Reinterpreting the 1917 Revolution in Daghestan: Conflicting Narratives and the Vernacular Perspective of Ali Kaiaev

In the two decades following its 1980 independence, Zimbabwe's gendered social and political transformation seemed, on the face of it, to be characterised by a swinging pendulum of state-led progress on women's issues followed by a period of back-sliding on earlier commitments. However, upon closer examination, the state's commitment to women's issues was always ambivalent, at best. If the story of gendered social and political transformation begins during the decade-long liberation war that preceded independence, the contradictory gender ideologies of ZANU(PF), the liberation movement that became the dominant party after independence, and the contradictory expectations of women who supported the liberation struggle in different capacities are clear. These contradictions, combined with the state's shallow commitment to improving the lives of Zimbabwean women, help to explain the state's lacklustre gender transformation, particularly in the areas of legal reform and developing state institutions to address women's development needs. As the state's increasing authoritarianism effectively eliminated spaces for advocacy that it created after independence, a growing number of women's NGOs developed issue-oriented approaches that criticised the government while at the same time developing relationships with particular segments of the government, and the increasingly organised opposition, in order to address women's issues. Thus, the gendered social and political transformation in Zimbabwe has been both non-linear and reconfigured to fit the spaces of the transformed state

This review essay discusses two recent monographs on revolutionaries and political violence in South Asia, Kama Maclean’s A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text (2015) and Durba Ghosh’s Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919-1947 (2017). Ghosh and Maclean’s books contribute to an expanding body of scholarly work on anticolonial politics in India, a rich historiography on liberalism in the British Empire, and studies of visual culture and oral histories in modern South Asia. Specifically, Maclean’s A Revolutionary History centers on the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) in Punjab and Delhi in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Maclean reconfigures the political terrain of India’s independence struggle and illustrates the importance of revolutionary violence in nonviolent politics through unstudied visual sources and oral histories. In turn, Ghosh’s Gentlemanly Terrorists focuses on Bengal, particularly revolutionaries in the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar from 1919 to 1947. Complicating the history of colonial constitutionalism as a gradual expansion of rights and representation, Ghosh demonstrates how constitutional reforms that aimed to promote liberal governance in India were tied to repressive emergency legislation. This review essay addresses how Gentlemanly Terrorists and A Revolutionary History contribute to ongoing efforts to rethink both the political chronology and the wider political landscape of interwar India by incorporating revolutionaries into the story of independence. It also considers how Maclean and Ghosh creatively utilize non-state archives and vernacular sources, in conjunction with colonial records, to follow the retelling of revolutionary histories in different media.

This article analyses how social movements and collective actors can affect political and social transformation in a structurally violent society using the case study of Northern Ireland. We focus, in particular, on the crucial role played by collective actors within the loyalist community (those who wish to maintain Northern Ireland’s place in the UK), in bringing about social and political transformation in a society blighted by direct, cultural, and structural violence both during the conflict and subsequent peace process. Drawing on data obtained through in-depth interviews with loyalist activists (including former paramilitaries), the article demonstrates the role and impact of loyalists and loyalism in Northern Ireland’s transition. We identify five conflict transformation challenges addressed by loyalist actors in a structurally violent society: de-mythologizing the conflict; stopping direct violence; resisting pressure to maintain the use of violence; development of robust activist identity; and the measurement of progress through reference to the parallel conflict transformation journey of their former republican enemies. The Northern Ireland case demonstrates the necessity for holistic conflict transformation strategies which attempt not only to stop direct attacks, but also the cultural and structural violence which underpin and legitimize them. In so doing, the article contributes to a broader understanding of how and why paramilitary campaigns are brought to an end.

