Cultural Reform Research Articles

Efforts to Modernize Chapbooks during the Initial Years of the Turkish Republic

Chapbook reform was part and parcel of larger projects of folk culture reform in Europe between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Political powers excised content perceived as dangerous and substituted material reflecting their own principles and aims. This article examines the reflections of this process in Turkey. The modernization of chapbooks was carried out by the Turkish political authorities as a state project only in 1937. That project included the transformation of traditional heroes and events in these chapbooks to place them in line with the Republican revolution and the state ideology of modernity.

Ethics and the Tax Profession: Restoring the Public Interest Focus

ABSTRACT: Tax practice is an integral component of the public accounting profession. Although accountancy as a profession embraces a strong public interest notion, there is an inevitable tension in tax practice between serving the client and maintaining the integrity of the tax system. Resolving this tension necessitates an ethics-infused judgment process. Ethical failures over the past decade have weakened the tax profession and called into question the extent to which practitioners in fact operate in a manner consistent with the public interest. In this paper, we explore the fundamental causes of the ethical problems that have plagued the tax profession and provide a roadmap for reform of the tax profession. Using Cressey’s (1953) fraud triangle as a framework, we first examine the normative ideal for the tax profession. We then examine the recent tax shelter abuses perpetrated by the major public accounting firms and find results consistent with our expectations under the fraud triangle analysis. In essence, ethical breakdowns resulted from the loss of a public interest emphasis, which in turn led to the explicit pursuit of commercial gain at the expense of the public interest. That the frauds were perpetrated within the context of a profession founded on a public interest notion is particularly concerning. In response to the problems observed, we identify key cultural reforms needed within the accounting academy, the accounting profession, and the tax system in order to restore trust and the public interest character of the tax profession to center stage and so guard against further adverse outcomes.

Between Two Worlds: Harry Reade, the Sydney Waterfront, and Cuban Animation

Harry Reade (1927-1998) was an Australian waterside worker-artist who became involved with animation production through the Waterside Workers’ Federation Film Unit, in Sydney. During the early years of the Cuban Revolution, Reade contributed to Cuba’s social and cultural reform process by influencing the development of the educational sector of Cuban animation. This article examines the forces that shaped Reade and the ways in which he contributed to the use of animation as an agent of social change.

Patrick Chamoiseau and the Limits of the Aesthetics of Resistance

It would seem paradoxical to situate work of Patrick Chamoiseau, militant Martinican writer, in context of French regionalism, a conservative cultural movement in France that defended languages and traditions from French provinces. First, a long period separates French regionalism from creolite movement, French Caribbean literary movement that emerged in wake of publication of Chamoiseau's 1986 groundbreaking work Chronique des sept miseres. As a literary movement, French regionalism was known for its patriotism and its aim to celebrate customs, landscape, and languages of regions. Its heyday, which extended from belle epoque to entre-deux-guerres, roughly from 1920s to 1930s, came some forty years before creolite. Seemingly, no historical continuity can be drawn between these two literary movements. Arguably, it would be equally difficult to draw any intellectual continuity between these liter - ary schools. The underlying ideology of French regionalism and creolite could not, on face of it, be more different. The former expressed desire to purify and renew nation by grounding French identity in soil (terroir). It found literary inspiration in rural space of heartland (petit pays), in ancestral way of life, or in psychology of popular classes. For French regionalist writers, true Frenchness could be found only in old moral values and untarnished local traditions of people of France. The emphasis on native traditions was so strong in regional- ism that many considered it to be the official doctrine of National Revolution, cultural reform of France undertaken by reactionary Vichy Regime led by Marechal Philippe Petain.

Community-driven development as a driver of change: water supply and sanitation projects in rural Punjab, Pakistan

This paper examines the question: how effective is a community driven development (CDD) approach to rural water supply? Some theoretical advantages of CDD approaches include: (1) community choices are more attuned to local needs; (2) sustainable O&M is more likely; (3) social capital is built; (4) more participation yields better oversight and less corruption; and (5) communities become active partners in development, itself a worthy objective. Using quantitative and qualitative data from a water supply and sanitation project in Punjab, Pakistan, the study finds that the CDD approach, consistent with expectations, has done well in extending water supply, drainage, and sanitation coverage to the poor rural communities, and demonstrated outcomes that are only achievable through CDD—including water tariff and cultural changes. The project was also effective in promoting local participation and ownership, particularly by women's groups, and is therefore likely to have sustainable operation and maintenance (O & M). This study uncovers two dimensions of CDD in water and sanitation as means to an end: political reform, by proposing implementation strategies of decentralisation; and cultural reform, by providing an approach to break cultural barriers.

