Crucial Decade Research Articles

Editorial Vol.16(1)

It is with great pleasure that we present to you Volume 16, Number 1, 2024, of "Voice: Biannual and Bilingual Journal” published by Autar Dei Chaudharain Research Centre (ADCRC) at Mahendra Multiple Campus, Nepalgunj, Banke, Nepal. Our journal continues to uphold its primary aim of facilitating the exchange of expertise among scholars on a global scale, fostering a dynamic platform for intellectual discourse across various disciplines. In this edition, we proudly present a multidisciplinary collection of 13 articles, with eight contributions in English and five in Nepali. This diversity reflects our commitment to linguistic inclusivity and our effort to bridge scholarly communities across different languages.The range of topics covered in this issue underscores the breadth and depth of academic inquiry being pursued by our contributors. Highlights include an in-depth analysis of the socio-economic impacts of policy changes in Nepal during the crucial decade of the 1990s, examining realism and societal dynamics in selected novels of Shashi Deshpande, and a stability evaluation of the Lanedada Twin Tunnel in KTFT, focusing on the structural stability and safety measures of a significant infrastructural project. Additionally, we have an exploration of alcohol use and its socio-economic and health effects in the Tharu community of Raptisonari Rural Municipality. There is also an analysis of historical and literary perspectives on trauma and displacement in Khushwant Singh's "Train to Pakistan." An exploratory study on how economic changes affect consumer behavior in the jewelry market of Nepalgunj adds a practical economic perspective. A comparative study on the reading comprehension abilities of Tharu and non-Tharu students’ sheds light on educational performance influenced by cultural and linguistic factors. Finally, a contemporary assessment of Nepal’s food sovereignty status and related policies offers valuable insights into current agricultural and food security challenges.For our Nepali readers, we offer a detailed exploration of classical Sanskrit poetics and theories of rasa, along with an analysis of the purpose and cultural significance of traditional songs in the Ribdikot area. There is a historical overview and critical examination of trends in Nepali short stories, a comprehensive look at the fifth part of the Vedapurana's gems, and an analysis of the ideologies presented in the novel "Basai."

Before Biodiversity: Trajectories of National Parks in Latin America (1930s–1980s)

Abstract Almost a century ago, long before biodiversity expressed a scientific value for nature, Latin American countries began establishing national parks. Today, they represent over 6 percent of Latin America’s landmass. By considering national park creation across a broad regional span and six crucial decades, this article explains a mode of state formation focused on caring for nature instead of just exploiting it. It examines how national parks expanded in the region by identifying three consequent trajectories: the use of these conservation units for frontier development in Argentina and as part of a broader project seeking social justice in Mexico; the formation of more haphazard park initiatives in various countries, taking Brazil and Chile as main examples; and the development of ecologically coherent park systems through the cases of Peru and Colombia. The article also addresses the role of science (especially forestry) and international cooperation in shaping national parks. In this manner, it uncovers the paths that faded from view after the idea that parks intend to protect biodiversity took hold and illustrates a rarely acknowledged aspect of state expansion.

Desire, Marriage, and Overpopulation: The Sexual Lives of Insects in the Enlightenment.

During the eighteenth century, the discovery of sexual reproduction in insect species prompted the demise of spontaneous generation and new developments in natural history, theology, and political economy. The sexual lives of insects prompted debates on whether insects were governed by desire, free will, and even marital tendency. Fuelled by the democratisation of microscopy, early modern entomology took a new turn and breadth: the study of insects and of their sexual lives provided unexpected new insights into human sexuality, reproduction, and Malthusian fears of overpopulation. This article surveys the intellectual culture of entomology and natural history during the crucial decades when entomologists worked to quantify the reproductive capacities of insect species. Assessing the influences these entomological works had within political economy and theology, we argue that the sexual lives of insects - once analysed and delineated - influenced familiar ideological features of the intellectual landscape of the late Enlightenment, particularly in the theological philosophies of northern Europe and in the political economy of population in Britain.

