Local Scholars Research Articles

Scholarly Influence in Criminology and Criminal Justice of China

Scholarly influence in criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) is not a new topic. However, in terms of international scholarly influence in Chinese criminology, there still exists no relevant literature, though emphasis on studying China has been increasingly recognized by the international criminological academy. The current study conducts a comprehensive analysis of 191 CCJ articles on China from 20 mainstream CCJ journals and locates those who have done work on Chinese criminology. By productivity and citation analysis, we obtain several rankings of the scholarly influence in Chinese criminology. The most prolific individual identified by the current study is Jianhong Liu; the most productive institution is the City University of Hong Kong; the most-cited scholar is Steven Messner, and the most-cited work is Policing and Punishment in China: From Patriarchy to ‘The People’ by Michael Dutton. Though the current study focuses on Chinese criminology, few local mainland Chinese scholars and publications in Chinese are among the dominant contributions.

Rasmus Rask in St Petersburg 1818–1819: Russian-Scandinavian Scholarly Networks and the Old Norse Sources of Medieval Russia

Rasmus Rask, nowadays regarded as one of the founders of comparative philology, travelled to St Petersburg in 1818. During his stay, he attempted to draw the attention of local scholars to the Scandinavian languages. In doing so, he forged important connections with benefactors, such as Count Rumiantsev, as well as historians and philologists of the Imperial Academy of Sciences. However, the most important friendship he formed was with Ivan Loboiko, who acquired from Rask an intimate acquaintance with Old Norse literature. Loboiko went on to become one of the first Russian scholars to study Old Norse sources in the original and use them to throw light on early Russian history at a time, when romantic nationalism’s interest in the medieval past reigned supreme in Russian literature and scholarship. This article will map for the first time the extent, nature, and influence of Rask’s connections in St Petersburg.

Digitization: Does It Always Improve Access to Rare Books and Special Collections?

Abstract:In April 2016, the Israel State Archives announced the most recent stage of an ambitious project to digitize all of their holdings (potentially 400 million pages of material): the new archival website was ready online (Aderet). With the new website came the ability to request digital copies of documents, which would be available on the website within two weeks of the request (Aderet). However, researchers would now at the very least be discouraged from requesting access to the paper documents (Lozowick), or, in the worst-case scenario, be refused access to anything except the website (Baron and Newhall). Local scholars (including a prominent professor of history at Tel Aviv University), the Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research, and the Middle East Studies Association of North America (which publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies) registered concern with the restriction of physical access to the archive and issued public calls for a reversal of the decision (Akevot Institute). The conflict was between perceived best practices of digitization and of archival stewardship (represented by the State Archivist Dr. Yaacov Lozowick) on the one hand, and standards and expectations for scholarly research on the Middle East, which largely depends on archival and rare book collections, on the other.

Chasing the Yellow Demon

Author's note: A few years ago, I read David Johnson's Spectacle and Sacrifice: The Ritual Foundations of Village Life in North China.1 The book immediately caught my attention because it dealt with parts of China that I know well: southern Hebei and eastern Shanxi provinces, where I was conducting research for a new book. Johnson describes festivals that helped bind together communities, and in several cases had information showing that some of them had been revived after the Cultural Revolution.One, particularly, seemed noteworthy: Guyi Village in the south of Hebei Province. This is near the steel-making city of Handan and one of the most polluted parts of China. I had been there several times and was fascinated with the idea that this area could also be home to elaborate, multi-day rituals that seemed otherwise not to exist in North China. According to Johnson's informants, local scholars had visited the village in the 1990s and seen exciting performances of Zhuo Huanggui, or Chasing the Yellow Demon, an exorcistic purging ritual performed at the end of the fifteen-day Chinese New Year's festival. I contacted local officials and academics, who were unsure if the ritual would be performed again. No one, it seemed, had been out to the village in years. So in mid-February 2014, I set off to see if anything was left of these complex performances.2

