Blockchain Papers

Nguyễn Mậu Bá Đăng, Nguyễn Khánh An, Ngô Thái Hưng

This study aims to identify the price spillover effects between decentralized finance (DeFi) and the stocks of Vietnamese commercial banks using a quantile spillover index model (τ) during the period 2018–2025. The results indicate that the connectedness between DeFi and commercial bank stocks is insignificant under stable market conditions (τ = 0.50), but becomes stronger during bearish (τ = 0.05) and bullish (τ = 0.95) market conditions. Notably, DeFi acts as a recipient of shock spillovers from commercial bank stocks across all three market conditions. Furthermore, the time-varying spillover analysis reveals that the connection between DeFi and commercial bank stocks intensifies during periods of high financial market volatility. These findings serve as an important source of information for investors and policymakers amid the ongoing digital transformation of Vietnam’s banking sector.

Alex Trahan

This paper combines novel archival research with a re-reading of the existing documentary record to reframe and investigate "the POW/MIA issue" as an ideological phenomenon. Prior research on the POW/MIA issue, or the widespread, persistent belief that US prisoners of war were secretly held in Vietnamese custody for years after the official 1973 prisoner swap, treats its persistence as the outcome of voluntarist factors like fraud and gullibility or the energy and innovation of grassroots activists. In contrast, this thesis argues that the issue's persistence in American political discourse is an artifact of the US national security state's ideological functions. It accomplishes this argument by first casting the National League of Families of Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia as an ideological state apparatus, then demonstrating that the League modeled a specific kind of state-sanctioned POW/MIA subjectivity organized through the feeling I call autonomic certainty, or the use of intense feeling as proof in-and-of-itself. The POW/MIA activism of Ann Fischer, a rank-and-file League member from Madison, WI, stands as an example of autonomic certainty in action. Ann's brother, US Marine Richard W. Fischer, was declared MIA in Vietnam in 1968, sending members of the Fischer family into a years-long quest to prove he was alive in captivity. Meanwhile, the Department of Defense withheld convincing wartime evidence that Richard Fischer was killed and buried on the day he disappeared. This thesis is the first piece of POW/MIA literature to stake its claims with DOD case files relating to a POW/MIA.

Tammy Wahpeconiah

How is God in the world? Is He, according to Christian theology, both transcendent and immanent? In other words, is He distant and separate from the world and humanity while at the same time working within both? Or, did He create the universe and then remove Himself from it? Are we able to comprehend certain aspects of God through our understanding of the order and beauty of the universe? Or, do humans seek a God who is no longer interested? Many science fiction writers have asked and responded to such questions including Ted Chiang in his collection, Stories of Your Life and Others. Several of his stories deal directly with these questions and we can read them as a critique of faith, religion, belief, and the nature of God. Chiang questions whether God has a role in our lives, what that role may look like, and the ability of religion to provide meaning. Furthermore, these stories are apocalyptic in nature, especially if we think of apocalypse as revelation, the Greek definition. Frederick Krueziger further defines apocalypse as “an unfolding; hence a revelation through unfolding” (5). Such unfolding always takes place within a story; thus, we must consider the inherent connection between apocalypse and story. As Krueziger says, “Apocalypse as story first of all reveals story as that which shapes our search for meaning” (5). The revelation, the unfolding, therefore is the story itself as well as what the story means. We can read Chiang's stories as apocalyptic because they reveal our disillusionment with our world and our inability to find meaning in religion alone. For Krueziger, science fiction as apocalypse illustrates our disillusionment with “the failure of the promise of technology and science to deliver the world from poverty, ignorance, disease, war, famine, plague, and death. &”(6). Although I agree that many science fiction works address these particular disillusionments, Chiang's stories, I would argue, have a certain similarity to the apocalyptic writings of John. People disappointed at the failure of the Second Coming to occur during their lifetime lost faith in the promise of God. John's writings deal with crises of both history and faith. Thus, Chiang's stories are similar to John's writings in that they deal with the disillusionment and failure of faith and religion. Before discussing the stories, it may behoove us to consider the definitions of faith, religion, and belief. Although we may feel we know what these words mean, and may even think they are synonymous, the distinctions among them are of importance to this essay. As John Bishop states, “& at its most general, ‘faith’ means the same as ‘trust‘.” Greg Popcak defines faith more narrowly, asserting that faith “is merely the innate drive to search for meaning, purpose and significance.” Religion, at its most basic, can be defined as a specific form of human activity as a means of achieving spiritual or material improvement. However, this form of human activity is often cultural because it is a system of behaviors and praxes uniting a community. Belief, according to Eric Schwitzgebel, refers “to the attitude we have, roughly, whenever we take something to be the case or regard it as true.” Interestingly, many define faith as belief without proof. Although many use these three terms interchangeably, Chiang employs them in specific ways in his stories. In the “Tower of Babylon,” Chiang uses the biblical story of the tower of Babel as his premise. His focus is not on God's creation of various languages as punishment for defying Him, but on humanity's desire “to see what lay beyond [the earth's] borders, all the rest of Yahweh's creation” (5-6). This story juxtaposes science with faith and religion as the Babylonians are building the tower so they can break into the vault of heaven. They desire knowledge about their world, but also desire knowledge about God, believing that the tower will enable them “to ascend to see the works of Yahweh” while allowing Yahweh to “descend to see the works of man” (6). In this story, Ted Chiang combines the above definitions of religion as a “search for meaning, purpose and significance” as well as the desire for material and spiritual improvement (Popcak). The envisaged structure is simple: Earth was seen as being situated in the middle of a great volume of water, with water both above and below Earth. A great dome was thought to be set above Earth (like an inverted glass bowl), maintaining the water above Earth in its place. Earth was pictured as resting on foundations that go down into the deep. These foundations secured the stability of the land as something that is not floating on the water and so could not be tossed about by wind and wave. The waters surrounding Earth were thought to have been gathered together in their place. The stars, sun, moon, and planets moved in their allotted paths across the great dome above Earth, with their movements defining the months, seasons, and year. (60) Chiang brilliantly describes the geocentric worldview through the protagonist of the story, Hillalum, who is an Elamite miner contracted to dig into the vault of heaven. He, along with other Elamite miners, spends four months climbing to the top of the tower. Along the way, he discovers how his world and his universe functions. He comes to know that night is “the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky” (“Tower” 11). He and the others reach a point on the tower where they see “storms from above and from below” and where people “[harvest] crops from the air” (14). After