A.H. Tammsaare’s Truth and Justice as a Postcolonial Bildungsroman

A.H. Tammsaare’s pentalogy Truth and Justice is considered a central text in Estonian culture, perceived virtually as a second national epic. The article analyzes it from the perspective of comparative genre studies. It is discussed as an idiosyncratic example of Bildungsroman, a genre narrativizing modernizing change focusing on the lives of everyday individuals, thus symbolically domesticating and humanizing the global developments of modernization. The emplotment of Tammsaare’s novel is comparatively discussed against the background of the Western European Bildungsroman on the one hand and of non-European postcolonial Bildungsroman on the other. The analysis enables to gain new insight into the reception and cultural working-through of the belated rapid modernization in Estonia. It also helps to explain the canonical position of Tammsaare’s novel in Estonian literature: The novel is a poetic tour de force that forges a both intra- and internationally acceptable model of modern Estonia.     

A cuarenta años del golpe militar en Chile. Reflexiones en torno a conmemoraciones y memorias

The commemoration of the Fortieth anniversary of the coup d'état in Chile in September 2013 was unexpectedly intense; even so that it forced a critical revision of the last four decades of Chilean history. Like never before in past commemorations, memory was, in many ways, the central theme of the cultural-political debate, which motivated society to make a conscience examination in order to face the individual, as well as the collective, responsibilities around the coup and the dictatorship that emerged from it. This text explores some of the reasons that guided said explosion of memory, marking a crucial turn in recent Chilean history.     

“I’m awfully fed up with being a prisoner”* Australian POWs of the Turks and the Strain of Surrender

Nearly 200 Australians were captured and held as prisoners of war (POWs) by Ottoman Turkish forces during the First World War. They have largely been overlooked in Australian history and memory of the conflict with the result that little is known of their time in captivity or of its wider ramifications. In examining the emotional impact of their capture and imprisonment, this article offers intimate insights into how these Australian POWs felt about their captivity, from the moment of surrender until long after the war had ended. The humiliation of capture and confinement at the hands of a culturally, religiously and linguistically different enemy and the restrictions imposed by wartime imprisonment exacerbated the prisoners’ private feelings of shame and failure, feelings that were publicly reinforced in the aftermath of the war as the two dominant narratives of the conflict—the heroic Anzac fighter and the Turks as the honourable enemy—excluded or, at best, marginalised their experiences. Such analysis tells us much about the psychological dimension of wartime captivity, and adds to our understanding of the legacy of this POW experience.     

The Struggle Against Corruption: Progress at a Snail's Pace. Why?

In 2010 the author, in an article for this journal, questioned the methods put forward by the international donor community to overcome corruption in the transitional and developing countries of the world. Five years on, the progress against this scourge has been minimal. In this article the author explores some of the reasons why. Apart from the obvious reason, namely the failure of political will in the countries themselves, he outlines some of the policy and practical errors that continue to hinder the progress that could be made.

Most of these errors are laid at the door of the international donor community, which perpetuates the remedies it advocates in spite of the evidence of failure. They range from a national anticorruption strategy that addresses corruption only in the public sector, to a policy of pursuing “grand corruption” but not “petty corruption” to insisting on an asset declaration system aimed at catching the corrupt and deterring others instead of aiming the system at identifying conflict of interest.

These egregious errors, among others described in this article, are the direct cause of lack of progress against a problem internationally recognized as destructive of everything the affected countries are striving to build. In the author's view the errors can and should be corrected. The remedies are relatively simple.     

Worse Than a Monolith: Disorganization and Rivalry within Asian Communist Alliances and U.S. Containment Challenges, 1949–69

Abstract

This article makes the counterintuitive argument that in the first two decades of the Cold War the communist alliance in East Asia was easiest for the United States and its allies to contain through coercive diplomacy during the period in which the communist alliance was most cohesive and unified under Soviet leadership (1954–57). With a focus on the Korean War and two Indochina Wars, this article shows how internal problems in the communist alliance significantly complicated the containment of communism. In the formative years of the East Asian communist alliances (1950–53), the alliance’s lack of organization and cohesion made it more difficult for anti-communist forces in the region to deter communist expansion and to control escalation of wars once they started. Between 1958–69, internal rivalry for leadership in the communist alliance made containment of the alliance particularly difficult for the United States and its allies. Until the Chinese and Soviet communists actually turned their guns on each other in early 1969, the Sino-Soviet rivalry for leadership of the international communist movement in the 1960s only served to increase the expansionist fervor of the communist movement as a whole, make peace agreements with anti-communist forces in the region more difficult, and maximize the amount of military assistance local revolutionaries, like Ho Chi Minh, received from both Moscow and Beijing.     