Arnold in Aysheshok, Schiller in Shnipishok: Imperatives of “Culture” in East European Jewish Nationalism and Socialism

When the February Revolution of 1917 unfettered public life across the Russian Empire, hundreds of thousands threw themselves into activism on behalf of numerous, conflicting visions of political, social, and cultural transformation. Although histories of the Russian Revolution still resonate with tropes of 1917 as rupture, most of these activists initially greeted February as a chance to realize programs born well before 1917, in the decades preceding the Revolution. Among the divided multitude of whom this was true was twenty-two-year-old Natan Bistritsky. Raised in a small, heavily Jewish town in the Ukraine and vouchsafed a traditional Jewish education, Bistritsky had broken with the world of Eastern Europe’s distinctive pietistic Judaism as an adolescent. He embraced instead two closely linked, self-consciously modern ideals: Jewish political nationalism and a secular nationalist vision of Jewish cultural reformation. Now, first in Moscow and then, by early 1918, in Kiev, he worked for Russia’s resurgent Zionist movement and for a Hebraist cultural movement that sought to create a modern Hebrew-language culture and transform Russia’s variegated Jewish population into a nation of secular Hebrews. Bistritsky—he would later assume a Hebrew name, Agmon, as the culmination of his own Hebraist self-transformation—was charged with bringing these ideals to the swelling Jewish populations of these metropoles, where small, Russified Jewish bourgeoisies were now swamped by tens of thousands of Jewish war refugees and

Community-Driven Development as Drivers of Change: Water Supply and Sanitation Projects in Rural Punjab, Pakistan

This paper examines the question: how effective is a community driven development (CDD) approach to rural water supply? Some theoretical advantages of CDD approaches include: 1) community choices are more attuned to local needs; 2) sustainable OM 3) social capital is built; 4) more participation yields better oversight and less corruption; and 5) communities become active partners in development, itself a worthy objective. Using quantitative and qualitative data from a water supply and sanitation project in Punjab, Pakistan, the study finds that the CDD approach, consistent with expectations, had done well in extending water supply, drainage, and sanitation coverage to the poor rural communities, and demonstrated outcomes that are only achievable through CDD – including water tariff and cultural changes. The project was also effective in promoting local participation and ownership, particularly by women’s groups, and is therefore likely to have sustainable operation and maintenance (O & M). This study uncovers two dimensions of CDD in water and sanitation as means to an end: political reform, by proposing implementation strategies of decentralisation; and cultural reform, by providing the approach to break cultural barriers.

The Good Book and the Good Life: Bestselling Biographies in China's Economic Reform

AbstractThis article looks at currently bestselling biographies in urban China as popular histories of the national self from 1949 to the present. In their retrospective narrations of the Cultural Revolution and economic reform, they identify a reorientation of life away from ideological community and towards market rationality. I locate this shift also in the history of the publishing industry that produces them and analyse how publishing practices and values have changed from Mao to Jiang, to argue that a reconstitution of the “good” has been effected by the deployment of old rhetorical goals under structurally new conditions. Extended into the broader political arena, this suggests that institutional continuity in contemporary China masks a reconstitution of governance itself, from direct intervention and political control to administrative regulation and commercial competitiveness. Communist revolutionary ambitions are now redefined and fulfilled through economic success in commercial enterprise. Contrary to the prevalent notion that such couplings are contradictory and unsustainable, I argue that a mutually generative relationship currently exists between the two.