climbing a number of weeks, the miners find themselves “at precisely the same level as the moon when it passed; they had reached the height of the first of the celestial bodies” (14). When they reach the level of the sun, the intense heat forces them to travel at night. Passing this level, Hillalum finds that the sun shines “upward, which [seems] unnatural to the utmost” (15, emphasis in original). When they are level with the stars, the miners discover that a star has hit the tower, leaving “a knotted mass of black heaven-metal, as large as a man could wrap his arms around” (16). Finally, they reach the vault of heaven itself, “a solid carapace enclosing all the sky (16) that ”[seems] to be made of fine-grained white granite, unmarred and utterly featureless“ (18-19). Hillalum's travels to the top of the tower allows him to discover both the meaning and significance of the physical world, not through religion or faith, but through his own observation. Since, in the geocentric view, the Earth is “situated in the middle of a great volume of water,” the Babylonians and the Elamite miners fear that breaking into the vault of heaven will release another Great Flood (Robishaw 60). They believe Yahweh caused the Great Flood, or the “Deluge,” by releasing “the waters of the Abyss & from the springs of the earth, and & [from] the sluice gates in the vault” (19). Concerned that they may hit one of these reservoirs, the Babylonians enlist Egyptian masons who design a system using large blocks of granite that will “slide down until [they] rest in the recess of the floor” and will completely block any opening (22). Using this design, they are able to safeguard the world from another flood when their worst fear is realized and the miners accidently dig into a reservoir. Hillalum and two others are trapped within the vault, but only Hillalum survives. The rising water forces him upward and the current of water carries him until “the walls [open] out away from him” (25). He awakens in a tunnel, but is able to see light ahead. He comes out of what he discovers is a cave and finds himself in the land of Shinnar, which is south of Babylon. Hillalum's return to earth from the vault of heaven forces him to realize that the world is shaped like a seal cylinder, “wrapped around in some fantastic way so that heaven and earth [touch]” (28). Thus, Hillalum's journey is in itself apocalyptic—as his story unfolds, the world reveals itself through his experience. The scientific worldview Chiang incorporates is fascinating; yet, what is even more fascinating is the way the inhabitants view God and their attempts to connect with Him. The people fear God's displeasure and Hillalum feels uneasy at the thought of breaking open the vault of heaven (4). Standing at the base of the tower even Hillalum's senses rebel, “insisting that nothing should stand so high” (6). He and the others continually wait for a sign from God “to let men know that their venture was approved,” yet God is silent (14). When the star mentioned above first hit the tower, “everyone descended &, waiting for retribution from Yahweh for disturbing the workings of Creation. They waited for months, but no sign came” (16). God never acknowledges their efforts, either blessing or damning them for their attempts. Their overwhelming desire for knowledge of God's workings cause them to give “thanks that they [are] permitted to see so much” while at the same time they “beg forgiveness for their desire to see more” (18). Their reactions show lack of surety regarding their purpose as Yahweh fails to respond. The inhabitants debate how God may perceive their attempts to reach Him. Qurdusa, one of the tower's bricklayers argues that “if the tower were sacrilege, Yahweh would have destroyed it earlier” causing one of the Elamites to counter: “If Yahweh looked upon this venture with such favor there would already be a stairway ready-made for us to use in the vault” (19). Hillalum, however, takes a more Deistic viewpoint, saying, “Yahweh may not punish us, but Yahweh may allow us to bring our judgment upon ourselves” (19). The God in this story creates the world but does not actively intervene. When Hillalum and the others hit a reservoir, he believes “his fate had come at last. Yahweh had not asked men to build the tower or to pierce the vault; the decision to build it belonged to men alone, and they would die in this endeavor just as they did in any of their earthbound tasks. Their righteousness could not save them from the consequences of their actions” (24). In this world, the focus is on the choices one makes and the consequences one must pay for those choices. Yes, God exists, but He does not intervene in human lives, nor does He care if they are virtuous or sinful, or if they worship or ignore Him. It was clear now why Yahweh had not struck down the tower, had not punished men for wishing to reach beyond the bounds set for them: for the longest journey would merely return them to the place whence they'd come. Centuries of their labor would not reveal to them any more of Creation than they already knew. Yet through their endeavor, men would glimpse the unimaginable artistry of Yahweh's work, in seeing how ingeniously the world had been constructed. By this construction, Yahweh's work was indicated, and Yahweh's work was concealed. Thus men would know their place. (28). Hillalum comes to understand that faith does not provide meaning or significance to his life. He glimpses “the unimaginable artistry” of the world through human endeavor, not through worship or religious ritual. As Alan Gregory states, while all “apocalyptic texts reveal human life in its precarious contingency,” apocalyptic “science fiction finds the contingency of life before immanent powers” (161). The inhabitants of this world find “a sense of wonder at the complexity of creation” that comes from their own exploration of the world (Smith). Yahweh does not open their minds or increase their understanding of their world and their place in it, only an individual's desire for knowledge does so. Chiang's story is apocalyptic in that it is the story itself that reveals our search for meaning. We do not need religion to achieve spiritual or material improvement; what we need is our continuing desire to discover and understand the physical world. The “Tower of Babylon” is a story illustrating the existence of God through the reasoning and observation of its characters, but not by supernatural manifestations. Such is not the case in “Hell Is the Absence of God.” In the world of the story, the idea of faith as belief without proof is not an issue. Angels make frequent appearances and inhabitants witness the dead ascending into Heaven or descending into Hell. Hell itself becomes visible on occasion, allowing the living to see a place very similar to their world as going to Hell means “permanent exile from God, no more and no less” (“Hell” 208). Angelic manifestations can lead to miracles but can also lead to indiscriminate death and birth defects because of the destructive power of their visitations. Furthermore, anyone caught in “Heaven's light,” which appears “only when an angel [enters] or [leaves] the mortal plain,” go to Heaven, even if they are wicked or evil (226). The protagonist of the story, Neil Fisk, believes in God (as do all in this world since there is no question of God's existence), but he does not love God. Neil in the believing that were of unfolding, or without from Neil is of either or about God, he to go to Hell people like Hell was where when exile from God no fear for Neil as it means without His however, is a that Neil since many of such as he in “the for God that he had love of God had to the then it did make The together even view of God and Neil would have reached the point where he was to However, he is not that is one of during a from the angel is by glass when the of the of the in which was see to Heaven, and while Neil have seen death as a he becomes of He to be with and the only way to achieve this is for Neil to to love God. However, he finds himself in a had been the blessing of his and God had he was to love for it? For it was like a love