Eastern Nations Research Articles

“The West” in the Eyes of the Iranian Intellectuals of the Interwar Years (1919-1939)

Persia has not been modernized and has not in reality been Westernized. Look at the map: there is Persia right up against Russia. For the past hundred years, living cheek by jowl with Russia, Persia has maintained her complete independence of Russian thought. Although sixty to seventy percent of her trade for the past hundred years has been with Russia, Persia remains aloof in spirit and in practice. For the past ten years, Persia has been living alongside the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, and has remained free from any impregnation by their basic ideas. Her freedom is due to her cultural independence. For the safety of Persia it is essential, if she is to continue to develop on her own lines, that she should not attempt modernization, and I do not think that the attempt is being made. It is true that the Persians have adopted motor-cars and in small way railways. But let us remember that the Persians have always been in the forefront in anything of that sort. The fi rst Eastern nation to enter the Postal Union and to adopt a system of telegraphs was Persia, which country was also among the fi rst of the Eastern nations to join the League of Nations and to become an active member. The Persians have always been ready to adapt to their own peculiar needs any Western invention that seemed to suit them. But that does not mean that they are being Westernized, with one exception. Westernization is taking place in the sphere of law.1

Affect Control in International Interactions

This research tests the proposition that national leaders generate international interactions in the process of maintaining sentiments about nations and international actions. The analysis deals with 1,934 international incidents in which one of 25 Middle Eastern nations responded twice within four weeks to an instigation by another of the 25 nations. Quantitative predictions from affect control theory correlate significantly with quantitative measurements of observed responses. In particular, affect-based predictions account for 59 percent of the variance in the nations' cooperation-conflict. Thus, international interactions are affectively-regulated to a significant degree.

US executives’ post 9/11 perceptions of competing middle eastern nations as foreign direct investment options

In this study, perceptual mapping was used to identify the post 9/11 positions of ten, competing Middle Eastern nations as foreign direct investment (FDI) options. The perceived position of the “ideal” nation also was identified. FDI executives indicated that a limited number of Middle Eastern nations are positioned to benefit from future foreign direct investments. However, none of the nations studied hold a strategically superior position. The stability of a nation’s political and economic risk, economic opportunities, and natural resources contributes to a nation’s perceived position. Some nations face more significant FDI obstacles than others.

US executives’ post 9/11 perceptions of competing middle eastern nations as foreign direct investment options

US executives’ post 9/11 perceptions of competing middle eastern nations as foreign direct investment options

