhammel, NIASFellow 2001/02, hasbeen awarded a researchfellowship by the CarlFriedrich von SiemensFoundation in Munich. Hisfellowship will run fromOctober 2007 to September2008.

Arie Shachar, NIAS Fellow1992/93, died in September2006 at the age of 71. He wasconsidered the father ofUrban Geography in Israel.In 1965 he wrote hisdissertation on the CentralBusiness District of Tel-Aviv.He was Professor at TheHebrew University ofJerusalem and Director ofthe Institute of Urbanand Regional Studies. Asan expert in urban andregional planning he waschief investigator of many

Joris Luyendijk, Writer-in-Residence 2003/04, wasawarded the DickScherpenzeel Prize 2006 forhis NIAS book Het zijn netmensen. This prize was set upin 1991 in memory of thejournalist Dick Scherpenzeel(1923 – 1973), and is awardedfor news reports aboutdevelopment issues. Theaward ceremony took placeon 31 October 2007 inUtrecht, and was attended bythe recipient through awebcam connection withSurinam where he wasstaying. Joris Luyendijk wasalso awarded the NSPublieksprijs (the Public’s Prizeof the Netherlands Railways)for his book which received24% of the 35,000 votes. Hetzijn net mensen waspublished in June 2006, and125,000 copies have beensold since its publication.It describes Luyendijk’sexperiences as acorrespondent for the Dutchmedia in the Middle East andthe problems he encounteredin his work as an independentjournalist. Recently, a Germanedition appeared entitled Wieim echten Leben.

boy named Bas. He was bornon 1 October 2007 as thelittle brother of Marieke andson of Henry Zijlmans.

Martin van Hees, NIASFellow 2006/07 and amember of the researchtheme Group “Games, Actionand Social Software”, wasappointed Professor of Moraland Political Theory at theUniversity of Groningen as of1 May 2007. Previously, hewas Professor Extraordinaryof Ethics in Groningen.

Wolfgang Iser, NIAS Fellow1973/74, died on 24 January2007 at the age of 80. Hisfields of research wereEnglish and comparativeliterature, theory of literature,and aesthetics. He heldprofessorships at theuniversities of Würzburg,Cologne and, from 1966 to1991, Konstanz. He was theprotagonist of a literarytheory developed by the‘Konstanz School’, and knownas Rezeptionsästhetik or‘reader-response criticism’.While at NIAS Wolfgang Iserwrote his major publicationabout this theory Der Akt desLesens. Theorie ästhetischerWirkung (München, 1976). Itwas published in an Englishtranslation as The act ofreading. A theory of aestheticresponse (Baltimore, 1978).

Helma Lutz, NIAS Fellow2004/05, was appointedProfessor of Women andGender Studies at the JohannWolfgang Goethe-Universitätin Frankfurt am Main.Previously, she was Professorat the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster.

Helma Lutz

photograph:HugoKeizer


collected in and aboutBurundi, and worked onpublications on the king’sritual in Burundi, the history ofethnography of Burundi, andthe socio-political structure oflocal communities in Burundi.

Jan Ziolkowski, NIAS Fellow2005/06, was appointedDirector of Dumbarton OaksResearch Library andCollection in Washington D.C.He will combine hisDirectorship with hisProfessorship at HarvardUniversity.

projects in Israel, and alsoDirector of the EuropeanScience Foundation researchprogramme “Regional UrbanStructuring in Europe” (1988 –1994). At NIAS Arie Shacharwas a member of the researchtheme group “Urban Changeand Urban Policy”, andfocused his research on theapplication of the World Cityconcept on the RandstadHolland as a functional urbanregion based on a unifiedlabour market.

Albert Trouwborst, NIASFellow 1975/76, died on 17

October 2007 at the ageof 79. He was Professor ofSocial Anthropology at theRadboud University Nijmegenfrom 1970 to 1989. Hisspecialisation was economicand political anthropology.Social network theory was oneof his special interests. He wasan Honorary Member of theCentre for Pacific Studies inNijmegen in recognition of hisdistinguished services inestablishing and developingPacific Studies at the RadboudUniversity Nijmegen. While atNIAS Albert Trouwborstanalysed research material

Wouter Hugenholtz kindly invited me to saysomething on behalf of the Windows Group atthis farewell dinner. He tactfully indicated,though, that I should not bore you to tears. Soas not to make you cry in your soup – andthereby spoil a lovely dish – I will tell yousomething about the rather unique way inwhich our group went about its businessduring the past ten months at NIAS.

