Le congrès mexicain mis en scène. 1813–72

SUMMARY

By looking at the various sites where successive Mexican congresses met between 1813 and the 1870s (be they constituent or legislative bodies), this article examines the role of such assemblies in the national political history and public culture of Mexico. The first part of this article follows the steps of successive congresses, identifying periods of serious political conflicts – though congress enjoyed a time of relative flourishing when it occupied a chamber within the National Palace. By analysing the ceremonies, rituals and symbols adopted by congresses, the second part of the articles underlines a historical rupture after 1857, which coincides with the laicization of government, and the secularization of the public space and parliamentary rituals.     

The Russian monument at Ayastefanos (San Stefano): Between defeat and revenge,remembering and forgetting

Legal and documentary Arabic reader. By M. Mansoor. 2 Vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 40 guilders.

Modern Arabic Short Stories. Selected and translated by Denys Johnson‐Davies. London, O.U.P. 1967.     

The Language of the Nation: The Rise of Arabic among Jews and Christians (1900–1950)

Abstract

This essay explores the ways in which in the period following the First World War, non-Muslim communities participated in the establishment of Modern Standard Arabic as the foremost symbol of the new states that replaced the Arab provinces of the Ottoman Empire. A comparison of the sociolinguistic trajectories of Syriac Christians in North Iraq, Jews in Baghdad and Catholic Christians in Palestine suggests that Arabic’s function of undergirding the ‘Arab states’ thrived on earlier interpretations of Arabic as the language of interregional and interdenominational contacts and as the language of cultural, societal and political modernization rather than on exclusivist nationalist, ethnic or linguistic identifications. Put differently, the increased use of Arabic by those who also had other languages at their disposal resulted from the combination of pragmatism with commitment to societal modernization and inclusive nationalism. The linguistic trajectories of these three groups are analysed against the background of a rereading of George Antonius’ The Arab Awakening (1938) as a contemporary source for the rise of Arab nationalism among non-Muslim minorities.     

‘A lucid stream of everywhereness’ in Ben Okri's Wild (2012): A postmodern perspective

Abstract

The argument begins by claiming that the phrase, ‘a clear lucid stream of everywhereness,’ taken from Ben Okri's The landscapes within, at once encapsulates the postmodern theories of complexity and relativity and evokes a cosmic dimension and a striving for Dasein [authentic human existence] that inform his poetic vision in his latest collection of poetry, Wild (2012). It proceeds to argue for the complexity inherent in the notion ‘postmodernism’; then discusses selected poems in terms of modernity's curious dilemma of ‘just now’ negating the preceding ‘just now’, that the French philosopher Jean-François Leotard talks of, treating recurring motifs of change, transformation and continuing presence. This includes a discussion of the two poems, dedicated to the memory of Okri's late mother and father respectively, that bookend the anthology, contextualising them within postmodernity. The article concludes by re-invoking its own abstract title in ‘Towards the Sublime’ in terms of Leotard's definition, before briefly assessing the import of Okri's latest collection of poems.     

Corporations,subjects, and citizens: the peculiar modernity of early Hispanic liberalism

Abstract

The varying degrees of political novelty and continuity brought about by the arrival of Hispanic constitutionalism are assessed in this article. It sheds light on the adaptations and the role played by pre-existing discourses and rituals in the articulation of the self-proclaimed “liberal” institutions, both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the new independent Latin American territories. The tensions between individualistic and collectivistic representations of political power are at the centre of the analysis. The text thus seeks to make an original contribution to current debates in historiography regarding the emergence of a liberal subjectivity in the early nineteenth century and its limits.     

Traditionalization,or the making of a reputation: women,weddings and expenditure in Tajikistan

ABSTRACT

This article aims to show how traditionalization is enforced by women in Tajikistan in the realm of marriage, focusing on the economic dimension of life cycle rituals: ritual expenditure and gift-giving. It shows that from women’s points of view, performing ceremonial competition may itself be a resource to recover their reputation, for example when a matrimonial rupture has harmed it. Focusing on single mothers, it demonstrates how practices of traditionalization performed by women can be directed at addressing gender constraints and stereotypes, such as the normative relation between marriage and femininity, and how they may also secure women’s separate sphere of competence and relative financial autonomy.     

