Debt, Value and Economic Theology

Economic theologies are systems of religiously legitimated beliefs and practices that align value (in Marx’s sense) with values (in broad anthropological usage). This article outlines the place of debt and the credit system in the economic theologies of four ideal-typical variants of capitalism: CatholicismAnglicanism, Calvinism-Puritanism, Pietism-Quakerism, and Free-Grace Evangelism. At the threshold of capitalist modernity, the economic theology of Catholicism-Anglicanism interwove debts into prevailing systems of status honor that maintained aristocratic boundaries for elites while forcing contenders into displays of sacrificial virtue. Calvinism-Puritanism sanctioned profit-seeking through rational assumption of risk in the credit system as a necessary ethicalduty to prove salvation. Pietism-Quakerism warranted a rational credit system as a communitarian means to foster pious enterprise and to ease the worldly burdens of believers. Free-Grace Evangelism encouraged the assumption of debt for get-rich-quick-ventures and speculative trading in the frothy credit markets of charismatic capitalism. Contemporary (global) capital has breached the geographic boundaries and moral vacuums that separated these economic theologies, engendering a monstrous accumulation of debt in hybridized form. Critical theories of economic theology reveal how debt and other forms of fictitious capital are supported by a complex, contradictory social imaginary whose dynamics generate openings for progressive change

Electronic structure and magnetism of equiatomic FeN

In order to investigate the phase stability of equiatomic FeN compounds and the structure-dependent magnetic properties, the electronic structure and total energy of FeN with NaCl, ZnS and CsCl structures and various magnetic configurations are calculated using the first-principles TB-LMTO-ASA method. Among all the FeN phases considered, the antiferromagnetic NaCl structure with q=(00pi) is found to have the lowest energy at the theoretical equilibrium volume. However, the FM NaCl phase lies only 1mRyd higher. The estimated equilibrium lattice constant for nonmagnetic ZnS-type FeN agrees quite well with the experimental value, but for the AFM NaCl phase the estimated value is 6.7% smaller than that observed experimentally. For ZnS-type FeN, metastable magnetic states are found for volumes larger than the equilibrium value. On the basis of an analysis of the atom- and orbital-projected density of states and orbital-projected Crystal Orbital Hamilton Population, the iron-nitrogen interactions in NM ZnS, AFM NaCl and FM CsCl structures are discussed. The leading Fe-N interactions is due to the d-p iron-nitrogen hybridization, while considerable s-p and p-p hybridizations are also observed in all three phases. The iron magnetic moment in FeN is found to be highly sensitive to the nearest-neighboring Fe-N distance. In particular, the magnetic moment shows an abrupt drop from a value of about 2 muB to zero with the reduction of the Fe-N distance for the ZnS and CsCl structures.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

On Rereading Klaus Theweleit\u27s Male Fantasies

Klaus Theweleit\u27s Male Fantasies has generated broad interest in the literature of several academic disciplines. His analysis of the symbolic and gender dynamics of the leaders of the German Freikorps (German paramilitary mercenary units of the period 1918-1923) has been widely generalized into a theory of modern masculinity. Two issues inadequately explored in Theweleit\u27s work nonetheless must be read through more recent empirical and theoretical work in history and sociology: (1) the formative role of colonial military experience in the careers of the German Freikorps officers who provide the material for his analysis and (2) the complex historical problem of the facticity of rape in Freikorps activity