L''''ESSAI SUR LES CAUSES DE LA RUPTURE ENTRE LE P. C. F. ET LE P. S. EN 1977

1972年6月,法国共产党和法国社会党签署了《共同执政纲领》,翻开了法国左派各党联合的新篇章。1977年议会选举,左派联合大有改变右派长期当权的政治格局之势,形势对左派极为有利。然而在向夺取政权迈进之时,法共与社会党在如何实施《共同执政纲领》的问题上发生严重分歧,导致了法国两大左派党的分裂,左翼联盟在议会选举中失利。从表面上看,分歧的焦点在于国有化问题:法共要求大规模国有化,而社会党则反对。但从更深层次上看,国有化规模之大小以及如何管理国有化企业等问题与两党在未来左派政府中的地位及其在工会中的作用和影响息息相关。     

Explaining Canada–US differences in attitudes toward the role of government: a test of S.M. Lipset’s ‘Continental Divide’

For decades scholars have engaged in a lively debate about the distinctiveness of Canadian and American value systems. Lipset (1990) argues that divergent responses to the American Revolution led Canada to embrace Tory values of ‘peace, order, and good government’ while Americans pursued classical liberal values of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. Other scholars question the extent, or even the existence, of the differences Lipset describes. Using surveys of students from Canadian and American universities close to the Canada–US border, we identify compelling support for Lipset’s hypothesised differences on the role of government in the least likely setting imaginable.     

Understanding young citizens’ political participation in Turkey: does ‘being young’ matter?

Participation is key to the discussions of democracy and justice. For all citizens, no matter their differences, having the ability to participate is a difficult but required condition for a just and democratic political community. Based on the recent research on citizenship in Turkey, this article aims to explore, first, whether young citizens’ political participation shows a different pattern when compared to the rest of the population and, second, whether being young still determines the outcome when controlled for demographical factors and economic status. We then question whether belonging to different collective identities plays a different role in the way young citizens participate, and how. Last, mostly focusing on young citizens’ perceptions of the Gezi Park protests, the paper will discuss the role of politicized collective identities in the formation of conventional and unconventional political participation.     

Lost in Santa Martha. Limitaciones para una etnografía en una cárcel de mujeres

En este artículo propongo un examen de algunos de los obstáculos establecidos por las autoridades penitenciarias para llevar a cabo un proyecto etnográfico en una cárcel de mujeres de la Ciudad de México. Mi intención es plantear la importancia de formas de investigación-acción en contextos que, como el mexicano, se ven afectados por una profunda crisis de los aparatos del Estado –en particular presto atención a los sistemas educativo, penal y de justicia- que impacta con mayor severidad a grupos vulnerables como es el caso de las mujeres en reclusión que están en el centro de este estudio de caso.     

Teoría del campo literario y subalternidad. Perspectivas metodológicas para el estudio de la poesía en el espacio literario ibérico

Abstract

La teoría del campo literario ha constituido una referencia importante para el estudio de literaturas definidas por su carácter subalterno o dependiente, y ha conocido interesantes desarrollos teóricos y aplicados en campos académicos como el gallego, el belga o el quebequés. Los modelos resultantes tienen varios elementos comunes, resultado de la crítica y de los ajustes metodológicos realizados sobre el marco teórico de partida. Entre estos últimos, destacan la consideración de una lógica nacionalista; la expansión de la idea de autonomía, entendida ahora en los sentidos estético, discursivo, e histórico-nacional; la identificación de especificidades en la estructura y el funcionamiento de este tipo de campos, así como la complementariedad con otras teorías del entorno empírico-sistémico. Los objetivos del artículo son el repaso de estos modelos y de las aplicaciones correlativas, la proyección de su rentabilidad en el espacio literario ibérico y, especialmente, el avance de pautas metodológicas para el estudio de la poesía. En relación con este último aspecto son estudiados determinados asuntos vertebrales: la identificación de habitus y principios de distinción; la inestabilidad de las relaciones entre canonización, subcampo de producción restringida, consagración, y vanguardia; o el papel asumido por la poesía en el reparto de funciones y capitales.     

