The Women Preachers of the Secular State: The Politics of Preaching at the Intersection of Gender,Ethnicity and Sovereignty in Turkey

This article analyzes the politics of preaching in Turkey in the last decade by focusing on the appointment of women as preachers and vice-muftis by the Turkish Presidency of Religious Affairs (Diyanet), a state institution established for the protection of secular foundations through religious service. It asks what happens when women wearing headscarves become civil servants and give religious guidance in a secular state, which prohibits headscarves in public offices and schools. It shows that the context, the use and the interlocutors of preaching make ordinary religious activity a complicated political practice that interacts with gender, ethnicity and state sovereignty. It argues that exceptional integration of headscarved women into public offices would seem to be an achievement given the long lasting political activism of women over the headscarf, but in the final analysis it serves the sovereign power of the state, which aims to absorb both Islamist and Kurdish challenges by mobilizing women preachers.     

Arab Identity and Ideology in Sudan: The Politics of Language, Ethnicity, and Race

In what is now Sudan there occurred over the centuries a processof ta'rib, or Arabization, entailing the gradual spread of bothArab identity and the Arabic language among northern peoples.After the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of 1898, British colonialpolicies favoured a narrow elite from within these ‘Arab’communities. Members of this elite went on to develop a conceptionof a self-consciously Sudanese Arabic national identity, inthe process adapting the term ‘Sudanese’ (sudani),which derived from an Arabic word for blackness and previouslyhad servile connotations. At decolonization in the 1950s, thesenationalists turned ta'rib, into an official policy that soughtto propagate Arabic quickly throughout a territory where scoresof languages were spoken. This article considers the historicaldiffusion of Sudanese Arabic-language culture and Arab identity,contrasts this with the post-colonial policy of Arabization,and analyses the relevance of the latter for civil conflictsin Southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains, and, more recently, Darfur.Far from spreading Arabness, Arabization policy sharpened non-Araband, in some cases, self-consciously ‘African’ (implyingculturally pluralist) identities. Arabization policy also accompanied,in some quarters, the growth of an ideology of Arab culturaland racial supremacy that is now most evident in Darfur. This publication was made possible in part by grants from theCarnegie Corporation of New York (Carnegie Scholars Program,2006) and the University Research Foundation of the Universityof Pennsylvania, but the statements made and views expressedare solely the responsibility of the author. The author wouldalso like to thank Benjamin F. Soares, Karin Willemse, VijayBalasubramanian, and two anonymous referees for their feedbackon earlier drafts of this article; the African Studies Centreat the University of Leiden for hosting the seminar (April 2007)where this work was first presented; and Tukufu Zuberi, EveTroutt Powell and the Africana Studies Center of the Universityof Pennsylvania for organizing a symposium on Darfur (1 March2007) that helped to bring ideas into focus.     

Inequality,Ethnicity, Political Mobilisation and Political Violence in Latin America: The Cases of Bolivia,Guatemala and Peru*

The paper explores the relationship between political violence and ‘horizontal’ inequality in ethnically‐divided countries in Latin America. The cases studied are Bolivia, Guatemala and Peru. Preliminary results are reported on the measurement of horizontal inequality, or that between groups, defined in cultural, ethnic and/or religious terms. The Latin American cases are shown to be often more unequal than the cases from Africa and Asia included in the wider study of which the work forms a part. The complex relationship between such inequality, ethnicity and political violence is explored historically. Ethnicity is today rarely a mobilising factor in violence in the Latin American cases, but the degree of inequality based on ethnicity is shown to be highly relevant to the degree of violence which results once conflict is instigated. History explains why.     

The Mining Industry and the State: The Politics of Tin Restriction in Bolivia, 1936–1939

In the aftermath of the Chaco War (1932–1935) a strong left nationalist political current emerged in Bolivia which defined the three large mining companies of Patiño, Hochschild and Aramayo as a superstate, controlling both the economy and the politics of the nation to their own advantage. This article challenges that characterisation by examining the way in which the state exercised control over the two largest producers. Unfortunately, the state lacked the technical capacity to use its powers responsibly, preventing the development of a coherent mining policy.     

The Failures of Neo‐Liberal State Building in Iraq: Assessing Australia's Post‐Conflict Reconstruction and Development Initiatives

This article examines Australia's post‐conflict reconstruction and development initiatives in Iraq following the intervention of 2003. Overall, it finds that Australia privileged the neo‐liberal model of post‐conflict state building by investing in projects that would enhance the capacity of the new Iraqi state, its key institutions and the private sector towards the imposition of a liberal democracy and a free‐market economy. To demonstrate, this article documents the failures of the Australian government's stated aims to “support agriculture” and “support vulnerable populations” via interviews conducted in Iraq with rural farmers and tribal members and those working in, or the beneficiaries of, Iraq's disability sector. It concludes by noting that such failures are not only indicative of the inadequacy of the neo‐liberal state building model, but also that these failures point the way forward for future post‐conflict reconstruction and development projects which ought to be premised on a genuine and sustained commitment to addressing the needs of those made most vulnerable by war and regime change.