as a for his he have but was a he He a of those who the but is by the that he should his role as one of God's those who have a to Neil is to his and make with God to find a way to love God, Neil finds a when a and while of the of his an and his was seen ascending to Heaven, to the of his Neil to a one of those who go to where either or the mortal When the angel Neil attempts to him but his into a However, a of light that “the light to Neil all the he should love As he now God an beyond what humans can for one he that he will go to Heaven since of him to Hell In is and he has a he than was when he was but his only is to love God. & He his being to Hell was not a of he he there was no for it, no His love for God, the us, “is the nature of In “Hell Is the Absence of Chiang brilliantly a of those who a religious that God those who love Him. Chiang forces the to with a why would a God on the Chiang believes this “is one of the of and with the that in the this story as of an world in which the is a directly the of the religious that miracles are always I do not agree that it is just the religious who believe miracles are always I do agree that many who would define themselves as religious have such In the world of the story, supernatural can have both and on However, we see on these have no at a witness to the angel believes God has a purpose for him and for “an with the to provide him However, does not either or He Neil death and to which to a of God's people that they can no more in the than in the mortal while them to worship God, just not a one God or not to have no on whether one in heaven or the is to question the of religious faith. In many “Hell Is the Absence of is a on In the world of the story, the inhabitants know God there is no or in to believe or not to The or is situated in the love one has or does not have for God. one God and to then one However, if one God and to as does Neil Fisk, then one is no in this world as one God to the argues that is us to take a religious belief and make it a and by so he forces us to think about ways religion can be so and in our Many of us feel certain as either a blessing or a from God, yet of us would feel a birth for as one or the Chiang us into a world where the inhabitants do not have such a world where is not God is not God is not (“Hell” This God is the God for those who do not see religion as a means of achieving any of spiritual improvement. Chiang the and the of God's We never know why God Neil to Hell and to “Hell Is the Absence of is an apocalyptic story that reveals a of faith, the disillusionment of those who no longer believe in the promise of God to the The disillusionment of faith those who do not see God as a way of their belief as Eric defines it, something we regard as what when one that something return to what if one can that God does not what when the one to it is the one for religious belief In by and what when the seek and find to the questions surrounding religious belief. understanding of and the universe on of the of For “is the of the the and the As a & is and of being & think and the of is to think and the has always with a of discovers this when is a and the understanding of the universe However, to a that is and discovers “a that any number with any other that any two are which of in the same sense of that has world to this but this sense of to that the of is nor with apocalypse reveals that can no longer provide meaning or structure to life and attempts understanding of himself and the universe on his that a of his allows him to a who “the between and and he finds his in his ability to in similar as to world, in the other and the other to world is to discover he has no for was it was something he In he feels more than a sense of to a when faith and religion no longer provide structure and meaning, both and their when they discover that what they have always as the of themselves and their world can no longer be Chiang's structure of by further to the of of faith. The story is out in with the of the which only two and The first is one through and a the other two are on either or a in and we can read one as a for faith and belief. For in the us that two The first one in that that may be but are & His that a of the of is just such a it be by any means using the of In other words, and proof are not the same we can know certain to be while not the ability to they are Such is one of the definitions of belief without proof. Chiang us with an look at what when what we believe meaning the is and the proof not from the but from As the that this is to a that there was no God. just it, but it for a For was something and is “the one who that it is not the same discovers his ability to his belief that meaning his understanding of the does not to for feel He feels as that has the of something he which is why the of the story is However, this this feels for than and their faith and both do so through their and Ted Chiang's apocalyptic stories are on our own search for meaning. Many science fiction writers often consider religion may however, creates and where religion and faith are while at the same time to the As the stories we our own disillusionment and many of us, the in the “Tower of Babylon” are to themselves whether they in knowledge or and Hillalum's and understanding of the world reveals to him that meaning is in scientific not or faith. Fisk, on the other in a world where proof of God is a yet he comes to know that God and may question why God, like the God in “Hell is the Absence of the and the without or In by religion for and “the to of the universe as yet, they find their universe not only but Chiang's story to those belief structure has intense and search for meaning them not to a and but only them further into As with all science Ted Chiang's stories reveal more of our than our reveals to We are not to God's role in our his stories us to question our own Chiang's apocalyptic is out of our own disillusionment that is on the world, but on the promise of God & which has and for some 11). these stories do not us or lead us and Ted Chiang's apocalypse reveals and that meaning and come out of death of

Andrew S. Moore

In October 1976, political scientist Seymour Martin Lipset studied recent polls and predicted that “if present trends continue,” the upcoming presidential election would be the first “in which Catholics have not been considerably more supportive of the Democratic nominee than Protestants.” Just a few weeks earlier, former governor of Georgia Jimmy Carter had enjoyed a comfortable lead over Republican President Gerald Ford in national public opinion surveys. But several different polls now revealed that no longer was the case. Lipset blamed the “Catholic defection” from Democratic ranks that he believed had come, at least in part, because of Carter's perceived shift to the left on a variety of issues; he appeared to many voters to be more liberal than he had been during the primary campaign. In addition, Carter's “cultural and religious style,” combined with a media fixation on abortion and his relationship with Catholics, had undermined his support among the nation's largest Christian denomination.1 This came at an inopportune time for Democrats, whose identity and relationship to the nation's religious people were in flux. As William Prendergast has written about the post–civil rights period: “Lost to the Democratic Party were millions of Catholics who would have enlisted under its banner in earlier times. Most had not become Republicans. They were adrift in a state of independence awaiting a candidate, a cause, a party more congenial to their values than the party of their fathers had become by the dawn of the decade of the seventies.”2 There were those who believed that Carter could have been that candidate. It was not to be. In short, Carter had what observers at the time labeled a “Catholic problem.” As it turned out, he also had a Protestant problem, as he represented the ways that the Democratic Party coalition was unraveling along religious lines. Both Catholic and Protestant problems resulted from the convergence of several interrelated forces. First, the civil rights movement