United States – Azerbaijan Relations (1991-2020)

The purpose of the paper is to thoroughly investigate the intricate relationship between the United States and Azerbaijan from 1991 to 2020, considering diplomatic, political, economic, and security dimensions. Emphasizing the pivotal role of Russian Federation in the South Caucasus, the research seeks to provide a holistic understanding of the factors influencing U.S.-Azerbaijan relations, offering valuable insights into evolving geopolitical dynamics over the three crucial decades.
 The novelty of the paper lies in its in-depth exploration of three decades of U.S.-Azerbaijan relations, the study provides unique insights into the evolving dynamics, contributing a comprehensive analysis of the multifaceted relationship.
 Conclusions. The author identifies 4 periods of US-Azerbaijan relations in 1991-2020: 1) 1991-2001, 2) 2001-2007, 3) 2007-2015, and 4) 2015-2020.
 From 1991 to 2001, the United States underwent a transformative phase in its policy towards Azerbaijan, marked by an increased focus on regional stability and economic partnerships through energy initiatives like the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Security concerns in the South Caucasus also influenced policy decisions, while considerations of democracy and human rights were weighed against broader strategic imperatives. This period set the foundation for subsequent shifts in U.S. policy towards Azerbaijan.
 In 2001-2007, U.S. policy towards Azerbaijan underwent significant changes, prioritizing the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline and intensifying efforts in combatting international terrorism. The Global War on Terror played a crucial role, leading to strengthened U.S.-Azerbaijan relations, though democracy promotion took a back seat to energy and security interests.
 The period from 2007 to 2015 saw a nuanced shift, with decreased U.S. focus on energy and security, increased attention to democracy and human rights, and challenges arising from Azerbaijan’s opposition to the Turkish-Armenian Rapprochement. Azerbaijan’s strategic concerns regarding Nagorno-Karabakh intensified, and U.S. engagement faced limitations in influencing regional outcomes.
 Between 2015 and 2020, U.S. policy towards Azerbaijan further disengaged across energy, security, and democracy promotion dimensions, influenced by factors like the unconventional oil and gas revolution, decreasing Central Asia significance, rising isolationism, and the Trump administration’s priorities. The U.S. response to regional dynamics, notably the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, showcased a trend of reduced involvement.

Looking for a “Genuine Science of Politics.” William H. Riker and the Game Theoretical Turn in Political Science

This article aims to show how the formal revolution in economics has influenced the developments of rational choice and game theory in political science. Our focus will be on American political scientist William H. Riker (1920-1993). We want to show how Riker used game theory and adapted it to fulfil his disciplinary agenda, contrasting the main trends in postwar American political science. Our thesis is that, in doing so, Riker stressed some aspects of the theory that differed quite sharply from postwar mathematical economics to which game theory belonged. Sections 1 and 2 describe Riker’s education and intellectual life until the late 1950s, showing how he became acquainted with game theory and how American political science as a discipline was changing in that crucial decade. Section 3 presents Riker’s main arguments in The Theory of Political Coalitions, focusing on his working through game theory to produce a suitable model of political coalition-building. Section 4 discusses some methodological aspects of Riker’s commitment to game theory and economic analysis. In particular, we aim to outline and discuss an apparent “dilemma” in his theoretical production, namely his resting on an outdated idea of economics, despite his use of game-theoretic analysis.

The Imperial Cities and Imperial Reform in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Germany, 1410–1532

ABSTRACT Many free imperial cities played a central role in the early events of the German Reformation(s). These same cities were among the constituencies that had shaped – and been shaped by – the processes dubbed “imperial reform” (Reichsreform) by historians: discussions about and implementations of governance at the highest level in the Holy Roman Empire. This article explores the relationship between the imperial cities and imperial reform in the fifteenth century and in the early phase of the Reformation (1517–32). It argues that “imperial reform” – a historiographical construct – is best conceived as a shared discourse of peace (friden), justice (recht), and order (ordnung) associated with the new institutions created in the Empire in the crucial decades around 1500. Imperial reform remained central to the urban governments’ political agendas even as evangelical teachings spread in the years after 1517, legitimizing them and offering leverage at a time of growing tension.

