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This paper revisits some of the writing of E.P. Thompson, a British historian held to have been influential in the development of social history in South Africa. Differently to debates that seek to establish the extent of his direct influence, the paper is concerned with the concepts Thompson used, and seeks to understand his theory and method for approaching historical transformation. The paper suggests that Thompson's reception in South African studies has generally ignored his materialism and used his concepts empirically without reckoning with some of their broad theoretical arguments. The paper then shows how Thompson's Marxian critique resonates with the historical anthropology of Jean and John Comaroff. Yet, the paper shows, this historical anthropology has been the object of attack by social history for its alleged failure to contextualise. The paper argues that what is at stake in this Africanist debate are two understandings of context that turn on the character of the empirical in research and the place of capitalism in contemporary studies of South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the process and findings of a critical evaluation conducted for a custom-made Location based game (LBG) designed to support reflection on social history. We use a mixed-method protocol to answer the following research questions: "Can a LBG be designed to stimulate situated reflection on social history topics? and "What form and type of reflections can occur when participating in a LBG? Using an innovative approach that took inspiration from the field of museum studies and computer science. We chose a Think-aloud protocol to conduct an evaluation in Valletta, Malta and adapted the Remind study protocol to explore participant experience in Luxembourg. We combined transcripts from both sets of experiments wiith user-generated content to complete a systematic analysis using a predefined set of qualitative codes. We were able to identify that LBG can support reflection on social history topics but the depth of and type of reflection depends on the social history content, the individual locations in the city, and personal connections players are able to make to both. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the powerful stereotypical media discourse that shapes and reproduces a certain racialised and prejudiced perception of people identified as “Roma” in Germany. Using a close analysis of a single picture – appearing as harmless at first glance – and through the reconstruction of its various interpretational contexts and semantics the paper identifies mechanisms used in stereotypical media coverage of “Roma”. This qualitative analysis draws on media analysis of antigypsyism as well as on research of photographic construction of the “gypsy” in order to analyse the contemporary visual regime of “Roma” in Germany. As it portrays “the Roma” as a fundamentally different and socially deviant group, this visual stereotyping is shown to be an integral element of the persistent antigypsyist ideology, deeply embedded in German society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the first specific exploration of Muslim slaves in front of American courts and legal mechanisms more broadly from the seventeenth century through the nineteenth century. As hundreds of thousands of slaves who came to America had Muslim backgrounds, many of those Muslim slaves found themselves in front of legal regimes and American courts. However, the Muslim identities of these slaves, despite the importance that their religious beliefs might have had for them, were rarely discussed in the case law or not mentioned at all. Drawing from Patterson’s notion of the “socially dead” slave, this paper draws on numerous examples from cases like Amistad to cases dealing with wills and estates to note that the ties to Islam in these cases were obfuscated and minimized. The social death of Muslim slaves in the way that the court documented their experiences silences the voices of American Muslim slaves who reacted in unique ways to their condition of slavery. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines methodological avenues for a historical sociology of development through a close reading of Naomi Hossain's recent book, The Aid Lab: Understanding Bangladesh's Unexpected Success (2017). Hossain's conjunctural perspective, the formative moment of Bangladesh in environmental catastrophe, war and famine in the 1970s, establishes a novel account of the country's development trajectory. Contingencies of the moment and consequent political uncertainties committed an emergent national elite to a largely informal but substantive social compact against future crises of subsistence. The result was a specific, transnational power configuration rendering Bangladesh a test case for developmental interventions and the production of knowledge regarding them. Debates in critical development studies have often posited that such 'elite commitment' is a consequence and not so much a precondition for social improvement, brought about through struggles from 'below.' How might these positions be reconciled by shifting the temporal frames of reference? By rendering historical processes legible as conflicting and complementary interactions between different social forces and actors? How can such actors be envisaged without presuming their identities and interests as fixed or given, but rather, as shaping and being shaped by such processes? These questions motivate the immanent critique and reappraisal of Hossain's timely work, highlighting its significance for dynamic analyses of historical capitalism today through the 'universal particularities' of the national case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article enquires into the socioeconomic causes of recurrent food scarcity in the nineteenth-century Middle East. Focusing on Iran as a case study, the paper shows that certain categories involved in the production and distribution of grain engaged in profiteering schemes and thereby contributed to the making of food shortage in urban settings. The most important of these groups were the government officials, the landed classes, and the grain merchants. The local bakers were also involved, but they did not have as