Urban change in China. Politics and development in Tsinan,Shantung, 1890–1949

Abstract

Over the last decade, in response to the metropolitan, heavily political concerns of the “China's response to” school in Western research on modern Chinese history, there has been a move toward local (regional, provincial, county and urban) studies. A focus on localities has meant increased emphasis on social and economic change and their linkages with political events. A new sub-field has emerged—Chinese cities. David Buck's ambitiously titled Urban Change in China is the first monograph to appear from the urban history sub-field. Its publication should, therefore, be an occasion for assessment of the parameters it assumes for the sub-discipline.     

Development for all? State schemes,security, and marginalization in Kashgar,Xinjiang

ABSTRACT

The past decade of development schemes has been experienced very differently by various groups within the city of Kashgar in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. The recent exacerbation of social inequalities, stratification, and tensions in Kashgar is a structural consequence of two phases of government policies: an accelerated formalization of the economy and remodelling of the city-scape as part of modernistic development implemented before 2014, followed by a phase of strong securitization. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork between 2009 and 2017, this paper analyzes the situation, reactions, and strategies of different groups of Uyghur residents of Kashgar to cope with the changing socio-economic and political environment.     

Loyalty,disloyalty, and semi-loyalty in Pakistan’s hybrid regime

The 2013 election in Pakistan was a significant point in a presumed transition from autocracy towards democracy, since for the first time an elected government completed a full term and was replaced by another freely elected government. Pakistan’s hybrid regime, however, continues to be threatened by a significant ‘disloyal opposition’, in the form of secessionists in Balochistan and jihadi Islamists of the Tehrik-e-Taliban (the so-called Pakistan Taliban). Drawing on the literature on hybrid regimes, and using Juan Linz’s framework that focused on both ‘disloyal’ and ‘semi-loyal’ oppositions to democratic rule, this article examines the threat to a continuing movement towards democracy posed by secessionists, Islamists, and the military.     

Therapies of Resistance? Yuta,Help-seeking,and Identity in Okinawa

In contemporary Okinawa shamanism and psychiatry are both employed by Okinawans to bring relief from what are understood to be godly or psychiatric interventions in their lives. This paper examines some of the reasons that shamanism is still popular and well-patronized in a society that is part of one of the world's most developed nations. By situating the role of shamans within a historical context, it becomes clear that repression of these women has taken place at a number of junctures in Okinawan history, mainly because they were seen as “backward,” “primitive,” or “too” Okinawan. In other words, their primary identity as Okinawans led those in political power to attempt to remove them from being socially acceptable, forcing them underground as the state reinvented itself to suit broader political strategies. Notwithstanding almost four centuries of discrimination and attempted repression, shamans continue to prosper in contemporary society, using markers of Okinawan identity (in particular ancestor worship) to legitimate their roles as therapists and healers. Patients, too, hybridize both systems today in informed and idiosyncratic ways, moving comfortably between treatment regimes. Both shamans and psychiatrists are perceived as therapists in this article.     

Music education literature in German-language polyethnic schools in Estonia, 1860–1914

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on music education literature in German-language schools in Estonia from 1860 to 1914. Music education literature in Estonian schools with German as a language of instruction has been an unexplored field of research. As a result of this systematic research, a representative sample of music education literature was formed: 30 German-language editions and 2,330 songs. The songbooks and music textbooks were considered as signs of German culture being dominant. The profound social, economic, and political changes, characteristic for the nineteenth century, caused tensions, which were expressed in the content of music literature.     