Chinese Europe: Alexander Herzen and the Russian Image of China

Chinese Europe: Alexander Herzen and the Russian Image of China Susanna Soojung Lim W H E AT O N C O L L E G E , M A S S A C H U S E T T S Alexander Herzen (1812-70), aleading nineteenth-century Russian thinker, memoirist, journalist, and novelist, spent the majority of his active professional life in exile in Europe, primarily England. Portrayed to genera¬ tions of Russians as the “father of Russian socialism,” Herzen is also known for his astute observations of the European scene and his reflections on Rus¬ sia’s relationship to the West. On the significance of Europe for Russia, he once declared, “We need Europe as an ideal, areproach, agood example; if she were not these things it would be necessary to invent her” (11:66). Yet Herzen’s thoughts on the West also lead us to an unexpected, reverse, direction: to the Far East and China. The present study examines the idea of China in the writings of the Russian thinker, in particular its sig¬ nificance as the source of adistinctive Russian discourse on China and Japan, one in which these Far Eastern nations figure not as clear signifiers of the exotic “Orient,” but rather as potent metaphors for considering Russia’s own place in history and its relation to the West.^ The first part discusses some specifics of Russian perceptions of China leading up to Herzen, fol¬ lowed by an analysis of his original contribution to the predominant nine¬ teenth-century idea of China. It then concludes with an examination of Herzen’s influence on Fyodor Dostoevsky and the Russian Symbolists. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the image of China in Russian thought and literature functioned as adual metaphor. On the one hand, it representedstagnationandconservatism,servingasastand-infortheRuss¬ ian self, in the way European thinkers used it to criticize their own societies. Ontheotherhand,beginninginthe1840s,Chinaalsobecameasymbolfor the other, the West. This counterintuitive conflation of China and Western Europewasshapedbywriters’awarenessofRussia’speculiarstatusbetween E a s t a n d W e s t . Thepasttwodecadeshaveseenagrowingnumberofstudiesdevotedto the question of Russia and the East in the theoretical context of postcolo¬ nialism and Orientalism. These studies have focused on the ways the Russian state and its intellectuals, writers, and artists have understood and described the empire’s eastern and southern peripheries.The need to readjust Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism when considering the Russian experience of the East has been noted by several critics.According to Mark Bassin, Russia’s ambivalent position is characterized by “a sort of existential indeterminacy between East and West, averitable geo-schizophrenia” (1998, 58); IntertextSy Vol. 10, No. 12006 ©Texas Tech University Press 5 2 I N T E R T E X T S Nathaniel Knight, in questioning the direct applicability of Said’s theory to Russia, writes that “when Russian scholars turned to the East it was often with asharp awareness of their own supposed backwardness and inferiority in the face of the grand civilization of Britain, France and Germany.” (77) This national insecurity has shaped Russian orientalist discourse: schol¬ arship on the treatment of the Caucasus in nineteenth-century Russian liter¬ ature, for instance, has shown how the creation of the south as Russia’s own Orient was significantly motivated by the desire to underscore Russians’ sim¬ ilarity to Europeans as colonizers and orientalizers.^ Like the use of the Cau¬ casus, the use of China reveals Russian perceptions of its “own supposed backwardness and inferiority in the face of the grand civilization” of Western Europe, but in adecidedly different manner. China in the writings to be examined below functions as astand-in not for an exotic or Romantic other that satisfied Russian imperial needs, but as afamiliar and contemptible Western other, and consequently as aweapon for critiquing the evils of Western modernity and stressing Russia’s distance from Europe. Russian thinking on China, then, becomes acomplex interaction among three ideas: Orientalism, Occidentalism^, and Russia. From Kitaishchina to “Chinese Europe” Although Russia was the first “western” nation to sign aformal treaty with China in 1689 (Treaty of Nerchinsk), its engagement with the Middle King¬ dom as atopic of cultural and intellectual life developed in the eighteenth century and simulated...

SCIENCE FOR PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST

SCIENTISTS FROM 12 MIDDLE Eastern nations, including Israel and the Palestinian Authority, met on neutral territory in the Mediterranean island nation of Malta in early November for the second conference designed to forge stronger relationships among scientists in the region. The conference organizers designed the meeting to draw the attention of national governments to the fact that improving regional scientific cooperation could aid sustainable economic development and promote peace and political reconciliation. We can't leave the peace process in the Middle East only to the politicians, commented chemistry professor Zafra M. Lerman of Columbia College Chicago. Spreading the message that everyone can work together is the best thing we can do for the Middle East, she told C&EN. Lerman served as chair of the conference organizing committee and leads the American Chemical Society's Committee on Scientific Freedom & Human Rights. Titled Frontiers of Chemical Sciences II: Research & Education in ...

Mexico's Southern Flank: The “Third” U.S. Border

Mexico's crime-ridden southern frontier has become a veritable third U.S. border, as a constant flow of Central Americans and others cross into Mexico, often en route to the United States. As the number of unlawful migrants surges, their characteristics are changing: recent apprehensions include nationals of Caribbean, Middle Eastern, and Asian nations, and foreigners linked to terrorism are using Mexico as a thoroughfare to the United States. Mexico's immigration department is hindered by a number of factors in stanching this flow, and Mexican officials have only begun to publicly recognize the severity of the problem. Washington, too, must wake up to the security threat posed by Mexico's soft underbelly.

