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.     

Paramilitary motivation in Ukraine: beyond integration and abolition

Abstract

A common theme in historical and contemporary warfare is the role of militias. Militias, both pro-government and rebel, act beyond their sponsors or else they would be understood as part of the armies that go to war. We think of militias as paramilitaries, approximate but not collocated with the military. Paramilitaries are ordinarily recruited and resourced differently. They are also ordinarily tactically different, playing a role in front line warfare where the intensity may be high, but where the position is fast changing or distributed in local areas. As the conflict literature will show, militias, or paramilitaries, are a common feature of any conflict and thus it is no surprise that we see their use in Ukraine. For the conflict in Ukraine, we use the term paramilitaries to indicate those forces that are fighting at the front line for both the Kyiv government and rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk, with these being considered ‘pro-Russian’ and even include Russian citizens. Relying on the pro-government militias literature, we show how militias on both sides play an important role in the conflict but also pose the biggest threat to a sustainable peace.     

The Trouble with Newcomers: Women,Localism and the Politics of Surfing

ABSTRACT

In Australian surfing, localism is a practice through which surfers claim authority to protect their surf breaks and access to waves from newcomers and outsiders. While localism has been shown to be a central component of the cultural identities of men who surf, the relationships to and experiences of localism of women who surf have rarely been the subject of critical analysis. In this discussion, I build on Krista Comer’s use of “girl localism” to understand how effects of globalisation are experienced as place-specific by surfers. In this case, thinking about localism helps shift an analysis of how women surf from a sole focus on sex and gender, and away from cisgendered white women, to adopt a more intersectional approach that considers multiple aspects of women’s surfing subjectivities, and the ways these impact their surfing lives. Examining the politicised nature of localism in surfing reveals how women are affected by and complicit in surfing hierarchies, highlights how surfing is enmeshed in the settler politics of place in Australia and, suggests means by which surfers might make more ethical approaches to entering surfing places as newcomers.     

Representatives and Represented in England, 1660–89

SUMMARY

This article considers the tensions and ambiguities in the attitudes of members of the English House of Commons towards those they represented. Constitutionally, the Commons assented to laws and taxes in the name of, and on behalf of, the people and presented the nation's grievances to the king. They were thus conscious to some extent of the need to defend the people's interests and to justify their conduct to the electorate and to their neighbours. However, memories of the civil wars made them nervous of popular involvement in politics and strongly resistant to any suggestion that ‘the people’ in whose name they spoke had any right to be consulted on ‘public’ issues, still less to tell them how to act. The latter part of the article explores one aspect of this attitude, the concern to maintain the confidentiality of proceedings in Parliament and to restrict the dissemination of parliamentary news, which meant that only in 1680–81 did the Commons agree to the printing of their ‘votes’.     

Professor John Roskell,FBA: The re-birth of the British Sub-Committee of the Commission and the History of Parliament, 1948–1960

SUMMARY

In this article J. Agirreazkuenaga examines the events in the Basque provinces of Spain during the attempted Carlist coup d'état of 1833. Essentially the coup was a failure, although its partial early success did give the Carlists a territorial basis substantial enough to sustain six years of civil war. The result of the coup was not the intended instant displacement of the legitimate, constitutional authorities throughout the region. The Carlists had made their preparations in advance, in anticipation of the death of the absolutist Ferdinand VII, and the threat of the introduction of a liberal constitutionalist regime under his daughter. They had recruited a local militia, the ‘Armed Countrymen’ which carried out the actual coup. But although these units were mainly volunteers, and paid for their service, they proved unreliable in action, being unwilling to engage in serious combat. In consequence during the first 100 days of the uprising, the early successes, based on the absence of serious resistance from the constitutional authorities, were reversed when they were confronted by troops loyal to the government. The article presents some conclusions about the state of development of traditional Basque society which were revealed by the failure of the original coup and the beginning of civil war.     

