Essentialist Approach Research Articles

Gender and the Ethical Given

G. W. F. Hegel's discussion of the Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit has provoked ongoing debate about his views on gender. This essay offers an interpretation of Hegel as condemning social arrangements that take the authoritativeness of identities and obligations to be natural or merely given. Hegel criticizes the ancient Greeks' understanding of both the human law and the divine law; in so doing, he provides resources for a critique of essentialist approaches to sex and gender. On this interpretation, Hegel views the conflict between Antigone and Creon as tragic because the gendered identities and obligations inherent to Greek Sittlichkeit are naturalized and withheld from scrutiny and revision. In the conclusion, I suggest how Hegel's criticisms pose a challenge to certain approaches to religious ethics.

Depicting and researching disciplines: strong and moderate essentialist approaches

This paper considers how the idea of ‘discipline’ can best be conceptualised, both in general and particular terms. Much previous research has employed a strong essentialist approach, a model of disciplines which exaggerates the homogeneity of specific disciplinary features and accords disciplines generative powers which they rarely possess. That approach is disabling because it closes down the appreciation of the heterogeneity within disciplines, as well as occluding the reasons for that heterogeneity. However, for researchers this oversimplified model offers the attractions of simple research questions and research designs. The consequence of using such a model is, though, that its distortions threaten the robustness of higher education research. The paper argues for a more sophisticated conceptualisation of disciplines, one which deploys a moderate form of essentialism. It applies Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances to the task of depicting disciplines and explores the implications for research of this more nuanced model.

Political Transitions, Value Change and Motorisation in 1970s Portugal

During the revolutionary period of 1974–76, there was vigorous debate in Portugal regarding the role of automobiles in the desired new society. The dispute was reinforced by the first international oil crisis. Strong ideological rhetoric was deployed either to defend the potentially liberating role of the automobile or to condemn its ‘bourgeois' underpinnings. This debate influenced social movements, policies, perceptions and views of social actors, thus contributing to market distortions, a short-lived disappearance of luxury and sports cars and to the creation of new models deemed to be adapted to the ‘true’ needs of the Portuguese. It also contributed to changes in automobile assemblage industry, road policy and delays in the implementation of road safety measures. Environmental, safety and traffic concerns were subdued, for a while, by a more essentialist approach to car consumption, with opposing interests trying to define the social spirit of automobile ownership and usage. The political turmoil of the period and the lack of coherent and durable policies account for the period being an intermission and not the beginning of a new trend.

Misogynists as Queers in Le Livre de La Cité des Dames

Christine de Pizan, in Le Livre de la Cite des Dames (1405), insinuates that misogyny is, as it were, little queer. At the beginning of the City, Christine becomes duped into believing that women are monstrous, and, in opposition to this way of thinking, Lady Reason appears and begins to describe to Christine how misogynistic convictions themselves are in fact quite abnormal. To inoculate Christine against misogyny, Reason intimates that chauvinism might inspire queer gender performance; she says that misogynistic texts have made Christine like cross-dresser: Tu ressembles le fol, dont la truffe parle, qui en dormant au molin fu revestu de la robe d'une femme (1.2; You resemble the fool in the prank who was dressed in women's clothes while he slept). (2) With this analogy, Reason compares Christine, who holds misogynistic sentiments, to foolish man who dresses like woman. Reason implies that misogynistic texts produce kind of drag on their readers. Reason's queer metaphor is not at all trivial. A close reading of the City shows that her maneuver is part of broader pattern in the text: Christine's main rhetorical strategy in her critique of misogyny is to associate misogynists with what we would now call queerness. Queer is, as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick puts it, an open mesh of overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent element of anyone's gender, of anyone's sexuality, aren't made (or can't be made) to signify monolithically (8). In this sense, queer does not refer to literal homosexual relations or identities. Rather, the term is far less specific, and even equivocal. Throughout contemporary scholarship it is, in some sense, always provisional (O'Rourke 10). As Carolyn Dinshaw argues in Getting Medieval, we might think of queerness as always contingent: it is not known priori but is a relation to norm, and both the norm and the particular lack of fit will vary according to specific instances (39). Paying attention to the ways in which medieval discourses fabricate queerness is, as William E. Burgwinkle (2006) suggests, the current task of medievalist queer scholarship (84). Instead of standing as given, queerness involves instability and disruption, sexual desires and gender performances that, by their very existence, challenge prevailing notions about sex and gender. Queer, then, attends to the nonnormative, though its referents may vary, hinging on particular text or culture. Of course, the fact that this word can stand for any nonnormative behavior might lead to some imprecision; but by limiting the scope of our discussion here to nonnormative behaviors that relate to sex and gender, our reading of Christine can be held to some definitional limits while still embracing the term's flexibility. That is, I use the term to refer to behaviors and characteristics that are defined in Christine's text as aberrant and that are implicated in what we think of today as sexual identity, nexus of gender performances, desires, beliefs, and acts--but that are not necessarily aberrant vis-a-vis contemporary norms that regulate sex and gender. Using the term here in somewhat limited but still flexible way can help us to illuminate how Christine's critique of misogyny pushes against old norms while trying to advance new ones. This article attends to the opening portions of the City through queer lens. As I argue, Lady Reason mocks misogynists for having unmanly bodies. She also disparages their sexual desires as unnatural. Reason likewise ridicules misogynists as being practitioners of transgressive gender performances, and she suggests that misogynists are socially abject because of their emasculated bodies and deviant desires. It would seem, then, that Christine queers misogyny. (3) Of course, when we speak about queerness--especially with regard to fifteenth-century work--we raise whole host of academic questions. First of all, the debate rages on between constructionist and essentialist approaches to the history of sexuality. …

