Barriers Natural and Unnatural: Islamiento as a Central Metaphor in Kuna Ecotourism

This article considers ecotourism among the Kuna of the San Blas Archipelago in Panama, using the term I use the concept of islamiento to describe both ‘isolation’ and ‘island‐isation’ as central metaphors to understand Kuna strategies in demarcating tourist and community spaces. The local autonomy exemplified by the Kuna in tourism is just one transformation of the way in which they utilise island configurations as a source of physical and ideological independence. While competition for resources between tourists, non‐Kuna ‘outsiders’ and Kuna ‘insiders’ is common, pressures on local inhabitants, resources and the need for privacy and community life are exacerbated in island tourism. Through various mechanisms that turn the physical properties of the archipelago to their advantage, the Kuna limit the impacts of tourism on daily life and strengthen their autonomy.     

Rabbi Yihye Yitzhak Halevi and his Relations with Imam Yahya

The chief rabbi of Yemen, Rabbi Yihye Yishaq Halewi, had a special relationship with the ruler, the Imam Yahya, after the Turks left Yemen in 1918. I will discuss several aspects of this relationship, including the public needs of his congregation in the capital city San‘a, such as problems of ownership of the land of the Jewish quarter and collection of the poll tax, aid to Jewish congregations throughout Yemen in maintaining the public order, and efforts on behalf of community leaders who suffered from saving children from the Orphans’ Decree.     

From the Bare and Arid Hills to Anatolia,the Loveable and Beautiful: Kemalist Project of ‘National Modernity’ in Anatolian Countryside

This article discusses how the discourse of ‘Anatolia, the loveable and beautiful’ was developed after the retreat of the Ottomans from the Balkans and how Anatolia emerged as the construction site of the Kemalist project of ‘national modernity’ and ‘Anatolian enlightenment’. Based on a meticulous reading of the ethnographies, histories and monographs on Anatolian cities and regions published between 1923 and 1950 as well as the journals of the local branches of People's Houses, the article demonstrates how the regime attempted to establish its legitimacy by incorporating the local elements into the ‘grand national narrative’ and nationalizing the Anatolian countryside.     

The Wang Lixiong prophecy: ‘Palestinization’ in Xinjiang and the consequences of Chinese state securitization of religion

ABSTRACT

In Your Western Regions, My Turkestan (2007), Chinese dissident Wang Lixiong warned of the ‘Palestinization’ of the Xinjiang question, defined as reaching ‘a critical point in time’ where Uyghurs and Han Chinese enter an interminable ‘ethnic war’. Following the knife attack on Han civilians in Kunming (2014), seen by many as an act of Uyghur terror, Wang reminded us that he had foreseen this trajectory seven years earlier. This article outlines Wang’s six interpretations of ‘Palestinization’ in the Xinjiang context, then shows how tightened regulations on religion and intrusive religious policing was the main catalyst for local retaliatory violence in 2012–2015. I contend that state securitization of religion was counterproductive, heightening societal insecurity and promoting inter-ethnic conflict between Uyghur and Han communities. In Chen Quanguo’s era of ‘de-extremification’, the state’s purported attempt to ‘purify’ Islamic practice continues to be experienced on the ground as violation of pure, halal space.     

The British Empire in India,the Gulf pearl and the making of the Middle East

Abstract

Genealogies of the term ‘Middle East’ conventionally focus on a juncture around the 1890s, when it gained new geopolitical currency, promoted by various European and American officials with reference to a space centred around the Arabo-Persian Gulf. This article argues instead that the ‘Middle East’ label should be seen as the culmination of a longer process, led less from London than from India. Over the previous century, this consolidation of ‘British’ India as a distinct regional actor was accompanied by the conceptualisation of its borderlands, including that Gulf-centred space. This space become a theatre for economic and political monitoring strategised from India, seeking to transform what was represented as a pirate-infested margin into a pacified buffer zone. Control and exploitation of pearl fisheries, the main economic activity for Gulf populations, was central to these efforts. Imperial strategy around the Gulf pearl was a key tool in founding an informal Indian empire in the Gulf and its hinterlands, in that very space to which the name ‘Middle East’ would subsequently be given.     

Germany and the Kosovo war: still a civilian power?