Constructing reconstruction,territorializing risk: imposing “no-build zones” in post-disaster reconstruction in Tacloban City,Philippines

Analysis of post-disaster reconstruction of urban areas has largely been understood as a function of technocratic and institutionalist paradigms, while critical perspectives have been largely influenced by the analysis of “disaster capitalism.” Common to these paradigms is little analysis of state attempts to deploy power over a population through controlling space in urban areas. This paper examines the strategies of internal territorialization undertaken by the Philippines state in post-Haiyan reconstruction polices. Drawing on data from Tacloban City, I show how bourgeois environmentalist and urban ecological security approaches exclude the urban poor from undertaking reconstruction in coastal communities. Discourses of cleanliness and securing the population of the city have accompanied material practices that enforce state territorialization in the city. These processes of state territorialization exclude those residing in risk prone zones from various forms of aid and relief. This paper concludes by highlighting processes of territorialization that have generated conflict in the city, as poor residents engage in forms of counter-territorialization to assert their space in the city.     

Whores, men, and other misfits: undoing ‘feminization’ in the armed forces in the DRC

The global attention focused on sexual violence in the DRC has not only contributed to an image of the Congolese army as a vestige of pre-modern barbarism, populated by rapists, and bearing no resemblance to the world of modern armies; it has also shaped gender and defence reform initiatives. These initiatives have become synonymous with combating sexual violence, reflecting an assumption that the gendered dynamics of the army are already known. Crucial questions such as the ‘feminization’ of the armed forces are consequently neglected. Based on in-depth interviews with soldiers in the Congolese armed forces, this article analyses the discursive strategies male soldiers employ in relation to the feminization of the army. In the light of the need to reform the military and military masculinities, the article discusses how globalized discourses and practices render the Congolese military a highly globalized sphere. It also highlights the particular and local ways in which military identities are produced through gender, and concludes that a simple inclusion of women in the armed forces in order to render men less violent might not have the pacifying effect intended.     

Intentional disruptions and violence in Ukraine's Supreme Rada: political competition,order, and disorder in a post-Soviet chamber, 2006–2012

This paper focuses on diverse forms of parliamentary violence (blocking the orators' platform and the chairman's podium, destruction of equipment, and violent brawls) during 2006–2012 in the Ukrainian parliament, and analyzes them as a repertoire of habitual parliamentary actions. The paper attributes these violent incidents to two external factors. First, they must be understood in the context of the general de-pacification of relations among principal political actors in Ukraine as well as exacerbation of political and ideological tensions among those actors. Second, the emergence of more violent episodes in the Rada, breaking with a more routine modus operandi of disruptions, has its origin in the earlier, prepolitical careers of certain members of parliament and their propensity to bring into politics particular dispositions (i.e., propensity to use violence) acquired in those previous professional experiences.     

Camera,Colony, Künstlerroman: Photography in Three Australian Novels

This article traces the practices of photography that have been portrayed in three Australian artists’ novels: Patrick White’s The Vivisector, David Malouf’s Harland’s Half Acre, and Gail Jones’s Sixty Lights. Photography’s shifting status in relation to art, modes of knowledge, modes of production, and methods of relating to space suggest a growing discomfort in the nation’s literary imagination towards colonial art’s mobilisation of the imagination to authorise “sacred” settler belonging.     

Crown and Cortes in Castile, 1590–1665

Summary

Preparations for the Estates General of 1789 constituted one of the last acts of the anclen régime in France. The accompanying elections have received relatively little attention, yet they bequeathed much more to the electoral practices and political mentalités of the Revolution than most historians have realised. Though separate orders were preserved at the final meeting of the Estates General, with disastrous consequences for the monarchy, custom was breached by the uniform fashion and broad franchise with which deputies were elected. When the National Assembly was created the orders were dissolved, but much of this semi‐traditional electoral system survived. Assemblies of voters, an indirect, two‐tier process of election and exhaustive balloting were all retained from the past. A pronounced aversion to declared candidatures and electoral canvassing remained equally entrenched. Moreover, radicals drew upon the old‐régime heritage, rather than upon Rousseau, in their use of mandates, oral voting and the pursuit of unanimity at the polls. The revolutionary experiment with elections ultimately faltered in face of apathy and cynicism among voters. This article concludes by suggesting how the electoral legacy of the anden regime inhibited the emergence of a ‘modern political culture’, which is currently hailed as the major achievement of the French Revolution.     