Land Acquisition,Investment, and Development in the Lao Coffee Sector: Successes and Failures

ABSTRACT

Despite the increasing acknowledgment of scholars and practitioners that many large-scale agricultural land acquisitions in developing countries fail or never materialize, empirical evidence about how and why they fail to date is still scarce. Too often, land deals are portrayed as straightforward investments and their success is taken for granted. Looking at the coffee sector in Laos, the authors of this article explore dimensions of the land grab debate that have not yet been sufficiently examined. Coffee concessionaires in southern Laos often fail to use all of the land granted them and fail to produce high yields on the land they do use. Thus, the authors challenge the often-assumed superiority and effectiveness of large-scale versus small-scale production, specifically the argument that they modernize agricultural production and optimize land use. They argue that examining failed investments is as important as studying successful ones for understanding the implications of the land grabbing phenomenon for social, economic, and environmental outcomes. Knowledge about the scale of “failed land deals” provides important motivation for national governments to close the gap between intentions and actual outcomes. This article engages with the current debate on quality of investment and challenges the approach of employing land concessions as a vehicle for economic development in the Lao coffee sector and in other sectors and countries.     

The Future Use of Technology in Education and Learning in the Commonwealth

ABSTRACT

Modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have increasingly been used in education systems and for learning across the world over the last quarter of a century, and are frequently seen as being an important means of delivering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG4. However, rhetoric about their potential benefits has often led to uncritical adoption of inappropriate and costly technologies, that have not benefited the poorest and most marginalised. This contribution explores likely uses of such technologies in Commonwealth education systems in the future, and what needs to be done so that these do indeed benefit everyone, rather than just the privileged with access to the latest technologies. It begins with an overview of existing Commonwealth initiatives, and then explores how ICT use for learning throughout the life-cycle is likely to change over the next decade. The next section suggests how Commonwealth organisations can best support governments and citizens in ensuring equitable distribution of relevant learning opportunities and mitigating the negative aspects of technology use. In conclusion, it advocates for the need to focus especially on the poorest and most marginalised, and it highlights the challenges of a future in which machines and humans are ever more intertwined.     

Understanding the Political Preferences of Seniors’ Organizations. The Swiss Case.

Abstract: According to numerous politicians, reforming the welfare state in aging societies has become increasingly necessary in spite of the growing influence of advocacy groups that have made reforms more difficult to realize. Studying the preferences of seniors’ organizations is therefore crucial to comprehending future welfare state policies. In this paper, I will examine recurrent variables that researchers working on seniors’ organizations study in order to explain the type of framing or political discourse that these organizations use. Using FARES/VASOS, the largest seniors’ organization in Switzerland, as a case study, I will show how common explanations (especially the ones that refer to the importance of the context or of the political opportunities structure), if they work, can also be seen as too incomplete or limited. We will see that focusing on how leaders are selected, their activism, and their reasons for involvement provides interesting data to help us understand the goals and political battles of this organization.     

A Triptych in honour of the cultural revolution

Abstract

Here are three valuable books which sincerely try to understand the Cultural Revolution and make it understandable to Westerners. They avoid theoretical juggling as well as picturesqueness for its own sake. None of these books takes for granted what a certain rhetorical type of Chinese propaganda states with overflowing phraseology, nor do they indulge in the kind of trifling questions characteristic of many Western commentators, such as: Is Chou En-lai losing ground? Is there a rift between the Secretariat and the Politburo? A rebirth of regionalism? and so on. The authors' most obvious concession to Western “bourgeois-educated” readers is that they try to avoid jargonistic Marxism, and to explain even the doctrinal grounds of the Cultural Revolution with plain words; but maybe it could be argued. that they only apply Chairman Mao's teachings in opposition to the “eight-legged essay style.” As for the “socialist-educated” reader, I should add that the authors also escape flatulent psychoanalysis and sociology.     