History Remaking and Cultural Identity: Subjectivity Transformation in Taiwan's Visual Culture

Political intervention and ideology can control and influence the formation of cultural characteristics and subjectivity. Stability and authenticity of cultural characteristics, therefore, are temporary and ever-shifting like a perpetually bouncing molecule in space. Taiwan is a typical example: its geographic location determines its fate. From the inception of human civilization, the Taiwan Strait has become the sea corridor and Taiwan the midway station, linking the South Pacific with Japan, and the island's proximity to mainland China has made it a convenient destination for Chinese pioneers. Since the rise of maritime exploration in the seventeenth century, Taiwan was colonized by European countries such as Portugal and Spain, followed by the Qing dynasty, which in 1683 formally claimed the island as part of its territory. After the Sino-Japanese War of 1895, Taiwan was ceded to Japan to become its colony. Following World War II the Nationalist Government of China reclaimed Taiwan, and the island eventually became its sole sovereign territory. Chinese culture became mainstream, naturally replacing Japanese colonial culture on the island. During the period of Nationalist-governed Taiwan, the island represented orthodox Chinese culture, establishing Taiwan's subjectivity. Local consciousness had begun to ferment in the 1970s, and the pace quickened when postmodern ideas were introduced the following decade. After violent political struggles and regime changes, Taiwan's nation status, cultural roots and identity have all experienced drastic transformation resulting in further ambiguity. This article focuses on four aspects: the dismantling of the grand narrative, reconstructing new historical concepts, consolidating Taiwanese characteristics, and the mutual benefits and conflicts between internationalization and localization, to elucidate ongoing anxieties about Taiwan's characteristics, subjectivity and ideology. Dismantling of the grand narrative focuses on how modernist theories of the nationstate influenced postwar Taiwan culture and historical identity. During the postmodern era this framework was dismantled; postmodern theories became the backbone of Taiwan's local consciousness movement, which in turn triggered the reexamination and recreation of Taiwanese history and culture. This early stage of cultural reformation deeply influenced artists' sense of belonging and engendered transformation in the iconography and concepts of Taiwan's visual arts. Reconstruction of Taiwan's historical concepts focuses on extracting lost, unfamiliar, unrelated cultural elements to weave a complete and persuasive historical iconography. Conflict naturally arose during this process of forced elimination of memories and implantation of new ”memories.” Taiwan's social movements are laden with this sort of conflict. They use visual arts to propagate ideology and strengthen points, and while this style of visual images often belonged to media propagation of popular culture, it demonstrates that Taiwan's visual culture shifted along with ideological changes. The inevitable, unavoidable tug-of-war ensued during the reformation of Taiwan history and cultural identity.

Urban water management in cities: historical, current and future regimes

Drawing from three phases of a social research programme between 2002 and 2008, this paper proposes a framework for underpinning the development of urban water transitions policy and city-scale benchmarking at the macro scale. Through detailed historical, contemporary and futures research involving Australian cities, a transitions framework is proposed, presenting a typology of six city states, namely the 'Water Supply City', the 'Sewered City', the 'Drained City', the 'Waterways City', the 'Water Cycle City', and the 'Water Sensitive City'. This framework recognises the temporal, ideological and technological contexts that cities transition through when moving towards sustainable urban water conditions. The aim of this research is to assist urban water managers with understanding the scope of the hydro-social contracts currently operating across cities in order to determine the capacity development and cultural reform initiatives needed to effectively expedite the transition to more sustainable water management and ultimately to Water Sensitive Cities. One of the values of this framework is that it can be used by strategists and policy makers as a heuristic device and/or the basis for a future city state benchmarking tool. From a research perspective it can be an underpinning framework for future work on transitions policy research.

Study on the Influence of Enterprise Culture’s Reform on CRM Implementation

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has been seen as a major trend during the recent years in Chinese companies. It is undoubted that technique plays an important role in CRM, but it is only a way and one of the factors which make CRM work normally. The keys to implementation CRM successfully are the person who uses CRM system and the proper enterprise culture. This paper analyses the reform of enterprise culture’s effect on the implementation of CRM, and put forward a new customer-centered enterprise culture.

