Grasping the Syrian War,a view from Albanians in the Balkans

Reactions to the brutal Syrian War from European governments and Europe’s Muslims have been diverse and subject to many shifts over the past few years. This paper focuses on how Albanian political and Islamic religious figures living in the Balkans have come to interpret the war. I focus on discourse, the ways in which these different agents communicate with their audience, and the wider contexts they evoke. Government sources and religiously themed lectures delivered by prominent imams on the social networking site YouTube are used to assess these trends. The most obvious aspect of these debates is the ways in which these agents use the war to press their own agendas, the government to affirm their commitment to the “West” and an ethnicized view of Islam, while Islamic religious leaders use it to reconnect their audiences to a more cosmopolitan vision of their past. War thus becomes a catalyst for a resurgent contestation between different groups vying for control over what it means to be “Albanian” and “Muslim” in the twenty-first century.     

The Possibility of Modern Middle Eastern Jewish Thought

While the vast scholarly fields of modern Jewish thought and modern Jewish intellectual history effectively include no texts by Jews who are of non-European origin, the domain of modern Middle Eastern intellectual history includes no writings by native Middle Eastern Jews. Aiming to help remedy this dual void, this article presents the core premises and argumentation of several pre-1936 Middle Eastern Jewish intellectuals. In filling in some of the contours and details of this rich—but significantly underexplored—history, it posits that a distinct Jewish intellectual school that unambiguously understood itself to be quintessentially Middle Eastern has been present since the beginning of European Zionism in the late nineteenth century. What contemporary scholars commonly recognise as post-1970s Mizrahi (Eastern) thought is thus better understood as an outgrowth of a Middle Eastern Jewish intellectual formation predating 1948.     

Across Nationalisms: Nascent Conceptualisation, Rudimentary Cross-Regional Historicisation

If nations are non-preordained configurations of socio-political collectivities then they cement – or fragment – as a consequence of two core sets of on-the-ground interactions: those taking place within a national movement among contending intra-national constituents; and those taking place between competing national movements, typically over territory. A third set of on-the-ground socio-political interactions has received less attention in the study of the phenomenon of nationalism: I term it 'dynamics across nationalisms'. If such dynamics are explored in conjunction with the more prevalent study of interactions within and between nationalisms, they can shed brighter explanatory light on the phenomenon of national consolidation/disintegration.     

Evaluating the forensic informativeness of mtDNA haplogroup H sub-typing on a Eurasian scale

The impact of phylogeographic information on mtDNA forensics has been limited to the quality control of published sequences and databases. In this work we use the information already available on Eurasian mtDNA phylogeography to guide the choice of coding-region SNPs for haplogroup H. This sub-typing is particularly important in forensics since, even when sequencing both HVRI and HVRII, the discriminating power is low in some Eurasian populations. We show that a small set (eight) of coding-region SNPs resolves a substantial proportion of the identical haplotypes, as defined by control-region variation alone. Moreover, this SNP set, while substantially increasing the discriminating efficiency in most Eurasian populations by roughly equal amounts, discloses population-specific profiles.     

Problem solving and youth violence: an evaluation of the Boston Gun Project

The Boston Gun Project is a problem-solving policing initiativeaimed at reducing homicide victimization among young peoplein the city of Boston. It represented an innovative partnershipbetween researchers and practitioners to assess the city's youthhomicide problem and implement an intervention intended to havepowerful impacts in the near term. In early 1996, a workinggroup representing a variety of law enforcement and social serviceagencies implemented an intervention that strategically respondedto gang violence, focused enforcement efforts on gun trafficking,and emphasized communication of the strategy to generate deterrence.The intervention is associated with a 60% decline in youth homicidevictimization (i.e., two fewer victims per month). There aresmaller declines in other measures of violence. The declinein youth homicide is sharp and occurs coincident with the introductionof the intervention. Competing hypotheses appear unable to accountfor the decline.     

Book reviews

Central Asia and the Caucasus After the Soviet Union: domestic and international dynamics Mohiaddin Mesbahi (Ed.) Gainsville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 1994, x, 353 pp, $49.95 cloth, $24.95 paper

Central Asia in Historical Perspective Beatrice F. Manz (Ed.) Boulder, Colorado and Oxford, UK: Westview Press, 1994, xii, 254 pp, $54.95/£40.95

The New Central Asia and its Neighbours Peter Ferdinand (Ed.) The Royal Institute of International Affairs, London, Pinter Publishers, 1994, 120 pp, £9.99, paper

Central Asia. 130 Years of Russian Dominance, a Historical Overview Edward Allworth (editor) Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, London: Academic & University Publishers Group, 1994, 647 pp, illus., £25.50/£65

Commonwealth or Empire? Russia, Central Asia, and the Transcaucasus William E. Odom and Robert Dujarric Indianapolis, Indiana: Hudson Institute, 1995, 290 pp, $12.95 paperback

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Russia and the former Soviet Union Archie Brown, Michael Kaser and Gerald Smith (editors) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 604 pp, illus, index, £40

Kyrghyzes and Their Ancestors: untraditional overview on the history and modernity T. Koychuev, V. Mokrynin and V. Ploskih Kyrghyzy i ih predki: Netraditsionnyi vzglaid na istoriu i sovremennost.Bishkek: Kyrghyzskaia Ensiklopedia, 1994, 128 pp, ISBN 5–89750–058–6

Independent Kyrghyzstan: Third Approach T. Koychuev & A. Brudnyi Nezavisimyi Kyrghyzstan: Tretii put. Bishkek: Ilim, 1993. 143 pp

Russians in the Former Soviet Republics Paul Kolstoe London: Hurst & Company, 1995, 272 pp, biblio, index, £37 hardback

The Revenge of the Past. Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union Ronald Grigor Suny Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press/Cambridge University Press, 1993, 200 pp, £10.95 paper

Black Sea Neal Ascherson London: Jonathan Cape, 1995, 306 pp, chronology, index, £17.99

Turkey in Post‐Soviet Central Asia Gareth Winrow London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1995, 53 pp, £9.50

The Rise of the Indo‐Afghan Empire, c. 1710–1780 Jos J. L. Gommans Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994, 219 pp, appendices, index, biblio, $65.75

Revolutionary Horizons. Regional Policy in Post‐Khomeini Iran John Calabrese Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Macmillan Press, 1994, 221 pp, biblio, index, £40

The Cambridge History of China/Volume 6, Alien regimes and border states, 907–1368 Dennis Twitchett (Ed.) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994, xxix + 864 pp, £80

China Deconstructs. Politics, Trade and Regionalism David S. G. Goodman and Gerald Segal (Eds) London: Routledge, 364 pp, 1994, £40/£12.99 paperback     

东亚区域合作的制约性因素分析

要实现东亚区域合作,推动东亚共同体的建设,解决东亚区域合作进程中存在的现实难题,当务之急需要处理好以下几个方面的问题：一是美国因素,即美国对东亚区域合作的态度与东亚对美国在区域合作中态度的看法;二是领导权,即必须要有一个坚强的领导核心推进东亚区域合作;三是互信原则的确立,东亚各国必须建立互信关系,尤其是东亚地区大国之间的相互信任：四是“低级政治与高级政治并行发展”,经济合作与政治安全合作同步进行。