This article assesses the motives, significance and implications of Germany's participation in the 1999 Kosovo War. This was all the more remarkable, because it took place under a Red–Green government and was not legitimised by a UN mandate. Events in Kosovo forced the new government to choose between two foreign policy articles of faith of the German Left: ‘nie wieder Krieg’ (‘never again war’) and ‘nie wieder Auschwitz’ (‘never again Auschwitz’). The government tried to ease this dilemma by flanking its participation in the war with intensive efforts to secure a negotiated settlement of the crisis involving Russia. Despite its participation in the war, Germany remains a ‘civilian power’, as it is committed to deploying military force strictly multilaterally. Kosovo shows that it has become a normal ‘civilian power’, comparable to other mature democracies in the Euro-Atlantic community.     

The official art of the Khrushchev Thaw: The Severe Style as an ambassador of the Estonian national school at Baltic art exhibitions in Moscow

In Estonian post-Socialist art history writing, the term ‘national’ has mostly been introduced as a defense mechanism against the Soviet regime. The aim of this article is to indicate that concept ‘national’ also played quite an important role in ‘official’ Soviet cultural politics, especially after Stalin’s death. The processes of cultivating ‘national particularities’ in the arts will be exemplified by the Baltic exhibitions in Moscow in the end of 1950s and 1960s.     

Urbanization and voting for the Turkish parliament

The Silk Letters Conspiracy, or Case, was a plot by a small clique of Indian Pan-Islamists located in Afghanistan, India and the Hijaz to overthrow British rule in India during the First World War. Although British officials at the time were prepared to admit that the conspiracy had been ‘organised with some skill’, there was a general feeling that it was a rather ‘pathetic’ and ‘ineffectual’ affair, and ‘crazy in the extreme’. This verdict has been echoed by those who have subsequently considered the plot, if only in passing. But there is more to the Silk Letters Conspiracy than meets the eye, as this article will detail. In retrospect, the Case has a greater significance than previously thought in terms of Britain's encounter with Pan-Islam.     

Colonial education and the shaping of Islamism in Sudan, 1946–1956

Abstract

This article assesses the role of British colonial education in Condominium Sudan in shaping the mindsets of Sudan’s first generation of Islamists between 1946 and 1956. Drawing on post-colonial theorists such as Nandy and Bhabha, it contends that the experiences of the pioneers of Sudan’s Islamic movement at institutions such as Gordon Memorial College and Hantoub Secondary School moulded their understandings of both ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’. As a result of their colonial education, Islamists deployed discourses concerning both ‘progress’ and ‘cultural authenticity’ that bore remarkable parallels with colonial essentialism, even as they announced a decisive break with the colonial past. Much like the conventional nationalists, they used the space created by the colonial educational institutions to establish an ideological community that transcended the narrow ethnic and regional divides previously fostered by the British. At the same time, Islamists and colonialists alike shared a contempt for Marxists and ‘deculturated’ effendis, and Muslim Brothers’ aspirations to escape the ‘English jahiliyya’, however counter-intuitive this may seem, bore similarities with the worldviews of colonial officials concerned with preventing what they saw to be the excessive impact of urbanization and modern education on Sudan.     

Imagining a dialectical African modernity: Achebe's ontological hopes,Sembene's machines,Mda's epistemological redness

In Chinua Achebe's book of essays Hopes and Impediments, he asserts that Nigeria's failure to ‘develop’ and ‘modernise’ like Japan is because of a ‘failure of imagination’. Yet for many Africans, modernity is a tainted ‘gift’ because it was introduced into the African continent along with European colonial capitalism which simultaneously caused an ontological crisis of self. Although many Africans want to ‘catch up’ with the West, how is it possible when Western technological superiority was equated with white racial superiority? Achebe declares that, as Africans ‘begin their journey into the strange, revolutionary world of modernization’, literature should function as guide. Hence, I examine Ousmane Sembene's novel God's Bits of Wood which depicts Africans laying claim to ‘race-less’, ‘language-less’ ‘machines’. But does (Western) technology change culture? Can African culture appropriate technology to form a dialectical African modernity? If so, what role does ‘tradition’ play? In Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness, we witness the emergence of a traditional modernity made possible by a dialectical epistemology.     

Inscribing the Arab Self: Butrus al-Bustani and Paradigms of Subjective Reform

This article attempts to understand Butrus al-Bustani's Nafir Suriyya as a foundational text in the creation of a new discourse of modern Arab subjectivity. More specifically, the study examines the epistemology that circumscribes al-Bustani's conception of the modern Syro-Lebanese Arab citizen. The article highlights the nomenclature fundamental to al-Bustani's formula for ‘concord and unity’ and ‘love of the nation’ in the wake of the inter-confessional violence, or civil war, of 1860 in Lebabnon and Damascus. In doing so, it reveals how conceptions of Arab self-hood are enframed by a binary of ‘success’ and ‘failure’. While identifying native ‘failure’, al-Bustani displaces it into several different agents in his attempt to salvage his conception of an ‘ideal’ native subject. Inevitably, the author demonstrates, this ideal national subject that Nafir narrates is mired in an inescapable Hegelian, master‐slave, struggle with the West.     