Toward a Theoretical Foundation for the History of Chinese Political Philosophy

This essay seeks to theoretically defend a certain type of narratable history of Chinese political philosophy against the challenge of both cultural essential ism and its critique.1 I will begin with an examination of cultural essentialism in existing works on the history of Chinese political philosophy, which shall serve as a foundation for the alternative approach I will then develop. It is my contention that it is possible to formulate a non-essentialist notion of Chinese political philosophy that may facilitate the writing of an integrated, chronological history of Chinese political 21 conclude by considering its broader implications in relation to the notion of East Asian civilization.I believe that we no longer have to defend the necessity of studying the Chinese tradition of political philosophy perse, for much ink has been devoted to the critique of various versions of Eurocentrism. Since Europe's discovery of competing civilizations around the world, even Europeans themselves have gradually accepted an irremediable human pluralism, perhaps with the exception of some narrow-minded and recalcitrant intellectuals. It became possible to think of Europe as only one of many civilizations, and not necessarily the best one. I presume that many view Chinese or East Asian civilizations to be on an equal ontological footing with the European one. At the very least, they are, in principle, equally worthy of scholarly attention.Having said this, what I want to discuss in this essay is the question of whether a specific form of exploration-i.e., an integrated, chronological history of Chinese political philosophy-is theoretically defensible. Before proceeding to explore its theoretical justification, a few comments on the state of the art seem to be in order, although I will make no effort to state the long pedigrees of relevant works on Chinese political philosophy or thought.Hsiao Kung-chuan's A History of Chinese Political is practically the only book-length study available in Western languages that introduces students to Chinese political thought from antiquity to the present.3 In fact, Hsiao's work is part of the 1930-40's scholarly trend that produced quite a few histories of Chinese political thought including those of Tao Xisheng, Lii Zhenyu, Liang Qichao and Lu Simian.4Until the 1980s, very few scholarly efforts were made to write a chronological narrative of Chinese political thought in mainland China since then. As many scholars acknowledge, such a void in mainland Chinese scholarship was caused largely by political turmoil during that period.5 Meanwhile, Taiwanese scholars, who were relatively free from political uncertainty, 6 produced a series of histories of Chinese political thought or philosophy, including those of SaMengwu, Xie Fuya, Ye Zuhao, and Yang Youjiong to name but a few.7 Over the last few decades, however, as the political landscape changed, mainland Chinese scholars have increasingly produced histories of Chinese political thought or philosophy. growing number of volumes entitled The History of Chinese Political Thought indicates the fact that chronological narrative is a popular genre in mainland Chinese scholarly writing on Chinese political thought or philosophy, while there appears to be no corresponding tendency outside China.Cultural Essentialism in the Histories of Chinese Political PhilosophyThis is not the place to attempt a review of all recent works on Chinese political philosophy in mainland China. Suffice it to say, significant portions of existing histories of Chinese political philosophy are still founded on an picture of Chinese political philosophy as somewhat determinate, bounded, and homogeneous. One indication is that many relevant studies are based on the dichotomy between the Chinese tradition of political philosophy and Western political In my view, it is this essentialist approach that leads scholars to consider the otherwise unfeasible chronological narrative to be constructive and even desirable. …

Being a Modern Human: essentialist and hierarchical approaches to the emergence of 'modern human behaviour'

Being a Modern Human: essentialist and hierarchical approaches to the emergence of 'modern human behaviour'

China’s Quest for “Soft Power”: Imperatives, Impediments and Irreconcilable Tensions?