FEATURES AND PROSPECTS OF VENTURE FINANCING IN UKRAINE

Urgency of the research. Ability of domestic enterprises to spend their own resources on reconstruction and modernization of production processes, to develop and introduce innovative products today is limited. Target setting. Attracting venture capital as a source of targeted investment of innovational developments has to become a catalyst for the introduction of innovative technologies in enterprises of Ukraine. Especially noticeable is the need for financial resources in the conditions of crisis in the economy of Ukraine. Analysis of recent research and publications. Forming of a national system of venture financing draws the interest of many local scholars, among which should be mentiond works of Z. O. Andriychenko, L. L. Antoniuk, T. O. Buturlakina, I. Baranetskyi, O. Boyko, V. Denisyuk, O. Y. Dudchyk, Y. Zhornokut, P. V. Kovalishyna V. Nezhyborets, I. Lobas, S. V. Onyshko, A. M. Poruchnyk, V. Savchuk, B. B. Sas, A. Stepanenko, O. Yastremskyi. Uninvestigated parts of general matters defining. Unsolved part of the problem is providing investment and innovative feature by domestic venture funds for their redistribution in favor of funding for innovative projects. The research objective. The main objectives of the article is to study the current state of the venture investments market in Ukraine, to determine the level of development and major issues. The statement of basic materials. The problem of effective development of the venture industry is extremely important in innovation sphere, and without creating private investment companies whose activities are supported by the state and public funds, it is impossible. The peculiarities of phased financing of entrepreneurial projects using venture mechanism. The research allowed clarifying the essence of the concept of «venture capital». The features of venture funding are compared to traditional types of financing. The analysis of the state of the venture capital market in Ukraine is done. Conclusions. Not enough developed Ukrainian investment and innovation systems related to the problems of the domestic investment climate, underdeveloped capital market, low prevalence of devices technology in the national economy, the imperfection of the legal system in the field of venture capital investment, low business transparency and a limited number of real investment attractive and innovative proposals. Ukrainian entrepreneurs and investors are not ready to build a European venture business models. All this creates a problem of national scope to increase the role of the classic business venture to build a new economic model of Ukraine, which will be based on the investment and innovative approach.

Legitimizing Empire: Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican Cultural Critique by Faye Caronan

Reviewed by: Legitimizing Empire: Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican Cultural Critique by Faye Caronan Charlie Samuya Veric Faye Caronan Legitimizing Empire: Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican Cultural Critique Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015. 208 pages. Why compare? And why now? In the wake of the transnational turn in area studies wherein borders that constrain knowledge are opened up, such questions may appear outdated. Their implications, however, remain robust especially for the future of comparison in the Global South. Faye Caronan's Legitimizing Empire: Filipino American and U.S. Puerto Rican Cultural Critique shows us why. In the West the comparative imagination has a relatively long history. The discipline of comparative literature, for example, flourished in the US after the Second World War, a development that coincided with the escalation of the Cold War, during which the culture of others became an integral part of statecraft and international diplomacy. More recently, American studies—the larger field within which Caronan's work is situated—has seen the rise of transnationalism, expanding the investigation of US history and culture to include those of other state formations in the age of globalization. The literature embodying such developments that put comparison front and center is too broad to be enumerated here. But such breadth cannot be said about Philippine studies, a field that Legitimizing Empire also addresses, whose emergence as an academic domain corresponded with the rise of comparative literature on US shores after the Second World War. It is not unfair to say that comparison has yet to find its rightful place in the study of Philippine society, history, and culture. The late Benedict Anderson, himself a comparatist, gestured toward this possibility in The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (Verso, 2001). The title of his book comes from no less than José Rizal, a point that may suggest the deep roots of comparative imagination in Filipino consciousness. But comparative scholarly studies done by local scholars are still hard to come by in the Philippines. This lack is ironic given the ecological and cultural diversity of the archipelago, a condition that suggests quite the opposite. Given such a diverse ecology and culture, the lay of the Filipino mind should be comparative, so to speak. The reality, however, could not be more untrue. Consider the lack of comparison in literary studies, which is rather bizarre given the fact [End Page 395] that Filipino scholars—Bienvenido Lumbera comes to mind—had been formally trained in comparative literature at American universities as early as the 1960s. Indeed, comparative literary studies remains marginal in Filipino scholarship, especially those that tackle American themes alongside Filipino questions. Since the publication of Lucilla Hosillos's Philippine–American Literary Relations, 1898–1941 (University of the Philippines Press) in 1969, for example, nothing similar has been done by a Filipino scholar on this side of the Pacific. Such a lack is a scandal given the prominence of American influence on Philippine history in the last hundred or so years. Caronan's work is accordingly significant in that it throws open the underlying principles that define cultural relations between the Philippines and the US. What is more, she includes another dimension that expands the scope of comparison—the case of Puerto Rico, a US Commonwealth. The origins of Legitimizing Empire go back to Caronan's undergraduate years at Cornell University, when she heard fellow students in the Latino Studies Resource Center talking about US colonialism in Puerto Rico while she was poring over an article by E. San Juan Jr in the nearby Asian American Resource Center. Caronan would later pursue the connections between the Philippines and Puerto Rico while completing her dissertation at the University of California, San Diego. The final product is Legitimizing Empire, Caronan's first book. Legitimizing Empire argues that US exceptionalism has delegitimized, and therefore neutralized, the critiques that are expressed in cultural texts produced by people of color, primarily Filipino American and US Puerto Rican. Looking comparatively at novels, documentary films, performance poetry, travelogues, and travel guides, Caronan illuminates the workings of US exceptionalism and highlights the deep but concealed connections that not only bind the two diasporic communities with...