PHOTOS OF THE HASHEMITES

East is West. By Freya Stark. Pp. 213. John Murray, 12s. 6d.

Irrigation in Iraq : its History and Development. By Ahmed Sousa, B.Sc., M.A., Ph.D. The New Publishers, Iraq. Luzac and Co. 1945. 54 pp. 8d.

The Hindiyah Barrage: its History, Design and Function. By Ahmed Sousa, B.Sc., M.A., Ph.D., Irrigation Engineer, Irrigation Directorate‐General. Government Press, Baghdad. 1945. Xv and 99 pp.; 17 maps.

Ikhwan us‐Safa. Dr. Phil. Omar A. Farrukh. Beirut. 1945. (Arabic text.)

lbn Bajja (Avempace) and the Philosophy in the Moslem West. Dr. Phil. Omar A. Farrukh. Beirut. 1945. (Arabic text.)

A Complete English‐Turkish Dictionary. By K. M. Vasif Okcugil.

The Geography of World Air Transport. By J. Parker van Zandt. Published by the Brookings Institution. Faber and Faber, London. 5s.

Morning Will Come. By Gordon Waterfield. Published by John Murray. Pp. 194; 31 illustrations.

The Future of India. By Penderel Moon. Pilot Press. 5s..

Maria Murder and Suicide. By Verrier Elwin. Oxford University Press, Bombay.

Beyond the Chindwin. By Bernard Fergusson. Collins. 10s. 6d.

Burma Pamphlets: No. 4 Burma Rice, 32 pp. No. 5, The Forests of Burma, by F. T. Morehead, 67 pp. No. 6, The Hill Peoples of Burma, by H. N. C. Stevenson, 50 pp. Illustrations and sketch maps. Luzac and Co. 6d. each.

Beyond the Burma Road. By Alan Houghton Brodrick. Published by Hutchinson. 16s.

England and the English. Amin Mumayiz. Baghdad. 1944. (Arabic text.)     

Abbasid Panegyric: Badīʿ Poetry and the Invention of the Arab Golden Age

This study argues that the third AH/ninth CE century panegyrists (praise poets) of the Abbasid caliphal court at Baghdad (and briefly at Samarra) were responsible for constructing the image of a Golden Age of Arab-Islamic dominion that was subsequently adopted by the poets and thinkers of the Nah?a or ‘Arab Awakening’ of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Challenged to create a poetry that would serve as the linguistic correlative of the astounding and unprecedented might and dominion of the rulers of the Arab-Islamic state, the Abbasid Modernist Poets (al-shu?arā? al-mu?dathūn) invented a powerfully and radically innovative poetic style, termed badī?. The panegyric odes of poets such as Abū Tammām and al-Bu?turī were canonized so as to promote a vision of an Arab-Islamic Golden Age and, further, to serve as models for the expression of Arab-Islamic hegemony and the conferral and contestation of legitimate authority. In the Nah?a of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Neo-Classical poets such as A?mad Shawqī recouped the Abbasid master poets to both retroject and project a vision of an Arab-Islamic ‘Enlightenment’. Finally, this study examines the fraught relationship of the post-Naksa (1967) Arab poet, as exemplified in the modern Yemeni poet ?Abd Allāh al-Baradūnī, with the poets and poetry of the Golden Age.     

Re-Imagining Identity: The Transformation of the Alevi Semah

Until the early 1990s, the Alevi community, a heterodox Islamic sect in Turkey, actively avoided explaining their beliefs to outsiders and were against permitting non-Alevis to enter their cem rituals. By the mid-1990s they began to hold their rituals publicly in the cemevi (lit. cem house) in Turkish cities and in their cultural centres in the diaspora. Almost all Alevi associations or the cemevis in the diaspora and ‘at home' have a semah group educated and organized by the executive. As opposed to rural/traditional cem rituals in which everybody may take part in the dance, the semahs performed in the urban cems are carried out by the semah groups consisting of young men and women. Moreover, these semah groups also perform in the non-ritual context. Thus, if the predominance of semah within the Alevi cem ritual is a ‘fact' to be studied, then differences in their present interpretations in Turkish cities and in the diaspora is another. This article examines these differences in the context of the transformation of the semah from the representation of religious identity to that of ethno-political identity.     