that peaked in the mid-1960s had drawn its moral energy from a particular religious vision for America. The black freedom struggle legitimated religious activism to achieve a desirable liberal political end.3 After much internal struggle, Catholics and many Protestants accepted that vision—at least rhetorically—and reaffirmed America's Christian heritage. Protestants had long marginalized Catholics and neglected their place in that heritage. Now, however, Catholics demanded acceptance on their own terms. Carter's Catholic problem, then, came at a time when the nation's largest Christian denomination believed that they had finally been embraced as part of the nation's Christian heritage. At the same time, however, other events of the 1960s accelerated trends toward secularization. For some people, Carter—the most openly devout presidential candidate since William Jennings Bryan—represented the possibility to reclaim a moral and religious vision for America and to encourage Protestant and Catholic cooperation to achieve that vision. He symbolized a postracial, more inclusive South, the antithesis of a nation that had become increasingly secular. His religious vision for the nation, however, and his ideas about the separation of church and state meant that his candidacy threatened the avenue through which Catholics had participated in public life since the nineteenth century. In a bit of historic irony, the nation's perceived secularization had roots in Carter's Southern Baptist theology and ideas about church and state and religious liberty. In a sense, of course, Carter's Catholic problem was not new. Catholics and Protestants had long viewed each other with at least suspicion, if not outright hostility. What was different now was that Catholics' position in public life had changed since the 1960s. For the first time, Catholics qua Catholics were part of the public debate. That is, in 1960, John F. Kennedy had been elected president only after assuring American Protestants that he could govern in a secular manner, that his being Catholic in effect would not matter.4 Now, however, the civil rights movement had changed the nation's political and religious landscape and created new opportunities for religion in public life. At its best, the civil rights movement reflected Catholic inclusion and they now expected to be a part of the new religious and political dialogue. Despite Catholic misgivings, the fact that Carter was a man of faith encouraged them that a shared religious vision for America could give them common ground. Carter's problem with Catholics—or their problem with him, to be more accurate—revolved around several issues. In one way or another, all the issues touched on Carter's stance on the separation of church and state. The potentially most explosive issue was abortion and where the candidate stood on the need for a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution. Second was the possibility of state support for parochial schools. Finally, Carter's being an outspoken and active Southern Baptist layman aroused general suspicion among the nation's voting Catholics. In the 1970s, these were interwoven, a complex web of issues that were difficult to separate from each other. Together they pointed to the paradox of Catholic involvement in politics. On the one hand, Catholics now expected to be taken seriously on their own terms in public life. On the other hand, they continued to suffer (at least in their own minds) marginalization. One unnamed Milwaukee, Wisconsin, priest summed up the problem succinctly. He wrote Congressman Clement J. Zablocki about the “very real danger that Catholics are being alienated by the seeming indifference of these Democratic Leaders to the problems of American Catholics.” His parishioners were no longer solidly Democratic and were skeptical of Carter. “They seem to think that [Carter] and the Party is [sic] not concerned about a deterioration of respect for life, eg. [sic] abortion, about the deterioration of the cities, about those constitutional aids to parochial education.” Indeed, “Mr. Carter seems to favor secularization of all education.” This priest recalled “the anti-Catholic attitudes of the Baptists in Bay View,” and his and his parishioners' allegiance to the Democratic Party was shaken.5 For him and others, abortion, the separation of church and state, and secularization of society all were of a piece. Sociologist, Catholic priest, and Carter supporter Andrew Greeley was one of the most public observers of Carter's Catholic problem. The worst part of it for Greeley was that the problem was one that Carter could have addressed and alleviated, with only a little effort. In fact, “it took a lot of effort on his part to get into trouble on a number of ‘Catholic’ issues.” On abortion, according to Greeley, Carter's personal position resembled that of Catholics. Carter should have simply said nothing; however, he, was “under pressure from feminist militants who wanted another symbolic victory over Catholics.” Feminists would not suddenly favor Ford over Carter, Greeley reasoned, but Catholics might.6 The 1976 Democratic plank amounted to two sentences in a lengthy document that covered the full range of issues expected to face a president—from taxes and health care to foreign policy. Democrats acknowledged “the religious and ethical nature of the concerns which many Americans have on the subject of abortion.” Nevertheless, a constitutional amendment was “undesirable.” Roe v. Wade should be allowed to stand.7 Blaming Carter for the platform was not entirely fair, since the platform did not meet all of the standard bearer's demands. To be sure, his would not have many Catholics His would have neglected to it would have simply to health care and with their own In to abortion, and former and first pointed to Catholic in the Baptist a that had since the 1960s but was perceived Carter and its for for Catholic about Carter's President Ford an to Catholic that the Carter to the Catholic to the of but to the and of by Catholics.” Carter should his personal to abortion and the fact that he had with Catholics, to his by the to the of on the Catholic John F. Kennedy for Catholics Protestants for their and it was time to the the of religious and Jimmy Carter as a a Southern and to as as a former candidate for the Carter that the problem was not the of or Greeley or Jimmy Indeed, it was and it would Carter on election Catholics were in and most of them were For they could not be or taken for For a to he Catholics to as a when they would be more to Catholics would not a way Americans would a with and on of the would they would for in a voting and give it to the The problem could be but not by with or of Catholic it first that Carter the nature of the problem and the to which Catholics the American and the Democratic the were two Democratic one of William Jennings and the other of The former is the was Catholic two had been at since the nineteenth but each to the party that did one The party of its roots to and was for most of the of American The with and was for most of the of as and of and As and other observers Catholics had been Democratic since the nineteenth century. At the same time, as a coalition of the Democratic Party Protestants as much of the liberal or Protestant to support for the time of Carter's however, that had to liberal Protestant support for and many of them their support to Democratic That liberal Protestant toward the Democrats to be the most of the political party in the of the to Carter could not the in his own party in the same way that he the and roots of the relationship and in the The the two Catholics and their of and the those Catholic “They were the most of people, as than his was Catholic of in the and political to were This parochial symbolic what the parochial if not that they were in to public that openly for the Protestant and for and all its and There were that Carter The first and problem was the 1976 Democratic Carter the with the support of and black with no active Catholic It was of to the of American Carter had Martin to on the platform at the But it was a not a Catholic to the for