Pathways of Creativity in Contemporary Newfoundland and Labrador ed. by María Jesús Hernáez Lerena

Maria Jesus Hernaez Lerena, ed. Pathways of Creativity in Contemporary Newfoundland and Labrador. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015. Pp. xiii, 341. 52.99 [pound sterling]. Pathways of Creativity in Contemporary Newfoundland and Labrador is a significant contribution to scholarly criticism on the cultures of Canadas most easterly province. All of us working in cultural fields connected to Newfoundland and Labrador owe a debt of gratitude to Maria Jesus Hernaez Lerena, the Spanish academic who compiled and edited twelve essays from eminent local scholars, artists, and commentators. In her introduction, Hernaez Lerena wonders if as an outsider she can find a safe observing position between, on the one hand, the romantic [of Newfoundland and Labrador] and, on the other, the to believe in the existence of untroubled idylls (1). Far from being an obstacle, her outsider perspective brings a refreshing curiosity and newness to the study, compelling the local contributors to reevaluate taken-for-granted assumptions about the cultures of the island and Labrador. productive tension between reverie and reluctance that Hernaez Lerena identifies runs through many of the book's chapters. collection is remarkable for a number of reasons. First, although the book is weighted toward literary scholarship, it also includes chapters on film, theatre, visual art, and oral storytelling traditions. Such transdisciplinarity in the context of scholarship on Newfoundland and Labrador is innovative and provides a breadth of reference that asks readers to link various creative endeavors. Of special note in this regard are essays by Jamie Skidmore and Noreen Golfman on Newfoundland theatre and film, respectively. Both Skidmore and Golfman offer an overview of creative works in the province and outline some of the central concerns for scholarly criticism. This is the basic pattern of many of the chapters, and so the collection offers a broad view of both the province's creative cultures and how these cultures are understood by critics. Along with its transdisciplinary perspective, the collection is also unique in the way it prioritizes marginalized voices, including those of Indigenous, women, and Labradorian artists. inclusion of writers and artists from Labrador is especially important, because in the context of Newfoundland and Labrador political, economic, and cultural discourses, Labrador is all too often an afterthought. Roberta Buchanan's essay, The Aboriginal Writes Back, reverses the colonial gaze by examining autobiographical writing by Abraham Ulrikab, an Inuk, alongside Wayne Johnston's historical fiction Navigator of New York. Robin McGrath's chapter, The Diarist Tradition among Labrador Aboriginal People, is likewise an important contribution in the way it theorizes and interprets writing from Labrador Inuit, Innu, and Metis. Valerie Legge's entry focuses on writing from women travelers to Newfoundland and Labrador and how such writing shapes discourses about the province. …

Analisis Kecenderungan Manhaj Akidah Shaykh Shams al-Din al-Sumatera’i

Shaykh Shams al-Din al-Sumatera'i is a very great and respected scholar during 16th and 17th century of Acheh. His knowledge in various fields recognized by local and international scholars. He had been a Qadi Malik al-’Adil, a religious leader, who became a referred by communities and country during the reign of the three Sultans of Aceh. He has authored nearly 40 pieces of books related to the theology and sufism. This study focuses on the methods used by Shaykh Shams al-Din al-Sumatera'i in his theological writings. This study found that Shaykh Shams al-Din al-Sumatera'i had used six methods in the such writings.