印度尼西亚新任武装部队司令L.B.穆尔达尼

莱奥纳尔杜斯·本尼亚明·穆尔达尼(Leonardus Benyamin Moerdani)一九三二年十月二日生于中爪哇省的炽布,但长在梭罗市。人们一般都叫他本尼·穆尔达尼(Benny Moerdani)。他的父亲R·G·穆尔达尼·索斯罗迪尔佐是铁路局的职员,母亲罗克玛丽娅·杰阿娜是个荷印混血儿,妻子名叫T·哈尔蒂妮,独女丽娅是高中二年级     

Preis der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung für sozialwissenschaftliche Aufsätze (Begründet durch Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Erwin K. Scheuch) Zeitschriftenjahrgang 2002

Mitteilungen und Berichte

Preis der Fritz Thyssen Stiftung für sozialwissenschaftliche Aufs?tze (Begründet durch Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Erwin K. Scheuch) Zeitschriftenjahrgang 2002     

‘Condemned forever to becoming and never to being’? The Weise Commission and German Military Isomorphism

Despite several post-Cold War reforms which have promised far-reaching change, the Bundeswehr faces a set of deficits in force structures, capabilities, doctrines and military adaptation, which leave it in danger of slipping permanently behind its European partners. The study examines the extent to which reforms proposed by the Commission on Structural Reform of the Bundeswehr will remedy these deficiencies. It finds that the proposals of the Commission include several important measures which will accelerate German convergence with the reforms of its European partners. However, the Commission fails to address several fundamental problems which impair the Bundeswehr's capacity to adapt to ongoing operations. The article critically engages with the existing theoretical literature on German defence policy and highlights the utility of neoclassical realism in explaining the process and outcome of German defence reform. The study also points to the urgent requirement for further comparative scholarship on post-Cold War European military adaptation and civil–military relations in defence planning.     

Linguistic Diversity and Ideologies among the Catholic Minority in Mandate Palestine. Fear of Confusion or a Powerful Tool?

Abstract

Palestinian Catholics have always played a major role in the Palestinian political, cultural and educational systems, with an influence disproportionate to their numbers. Instrumentalized by France during and even after her Protectorate of the Christians (1924), more visible for the Europeans during the growth of European institutions in the Holy Land and the beginning of an international Christian network, Catholic Palestinians (mainly Latin and Melkite) favoured multilingualism, but at the same time felt trapped between different trends that influenced linguistic ideologies and practices. They faced the centralizing Catholic interests of Rome (who first favoured French and Italian, but soon after the Mandate mostly Arabic); the national interests of Catholic European powers present in the Holy Land favouring their own languages (French, German through the German Catholics and the Austrians, and English through the British Catholics); and the Arabization promoted by the Melkite community.

The present article aims to analyse the linguistic choices of the Catholic community, via its educational system, by observing the process through which a complex local reality has been simplified by colonial powers, to tackle identity and conflict through language.     

‘The Importance of being Civil Society’: Student Politics and the Reformist Movement in Khatami's Iran

Through a non-conventional understanding of civil society activism, the article provides an explanation of the relationship between the student movement and Khatami's governments in Iran. This study approaches ‘civil society’ as a space where we may observe the dynamics and exercise of power. The case study of the interactions between the Daftar-e Tahkim-e Vahdat and Khatami's governments illustrates how civil society is not a fixed concept, but a contested one. By analysing the conflicts and interactions between these two actors, the article examines the continuous negotiations that reinvent the meaning of civil society and produce political inclusion or exclusion.