Enduring Class Struggle in Tunisia: The Fight for Identity beyond Political Islam

This article examines the emergence of Salafism and the post-Ben Ali process of institution-building through the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion that have their origin in the Bourguibian period. While Al-Nahda compromised with opposition secular parties accomplishing the integration of a moderate Islamist middle-class excluded from power since independence, continuous political mobilisation and urban revolt in parallel with the liberalisation of the public space gave birth to a new radical Islamic subject, Ansar al-Sharia, which represents disenfranchised lower classes that remain excluded from enjoying the benefits of the revolution. The article highlights how this exclusion is in continuity with Tunisia's modern history, where the threat of radical Islamism has often been deployed to mystify social class exclusion.     

The power of everyday subordination: exploring the silencing and disempowerment of Chinese migrant domestic workers

This paper examines how Chinese female migrant domestic workers are influenced by different forms of subordination; how norms, practices, and power relations enable and legitimize their subordination; and the ways in which subordination elicits compliance while silencing and disempowering the workers. I advance a new perspective on subordination, linking forms of subordination with forms of consciousness. Consciousness of one’s treatment and how one is changed by it informs the decision of whether to remain silent. Compliance, silencing, and disempowerment are facilitated by recognizable and subtle forms of subordination that can directly control individuals’ actions, shift their perspectives, and cause them to act against their own interests. When workers are not conscious of the insidious impact of subtle subordination upon their attitudes, perspectives, and behavior, they are far less likely to resist.     

Bringing the Revolution to the Countryside: Rural Health Programmes as State‐Building in Post‐1952 Bolivia

Bolivia's Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Revolutionary Nationalist Movement, MNR) took power in April 1952 via a popular social revolution. After 1952, the party implemented state‐sponsored modernisation projects, including extending rural public health programmes. The MNR used health programmes to change rural practices, cultivate political loyalty, and expand the state's political power. Yet rural indigenous communities were hardly passive recipients of these programmes. These communities often requested government services, and they borrowed the MNR's own political rhetoric to position themselves as worthy of state attention. Public health programmes increased access to rural health care, but they also allowed state officials and rural communities to negotiate the MNR's authority.     

The emergence of prophetic ministries in Botswana: self-positioning and appropriation of new media

ABSTRACT

In the past two decades or so, Botswana has witnessed a spectacular growth of prophetic Christianity and experienced a media revolution through the emerging use of new media. While studies have generally focused on either the growth of Pentecostal Charismatic Christianity or the new media revolution, little attention has been paid to the characteristics of emerging prophetic ministries, entailing the appropriation of new media and how this has accelerated the development of religious practices in Botswana. In light of positioning and mediatisation theories, this paper examines the ways in which prophetic ministries position themselves and shape the religious landscape of Botswana and how prophetic ministries have adopted and appropriated the use of new media technologies. It argues that the synergy between prophetic ministries and technological developments of new media opens a new space for cultural production of religious practices and experiences as well as religious imagination, experience and identity.     

Women employment in colonial Hong Kong

Women's participation in the labour market is on the rise, and employment opportunities available to working women have increased greatly. However, working women in Hong Kong are still disproportionately underrepresented in higher status occupations. Despite general improvement in their educational attainment, women are still unequally paid. Their role in the workplace is still very much constrained and impeded by their familial role. Hong Kong women's continuing subordination in the workplace lies in the domination of the Chinese patriarchal family in industrial Hong Kong. Women experience institutional discrimination insofar as other institutions and the public at large also subscribe to culturally entrenched prejudices and discriminatory practices against women. It appears that women's subordinate status will not change in the foreseeable future.     

Fault,Gender Politics and Family Law Reform

Recent public debates about family law reform have revealed both support for and criticism of legislative policies that seek to shape social norms. Amidst this debate was a suggestion from some quarters that the Whitlam Government's removal of fault‐based divorce is responsible for the gendered tensions that characterise modern reform debates. This article draws on archival records and interviews conducted with family law professionals who worked in the system in the 1970s and experienced the transition to the no‐fault system, to explore the principles underlying the introduction of the Family Law Act of 1975 and to identify the sources of continuing dissension about its impact.     

Ferrets in the Caribbean: Britain,Grenada and the Curious Case of the Armoured Cars

Abstract

When the Marxist-Leninist New Jewel Movement seized power in Grenada in March 1979 they set about securing and defending their ‘revolution’ against the threat of a countercoup organised by the deposed Prime Minister Eric Gairy. Military aid was quick to arrive from expected allies, namely Cuba and Guyana. Grenadian Prime Minister Maurice Bishop also requested arms from Britain and the United States. The People’s Revolutionary Government’s (PRG’s) ties to Cuba and evasiveness over election plans ruled out the US providing any support. Britain remained more open-minded about the PRG’s intentions. Using recently declassified British government documents, this article will examine London’s deliberations over supplying armoured cars to Grenada. It argues that Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials focused on the bigger picture of steering the PRG away from Cuba at the cost of considering how the sale of the armoured cars to the PRG would appear to a wider audience and that the PRG’s increasingly authoritarian behaviour ultimately vetoed the sale.     

