Zimbabwe’s transition overload: an interpretation

ABSTRACT

The article argues that to understand the troubled history of Zimbabwe we have to pay attention to the multiple and incomplete ‘transitions’ that the country underwent within three decades. Each of these transitions was probably inevitable and the trajectory they followed may be the right one for each of the transitions. However, the transitions in Zimbabwe were intertwined in a not always mutually supportive way. Indeed, we also argue that eventually, Zimbabwe suffered from a ‘transition overload’ as the many transitions undermined or confounded each other. The article is also a caution against the preoccupation of individuals in Zimbabwean history. Finally, there are some lessons for post-conflict countries that are often faced with wide-ranging agenda that often include externally imposed items.     

The fate of the Assyrian minority in early independent Iraq: a test case of political violence based on rational primordialism

Analyzing ethno-national conflicts is usually not easy in that not all quantitative scientific tools are useful to the student of a conflict based on primordial elements. The burden of studying the outcome of a conflict is all the more complex given that the two conflicting groups might be at two different stages of their political development at any given time during the course of the conflict. In the case of the fate of the [Eastern Christian] Assyrian community in early independent Iraq, the political rationale for decisions taken by each party was drawn from different sociological, historical and political realms. Decisions in times of conflict and their political and historical ramifications are not always rational, since they draw upon primordial/communal considerations rather than the accurate reading of the overall true strategic scene.

The violence was an outcome of a combination of primordial differences and rational choice. The Iraqis sought to establish a new sovereign state with minimal disturbances from its Christian minority that they perceived as not belonging to the new nation. As for the Assyrians, they chose violence believing that at least some superpowers would support them. Historically, this rational decision based upon a primordial dispute turned out to be a mistake primarily because of lack of external support, weak internal cohesion of the group, and feeble leadership.     

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.     

From paradigm shift to retooling: the foundation and maintenance of the AKP

ABSTRACT

This article examines the foundation of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi-AKP) after a paradigm shift and its maintenance through retooling, which involves strategic positionings and tactical manoeuvres within its new paradigm. The positionings and manoeuvres that the party took vis-à-vis states of exception have been imperative for its survival in government. The main argument of the article is that the AKP retooled itself in the face of crises rather than going through a paradigmatic change, that is to say, resorting back to the Islamism of the party elite’s origins, in Kuhnian terms. Through the fluidity of its discourse and the unrivalled charisma of its leader, the AKP has -multiple times- changed the center of gravity of its discourse and policies without having to disarticulate its founding political imaginary. Neither its recently increased nationalism nor authoritarianism was the result of an ideological orientation, just like the democratic reforms in its initial years. They were mostly by-products of survival efforts at power positioning, through retooling.     

Over the centuries: a history of Wollstonecraft reception

ABSTRACT

Both Wollstonecraft’s fame and infamy are attributable to her lived experience as the woman author of the only radical republican feminist text published in the pamphlet war of the 1790s. Yet, her radical republican politics were divorced from her gender politics in the early reception. This paper argues that this separation was subsequently sustained in part by interpretive practices that rest on the suppression of the original split. It shows that over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, both outside and within academia, the dominant interpretive tendency of neglecting Wollstonecraft’s radical republican politics has deradicalized both her historical political thought and her iconic image. This conventional reception has both enabled and limited the resources made available through Wollstonecraft to feminists throughout history.     

国籍·民族主义·"社会主义":战后缅甸华侨国籍个案研究

吴努时期,缅甸华侨中存在国籍(选择)问题的主要是第一代移民、一代和少数二代以上的侨生.这一时期这部分华侨入籍并不积极,入籍比例较低.这主要是缅甸民族主义政策对华侨的影响,吴努政府对"社会主义"的理解和实践,中缅关系的亲善,中国对缅甸华侨的影响等多种因素综合作用的结果.     

The role of moral disengagement in the execution process

The present study tested the proposition that disengagement of moral self-sanctions enables prison personnel to carry out the death penalty. Three subgroups of personnel in penitentiaries located in three Southern states were assessed in terms of eight mechanisms of moral disengagement. The personnel included the execution teams that carry out the executions; the support teams that provide solace and emotional support to the families of the victims and the condemned inmate; and prison guards who have no involvement in the execution process. The executioners exhibited the highest level of moral, social, and economic justifications, disavowal of personal responsibility, and dehumanization. The support teams that provide the more humane services disavowed moral disengagement, as did the noninvolved guards but to a lesser degree than the support teams.     

西方大众文化理论的反拨与突破——批判理论的批判与理论多元的开放

大众文化的崛起与文化产业的兴盛带来了许多理论话题与现实问题.西方大众文化理论的先后引进,刺激了中国大众文化批评的开展,也能解决一部分中国的大众文化现实问题.但要警惕和防止以"他者"的文化眼光来遮蔽中国本土的问题情境,或把西方社会的文化问题硬性移植到中国而变成"假想敌",所以,必须结合中国实际将西方文化理论"再语境化",结合中国当前的"后革命"特色坚持适时而积极的文化批评.     

“三个代表”重要思想中关于执政党建设理论及其特点

"三个代表"重要思想中关于执政党建设的理论,具有两大突出特点,即反映了符合时代特点的执政观;体现了全面安排、整体推进、重点突出和有机结合的统一性。新世纪新阶段,贯彻"三个代表"重要思想,要以提高党的执政能力为重点,全面推进党的建设新的伟大工程。