Capturing Brazilian society in movement: from cordiality to circulation and “spaces between” in Maria Augusta Ramos’s Futuro junho (2015)

ABSTRACT

This article analyses Maria Augusta Ramos’s 2015 observational documentary Futuro junho (Future June), filmed in the Brazilian city of São Paulo in the lead-up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Taking as its starting point a connection, established by one of the film’s four main “characters,” or subjects, between Brazilian historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda’s influential work on cordiality and the idea of circulation between public and private spheres, the article explores how circulation (economic, urban, media, and cultural) is portrayed in the documentary, as well as how it foregrounds both spatial and temporal movements. This is complemented by a discussion of the film’s own circulation through attention to critical reviews which have debated the film’s success in documenting, in a timely way, a national conjuncture characterised by crisis and conflict as well as unpredictability and rapid change. The article argues that by imbricating and intertwining multiple cultures of circulation, and by drawing attention to the varied economic and urban experiences of its characters and the spaces between them, Futuro junho captures a Brazil in flux.     

Reflections on Economic Sovietology: A Comment

A specialist on Russian politics and society examines the apparent success of economic and political liberalism in Novgorod oblast' in the 1990s. The article is based on published and unpublished documentary sources from the region, as well as in-depth, repeated interviews with local officials during 1997-1999. Focus is on progress in economic reform, finance, and foreign investment, forms of political decentralization and representation, the growth civic associations, and styles of political leadership. Several explanations for these outcomes are proposed and discussed.     

Opposition to Israel’s first Qadiya

ABSTRACT

In 2017, following a fraught 22-year struggle, Israel appointed the first female judge (sing. qadiya, pl. qadiyat) to its Islamic (shari’a) courts. This contrasts with the earlier appointments of qadiyat around the world, most notably in the Palestinian Authority in 2009. The Israeli shari’a courts’ jurisdiction over family law, a field of law which engages in women’s issues, makes the introduction of qadiyat particularly salient. This article is among the first to focus academic research on the issue of qadiyat within Israel and is based on field interviews with practitioners and academic experts, as well as documentary primary and secondary sources. This article finds that the obstacles that delayed the appointment of Israel’s first qadiya were a manifestation of the political impact Muslim minority status had on the country’s Muslim and Jewish establishments.     

Sexual Slander and the 1965/66 Mass Killings in Indonesia: Political and Methodological Considerations

Indonesia has been haunted by the “spectre of communism” since the putsch by military officers on 1 October 1965. That event saw the country's top brass murdered and the military attributing this putsch to the Communist Party. The genocide that followed was triggered by a campaign of sexual slander. This led to the real coup and the replacement of President Sukarno by General Suharto. Today, accusations about communism continue to play a major role in public life and state control remains shored up by control over women's bodies. This article introduces the putsch and the socialist women's organisation Gerwani, members of which were, at the time, accused of sexual debauchery. The focus is on the question of how Gerwani was portrayed in the aftermath of the putsch and how this affects the contemporary women's movement. It is found that women's political agency has been restricted, being associated with sexual debauchery and social turmoil. State women's organisations were set up and women's organisations forced to help build a “stable” society, based on women's subordination. The more independent women's groups were afraid to be labelled “new Gerwani ” as that would unleash strong state repression. This article assesses the implications of these events for the post-1998 period of Reformasi and reviews some recent analyses of 1965, state terrorism and violence and reveals blind spots in dealing with gender and sexual politics. It is argued that the slander against Gerwani is downplayed in these analyses. In fact, this slander was the spark without which the bloodbath would not have happened and would not have acquired its gruesome significance.     