Le Parlement et le pouvoir religieux dans le Portugal du Moyen Âge

SUMMARY

The medieval Portuguese clergy and nobility, particularly those of higher status, were the political and ideological support of the sovereign. As vassals of the king they had been members of the curia regia from its beginnings. They naturally became part of the parliament when it was created in the thirteenth century. In these early assemblies the monarch consulted them about political issues of general interest, but the clergy and nobility were free to bring forward their own concerns. Maria Helena da Cruz Coelho examines how the clergy complained to the kings D. Afonso IV (1325–57), D. Pedro (1357–67) and D. Fernando (1367–83). They insisted on defending their privileges, ecclesiastical rights and temporal power, presenting long lists of accusations mostly against the nobles and royal officials. But to give a wider perspective the author also studies the dissatisfaction that the people expressed in these assemblies about the clergy, charging them with oppression while both collecting taxes and rents and applying justice. The parliamentary discussions demonstrated clearly the social tensions of the times and allowed the king to judge and to rule in a more balanced way between the estates in order to exert his sovereign power in a pacified kingdom.     

Individuals,Parties and the Parliamentary Record in the 1690s

SUMMARY

In this article Colin Brooks reviews the historical writing of the last thirty years on British history between 1688 and 1714. This has offered a variety of interpretations which give priority to a number of different factors. The problem now facing historians is how to synthesize these interpretations into a coherent account. The article suggests that while it is possible to reconstruct from the surviving source materials what happened in the House of Commons, the incompleteness and the ambiguities of the evidence make it much more difficult to determine why it happened, or what were the motives of the individuals taking part. The nature of the source materials requires that they be interpreted with more caution than they have often received: they have as much to tell about individual perceptions as about what actually happened.     

The origins of the Vietnamese revolution: Taking the long view

Abstract

Americans knew little about Vietnam when they assumed command of the Indochina War in 1954. There were no American scholars who devoted their careers to its study, and, with the exception of Virginia Thompson's French Indochina and a few other works, there was no American body of work on the subject. And so, to better understand the political and social forces confronting them, Americans took possession of the entire French work on Vietnam as part of their legacy of war. Thus, as the first American scholars began to study the Vietnamese revolution, they built on the foundation laid by decades of French scholarly effort.     

Portuguese Democratisation 40 Years on: Its Meaning and Enduring Legacies

Abstract

On the fortieth anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, it is pertinent to ask how Portuguese citizens understand their transition to democracy. In this article, some of the main findings concerning the meanings and legacies of 25 April 1974 are presented, drawing on the findings of two surveys focusing on Portuguese attitudes towards 25 April and fielded in 2004 and 2014, respectively, to a representative sample of the Portuguese population. Here we focus on the degree to which the transition is viewed positively and its social and economic legacies. In the final sections, the main findings of the articles in this special issue are discussed through a presentation of the main questions they answer and the new ones they raise.     

Parliaments and the future

SUMMARY

In this article, Izmail Sharifzhanov examines a short period of Tatar parliamentary history—its last fifteen years (1990–2005). These years were crucial ones indeed: first, they coincided with tremendous events in Russian history on the threshold of the twenty-first century and, second, they had decisive consequences for Tatar history itself. They aroused great enthusiasm among the Tatar people: for the first time in its tsarist and Soviet history it could hope to achieve real national sovereignty, but it proved, as usual, that these expectations were vain. Moscow and the local bureaucratic elite did their utmost to restrain a radical national movement and establish their power in the republic. The parliament again lost its initial rebellious spirit and political independence.     

‘They do not help,only demoralize’: peasant nachalniks and the last imperial Russian reform on the Kazakh Steppe, 1902–1917

ABSTRACT

This article studies an early-twentieth-century reform in local administration on the Kazakh Steppe. It was catalyzed by the massive in-migration of peasant settlers from European Russia, which required fundamentally new administrative forms and institutional decisions from the state. In 1902 the Russian Empire extended the Temporary Regulation on Peasant Nachalniks, which was previously law only in Siberia, to the steppe oblasts of Akmola, Turgai, Semipalatinsk and Uralsk. In examining discussions surrounding the implementation of the new law, this article uncovers the complexity and ambiguities of the decisions that were made, the problems the new law faced, and the wide array of participants in enacting it. The article also compiles a socio-cultural portrait of the peasant nachalniks and the activities they undertook. Finally, it addresses how the Kazakh population perceived these new officials, and how they interacted with representatives of the Kazakh administration, which was crucial to their effectiveness.     