Micro Spaces, Performative Repertoires and Gender Wars among Islamic Youth in Istanbul

The cultural reforms introduced by the Turkish Republican elite after 1923 aspired to a Western-oriented civilisational transformation. Excluding Islamic symbols from the modern public sphere (such as the headscarf) was perceived as one indispensable prerequisite of the Westernisation process. The public sphere tightly monitored by the secular elites appeared as an outcome of state modernism, relegating religion to the private sphere. The emergence of an Islamist social movement in Turkey in the 1990s was characterised by its challenging of the laicity of urban spaces. Male and female activists presented themselves in a way that announced their Islamic identity, thus culturally and ideologically contesting the modernist/secularist public sphere. My argument is that the public performance of an Islamic identity in Istanbul in this period did not manifest itself as a movement of atomistic individuals, but neither was it an experience of a unified community. By contrast, Islamists pursued a form of subjectivation through Islamic morals as they tried to blend a new rationality with a religious self. In the process, young male and female Islamic actors often clashed over what the performing of this Islamic self might include.

Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement (review)

Reviewed by: Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement Rossella Ferrari (bio) Xiaobing Tang . Origins of the Chinese Avant-Garde: The Modern Woodcut Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. xii, 300 pp. Hardcover $60.00, ISBN 0-52-024909-7. With this impeccably researched and beautifully illustrated volume, Xiaobing Tang has written the definitive account of a significant yet understudied topic within English-language scholarship on China: the modern woodcut movement that revolutionized Chinese art in the early 1930s. Tang traces its genesis and subsequent dissemination through the Nanjing decade (1927-1937), specifically, from the inauguration of Nanjing as the new Nationalist capital in 1928 to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937. The first three chapters reconstruct the historical and institutional context of the early decades of the twentieth century, addressing the key artistic movements and personalities that populated the cultural-artistic field of modern China in the prewar era. Alongside visual artists such as Liu Haisu, Lin Fengmian, and Xu Beihong, the activities of prominent public intellectuals and writers such as Cai Yuanpei, Tian Han, Ouyang Yuqian, and Guo Moruo are also surveyed. One chief protagonist of Tang's engaging narrative is Lu Xun, who is widely acknowledged as the "spiritual patron of the woodcut movement" (p. 4). All three chapters begin with the year 1928, a crucial historical moment in which artistic production started to be institutionalized by the newly-established Nanjing government. They vividly flesh out the excitement, energy, intellectual diversity, and animated spirit of discussion of the time—especially in the commercialized and cosmopolitan environment of Shanghai. Chapter 1 examines various proposals for art instruction on a national scale, in particular Cai Yuanpei's advocacy of "aesthetic education" (meiyu), and traces the emergence of a notion of "art movement" since the second half of the 1920s. Tang details the major debates of the period relating to the modernization of the Chinese visual arts and highlights the decisive role played by Chinese students in Japan and Europe in the introduction and dissemination of foreign styles and aesthetic concepts. The question of function or purpose of the artwork, which constitutes a central aspect of avant-garde theory, is repeatedly addressed in this and other chapters, and so are related notions of autonomy and "art for art" (the "ivory tower") as opposed to "art for life" (the "crossroads," p. 35). This moment was critical in the history of Chinese art, as new trends and schools emerged and cultural producers constantly redefined their historical mission and social role. The "meaningfulness and consequentiality of art" became persistent concerns (p. 3), and increasingly greater emphasis was laid on art's closeness to life praxis and on the artist's direct involvement in social reform. The woodcut movement, [End Page 271] too, came to address questions of function and purpose, but their responses and approaches to contemporary events "would be critically different" (p. 4) from those of other promoters of aesthetic modernity and cultural reform. This difference, along with its anti-institutional disposition, political drive, and innovative visuality, became the key marker of distinction of the modern woodcut community as "a truly avant-garde movement" (p. 218). Chapter 2 deals specifically with the literary field and its intersections with the visual arts. The intellectual journeys of Tian Han and Guo Moruo from Japan to China, their subsequent involvement with the Creation Society, and its shifting ideological orientations testify to the increasing appeal of left-wing political theories and artistic conceptions since the late 1920s. Emergent notions of proletarian and revolutionary art and literature, also shaped by Marxist movements in Japan, paved the way for the advent of the first generation of modern printmakers in the early 1930s. Chapter 3 introduces Lu Xun's long-standing involvement with the visual arts field, his interest in modern Japanese and European prints, and his advocacy of the "creative woodcut" (chuangzuo muke) as a truly modern, vigorous, and revolutionary art form—a belief that would direct his unremitting patronage of this medium until his death in 1936. The key artists, exhibitions, and publications that contributed to the flourishing and expansion of the movement are comprehensively surveyed in chapters 4 and...

