Reflections on the prehistory of the Abdālī Afghans

ABSTRACT

The Abdālī Afghans-Pashtuns played a leading role in the creation of the Durrānī polity (est. 1747) – the precursor of present-day Afghanistan. Given their lasting contributions to the process of state formation in Central Asia, it is somewhat surprising that the early history of the Abdālī remains obscure. Nevertheless, authors of recent generations have not been deterred from speculating on the origins of the Abdālī. This article explores the prevailing theories concerning Abdālī prehistory, including the tribe’s purported connection to both the Hephthalites and the Sufi saint Abū A?mad Abdāl, as well as some of the motivations undergirding these theories. It also considers the place of the Abdālī within the Afghan-Pashtun tribal system and ventures to reconcile their Afghan identity with their alleged non-Afghan origins. The present study thus aims to offer a more nuanced understanding of the history of the Abdālī – the most politically prominent group in Afghanistan’s history.     

Regulation of armed conflict: critical comparativism

Abstract

This paper calls for comparative analysis of international humanitarian law and Islamic laws regulating armed conflict by focusing on the underlying assumptions and interests informing both systems (rather than on rule-based comparison). It argues that examination of the biases inherent to each legal system can potentially inform scholars to understand better the paradigms shaping each of them. In doing so, the paper builds on contextual and critical interpretations of both fields of law to assert the need for ‘critical comparativism’ rather than functionalist comparativism. Unlike functionalist comparativism, which treats international law as the ‘objective’ benchmark against which other legal traditions are measured, ‘critical comparativism’ treats the two legal systems examined as alternative manifestations of power structures which, when contrasted against each other, help shed more light on the inherent bias in each legal system.     

Whānau Ora and the Collaborative Turn

In the context of the ongoing evolution of the field of public management, this article first explores the two interlinked concepts of collaboration and accountability. It suggests that these are understood and applied in a number of different ways. Using research and semistructured interviews with a number of government officials and nongovernment service providers, the article then explains how these approaches are reflected in a current New Zealand initiative of devolved governance—Whānau Ora. The different, and at times conflicting, perspectives of New Zealand’s formal model of public sector management and that of traditional Māori culture are explained.     

Māori,Family Group Conferencing and the Mystifications of Restorative Justice

Abstract

The Family Group Conferencing (FGC) forum is often presented by policy entrepreneurs and advocates as indicative of the ability of restorative justice (RJ) to accommodate the cultural and justice needs of diverse populations. In this article, we present recent empirical research from one of the authors on Māori experiences of the forum. Drawing from this research, as well as other secondary sources, we demonstrate that far from being an exemplar of culturally appropriate justice practice, the forum is experienced by some Māori participants as one that encloses Indigenous culture and Indigenous participants within a Eurocentric, formulaic, and standardized process. The final section of our article reveals changes to the development of restorative policies and the practice in the Aotearoa New Zealand context that Māori participants believe are necessary to make the movement, and interventions such as the FGC, an empowering experience for Māori.     

‘Remaining awake through a great revolution’: The rhetorical strategies of Martin Luther King Jr

Martin Luther King, Jr is the most recognisable face of the black Civil Rights movement in America in the 1950s and 1960s. His ‘I’ have a Dream’ speech, given in 1963 as part of the march on Washington, has been identified as a key moment in American history, beyond just its importance to the Civil Rights movement. King's lasting place in American history has recently been codified in the declaration of his birthday as a National Holiday by the Reagan Administration in 1986. Unlike other Civil Rights leaders, King gained support from black and white communities for his program of change. In fact, King's major successes in gaining Presidential support for Civil Rights Bills in 1964 and 1965 resulted from his ability to win the support of Northern white liberals for Federal intervention in Southern race relations. Although considerable work has been done on the methods through which King's campaigns sought to tap white support for Civil Rights, scant attention has been given to one of the central vehicles through which King was able to mobilise white support, his language. Despite the publication of two recent studies on King's rhetoric, (Miller 1992; Lischer 1995) scholars have largely ignored King's rhetoric as a source of study. In this paper, I seek to fill some of this gap by analysing the key rhetorical strategies King employs to win support from his predominantly white audience in his speech ‘Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution’.     