Al-Fajr al-Jadid: A Breeding Ground for the Emergence of Revolutionary Ideas in the Immediate Post-Second World War

This article claims that all of the objectives put forth by the Egyptian revolutionary regime appeared in the leftist journal al-Fajr al-Jadid several years prior to the July 1952 revolution. The authors' central claim is also that the essentials of Nasserism including its basic tenets neutralism, pan-Arabism, and Arab socialism were clearly articulated in al-Fajr al-Jadid. Although there is no clear-cut evidence to show the existence of neither political nor ideological direct links between Nasser and the al-Fajr al-Jadid's group, this article clearly demonstrates the existence of remarkable ideological textual similarities between Nasserite's and al-Fajr al-Jadid's revolutionary ideas.     

Panel on the Economic and Political Consequences of Chernobyl'

This article summarizes a discussion by a panel of leading experts on Soviet energy analyzing the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl' nuclear plant in the Ukraine on April 26, 1986.

The near-term economic costs associated with clean-up, relocation, and compensating for losses to electricity supplies are significant but manageable. The longer-term effects will focus on likely modifications in Soviet strategies for the nuclear industry, which may shift emphasis back towards conventional fuels and conservation.

The political consequences were managed fairly well by the leadership. Consistent with Secretary Gorbachev's policy of glasnost' (openness) more information has been available on this event than was the case in previous analogous situations. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: 027, 124, 723.     

Borders Inscribed on the Body: Geopolitics and the Everyday in the Work of Martín Kohan

This article analyses the critique of militaristic geopolitical worldviews in two novels by Martín Kohan (Dos veces junio, 2002 and Ciencias morales, 2007). Drawing on ‘everyday nationalism’ and the insights of feminist geopolitics, it explores these novels' use of space and gendered violence to present Argentina's 1976–1983 dictatorship and the Falklands/Malvinas war as unexceptional manifestations of the relationship between the state and its citizens. This reading foregrounds Kohan's emphasis on the origins and consequences of national identity discourses, framed as powerful narratives capable of generating a vision of the nation-state that privileges the security of borders over bodies.     

When the Walls Come Crumbling Down: The Monarchy and Thai-style Democracy

Although many people date critical commentary on the Thai monarchy to Paul Handley's explosive biography The King Never Smiles: A Biography of Thailand's Bhumibol Adulyadej, this article demonstrates the existence of a consistently critical body of work, in the English language, that emerged contemporaneously with the king's growing stature from the 1980s. It also considers the conditions that have led to wider and more vocal criticisms since the coup of 2006. The primary focus is an exploration of new contributions to this critical commentary by the authors of the edited collection Saying the Unsayable: Monarchy and Democracy in Thailand. It identifies tensions across the chapters, including different emphases on liberalism and conservatism, and on the symbolic functioning of the monarchy.     

Lands,Hands and Socio-cultural Boundaries: A Reading of Dhu Nun Ayyub's The Hand,the Land and the Water (1948)

This article offers a literary analysis of the novel The Hand, the Land and the Water (Al-Yad wa'l ard aa'l ma'), written by communist intellectual Dhu Nun Ayyub (b.1908). I read this novel in an attempt to analyze the boundaries between Baghdad and countryside (al-rif), as understood by the novel's protagonists, and to underscore the ways in which such boundaries were not only constructed, but also crossed and challenged. The novel conveys many themes that occupied the Iraqi leftist intelligentsia at the time, such as the abuse of peasants by their sheikhs and by the state. It was one of the first fictional representations of the Wathba, and thus can be seen as an endeavour to understand the meanings of this very important moment in Iraqi history.     