Carol Jacobs: new chair of Global Fund Board wants to engage private sector

Carol Jacobs: new chair of Global Fund Board wants to engage private sector

Nervous outsiders

In 1955 29 Asian, African and Middle Eastern nations gathered in Bandung, Indonesia, to discuss a range of issues including colonialism, racialism, economic development, war and peace. India's Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, was one of the key figures at the conference, but the Chinese Prime Minister, Chou En-lai, was the primary focus of world attention and media interest. The conference raised awkward questions for the Australian government. It highlighted the point that Australia was geographically part of Asia and had a vital interest in the region, but the fact that Australia had not been invited to attend the conference emphasised its status as a nation apart, racially and culturally. The Bandung conference provides an ideal opportunity to examine thinking about Australia's place in Asia as key figures in the Department of External Affairs, journalists and Asianist intellectuals debated whether or not Australia should attend.

Declining hepatitis A seroprevalence: a global review and analysis

Hepatitis A virus (HAV) is spread by faecal-oral contact or ingestion of contaminated food or water. Lifelong immunity is conferred by infection or vaccination, so anti-HAV seroprevalence studies can be used to indicate which populations are susceptible to infection. Seroprevalence rates are highly correlated with socioeconomic status and access to clean water and sanitation. Increasing household income, education, water quality and quantity, sanitation, and hygiene leads to decreases in HAV prevalence. Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and most European nations have low anti-HAV rates. Although anti-HAV rates remain high in most Latin American, Asian, and Middle Eastern nations, average seroprevalence rates are declining. Surveys from Africa generally indicate no significant decline in anti-HAV rates. Because the severity of illness increases with age, populations with a high proportion of susceptible adults should consider targeted vaccination programmes.

History Derailed: Central and Eastern Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century by Ivan T. s> Berend (review)