The German solidarity pact: A case study in the politics of the Unified Germany

The political process in the old Federal Republic was distinguished by all‐pervasive negotiations and an orientation towards consensus, as indicated by the concepts of ‘co‐operative federalism’, ‘co‐operative opposition’ and ‘neo‐corporatism’ frequently used to describe relations between the federation and the state governments, between the federal government and opposition, and between the federal government and organised economic interests. Some observers expected German unification to lead to fundamental changes in these traits. This study of the negotiations which took place over a ‘Solidarity Pact’ between September 1992 and March 1993 concludes that, far from the political process of the old Federal Republic having been transformed by unification, its distinguishing traits appear rather to have been reinforced. It argues that, whilst there will be no second Solidarity Pact, cooperation and compromise will remain more pervasive in the politics of the unified Germany than confrontation and polarisation.     

Soya, culture and international food aid: The case of a Nicaraguan communal kitchen

Abstract— This article examines changing institutional and grass roots strategies in response to hunger and malnutrition in Nicaragua during the period of revolutionary government and the years subsequent to the Sandinistas' 1990 electoral loss. The 1990 change in government put an end to any cohesive national food policy and initiated significant reversals of the land reform programme. In this context of a move away from state support and in an ever-worsening economic situation, grassroots organisations at both the local and national level sought to take over these ‘privatised’ functions. The article will examine a particular grassroots project, the San Rafael communal kitchen, in the context of the national and global factors which shape hunger and attempts to remedy it.     

Islam,ethnicity and the state: contested spaces of legitimacy and power in the Kurdish-Turkish public sphere

ABSTRACT

The pro-Kurdish nationalist mobilization in Turkey was mostly built on the right to self-determination aligned with the Marxist-Leninist ideology for the insurgent Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the early 1980s and ethnic minority rights for the secular-leftist pro-Kurdish legal parties in the 1990s. The Turkish state mostly framed the legal and illegal pro-Kurdish mobilization as ‘the enemy of the state’ and ‘the enemy of Islam’ in its counter-insurgency efforts. However, in the 2000s, the PKK and the pro-Kurdish legal parties became more tolerant and inclusive toward Islamic Kurdish identity by mobilizing their sympathizers in events such as ‘Civic Friday Prayers’ and a ‘Democratic Islamic Congress’. This move aimed to function as an antidote to the rising popularity of the ruling conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Kurdish Hizbullah in the early 2000s. In other words, Islam and pious Muslim identity has increasingly become contested among Turkish Islamists, Kurdish Islamists, and the secular Kurdish nationalists. This article seeks to unpack why, how, and under what conditions such competing actors and mechanisms shape the discursive and power relationships in the Kurdish-Turkish public sphere.     

'… the state begins to wither away…': Notes on the Interpretation of the Paris Commune by Bakunin, Marx, Engels and Lenin

Bakunin (1871): ‘Revolutionary socialism has just attempted its first demonstration, both splendid and practical, in the Paris Commune …. I am above all a supporter of it because it was a bold and outspoken negation of the state.’ Marx (1871): ‘The Commune—that is the reabsorption of the state power by society as its own living forces instead of as forces controlling and subduing it, by the popular masses themselves, forming their own force instead of the organized form of their suppression.’ Engels (1891): ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat … Do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.’ Lenin (1919): ‘Only the Soviet organization of the State can really effect the immediate break-up and total destruction of the old, i.e. bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial machinery which has been … the greatest obstacle to the practical implementation of democracy for the workers and working people generally. The Paris Commune took the first epoch-making step along this path. The Soviet system has taken the second.’     