decisive a role as the other groups. In showing how these categories engaged in market manipulation, the paper contends that food scarcity cannot be explained without a proper understanding of the commercialization of grain and the economic integration of the Middle East in the nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author problematizes the distinction between experience near and experience distant by suggesting that this bifurcation has everything to do with whether we think in terms of Cushman's one complex world or split worlds. The ground between experience near and experience distant is the ground on which our histories, cultures, traumas, and differences exist. The author questions whether the cherished belief that the gold standard of hearing from the patient and staying close to the patient's experience and view of reality is enough anymore. Our therapeutic passive receptiveness—our willingness to be taught- could be felt by our patients as disinterest, prejudice against, superiority, or non-reflected upon privilege. We need to be ready and willing to communicate or signal our openness, respect, and curiosity about the lived experience, histories, and cultures of those different from ourselves. Ethical labor is made up of the empathic stretch to know and research those aspects of our patients lives and familial cultural and social histories that simply cannot yet be delivered in affectively accessible forms. We must try to understand that what may feel like experience distance is so very much more than that. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using ethnographic data on Boston's Haymarket Square, this paper demonstrates how public space and a market opportunity can generate solidarity among people of different ethnicities in the form of a cosmopolitan canopy, and how a single ethnic tradition can nurture an open, public multi-ethnic environment. The paper illustrates how Haymarket vendors' treatment of ethnic and racial difference is actively deployed in the construction of new groups that largely transcend such distinctions. This article outlines the mechanisms by which a cosmopolitan canopy is sustained, and how it serves a constructive social function within the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the state of post-war memory in the Croatian city of Vukovar. It addresses the recent resurgence of Croatian nationalism, manifested through the implementation and subsequent vandalism of civic bilingual (Latin/Cyrillic) plaques. It does so by examining the culture of commemoration that has come to define Vukovar since Croatian independence in 1995 and that has remained powerfully persuasive to this day. Considered a national symbol and an emblem of sacrifice, the city of Vukovar has become encoded by the rhetoric of its wartime past, allowing little opportunity for future development and growth. This paper argues that while such observance and remembrance are elements crucial to the formation of national identity, collective memory itself must remain in flux, constantly changing to remain useful for the generations to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses analysis of interview transcripts and notes from participant observation to explore white reactions to the introduction of diversity management in a large public sector workplace in Glasgow. The paper analyses white talk about racial equality in a social context where the shaming, exclusion and demonization of disadvantaged groups including migrants, asylum seekers and the poor have ensured that issues of entitlement and race are highly charged. It is suggested that in such contexts diversity management is being wielded as a new kind of civility by middle-class people invested in the objectification of poor whites. This represents a form of class conflict over belonging within the body of whiteness that risks reinforcing rather than redressing racial resentments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Heritage’ is a term that is ambiguous in the best of circumstances; however, it becomes even more so in urban environments where conflicts of identity and culture are pivotal, as in Israel’s mixed Israeli-Palestinian cities. In this paper, I examine the recent redevelopment of the Jaffa port, Israel. Jaffa’s ancient port has had a significant role in facilitating industry, commerce and social ties in the area, and it has recently been remodelled by the city as a cultural and entertainment hub. Through interviews with key stakeholders and observations, I examine the role of heritage in the redevelopment using two broad categories: heritage of the built environment and cultural heritage, including the practice of fishing. I argue that while efforts have been made to conserve the waterfront’s heritage, the redevelopment has resulted in an artificial space that does not speak to the local culture of Jaffa as it is interpreted by the port community, including the fishermen. The Jaffa case study suggests that more attention should be paid to the delicate role of urban planners in facilitating change in a politically and culturally contested environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

When New Zealand military forces occupied Sāmoa in 1914, there were 12 recorded leprosy sufferers isolated in a leprosy station established by the Imperial German government in the village of Falefa. By 1918, the leprosy sufferers had been relocated to the island of Nu‘utele, off the east coast of Upolu. Four years later in 1922, the patients were transferred to the Fiji leprosy colony on the island of Makogai. Drawing largely on archival, song and oral records, this paper focuses on the years from 1918 to 1922 and examines the network of authorities involved in the care of leprosy sufferers and the policies of the New Zealand administration to keep Sāmoa ‘clean’ of the disease. This care and these policies led to the ‘Makogai solution’, which, as fragments of songs and oral histories indicate, was for decades to haunt those left behind in Sāmoa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Central Leprosy Hospital on the Fijian Island of Makogai received patients of many ethnicities and from many localities across the British southwest Pacific. Yet, during the years of the hospital’s operation from 1911 to 1969, Indians