Vittorio Alfieri e la lingua “classica” di Simeon Marcovici: alcune considerazioni metodologiche sulle traduzioni dell’Oreste e del Filippo

"The most representative Romanian translations of the 19th century can be the subject of an aesthetic-rhetorical study, which, usually, we would devote to an original literary work. Because of their experimental character, the translations are closely linked to the contemporary “language question”: thus, they offer a tool to observe the evolution of literary Romanian in those crucial decades. In other words, we can consider translations as a ground for the reception of Western models and the development of modern literary language. In this study, we propose overcoming the two most popular approaches to Romanian translations: the exclusively lexicographical one, which mainly focuses on the collection of data related to the neological lexicon: the exclusively historical-sociological one, which considers translations as historical-literary and socio-cultural documents without dwelling on the aesthetic-rhetorical values of the literary text. On the contrary, the value of such translations lies not only in their being (useful) witnesses to certain linguistic forms or certain sociological and historical contexts, but in the fact that they are autonomous literary texts. Composed exclusively of translations of literary works and technical texts, Marcovici’s output is a typical example of the extraordinary phenomenon of Romen translations in the first half of the nineteenth century. His prose translations of two of Alfieri’s tragedies, Oreste and Filippo, in a volume published in Bucharest in 1847, mark one of the high points of interest in Alfieri’s output in the Romanian nineteenth century. Such a late interest in an eighteenth-century author like Alfieri, who had played so much part in the Italian, Greek, and Romanian Enlightenment and Preromantic temperament, often cloaked in anti-Tyrannical nationalism, should not be surprising. Marcovici’s entire cultural activity shows a strong “anachronistic” inclination toward neoclassical themes, also motivated by his being professor of rhetoric at the College of St. Sava. For Marcovici, literature is not only to be considered in the same way as a “school of moralization”, but also a model for the correct use of literary language. It follows, therefore, that there should be a determined fidelity to the needs of popularization, to the “simple” style, to the naturalness of vocabulary and to the minimization of the needs of overdeveloped rhetorical language. The contribution will therefore go through some lexicographical, stylistic and rhetorical aspects of the two Alfierian translations, focusing on the “classicism” of Marcovici’s language."

Journey to Indo-América: APRA and the Transnational Politics of Exile, Persecution, and Solidarity, 1918–1945

Journey to Indo-América demonstrates the centrality of transnational exile networks for understanding the evolution of the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) and its political struggles in Peru over the course of the party's first two decades of existence. During most of this period APRA could not operate legally in Peru, and hence the far-flung network of exiled Apristas who developed a continental consciousness. Using archives that had not been much consulted, Geneviève Dorais traces these networks and details how the experience of exile for Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre and other Apristas shaped their conception of Indo-America and helped to support the party's efforts to gain power in Peru.Even before APRA's founding in 1926, transnational connections influenced the thinking of Haya de la Torre and other future Apristas. While APRA's roots in the university reform movement that began in 1918 have been well established, its connections to networks of progressive Christian and pacifist intellectuals in the United States have received less attention. Dorais dedicates a whole chapter to these connections that began in Peru and centered on two key figures: John Mackay, a Scottish Presbyterian pastor who founded the Colegio Anglo-Peruano in Lima, and the Christian pacifist and activist Anna Melissa Graves, who developed a strong friendship with Haya de la Torre. Both Mackay and Graves were attracted to expressions of hemispheric identity and solidarity, which they saw as signs of a necessary spiritual regeneration in the West.Dorais highlights the tensions within these transnational networks in which Apristas and non-Apristas had different goals. Mackay and Graves pursued their own agendas in promoting Haya de la Torre as a kind of spiritual leader for Latin America. Yet they were less accepting of the nationalism of Apristas who sought to address Peru's specific problems of social injustice. While Haya de la Torre initially relied on them for both emotional and financial support (particularly in the case of Graves), he gradually broke ties as he developed new connections in Mexico, the Soviet Union, and Europe, and after APRA became a national party in Peru.Among the most convincing aspects of Dorais's analysis is the link she establishes between the experience of exile and APRA's ideological shift away from its early anti-imperialism. While this shift has usually been attributed to Haya de la Torre's response to changing world events, including Franklin D. Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy, Dorais offers a more sociological interpretation. Deprived of political rights in Peru, where APRA remained proscribed, exiled Apristas embraced the notion of a continental identity (Indo-America) that included democratic rights. Their position thus aligned them more closely with the United States at a time when communism and fascism were growing forces on the world scene. Ideology and praxis were interwoven as exiles “used Indo-América as a way to universalize their demands in the context of local repression” (p. 186).Dorais also argues that the Aprista transnational networks remained central to the party's political struggles inside Peru during the long period of political persecution that stretched, with a few interruptions, from 1932 to 1945. For example, immediately following APRA's establishment in Peru in 1930, Apristas returning from exile relied on their experience abroad as a source of authority and legitimacy vis-à-vis party leaders in Peru. The broad international campaign to free Haya de la Torre from jail during the year 1932 further strengthened those Apristas with transnational connections and bolstered the “Hayista faction” within the party.The degree to which these Aprista transnational networks remained instrumental in sustaining the party in Peru during the long period of persecution known as the catacombs (1933–39) is more open to debate. There is no doubt that the continued efforts of exiled Apristas to write political propaganda influenced international opinion, created sympathy for APRA by criticizing the dictatorial government of Oscar Benavides, and reinforced the narrative of APRA as a party with strong popular support. In some cases, foreign Christian “intermediaries” inside Peru also helped to circulate propaganda at a time of persecution. Yet networks of Apristas throughout Peru lacking transnational connections continued to engage in struggles of their own to keep the party alive. In fact, an Aprista counternarrative about exile emerged in Peru in which exiles were portrayed as leading an easy life far from the realities of political persecution or, to use the words of Haya de la Torre, a life of “sensualization.”Dorais's book is a welcome addition to the most recent scholarship on APRA's transnational dimension. The author convincingly argues that we must take seriously the experience of exile to understand the history of APRA and has modeled an effective methodology for doing so. Hopefully this work will inspire others to pursue similar lines of research to further uncover the intricacies of the transnational networks that stretched throughout the Americas during these crucial decades in world politics.

