Nostalgia for America's village past: Staged symbolic communities

Conclusion Staged Symbolic Communities have become important cultural forms in contemporary America. Assimulacrums of community, they offer a vision of the organic community with which few contemporary communities can compete. They offer an outlet from the work organization of mass bureaucratic society enabling the tourist visitor to feel both relaxed and in control.Visitors to SSCs take away more than souvenirs and decorating ideas. They also carry lessons regarding identity, history, and community. The Williamsburg effect involves more than paint colors and the attractive presentation of historic villages. It is now the leading architectural model for new communities, the colonial town replacing suburban sprawl (Mohney and Easterling 1989). We have yet to see whether this model will indeed prove the radicalism of tradition (Calhoun 1983), resulting in the restoration of community structure and affective ties, or whether the step backward suggested by SSCs is simply and only that.This paper was first presented at the 1990 SSSI Stone Symposium, St. Petersburg, FL. I should like to thank David Bouchier for helpful comments on an earlier version.     

Colonial legacies,armed revolts and state violence: the Maoist movement in India

Abstract

This article examines the connected histories of armed tribal and peasant revolts in colonial and postcolonial India with reference to the ongoing Maoist conflict in rural and tribal areas of central and eastern India. The article makes two interrelated arguments about the violent continuities that endure from colonial to postcolonial contexts: (1) the nation-state system, in its efforts to establish control and influence, creates a hierarchy of citizenship engaging in the hostile policing of marginalised subjects, thereby engendering armed revolts and political violence; (2) the postcolonial state’s response to these armed revolts by marginalised subjects who challenge its sovereignty and monopoly over violence, is equally violent and repressive. Most significantly, the state’s response is legitimised in the same colonial idioms and justifications that mark epistemic and physical violence against the third world.     

印共（毛）的崛起及发展前景

近年来,印度左翼极端组织印共（毛）的活动日趋活跃。该组织在与政府的对抗过程中,势力逐渐扩展,能量日益增长,影响愈加深远,已被印度政府视为国内安全的巨大挑战。     

The making of Maoist model in post-Mao era: The myth of Nanjie village

Bucking the general trend of privatization in China, the model village of Nanjie has cultivated the image of a “small zone of communism,” a modern-day commune that practices extreme measures of egalitarianism. Such an image is promoted by some Party leaders at the center as well as local cadres, and bolstered by the spectacular display of the village's wealth. With the aid of fieldwork data, our research examines the claims of “success,” “egalitarianism,” and the attribution of “success” to “egalitarianism.” We find that the village's early rise to prosperity took place before the celebrated Maoist practices were introduced, and that its later rapid development was an artifact of politically awarded state loans. We then examine the “actually existing Maoism” by uncovering the capitalist labor relations between the local villagers and the hired laborers, and the political inequality among the village's own legal residents. We conclude by examining the political processes that gave rise to this star village in the post-Mao era.     

The Nepali State and the Dynamics of the Maoist Insurgency

In contrast to existing quantitative studies of the civil conflict in Nepal, we argue that combinations of motive and opportunity were crucial for the development of the Maoist insurgency and that these conditions stem largely from the nature of the Nepali state. The decade-long insurgency was characterized by two distinct dynamics. In the initiation period of the war (1996–2000), the insurgency was driven largely by newly enabled Maoist organizers capitalizing on the caste, ethnic, and economic divisions that had been codified over time by autocratic state-building efforts. In the more violent and geographically widespread maturation period of the war (2001–2006), the insurgency depended less on historical grievances than on the motivation of rebels and sympathizers by the often-indiscriminate violence perpetrated by the besieged Nepali state. We provide empirical evidence for this argument in a narrative section that contextualizes the Maoist insurgency as well as in a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of data for the 75 Nepali districts in the two periods of the insurgency. fsQCA allows for the assessment of how combinations of the largely state-generated motivations and opportunities affected the dynamics of the insurgency.     

Europe,Land of Anguish and Nostalgia

Three years into the protracted Eurocrisis “all choices are ugly,” as former British prime minister Tony Blair comments. Indeed, the high cost of bad options is prompting some to question whether Europe is worth saving the euro. Along with Tony Blair, the former Italian prime minister Romano Prodi as well as two of the best financial minds around—Nouriel Roubini and Mohamed el‐Erian—warn of the dire consequences of a euro breakup. One of France's most prominent philosophers, André Glucksmann, wonders whether the idea of a united Europe—a reaction to the horrors of World War II—can hold everyone together in the future when peace is the norm.     

法国五月风暴与法共、毛派和托派

一九六八年法国五月风暴是当代法国的一次文化革命,但它对法国包括政治领域在内的各个方面产生了巨大的冲击.令人意外的是,绝大多数左派和极左派政党组织并没有积极支持这场反对现存社会秩序的、以学生为主的运动,甚至法共还批评和否定了这场学生运动的意义,而许多毛派和托派分子也并未热烈响应.通过分析法共、毛派和托派的政治观点、对学生运动的评判及国内外因素的影响,不难发现其所持该立场的原因.     

Strategic Interaction Between Rebels and the State: A Study of the Maoist Conflict in Nepal

The “people's war” in Nepal during 1996–2006, led to two significant outcomes—the elimination of monarchy and political victory for the Maoists. These political outcomes raise important questions about the process of Maoist conflict in Nepal. While several studies on political conflict are concerned about “why” such conflicts happen, I focus on “how” the strategy of conflict unfolded in Nepal. In this article, I argue that strategic interaction between rebels and the state explain why the conflict led to negotiated settlement in Nepal. To discuss the sequence of rebel–state interaction, I introduce a game theoretic model. In addition, I show how territorial control, target selection, and levels of violence used by the rebels in comparison to the state are crucial in understanding the conflict process. The case study in this article analyzes the relevance of rebel–state interaction to reveal micro processes of political conflict and further suggests that negotiation can become an important tactical choice in resolving conflict.     

Global Jihadist Recidivism: A Red Flag

This commentary examines the issue of global jihadist recidivism and identifies it as a potential long-term international counterterrorism concern. Although there are no comprehensive and accurate statistics on global jihadist recidivism, there is sufficient anecdotal evidence that suggests that the tendency for released imprisoned global jihadist terrorists is to return to terrorist activity. It is important to understand that arresting, indicting, and sentencing a captured global jihadist terrorist is not the end of the counterterrorism skirmish. In fact, the next stages of incarceration and reformation are more crucial to the endgame. The problem of global jihadist recidivism is at the core a manpower issue. Prisons have always been an important front for all types of terrorist groups. Recidivism or the failure of prison rehabilitation programs is simply one component of this front. Terrorist groups do not want their imprisoned members to reform and resign from the organization. Further research needs to be conducted on the recidivism rate for terrorists and whether religious terrorists would have a higher rate than secular ones. The academic, think tank, and U.S. government communities need to examine this issue to determine if it is a long-term international counterterrorism problem. The author believes it will be.     

走近尼共（毛）——尼泊尔共产党（毛主义）获胜选区访谈纪实

2008年4月10日，尼泊尔举行制宪会议选举，尼泊尔共产党（毛主义）一鸣惊人，出人意料地赢得240个简单多数制选区中的120个和335个比例制席位中的100席，占总席位601席的37％，几乎是第二大党尼泊尔大会党和第三大党尼泊尔共产党（联合马列）所获席位之和。尼共（毛）曾从事武装斗争10年之久，两年前才放下武器，走出丛林。一年半前才获得合法地位，能在此次投票率高、得到国际社会普遍认可的选举中战胜其他有十几年议会斗争经验的老牌政党，背后的原因是什么？