Religion,demography, and politics in Lebanon

A devastating earthquake hit Istanbul and its environs shortly after noon on 10 July 1894. Although seismic disturbances were quite frequent in the long history of the Ottoman capital, the imperial city had not witnessed such violent tremors in more than a century. Hundreds of people died and thousands more were injured as a result of the complete or partial collapse of private dwellings, mosques, churches, synagogues and other public buildings. The earthquake of July 1894 hit the seat of the Ottoman government during a period of rapid socio-cultural change and shortly before the empire faced one of its worst crises in the late nineteenth century. As may be expected, many people in the Ottoman lands sought an explanation to the calamity that befell the inhabitants of the capital and neighbouring regions. Some could draw on long-standing interpretive traditions that were primarily either theological in nature or based on classical naturalist theories. However, the Ottoman intelligentsia rejected such explanations out of hand. The Ottoman response to the earthquake mirrored the similar embrace of science's authority and adoption of scientific methods and tools in many other contemporary societies. The process of the expansion and globalization of scientific knowledge expanded beyond the boundaries of Europe and its colonies. Science and technology were widely perceived to be the measure of civilization and modernity. The Ottoman intelligentsia and political elite were therefore invested in helping the Ottoman Empire meet standards that were set in Europe and North America but also achieved quite successfully in Japan. They seized upon the earthquake of 1894 to disseminate knowledge of modern earth sciences and implement new methods of scientific study of seismic events in the Ottoman lands.     

Imagining modernity: the language and genealogy of modernity in nineteenth-century Arabic

This article employs the methodology of conceptual history to contest two of the most common theoretical approaches dominating our understanding of modernity in the field of Middle Eastern studies. The first approach relies on the assumption of incompatibility between modernity and Islam and captures Arab modernity using concepts such as ‘adoption’. The second understands Arab modernity through concepts such as ‘imitation’, contending that it is a legacy of Western imperialism. This article challenges both theories by examining the genealogy of tamaddun (civilization, being civilized), a pivotal concept used in nineteenth-century Arabic to imagine modernity. The genealogy of tamaddun elucidates that medieval paradigms derived from the concept of madina (polity) were rediscovered, reimagined, and reused in the context of the rise of the nation-state and the challenge of Western imperialism. The article suggests understanding Arab modernity and its critique from within, rather than outside of, the temporality of the historical condition.     

King Faisal ibn Abdul Aziz Al Saud in the arena of world politics: a glimpse from Washington, 1950 to 1971

This paper aims to draw a portrait of King Faisal, as it emerges from the records of the various presidential administrations of the USA. The records which were available to me usually originate from the encounters of the heads of state and their ministers on the occasion of official visits. Despite ceremonial protocol and diplomatic courteousness, the encounters always also had a personal touch of character and emotion. Therefore we do not simply look at the portrait through an American mirror. No doubt, the documents at hand do contain specific perceptions of King Faisal and of Saudi society by the various administrations in Washington. On the other hand, the mere fact of the King's physical presence and verbal performance in those encounters brings authenticity to the fore. Because of the fairly wide range of topics on the political agenda of such state visits, the portrait sheds light on King Faisal's personality, public appearance and sense of humour, on his statesmanship as well as on his diplomacy and commitments in the arena of Middle Eastern politics and of international relations at large. Since it seems to me that the year 1966 is of particular significance for an assessment of King Faisal's political legacy in the Middle Eastern arena, I have depicted his visit in Washington and meeting with President L.B. Johnson in June of that year for a more comprehensive treatment. In contrast, Faisal's personal encounters with Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and later on—twice—with Richard Nixon are dealt with more cursorily.1 The sources for this paper were not really collected in any systematic fashion. Rather, they came my way in the course of a research project with a different, although related topic (see Helmut Mejcher, Sinai, 5 giugno 1967. Il conflitto arabo‐israeliano (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, 2000). On the other hand, it is not a random collection either. As I said before, the documents focus on the diplomatic highlights of official visits of the King and Crown Prince in Washington. View all notes     

Islamist politics in migrant cities: local identity cleavages and intra-party politics in Turkey

This article explores how the local party organizations of the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party—AKP) interact with complex social structures in migrant-receiving cities in Turkey. Islamist movements are widely viewed as uniquely capable of appealing to working-class migrants. However, the support for Islamist parties varies across migrant-receiving cities. This article argues that local party organizations face two potential sources of discord that they have to resolve in order to build support in migrant neighbourhoods. They have to bridge the regional identity cleavages among different migrant communities while surmounting intra-party conflicts. In pursuing this argument, this article opens up the black box of local identity politics in the industrial heartland of Turkey and provides an ethnographic account of intra-party conflicts and political survival within the AKP.     