From resistance to transformation – The journey to develop a framework to explore the transformative potential of environmental resistance practices

Standing in front of perhaps the most crucial decade of the future to come, when mankind has just experienced three years of global pandemic, a raging war, extreme climate events and mass extinction of animals and plants, we have arrived at a crossroads. Decisions must be made on whether we charge at full speed to explore alternative social-ecological systems that lead to human well-being and regeneration of nature; or continue down a pathway built on resource extraction, unsustainable and unethical urbanization and destruction of nature and lives. Recently, as countries seek to recover from the pandemic, many are contemplating large-scale infrastructure schemes and projects, which have been tried and proven means to drive extraction-based economic growth. This highlights the importance of environmental justice and resistance – an area from which voices are not often heard loud enough, yet offers fertile ground where radical, sustainable alternatives may emerge among people and communities that refuse to comply with the unjust development imposed on them. Our work seeks to contribute to research studying the potential of such phenomena, by designing a framework to capture key organizational, political and ethical features that make resistance a transformative practice. The outcome of this effort is a Resistance-Based Transformative Alternative (ReBasTA) Framework, which can be employed to inform both desktop-based data collection and analysis on resistance practices, as well as in-depth field research on deep drivers and leverage points for transformation. Moreover, the framework makes longitude study of transformative practice possible, by using a consistent set of criteria. This paper introduces the conceptual and methodological approach underlying our framework and the collaborative process employed in designing it and its key criteria. In the final section, we also discuss possible applications, with particular reference to resistance movements triggered by large-scale infrastructures.

Autocratisation, electoral politics and the limits of incumbency in African democracies

ABSTRACT The world is experiencing a new wave of autocratisation, characterised by a global democratic reversal. From 2010 to 2020, the share of the world population living in autocracies increased from 48 to 68%. Electoral autocracies are now the world's most common regime type, and along with closed autocracies they number 87 of the world's 195 states. Even during the height of the third wave of democratisation, elections in Africa rarely led to an alternation of power. Thirty years after the third wave, this special issue introduction takes stock of how many transfers of power occurred in the three crucial decades between 1991 and 2021. In this special issue, we focus on Zambia to understand some of the factors that contributed to an electoral turnover, notwithstanding the many benefits of incumbency that were enjoyed by the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) led by President Edgar Lungu. We show that the outcome of Zambia's August 2021 election demonstrates the limits of incumbency. We suggest that voters and opposition parties in countries with previous experiences of peaceful transfers of power might rely on a ‘democratic muscle-memory’, to dislodge autocrats and call for more research on when and why incumbents lose.