This essay explores a global and existential problem—how ordinary people live and contend with historically deep subordination, humiliation, and exclusion—through an examination of the everyday lives of formerly untouchable caste Dalit communities in Kerala, India. I look at this through the lens of neighborliness: how people discuss how theylive togetherwith other castes and classes in small town and rural Kerala. Their continuing struggles with and experiences of humiliation and subordination must be placed within the historical context of Kerala, where deep inequality previously constituted every social relationship, and where the communist movement and other important social and political transformations have radically transformed living conditions and provided new languages and possibilities of equality within the official public sphere, if not the household. Drawing from the anthropology of ethics and engaging with philosophical discussions of living with others, I scrutinizeneighborlinessas an ethical landscape for Dalits living in new kinds of neighborhoods produced by political and social transformation. In doing so, I also reflect upon the ongoing conversations and interactions within which, for Dalits, respect, dignity, and worth are at stake. The essay also suggests new ways of understanding publics that are neither private nor part of the official public, but rather are networks of houses within rural neighborhoods—what I call “private-publics,” which are constituted through gendered caste relations.

The article is devoted to the evolution of the main concepts of public administration, which is considered through the prism of the historical periods of the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, and the emergence of capitalism. The author analyzes how approaches to management changed in the context of social, economic, and political transformations, and also considers how these changes were reflected in modern concepts of management science. Public administration is a key element in ensuring the effective functioning of state institutions, since the ability of the state to solve complex problems, maintain stability, and ensure development depends on its quality. The article emphasizes the importance of ethics, human rights, and democratic principles, which remain relevant for effective management today, in particular in the context of globalization, the development of information technologies, and social transformations. The study of the concepts of T. Aquinas, N. Machiavelli, D. Diderot, S. Montesquieu, I. Kant, and G. Hegel allows us to establish the relationship between historical theories and modern approaches to public administration. T. Aquinas's ideas about the harmony between faith and reason, as well as the need for moral principles in governance, find their application in the modern fight against corruption and abuse of power. N. Machiavelli's ideas about the state as an organic system that depends on the attitude of the people and the ability of rulers to achieve results, are of profound importance in the context of today's challenges. I. Kant's ideas about the autonomy of the individual and freedom, as well as H. Hegel's ideas about the importance of implementing laws through educated and conscious officials, are of great importance for the development of ethical governance. In general, the article demonstrates how historical concepts of public administration form the foundations of modern management theory, contributing to the improvement of management practices in the context of global changes, social and political transformations. The key trends in the development of public administration are identified, and the need to improve management methods and principles for effective adaptation to a changing environment is substantiated.

The article confirms that profound economic, social, and political transformations occurred around 1800 BC on the Greek Mainland and especially on the Peloponnese. We underline that the former century – the 19th century saw the creation of chiefdom societies in parts of the Mainland and consider the 18th century to create the economic, social, and political structures of the Mycenaean state. We have seen that the external relations with the tribes on the Greek Mainland were with the Cyclades, while no relations with Crete are attested during the period of the early shaft graves in Mycenae (MHIIIA). In the Eastern Mediterranean, the 18th century BC saw the fall of the Middle Kingdom in Egypt, the rise of the Assyrian dynasty under Shamshi-Addad, the kingdom of Hammurabi of Babylon, the early Hittite kingdom and the establishment of Troy VIa in northwest Anatolia. We consider this tremendous boom in the Eastern Mediterranean to have inspired the creation of the secondary (‘derivative’) Mycenaean state. The intention is to show that using a high-resolution diachronic time scale makes it possible to create a narrative of gradual social, economic, and political transformations from the Middle to the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean area. The article is divided into two sections. First, a summary of the most recent results describing chronology and social transformations in Middle Bronze Age and early Mycenaean Greece (‘status analyses’) and second, a conclusion estimating what these data tell us about the origin of the Mycenaean society. To reach this conclusion, we have constructed an evolutionary model in order to establish a gradual development of Mycenaean society. The conclusion based on our evolutionary model seems to advocate for a strong influence from the eastern Mediterranean countries, creating the social and economic structure of the Mycenaean society.