REVIEWS 757 known about such attemptswhich were, in any case, renderedperipheralby the Pilsudski-ite'Doctrine of the Two Enemies' and other exigencies of that period. Bokajlo'sequally ill-focused and overlong paper also adds very little that is intrinsicallynew, in this case about the federalismassociated with the old Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth, J6zef Pilsudski'sideas, and with the weakly-definednotions of a Mitteleuropa entertained for a time by sections of the Polish socialistand nationalistmovements. The volume is rounded off by Jurgen Elverts'sratherflat account, based directlyon his earlierpublications, of how the original nineteenth-century concept of a German-led Central EuropeanFederationwas subsequentlycommandeeredby right-wingintellectualsand eventuallyincorporatedby the Third Reich into itsracist-imperialist foreignpolicy. However interesting and significantideas of European unity and the like are, it must be remembered that until 1945 they were marginalized intellectually and politically by the steamroller of an increasingly militant, intolerant nationalism, especially from about i890 onwards, and by its corollary, the emergence of the self-conscious nation-state, which was exemplified during the interwaryears by, among others, Weimar Germany and the Second Polish Republic. It is that proper, wider perspectivewhich is lacking in most of this volume, whose limited scope, moreover, cannot reasonably be expected to address wholly satisfactorilya topic -'United Europe' of such complexity and magnitude. TheCentrefor Research inPolishHistory PETER D. STACHURA University ofStirling Berend, Ivan T. Histogy Derailed.Central andEastern Europe in theLong Nineteenth Century. University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, and London, 2003. xx + 330 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index. $39.95: /27.95. MORE than two decades ago, two Hungarian scholars,the late Gyorgi Ranki and Ivan Berendpublishedtwo studies,in English,on economic development and backwardness in Central and Eastern Europe (Underdevelopment and Economic Growth, Budapest, I979 and TheEuropean Periphegy andIndustrialization, Cambridge, I982). They were among the few booksfrom Communist Europe which merged easilyinto the mainstreamof Westernhistoriography. The study under review was written by Professor Berend alone: after a distinguishedcareer in Budapest (he was Rector of the Karl Marx University and then President of the Academy of Sciences), he now works at the Universityof California.The book dealswith the long nineteenth centuryand the short Eastern Europe. Russia makes brief appearances:the lands under Habsburgruleas well as the Balkansstandat the book'scentre. ProfessorBerend argues that the main goal of the Eastern nations was to join the 'civilized', that is, Western Europe. The economic, cultural and political life of the region was dominated by that objective and 'fundamental nationalism' (p. 235) was the preferred instrumentfor its achievement. The process often involved aggression abroad or police terror at home, and the 758 SEER, 82, 3, 2004 development of extreme right- and left-wing populism pointed to the revolutionsto come. The complexjigsaw puzzle assembledbyBerendcontains some dazzlingpieces depicting,for example, the historyof music harnessedto the national cause, or the story of the delayed revolution in agriculture.The argument concerning the 'core' and the 'peripheral' regions in Europe (Berend's Eastern Europe contains a similar core region, the AustrianBohemian territory) is carefully developed and skilfully deployed. It is a perspectivewhich is shaped by the development theories of the I96os, and it isbroughtinto a somewhat sharperfocusby the fallof Communismin Eastern Europe. The strengthof theWesternmagnet, however, deniesanykindof autonomy in the historicaldevelopment of the region. Its German description,Zwischeneuropa , helps to change the perspective. Froma periphery,the region emerges as the object of long-term and fierce contests, and not between Germany and Russia alone. It is a borderland,with militaryfrontiers,fortresses,privileged standing armies. The Habsburg military frontiers were turned against the Balkans and were still in place in the nineteenth century; as late as the eighteenth century, new militaryfortresstowns were establisheddeep in the hinterland of the Habsburg state. The consequences of such a strenuous military past were by no means negligible: it may be that some of Berend's 'parasitic landlords' had a distinguished military ancestry or, that later, 'barrackssocialism'derivedfrom the common usagesof the contested region. In the West, Berend points out, the state helped to create the nation, whereas in the East -including Germany and Italy the nation was expected to form the state.In the multi-nationalempiresof the East,however, the state also had the capacity profoundly to affect the future of nations. In Austria...

The limits of constructedness: memory and nationalism in the Arab Middle East

Abstract. This paper examines the influence of the historical trajectory on the creation of nationalism in the twentieth century Middle East. While it is not claimed here that everything was decided in preexisting history, the paper claims that history was important. If the story of Middle Eastern nationalism is the story of the tension between ethnic Pan‐Arabism and geographical state nationalism, the fact is both these phenomena are highly distinct in the sources used for this study, mainly seventeenth‐ and eighteenth century biographical dictionaries. The modern countries (Egypt, Syria) are in daily use, serving partially as terms of identity, non‐political though it might have been. A sense of Arabism existed as well, probably surviving from the early Islamic period. It had much to do with the survival of Arabic literary genres as the preoccupation of the intellectual elite. The Ottomans did their bit in this regard, by treating the Arabic‐speaking Middle East as substantially one unified unit, their provinces being superficial and unimportant barriers, mentally no less than physically. Thus, when the Ottoman Empire disappeared in the early twentieth century, the ambivalence between Arabism and state‐based nationalism already existed, and was by no means invented by colonialism. The later success of this or that version of nationalism could only be explained by reference to modern factors, but the repertory owed much to the cultural history of the region.