Petrarch's Rome: The History of the Africa and the Renaissance Project

❦I. On Easter Sunday 1341, in a ceremony that took place on Rome’s Capitoline Hill, Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374) was crowned with the laurel wreath. Petrarch owed this realization of a longstanding dream to a large network of friends, but also to the favor of King Robert of Naples. Robert submitted the poet to a three-day examen privatum in his residence, then formally declared him worthy to be crowned poet laureate. The powerful Roman Colonna dynasty also provided active support. As capellanus continuus, Petrarch (who had been ordained in the lower ranks of the Catholic priesthood) had been a familiar figure at the court of Cardinal Giovanni Colonna in Avignon since 1330. The examination by King Robert as well as the legal document containing the privilegium laureationis show that the Roman ceremony was clearly modeled on medieval academic protocol. Its intentions, however, point in an entirely different direction. The poet’s coronation speech, traditionally known as the Collatio laureationis, as well as the other pertinent documents clearly indicate that Petrarch intended to fashion the Capitoline honors into the grandiose inauguration of the new age he was hoping for—regardless of the medieval traditions to which these honors were indebted. Petrarch claimed that the ceremony was reviving a classical tradition that had been forgotten and neglected for more than twelve hundred years. At the same time, it was to signal the impending reformation of an exhausted culture by means of a return to the spirit of the ancients. This spirit, according to Petrarch,

The Dramatic Works of Catherine the Great: Theatre and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Russia by Lurana Donnels O'Malley , Catherine (review)

REVIEWS 727 contribution to Russian pre-revolutionary scholarship and its non-appearance at the time was a sad deficit.Much of its scholarly achievement has been overtaken by other work during the last hundred years, but it stillhas much to offer. The volume may also be seen as a contribution to the history of historiography. Moreover, its publication at the present time is an act of collegial and filial piety on the part of post-Soviet Russian scholars, and it honours thememory of an undoubtedly outstanding historian. LudlowRoger Bartlett O'Malley, Lurana Donnels. The Dramatic Works ofCatherinethe Great:Theatre and Politics inEighteenth-Century Russia. Performance in the Long Eighteenth Century: Studies in Theatre, Music, Dance. Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, VT, 2006. xiii + 227 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Appendix. Bibliography. Index. ?50.00. As woman, monarch and cultural figure,Empress Catherine II continues to impress.Among both scholars and the general public, her appeal has persisted for generations. Although there are many superb studies devoted to Catherine's life and reign, specialists and non-specialists alike seem always ready to read another book about the admired empress. The story of Catherine's personal life is one of tragedy, romance, intrigue and danger, and her accomplishments as ruler compare favourably to those of any monarch in early modern Europe. Some historians would call her the greatest ruler ever to govern Russia. Numerous scholarly studies have analysed Catherine's mili tary and diplomatic victories and her wide-ranging institutional and cultural reforms. In almost any discussion of eighteenth-century Russian culture, Catherine plays a prominent role as both patron and participant. Leading European intellectuals of the day admired the empress's political and artistic writings, and scholars have long included her works in discussions of the European Enlightenment(s). Lurana Donnels O'Malley provides another con tribution to this time-honoured practice in her sensitive study of Catherine's dramatic works. Between 1770 and 1790 Catherine wrote over two dozen plays and operas in Russian and French. The empress claimed to write for her own and her subjects' amusement, but because Catherine viewed theatre as a tool of education and enlightenment, she also effectively 'staged' her political views. O'Malley is not a Russian historian or literary scholar in the traditional academic sense, and her discussion of the cultural and political background to Catherine's dramatic writings tends to be thin and formulaic. But as an histo rian of theatre and a practising director, O'Malley brings valuable qualities and a unique perspective to the reading of Catherine's plays. In a lively and original analysis, she draws attention toCatherine's technical skillsas a play wright and shows how the empress employed aesthetic strategies to convey a political and moral message. O'Malley also relates the content of Catherine's plays to events in the empress's personal lifeand in the history of the empire she ruled. 728 SEER, 86, 4, OCTOBER 2008 In chapters organized by genre ? comedies, historical plays, and comic operas ? O'Malley also tries tomaintain a chronological approach in order to highlight the emotional, intellectual and policy concerns that informed Catherine's dramatic writings. She begins with five comedies written around 1772 and thenmoves on to discuss the later comedies, including three anti Masonic plays, written in the period 1785-90. In the comedies, Catherine emerges as an Enlightenment moralist adept in the application of neo-classical artistic forms. From the comedies and French dramatic proverbs, O'Malley shifts our gaze to the Shakespearean plays of 1786 ? one comedy and two historical plays ? which reveal a Catherine open to artistic innovation (willing to abandon neo-classical symmetries), appreciative ofRussian cultural traditions, and skilled in the use of baroque pageantry to assert political power. Finally, in the last chapter of thebook, O'Malley examines Catherine's comic operas, written between 1786 and 1790,which pay 'homage toRussian folk forms by stitching together fairy tales, byliny, popular songs, and even a witch' (p. 200). In the comic operas, Catherine's ability towrite Russian verse also becomes evident, as does her talent for treating serious, even disturbing, subject matter with humour and grace. O'Malley's study isbased on a close reading ofCatherine...