Book Review| December 01 2019 Review: The Religious Question and the Paths of Political and Social Transformation in the Maghreb Countries, by a group of authors The Religious Question and the Paths of Political and Social Transformation in the Maghreb Countries by a group of authors (Beirut: Nama Center for Research and Studies, 2017). 424 pp. ISBN 9786144317129. Said Jalil Said Jalil Independent researcher, Morocco Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Contemporary Arab Affairs (2019) 12 (4): 156–164. https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2019.12.4.156 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Said Jalil; Review: The Religious Question and the Paths of Political and Social Transformation in the Maghreb Countries, by a group of authors. Contemporary Arab Affairs 1 December 2019; 12 (4): 156–164. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2019.12.4.156 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentContemporary Arab Affairs Search This collective work includes the contributions of the Second Maghreb Forum for Young Researchers in Social and Human Sciences held in Rabat, Morocco, October 16–18, 2015, on the theme “The Religious Question and the Transitions in the Maghreb,” organized by the Afkar Center for Studies and Research in cooperation with the German Hans-Seidel Foundation. The contributions of this work were the results of in-depth research and investigation focused on understanding the phenomenon of religiosity in the Maghreb communities, the presence and representation of the religious balance, the reasons for its use by extremist religious groups and political Islamic groups, as well as in official religious institutions of a traditional character, via the use of approaches and methodologies adopted in the humanities. Key highlights of the symposium included the contributions of participants to the following debates: the influence of religion in the public sphere; the limits of its influence and the... You do not currently have access to this content.

A MULTINATIONAL SEEKING IN VAIN A UNION as a counterpart in bargaining; another multinational expelling union representatives from the firm; companies with good and bad labour relations; small and medium-size firms with no unions at all-all these may be found in news items, case-studies and episodes from the near past of labour relations in transformation and development in the post-socialist countries. After five to six years of the political, social and economic transformation can we already speak about a new system in the field of labour relations, or is it still in transformation? Is the experience of this half-decade sufficient to identify the features of the new emerging system with any of the already known patterns of labour relations? In the late 1980s and early 1990s in Central and Eastern Europe there were widespread illusions as to the prospects of labour relations and the new role of employees and their interest associations. The international, economic and social conditions of the real processes of social transformation in these countries, however, framed events differently, and the new institutions of labour relations and social cooperation seem to display unexpected patterns. Social scientists and politicians as well as unionists are now seeking to understand the real logic of the transformation process and the motives and intentions of the social partners within it. Since the social and economic context of the current transformation process varies from country to country in Eastern and East-Central Europe, very different strategies and practices of institution building, combined with national and local traditions of interest representation and participation, are creating a rich variety of new autonomous systems of labour relations. Several elements of the political and economic transformation are closely connected to the shaping of the labour relations system in the post-socialist countries. Some of them are supporting its development, while others are unfavourable to its strengthening. Certain factors are unique in the different Central and East European countries, others represent international trends. This article aims to illustrate the characteristics of institution building in the field of labour relations in Hungary. In Hungary the new democratic political order, its laws and institutions, has finally ensured the existence of an autonomous labour relations system after a long period of reforms since the late 1960s aiming at loosening the subordination of labour relations to a monolithic political order. The political transformation was carried out by social actors and organisations that-even if newly created in democratic processes-were

Afghanistan is a multiethnic country with a complex legal system characterized by intricate interactions between Islamic law, customary law, and modern legal frameworks. This research critically examines the resilience mechanisms of Afghanistan's legal and judicial systems within the context of persistent political uncertainty and societal pluralism. Employing a descriptive qualitative methodology and comprehensive literature review, the study analyzes legal documents, international reports, and academic literature spanning the post-Taliban period from 2001 to the present. The research investigates the dynamic challenges confronting Afghanistan's legal infrastructure, particularly its capacity to integrate diverse normative systems while maintaining institutional legitimacy. Key findings reveal significant complexities in Afghanistan's legal landscape. The system encounters substantial obstacles in harmonizing Islamic legal principles, traditional customary practices, and contemporary legal standards. Family law reforms emerge as a critical focal point, demonstrating progressive attempts to enhance women's rights while simultaneously navigating conservative societal resistance. The research illuminates the intricate interplay between legal pluralism, political transformation, and institutional adaptation. It highlights how Afghanistan's judicial system continuously negotiates between preserving traditional legitimacy, accommodating societal diversity, and meeting international normative standards. The study recommends a comprehensive, nuanced approach to judicial reform that holistically considers cultural diversity, respects traditional values, and aligns with international human rights principles. By exploring the mechanisms of legal resilience in a conflict-affected context, this research contributes valuable insights into understanding adaptive strategies within complex, multi-layered legal systems. The findings provide a critical framework for comprehending how legal institutions can maintain functionality and relevance amid profound political and social transformations.