Expanding the Story of Japanese American Internment

Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. 322 pp. Eric L. Muller, Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001; paper, 2003. 229 pp. Since the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the story of the Japanese Americans interned during World War II has spawned a cottage industry of popular histories, museum exhibits, public memorials, biographies, novels, memoirs, children's fiction and non-fiction, documentary and feature films, and, of course, scholarly studies. The Redress legislation, which required the U.S. government to pay $20,000 in reparations to each living survivor of America's concentration camps, ushered in a new era of legitimacy and popularity to the internment story. An Internet check on “Books in Print” lists 101 titles with the keywords “Japanese American internment.” Professional historians sit at the intellectual helm of this internment boom, and, accordingly, the amount of their output too has expanded. While the production of monographs and dissertations has increased in the recent past, more interesting to observe are the changing ways in which scholars have approached the internment. Since the 1940s, historical researchers focused on the most obvious architects of the decision to remove 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast; three decades later the innocent victims of this wartime policy took center stage. Now the spotlight of innovation shines on those who have long been considered minor players in the internment drama. Two recent and highly notable monographs, Greg Robinson's By Order of the President and Eric L. Muller's Free To Die for Their Country, epitomize this historiographical trend. In focusing on the shadows of the internment story, these books compel a reconsideration of some of the basic elements to the internment narrative.     

Konfrontasi and Australia's Aid to Indonesia during the 1960s

This article examines Australia's aid program in Indonesia in the 1960s. With the transfer by the Dutch of West New Guinea to Indonesia in May 1963, the Australian government looked to expand aid to its northern neighbour beyond the Colombo Plan in an effort to cement friendly relations. The events associated with konfrontasi threatened this policy objective. Yet despite Indonesia's belligerent stance, Australia was able to continue its aid program (by supporting the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunication Network) and to keep the lines of communication with Jakarta open. When konfrontasi ended in August 1966 after regime change in Indonesia, Australia was able to rapidly expand its aid program. This article argues that konfrontasi changed the ways in which Australia's aid program in Indonesia was construed, which in turn contributed to a re‐consideration of the role of aid in Australia's foreign policy more broadly.     

Nothing personal: explaining the rise and decline of political machines in Ukraine

This article is the first to explore and compare the dynamics of party-building between the three main political forces that competed for power during the last decade in Ukraine – Viktor Yushchenko's Nasha Ukrayina (Our Ukraine), Yulia Tymoshenko's Batkivshchyna (Fatherland), and Viktor Yanukovych's Partiya Rehioniv (Party of Regions). We show that their political trajectories can be explained by differences in their organizational structure and distribution of resources within the party's leadership. When a party depends on resources linked primarily to one individual, it will develop a personalized decision-making structure advantaging its leader, and the party's fortunes will be tied to the popularity (or lack of same) of the leader. By contrast, when a party relies equally on resources from several groups, a more consociational style of decision-making is likely to emerge. Using Ukraine as a case study, the article shows that personality-led parties will be more vulnerable to defections and less capable of absorbing potential competitors. On the other hand, coalition-led parties are better capable of surviving defeats, maintaining internal cohesion, and merging with like-minded parties.     

The Russian monument at Ayastefanos (San Stefano): Between defeat and revenge,remembering and forgetting

Legal and documentary Arabic reader. By M. Mansoor. 2 Vols. Leiden: E. J. Brill. 40 guilders.

Modern Arabic Short Stories. Selected and translated by Denys Johnson‐Davies. London, O.U.P. 1967.     

Noucentisme's “arbitrary” nature in the Mont-roig landscapes of Joan Miró (1918–1922)

The purpose of this article is to discuss the development of Joan Miró's aesthetics between 1915 and the early 1920s, and to offer an interpretation of a series of landscapes that he painted between 1918 and 1922, by highlighting their similarities with some of the landscapes described by Catalan writer Josep Pla in his Obra completa. Both Miró's and Pla's landscapes are situated within the context of Noucentisme and, more particularly, of Noucentisme's classicist aesthetics as defined by Eugeni d'Ors in his Glosari.     

The coup d'état in Spain: from the anti-liberal movements to the democratic revolution, 1814–1874

SUMMARY

In this article Mikel Urquijo seeks to explain the evolution of the coup d'état as a feature of the political history of Spain in the nineteenth century. The repeated interventions based on the armed forces, with a greater or lesser contribution from the civilian politicians, are seen as the method by which some alternation in government between the political factions was made possible. The article traces the development from the purely military coup, or pronunciamiento of the early years, intended to exclude civilian politicians, to the mixed coups of the mid-century. In the absence of a truly democratic political system, or a developed national and civic consciousness, in a system where the ruling party could decide the outcome of elections by executive action, the coup was the accepted method of changing the regime. But the increasing participation of civilian politicians in the process culminated in the coup of 1868, which had some of the characteristics of a democratic revolution, and overthrew for a time the Bourbon monarchy. This represents a true civic-military coup d'état.     