what be the first time in Carter's Democratic coalition be than and black Protestants a few In to a general it Catholics. What was that Catholics believed that Carter in to liberal on after the be to get was not a of Catholics. Indeed, in his of the problem, at they as of than with the political Nevertheless, the problem was more than one of perceived and It was real for many more for it had political Catholic revealed the of in the Democratic Party in the 1960s. As liberal and had taken of the party from and the of those Catholics. that by the 1960s Catholics had enjoyed opportunities that and movement up the In fact, were than the whose was the of during Nevertheless, they the of that and the and real of of and their the of by Greeley and that They marginalized and Greeley with that Martin a of the and to on the platform with Carter. of a of the an at left from a of anti-Catholic and Catholic of their place in the public Carter's acceptance the of a who have and had to for or to suffer from the public are or by their to For Greeley, that was a that “the fact that most of those who to Catholic are who are not Catholic but a for their that Carter people who were is, who had or This would be more than It would Carter who could problems and the candidate into and from of anti-Catholic The most of what could came with Carter's of the issue of to parochial the Catholic is its to What Carter did not seem to was that of church and state is an anti-Catholic It is to to parochial because it is the of all the and Protestant that to to to parochial and to their over To to would be political to parochial was one of two issues that as abortion other was that Carter could about a that would the first to in to with to be a to the of the This would parochial which were and to Catholics that Carter had their in they did not in Carter's not as as would have the had to Catholic One revealed the difficult position Carter was as he to these political with Democratic secular to his own personal That concerned the relationship church and state in It Carter's position as being one of a in the for the separation of church and state. a position reflected the “in that religious freedom be threatened by a from in the “the public to parochial The candidate continued to however, to to public schools. to religious at the of America's and it is also a the has Nevertheless, that a some to some from public could in the of that was to all and and of the they had as a public than a to The did an of “the of to freedom of at the same time, the public or to a After the is one way Americans achieve desirable the of and in 1976, the Carter a to the Catholic The Carter's a and for for to whose It that a parochial had a long and a and in the of What was at however, was “the of millions of and Americans to a religious for their This at the of America's and It is a not by Carter a on a Georgia that would give to and schools. In Carter that as be to that the freedom of and that parochial have in the in the Carter's in the separation of church and state was in his ideas about personal and should be from to his own and about moral issues on that to and moral to were the state should The American Protestant was that Catholics, who their allegiance to the in were not to their own is no that Carter shared the that threatened religious he did his about the of to the issue of This to the that was a Catholic As Catholic and political observers it threatened the political on the of the who had long up their In October 1976, a presidential among its President Gerald Ford of the Carter with by revealed abortion as according to a was no that those to the of the the more issue was the Democratic Party which a constitutional amendment Roe v. Carter's own position on abortion was He his personal to the but was to support to Roe v. long he had been to the is He the governor of Georgia after v. was in state and he had been governor for a of when it was with Roe v. the Carter's and that Carter to the in That is not in the but was a in that that to abortion What was Carter wrote the to a in by and an of and a of all of which for the need for of and The would be the of of In his Carter his in with him now the of each and to many they would to have and when they would to have them as an for and as an for and Carter was that it was now to these issues more it was the of each to what he or to the of to wanted into on a Carter's to in a problem for him in the but that after the appeared Carter's on abortion a bit and he his to This came in to in a public and to the of As a by the time he was a presidential candidate, Carter to a personal to abortion, but an to effort that would Roe v. He did the Carter as he would support a to national and that Carter had acknowledged that “under he would support a constitutional amendment on a Georgia state Despite the fact that of Carter's position on a constitutional amendment from in and appeared on to the that was to Catholic support for Carter over the only Catholic candidate in the After the Carter that the took his of and was in fact, a of his to a constitutional After he the he and his did to up his Catholic At the of on a in he with Catholic of of of the of Catholic John of John J. of and of were of the of the Catholic The Catholic were that Carter in his support of Roe v. but they were encouraged that he, according to a with not an effort to a constitutional to to Carter, he his own it that Catholics, or have a to an would to an At least one of people, Catholics for a that Carter was on the of his position on abortion in to Catholic on the Catholics for a had in a with Carter, a fact that to the was in of recent with the of Catholic Catholics for a was that Carter continued to a constitutional amendment and the to which most Catholic were to Indeed, the that that a of Catholics that abortion should be a a and in a of the in was At least one priest, his that the Carter and the Catholic would to President Ford and Catholic support for Jimmy The wrote in The was that on abortion threatened to the to a In fact, he the Democrats had long been more in with the of the church on issues than the stance of the Republicans. Both Democrats and Catholics are by a common for the of and the people of society and Catholics to the abortion issue to become a in the from Wisconsin, where the of Catholic believed that their own could be to the Carter campaign. The had for in wanted Democrats to a Catholic on life from abortion to to As to the life issues on the with if Life is the only one that the to would have a problem To that Carter could be to a constitutional “the Catholic and the political be to to a of the problem. Democratic Catholics are to a to In his that Carter should not his own position on abortion, which was as it and be in in the What was Carter should not be concerned about the in since the are more to than to lead Carter should that the movement at the and those have their own Carter should to and he did be all was that was the and who did not in to all that the or them to But abortion was to Catholics. It could not be as as to a of in fact, as out, the were in effort. in the revealed that abortion was the issue on which was of among The same could not be said for the nation's Indeed, if was on abortion it was that it was a Catholic issue that threatened to of religious liberty. In Protestant Catholics were to the separation church and state. This was the opinion of the of the Southern Baptist Christian Life was a of the of a in the in an effort to amendment that would have Roe v. The acknowledged among the nation's religious people about The issue for them was religious which “the freedom to abortion in of his or own and religious and in with Most Southern Baptists had the issue much in 1976, and Carter's position was with most of those who Nevertheless, as a political issue was After Roe v. Wade abortion a national voters who were their own of those Carter They that abortion would not most of Carter not to on the It was more that he his position and and former candidate for the Democratic presidential a Carter that is being up by the in the on abortion.” Nevertheless, Carter's position