comprised the largest single ethnic group. They were almost all indentured labourers, brought to Fiji to work on sugar plantations, or the descendants of those who remained after their contracts expired. Drawing on archival records, this paper explores Indian identity on Makogai. On one hand, the experience of Indian patients was shaped by an ambiguous connection to place formed partly through both the stigma and the mechanisms of indenture. On the other, they shared with fellow patients on Makogai the stigma of leprosy and the experience of the disease and isolation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores intersections between the HIV and human rights in Zimbabwe, a country with a high HIV prevalence and a contested human rights record. In-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted with 60 people living in poor communities in the capital, Harare, are used to explore their lived experiences of HIV. The participants’ responses indicate the essential role that human rights play in successfully living and surviving with HIV. We identify health-rights standards and use a rights-based analysis to discuss a range of health-related concerns, in particular, those related to treatment and the social mediation of disadvantage. The social determinants of health and structural violence conceptually frame our understanding of the participants’ accounts of successes and failures in relation to poverty reduction, gendered disadvantage, discrimination and public health and illustrate how the individual and collective agency generated by rights-based empowerment can improve health and well-being in difficult political and social environments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper questions the categorisation of good/bad governance and argues that such a stylised conception fails to capture the ambivalence of responsibilities and accountabilities in a political system characterised by multiple layers of authorities. Using a case study of the tobacco monopoly in China, the paper shows the contradictory goals and outcomes in different modes of operation that defy a stylised categorisation. A vigorously enforced regulatory regime with a higher level of transparency and bureaucratic accountability raised the national revenue and put tobacco production in accordance with the national plan. Yet it has severely impaired the welfare and livelihood of tobacco peasants. Conversely, a regulatory regime captured by parochial interests and sabotaged by rent-seeking politics rendered bureaucratic authority arbitrary and opaque, and at the expense of the state plan and national interests. Nonetheless it protected the welfare of peasants, improved local production and helped develop the local economy. The paper argues that the pathways to good governance are not only multi-linear, but also heterodox and unpredictable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores collective memory in Newham, East London. It addresses how remembering East London as the home of whiteness and traditional forms of community entails powerful forms of forgetting. Newham's formation through migration – its ‘great time’ – has ensured that myths of indigeneity and whiteness have never stood still. Through engaging with young people's and youth workers' memory practices, the paper explores how phantasms of whiteness and class loss are traced over, and how this tracing reveals ambivalence and porosity, at the same time as it highlights the continued allure of race. It explores how whiteness and class loss are appropriated across ethnic boundaries and how they are mobilized to produce new forms of racial hierarchy in a ‘super-diverse’ place. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the development of Bangkok's urban spaces in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It aims to understand the ways Western culture influenced the development and use of urban spaces in this non-Western and non-colonized city. Thailand, then known as Siam, is unique as it was the only country in Southeast Asia that was not colonized by Western powers. Accordingly, the domestic political circumstances in Thailand played a critical role in the country's path to modernization. The primary shifts in accordance with the country's modernization were concentrated on the capital city and its society. Amongst the shifts of urban environment, the urban spaces in Bangkok were transformed and developed. The paper argues that the Siamese absolute monarch was a critical agent in the development process and that the modern spaces were developed in Bangkok as part of the king's wider political strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits the controversy over whether unemployed workers in interwar Britain chose not to work because unemployment benefits were too generous. Economists have generally neglected the actual expressions of unemployed workers on the subject, while focusing rather narrowly on the economic aspects of work. The paper takes seriously the voices of unemployed workers, providing economists with a historian's perspective. Unemployment brought workers isolation, family breakdowns, anxiety-ridden idleness, shame and hardship for spouses. Their testimonies render implausible the argument that they voluntarily elected not to work. The evidence emphasises that work meant more than a source of income: it had positive social aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I discuss my life history study on experiences of race in the lives of Jewish-Canadian and Jewish-American birth mothers of children from black/white interracial, inter-religious relationships. Opening with a reflection on my personal experience and what compelled me to undertake this research, I then provide a short introduction to attitudes about interracial/inter-religious relationships found in the literature, followed by an introduction to my research methodology. Finally, I compare and contrast the experiences of three Jewish-American mothers, excerpted from their published narratives, and the experiences of two Jewish-Canadian mothers from two recorded interviews, with my own experience. I conclude this paper with a brief summary of the emerging themes in my research and how they add to our understanding of mothering across racialized boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper depicts the transnational ethnic and religious ties between China and Southeast Asia and examines the cultural, political and economic implications for state–minority relations in Southwest China. It documents how transnational ethnic and religious ties facilitate cultural revival among the ethnic Dai people in Southwest China and examines the impact of Buddhist networks on local governance. In particular, it portrays the cooperative relationship between the Chinese state and the Buddhist Sangha on social issues such as HIV/AIDS prevention and care. The paper argues that the Chinese state is more willing to cooperate with transnational ethnic and religious groups when the latter can help improve local governance and generate economic development, under the condition that they do not challenge the state's ultimate legitimacy and authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary conservation discourse, an uncomfortable distinction exists between the foreign organisations invested in protected areas and the surrounding ‘local communities’. Specifically, this dichotomy seems to reinforce a stereotypical set of imagined stakeholders, ultimately promoting Euro-American conservation experts as the instructors of uninformed residents in wild areas. This paper presents publications on two community-based conservation efforts in South Luangwa, Zambia that emphasise this division: Administrate Management Design (ADMADE) and Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO). Through community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) literature from Zambia, additional CBNRM narratives from elsewhere in Southern Africa, and limited supporting ethnographic evidence from South Luangwa, this paper demonstrates the continued Euro-American environmental hegemony of ‘community-focused’ conservationism. In particular, the perspectives publicised by both ADMADE and COMACO suggest that without influence from international conservation institutions, ‘communities’ that live amongst wildlife in Zambia will deplete their natural resources and in the process alter the African savannah as imagined and revered by the global North. This paper introduces a preliminary analysis of both ADMADE and COMACO in attempt to unveil their inherent imperial associations and highlight the local challenges to their protocols. In so doing, this critique serves as a point of departure for future comparative research on the repeat assumptions and rejections of CBNRM programmes in Southern Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper contends that Salim al-tavarikh, a didactic genealogical history of the Arains published in 1919, was a sophisticated discursive means of claiming high social status for the community in the historical context of colonial Punjab. The interpretive techniques adopted in this text for making these claims go against the grain of existing scholarly literature on social mobility and reformist Islamic thought in modern South Asia. First, it constructed a genealogical history which traced the colonial Arains’ origin to early Islamic Arabia by claiming that they were descendants of Arab soldiers who had participated in the Umayyad general Muhammad bin Qasim’s early eighth century conquest of Sindh. As the progeny of these valorous Arab-Muslim conquerors, the colonial Arains were a distinctive Muslim community with innately Islamic attributes. Second, drawing upon this inherent Muslimness, it developed a reformist perspective tailored to the Arains’ political classification as one of Punjab’s elite ‘agriculturalists.’ It recast the Arains’ adherence to an inheritance system based on custom and Arain peasant women’s mobility as practices supported by the Quran. In this way, this text upheld the Arains’ ‘true’ Muslim identity while consolidating their agriculturalist status. This narrative also contested contemporary representations of the community as ‘bad’ Muslims of ‘lowly’ indigenous origin.ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHERCopyright of South Asian History & Culture is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores significant factors influencing the process of Arab American racial formation. I bring into conversation theories of racial formation and ‘political shock’ in social movement scholarship to develop the notion of ‘racialized political shock’ as an important factor in how racial and ethnic groups mobilize and organize. Many moments of political shock are highly racialized and have the potential to reorder the racial and ethnic landscape in ways that can open opportunities or introduce constraints to mobilizations around racial formation. Drawing on existing studies of Arab Americans, this paper highlights how Arab American racial formation has been galvanized during moments of racialized political shock. In the Arab American case, these moments have led to a call for recognition outside the category of white. I conclude by outlining ways forward in the study of Arab Americans, who have been overlooked in studies of race and ethnicity in the US. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Histories are re-writing what Sherna Berger Gluck famously called the ‘master historical narrative’ of the US WLM, especially in historicizing the efforts of feminists of colour. This paper echoes this by exploring how white feminists embraced racial justice politics, particularly during the early 1970s, when it is often assumed that white feminists failed to enact racial justice. In historicizing the efforts of white anti-imperialist feminists in greater Boston, I maintain that the ‘master historical narrative’ wrote not only black, Chicana and multiracial feminisms out of history, but that it skewed our understanding of the race politics of white, US feminists. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper considers mutual imaging of aid workers and Bhutanese refugees in Nepal. Based on a theoretical perspective of aid as a socially negotiated arena, the contextual and interactionist concept of imaging is used, rather than labelling (which is done to people), or perceptions (located in one actor's head). The paper uses a Q-methodology that symmetrically researches different groups of actors by posing the same questions. Our data confirm that the distinctions between the way aid workers and recipients view themselves, each other and the aid provided were more gradual than clear-cut between categories and that the legitimacy of aid workers is not determined by the perceived quality of aid. Problems with routinised aid were not translated into negative images, whereas problems with new and irregular types of aid were. Our research indicates the importance of the interaction between implementing staff and active beneficiaries. The roles of these active volunteers and incentive workers are important but ambiguous. They may smooth the divide between aid agencies and clients, but their proximity to the aid regime may also lead to tensions. The way these roles are played out and the effect this has on imaging and aid legitimacy is an area for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic segregation has become an emerging feature in Malaysia's education system even though the institutional role of education should have been a unifying force for the country's multi-ethnic society. The underlying problem is that, at all levels of education provision in Malaysia, alternative streams are allowed to coexist alongside mainstream education provided by the government. Alarmingly, these alternative streams are not reinforcing what mainstream education is trying to do: foster ethnic integration. Instead, the alternative streams have become divided along ethnic lines. This paper looks at the development of Malaysia's education system and examines two main factors that have contributed to the current state of ethnic segregation: enrolment choices and preferential policies. These two factors have in one way or another helped to strengthen the coexistence of alternative streams alongside mainstream education from which ethnic segregation emerges. These alternative streams have become competing rather than supplementary/complementary forces capable of challenging mainstream education. This paper explains how these two factors contribute to ethnic segregation at all levels of education notwithstanding their causal relationships at certain levels of education. Second, it evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the measures taken by the Malaysian government to desegregate the education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the increasingly popular research area of 'living history' - the presentation of an historical period by live actors who portray and 'live out' the conditions of a particular time and place, largely through public events and other forms of staged reconstruction. While the topic might be analysed from various approaches, the paper endeavours to focus upon 'living history' largely as a 'serious leisure' pursuit, enquiring as to who participates and why. The paper is founded upon a survey of one re-enactment society in the UK which depicts the Civil War in the USA. As one of the largest of such societies, the American Civil War Society (ACWS) not only provides a fine example of 'living history', but one largely outside of its immediate historical and cultural context. The paper argues that re-enacted events, certainly in the case of a male-dominated 'living history' society, are not primarily an educational exercise. Rather, they are meaningful for the individuals involved, sustaining and enhancing their life-style interests and a 'serious' hobby through camaraderie, collective involvement, and a subjective understanding of authenticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a paper which provides a selective overview of history writing in and about the French Overseas Territory of New Caledonia. The tensions experienced by New Caledonia since the late 1960's, and particularly during the 1980's between the pro-independence Kanak movement and large sections of the Caldoche community may have significantly decreased during the 1990's, but the present problems faced by New Caledonia have been postponed rather than solved. This paper also proposes a thematic commentary on New Caledonia's historiography.

In a 1997 paper in Urban Studies , Clapham argued that Housing Studies could benefit from an injection of social constructionist research, as previous housing research had been driven by policy-makers. This paper rebuts this argument, demonstrating that such research has been carried out by sociologists of housing in Britain for some 30 years. The paper continues with a detailed example of such research, offering a case study of the housing management of the interwar (1924) Glasgow housing scheme of Hamiltonhill. Marrying constructionist and materialist theoretical perspectives, and drawing upon a wealth of empirical data, the paper demonstrates that the social practice of council housing management in interwar Glasgow was blatantly aimed at the social control of public-sector tenants, and that this social control was firmly located in contemporary class relationships and class ideology. The paper concludes that such a perspective has considerable potential for the analysis of current housing management practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the 1940s and the 1950s, a crucial period of change for Algerian nationalism and state formation, Berber activists within the anti-colonial nationalist movement challenged the political line of the nationalist party, theMouvement pour le Triomphe des Libertés Démocratiques. This opposition focused on the need to redefine the concept of identity: activists did not reject either Arabic or Islam—the dual linguistic-religious core of national identity for Algerian nationalists—but they identified with a broader idea of an ‘Algerian Algeria’ that could incorporate various components of society. Through the study of archival sources, this paper analyses the origins and consequences of the 1949 controversy within Algerian nationalism known as the ‘Berberist crisis’. Particular attention is paid to the idea of the nation proposed, assessing whether and how Berber activists participated in the political debate and state-building. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper traces the growth of working-class street markets in Victorian London and argues that they possessed the capacity to disrupt axiomatic narratives of liberal reform and commercial progress. It contends that accounts by slum writers (James Greenwood and George Gissing) and the visions of market reformers (Baroness Burdett-Coutts and Arthur Cawston) sought to define the parameters of a proscribed sphere of informal commerce and to replace it with a sanitized, formal ideal. Rather than meekly fading away into obsolescence, however, street traders challenged these ‘static images’ in spaces like Whitecross Street Market, which flourished on the frontiers of urban modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper discusses how the recent history of famine has influenced the mission of relief-oriented non-governmental organisations (NGOs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the popularity of hula in contemporary Japanese society in order to understand how Native Hawaiian images and traditions play a role in constructing the image of a ‘paradise’ in Hawai`i. By drawing on the personal experience of the author as a participant observer in hula lessons and performance in Tokyo, it argues that aiming for the sense of cultural authenticity is integral to the Japanese practitioners’ attraction to hula. It also shows how Native Hawaiian hula teachers and performers skillfully appropriate the Japanese desire to discover an ‘authentic’ Hawai`i for their cultural as well as personal gain. Today’s Japanese discourse of ‘Hawai`i as paradise’ derives from the contemporary socio-cultural context of a Japanese society that longs for the authentic culture of the indigenous ‘other’ as well as from the shrewd use of that longing by the ‘other.’ [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to describe and analyse the royal harem and its functions during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848–96), on the basis of two independent Persian-language sources written by noble Iranian women at the turn of nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Naser al-Din's daughter, Taj al-Saltana (1884–1936), who in her famous memoirs vividly rendered her early years spent on her imperial father's court, and ‘Lady from Kerman’ (whose identity remains, for the moment, unclear), who authored a latterly published travelogue of pilgrimage to Mecca and the holy Shi'a places in contemporary Iraq held by her in the early 1890s. The second part of the latter account is entirely dedicated to the sojourn in Tehran, where, upon coming back from the sacred journey, the woman was a frequent guest at the royal harem. Both accounts are unique as they are the only known first-hand sources penned by the female insiders of the harem in nineteenth-century Iran. Furthermore, both authors, who actually met each other, describe the same figures and events – which provide an opportunity to compare their relations and augment our knowledge about Iran in the late Naseri period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the slow but steady transformation in how Coptic identity has been articulated and expressed since the mid-1990s. In the past, Copts were careful not to challenge a particular narrative of national unity, which formally included Copts in the Egyptian nation (‘religion is for God, and the nation is for all’), but which in practice imposed a kind of public invisibility on them. Today, a growing number of activists are seeking a public identity for Copts, a form of the ‘politics of recognition’ and the ‘right to difference’. This is a controversial approach within the Coptic community, as well as between the Copts and the Muslim majority and the Egyptian state, and to some extent has required new vehicles for Coptic self-organization and expression, outside the older ‘neo-millet’ institutions that had governed Coptic life for decades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many inhabitants of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) hold the belief that their society is not only more egalitarian today than that of their forefathers', but also more egalitarian than that in Pakistan. According to them, Pakistani society continues to be highly hierarchical with stark class and caste-like boundaries, while in AJK these boundaries have become weaker and merely symbolic since the 1970s due to changes in four interconnected factors; namely, migration patterns, land ownership, access to education, and democratic politics. This created an unprecedented level of social mobility among and within biradaris, the caste-like kinship corporate entities that are the crucial social boundary in this region. Yet, the main factor dictating membership in the biradari – endogamy – did not change, and access to power and resources is still determined mostly through biradari-ism. In this paper, I examine how notions of hierarchy and social stratification evolved over time and what contributed to this evolution. I argue and conclude that AJK society is still hierarchical but it has gained an element of fluidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses annual commemorative activities of July 11 in the Bosnian diaspora communities in Europe, the USA and Australia, a widely embraced grassroots trend commemorating the 1995 Srebrenica genocide that has become an important act of public memorialisation, reassertion of collective identity and a form of political activism among the Bosnian refugees and genocide survivors in different places across the globe where they have settled. In addition to serving as a cohesive factor among the members of the Bosnian diaspora communities and providing them with a social context in which they can collectively mourn their losses, the Srebrenica commemorations in diaspora have been increasingly reaching out to include members and leaders of the mainstream communities; hence becoming distinct, locally situated, global public events about Bosnia and Srebrenica rather than remaining the exclusive Bosnian immigrants' gatherings that they initially tended to be. In conjunction with the public commemorations, Bosnian diaspora organisations and initiatives have successfully lobbied the governments of their adopted countries to pass resolutions recognising the Srebrenica genocide and calling for July 11 to be acknowledged as the Srebrenica Remembrance Day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the French finally seized control of the Lao territories on the east bank of the Mekong from the Siamese in 