Colonial Existence,Home and Nationalism in the Narratives of British Cameroons’ Exiles in the United States

This article explores the personal meanings and public expressions of colonial existence, home and nationalism among exiles of British Cameroons from the standpoints of 11 biographies of British Southern Cameroons’ first-generation exiles living in the United States. Examining their narratives reveals why the exiles actively resist a public categorisation as being Cameroonians. This article provides a new type of research regarding British Cameroons’ exiles and their vision of the restoration of the statehood of British Cameroons, a former United Nations trust territory deserving its separate sovereignty and independence in accordance with the UN Trusteeship Agreement (1946) and UN Resolution 1514 of 1960 on the independence of colonial people. Significant about this study of the narratives of British Cameroons’ exiles is its focus on biography for portraying particular facets of nationalist resistance, including questions relating to the processes that surround the right to define the community one calls home.     

La procédure des Gravamina lors des sessions de la Diète hongroise

Summary

In 1791 there were published eight weeklies and one fortnightly in the British North American colonies which, in 1867 and the following years, united to form the Canadian confederation. The British newspapers served them all as principal sources of information about the events in Europe. The positive and sympathetic press reports in Great Britain relating to the momentous changes in Poland, which were introduced with the adoption of the 3 May 1791 Constitution by the Diet, were thus also ‘echoed’ in Canada. These ‘echoes’ notwithstanding, judging by the scope of press coverage, which started on 4 July 1791, as well as by some editorial comment, it can be concluded that there also existed a genuine interest in Canada about the progress of the peaceful Polish ‘revolution,’ which contrasted so sharply with the bloody strife in America and France.     

History,Memory and Commemoration: The Iraqi Revolution of 1920 and the Process of Nation Building in Iraq

The Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920 was actually a series of local, mostly Shi‘ite, uprisings against the British forces which had occupied Iraq during the First World War. Even though it was squashed by the British, it has been established since then in the Iraqi collective memory as a war of independence and a formative event of Iraqi nationalism, symbolizing the unity of the Iraqi people, their solidarity and patriotic spirit. This article tries to show how the Great Iraqi Revolution was commemorated and remembered through time in order to provide better understanding about how Iraqis see themselves and their past.     

Alpine Masculinity: A Gendered Figuration of Capital in the Patagonian Andes

This article investigates the Patagonian ecotourism industry and the spatial production of gender privilege. The analysis attends to how the spatial practices of park rangers, tourism guides and climbers create a gendered space of capital accumulation that devalues and marginalises othered subjects – such as women and non-alpine men – within specific domains of nature. Developing the concept of a figuration of capital, this article argues that the ecotourism industry has facilitated the rise of an alpine masculine subject based upon key bodily values: robust physicality, a conservationist ethic and heroic narration about engaging wilderness.     

Obstructive or promoting? British views on German unification 1989/90

Six years after unification German public opinion still regards Britain as the ‘No‐saying’ nation which not only holds up further European integration but also never really wanted German unity to happen. This article argues that British attitudes to the process of German unification in 1989/90 were more diverse and generally more positive than an undue concentration on the views of Margaret Thatcher and her advisers may suggest. An analysis of Foreign Office policies and an examination of public and published opinion as well as of the debates in both Houses of Parliament reveal a constructive British stance on German unity and a substantial and real contribution of British diplomats to the Two‐plus‐Four process. Whereas the Foreign Office and Downing Street agreed on the major effects German unity would have on Britain's international standing, they differed about the way Britain should respond to the new challenges.     

European Integration and the End of an Imperial Consciousness in Britain

This article examines the impact of European integration between 1961 and 1975 on national and imperial consciousness in Britain. It suggests that the end of imperial sentiment that was brought about by greater involvement in Europe did not produce a strong or deep attachment to the idea of European integration. Arguments about the need for European integration to transcend war in Europe tended to reinforce a sense of Commonwealth commonality for the British rather than a sense of European commonality. Although the Empire and Commonwealth had become a mere source of nostalgia in British consciousness by 1975, the weak support for European integration continues to condition British attitudes to European integration to this day. Indeed, in the current Eurosceptic climate, the Dominions are making a return to British political consciousness.     