From establishing Confucius Institutes all over the world to mounting an advertising blitz in New York’s Times Square, the Chinese state’s multifaceted endeavour to strengthen its “soft power” has been highly visible and the subject of much recent political, journalistic, and scholarly attention. This paper locates the Chinese state’s “soft power” quest within historical and geopolitical contexts and explores the profound contradictions in its underpinning political economy and cultural politics. While this campaign’s state, industry, professional and moral imperatives appear self-evident and there are converging elite and popular interests in the project, its structural impediments seem to be insurmountable. Furthermore, there are irreconcilable tensions between a drive to pursue an elitist, technocratic, and cultural essentialist approach to global communication and a capacity to articulate and communicate an alternative global political and social vision that appeals to the vast majority of the world population in a deeply divided and crises-laden domestic and global order.

Religious Writing by Orthodox Jewish Women: Creating a Theology

Since the middle of the 1990s, a considerable number of books and articles have been published by traditional Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish women. This article explores the ideas and rhetorical strategies of some of these books and articles as representative of an established religious genre and as signs of an authentic search for new definitions of Orthodox femininity. The quest for traditional Orthodox/ultra-Orthodox femininity seems to proceed in two general directions. The first follows the lines of religious gender essentialism, while the second disrupts the idyllic stability associated with traditional concepts of complementary gender roles. The latter transforms Judaism's static model of inter-gender relations into a dynamic process which is to culminate in the establishment of gender equality in the messianic age. The essentialist approach, which presents spirituality as women's innate gift, seems to offer the perfect strategy for dealing with the theological and practical problems faced by Orthodox Jewish women in their own communities. Nevertheless, the popularity of the evolutionary approach indicates the shortcomings of traditional essentialism: the longing for equality and the perception of injustice remain alive under the surface, despite the apparent complacency of most Orthodox women.

Educational leadership and the Capabilities Approach: evidence from Ghana

School leaders play a central role in affecting the educational development of the young people for whom they have responsibility. This is especially the case where school leaders are operating in challenging low-income environments. This paper argues that a focus on Sen’s notions of individual agency and freedom are a necessary but not a sufficient factor in the conversion of capabilities into functionings for these school leaders. This is done through using the Capabilities Approach as a lens through which to carry out a retrospective analysis and evaluation of the activities of a group of primary school headteachers in Ghana involved in a UK Government-funded project focused on education quality. The paper argues that headteachers with the capability of initiating change in the education process in their schools are unlikely to act in this way unless they feel that they have permission to do so. It is also important that headteachers feel that they are working within a context and an environment where acting in ways which aim to improve pupil learning is seen as central to their role. This kind of supportive context for school leaders (and for other educational practitioners) cannot be divorced from a policy environment which sanctions such activities, and, hence, it is argued that such a context is crucial to policy developments which seek to establish and sustain the core capabilities which are at the heart of Nussbaum’s essentialist approach. The paper also brings to the foreground the tensions that exist between the notion of individuals being free to make choices about what they have reason to value, on the one hand, and the implications that these choices have for the freedoms of other individuals with whom they are connected to make such choices. Finally, it is argued in the paper that the action research approach used in the Leadership & Management Project in Ghana, allied to a positive policy context, provides both the sensitivity to context and a practice-oriented focus which can enable school leaders to bring about the conversion of their individual capabilities into functionings.

State Representations of the Other: The Case of China's Matriarchy

Previous tourism representation research has primarily adopted an essentialist's approach in interpreting the construction of the self in contrast to the Other and treated both Other and self as holistic entities. Contrary to previous research, the current study takes a postmodern epistemology to uncover the complex and fluid nature of the construction of a Chinese identity through official tourism representations of the matriarchal Mosuo. Forty-six articles published between 1990 and 2010 in major Chinese newspapers were collected and analyzed with Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). Three major themes (i.e., feminized Other, economic growth, and authenticity) are identified and the analysis of the themes exposes the differentiating and dynamic nature in the construction of self identity in the state representations of the Mosuo people. Such results demonstrate the necessity of taking a more critical and nuanced approach in the examination of how states use tourism representations to construct national identities.