Soviet musicology and the ‘nationalities question’: the case of latvia

Nation branding, as a phenomenon, is attracting increasing scholarly attention. However, much of the existing literature has been written by those involved in the public relations industry themselves. There have been some studies which have been written from a critical viewpoint; however, the tensions of branding a nation have often been neglected. This paper aims to explore the inherent tensions between nation branding and nation building. To what extent is nation branding a tool or a practice? What images of the nation do branders seek to promote, and who is this image for? Is nation branding merely a more palatable version of nationalism? In particular this paper focuses on the debates surrounding the launch of Brand Estonia in 2001/2. Brand Estonia, with the slogan Welcome to Estonia: Positively Transforming, was launched to coincide with Estonia staging the Eurovision Song Contest in 2002. It is a unique and interesting case study given the level of controversy that the initiative generated amongst the Estonian public. Estonia was the first Former Soviet Republic to launch a nation branding project and, perhaps more controversially, it was managed by a British-based company, Interbrand. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to public-level discourses concerning Brand Estonia. The empirical findings discussed in this article highlight some of the more salient narratives on national identity that Brand Estonia engendered and therefore aims to fill this gap.     

Popular culture and religious metaphor: saints and shrines in Wakhan region of Tajikistan

The article focuses on the study of the Ismā‘īlī saints (awliyā) and shrines (qadamgāh) in the Wakhan region of Tajikistan along with their historical context. Its essential purpose is to draw a succinct historical and ethnographic picture of shrine culture in the region and determine its religious significance in the broad frame of socio-cultural context of Wakhan. While discussing rituals associated with saint veneration and shrine visitation, it elaborates on the changing role of shrine culture in modern Wakhan and its adaptation to the newly established social and cultural circumstances after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is argued that the process of religious and cultural revival in post-Soviet Wakhan had its own distinctive element manifested in the transformation of the existing shrines into museums or ‘museumization’ of shrines, a process that not only changed the spatial compositions of the shrines but also enhanced their social and cultural functions.     

A ‘class of no political weight’? Interracial Marriage,Mixed Race Children and Land Rights in Southern New Zealand, 1840s-1880s

ABSTRACT

Interracial marriage was a defining feature of interaction between local Ngāi Tahu and newcomers in southern New Zealand from the early nineteenth century. Scholarship has explored the importance of such relationships to development of New Zealand’s early resource-based economies and to colonial assimilation policies. However, the experiences of cross-cultural households and families in colonial New Zealand are less well documented.

Using a body of writing produced by fathers and their mixed-race children in response to land claims investigations in the mid-nineteenth century, this article explores the political, economic and social world of interracial families in southern New Zealand. The correspondence over land rights reveals the ongoing importance of kinship ties through generations as colonial expansion impinged on these communities. Through petitioning and letter writing, fathers and children contested what marriage and family meant and strategically asserted their individual and collective identity in the face of increasing land dispossession and economic hardship.     

Physical growth and ethnic inequality in New Zealand prisons, 1840–1975

The British colonization of New Zealand after 1840 was marked by an unusual concern compared to other settler colonies to incorporate the indigenous Māori population into the new society. But despite a continuing political rhetoric of protection and sovereignty, Māori have historically had lower living standards and, since the 1920s, higher rates of incarceration than European-descended New Zealanders (Pākehā). In this article, the authors examine differences between Māori and Pākehā over 130 years using prison records. Aggregate data from the Ministry of Justice shows long-term change and differences in incarceration rates. Using a data set of all extant registers of men entering New Zealand prisons, the authors show change over time in convictions and in height. The adult statures of Māori and Pākehā were similar for men born before 1900, but marked differences emerged among cohorts born during the twentieth century. By the Second World War, the gap in adult stature widened to around 3 cm, before narrowing for men born after the Second World War. Periods of divergence in stature are paralleled by divergence in fertility and indicators of family size, suggesting the possibility that increasing fertility stressed the economic situation of Māori families. The prison evidence suggests that inequalities in ‘net nutrition’ between Māori and Pākehā are long-standing but not unchanging – indeed, they increased for cohorts born in the early twentieth century. A subset of the data describing adolescents confirms that, among those born after 1945, the ethnic differential was already visible by the age of 16.     

沉与浮：明清鼎革变局中的欧洲传教士利类思与安文思（下）

Being the important figures of missionaries in China in the 17th century, the priest Lodovico Buglio and the priest Gabriel de Magalhāes witnessed and experienced the special time of the Ming and Qing ...