Living in the Marikana world: The state,capital and society

Abstract

The ‘Marikana massacre’ that happened on 16 August 2012 at Lonmin mine near Rustenburg in the North-West province of South Africa, in which the South African police shot dead 34 mineworkers for protesting against low wages and other unbearable employment and/or living conditions, cannot be understood as merely an accidental event. It may therefore be useful to view the massacre as one of those tragedies that dramatises, in visible ways, the generally hellish conditions which the peoples of the non-Western world have come to endure ever since the advent of Western modernity. The ‘voyages of discovery’ undertaken by figures such as Christopher Columbus after 1492 marked the commencement of a world system characterised by a Western-centred modernity whose ‘darker side’ inflicted hellish conditions on the non-Western subject, while its ‘brighter side’ in the West saw positive developments – from the 16^th-century ‘rights of people’ to the 18^th-century ‘rights of man’, up to the late-20^th-century ‘human rights’. This article is a decolonial critique on the Marikana massacre and seeks to explain how the modern world system has, since its advent in 1492 as global power structure, been producing a series of ‘Marikana-like’ conditions and events on the part of the non-Western subject that underlies its hierarchical arrangement. The article's point of departure is that rather than understand the Marikana massacre as a unique event or accident, it can better be characterised as a sign of the non-Western subject's subjection to Western-centred modernity. The article explicates how the modern South African state and capital are part of the same ‘colonial power matrix’ (Quijano 2000a), hence the two were bound to be on the same side against labour during the Marikana massacre.     

Chile's (Inter)National Identities: Framing the Relations with Bolivia and Peru

National identities play a significant role in Latin American international relations. They affect the ways in which policy‐makers view themselves and others, as well as influencing the ways in which their policies are ‘received’ abroad. In this way, identities create opportunities and constraints for foreign policy‐making, framing the relations between Latin American countries. The author argues that, since 1990, three main patterns of Chilean identity recently affected the country's relations with its northern neighbours Bolivia and Peru: a ‘neoliberal identity’, a ‘legalistic identity’ and a ‘progressive identity’. These three patterns of identity have created opportunities for cooperation as well as causes for conflict.     

The Voice of (Which?) Africa: Miriam Makeba in America

Throughout her time as a concert singer in 1960s America Miriam Makeba was promoted as the embodied voice of a sonic, imagined Africa. Where her white audiences were attracted to the complete ‘‘otherness’’ of her African blackness, her black American audiences saw themselves – or imagined versions of themselves – put on stage, and built solidarities between their own struggle and the struggle against apartheid. In this essay, I argue that the discourses that followed Makeba’s voice and body reflected the evolving attitudes of America towards Africa, and, through Africa, its contradictory relationship to its own African American citizens. Makeba played on these discourses to craft a political and musical identity in solidarity with black and diasporic causes. This identity, embodied in the persona of ‘‘Mama Africa,’’ allowed Makeba the flexibility to speak to and for her fellow (South) Africans with cultural authority. By joining the oft-opposed positions of ‘‘Africa’’ and ‘‘The World,’’ Makeba became what I’m calling an African Cosmopolitan.     

Power Politics Behind the Transforming Geopolitics in East Asia

Current geopolitical dynamics in East Asia is generated by the US rebalancing and China’s counterbalancing. The US rebalancing has so far ended in an encircling of China, whereas China counteracts to extend into the seas and the lands as typified by the Belt and Road Initiative and assertive activities in the South China Sea. China under Xi Jinping’s leadership has set up a new guideline of ‘great power foreign policy’ (大国外交) to realize Xi Jinping’s ambitious vision of ‘China dream’. As delivered in the ‘New Model of Great Power Relations’, China under Xi Jinping’s leadership seeks clearly for ‘regional dominance’, while for ‘global balance’ with the USA. With rebalancing, however, the USA seeks to restore power balance in East Asia by adding up to military and economic resources already deployed there. By doing so, the USA aims to achieve its strategic goal of ‘regional balance’, while maintaining ‘global dominance’. These two distinct strategic goals, regional dominance and global balance for China and regional balance and global dominance for the USA, interact to result in currently transforming geopolitics in East Asia.     

Internal constraints on the process of industrialization in Gaza

This paper examines the internal constraints on Gaza's manufacturing sector during the Israeli occupation. Manufacturing development was constrained by the Israeli occupation, but the authors chose to look at the situation from Gaza's point of view, and examine the attitudes and the effects of the lack of industrial experience on manufacturing.

Internal constraints include the ‘lack of an adequate skills base’, ‘a misunderstanding and distrust of marketing’, ‘unsophisticated attitudes towards finance and the value of time’, ‘price being seen as more important than quality’ and ‘authoritarian attitudes to management practice’. Local education and training are struggling to remedy aspects of this situation but they presently lack the resources.

There was a widespread lack of understanding of the concept of a company as a separate entity.