For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia by Robert D. Crews (review)

REVIEWS 553 of Radishchev's main work; it ends with a consideration of Zhukovskii's Siberian diary. This book has its origins in a 1995 doctoral thesis. It is perhaps regret table that in revising the author was unable to take into account more recent work, since this is an area in which advances have been made and worthwhile arguments about the shape of the Russian Enlightenment are happening. In particular, not engaging with Andreas Schonle's account of the same corpus of texts (Authenticity andFiction in the Russian Literary Journey, iygo-1840, Cambridge, MA, 2000) seems like a missed opportunity to underscore the difference in these two complementary studies. But its value lies, above all, in the comprehensive coverage it gives to the canonical texts of Russian travel writing and more obscure works. Throughout Dickinson is attentive to the tension between the prescriptive nature of travel writing, which combined the utilitarian function of the travel guide, and itsother functions as a narra tive of personal growth and, most importantly forDickinson, a statement of national pride inRussia's achievement of parity with theWestern countries encountered by these writers. BreakingGroundhas littlenew to say about any of its constituent texts, but it offers a comprehensive account of the genre as a whole. The study ismarred by conceptual fuzziness in places. Dickinson consistently refers to the texts considered in thisbook as travel literature.But in fact her corpus of texts contains works that are not literaryand fall into the category of travelwriting of a much larger description. There isa tendency to use the term 'Grand Tour' too loosely as neither Kiukhel'beker nor Karamzin follow the the highly prescribed itineraryassociated with that rite of passage in the education of British elitemen. The term 'scientific' as a description of Radishchev's technique really needs to be unpacked in order to be helpful. Is itany different from empirical? Is itLinnaean or does it show the impact of advances, largely in the area of the chemical sciences, in theAcademy of Sciences? Given Radishchev's interest in natural philosophy itwould have been helpful to know. At times, her close readings are arguably off themark and do not corroborate the conclusions. Batiushkov's account of his military travels smack more of jingoism than literary sophistication. But ifone takes them more seriously as 'travel writing', then Dickinson's reading is open to questioning since Cirey, where Batiushkov found himself, is more than the place where Voltaire spent many of 'his most productive years'. It is the place where he wrote his most important works on Newtonian physics, which is surely to the point when Batiushkov records how he and his comrades affirm theirRussian identityby boasting of the immortal Lomonosov. These criticisms notwithstanding, this book makes an insightful contribution to a burgeoning area of research. StEdmundHall, Oxford Andrew Kahn Crews, Robert D. For ProphetandTsar: Islam andEmpire in Russia and Central Asia. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006. viii + 463 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $29.95: ?19.95. The last ten years have seen something of a revolution in the study of Russia's Imperial past. Beginning, perhaps, with thework ofJames Forsyth and Yuri 554 SEER, 86, 3, JULY 2008 Slezkine on Siberia (Forsyth,A History of the Native Peoples ofSiberia,Cambridge, 1992; Slezkine, Arctic Mirrors: Russia and the Small Peoples of the North, Ithaca, NY, 1994), we now have excellent regional studies of the Volga-Kama Region and the Steppe ? Allen J. Frank's Muslim Religious InstitutionsinImperialRus sia (Leiden, 2001), Virginia Martin's Law and Custom in theSteppe (London, 2001); Robert Geraci's Window on the East (Ithaca, NY, 2001); Paul Werth's At the Margins ofOrthodoxy(Ithaca, NY, 2002); Michael Khodarkovsky's Russia's Steppe Frontier (Bloomington, IN, 2002) and Willard Sunderland's Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca, NY 2004) ? the Caucasus ? Moshe Gammer's Muslim Resistance to the Tsar (London, 1994), Austin Jersild's Orientalism and Empire (Montreal, 2002) and Nicholas Breyfogle's Heretics and Colonizers:ForgingRussia's Empire in theSouth Caucasus (Ithaca, NY, 2005) ? and Central Asia ? Adeeb Khalid's The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform (Berkeley, CA, 1997), Daniel Brower's Turkestan and theFate of theRussian Empire (London...