Petitioning in early seventeenth-century Scotland, 1625–51

ABSTRACT

In contrast to recent work on England and other parts of Europe, research on petitioning in early modern Scotland is still in its early stages, notably in respect of its political significance in a comparative context. This article investigates supplicatory activity in Scotland during a crucial period in which the petition came under intense scrutiny. The 1630s saw a determined attempt by King Charles I’s Scottish government to clamp down on the use of supplications to express criticism of royal policy; assertive, but carefully controlled, petitioning was one part of a resistance strategy that resulted in the downfall of the king’s regime. When a new government came to power in 1638 headed by the Covenanters, petitioning activity came to be seen as a potential challenge to their authority. Petitioning does not appear to have invoked ‘opinion’ in 1640s Scotland as has been claimed for England; the printed petition remained a rarity in Scotland. Nevertheless constitutional reform, combined with the wartime conditions of the 1640s, generated more recourse to petitioning, and the government recognized opportunities to enhance its claims to legitimate rule. A preliminary investigation of everyday petitions to the government during the 1640s shows how the narratives constructed by supplicants often sought to endorse its values and ideals, but that this type of petitioning was also used by supplicants to critique the government’s policies and hold it to its own rhetoric.     

The feminist movement in Taiwan, 1972–87

Abstract

The definition of the women's movement has caused a certain degree of confusion in the women's studies community in Taiwan. Before 1986 it was debated whether there was or had ever been a women's movement at all on the island, for gender equality had been guaranteed by the 1947 Constitution, and hence some people questioned the desirability and potential impact of such a movement. Afterwards, as social movements collected momentum and popular support, the tendency has been to define the women's movement broadly to include all types of women's group activities.     

From salary to resistance: mobility,employment, and violence in Dibra, 1792–1826

ABSTRACT

This article traces the military employment patterns of the highlanders of Dibra in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It addresses how the Albanian highlanders found different opportunities for military employment in a period largely associated with political instability. The Albanians as ‘mountain bandits’ have been regarded as the primary culprit of the violence that ravaged the Balkans. The same bandits, this article shows, constituted at the same time the irregular forces the Ottoman army came to rely on in the late eighteenth century. By demonstrating different prospects of employment with which the Albanian irregulars were preoccupied, it provides a broader perspective to observe the turmoil the Balkans underwent in a period of political instability. This article also deals with the intricate interplay between the Albanian irregulars and the Ottoman military administration. It reinserts the Albanian bandits-cum-irregulars into the background of the military reforms. Showing how different prospects for military employment that ranged from freelance plunder to service either for the imperial army or the retinue of the rogue Albanian pashas came to clash with the discourse of military reforms, this article also traces the increasing tension between the Albanian irregulars and the modernising Ottoman army.     

The South in Sudanese politics, 1946–1956

Islam and Democracy by John L. Esposito and John O. Voll. New York Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp.232, index and bibliography. £16.99 (paper).

The Merchant Republic of Lebanon: Rise of an Open Economy by Carolyn L. Gates. London: I.B. Tauris, 1998. Pp. xvi + 248, bibliography, index. £39.50.

The Political Economy of Market Reform in Jordan by Timothy J. Piro. Lanham, Maryland and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. Pp. xvi + 131, bibliography, index. $54.00 (cloth); $19.95 (paper).

Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries. History and Culture in the Modern Era by Harvey E. Goldberg (ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Pp. xv + 346. £31.50 (cloth); £14.99 (paper).

Memoirs of Baghdad, Kurdistan and Turkish Arabia, 1857: Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government, No.XLIII. — New Series by Cdr. James Felix Jones, I.N. Slough: Archive Editions, 1998. Pp.xlvii + 504. £595.

Secularization of Iran: a Doomed Failure? by Azadi Kian‐Thiébaut. Paris: Peeters, 1998. Pp. 296, bibliography, index.