Ukraine’s democratization that started after the disintegration of the Soviet Union is an ongoing effort, accompanied by incremental political, social, and ideological transformations as well as tumultuous events—the Orange Revolution (2004–2005), growing authoritarianism during the presidency of Yanukovych (2010–2014), the Revolution of Dignity (2013–2014), Russian annexation of Crimea (2014), and Russia’s ongoing military aggression in Eastern Ukraine (2014-present). This study is concerned not with the actual political and social transformations in the country, but with mental representations of society that these transformations generated. The cultural models theory and method offered a toolkit for examining people’s implicit ideas and taken-for-granted assumptions through the analysis of spoken discourse. I conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with people in Western Ukraine, identified recurrent ideas and conceptual metaphors in the interviewees’ discourses, and propose three cultural models of society underlying them.

Reviewed by: New Voices in the Nation: Women and the Greek Resistance, 1941–1964 Thanasis D. Sfikas Janet Hart, New Voices in the Nation: Women and the Greek Resistance, 1941–1964. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 1996. Pp. xiii + 313. With illustrations. $39.95 cloth, $16.95 paper. Many Greeks saw the events of the 1940s as confirmation of the possibility of making history through the conscious negation of the existing order. Their new consciousness of history in the making led them to conceptualize the potential for new social structures and societies, and generated an unwavering commitment to direct and purposeful change. The origins and course of this attempt, as well as its international context and dimension, are increasingly well-documented, researched and accounted for. What remains still in its infancy is a systematic and methodologically rigorous inquiry into its grassroots dimensions and manifestations. This is the historiographical milieu in which the work of the anthropologist Janet Hart must be placed, as it endeavors to capture the active participation of Greek women in the EAM resistance movement and to gauge the extent to which this experience wholly transformed their lives. Hart explores events in Greek political history in the 1940s and seeks to illuminate the social and political transformation that EAM tried to bring about. Her focus is on EAM’s attempt to institute a new social order that would include, inter alia, “unprecedented numbers of female citizens.” This, she argues, was “part of [EAM’s] bid for national modernity or a ‘modernist moment.’” Thus the aim of the book is to discuss the themes “EAM on women” and “women in EAM” as a direct consequence of the influence of the ideas of modernism that prevailed in interwar Europe. Before dealing with the collective experience of female participation in the resistance and the opportunities this offered women to become agents of their own political fate, the author engages in a detailed and insightful examination of the ideas propounded by Antonio Gramsci in his Prison Notebooks. This is central to her argument, as the great Italian communist intellectual theorized on the organization of resistance to Fascist oppression. Hart finds similarities between Gramsci’s ideas and those of some leading EAM intellectuals such as Dimitris Glinos with regard to the need to create viable models of socialism that, instead of conforming to the emerging Stalinist straitjacket, would be flexible enough to fit indigenous conditions and needs. Then she proceeds to examine the policy decisions and actions of EAM’s intellectuals in the broader context of collective action. The focus is firmly on Greek women and on an attempt to demonstrate how the modernist concepts of political mobilization, participation, resistance, and change made possible their active involvement in EAM. The evidence adduced consists of forty-four interviews that the author conducted with female members of EAM, and also some EAM literature. Progressively, Hart’s analysis centers on mobilization based on gender, and on how Greek women fitted into the mixed-sex branches and offspring of EAM. This task is discharged successfully. The author demonstrates a formidable grasp of theoretical constructs and an enviable familiarity with the analytical tools of anthropology. What emerges with force and moving detail is the participation of Greek women, en masse and actively, in a supreme experiment of [End Page 378] social transformation. This left an indelible mark on the women’s lives and proved sufficient to sustain them through the hardships that followed the experiment’s defeat. Even so, this is an uneven book that will cause historians to have serious reservations and misgivings. Errors of fact and interpretation mar what is otherwise an imaginative, passionate effort to remind us of some of the questions posed by Bertolt Brecht in Questions from a Worker who Reads: “Who built the Thebes of the seven gates? / In the books you will find the names of kings.” To begin with, the author fails to clarify what kind of inquiry this is. In the very beginning the clearly stated aim is “to explore events in Greek political history that occurred during the 1940s.” The suspicion that this may well be a work of history is reinforced at the very end, where...