The group, I believe, will go down in the

annals of NIAS for two reasons. First andforemost, we were an amazingly happy lot, asyou all surely would have noticed. And –surprisingly, some envious souls will say – wewere also quite good at our job ofdemystifying the genesis of language. This ofcourse came on top of our impressive feats inmore taxing areas such as communal cooking(in the Blue Kitchen), table tennis and bardancing. So you may have been wonderingabout the secret of our happiness and success.

On being as happy as a Fish without a BicycleRudie Botha delivered this speech during the Farewell Diner 2006 on 23 June 2006.

NFAMembers are kindly requested to send details about developments in their scholarly careeror personal life that they think might be of interest to other (former) NIAS Fellows. Please sendyour information, including specifics about date and place of the reported event [email protected].

‘Address unknown…’

NIAS and the NFA like to keep in touch with all the NFAMembers. This is sometimes made difficultbecause NFA Members do not inform NIAS of their change of address. We are very grateful to theNFA Members who responded to our request for updated addresses in the Spring 2007 NIASNewsletter. It was helpful in locating former fellows whose addresses were unknown.Below you will find a new list of members whose addresses are unknown. If anyone knows of theircurrent whereabouts or their current addresses this information would be greatly appreciated.

Bernhard Dahm (1981/82), last known address in Passau, GermanyM.O.A. Durojaiye (1982/83), last known address in Lagos, NigeriaPeter Swanborn (1978/79 and 1996/97), last known address in Odeigne, Belgium.


54

scientific problems, believing that Mencken’sMeta-law has got it exactly right:

For every scientific problem, there is a neatsimple solution, and it is always wrong.

Our research strategy, moreover, included thepractice of lying flat on our faces on the floorof the Seminar Room for lengthy periods in thecourse of group meetings. At first blush, thisbehaviour may appear slightly odd but it wasin full agreement with Churchill’s Commentaryon Man which says that:

Man will occasionally stumble over thetruth, but most of the time he will pickhimself up and continue as though nothinghappened.

To be half decent, any group needs in additionto a research strategy, an epistemology. So wedecided to have one – incidentally because wealso liked the learned ring of the word“epistemology”. We got ourselves one thatincluded Vique’s Law, since we didn’t have anotion of what a comprehensive theory oflanguage evolution would have to be about.This law, you see, states that:

An evolutionary linguist without a grandtheory is like a fish without a bicycle.

Whereby I come to a second agnosticingredient of our epistemology: a healthydistrust of facts. This we derived fromFinagle’s Creed:

Science is about truth: Don’t be misled byfacts.

As you may have noticed on various occasions,we were rather good at communicating – bothwith one another and with other scholars. Butwhat may still puzzle you is why we spoke toeach other in hushed voices during groupmeetings. The explanation lies in our adoptionof the Whispered Rule which states, with greateconomy, that:

People will believe anything if you whisper.Whispering, of course, has an apparentdownside: one cannot hear everything that issaid all that well, all the time. This, however,turned out to be blessing in disguise, helping usto reach consensus about potentially divisivematters. After all, it is not easy to fight withcolleagues about things that you couldn’t hearthem saying. For communicating with scholarsoutside the group, we had considerable successwith a different strategy governed by Finagle’sFourth Rule, which says that:

In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

It is my pleasure tonight to tell you about it.

When we arrived in September 2005 at NIAS,we soon realized that Holland had become aplace where “Laws are laws and rules arerules”. And if one did anything without abidingvisibly by some law or rule, one ran the risk ofbeing sent home without ceremony. So we satdown and got ourselves some laws and rulesto govern just about everything that weintended to do. And the secret of ourhappiness and success is that we happened tofind just the right laws and rules. Let me giveyou some examples.

It is generally believed that groups have nochance of getting anywhere unless they act ina highly cohesive way. But, fortunately, wefound a couple of laws which saved us fromthe disastrous effects of too much cohesion.The first is the well-known Gadarene SwineLaw which says:

Merely because a group is moving nicelytogether does not mean it is headed in theright direction.

We decided, accordingly, to move together inthe more subtle way described in Farber’sThird Law:

We are all going down the same road indifferent directions.