A new educational model and the crisis of modern terminologies: a view of Egypt in the nineteenth century

The beginning of modern Arab education coincided with the Arab Awakening in the nineteenth century. The modern educational system witnessed its most important developments in the Arab world, as shown by the case of Egypt, under the Ottoman Empire. Examining a new model of education as shown in the literary sources of the Arab Awakening, one finds that there were difficulties in presenting the various scientific texts in a lecture format. The students were unfamiliar with the new scientific terminologies, and the professors, in turn, did not have suitably accurate scientific terms within the Arabic language. This article discusses the crisis of terminologies that challenged the development of a new educational system. It also describes the expertise acquired by local scholars from foreign experts during their educational missions to Europe. The knowledge they gained enabled them to modernise the Arabic language upon their return. Eventually some of the terminology used within the new educational system filtered through to everyday use within the wider culture.

The Boundary Problem and the Changing Case Against Deference in Election Law Cases: Lessons from Local Government Law

Abstract This essay for the 2016 AALS Section on Election Law Program, “Election Law at the Local Level,” applies lessons from local government law to election law problems. Both local government and international law scholars discuss something sometimes called the “boundary problem.” A simple belief in democracy or self-determination—or the decision of some group of voters—cannot provide much guidance about what the boundaries of a city, state, or nation should be. Before a geographically bounded group of voters can decide its own boundaries, who comprises the relevant group must itself be determined. Any such choice will exclude some people who claim an interest in the decision. The group of deciders cannot be determined democratically, as a vote to decide who decides would face the same problem. Some value other than self-determination must be introduced to determine who decides before any boundaries can be set. The implication is that any city, state, or country's decision about its own boundaries is ...

Patterns of judicial behaviour in the Thai Constitutional Court, 2008–2014: an empirical approach

ABSTRACTThe Thai Constitutional Court has been mentioned extensively by local and international scholars and not always in the most positive way. The original dataset of all decisions for the period 2008–2014 is assembled in this article and the determinants of dissent are analysed. The findings indicate that there is some evidence that dissent is related to pro-constitutional and pro-administration decisions. The role of individual judges is further explored and the research concludes with a more positive tone than previous literature.

Is social cohesion relevant to a city in the global south? A case study of Khayelitsha

The concept of social cohesion is increasingly being utilised in local and international policy discourse and scholarship. The idea of collective efficacy, defined as ‘social cohesion among neighbours combined with their willingness of intervene on behalf of the common good,’ has been posited as having an important protective effect against violence. This article investigates the relevance of international framings of social cohesion and collective efficacy, which have largely been conceptualised and tested in the global north, to the conditions of social life and violence prevention in a city in the global south. These circumstances are interrogated through an ethnographic study conducted in Khayelitsha township in the Western Cape, where a major internationally funded and conceptualised violence prevention intervention, Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU), has been implemented. The ethnographic material contests some of the key assumptions in international discourses on social cohesion and the manner in which social cohesion has been interpreted and effected in the violence prevention initiatives of VPUU.

The Boundary Problem and the Changing Case Against Deference in Election Law Cases: Lessons from Local Government Law

This essay for the 2016 AALS Section on Election Law Program, “Election Law at the Local Level,” applies lessons from local government law to election law problems. Both local government and international law scholars discuss something sometimes called the “boundary problem.” A simple belief in democracy or self-determination — or the decision of some group of voters — cannot provide much guidance about what the boundaries of a city, state, or nation should be. Before a geographically-bounded group of voters can decide its own boundaries, who comprises the relevant group must itself be determined. Any such choice will exclude some people who claim an interest in the decision. The group of deciders cannot be determined democratically, as a vote to decide who decides would face the same problem. Some value other than self-determination must be introduced to determine who decides before any boundaries can be set. The implication is that any city, state, or country’s decision about its own boundaries is not due any particular deference on democratic grounds. The Supreme Court has endorsed this view, giving states virtually free reign to determine who should participate (if anyone) in elections setting local boundaries. There is a functional analogy between election laws and boundary drawing. Like determinations about the boundaries of a polity, election laws determine who may participate as part of tomorrow’s electorate and how those votes will be aggregated. Because both involve decisions that include or exclude others from the body politic, the boundary problem should also apply to election law. This fresh way of thinking about election law suggests that courts should not give their ordinary, democratically justified deference to legislative enactments in election law cases, one quite distinct from traditional principal-agent-style concerns. Further, the boundary problem can help explain the Court’s skeptical attitude in cases like Lucas v. The Forty-Fourth General Assembly of the State of Colorado, where voters themselves in a referendum choose a system other than equal representation. Finally, the boundary problem bites more severely when local governments pass election laws. Local governments have all sorts of tools for determining who may live in town — from taxes to land use — that can entrench today’s majority. Local election laws provide these majorities with yet another tool, which makes competition even more unlikely. Whatever deference is due in election law cases generally, courts should give less deference to locally-drawn election laws.