Classroom and Empire: The Politics of Schooling Russia's Eastern Nationalities, 1860-1917 by Wayne s> Dowler (review)

REVIEWS 36I of Lvov'sJan Kazimierz universityin the late I930s, and in the earlyattempts, recountedbyYudlMark,oftheJewish folkistmovement inpost-I9I9 Lithuania to develop a political modus vivendi with the new regime. Fullunderstandingof and sensitivityto each others' needs and aspirationsmay have alwaysbeen a bridgetoo farin the Polish-Jewishstorybut it has alwaysremained atthe heart of Polin'svision of what mighthave been. Towards the end of this volume Raphael ('Felek') Scharf offers a moving obituary to the writer Andrzej Szcypiorski who, like Kuron, went against the grain of denunciation and blackmail to seek to protect PolishJewry in the face of Hitler. In an earlier public exchange, Scharf received no thanks from Szcypiorskifor suggesting that the majorityof the Polishpopulation, far from being ready to help, were activelyhostileto theJews. Coming to gripswithallthecomplexityandtragedy of Polish-Jewish relations was always at the core of the gentle and noble Scharf's love for the country of his birth. Now that he is no more, his legacy throughPolinremainsallthemore importantand critical. Parkes Centrefor Jewish.Non-Jewish Relations MARKLEVENE University ofSouthampton Dowler, Wayne. Classroom andEmpire:ThePoliticsof Schooling Russia'sEastern Nationalities, i86o-I9I7. McGill-Queen'sUniversityPress,Montreal, Kingston, ON, London and Ithaca, NY, 2001. xiv + 296 pp. Notes. Tables. Bibliography.Index. J46.oo. SOCIETY is in great measure shaped and defined by its system of education. The more complex the society, the more difficultand challenging the task of formulating appropriateeducational strategies.Multiethnic societies present special problems. One important issue is the choice of the language in which tuition is offered what role, if any, should be given to the languages of minorities?To what extent shouldthe language of the majoritybe imposed on the population as a whole? Questions such as these have a fundamental bearing on national identity, social cohesion and systemichierarchiesin terms of status,employment and political representation. In the twenty-firstcenturyvirtuallyevery independent state in the world is confrontedwith theneed to resolveconflictinglinguisticand culturalpriorities. However, this is not a new situation. From the eighteenth century onwards, when the concept of universalschooling, linkedto the growth of urbanization and industrialization,began to gain ground in Europe, these questions have been a matter of debate. They acquired particular significance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when European powers controlled large extra-territorial colonial empires, encompassing populations who spoke different languages, followed different faiths and had histories and cultures that were different from those of the 'mother country'. The promotion of Western-styleeducationin theseoverseaspossessionsraisedsensitivequestions regarding the relationship between rulers and ruled, including notions of culturalsuperiorityand the concept of a 'civilizingmission'. The tsaristempire had characteristicsthat in some ways set it apart from the British and other European colonial empires. However, in matters of 362 SEER, 82, 2, 2004 educational policy it faced many of the same problems. With the reforms of the i 86os came a growing awarenessof the need to provide education (albeit at a fairlyrudimentarylevel)forthe non-Russiansubjectsof the empire.Many were Muslims. Some the Tatars of the Volga region -had come under Russian rule several centuries earlier, while others in Kazakhstan and Central Asia had been incorporated into the empire more recently. The policies thatwere used in these differentregionswere not uniformand in some cases changed quite significantly over time. However, exposure to Russian education had a major impact on all these peoples and affectedfuture social and political developments. Wayne Dowler has produced a lucid and well researchedaccount of tsarist educational policies in 'the eastern territories',from the second half of the nineteenth centuryup to the outbreakof the I917 revolution.As evidenced by the extensive bibliography, he draws on an impressive range of archival materials and contemporary documents. The main geographic focus is the Volga region, where the population was religiouslymixed (Muslim,Orthodox Christian and pagan) and included Turkic peoples as well as a substantial Finnish population. Less space is devoted to Central Asia, but there are informative sections on Kazakh schools and schools in Turkestan.The work is prefaced by a succinct Introduction that provides a helpful contextual framework.There are nine chapters;these cover such themes as 'Conversion and Apostasy', 'Schooling Baptised Non-Russians and Pagans', 'Schooling Muslims', 'Pedagogy and Politics', and 'The Non-Russian School and the Dilemmas of Russian Nationalism'. The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments, reiteratingthe strengthsand weaknessesof the Russian approach...