A Multiple Realization Thesis for Natural Kinds

Abstract: Two important thought‐experiments are associated with the work of Hilary Putnam, one designed to establish multiple realizability for mental kinds, the other designed to establish essentialism for natural kinds. Comparing the thought‐experiments with each other reveals that the scenarios in both are structurally analogous to each other, though his intuitions in both are greatly at variance, intuitions that have been simultaneously well received. The intuition in the former implies a thesis that prioritizes pre‐scientific over scientific indicators for identifying mental kinds in certain circumstances, while his intuition in the latter implies a converse thesis, prioritizing scientific over pre‐scientific indicators for identifying natural kinds in analogous circumstances. In this paper I question whether we can consistently endorse both of these intuitions. A consideration is presented to attempt to justify the common intuition found in the multiple realization thought‐experiment. Then it is argued that this same consideration has application in the structurally analogous Twin‐Earth thought‐experiment. This recommends a kind of multiple realization thesis for natural kinds, in opposition to a scientific essentialist approach. The various respects in which mental kinds like pain and natural kinds like water are similar to each other, such that similar philosophical treatments are warranted for both, are enumerated.

The Long Goodbye: Beyond an Essentialist Construction of WMD

This article responds to an earlier article by Christian Enemark to reassess the concept of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). How is the concept defined and can it be removed from policy and academic discourse? Firstly, this paper contests the reduction of WMD to mean a fixed set of armaments (nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons). In contrast to this essentialist approach, it uses American archival and policy examples to demonstrate that the concept has been defined in a wide variety of ways, choices that reflect the strategic and contextualized intent of the actors. Secondly, this article questions the assertion that the quality of strategic thought and security policy would be improved if the concept were abandoned. While the conflation of diverse weapons under the umbrella of WMD is problematic, the political nature of the concept's construction means its elimination is not straightforward. Conceptual change cannot be imposed independently of the way meaning is politically constructed. While not disputing the serious problems associated with allowing the WMD concept to survive, this article concludes that the real question here is one of context. Failing to address why and how it is used leads to underestimation of how likely removal is within the current discursive climate. As long as that value remains – as long as WMD is an effective resource for policymakers to shape security policy – there is little chance of being able to abandon the WMD concept in the foreseeable future.

Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines? Essays on Ethnicity, Identity, and Diaspora