Is social cohesion relevant to a city in the global south? A case study of Khayelitsha township

The concept of social cohesion is increasingly being utilised in local and international policy discourse and scholarship. The idea of collective efficacy, defined as ‘social cohesion among neighbours combined with their willingness of intervene on behalf of the common good,’ has been posited as having an important protective effect against violence. This article investigates the relevance of international framings of social cohesion and collective efficacy, which have largely been conceptualised and tested in the global north, to the conditions of social life and violence prevention in a city in the global south. These circumstances are interrogated through an ethnographic study conducted in Khayelitsha township in the Western Cape, where a major internationally funded and conceptualised violence prevention intervention, Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU), has been implemented. The ethnographic material contests some of the key assumptions in international discourses on social cohesion and the manner in which social cohesion has been interpreted and effected in the violence prevention initiatives of VPUU.

Facing Marxist Orthodoxy: Western Marxism,The Making, and the Communist Historiographies of Czechoslovakia and Poland, 1948–1990

AbstractAlthough the impact of Thompson’s work outside the UK has been recognized and pointed to many times, the ways in which Thompsonian categories and concepts, or Marxist thought from the West more broadly, was received in the countries of the former Eastern Bloc remain rather unclear. AlthoughThe Makinghas never been translated into Polish, Czech, or Slovak, the historians of East-Central European countries were not totally cut off from Western scholarship. Major academic institutes and universities throughout the communist bloc maintained basic contacts with colleagues in the West, and Thompson’s work was known among some local social historians. Marxism from the West in general and Thompson’s work in particular posed challenges that had to be dealt with. This paper traces the ways in which historians of Poland and Czechoslovakia responded to these challenges to the official position of Marxist orthodoxy. TakingThe Makingas an example, it highlights the reception (or lack thereof) of Western influences on local scholarship, and the dynamics of these encounters – whether they were affirmative or critical – in relation to the changing political landscape of East-Central European countries after World War II.

Das Friedensinstrument für jüdische Untertanen der Herzogin Agnes von Schweidnitz von 1370

AbstractFollowing the Black Death persecutions which started in 1348, the Jewish spiritual centres shifted from the Rhine eastwards. There was an important Yeshiva, for instance, in the Silesian town of Świdnica, where famous scholars learned and taught. Świdnica belonged to the Piast Duchy of Świdnica-Jawor, where – after the death of Bolko II in 1368 – his widow, Agnes of Austria, ruled up until her own death in 1392. In 1370 Agnes decreed a peace settlement for the Jews in her duchy, which can be seen as one of the first such arrangements. It impacted at various levels on internal Jewish affairs, for instance in stipulating that the community was to elect its »bishop«. This strengthened the parish council against the local scholars. The Jewish court, which, in accordance with Jewish law, decided on questions concerning marital and inheritance law and in civil process orders between Jewish parties, also answered to the Jewish »bishop« and his advisors. What was new in Duchess Agnes’ »Jewish Charter« was that the congregation could determine the level of taxes they would pay the Duchess.

Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe by Mary E. Barnard

Reviewed by: Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe by Mary E. Barnard Núria Silleras-Fernández Barnard, Mary E. Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe. Toronto: U of Toronto P, Toronto Iberica, 2014. 226 pp. ISBN: 978-14-4264-755-8. Garcilaso de la Vega (1501?-1536), a canonical poet, courtier, and soldier in the army of Emperor Charles V was accustomed to enjoying the luxury objects that were on prominent display at the Spanish Habsburg court, including tapestries, paintings, books, relics, medals, coins, and exotic artifacts from the Americas. In 1532 he was forced into exile in Italy, where he went into the service of his friend, Pedro de Toledo, the Marquis of Villafranca and viceroy of Naples. This was an important experience for Garcilaso as a writer, in that this Mediterranean setting acquainted him with new texts and ideas, and with precious objects and Roman monuments, and gave him an opportunity to interact with local scholars and gain a clearer understanding of Classical culture. In Garcilaso de la Vega and the Material Culture of Renaissance Europe, Barnard analyzes how Garcilaso engaged with exotic and luxurious objects in the poems he wrote during his last years (1532-1536) – the period that he lived in Naples. Barnard reads Garcilaso's time in Italy as an "invitation to admire and dialogue directly with its material culture" (7), and considers the way the objects (some of which he must have certainly seen) feature in his poems as his particular response to the material culture of his time. For her, they constitute a fundamental element that readers must take into account in order to fully understand and appreciate his "new poetry." The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and a very short epilogue (instead of a formal conclusion), which treat Garcilaso's Neapolitan poems as "a kind of a sixteenth century poetic imaginary" (13). Because Barnard considers these to be the poems that engaged the most with materiality, she has organized each chapter around a distinct set of objects. The first chapter, "Weaving, Writing, and the Art of Gift-Giving", studies tapestries, which were highly valued in the sixteenth century and considered indispensable signs of elegance and luxury. She connects these to Garcilaso's third eclogue, which comprises a lyric version of a figurative tapestry, in which nymphs weave a tapestry while the poet weaves his verse. The two are similar because both tapestries and poems have the potential of constituting elements of networks of patronage and gift exchange. The second chapter, "Empire, Memory, and History," examines the battle of Tunis (1535), in which Charles V's forces confronted those of the Berber pirate, Kheir-ed-Din Barbarossa, the admiral of Suleyman the Magnificent. The Emperor deliberately brought artists and humanists along to the battle so they could suitably and accurately commemorate his anticipated success over the Ottoman sultan. Garcilaso was there, as was the Flemish artist, Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, who transformed his drawings of the combat into twelve tapestries that constituted a sort of official celebration of the victory. Barnard links these tapestries, along with a portrait by Titian, and a statue by Leoni to a set of Garcilaso's works, including his sonnet thirty-three, "A Boscán desde la Goleta", sonnet ten, "O dulces prendas por mi mal halladas", and his Latin "Ode to Ginés de Sepúlveda," which together presented the poet's more nuanced and fine-grained version of the episode. In the course of this, he addresses themes relating to history and memory while analyzing [End Page 295] the poems and artifacts. The following chapter, "Objects of Dubious Persuasion", examines the "ode ad florem Gnidi" – a poem with the agenda of trying to convince a reluctant Neapolitan noblewoman, Violante Sanseverino, to accept her suitor, Mario Galeota. This piece is assessed alongside material items including a lyre, a viol, a zither, a shell boat, a painting, and a statue. Chapter Four, "the Mirror and the Urn", comprises a close reading of the second eclogue, juxtaposed with a mirror and an urn, and considers the poem's connection to subjectivity and melancholy. Next, Chapter Five, "Eros...

Is social cohesion relevant to a city in the global South? A case study of Khayelitsha township

The concept of social cohesion is increasingly being utilised in local and international policy discourse and scholarship. The idea of collective efficacy, defined as 'social cohesion among neighbours combined with their willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good', has been posited as having an important protective effect against violence. This article investigates the relevance of international framings of social cohesion and collective efficacy, which have largely been conceptualised and tested in the global North, to the conditions of social life and violence prevention in a city in the global South. These circumstances are interrogated through an ethnographic study conducted in Khayelitsha township in the Western Cape, where a major internationally funded and conceptualised violence prevention intervention, Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU), has been implemented. The ethnographic material contests some of the key assumptions in international discourses on social cohesion and the manner in which social cohesion has been interpreted and effected in the violence prevention initiatives of the VPUU.