Which brings me to the research strategy weadopted for moving down this road.Fundamental to our strategy was anabhorrence of looking at problems in exactlythe right way. In our view, Anderson’s Law hitthe nail on the head in this regard:

Any problem, however complicated, iflooked at in exactly the right way, willbecome even more complicated.

Likewise, we were less than attracted to theidea of finding neat simple solutions for our

Rudie Botha, his wife Hanna and Mayke de Jong at FarewellDiner 2006


Workshops and ConferencesJuly 2007 - December 2007

Summer school The Dutch Republic and Britain: The Making of aEuropean World-Economy(University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth)

Supervisory Board Strategy Meeting(The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law)

Workshop Art, Agency and Living Presence in Early Modern Italy(Leiden University)

Meeting European Economic Advisory Group(EEAG/NIAS)

Meeting Widespreading and Increasing the Quality of PreschoolEducation in Turkey(Sardes)

16 July – 3 August

27 September

4-7 October

6-7 October

30 October – 1 November

If you believed the things we told you aboutlanguage genesis in the course of the year, younow know why. And if you have beenwondering about why our workshops were sostrikingly successful, the answer lies infollowing Zusman’s Rule – we made provisionfor extended lunches. Zusman’s profoundinsight, of course, was that:

A successful workshop depends on theratio of meeting and eating.

I turn next to the way we did our reporting. Asyou know only too well, NIAS – elysian as it is– still requires fellows and groups to report onwhat they did during their stay in Wassenaar.So we, too, had to respond to the question “Didyou carry out the plans set out in yourproposal?” We responded with an unqualified“Yes”, not mentioning, however, that ouranswer was underpinned by Featherkile’s Rule:

Whatever you did, that’s what you plannedto do.

And in reply to NIAS’s question “How much ofthe work on your project did you complete?”we said without batting an eyelid, “Ninetypercent”. What we kept to ourselves, however,is that we had made our calculation inaccordance with the Ninety-ninety Rule of

Project Completion:The first ninety percent of the project takesninety percent of the time and the last tenpercent takes the other ninety percent.

And so I have come to the last rule I would liketo share with you, as well as with the othermembers of our group − since I have kept thisrule to myself, expecting that I would need ittonight it for consoling those who may bedeeply distressed by the thought that ourgroup has reached the end of its road. To them,I would like to say “Cheer up!” And in supportof this, I would like to cite Agnes Allen’s Rulewhich says:

Almost anything is easier to get into thanout of.

This rule, fortunately, applies to groups too.And since rules are rules and so have to befollowed, we will meet again as a group in sixmonths at the Cradle of Language Conferencein Stellenbosch.To conclude, I would like to thank you all forlistening to me in a spirit of true fellowship.

Rudie BothaCo-ordinator of the Windows Group23 June 2006

NIAS/NFA Newsletter, Number 39, Fall 2007

NIAS, Wassenaar 2007/9

Contributions and comments can be sent to theeditorial committee, attn. Saskia Hageman,email: [email protected].

Design and lay-out by Guusje Thorbecke, AmsterdamPrinted by De Bink, Leiden

© NIAS 2007. No part of this publication may bereproduced in any form by print, photoprint,microfilm or any other means without writtenpermission from the publisher.

22 October

8 November

29 November

13 December

A Holistic View of Qumran and the DeadSea Scrolls.Trans-disciplinary Research of Qumran'sBio- and Material cultures

Combatting 'Child Labour': Assumptionsand Questions

The Faustian Bargain of the SovietAutomobile

Reasoning in Time

Jan Gunneweg, NIAS/The HebrewUniversity of Jeruzalem

Michael Bourdillon, NIAS/Universityof Zimbabwe

Lewis Siegelbaum, NIAS/MichiganState University, East Lansing

Alice ter Meulen, NIAS/University ofGroningen

NIAS Seminars and LecturesOctober 2007 - December 2007

12-16 March

22-26 October

13-15 December

Brain Mechanisms and Cognitive Processes in the Comprehension of Discourse

Complexity in Economics and Finance

Literature and Evolutionary Theory

NIAS-Lorentz WorkshopsMarch 2007 - December 2007

2 November

22 November

Conference Legal Research(The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law)

Workshop Private Actors(The Hague Institute for the Internationalisation of Law)


Nias Newsletter 39

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Transcript of Nias Newsletter 39