Migrating borders: an introduction to European identity construction in process

This introduction to the edition provides the historical, geopolitical and methodological context for a programme of collaborative research conducted between 2000 and 2003 in sets of communities on the border between the EU and its south-)eastern ascendant nations. Our analysis is framed by interlinking comparative themes which form the cores of the different articles contained in this special issue. This opening article argues that the geopolitical dimension of the border needs to be understood both as an axis of past conflict and painful memories, and as an axis of contemporary socio-economic inequality. Only by understanding this double legacy and its effects on the communities along the border can ongoing conflicts between the people on either side of the border be fully understood.

Watching the war against Iraq through pan-Arab satellite TV

It was the first Gulf War in 1991 which led to the satellite television explosion in the Arab world. Arabs then knew about Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait through CNN. Today, Arab satellite channels reach almost every Arab capital and many Middle Eastern and African nations — from Mauritania on the Atlantic coast to Iran in the east, from Syria in the north to Djibouti in the south. This battle for the airwaves and boom in satellite channels in the Arab world has become both a tool for integration and dispersion. It is raising a glimpse of hope that the flow of information will no longer be pouring from the West to the East, but from the East to the West. Questions, however, remain about the credibility of news coverage by Arabic networks like the maverick Qatar-based al-Jazeera and whether Arab journalists adhere to journalistic norms upheld in the West.

The PRC's Relationship with the ASEAN Regional Forum

Ever since the discovery of China by Western nations the West has continually tried to gain access to China, and sometime even to understand her. Conversely, many Eastern nations who came within China's reach have preferred to keep her at arms length. This dichotomy continues today, although the East/West division is less clear. The People's Republic of China's sheer geographical size, its location in the heart of Asia, its huge population and thus its potential as an economic and miitary superpower instils fear in many. Will the PRC become a ‘responsible power’, an irresponsible hegemon, or collapse into political disorder and chaos? In anticipation of the coming changes in the PRC, the foreign policy of those nations concerned with the PRC has oscillated between engagement and containment of China.

Designing and implementing culturally‐sensitive IT applications

The Internet, World Wide Web, and related information technologies, originally developed in Western countries, have rapidly spread to a great variety of countries and cultures. Many of these technologies facilitate and mediate interpersonal communication, an activity whose modes and means bind closely to cultural values. This article provides a theoretical integration of a framework for culture values together with a model for understanding privacy and related issues that arise when personal information is shared or exchanged using information technology. The resulting hybrid framework can help understand and predict individuals’ culturally linked reactions to various communication‐related IT applications (e.g. e‐mail, e‐commerce sites, Web‐logs, bulletin boards, newsgroups) in diverse cultural contexts. An application of the framework to cultural settings in Middle Eastern nations concludes the article.

Classroom and Empire: The Politics of Schooling Russia's Eastern Nationalities, 1860-1917. By Wayne Dowler (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. xiv, 296pp. $65.00)

Classroom and Empire: The Politics of Schooling Russia's Eastern Nationalities, 1860-1917. By Wayne Dowler (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001. xiv, 296pp. $65.00)

Wayne Dowler. <italic>Classroom and Empire: The Politics of Schooling Russia's Eastern Nationalities, 1860–1917</italic>. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2001. Pp. xiv, 296. $65.00

Wayne Dowler. <italic>Classroom and Empire: The Politics of Schooling Russia's Eastern Nationalities, 1860–1917</italic>. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press. 2001. Pp. xiv, 296. $65.00

Reviews of Books:Classroom and Empire: The Politics of Schooling Russia's Eastern Nationalities, 1860-1917 Wayne Dowler

Reviews of Books:Classroom and Empire: The Politics of Schooling Russia's Eastern Nationalities, 1860-1917 Wayne Dowler