The Japanese Movement to Protest Wartime Sexual Violence: A Survey of Japanese and International Literature

ABSTRACT

This paper contributes a genealogical perspective to the social sciences study of robots in Japan, proposing a widely applicable research on “robot cultures.” The author discusses the corporate and governmental strategies and mechanisms that are shaping a national robot culture through establishing robot “lineages” and a national robot history which can have significant implications for both humans and robots. The paper contributes discussions on monozukuri (manufacturing) and Nihonjinron (theories on “Japaneseness”) to the existing anthropological consideration of robots, by examining links between monozukuri and robots, robot genealogy, popular culture and robots, and different social rituals and sites that help the enculturation of robots. The paper draws attention to the power relations and hegemonies of robot culture which also imply the existence of plurality and diversity that will require further scholarly attention as the robot phenomenon unfolds.     

浅析越语歌谣中的六八体歌谣

六八诗体是越语歌谣中最常见、最重要的一种诗体,它独特的押韵规律所表现的语言特色使歌谣更易于吟 唱和记忆,深受劳动人民的喜爱。六八诗体歌谣有着丰富的文化内涵,反映了广大劳动人民的现实生活和理想愿望,是越 南民间文学艺术的一大宝藏。     

I Cry Out So That You Wake Up1: Cegerxwîn's Poetics and Politics of Awakening

This study focuses on the poetry of the well-known Kurdish poet Cegerxwîn (1903–84). Contextualizing Cegerxwîn's life and literary career within his specific social, political and historical circumstances, this article demonstrates the way in which Kurdish classical poetry during his madrasa education shaped Cegerxwîn's poetic creation. Furthermore, the oppression and exploitation of Kurdish peasants at the hands of tribal chiefs, sheikhs and nation-states contributed to Cegerxwîn's adoption of a Marxist and nationalist social and political standpoint. This article, attempting a closer reading of his poetry, suggests that at the essence of his poetry is found the continued use of the metaphor of awakening. Hence Cegerxwîn's poetics and politics can best be depicted as one of awakening the oppressed and subordinate social groups including the Kurds, peasants and workers from their deep sleep of oppression and exploitation. Through his Kurdish poetics and politics of awakening, it is argued, Cegerxwîn participates in the progressive political discourses of his times.     

Mobility and fusion in the literary field: the maverick poetry of Dolors Miquel

Abstract

With the aim of exploring the correlations between sociological and aesthetic areas, this article examines the mobility of poet Dolors Miquel in the Catalan literary field, where she has occupied positions ranging from the poetics of orality to ruralism, and where her work has been printed in the commercial press as well as underground publications. This paper ties that mobility in with practices of fusion such as the parodical discourse and camp, based on the hypothesis that in literatures affected by subordination, as is the case of Catalan literature, the partial overlapping of the spheres of general and restricted consumption is conducive to the emergence of dual languages. The satire, the revision of tradition, and the purposely “low-cost” tone that characterise Miquel’s poetry can be read as discourses formed by the combination of popularised stagings and elitist knowledge. Although this combination compromises the distinction between select minority and mass public audiences, it offers new answers to a question posed in the Catalan literature from the 1960s on and which continues to apply today: the question as to the space to be occupied by popular literature.     

Romantic Love,Sex and Marriage Lithuania Style

Abstract

Recent cross-cultural studies indicate that sexual permissiveness is culturally accepted, endorsed and practised in the Baltic states. Flaws in these studies are pointed out and a more extensive multi-method approach is used to examine Lithuanian conceptions and practices of romantic love and to propose a cultural model of romantic love. It is shown that young adult Lithuanians tend to view romantic love as an initial and temporary “dreaming” stage in a love relation. This stage is differentiated from ordinary life and is very “poetic” but ends either in separation or in a transformation into “real” or “true” love. Romantic love, as a temporary and poetic form of love, is typically practised during the period when males and females are pursuing career goals. Thus, young adult Lithuanians may adopt values of sexual-romantic permissiveness during this time. Once they are established on a career path they are more likely to attend to the business of marriage. “True” rather than “romantic” love then becomes the criterion for a successful marriage.     