In the introduction to Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines?, Raanan Rein calls for a change in Latin American Jewish Studies away from an essentialist approach that focuses almost exclusively on the Jews of one or more Latin American countries. He proposes that Jewish Latin Americans should be studied as an ethnic group that interacts with other groups and navigates the social structures within a certain place. In this way he distances himself from Haim Avni, Judith Laikin Elkin, Judit Bokser Liwerant, Robert M. Levine, and other influential scholars of Jewish Latin America.Rein employs this ethnic methodology in many, though not all, the essays in this volume. Chapters such as “Complementary Identities: Sephardim, Zionists, and Argen-tines in the Interwar Period” and “A Pact of Oblivion: The De-Peronization of the Jewish Community” are written from an ethnic perspective. They deal with rivalries and support systems within the Jewish community and shed light on how Jews have coped in an increasingly multicultural and sometimes hostile environment. Rein explores the complex interrelations not only among Jews and non-Jews in Argentina but also among Jews of differing social class, origin, and level of affiliation with the established Jewish organizations within that country.Other chapters, like “Argentina, World War II, and the Entry of Nazi War Criminals,” “Diplomats and Journalists: The Image of Peronism in the Hebrew Press,” and “Soccer as a Double-Edged Sword: Argentine Exiles in Israel Protest against the 1978 World Cup,” go far beyond ethnicity. Rein’s interests are much broader and include the relationship of Juan Domingo Perón and Evita Perón to the organized Jewish community, the US State Department’s unrelenting opposition to Perón, the vicissitudes of the Argentine Catholic Church (particularly over the issue of religious education in the public schools), the evolving culture of Argentine Jews who have emigrated to Israel, the Israeli press’s reporting of the two Perón administrations, and, especially, Argentine-Israeli relations.Rein is quite effective in debunking long-held views about Jewish life in Argentina. In contrast to beliefs expressed by historians and accepted by the general public in many countries, Rein demonstrates convincingly that Perón was favorable to the Jewish-Argentine community and remained so even after Jews voted against him en masse in the presidential elections of 1951. Perón had Jewish advisors at the highest levels, and he maintained excellent relations with the fledgling State of Israel. Jews held key positions in the Peronist party. Also, Rein argues that only 50 German Nazi war criminals and about 130 others from Nazi-occupied territory actually settled in Argentina, out of the tens of thousands that passed through Argentina while fleeing the denazification of Europe from 1945 on.In his analysis of the influence of the State of Israel on Jewish Argentines, Rein also provides new insights. He explains how despite continuous emigration to Israel, the concept of Zionism in Argentina serves more to provide Jewish Argentines with an idealized “homeland,” like that of other immigrants, rather than an incentive to leave one’s South American “home.” Conversely, he points to Israel’s repeatedly taking actions without concern for the safety of Jewish Argentines, thus putting national interests before Jewish ones. However justified, the 1960 Israeli kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann from a Buenos Aires suburb led to two years of violent anti-Semitic backlash by the Tacuara and other armed right-wing shock troops and the subsequent creation of effective Jewish defense organizations. Rein reveals new information about the close ties between the Israeli government and the military junta that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983. Leaders of both countries made reciprocal “goodwill” visits, the Israeli generals bragged of the highly profitable arms deals they made with the Argentine generals, and the Argentine generals appreciated their favored status. During the same time period, a disproportionate number of Jewish Argentines were being disappeared by military and paramilitary death squads, without protest from the Israeli government.Rein is a meticulous researcher. His argumentation is very clear and free of jargon and extraordinarily well documented. The bibliography of this book is exhaustive. The inclusion of Hebrew-language journalistic and governmental sources and new or lesser-known Argentine ones is a particularly valuable addition. This bibliography alone will provide a valuable resource for historians in many fields.Argentine Jews or Jewish Argentines? will certainly be of interest to scholars in Jewish studies and Latin American Jewish studies, Israel studies, and historians of Argentina. Professors and graduate students of Israeli foreign policy and its press will find much new material here. An Israeli historian with extensive experience in Argentina, Raanan Rein has made an exciting contribution to Latin American Jewish scholarship.

The 503 Days Of “El Piquete De Londres”: A Diasporic Space And Moment

AbstractThis article looks at the picket lines formed during the detention of Pinochet in London in October 1998. El piquete de Londres (“the picket of London”) involved the rerouting of a worldwide dispersed group of members of the Chilean diaspora to London, the recreation of a repertoire that combined contention and commemoration, politics and emotions, as well as local and international domains. Reflecting on those processes, the article argues that the 503 days of el piquete are part of a crucial moment and space: that of the diasporic. Through this, the Chilean diaspora’s distinctive connections to Britain were visibly (re)articulated while their sense of “home,” displacement, and belonging was, once again, reformulated. Along with turning our attention toward Britain’s “new” diasporas, this piece contributes to a critical tradition in migration studies which—while challenging essentialist approaches—conceives “diaspora” as a field of interaction, which is embodied and affective as well as historica...

Researching Islamic marketing: past and future perspectives

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons underlying the recent interest on Islamic marketing, discusses past research on the topic and offers a future research perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe paper is based on a critical review of the existing literature. It offers ethnoconsumerism as a way to develop a situated understanding of Muslim consumers and businesses.FindingsTwo distinct phases, omission and discovery, characterize the existing literature. Omission derives from the stereotyping of Muslims as traditional and uncivilized people and Islam as incompatible with capitalist consumer ideology. Discovery relates to the identification of Muslims as an untapped and viable consumer segment and the increasing visibility of Muslim entrepreneurs.Research limitations/implicationsA deeper understanding of Muslim consumers and marketers requires doing away with essentialist approaches that reify difference. Instead of focusing on differences future research needs to pay attention to how such differences play out in the daily lives of consumers and examine the religious, political, cultural and economic resources, forces and tensions that consumers experience and negotiate as they (re)construct and communicate their identities as Muslims.Practical implicationsManagers should not assume Muslims to be a homogeneous and preexisting segment. They should focus on the daily practices for which the product may be relevant and generate solutions that will help Muslims live proper Islamic lives.Originality/valueThe paper draws attention to the potential problems in carrying out research on Islamic marketing and highlights the dangers of an essentialist perspective.