was the that fact, the what the Carter political should be. to Carter's was to to on the abortion than two left in the and with Ford that was of the has to be on to those Carter should the of the of to to to them only a of voters who were more concerned about Carter's to with the political Democratic William the of abortion as an issue that could In he a election when his him with the issue in the of their campaign. first Carter, not Carter's personal to abortion and to the as as his that should to encourage were general and become and a of voters in an effort to an few Carter and those for him on the on the the position on position should be as of political of about the of Carter should also Ford and personal about they would for abortion in their position no more than The to Carter's was to the The that Carter's Catholic problem did not him in In fact, he of the Catholic to along with of the Protestant That of the Catholic was considerably than the that had in it also was than Carter would in when he of the Catholic in he did little to his Catholic He did to the of to for This an among his and those who had him during the campaign. In a of Carter's in the of the the to the president for public the outspoken and addressed the president in a to be for and and over Carter's about for concerned among that Carter would position and support the of for when in the of the They also that Carter's to and and in a in an Carter's of that his position potentially of of the the an most these Carter the his would in he had much on state would have in his he that his was to during campaign. is more liberal than Despite pressure from his own Carter stood his that his own stance on the relationship church and state his in he to Southern Baptist and but with other In fact, the problem had the the of the polls that Carter to have the election all but he to a of with in an to up his The was that Carter's religious faith would lead him to a new state that would the of his In a on in the face of own however, Carter that he had on a lot of with have in many of was for a Southern Baptist Carter, and particular was a of on the But it came in the at the time for Carter. were by his of the and by the fact that his came the of a of and In a sense, Carter's to his and to to his was with his The support for separation of church and state was in the that and personal would This was most in an in which most people were with the of a that was at least in In the was not and Carter was not a But events of the 1960s had drawn the into the nation and the nation into the South, a that had to its by the Carter continued to that personal and but his to new religious revealed the to which position in national society had He a relationship with several of the Southern Baptist the Jimmy president of the from to As Carter encouraged the of a by the and Baptist to the for what appeared to be The of the Georgia Baptist The Christian his in a through the Carter's with Baptist in some The president should be for a with those religious the same as he would be with that the to the into the and to of and for the President to which become in and Southern Baptists to some Carter's of what Baptists that John F. Kennedy would have he their at in during the campaign. to for other Georgia Baptist In his to Carter by the personal and The as his and he with during his Carter had from but a As governor of Georgia and as president of the Carter had and to religious of all in the separation of church and state and would not to in at Carter's of a was from where Baptists believed their primary Nevertheless, Carter and he to be in the be that Baptists have no to be concerned about Carter's relationship with other religious the that expected from the in his Carter an effort to to religious then, however, it was In fact, his own denomination in The that of the denomination that with Carter on the nature of religious and the of the in a particular moral vision on the The new of the denomination was more concerned with they believed that Carter's of religious had encouraged the nation's secularization. This the for abortion to become a political issue for Southern Baptists in the and for them and Catholics to a shared religious vision of America that had in the of the civil rights Carter's had drawn into the political if Carter turned not to be their candidate. Carter had to from to his faith for political not an active a vision that to Carter's Southern As a most Southern Baptists their way into the Republican Carter's ideas about religious and about the separation of church and state. in the they the need to abortion as a moral and religious issue than a Catholic It an issue in the nation's religious heritage. One Baptist the to abortion a Catholic issue was a which the of the millions of who are not changed and in the a of Southern Baptists for Life acknowledged that Southern Baptists have the to to the of They to and they with over the the Christian Life should abortion in the They that but only after in Most Catholics and came to on Nevertheless, many Catholics continued to however, they now did the of a party that Carter's on the of religious The among many observers was that the Democrats had become the secular the one to religious In fact, Carter's position would be the one by Catholic Democratic in the a position that them at with of the

Jean-Philippe Fontenelle, François Molle, Hugh Turral

The political changes which induced the technical and institutional evolution of the Red River Delta's (Vietnam) water control systems are described. The management framework and financial organization of the delta's water control systems are also described. The financing of the different operators, the amount and use of the water fees paid by farmers, and the process of water management decentralization and privatization in the delta, are analysed.

Monica Dall’Asta, Alessandra Chiarini

Women's interest in found footage and compilation has been extraordinarily intense from the very beginning.1 Even the origins of this peculiar mode of film production are tied to a woman's name, that of Esfir Shub, the great director of Soviet cinema who was the first to create an essayistic feature by putting together pieces of archival footage.2 Her seminal film of 1927, Padenie Dinastii Romanovykh (The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty), depicts the collapse of the Tsarist empire from the February Revolution to the October Revolution of 1917 purely by means of a montage of preexisting footage. Followed by a handful of other films she made with the same method in subsequent years, this first experimentation in compilation film was an opportunity for Shub to demonstrate the creative power of montage, showing how even the most resistant, unyielding materials can generate an entirely new meaning from the way they are combined—as for example in the case of the numerous shots taken by the camerapeople of the Tsarist film industry, which were transformed through her editing into incontrovertible proof of the necessity of the Revolution. In a way, then, Shub's work can be considered the most advanced result of all the philosophy of the Soviet avant-garde, for her films test Lev Kuleshov's intuition about the signifying power of montage by reworking preconstituted materials that had been originally produced to respond to a completely different, and sometimes even opposite, ideological project.3Many more women after Shub have adopted compilation as their privileged approach to film production and experimentation. Once a marginal form even in the documentary field, found footage cinema is now enjoying an extremely vital phase, fostered by both the exponential growth of the audiovisual archive and the improvement of digital editing technologies that have made film images all the more usable. Up to the 1950s and through the appearance of new avant-garde movements at the end of that decade, the history of found footage cinema consists of very few names and a similarly small number of film titles. And yet, even in the first half of the twentieth century women are a notable presence in the field, not only for their sheer numbers, but also