Whole Soyinka and the Poetry of Isolation

This paper provides a glimpse of Islamic scholarship in Mirriah, Niger Republic, at a particular point in time, 1974–1975, before some of the latest currents of religious unrest erupted in West Africa. Through interviews with local scholars, it examines the degree to which they participated in a West African “core curriculum” shared with other Islamic scholars across the Sahel. It also explores the history of the malamai class in Mirriah, noting significant ties to the Bornu empire. Both the ruling dynasty and Mirriah itself also exemplify the process of “becoming Hausa”: people of diverse origins have come to define themselves as Hausa, adopting the Hausa language and the religion of Islam.     

二期寄语

茶楼开张,首辑数篇杂文随笔,笔触轻松,内容却格外厚重,发人深省,迎得读者好评。本期数文本是茶楼开张前投来的,因路窄人多,只好排作第二期,但品质绝不逊于首辑。篇篇精彩,恕难一一评点,在此本人作为楼主,权且将拜读诸文后心得充作本期寄语。     

On the Museum of Innocence: Caressing the World With Words

The megacities arising around the planet are like the Internet where many events are taking place simultaneously. The urban scape today is becoming more a space of flows—migrants, trade, capital, information, microbes—than a space of places rooted in an historical identity. The megaurban condition today encompasses many realities, from the glittering generic city‐state of Singapore to the slums climbing up the hillsides around Mexico City or Sao Paulo. In these spaces we work, love and live out the intimate moments of our lives. In these spaces we consume and spew out climate warming gases. In this section, two of the world's “star architects”—Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry—the visionary “arcologist” Paolo Soleri and the Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate, Orhan Pamuk, grasp at chronicling the reality of where we live.     

Doing Things with Words: The Case of 'Management' and 'Administration'

Over the last two decades, management, rather than administration, has become the dominant category through which both academics and practitioners talk, write and argue the organization of public services. More recently, the discourses of leadership have also been increasingly deployed in this context. Based on interviews with UK National Health Service trust chief executives, the article examines these particular discursive changes, exploring what the distinctions do rather than what the categories might represent. It reminds us of some of the things we do (in reality and to reality) when we deploy such words, especially in the debate about control. It also suggests possibilities for disturbing the dominance of the terms that are generally axiomatic in constructing arguments about the public sector; a dominance that has come to favour the interests of some as it denies the interests of others.     

The United Nations convention against the taking of hostages: The inside story

Abstract

This article briefly outlines the four‐year negotiating process from early 1976 to late 1979, which it was necessary to follow before agreement could be reached and the United Nations General Assembly adopted, by consensus, an international treaty designed to make the act of hostage‐taking a universal crime. The treaty requires that a ratifying state prosecute an international hostage‐taker found within its borders or hand over the hostage‐taker to another state for prosecution. It fills existing gaps in international law by abolishing existing “safe havens” for hostage‐takers. The article focuses in particular on the third and final three‐week meeting of the thirty‐five‐nation Ad Hoc Committee established by the United Nations to carry out this task and shows how agreement was finally achieved.     

The micro-politics of norm contestation between the OSCE and Kazakhstan: square pegs in round holes

Norm contestation by local actors has emerged in recent years as an explanation for the failure of norm diffusion. This article contributes to the literature on norm contestation by analysing how norms diffused by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) pertaining to election observation and free and fair voting are re-constituted and contested by domestic actors in Kazakhstan. The study contributes to the idea of ‘constitutive localisation’ by emphasising a more fundamental level of disagreement beyond just congruence between the diffused norm and local beliefs; by demonstrating contestation can occur in the later stages in the norm diffusion cycle; by focusing on the micro-politics of contestation by local actors involved in the implementation of diffused norms; and by revealing how norm contestation is not necessarily a process of emancipatory politics, but a strategic act to serve authoritarian consolidation. Utilising a four-fold framework, the analysis illustrates how norms, while initially accepted by Kazakhstani authorities, are reconstituted through political discourse and/or practice, creating the moment of contestation. While this contestation is instrumentalised by political elites for their own advantage, it also remains an important element of agency within a normative order which they had little previous control over.     

Political economy of land grabbing inside China involving foreign investors

China tends to be a dominant figure in the literature on global land grabbing. It is either cast as a major land grabber in distant places such as Africa, or as a key player in crop booms elsewhere because it provides for massive market demand, such as for soya from South America. These are all important issues and are well covered in the literature. However, the crop booms inside China that involve transnational capital and investors – and have provoked conflict around land politics – have been overlooked. Spotlighting the issue of land grabbing inside China reminds us that capital accumulation is principally interested in geographies and settings where it can generate profit – regardless of nationalities, boundaries, structural or institutional conditions. This paper hopes to contribute towards a more refined picture of global land grabbing.     

奥运会前话奥运

随着宣传媒体的飞速发展,尤其是电视在世界上的普及,4年一度的国际体育盛事--奥林匹克运动会已经成为全世界关注的一大焦点.     

"A Dime Store of Words": Liberty Magazine and the Cultural Logic of the Popular Press

Abstract

The essay posits the question of the end of May Fourth as a properly political sequence. If we consider May Fourth as a political movement, asking how it ends implies asking what kind of political subjects and political organizations were active then and ceased to be active at a certain point in time. Asking when and how the May Fourth movement ended implies, therefore, asking what ended. The essay analyzes a series of statements and actions signaling the “end” or the “defeat” of May Fourth in order to question whether there were collective practices, locations, and categories proper to the May Fourth period and how they got exhausted. Two elements appear to be crucial: the organizational structure of the xuehui and the category of “student.”     

中苏核武器合作内幕

1958年7月31日至8月3日,苏联领导人赫鲁晓夫和国防部长马利诺夫斯基秘密访问了北京.中国提出,请苏联"老大哥"传授核技术.然而,从60年代初开始,两国关系逐渐紧张进而演变为公开对抗.1964年10月16日,中国依靠自己的力量成功地试爆了第一颗原子弹.俄罗斯汉学家通过查阅大量从未公开过的文献,揭开了当年中苏领导人之间鲜为人知的内幕.