A Failed Manipulation: The British,the Oudh Bequest and the Sh i Ulama of Najaf and Karbala

Between 1850 and 1903, the Oudh Bequest channelled over six million rupees from India, through British mediation, to the Shi i shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala in Iraq. It has intrigued historians the way that this sophisticated British tool has exercised influence and control over the Shi i Ulama in Iran and Iraq. However, the British became directly involved in the distribution of the Bequest in 1903, on the eve of the Constitutional Revolution. In view of the ulama's growing involvement in Iranian politics, and gross corruption among the distributors, the British saw the Bequest as a means to enhance their influence over the ulama in Iran. The political usage of the Bequest was a subject of a prolonged debate within Bequest bureaucracy. Disagreements often stemmed from different priorities, determined by local considerations, of British authorities in Iraq, Iran and India. In 1912 the British took over the direct distribution of the Bequest, abandoning their expectations to use the Bequest as a ‘powerful lever’ in Iran, and shifting their focus to enhancing their prestige in Iraq itself and acquiring the goodwill of Shi is in India. These policies were renewed with greater vigour after the British occupation of Najaf and Karbala in 1917. Overall, these British attempts ended in dismal failure, showing that charity, however generous, cannot compensate for the need of religious leaders to maintain popular support by distancing themselves from foreign patronage and tutelage. Moreover, manipulation proved less powerful than broader historical processes such as the rising national and religious awakening against foreign powers.     

CHANGE AND DISCONTINUITY: WAR AND AFGHANISTAN, 1904–1924

In the imaginations of many, war in British India had its focus on the North-West Frontier and was fought against the tribes of that region. However, British thinking about Indian defence involving Afghanistan underwent tremendous change over the period under consideration. British plans to meet a Russian invasion on the Kabul-Kandahar Line in 1904 resembled those of any other Nineteenth Century Imperial campaign, with numbers of infantry and cavalry still being thought of and referred to as bayonets and sabres. Twenty years later, heavily influenced by the experiences of the Great War in the region and the Third Afghan War and associated operations, the calculus was different with logistics changed by motor vehicles and the introduction of what today are referred to as force multipliers, such as aeroplanes and machine guns. It was over this period that warfare as fought and conceptualised by men like Napoleon gave way to modern practices familiar to us today.     

‘There Can Be No Revolution without Culture’: Reading and Writing in the Bolivarian Revolution

Under Hugo Chávez's ‘Bolivarian Revolution’, the government made itself present in all stages of literary production, applying the official idea of reading and writing as ‘socialist practices’. The Bolivarian government envisaged a popular counter‐hegemony, courting popular support while delegitimising cultural elites and reinforcing class tensions. Bolivarian cultural policy is anachronistic in an age of global literary markets, while the emphasis on a national collective of writers over internationally promoted representative writers of the revolution is particularly radical.     

Taking the bait: Maoists and the democratic lure in Nepal

After leading a tumultuous revolutionary people's war for a decade, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has slithered into a peace process and is being egged on to put the revolution to the vote. Maoists themselves are sending mixed signals about whether or not they are going to take the democratic bait to save the “beautiful” democratic, peace process from the “beastly” people's war, urban insurrection and revolution. My contention is that unless the lie of the liberal political process is identified in its most democratic, free and fair forms and not just in its secret, conspiratorial underside, the Maoists might be lured into an unbalanced democratic game. The article argues that the Maoists were not just pushed into this political process by force of circumstance, as the best possible option, “given the international and national situation,” but it seems to follow from their flawed understanding that the present political process constitutes a progressive phase in the path to a New Democratic society. The Maoists are, of course, not abandoning the revolution as such but they are possibly metamorphosing from revolution-embodied to speaking in the name of the revolution – perhaps with the added risk of transforming the revolution itself to just a name.     

Health Risks for Poultry Workers in Brazil in the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article discusses labour relations in the poultry industry in Brazil in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the meat production and processing industries there have been many complaints about abusive practices that put workers' health at risk. In several small cities across the country, slaughterhouses already act as pandemic contagion risk hotspots. We present an overview of the demeaning treatment of workers and the risks to public health associated with Brazil's poultry industry.     

Sultanism and Civil War in Libya

The 2011 Libyan uprising transformed into a civil war in a matter of days—and it has lasted more than a decade. What made this uprising different from others? This article argues that the type of system determined the outcome of the revolt. It posits a relationship between Muammar Qadhafi's sultanistic regime and the fragile political institutions that have allowed the chaos and rivalry to persist without resolution. To demonstrate this, Libyan citizens were surveyed about their perceptions of how Qadhafi shaped the political order responsible for today's institutional vacuum. While the revolution revealed the Qadhafi regime's lack of popular and foreign support, as well as the inadequacies of state institutions, it could not use institutional channels to mobilize the public and organize authority, as in Tunisia and Egypt. The civil war, coupled with the interventions of regional and international powers in support of local actors and militias, has made the Libyan case different. The article also explains how the passive stances of the League of Arab States and the United Nations paved the way for external rivalries.