by virtue of the quality and originality of their work. In this context we need to cite at least the name of Germaine Dulac, whose archival film of 1935 anticipates many typical concerns of the contemporary debate about the historicity of the film image. Le cinéma au service de l'histoire (Cinema at the Service of History) was assembled by Dulac during a period of intensive archival research at Gaumont, where she had been employed until the previous year as coeditor of the company's newsreel, France Actualités. Her monumental film is constructed from fragments taken from Gaumont newsreels from 1905 to 1935, and presents itself as a recollection, as well as a critical assessment, of the historical experiences made by a generation, her own, that was equal in age with the cinema: the generation born during the Belle Epoque, educated in the myth of progress, and doomed to witness its ruinous dissolution in the disaster of World War I, only to find itself confronted with the advent of dictatorships and totalitarianism. Made in the political-cultural context of the Popular Front (the film was made to be screened on the occasion of the opening of an independent “all-newsreel” film venue), Cinema at the Service of History reveals a thorough confidence in the testimonial power of cinema.4 It is at once a requiem about the atrocities of war and its moral, social, political, and economic consequences, and a warning to the present about repeating the mistakes of the past.Alongside Shub and Dulac, the third female master of found footage cinema before the 1960s is no doubt Nicole Vedrès. Her innovative work on Paris 1900 (1947) combined a “classical” approach to compilation film, based on exclusive use of documentary sources, and a more definitely modern approach, which regards the products of narrative cinema as no less legitimate sources of historical knowledge than documentary materials. Vedrès's work anticipates by several decades the awareness, typical of the debate on film and history of the early 1980s, that every film, whether narrative or documentary, bears a number of specifically historical traits—or, rather, what Vedrès characterizes as a specific form of historical truth that expresses itself in a visual quality on the order of photogénie.5This early phase of the history of found footage cinema, where three women play a primary role, draws to a close at the end of the 1950s. A more critical, irreverent, and playful attitude toward archival images, and a tendency to employ the past to produce an allegory of the present, and often quite a complex one, appears in the work of diverse experimental filmmakers, including Isidore Isou, Stan VanDerBeek, Bruce Conner, and Guy Debord. Again, several women participate as well in this new moment that marks the evolution of found footage film as a major form of experimental cinema, often referred to as collage film. Though the women's names are more obscure today than the filmmakers we have just cited, their position in this shift is far from secondary in terms of their critical awareness and their innovations.Already in 1959, Jane Conger Belson Shimané's Odds and Ends offered a precocious example of a collage film that mixes outtakes of travelogues with abstract animation, both painted on the filmstrip and created with paper cutouts. Since then, the ranks of women involved in the deconstruction of the codes of contemporary culture—and often particularly of its sexist stereotypes—through the reworking of preexisting footage has not stopped growing. Filmmakers such as Anita Thacher, Chick Strand, Dara Birnbaum, Peggy Ahwesh, Michelle Citron, Abigail Child, Hito Steyerl, Angela Ricci Lucchi, Leslie Thornton, Su Friedrich, Eve Heller, Vivian Ostrovsky, Nina Fonoroff, Sabine Hiebler, and Frédérique Devaux, or, among the younger ones, Lana Lin, Naomi Uman, Deborah Stratman, Caroline Avery, Cheryl Dunye, Cathy Joritz, Barbara Meter, Louise Bourque, Magda Matwiejew, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Rebecca Baron, Meike Fehre, Meryll Hardt, and Lisa Reboulleau—and those whose work is analyzed in this issue of Feminist Media Histories: Myriam Borsoutsky, Cecilia Mangini, Cécile Fontaine, Barbara Hammer, Valentina Monti, and Alina Marazzi—make us tempted to describe found footage cinema as a field where gender parity is close to being finally attained.Yet we want to resist explaining away such a proliferation of female auteurs who choose a most difficult manner of expressing their own imagination and thought—through images created by others in different places and times—with some sort of specific or “essential” female inclination toward montage, maybe even by invoking its similarity to the tailoring operations of cutting and sewing. Such essentialist comparisons can certainly be suggestive, but they hardly help us understand the reality of women's experience in the sphere of filmmaking. Even less could we endorse a thesis that would interpret women's bent for compilation films as an ability to excel exclusively in contexts characterized by a minimum creative coefficient. On the contrary, the innovative content of cases such as those we briefly recall above should demonstrate the opposite—that is, women's extraordinary creative capacity, evidenced by their ability to extract the maximum coefficient of originality from seemingly inert materials.But this would be a simplification, too, a sterile generalization based on a purely reactive attitude. A more interesting approach begins when one considers the apparent affinity between women and the practice of found footage, on the one hand, and on the other the material conditions of film production—more precisely, the difference that exists between the labor involved in editing and researching and that involved in shooting, especially in commercial cinema. All available data show that commercial cinema, which, as everyone knows, is basically a narrative and fictional type of cinema, is a field where only a few women succeed in reaching and holding directorial roles. We are then prompted to ask whether the specific difference that is responsible for found footage cinema being such a favorable field for women's initiative should not be sought at the level of what we mean by “film directing” in the first place.Cameraless cinema does not imply “directing” in the common sense of the word. Women working in found footage do not direct actors and technicians on a film set; they do not preside over complex organizational machines from the apex of the film set's hierarchical system. If they work in a group, they do so by choosing a few close collaborators, often other women. Their work more closely resembles conducting a research project, including immersive sessions in archives and philological interrogations about the materials, than directing a film set. This amounts to saying that women, in the absence of directorial opportunities within the frame of institutional cinema, may have elected the practice of found footage as a way to build an autonomous space of creativity that allows them to transform limitations into a stylistic peculiarity.6The subtitle of this issue, “Women Without a Movie Camera,” alludes in a clearly provocative way to the objective condition of limitation that women experience in their attempts to access professional opportunities for directing in the mainstream film industry, a situation that, in our interpretive hypothesis, can explain better than any tailoring metaphor the remarkable intensity of female creativity in found footage cinema.7 More than a yen for reusing archives, the breadth of female presence in the history of films derived from found footage proves women's tenacious will to make cinema at all costs, even if it means inventing their own modes of independent production under conditions of limitation and lack of means. Clear evidence of this is that even when they leave the particular sphere of found footage and take up the camera, these filmmakers usually keep working beyond the borders of mainstream narrative cinema, that is, in the fields of documentary, experimental, or animated cinema.Put another way, if an affinity between women and found