Introduction

Introduction Jim Hicks IN THE FIRST introduction I penned for this magazine, I felt it incumbent to cite Ralph Waldo Emerson. One line in particular, for the fall of 2016, seems even more appropriate now than it did in 2010, or in 1848, for that matter. In his introduction to the first issue of the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, Emerson wrote, “This country needs to be extricated from its delirium at once.” This issue’s featured artist, Nina Chanel Abney, also brings Hamlet to mind, holding, as she does, a mirror up to that madness — “in the very torrent, tempest, and (as I may say) whirlwind of passion.” Abney’s work is all the more essential given what we find on the national stage today — dominated by “players that [we] have seen play” as they strut, bellow, and “imitat[e] humanity so abominably.” Back at the onset of the millennium’s second decade, I argued that another key step toward extrication, and away from delirium, would be a dramatic increase in the amount that the Massachusetts Review publishes in translation. Since then, we’ve done well on that score, averaging perhaps twenty percent, though we could certainly do better. In this issue, for example, only two of our twenty authors first wrote their work in a language other than English: poems from Fahrad Showghi, translated from German by Harry Roddy, and letters from Joan Sales, translated by Contributing Editor Peter Bush. So this round we’ve batted just half our average. That said, it should be added that the goal for MR was never quotas, even if we remain resolutely pro-immigration. To much of the world, much of what this country produces appears, it must be said, provincial. And MR will never stand for that. So let’s take a closer look at what’s included in this issue. We begin with three “Amherst Stories” from MR’s founding editor, Jules Chametzky. The red thread that guides these accounts, however, ties them each to flakey international movements: first the Moonies, then Scientology, and, in perhaps the grimmest tale of all, Reichian orgonomy. Elsewhere a hat trick of other local heroes — Marilyn Chin, Stephen Clingman, and Sabina Murray — also adds to our understanding of the world and its history. The nightmarish diet in Chin’s “Immigrant Dreams,” the three episodes from Clingman’s memoir about growing up in apartheid-era South Africa, or Murray’s vision of the visionary Roger Casement: each a case study in [End Page 378] how all true politics is global, even when it acts only locally. In Amherst historian Laure Katsaros’s lovely tale of the Goncourt brothers, and French culture itself, surrendering to a Japanese invasion, we have a fascinating story of cross-cultural pollination, one that arrived at our office from just across town. Joann Kobin’s tale of late-life language learning has a French twist as well, though in this case the author does live all the way across the river in Northampton. Muira McCammon’s research on the Guantánamo Bay library is another fruit of local scholarship, and one with evidently historic ramifications. Elsewhere in this issue, Nil Santiáñez delivers the second half of his lesson in reading the literature of the Great War comparatively. And as their work here makes manifest, neither the poetry of Michael Waters nor that of Terese Svoboda fits neatly into any national box. Let a last line from the latter stand as slogan for both, and for us: “Not you, where once was all-you.” Our autumnal offerings also include a pair of atypical family stories: Christine Sneed invents an advice column capable of giving life lessons to its author, and Alex Poppe hatches a CRISPR tale of genetic manipulation than any we’ve ever read. Both narratives for our time, about our world, not ourselves. Finally, let me also mention the closing poem from Lisa Beech Hartz. Its subject, a photograph by Doris Ulmann of the great Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco, seems a particularly good fit for these pages. Ulmann was an alumna of the storied Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City, an institution that counts among its early...

Działalność społeczna i edukacyjna Koła Pań Karaimskich w Haliczu

Przez stulecia udział karaimskiej kobiety w życiu społecznym był ograniczony. Dopiero w latach 20 XX w. powstała w Wilnie pierwsza karaimska organizacja kobieca. W 1932 r. Sabina Nowachowiczowa, nauczycielka, jedna z pierwszych Karaimek, które zdobyły formalne wykształcenie i pracowały zawodowo, założyła Koło Pań Karaimskich w Haliczu. Cele organizacji było podnoszenie poziomu świadomości członkiń, kształcenie ich w zakresie podstaw wiary, dziejów i języka Karaimów, a także zapewnianie im wiedzy ogólnej, tak by mogły przekazywać tradycyjne karaimskie wartości swoim dzieciom. Koło organizowało wycieczki, akademie upamiętniające ważne postaci z historii karaimów, prelekcje wygłaszane przez miejscowych działaczy i zapraszanych gości. Tematyka tych wystąpień była niezwykle szeroka i obejmowała różne zagadnienia, od zasad wiary i dzieł literatury karaimskiej po wykopaliska w Egipcie i zagadnienie niepodległości Krymu. W artykule zostają szczegółowo omówione różne aspekty działalności Koła na podstawie dokumentów z archiwum S. Nowachowiczowej.