Kazimierz Wielki jako reformator i człowiek

Endowed with all the traits of an outstanding monarch and creator of his state, King Kazimierz III (also known as the Great) appears one of the greatest figures in the history of Poland. It was him who laid out the legal and political foundation of the modern state. He initiated legislative, administrative, economic, military and cultural reforms which became the source of the power of the Jagiellonian dynasty. However, apart from the above mentioned virtues, Kazimierz Wielki had a number of vices and weaknesses. He tended to be irritable and bad-tempered. He overly appreciated jewels and luxury. What is more, he was promiscuous and overindulged in drinking and eating.

New hope for urban high schools: cultural reform, moral leadership, and community partnership

The last sixty years have seen tremendous strides in high school education. More young people of all races and backgrounds are graduating from high school, with more credits in tougher courses, than ever before. However, our dropout rate is still too high and far too many graduates are not prepared for college. High school reform for city schools has been particularly challenging where poverty and racism have undermined the high school experience. Educators have relied upon two reform strategies: the curricular strategy focuses on the academic content that is delivered in the classroom, content reformers have adjusted. They also have restructured the high school itself to maximize the impact of the classroom. This book offers an additional strategy, one essential for real change: the cultural reform strategy. Cultural change-a fundamental change in the beliefs, attitudes and expectations of the stakeholders-is difficult to achieve. Yet, without a change in the culture of the high school, curricular and structural reforms will have limited impact on raising student engagement. The authors illustrate the history of high school reform, and develop a case for the necessity of cultural reform, by taking an intimate look at one very typical urban high school-Dorchester High School in Boston. Dorchester High faced trends, policies, and challenges similar to those of high schools all over the country, so that the lessons learned there should be instructive for urban high schools across America. Gonsalves and Leonard also examine Dorchester High in the context of community partnerships and relationships.

Modernity and Its Fallen Languages: Tanpιnar's Hasret, Benjamin's Melancholy

A comparative study of the politics and theory of language in the writings of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpιnar and Walter Benjamin, this article suggests that a rethinking of the discursive commensurability and incommensurability of modern Turkish language and literature with western European representational practices has crucial implications for critical comparative methodology today. I leave behind conventional accounts based on models of European literary influence, emphasizing instead changes in writing practices that accompanied the development of modern literature and comparatism. Of particular significance for my analysis are the intensification of print culture and language reforms. I examine Tanpιnar's writings as a special archive registering the problematic of representational writing, while exploring their continuities and discontinuities with Benjamin's work. I configure an alternative critical comparative framework, troubling the uneven epistemological categories of modernity through which “East” and “West” continue to structure even the transnationalist critical discourse that interrogates them.

The New Labor Culture and Labor Law Reform in Mexico

There are two competing labor law reform proposals in the Mexican legislature, both of which would profoundly reshape labor-capital-government relations should they be passed. The Plan Abascal is based on idealized relations of production derived from the post-Fordist theory that new global economic realites demand new regulations that allow employers more flexibility to deal with sudden market shifts. In contrast, the reform authored by an independent union confederation protects workers against employer and government unilateralism and exploitation.