China's industrial revolution: Politics,planning and management, 1949 to the present,by Stephen Andors

Abstract

The study of Chinese industrial development has come a long way since the 1969 publication of Barry Richman's Industrial Society in Communist China (New York: Random House, 1969). Richman recognized that China had begun to “organize conscientiously and vigorously for industrial progress since the beginning of the 1950's.” Unlike some of his predecessors, he did not explain China's industrial growth in terms of mass coercion or swarms of “blue ants” instead, he warned the reader that “in order to understand more fully how Chinese management and Chinese organization function, it is essential to have an understanding of Chinese ideology.” His examples of the use of ideology-e.g., the study of Mao's On Contradiction to help resolve a problem of cost vs. quality in bicycle production-were refreshingly concrete and useful.     

Yarmouk minors: their situation and displacement… their agency through cultural forms,psychosocial activities and through daily life actions

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on exiled minors from Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp. It elucidates how the trauma of Yarmouk, resulting from the Syrian con?ict, evokes the Nakba of 1948 and the loss of Palestine. It explains generally how this trauma has a?ected minors of Yarmouk, but on the other hand how they are able to engage positively in such situations. Therefore, it focuses on the agency of Yarmouk minors, and explores it through investigating their cultural forms such as poem reciting and singing, as well as through focusing on their engagement both in psychosocial activities and daily life actions. Poems that emphasize the displacement from Palestine and Yarmouk as well as illustrate the imagination of the lost land. Daily activities and psychosocial that stress the pursuit for a normal life. Theoretical concepts borrowed from Anderson, Chatterjee and Hage are employed in order to enable us understand in which ways minors demonstrate their agency in order to maintain the daily survival. The data analysed in this paper stems from interviews with Yarmouk residents, both adults and minors, along with visual materials such as videos and photos provided by relief workers and activists.     

‘The devil or the Dutch’: Holland's impact on the financial revolution in England, 1643–1694

SUMMARY

In this article Beat Kümin and Andreas Würgler make a comparative study of how the peoples in early modern England and Hesse used their acknowledged rights to present petitions and grievances to exercise a real influence on the process of legislation, and even over administration in general. They could on occasion, virtually initiate legislation from below. The article illustrates the unusually wide scope and usage of the petition in England, helped by the early recognition of the subjects' right to petition both houses of Parliament as well as the monarch. It is suggested that this could result in a broad popular participation in the work of government. But even in Hesse, where the rulers asserted their sovereign rights as sole legislators and where, from the seventeenth century, they were attempting to develop an effective bureaucratic administration to sustain their aspirations, the method of petitioning the ruler, either through the Estates, Gravamina or directly, enabled ordinary people to have a part in promoting legislation and to participate in, and even effectively restrain, the princely administration.     

Women of protest,men of applause: political activism,gender and tradition in Kyrgyzstan

ABSTRACT

Tradition has come to play an important role throughout Central Asia in a number of new ways since independence, but has been predominantly investigated regarding nation building. In this article, we show how tradition is being used operationally in the context of activism and political conflict. We expose the various motivations and tactics pursued by aksakals (lit., whitebeards) and by a movement of mature women called OBON (lit., Women Units for Special Purposes) as they participate in politics, and the role tradition plays in these activities. We argue that aksakals actively draw on tradition even in the political realm to avoid being derogatorily labelled ‘elders on duty’, whereas OBON women position themselves as economic and political actors but are subjected to discourses and practices of tradition by others. While both aksakals and OBON women have been central to political action in Kyrgyzstan in the last two decades, this article is the first to compare and contrast these two categories of unusual activists. The comparison reveals a perpetuation of culturally recognized gender roles even when these actors go beyond their ‘traditional’ realms of competence.     

The Baltic states,Finland, and British economic expectations in the early 1920s

Abstract

After the First World War, the Baltic states — not Finland — attracted the British as a bridge to Russian markets. The article deals with the rank of these states in British economic expectations. It is shown that whereas the Baltic states were highly prioritized, in 1920, by 1926 the British preferred Finland as a more trusworthy trading partner than Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The article thus shows how the rank of the Baltic states and Finland changed in British expectations when all of these states were seen as markets in and of themselves.