Architecture as Memory: Gothic Ruins in the Work of Lyonel Feininger, 1928-1953

In the summer of 1928 Lyonel Feininger made his first drawings of the ruins of a local church in the German village of Hoff. Through a series of happenstance episodes these Gothic ruins grew to haunt the artist’s entire body of work: across various media (pencil, watercolor, ink, oil), across space (in person from the Baltic coast, and later in New York from memory), and time (the motif spans three crucial decades of the artist’s career). While everything else in Feininger’s life was sent into a chaotic flurry – the banning of his works by the Weimar government, shutdown of the Bauhaus, forced exile from Germany – the visual motif of the ruins of Hoff remained a dependable constant. In the meantime, the image of the abandoned church took on polyphonic layers of meaning, an avenue for the artist to reflect on his own sense of belonging to the German culture, on the evolving definition of what that culture meant amid the rise of nationalistic sentiments, and on its ramifications for the private life of his family. This essay attempts to reconstruct those layers of meaning through first-hand encounters with the artist’s letters from the archive, his drawings, and reminiscences of his wife and son.

Obscured from Us by His Own Talent Elsewhere: Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) or ‘Every Man His Own Economist’

Patrick Geddes (1854–1932) has been characterized as ‘a biologist, sociologist, botanist, geographer, urban planner, educator, founder of museums, schools, and institutions, leader of meetings and associations, poet, and guru’. Less often remarked on, he also had something to say on economics. It is this oft-neglected aspect of his thought with which this paper deals. Although not formally qualified in any of the fields in which he was later to play a leading role, and certainly not in economics/political economy, he contributed as much in terms of papers read and publications as anyone else in the crucial decade of professionalization prior to the formation of the British Economic Association and the appearance of its Journal; moreover, although some of his views might today be considered to have been eccentric, he nonetheless anticipated, for example, the application of the natural and physical sciences to economics.

Egypt’s Salafi Awakening in the 1970s: Revisiting the History of a Crucial Decade for Egyptian Islamic Activism

This article aims at revisiting the history of Egyptian Islamic activism during the important decade of the 1970s, by reintroducing a crucial element that is absent from the existing academic literature: the role played by Salafi ideas in the religious socialization of 1970s Egyptian Islamic activists. Far from only being the product of Saudi Arabia’s intense petrodollar-funded proselytization efforts, these Salafi ideas had already gained a foothold in Egypt in the first half of the 20th century, when they started being promoted by organizations such as Ansar al-Sunna al-Muhammadiyya, which saw itself as a rival to the Muslim Brotherhood. Reintroducing this element helps complexify a historiographical narrative of the 1970s that has been mostly centered around the Muslim Brotherhood and the posthumous role played by the ideas of radical thinker Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966), and it is key to a more accurate and nuanced understanding of the subsequent evolutions of Egyptian Islamic activism.

From Glasgow to Sham El-Sheikh (COP27): How to raise climate ambition

The Glasgow Climate Pact defined 2020–2030 as a crucial decade for climate change mitigation. Scientific experts say multiple strategies and policies must be designed and implemented over the next eight years in order to limit global warming to 1.5°C. However, the latest United Nations studies report a lack of ambition in mitigation strategies. The most recent COP26 held in Glasgow (United Kingdom) brought no breakthrough. Why do climate negotiations fail? To answer this question, this article will address the multiple meanings of “climate ambition”. We analyse and contrast the main actors’ perspectives on ambition: the ecomodernist vision of Western countries, the limits to growth requested by prominent scientists, the post-developmental approaches of the Global South, and the compensatory vision of the fossil fuel-dependent countries. A few months before COP27 – to be held in November 2022 in Sham El-Sheikh (Egypt) – it is essential to find common ground between the different visions. If we want 2020–2030 to be a successful decade, a shared definition of climate ambition has to emerge.