SPECTACULAR COMPASSION

ABSTRACT

China's “Olympic Year” (2007–2008) was a watershed moment for the country and its ruling Chinese Communist Party. In this article, the author draws on her fieldwork experience as one of the few foreigners living in rural Tibetan regions during the Tibetan unrest in spring 2008 to consider the implications of the Olympic year from the margins of the state. Taking inspiration from recent anthropological debates about the nature of humanitarianism and sovereignty in neo-liberal and post-socialist states, the author considers the Tibetan unrest and the Sichuan earthquake that occurred just three weeks later on 12 May as particularly emblematic disastrous events linked by a new biopolitics of “charity” or “compassion” (Ch. aixin) in the context of state-led disaster relief. To get at the contested nature of morality and sovereignty in practice, the author focuses on nationally televised post-quake death rituals in which statist abstract compassion for lost Chinese citizens confronted the universalized compassion of embattled Tibetan Buddhist monastic communities.     

The Resilience of Monarchised Military in Thailand

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that conventional notions of Thailand’s military must be re-examined because they misrepresent the military’s role in politics. Instead of examining its material interests, one must also scrutinise the power and legitimacy of Thailand’s armed forces in terms of its connection to monarchy over time. The relationship between monarchy and military represents a “parallel state”, whereas the ideology, rituals and processes within this relationship result in what can be termed a “monarchised military.” The purpose of this nexus is to sustain a palace-centred order from which the military obtains legitimacy. From 1991 until 2014, the monarchised military mostly operated behind a defective democracy, although it occasionally carried out coups to re-assert the palace’s authority. Its more recent political intrusions have enhanced the military’s power on Thailand’s political stage. Civilian prime ministers have unsuccessfully sought to reign in the military, but to no avail owing to the armed forces’ close association with monarchy.     

Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language, Ethnicity, and Race

In what is now Sudan there occurred over the centuries a processof ta'rib, or Arabization, entailing the gradual spread of bothArab identity and the Arabic language among northern peoples.After the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of 1898, British colonialpolicies favoured a narrow elite from within these ‘Arab’communities. Members of this elite went on to develop a conceptionof a self-consciously Sudanese Arabic national identity, inthe process adapting the term ‘Sudanese’ (sudani),which derived from an Arabic word for blackness and previouslyhad servile connotations. At decolonization in the 1950s, thesenationalists turned ta'rib, into an official policy that soughtto propagate Arabic quickly throughout a territory where scoresof languages were spoken. This article considers the historicaldiffusion of Sudanese Arabic-language culture and Arab identity,contrasts this with the post-colonial policy of Arabization,and analyses the relevance of the latter for civil conflictsin Southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, and, more recently, Darfur.Far from spreading Arabness, Arabization policy sharpened non-Araband, in some cases, self-consciously ‘African’ (implyingculturally pluralist) identities. Arabization policy also accompanied,in some quarters, the growth of an ideology of Arab culturaland racial supremacy that is now most evident in Darfur. This publication was made possible in part by grants from theCarnegie Corporation of New York (Carnegie Scholars Program,2006) and the University Research Foundation of the Universityof Pennsylvania, but the statements made and views expressedare solely the responsibility of the author. The author wouldalso like to thank Benjamin F. Soares, Karin Willemse, VijayBalasubramanian, and two anonymous referees for their feedbackon earlier drafts of this article; the African Studies Centreat the University of Leiden for hosting the seminar (April 2007)where this work was first presented; and Tukufu Zuberi, EveTroutt Powell and the Africana Studies Center of the Universityof Pennsylvania for organizing a symposium on Darfur (1 March2007) that helped to bring ideas into focus.     

Extracts from an Arabic History of Sokoto

This article is made up of extracts from a new translation ofthe Arabic history of Sokoto by Hajji Sa‘id, which wasprinted as an addendum to Tadhkiratu ’Inisian, Publishedin 1899 by Houdas and Benoist, and covers the period of threesultans, Muhammad Bello, Atiqu and Aliyu.¹ It presents a graphicaccount of life in those days of sporadic revolt on the partof the old Hausa states against the new Fulani power. The translatorworks in the School for Arabic Studies in Kano.