1893, Houaphan became an internal upland frontier region within colonial Indochina. Unfamiliar with the concept of overlapping spheres of sovereignty—during the nineteenth century, Houaphan paid tribute to both Luang Prabang and Hué—members of the French colonial administration held discordant views on whether to attach Houaphan to either Laos or Annam. In 1896, the Gouverneur Général in Hanoi decided to divide Houaphan between the two protectorates. This administrative decision triggered unforeseen consequences such as large-scale migrations of the Lao population from east to west. Only seven years later, Houaphan was united again as a province of Laos. This paper explores the social, political and cultural dynamics of this ethnically heterogeneous upland region with regard to specific colonial administrative practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to assess when and how the Lebanese Diaspora in Australia, Canada and the USA is most able to affect homeland affairs in Lebanon. Drawing on over 300 in-depth interviews and analysing literature on the Lebanese Diaspora and Lebanon itself, the article seeks to categorise the spectrum of diaspora engagement with Lebanon and more fully define the diaspora's homeland participation. Tentative conclusions indicate that the Lebanese Diaspora is most able to affect homeland affairs when the state is absent or unable to perform its functions as well as because the various political factions do not want a state built. However, to date, despite its renowned strength, the Lebanese Diaspora has not been able to affect change in the sectarian nature of Lebanese homeland politics nor in the too often replicated sectarian politics in the diaspora. We conclude that the diaspora is thus both strong and weak vis-à-vis affecting homeland public affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The recent increase in American divorce rates has aroused a great deal of media publicity, popular discussion, and social science research. Several recent works have begun to reexamine the origins, trends, and implications of divorce in American history. This paper presents systematic data concerning the extent of divorce in three North Central states for the 1810-60 period. The findings establish the incidence of mass divorce for a considerable period prior to official divorce statistics. Major patterns are analyzed and compared to late 19th-century data from the first governmental studies of divorce for the 1870-1900 decades. While some urban-rural differences are found, changing laws and norms played the principal role in the increase in divorce rates during the 1800s. The final part of the paper discusses the implications of these findings for understanding marital disruption in social-historical perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study investigates Arab and Muslim students’ social relationships on 21 community college campuses in the USA (N = 753), with comparison groups of African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Whites (N = 567). Survey findings revealed a positive relationship between campus friendships and sense of belonging, controlling for ethnic and religious identities, and perceived discrimination on campus. Individual group differences were found among Arab Christians, Arab Muslims, and non-Arab Muslims, and the comparison group. As an earlier publication based on the same study revealed, 75% of Arab and Muslim students’ campus friendships were either same ethnic and/or same faith, with only a quarter of campus friendships being of different ethnicity and different religion. Although such results suggest the existence of ethno-religious enclaves, this paper concludes that Arab and Muslim students are not purposely enacting their own ethno-religious balkanization, but—like other ethnic groups—forging their own campus communities within the larger campus community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the relevance of nineteenth-century Maghrib scholarship models to the transmission of Islamic knowledge and information among communities of American Muslims in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Nana Asma'u 'dan Fodio (1793–1864) – scholar, teacher, poet, and activist – was actively involved in the trials and itinerancy of the Sokoto Jihad (1804–30), in which she was principally involved. Although she never travelled beyond her region (now known as northwestern Nigeria), her scholarly reputation extended throughout the Maghrib during her lifetime. This paper explains how Asma'u's reputation and work was spread from the Maghrib to the USA by American Qadiriyya groups that purposively modelled their own communities on that of the nineteenth-century Fodio family network, developing women's study groups based on Asma'u's model, the'Yan Taru(The Associates), and using her educational materials in twentieth- and twenty-first-century-technological contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Taking Stuart Hall's insistence on the ‘worldliness’ of cultural studies as the definitive point of entry, this paper traces breaks and continuities in the constitution of the trope of ‘crisis’ in Birmingham in the 1970's and in the globalized context we are working in today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper traces the key periods, players and events which have contributed to the shaping of the current landscape of teacher education in Scotland. Starting with the Wheatley Report and the formation of the General Teaching Council (Scotland) in the 1960s through to the most recent Donaldson Review of Teacher Education, we examine ebb and flow amongst GTCS, government, colleges of education and universities. Following its own trajectory, Scottish Education resisted and rejected policies emanating from an ‘English’ ideology, capitalised on respect for and influence of the GTCS, and successfully moved teacher education’s base from autonomous colleges to high-status universities. At the core of teacher education in Scotland is the continuing desire for partnership-working amongst key stakeholders: local and national government, GTCS, schools, teacher education institutions, teaching unions, parents and pupils. A teaching profession of trained graduates, underpinned by university-led subject study, is now moving steadily towards Masters-level professional learning for all. Although having faced some troubled episodes, this period has also been characterised by remarkable stability and consensus and, although still tackling the improvement agenda suggested by the recent Donaldson review, teacher education in Scotland has retained a high degree of public and political trust. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on the new second generation has paid much attention to testing one of the hypotheses posed by segmented assimilation theory – downward assimilation into America's underclass – and has neglected to examine other possible outcomes. In this paper, I address a much understudied pathway – assimilation by way of the ethnic community – based on a case study of Chinese immigrant children in the USA. I show that the children of Chinese immigrants have made inroads into mainstream America through educational achievement, not only because of the strong value their parents put on education but also because resources generated in the ethnic community help actualize that value. The Chinese American experience suggests that, in order to advance to the rank of middle-class Americans, immigrant parents have chosen the ethnic way to facilitate children's social mobility and achieved success. Paradoxically, ‘assimilated’ children have also relied on ethnicity for empowerment to fight negative stereotyping of the racialized other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay assesses the workings and effectiveness of Virginia's registration system of free blacks during the first generation following its creation in 1793. Although total conformity to the law was not demanded, the system served to identify mobile and unknown free people of color and to ensure white control especially during periods of crisis. Free blacks used the system to document their own freedom and that of free-born children, and to obtain identification papers if forced to leave the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasingly diverse character of London's multicultural landscape has shaped how migrants interact with(in) the different spaces of the city. This process entails both settled and incoming migrants' participation in place-making; a mutual imbrication that might promote the long-settled migrants' evocation of a lost terrain. This article unpacks that process by looking at the Latin American social football scene of South London, specifically a space known asla cancha(the pitch). This was founded by Chilean political refugees during the 1970s and it has incorporated Latin American ‘economic’ migrants and ‘local’ Britons through time. Starting from the evocation of a lost ‘golden age’ ofla cancha, the paper unpacks this space's contested, complex and changing nature. It presents diaspora space, community and belonging as lived processes. Through this depiction, the assumptions of homogeneous and isolated migrant communities are challenged, as are the diaspora's nostalgic claims that also emerge from them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the material effects of the theorisation of the contemporary Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora around the 1983 Colombo riots. In the complicated aftermath of the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009, it is necessary to rethink the way in which diasporic history has been constructed in order to factor in its multiple dimensions and underlying dynamics. By critically foregrounding the key literature on the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora, which is definitive to understanding the history of Sri Lankan Tamil emigration around the 1983 riots, the modern diaspora can be framed anew by longer and more diverse historical perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While “new media” have substantially altered the landscape for information dissemination and social mobilisation, these media are neither all alike in their ideological leanings or intentions, nor independently capable of identity transformation and mobilisation. The paper explores these new media in the context of Malaysia since the late 1990s. It differentiates among news sites and organisational websites, which transmit (often previously proscribed) information to domestic and foreign audiences, with potentially significant effects on “civicness” and mobilisation; blogs, which tend to be primarily personalised, monological and often unfiltered; and social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, which have eroded the anonymity of online interaction but represent the apex of self-selected communities. “Old media” still populate this landscape as well, from newspapers and other media sources, to public lectures, to leaflets and other ad hoc publications. Even apart from common caveats as to who has access, criteria for evaluation of these new and old media as tools for political change must vary, including differing degrees of information-provision and edification, interest articulation and aggregation, and transformation of collective identities so as to enable new patterns of mobilisation for collective action. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

There is a great deal of uncertainty over the levels of, and trends in, infant mortality in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. As a result, the impact of the break-up of the Soviet Union on infant mortality in the region is not known, and proper monitoring of mortality levels is impaired. In this paper, a variety of data sources and methods are used to assess levels of infant mortality and their trend over time in one Central Asian republic, Kyrgyzstan, between 1980 and 2010. An abrupt halt to an already established decline in infant mortality was observed to occur during the decade following the break-up of the Soviet Union, contradicting the official statistics based on vital registration. Infants of Central Asian ethnicity and those born in rural areas were also considerably more at risk of mortality than suggested by the official sources. We discuss the implications of these findings, both for health policy in this seldom studied part of the former Soviet Union and for our understanding of the health crisis which it currently faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]