Partner to Partition: The Jewish Agency's Partition Plan in the Mandate Era by Yossi Katz. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1998. Pp. xii + 209, bibliography, index. £35.00 (cloth); £17.50 (paper).

Between Jerusalem and Hebron: Jewish Settlement in the Pre‐State Period by Yossi Katz. Ramat‐Gan: Bar‐Ilan University Press, 1998. Pp. 295, bibliography, index.

Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus by R. Hirschon. Oxford: Berghan, 1998 (first published 1989). £14.95 (paper).     

The Slowdown in Soviet Industry, 1976–1982

Growth rates of industrial production in the USSR have been falling since 1950, and the drop was especially large in 1976–1982. The falloff was associated with a pronounced deterioration in factor productivity. The most important explanatory factors seem to have been the economy's unfavorable response to a major cutback in the growth ot investment, unexpected shortages ot key raw materials and energy, and transportation bottlenecks. Mistakes in investment policy seem to have been responsible for many of these difficulties. The secular decline in industrial growth probably will continue since the causes of the slowdown are imbedded in the system of socialist central planning and systemic reform is not likely. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: 052, 113, 124.     

Lion in the Sand: British Policy in the Middle East, 1945–67

The crisis that unfolded after Iran's June 2009 presidential election exposed the absolutist nature of the state's highest religious authority (wali-ye faqih), Ayatullah ‘Ali Khamena'i. It also revealed the urgent need to critically interrogate Ayatullah Khomeini's doctrinal justifications for the governance of the jurist (wilayat al-faqih) in light of how ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Shi‘i Imam, assumed the caliphate: divine bestowal (nass) combined with public investiture that took the form of bay‘a (oath of allegiance). Ayatullahs Husayn ‘Ali Montazeri, Mohsen Kadivar, Yousef Saanei, Bayat Zanjani and Mehdi Karrubi have attempted to devise a model in which sovereignty belongs to the public and limits the clergy's role in daily matters of the state to oversight and guidance. In contrast, Ayatullahs Kazemeyni Boroujerdi and Mojteba Shabestari argue for a clear-cut separation between the church and the state so that the public can choose its form of government since no specific form is prescribed in Islam. On the other hand, Ayatullah Mesbah Yazdi, a member of the Assembly of Experts, has consistently been a passionate advocate of the absolute authority of the jurist in its most comprehensive form and a vehement opponent of any dissenting discourse on this subject.     

Şemseddin Sami,Women, and Social Conscience in the Late Ottoman Empire

In championing women's rights, ?emseddin Sami (1850–1904) sought to remould Ottoman social conscience along an egalitarian ethic based on gender equality in intelligence. In his novel Taa??uk-? Talat ve Fitnat, his treatise Women, and his six-volume encyclopaedia Kamus al-A'lam, he offered the ideal of monogamous marriage based on love and forgiveness, underscored the imperative of female education and job opportunities, and demonstrated the wide range of women's achievements throughout Islamic and Western history. The remaking of men needed to complement the remaking of women. Detailed studies of individual writers and magazines are necessary to gain an appreciation of the struggle to redefine the dignity of women in the late Ottoman Empire.     

Building new selves: identity, “Passing,” and intertextuality in Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light

This article examines Zoë Wicomb’s wide-ranging use of intertextuality in the novel Playing in the Light to explore the links between identity construction and postcolonial authorship. Focusing on the characters as intertextual agents, I argue that the three coloured women on whom the novel focuses – Helen, Marion, and Brenda – use texts in distinctive ways that illuminate their struggles to position themselves in South Africa’s complex and changing racial landscape. Racial “passing” is one form of a larger pattern in the novel of the use of citation and imitation to achieve specific ends. By embedding the citations of Helen and Marion within the citation-rich narrative of Brenda, Wicomb lays bare the mechanisms of identity construction within a work that stages and highlights its own intertextual practices.