Public debt and money for a political ecology in the European Union

The pandemic crisis has displayed the lack of precautionary measures and health infrastructure in most advanced countries, not forgetting how little help has been granted to poor countries. In the face of a worldwide ecological crisis, there has been no global cooperation. In addition, in 2020, catastrophic events due to climate change have accelerated. Public finances have been called upon to support the economy and to engineer a much hoped-for short-term recovery on the one hand, and to put financial systems in order to deal with climate change in the coming crucial decade on the other.Our work tries to address this dual challenge. First, it handles the crucial problem of debt sustainability in a theoretical framework that emphasizes the discounted ratio of future primary balances rather than the level of debt. Simulations of the theoretical model used are provided for the four largest countries of the euro zone to show the conditions in which public debt could be sustainable during the crisis and the subsequent recovery.Moving to the longer-term challenge of handling climate change, societies must confront the irruption of climate-related risks that are plagued with radical uncertainty. To deal with this new financial landscape, the institutional structure of finance must be reformed. Furthermore, macroeconomic disequilibria are no longer symmetrical. The threat of a deflationary depression is far higher than inflationary risks. Consequently, central banks need to integrate macro-prudential and monetary policies and to collaborate with fiscal policy. The financial regulatory authorities are developing precautionary macroeconomic scenarios to induce private agents to report the ecological costs of their economic activity and then to reduce those costs under their monitoring.Strategic planning is indispensable for the financing of long-term infrastructure investments that receive insufficient finance from the markets. Three categories of actors stand out for the long-term restructuring of Europe’s financial systems: first, the public development banks networked under a reformed EIB; second, responsible long-term financial investors, who understand that economic damage from climate change negatively influences their long-run financial returns; and third, the European system of central banks that can account for the differentiated impact of climate change within the euro zone.

The government, private firms, and dual-track private sector development: China's experience in two crucial decades

A key to understand the evolution of an economy is the property rights institution and the contracting institution that the government set up to shape the business environment of private firms. Focusing on China during its crucial two decades of transition (from the early 1990s to the early 2010s), this paper documents how the country's business environment and the characteristics of entrepreneurs evolved, along with the role played by local governments. Relying on multiple comprehensive data sets, the paper shows that many aspects of local business environments improved: infrastructure, development of the court system, and access to external finance. Meanwhile, the share of politically connected private firms remained large, and their advantage in accessing key resources increased. Under this dual-track private sector development, private firms became larger and more innovative and adopted more formal corporate governance mechanisms. Entrepreneurs became better educated, with more diverse sectoral experiences. Market competition increased over time, especially after China's World Trade Organization entry. The paper offers suggestive evidence that this dual track development had negative consequences, such as a lower tendency to innovate by politically connected firms.

The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene by Theodora Dragostinova