Bringing the British back in: Sephardim,Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox and the policy of Jewish unity

This article analyses the British role in establishing and maintaining a Jewish–Arab demarcation line by means of a policy of Jewish unity and by enabling Ashkenazi Zionist control of the Yishuv. In the first part, it analyses British policy towards the local Sephardi as well as the local Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox communities, both of which for different reasons did not neatly fit into the Jewish/Zionist–Arab binary. I argue that the British followed a policy of Jewish unity at the inception of the Mandate which they upheld repeatedly against Ashkenazi anti-Zionist Orthodox efforts and which by 1936 had created a truism enforcing a binary understanding of the conflict. In the second part, this article analyses the ways in which these communities presented themselves vis-à-vis the British. I argue that despite different strategies of maximizing their influence, both communities foundered on the existing power configurations.     

From Renascer to Velho Chico: negotiations between cordiality and modernity in the Brazilian telenovela

ABSTRACT

This article takes as its focus the main Brazilian cultural and media product, the telenovela or soap opera, to discuss the characteristic of the Brazilian personality referred to as the homem cordial (“cordial man”). The article analyses two telenovelas: Renascer (1993) and Velho Chico (2016), which, written by the same author, but in very different historical contexts, sought to recover the trait of cordiality in its essence. In its comparison of the two telenovelas, this study presents and discusses the changes, permanencies and negotiations of a cordial tradition in the face of a particular aspect of modernity represented by both the process of urbanisation and by television itself.     

Tradition and modernity: Alevis' ambiguous terms and Turkey's ambivalent subjects

Israel has very limited indigenous hydrocarbon resources and is located next to the energy-rich Persian Gulf region. This study is divided into two parts. The first part profiles Israel's energy outlook. Specifically, it examine the country's oil and natural gas exploration and potential. The second part discusses the seemingly successful negotiations to export natural gas from Egypt to Israel. This is followed by an analysis of the efforts to export Iraqi oil via Israel (the Mosul–Haifa pipeline) and the attempt to revive the scheme in the aftermath of the 2003 war in Iraq. Finally, the article examines the short-lived experience in exporting Iranian oil to Israel under the Shah and the current status of the Trans-Israel pipeline. The study suggests that regional energy cooperation would benefit all parties and international energy markets. However, such cooperation is unlikely in the near future.     

Contested modernity: divided rule and the birth of sectarianism,nationalism, and absolutism in Bahrain

This study argues that political mobilization based on ethnosectarian identities in Bahrain is a modernist product of the contestations that occurred in the period of increasing British colonial involvement in the early twentieth century. Two concepts are utilized. The first is the colonial ‘ethnosectarian gaze’, marked primarily by its underlying epistemology that saw ethnosectarian cleavages as the main analytic units for approaching local political power, practice, and discourse. The second is ‘contested and divided rule’. With the advent of Curzon’s ‘forward policy’ in the Gulf, Britain actively divided sovereignty between itself and the local ruler, with actors on the island faced with two conflicting sources of jurisdiction. The British viewed issues of jurisdiction primarily through an ethnosectarian lens, and increasingly so did other actors, creating an inter-feeding dynamic between ethnosectarianism, nationalism, and divided rule. Two emergent forms of political mobilization are emphasized. The first mobilized based on ethnosectarian identity-specific demands and grievances. The other took an overtly nationalist, trans-sectarian, anti-colonial tone, having its roots in the al-Nahda renaissance that swept the Arab world in the nineteenth century. Thus, colonialism, absolutism, ethnosectarianism, and nationalism went hand in hand, products of a similar period of divided rule, their lingering effects still felt today.     

Corporations,subjects, and citizens: the peculiar modernity of early Hispanic liberalism

Abstract

The varying degrees of political novelty and continuity brought about by the arrival of Hispanic constitutionalism are assessed in this article. It sheds light on the adaptations and the role played by pre-existing discourses and rituals in the articulation of the self-proclaimed “liberal” institutions, both in the Iberian Peninsula and in the new independent Latin American territories. The tensions between individualistic and collectivistic representations of political power are at the centre of the analysis. The text thus seeks to make an original contribution to current debates in historiography regarding the emergence of a liberal subjectivity in the early nineteenth century and its limits.     

Religious Politics in Mandate Palestine: The Christian Orthodox Community Controversy in the Thirties

The paper elaborates on the power struggle over the patriarchal election that took place in the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem in the 1930s and the key role of the Mandatory Authorities in its resolution. The lengthy electoral process reignited the old controversy between the Greek hierarchy and the Arab congregation over the institution’s alleged national character and centralized administrative structure. Consequently, the conflict became entangled in the Arab quest for emancipation from Greek ‘cultural imperialism’. The British position in the conflict evolved according to two stages: a) an early pro-Arab stance, determined by British colonial objectives in Palestine; and b) a late pro-Greek stance, as a result of the new British diplomatic priorities at the eve of the Second World War. The British government followed a ‘divide and rule’ policy: it abstained from resolving the conflict, while exploiting the existing inter-communal divisions to its own political ends.