Sugar Man and Anglo-Sweden

Searching for Sugar man, for all its success in appealing to a global audience, has a distinctly Swedish provenance. Attention to its local preconditions can shed light on the film-maker Malik Bendjelloul's project and explain some of its elisions and emphases. With a media degree from a Swedish university, Bendjelloul started working for public service television in Sweden. This enabled him to experiment with documentary formats and later to discover the story of Sixto Rodriguez. With a public grant and large amounts of enthusiasm, he shaped a film that could be interpreted as an outcome of a specifically Anglo-Swedish culture. As a heavily anglicised country, Sweden is reaping the benefits of globalisation, but this also produces anxieties of influence. Searching for Sugar man is, in that respect, more about providing an alternative narrative about the USA and the English-speaking world, than exploring the cultural politics of South Africa.     

The Missing Link: Explaining the Political Mobilisation of Islam in Indonesia

Abstract

Why has an increase in personal piety among Indonesia's Muslims not translated into electoral gains for Islamic political parties? To help explain this conundrum, this article focuses on the role of Indonesia's mass Islamic social organisations, Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) and Muhammadiyah. Using a political economy lens, it argues that control over state resources and the provision of social welfare facilities have helped political parties maintain power over the years and that NU and Muhammadiyah have at times played important mediating roles in this process. Extending this analysis into Indonesia's contemporary politics, it then proposes that since 2004 in particular, the health and education facilities provided by NU and Muhammadiyah are becoming less important to ordinary people in relation to the services provided by the state. It concludes that this trend has weakened the ability of these organisations to channel public support to political parties/candidates and is one reason why Islamic parties have not been able to capitalise on increased religiosity in the social sphere.     

Adrià Gual as illustrator,stage and costume designer

Catalan playwright, director and teacher Adrià Gual was a key figure in the development of modernista theatre. With his emphasis on theatre as artistic synthesis, Gual's multi-faceted work mirrors that of other European innovators and lays the path towards theatrical renovation in Catalonia and in Spain more generally. The visual element is a key component of his approach, and is reflected in his costume designs and illustrations to printed play texts. This article considers his work in two areas: Oscar Wilde's Salomé – perhaps the archetypical Symbolist play – and the commedia dell'arte spectacles he devised for performance in 1912 and 1927. The article also considers Salvador Dalí's set design for the latter, and allows us to highlight connections with the theatre design work of other avant-garde artists.     

Chilean and Transnational Performances of Disobedience: LasTesis and the Phenomenon of Un violador en tu camino

This article analyses the performance Un violador en tu camino created by Chilean feminist theatre collective LasTesis, shared by millions and re-staged across the globe. It explores the relationship between the original piece and theorist Rita Segato's insights on rape culture, and how it counters aspects of this culture. It examines how the transnational spread of Un violador counters tendencies of MeToo, and examines four cases of the performance's re-staging in Latin America and beyond, showing how they make manifest the pervasiveness of rape culture as well as how groups have adapted them to speak to local issues.     

China: A function of the Japan‐US alliance

China's greatest future strategic concern is the Japan‐US alliance. Hisahiko Okazaki argues that a strong alliance limits China's foreign policy options, and stresses the importance of Japan and the US working together to establish a foreign policy towards China that will promote peace in the region. Okazaki was born in Dalian, China, in 1930. He served in Japan's Foreign Ministry, holding such posts as minister to the United States, chief of the ministry's Information Analysis, Research and Planning Bureau, and was ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Thailand. This article is adapted from an article first published in August 1995 in The Daily Yomiuri and is printed with the permission of the author.