What is the significance of feeling unbearably weighed-down by everyday life on the social and economic margins of a Central American city? What are the politics of a mother feeling there is no longer any point in showing up for work given the limited impact it makes for the everyday needs of her family? Relatedly, what is the significance of another woman carrying on with the business of survival as a member of Nicaragua’s urban poor majority? In this article, I question the differences and connections between two women’s engagements with poverty in a shanty on the outskirts of León, Nicaragua’s second biggest city. Subject to isolated analysis, each woman’s corporealization of poverty appears ambiguous in terms of what they do to the inequalities that structure their existence. By engaging these corporealities as affective forces—trans-personally constituted and constituting forces that impact human action—they can be understood as agencies capable of impacting the future. The impetus to carry on and to curl up in bed may represent seemingly contradictory engagements in (or away from) social life, but they both animate a sense of the present’s painful inadequacy, which may be socially transformative. Approaching bodies pushed to their limits as affective forces complicates individual-centric notions of agency, and, I argue, is crucial for understanding how and when social and political transformation becomes imaginable and achievable (or not) in particular contexts.

Arab literature is undoubtedly the focus of attention of Jewish critics and translators, and their areas of interest in the modern era. And translate it or not realize it. Therefore, the Jewish translators used to translate many of the Arab literary products as the most vital means on the ground, which contribute greatly to the knowledge of the essence of Arab societies and the social transformations therein, so that literature is a mirror of the social, intellectual and political transformations that societies witness. Our research will focus on three prominent translators who have adopted unique trends of translation, in opposition to ideological motives, and led translation activities in different directions: Menachem Kaplwick (1988-1900), Shimon Ballas (1930-2019) and Anton Shammas (1950). All three represent not only three generations of translators who have worked within this translation activity, but also three ideological and ethnic groups of translators: the European-oriented Jewish translators who are the orientalists, and the Jews of Arab culture who maintained their confidence in this culture but who served in their activities and orientations.

While Convivencia is a specific historical term that has come to represent an idea of peaceful co-existence, Convivencia: Urban Space and Migration in a Small Catalan Town complicates this simplistic vision. Instead, it shows how convivencia has been and is indeed always conflict-ridden by scrutinising the relations between cultural diversity and social conflicts and considering why some social conflicts are said to be inherently cultural. It does this through a multi-scalar extended case study of a small town in Northern Catalonia, Spain. Starting from an ethnography, it sheds light on the multiple local-global processes inherent to the social construction of the “migrant problem” and its solutions. The book analyzes the simultaneously local-global transformation of migration and societies, connecting the local processes of space- and place-making in Salt with the more extensive processes of migration, economic crisis and social transformation, and finally, the responses to these changes from the local society, institutions, and NGOs. This work allows for a deeper understanding of the complex web of urban, social, and political transformation in which migration as a phenomenon takes part. Focusing mainly on the interaction between mobility and settlement and the socio-cultural processes at different scales through the vectors of production and reproduction of space, it advances findings on the “new social question in Europe.”

While Convivencia is a specific historical term that has come to represent an idea of peaceful co-existence, Convivencia: Urban Space and Migration in a Small Catalan Town complicates this simplistic vision. Instead, it shows how convivencia has been and is indeed always conflict-ridden by scrutinising the relations between cultural diversity and social conflicts and considering why some social conflicts are said to be inherently cultural. It does this through a multi-scalar extended case study of a small town in Northern Catalonia, Spain. Starting from an ethnography, it sheds light on the multiple local-global processes inherent to the social construction of the “migrant problem” and its solutions. The book analyzes the simultaneously local-global transformation of migration and societies, connecting the local processes of space- and place-making in Salt with the more extensive processes of migration, economic crisis and social transformation, and finally, the responses to these changes from the local society, institutions, and NGOs. This work allows for a deeper understanding of the complex web of urban, social, and political transformation in which migration as a phenomenon takes part. Focusing mainly on the interaction between mobility and settlement and the socio-cultural processes at different scales through the vectors of production and reproduction of space, it advances findings on the “new social question in Europe.”