Reviewed by: The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene by Theodora Dragostinova Elizabeth Banks (bio) Theodora Dragostinova, The Cold War from the Margins: A Small Socialist State on the Global Cultural Scene (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2021). 307 pp., ill. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-5017-5329-9. Theodora Dragostinova enriches understandings of the cultural Cold War by examining cultural exchange in and from Bulgaria in the long 1970s and by demonstrating the centrality of culture to socialist and nationalist nation branding in Bulgaria. Emphasizing Bulgaria's status as a "small state," Dragostinova additionally invites scholars to rethink the concept of periphery in cold war history and global history more generally. The body of the book consists of a preface, an introduction, which establishes the importance of the global cultural scene amid the challenges of the 1970s, six chapters, and an epilogue. Chapters 1 and 2 present the efforts within Bulgaria to use complex cultural events to reinvigorate state and society during this crucial decade. The most important of these events was the 1300th anniversary of Bulgaria, which took place in 1981 but was celebrated through anticipation and preparation for much of the late 1970s. This celebration, like the embrace of culture writ large, was the initiative of Liudmila Zhivkova, the daughter of the longtime state leader Todor Zhivkov. She is the book's central character, and was the cultural secretary from 1975 until her death in July 1981. The remaining four chapters explore overseas uses of Bulgarian culture in the same years. They demonstrate the enmeshing of international cultural performance with domestic, the variety of socialist world making in the seventies and eighties, and the pursuit of foreign audiences as central to Bulgarian self-expression. Dragostinova refreshingly avoids any sense of surprise that a small state would actively pursue global ambitions, focusing instead on documenting its details. The international cultural tour begins closest to home, with chapter 3 examining exchange with Bulgaria's nearest neighbors. Chapter 4 heads farther afield to the FRG and United States to document the creation of a multivalent Bulgarian diaspora through cultural exchange. The chapter reveals elaborate state plans for recruiting émigrés of various backgrounds and political persuasions for socialist Bulgaria, while highlighting varied responses and forms of national affinity among Bulgarians abroad and their descendants. The final two chapters travel farther still to cover cultural exchange with India, Mexico, and [End Page 321] Nigeria. They show how connections with the developing world, where audiences had little or no prior knowledge of Bulgaria, offered officials more space to craft their cultural national self-image. These chapters usefully show how Bulgarian cultural officials presented one message for audiences miles apart, underlining the international cultural project as primarily domestic, while noting local variations in expression and reception. Dragostinova's vibrant account of Bulgarian cultural initiatives in the long 1970s is driven by a method-as-argument she calls a "pericentric approach." It disturbs traditional historical narratives by centering on states and people usually considered small or peripheral. Cultural exchange generated a whole range of local meanings that can only be seen and understood in the specific sense; paying attention to these details makes clear the polyphony of socialist world making even in a single national case. This is an important contribution, especially as histories of the Cold War may suffer more than other subfields from an obsession around causality or a hangover assumption that Eastern Europe was overshadowed by the USSR. Following a long line of scholars who have delved into the specific to demonstrate the falsehood of this claim, the book displays honest fidelity to the Bulgarian point of view, even as two-thirds of the book is about Bulgarian culture abroad in various forms. Dragostinova is always very careful about the limitations of her sources, which are Bulgarian, and makes observations about Bulgaria rather than an ephemeral "socialist world" even as she rightly insists her method would be fruitfully applied in other settings. At times this reader found herself wishing for more contextualization that would help make sense of the metrics of smallness and bigness that underlay the argument. Between 1977 and 1981, for...

Perceptions and purpose of the bomb: Explaining India's nuclear restraint against China

AbstractMuch of the literature on India's nuclear programme assumes that China's nuclear capability drove New Delhi, the strategically weaker actor, to pursue a nuclear weapons capability. China's nuclear tests not only rendered New Delhi militarily insecure and dented its claim for the leadership of the Third World but they also polarized the domestic debate over the utility of the bomb. In the global scheme of nuclear proliferation, therefore, India was just another fallen nuclear domino. Marshalling recently declassified documents, this article revisits India's nuclear behaviour during the crucial decade between 1964 and 1974. By focusing on threat assessments made at the highest levels and internal deliberations of the Indian Government, this article shows how, contrary to the claims made in the literature, Indian decision-makers did not make much of the Chinese nuclear threat. This conviction emanated out of their distinct reading of the purpose of nuclear weapons in China's foreign and military policy; their perceptions of how India could achieve nuclear deterrence against China by using the bipolar international politics of the Cold War; and, finally, their understanding of the political costs of developing an indigenous nuclear response to China's nuclear threat. New Delhi's nuclear restraint resulted from its perceptions of Chinese nuclear intentions and its beliefs about the purpose of the bomb in Sino-Indian relations. India's perceptions of China as a nuclear adversary and its decision-makers’ views on the purpose of nuclear weapons in this rivalry were fundamentally different from the expectations set out by the domino theory of nuclear proliferation.

Medicine and the Body in Second‐Wave Feminist Histories of the Nineteenth Century

AbstractThe 1970s was a crucial decade in the historiography of medicine, and it also witnessed a new political movement. This article will explore the relationship between medical history and second‐wave feminism and argue that 1970s feminists made the idea of the nineteenth century and its medical system work for their political cause. Not only did many of them find in that century the origin point of their own conflict with the medical profession, they also claimed that the medical care they received was founded on the form and methodologies of medical knowledge that arose in the 1800s. Moreover, I contend that the importance of the nineteenth century to many feminist scholars was related to second‐wave feminism's reassertion of the physical body in the construction of personal identity and its related privileging of embodied, experiential knowledge over objective or disembodied forms of expertise.

