Memories of Nehemia

This article is both a biographical sketch of the career of Nehemia Levtzion and a reminiscence. Levtzion grew up in Israel during the period of its founding. He early chose to study Islamization in Africa and became the leading interpreter of the history of Islam in West Africa. Though often called on to assume administrative responsibilities in the Israeli educational system, he maintained a commitment to scholarship. The small conferences he held in Jerusalem over the years often involved a re-thinking of basic problems in the history of Islam in Africa and in the larger Muslim world. He was particularly interested in processes of conversion and the dynamics of change. Though he described many varieties of Islam and different levels of Islamization, he never accepted the notion of a distinctively Africa Islam. He saw instead processes that were similar throughout the Muslim world.     

Engaging with the Legacy of Nehemia Levtzion: An Introduction

This volume draws principally on presentations from two African Studies Association meetings (2003, 2004) that celebrated Nehemia Levtzion’s contributions to the field of Islam in Africa and reminisced about our collective personal interactions with him. It is enriched by additional papers from former students, colleagues and friends (usually one and the same), as well as from contemporary young scholars just beginning to “know” Levtzion through his legacy. The “Epilogue” gives a final, posthumous word to Levtzion himself, in an article looking at the contemporary role of fundamentalism from the perspective of an historian who spent his life engaged in the history of Islam at its Middle Eastern and African crossroads. The following pages are meant not only to pay homage to Nehemia Levtzion but also to reflect critically, to push boundaries, and to introduce Africanist scholars, engaged in other areas of study and new generations of Africanist scholars in this field, to Levtzion’s role in shaping how we have come to understand the experience of Islam in Africa.     

Remembering the Soviet State: Kulak children and dekulakisation

When analysing dekulakisation little attention has been paid to the fact that almost 40% of the total number of the deported were children younger than 16 years of age. By examining the experiences of a small number of kulak children this article discusses various strategies of surviving. When unravelling their childhood experiences, kulak children tend to dwell on their suffering and victimisation. The findings of this article are, nonetheless, that kulak children were much more than passive victims—in fact they actively took an enormous responsibility for their own survival.     

Patriotic Discourses in Russia's Penal Peripheries: Remembering the Mordovan Gulag

Using materials gathered during field work in the penal region in the southwest corner of the Republic of Mordoviya in 2007, the authors examine the official representations of the history of the Mordovan gulag from 1930 to the present day. Through an analysis of the penal authority's institutional newspaper, its museum and anniversary celebrations marking the founding of the Mordovan gulag, the authors argue that a stress in the official history on continuity and tradition of service is evidence of growing confidence of this part of the security apparatus after their loss of status in the 1990s associated with the collapse of the penal economy and negative comment by international monitors and domestic penal reformers.     

Remembering the repression of the Stalin era in Russia: on the non-transmission of family memory

Research into some 30 families has revealed blank spaces in the history of many of these families, most of which date from the Stalin period. My thesis is that the internal policy of the Soviet state, with its repression and stigmatization of victims and their families, contributed to making certain pages of Soviet history disappear from family memories, or be reinterpreted within these memories. The policies of physical and symbolic stratification of the new “communist” society and stigmatization of broad social groups tended to create a gap between the social outcasts and their families. Families were impelled to “purge” their past and to eliminate the elements that could make them discreditable: to change names, surnames, and fathers’ names, to destroy the documents and photographs containing information about repressed people and to forget relatives lost from sight in the political turmoil. With the disappearance of eyewitnesses, firsthand memories that had not been transmitted to subsequent generations fell out of family history. These memory omissions result in these pages of family history being entirely wiped out, or lead to fragmented and impersonal memories.     

危险性与被害性：未成年犯罪人人身特征分析

在未成年人犯罪研究中,人身特征是一个重要的理论问题,但传统犯罪学中的人身危险性理论并不适合未成年犯罪人的人身特征描述。人身危险性只是未成年犯罪人外在的人身特征,对犯罪生成起到决定性作用的是未成年犯罪人具有的被害性特征,关注这一特征具有重要的理论意义。     

亲历乌干达天然动物园

这是一次终生难忘的旅行,凌晨三时左右我们驱车从驻地出发,顶着满天星斗,沿着平坦的柏油路快速前进,到达乌干达首都坎帕拉市,匆匆采购了一些烤肉、面包、饼干、水果、饮料等食品后便继续上路.