Understanding Another Person and Cooley’s Principle of Sympathetic Introspection: Consciousness in the Study of Human Life and Experience II

This article looks at the problem of intersubjectivity, that is, how it is possible that a person can come to subjectively understand the subjective experience and larger state of another person, focusing almost exclusively on how this problem is addressed in qualitative studies using the “Participant as Ally—Essentialist Portraiture” methodology and Cooley’s principle of “sympathetic introspection.” The first four sections illustrate some of the features of the essentialist approach that lead to such understanding. For example, the investigator focuses on larger holistic impressions she gets from particular “significant” passages that she regards as giving a sense of the participant’s consciousness and nature as a person (Section 1). The last two sections argue that practice of essentialist portraiture suggests that there is in everyone’s self, in her “I,” a level where there is a subtle understanding of the consciousness and being of every possible “being a human being.”

Islam, Consumption and Marketing: Going Beyond the Essentialist Approaches

Islam, Consumption and Marketing: Going Beyond the Essentialist Approaches

Taking Queer Linguistics further: sociolinguistics and critical heteronormativity research

This article provides an overview of the young discipline of Queer Linguistics and discusses how it may be fruitfully applied in sociolinguistics as a contribution to critical heteronormativity research. After locating Queer Linguistics historically as a reaction to earlier essentialist approaches in the field of language and sexuality, its theoretical underpinnings are outlined. Queer Linguistics is not to be equalled with a “gay and lesbian” approach to language. It rather transfers ideas from Queer Theory to linguistic research, building on the integration of work by poststructuralist scholars such as Foucault, Butler and Derrida in order to provide a critical investigation of the discursive formation of heteronormativity. Three potential criticisms against Queer Linguistics as a poststructuralist approach are addressed: its supposedly low relevance, issues of political agency, and its alleged lack of empirical applicability. Finally, methodological suggestions are made as to how sociolinguists may proceed from a Queer Linguistic point of view, focusing on ethnographically oriented studies of local identity negotiation, critical approaches to Discourse Analysis and Contrastive Sociolinguistics.

Spirituality and Spiritual Care Made Simple: A Suggestive, Normative and Essentialist Approach

This paper advances some novel definitions and understandings of spirituality. Spirituality is characterized as the experience and process of engaging with and managing significant relations and attachments with a variety of objects, including material, immaterial, psychological, social, living, dead, conscious, unconscious, and transcendent objects. The genesis of this understanding is outlined. Spiritual care, religious spirituality and religious spiritual care are discussed and described in the light of this definition. Some of the implications of these understandings/definitions are explored.

Дар Империи: Взгляд с Гор

SUMMARY: The review article by Vladimir Bobrovnikov is devoted to the discussion of two books: The Captive and the Gift by Bruce Grant and A Look at the Mountaineers, the View from the Mountains by Yuri Karpov. Bobrovnikov situates these two books in the larger historiographical context of studies of the Caucasus, which is dominated by the reductionist perspective of looking at the Caucasus through the prism of empire and conquest and by narrow-minded ethnographic studies. The two books differ from this context by their attempt to understand the region by looking at the interaction between the local population and empire and by their criticism of simplistic orientalist paradigms. Bobrovnikov praises Grant for the breadth of material covered, innovative interpretation of empire as a sovereignty of gift, and the potential of the latter concept to go beyond the conventional view on the history of the Caucasus from the viewpoint of postcolonial studies. He acknowledges the viability of looking at empire in terms of cultural memory, which lies at the center of Grant’s approach. Bobrovnikov criticizes Grant for failure to take into account the historicity of imperial power and local societies associated with the historical dynamics of expansion, conquest, accommodation, and incorporation of the region in the Russian Empire. Karpov’s book is devoted to the analysis of micro-history of mountainous societies based on Jamaat/Jamia in the period of the eighteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Bobrovnikov praises Karpov for “thick description” of social and cultural realities of mountainous societies in Dagestan and for taking into account the factors of social change in the borderland that led to the disintegration of Jamaat/Jamia. Finally, Bobrovnikov contends that historical parallels with present-day realities in Karpov’s book appear unconvincing. Bobrovnikov criticizes Karpov for elements of an essentialist approach in his treatment of Jamaat/Jamia and for underestimating the role of Islam in resistance and accommodation in the North Caucasus. Bobrovnikov’s conclusion is that the two books may be looked at as complementary to each other, although the authors differ in their approach.