The Story of Rufino: Slavery, Freedom, and Islam in the Black Atlantic

Three of the finest Brazilian historians of slavery of their generation have combined their scholarly talents and their varying regional expertise to bring to us an innovative and imaginative biography of a transatlantic enslaved sojourner whose life and travels reveal the complexities of the slave system in the South Atlantic. The book is deceptive because while it seems to be a microhistory, a biography of an obscure African man caught up in the slave trade to Brazil in the mid-nineteenth century, the authors have used his life to illumine the realities of some of the most important and most interesting aspects of the slave trade's final decades and the ways in which slavery as a social and economic system touched everyone—enslaved, freed, and free—who lived within it. Rufino José Maria's odyssey from his native Oyo in Yorubaland carried him across the South Atlantic as a slave to Bahia in about 1822, where he worked as a cook and apparently helped in the apothecary shop of his master. He then accompanied his master's son far to the south to Porto Alegre, where as a cook he came into contact with resident enslaved Muslims and where, in 1835 under a new master, he secured his manumission by self-purchase. Caught up in the regional civil war, the Guerra dos Farrapos, he moved to Rio de Janeiro just at the moment when news of the Muslim Malê Revolt in Salvador had put Brazil's capital on edge, but he found employment again as a cook on a slaving vessel, and so the ex-slave now returned to Africa aboard a slaver to Luanda. Further voyages on slavers brought him to Sierra Leone after a British cruiser suppressing the slave trade intercepted his vessel, and while there Rufino lived with Muslim Yorubas like him and studied the Koran before returning to Brazil to reside in Recife. There, he lived as an alufá, an Islamic spiritual adviser and healer, drawing on his knowledge of Islam and his apothecary training and providing charms, amulets, advice, counseling, and prayer to his clients. In 1853 he was arrested under suspicion of involvement in a slave revolt, and the documents in Arabic in his possession were used as evidence of his complicity.The travails and travels of this former slave, who himself became involved in the slave trade and an owner of at least one slave but also ably circulated between religions and empires, provide the opportunity for a vivid microhistory of the South Atlantic in the nineteenth century. Of course, there are gaps and absences in the documentary trail of this somewhat ephemeral personage, but rather than detracting from the biography, they allow the authors to fill in the lacunae with illuminating discussions of the social, political, judicial, and economic contexts that make this extraordinary biography a masterful general transatlantic study of Brazilian slave society in the crucial decades when British pressure was bringing the trade to an end.The world that Leslie Bethell had outlined with treaties and incidents, diplomats and politicians in The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade (1970) is populated here with the people most affected by that change. The authors have used the peregrinations of Rufino as an opportunity to discuss the rise of the popular press in Rio de Janeiro, the settlement patterns in Freetown, Sierra Leone, the corruption of officials involved in the seizure of the slave ships, the residence arrangements and ethnic associations of the Yoruba-speaking Nago in Recife, and the theological debates within the Islamic Afro-Brazilian communities. In other words, they have provided a vision of the quotidian world of a slave society. Perhaps best of all, despite the considerable archival challenges, they have been able to provide a nuanced image of the life and thought of this African traveler, sometimes accused as a sorcerer, his Arabic writings suspected as seditious, but a man devoted to his faith yet tolerant of the beliefs of others; like Carlo Ginzburg's Menocchio, he told his interrogator that the question of which religion is best “will only be decided when the world ends” (p. 215).As part of the biographical turn in slavery studies, the authors wisely underline the moral and ethical complexities of slave societies and the fact that Rufino's story was not typical. But even so, Rufino's life story provides a guide to a larger history in which he played “a small but interesting, and sometimes nefarious, part” (p. 244). Fluidly translated, rarely does a book so impressive in its research and conceptualization convey its message in so accessible a narrative that it can be used to great advantage by both graduate and undergraduate students. This is one of the finest books to date on slavery and its complexities in the nineteenth-century South Atlantic.