footage cinema exists, most likely it is not because the process resembles “cutting and sewing,” but because cameraless cinema appears as a utopian mode of production that can be practiced in perfect autonomy, or together with a small group of trusted collaborators, in which a lack of means can be countervailed with patience and flair. It is a cinema that, as in the case of Cécile Fontaine, can even be executed at home at the kitchen sink.The remarkable number of women filmmakers who are or were active in found footage cinema could then be taken as confirmation of the famous hypothesis advanced by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One's Own (1929), that we would now have many more female names in the history books if women had had their own rooms where they could work in peace, away from the stereotypes and performative codes of patriarchal culture. The separateness and seclusion of the editing room are more than just metaphors for Woolf's idea of the room of one's own as a space of autonomy and expressive freedom.The field at stake is obviously much larger than is possible to analyze within the limits of the present publication. Unable to cover the entire, rich spectrum of women's contributions to the history of found footage cinema, we chose a series of studies on a few individual figures who represent various different approaches.8The issue opens with a selection of articles by Esfir Shub, as yet unpublished in English, introduced and edited by Liubov Dyshlyuk. The publication of these materials drawn from Shub's autobiographical book Zhizn' moya – kinematograf (Cinema Is My Life, 1972) is a deserved homage to a figure who is regularly presented as the most influential pioneer of compilation film, but whose poetic reflections are almost completely unknown in the Western world. Dating back to the time of the making of The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927), Shub's writings in this issue document her extraordinary awareness in tackling the task of assembling in a coherent montage a host of such heterogeneous materials as old newsreels, home movies, and institutional documentaries. In their rigorous as well as impassioned tone, which continuously emphasizes the political valences of filmmaking, these articles confirm the fundamental position that Shub occupies not only in the practice of, but also in reflections about, the practice of compilation cinema.Monica Dall'Asta's essay on Myriam Borsoutsky and Nicole Vedrès focuses on two French figures who are almost completely forgotten today. In the virtually perfect obscurity of Borsoutsky (better known as Myriam)—who was Sacha Guitry's editor during the 1930s, before collaborating with Vedrès on Paris 1900 and codirecting La Course de taureaux (Bullfight, 1951) alongside Pierre Braunberger—Dall'Asta finds a clue to retracing a possible female genealogy of French found footage cinema. The rediscovery, or rather the discovery, of Myriam, whose skills in editing were so outstanding as to be called “diabolical” by André Bazin, discloses a whole cultural scene that includes as many different figures as Braunberger, Henri Langlois, Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Jacques Brunius, Denise Tual, Victoria Mercanton, and Yannick Bellon. Paradoxically, Myriam's obscurity becomes the crucial element that illuminates a gray area in film history, beginning with Vedrès's groundbreaking work.Better known for the documentaries she shot—which register, with the precision of an anthropologist's eye, the transformations of Italian society between the 1960s and the 1970s—Cecilia Mangini also belongs to the crowd of forgotten women filmmakers. Her films based on the technique of assemblage are examined in deep detail in Dalila Missero's essay. Mangini's work in the archives began with the making of All'armi siam fascisti! (To Arms! We're Fascists!, 1961–62), the film she made with her husband, Lino Del Fra, and the socialist film critic Lino Micciché, and continued with Stalin (1962–63), codirected with Lino Del Fra and the great Marxist poet Franco Fortini. As with Dulac's and Vedrès's earlier works, To Arms! We're Fascists! offers a critical reading of the historical experience of the authors' generation, born under the Fascist regime and subjected to the destructive fascinations of its ideology. To find the documentary materials for both this film and Stalin (issued in 1963 in a version reedited by the producer and disavowed by the authors), Mangini conducted research in several archives around the world, facing huge difficulties. Her interest in the meaning effects attainable through the recombination of stock footage is further documented by an intense sequence in her film of women's emancipation, Essere donne (Being Women, 1963–65), of which Missero proposes an extremely accurate analysis.Barbara Hammer's first feature, Nitrate Kisses (1992), is examined by Alessandra Chiarini as an example of a film based on the construction of a complex relationship between stock footage and original shots. In conceiving of her cinema as a means for the expression of “feeling-images,” that is, “inseparable unity of emotion and thought/idea/image and internal bodily states of excitement,” Hammer is in search of an alternative style to the linear narration of mainstream cinema.9 In the movement of thoughts and emotions that spring from the flow of images in the film, Chiarini sees a method of assemblage that is reminiscent of Maya Deren's theorizations about “vertical cinema.” In Nitrate Kisses this method is adopted to a history of the twentieth century by and footage and original shots are combined in to a critical about history that into the and of between past and present, individual and very different case is presented in essay on Cécile A French who is very of what Nicole has called a approach to found footage, the of preexisting images by way of on the film a of that in and of or of the film her on the relationship between the stylistic and and that the mode of La to the construction of The are where a with the of the film is with an to the content of the the most original of the the of footage to the that her to her from when she was a In these materials a complex whose and quite result is the of the of of film archives to create new films is the of essay. More particularly the with the complex creative and process the making of a film constructed from fragments from the of the an Italian Made by Valentina with at the editing is just the in a that has produced an a and a film, Dating from the the images as of a the of and and document the of the between and is to describe the work of and as a time with the the images, which to the women of the and at the same time the rigorous approach, no less than with which women images of women to a montage of in the with and Alina that the issue, these two of contemporary found footage cinema their experiences and their creative and professional by by film Barbara and filmmakers demonstrate a awareness in their approach to the practice of cameraless cinema. who is the of films in the political of Italian has been regularly working with the early with first feature, More with their has of interest and is the case of More with which the of who only a few after by materials from her home by her and after a time from an old her and and from the of the on a visual history of women's in that, among a host of different materials, includes fragments from films by the during the to on complex such as the of preexisting images, the of archival footage as a of and the relationship between found footage and women's cinema, and a series of very original which the of montage in the expressive of women's by the creative that exists between and the of this of also alludes to the editing room as room of one's a space where women, over the of almost a have the of Woolf's The editing room as a of separateness and autonomy is a space where women have to make of their a a of movement in the of the film If this is then we that found footage cinema should an in film We more new research will to the work of not just the filmmakers, but also so many obscure the of these