Stilwell in the stocks: the Chinese nationalists and the allied powers in the second world war

Dr Hans van de Ven is Reader in Modern Chinese History at Cambridge University. His most recent publication is War and Nationalism in China, 1925–45 (Routledge, London, 2003; this will be reviewed in the next issue of Asian Affairs). Other publications include Warfare in Chinese History (Leiden, Brill, 2000) and From Friend To Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party (University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991). This article is based on the talk which Dr Hans van de Ven gave to the Society on 11 March 2003.     

The Foundation of the Saint-Joseph University of Beirut: The teaching of the maronites by the Second Jesuit Mission in the levant

The purpose of this article is to examine the relations between Egypt and Saudi Arabia from the time of King Faisal's rise to power until President Nasser's death, via various events that shaped the Middle East. The article will also examine the main points of disagreement between the two countries, as well as the threat to the stability of the Saudi regime posed by the Egyptian President during those years. Finally, the research will examine the influence of President Nasser's death on Saudi–Egyptian relations and on the Middle East in general.     

Structuring dissident desire: representations of same-sex prison contact in contemporary South African culture

The figure of the prisoner, particularly as associated with the Numbers gangs in South African prison gangs, is both a hyper-masculine and (homo-)eroticized character. Prison allows for a state of being queer that, through its subject having already been criminalised, and escapes the stigma of feminization associated with it in the hierarchically gendered society outside of prison. Through the structure of the gang and in the confines of the prison, same-sex desire is at the centre of criminality and masculinity. At the same time, prison allows a space in which same-sex desire is countenanced; it thus becomes a literary setting fraught with same-sex eroticism. This essay considers the extent to which the masculinities of prison have become conflated with notions of an eroticized homosexual threat and the politics and fates of such threat inside and outside the jail walls. It reads a film (Proteus, 2003), non-fiction text (The Number, 2010, by Jonny Steinberg), short fiction (by Jan van Tonder), and play (Tertius Kapp’s Rooiland, 2013).     

What price access to the open seas? The geopolitics of oil and gas transmission from the Trans-Caspian republics

In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union was the world's largest hydrocarbon producer. The landmass over which these resources are distributed is vast and the reserves mostly landlocked. To convey these hydrocarbons to refineries and to market, the Soviets constructed the largest integrated pipeline networks in the world. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, new competing national interests have produced tensions over these energy resources and transmission corridors, with economically detrimental and often irrational consequences. In Central Asia, the post-Soviet Republics of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan produce significant amounts of hydrocarbons and export their oil and gas to or through Russian Federation territory. Russian government policy aims to continue exercising political control over these resources and to maximize Moscow's share of profits from their export. This paper examines oil and gas transmission issues in Central Asia, against a backdrop of emerging new relationships between the Russian Federation and the three post-Soviet republics, the resurgent strategic competition between Russia and the United States, China's developing power base in the region and Iran's potentially key geographic position for channelling Caspian energy supplies towards the Persian Gulf.     

From Indian Millenarianism to a Tropical Witches' Sabbath: Brazilian Sanctities in Jesuit Writings and Inquisitorial Sources1

This article analyses 'Santidade', the most important Indian millenarian movement to occur in colonial Brazil. Santidade erupted during the 1580's in the Jaguaripe area in the captaincy of Bahia. Santidade's greatest peculiarity, besides the blending of Catholic and indigenous beliefs and rites, was the fact that a slave plantation owner decided to protect it, promising to defend the Indians'"religious freedom" on his land and attracting them to his Jaguaripe sugar mill. The leader of the Santidade movement, an Indian baptised as Antonio, proclaimed himself to be the ancestral indigenous deity Tamandaré. After luring the leader of Santidade into a trap set by the Jaguaripe sugar mill owner, the movement was destroyed in 1585.     

中日大学生志愿服务的异同比较和启示

日本的大学生志愿服务事业起步较早,在志愿服务的内容和形式、立法建设和制度保障等方面已积累丰富经验,产生积极的社会效应,对推进中国大学生志愿服务工作具有现实借鉴价值。我们应在比较和反思的基础上,探索建立符合中国国情的大学生志愿服务工作长效机制,以最大限度地发挥志愿活动促进大学生健康成长与社会和谐发展的实际功效。     

Critical social media information flows: political trust and protest behaviour among Kazakhstani college students

ABSTRACT

In political regimes where traditional mass media are under state control, social networking sites may be the only place where citizens are exposed to and exchange dissident information. Despite all the attempts, complete control of social media seems to be implausible. We argue that the critical information that people see, read and share online undermines their trust in political institutions. This diminishing trust may threaten the legitimacy of the ruling regime and stimulate protest behaviour. We rely on original survey data of Kazakhstani college students to confirm these expectations. The data are unique in that they directly measure exposure to critical/dissident information, as opposed to simply assuming it. The analysis leverages Coarsened Exact Matching to simulate experimental conditions. This allows us to better identify the consequential mechanism and the attitudinal precursor by which social media influence protest in an authoritarian context.     

The effect of experience on the political attitudes of Korean college students

Korean student enter college singularly susceptible to the influence of their seniors, who tend to be critical of the Korean government and its relation to the United States, and by extension, the United States itself. One recent study involving 208 Korean college students suggested that the attitude of the great majority had become progressively less favorable, or more unfavorable toward the United States over a one-year-period, and more cynical concerning its motives. That study, however, did not control for age, and relied on students’ own impressionistic self-reports of their initial attitudes. The present study is a replication and extension of that one, using a panel of entering students, whose attitudes were measured during the first and last weeks of their first college semester. The results indicate that the change in attitude toward “anti-Americanism” occurs within this first semester.     

From mice-eaten passports to fingerprint scanning: fluctuating state presence and ‘entangled documents’ along the Kyrgyz–Uzbek border

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on engagement with identity documents among the rural Uzbek population in the borderlands of Kyrgyzstan. By exploring the materiality of the documents and people’s concern with these material artefacts of bureaucracy, this article illustrates how the state has been moving in, out and through the lives of the people living on the margins of the state. People’s engagement with documents illuminates the temporal dynamics of the state’s spatialization practices and highlights the fluctuating presence of the state. In addition, this article exposes the discrepancies between the classificatory bureaucratic order and the changing realities of everyday life. Gaps between these two domains are filled with what I refer to as entangled documents. People’s attempts to disentangle documents reveal how people on the margins of the state manage encounters with state bureaucracy and provide insight into the internal dynamics of a local bureaucracy.