Post-revolutionary Context Research Articles

Challenging global changes in a post-revolutionary context: the case of irrigated olive growing in central Tunisia

Abstract. Research on agricultural development models shows that local applications of global models are adapted both to the globalisation of agricultural markets and to climate change. The circulation of such models is also linked to local political and historical contexts. However, few studies have focused on abrupt changes in economic policies, such as those following the Arab Spring. We propose to study the evolution of olive-growing development policies in post-revolutionary Tunisia. In order to mitigate both market- and climate-induced vulnerabilities and to make the sector more competitive with major olive producers, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) guidelines recommend intensification of Tunisian olive farming through irrigation. Our research makes two main claims: (1) the change in the production model towards irrigation aims to respond to globalisation, climate change and national policies. (2) Some exporters are involved at several levels of the value chain. This research conducted by geographers and economists analyses the mutations of the olive sector towards irrigation, using a double theoretical framework on the circulation of agricultural development models, with a political-ecology approach. This paper contributes to a growing body of research on the relationship between commodity production networks and water studies.

La Chica Moderna and the Virile Sport of Boxing: Women Boxers, Gender Politics, and Identity Construction in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s

The 1920s and 1930s in Mexico were an important moment of transition for women’s sport, as women’s interests in sport as spectators and participants increased, giving rise to social debate. Much of these debates formed part of a broader discussion about the emergence of the ‘modern woman’ or, in the case of Mexico, la chica moderna. By focusing on the representation of the modern woman boxer in Mexican newspapers and popular media, this article analyses the socio-cultural construction of femininity through the discourse of sport in the postrevolutionary context of the 1920s and 1930s. This work considers how authors and publications with close ties to the postrevolutionary regime allocated the modern boxing woman a place within the postrevolutionary project, which provided the project a progressive appeal that argued for a true social equality. However, commentators also went to great lengths to reconcile the transgressive and modern character of women boxers with the state’s more traditional discourses on acceptable femininity and clear limits remained in place for women. Nevertheless, the 1920s and 1930s witnessed a remarkable opening up of possibilities for alternative types of femininities in a context that sought to establish a new national citizen in terms of gender.

Uneasy Entanglements

This article considers the entanglements revealed by the recent and rapid influx of solar technology on the archipelago of Zanzibar. Following a technical failure that left the islands without electricity for three months in 2009–10, the Zanzibari government has pursued several avenues to increase energy autonomy, including solar power. However, the future of energy independence promised by solar development is complicated by a legacy of political conflict and new relationships of dependence and inequality. Drawing on interviews with domestic energy users, government officials, state engineers and NGO activists, and situated within the unique post-revolutionary context of Zanzibar, this article explores how solar innovations and investments contribute to the reimagining of social, economic and political entanglements while simultaneously reproducing persistent discourses of hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion.

Observations on the Egyptian Independent Music Scene and Political Dynamics in a Post-Revolutionary Context

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Women driving women: drivers of women-only taxis in the Islamic Republic of Iran

This paper explores the work narratives of drivers of women-only taxis in Iran to gain an understanding of how they navigate the world of driving segregated taxis. Iran's shift from a secular to an Islamic state in 1979 reinforced the gendered constructions of the public sphere through policies and practices that encouraged women’'s roles in the private sphere and channeled their realms of public participation into traditionally feminine domains to the greatest extent possible. Previous research provides important insights into the consequences of the post-revolutionary gender discourse for women. However, little attention has been paid to on-the-ground nuances of women’s day-to-day navigations of the public realm. Using in-depth qualitative data from interviews with 40 female taxi drivers, this study shows how these women incorporate cultural beliefs and values that have been central to the “gendering” of public life in the post-revolutionary context into their daily strategies of negotiations and resilience.

Lezama Lima’s “Julián del Casal”

This examination of José Lezama Lima’s groundbreaking essay on the controversial late-nineteenth-century Cuban poet Julián del Casal situates the essay in the postrevolutionary context in which it first appeared in a Havana newspaper in 1941, a year after the ratification of the Constitution of 1940 and the publication of Fernando Ortiz’s celebrated Cuban Counterpoint. It explores Lezama Lima’s essay as a response to this moment in Cuban history as one that sought to forge, according to Rafael Rojas, a new “pact of national reconciliation,” and was characterized by anxieties over Cubans’ ability to produce. It argues that Lezama Lima’s essay responded by turning from questions of production and proposing instead an urban aesthetic practice of reception and failure that foregrounds—in a manner not unlike contemporary queer critics—the racial and sexual spectral and ephemeral as sources for alternative forms of productivity and agency.

Presencia visible de la cámara en el documental latinoamericano

Ya desde El hombre de la cámara (Vertov, 1929) la presencia visible de la cámara al interior del registro fílmico señala la irrupción autorreflexiva del dispositivo cinematográfico. En la película de Vertov, esta presencia constituye una reflexión a la vez técnica, estética y política acerca de las condiciones de producción en un contexto posrrevolucionario. En este artículo se analizará la presencia de la cámara en algunos documentales latinoamericanos en los que la figuración del dispositivo fílmico se hace visible y en donde esta presencia cumple un rol fundamental a nivel formal y narrativo. Específicamente este artículo se referirá a un noticiero, a La batalla de Chile de Patricio Guzmán, Agarrando pueblo (1977) de Luis Ospina y Carlos Mayolo, a Cabra marcado para morrer (1984) de Eduardo Coutinho y a la serie Como me da la gana de Ignacio Agüero que tuvo una versión en 1985 y otra en 2016.

After Isolation: Mirrors between Parallel Worlds and New Conceptual Spaces of Activism in Post-Revolutionary Iran

In this article, we theoretically conceptualise the renegotiation of participatory action and activism through the formation of intellectual space that is self-reflective and upheld by what we metaphorically describe as mirrors between parallel worlds. Rethinking what activism is and how an individual relates to their social group is dependent on different levels of self-reflection, self-criticism and competing scales of insertion of other people’s struggles into one’s own political vision in an effort to intellectually rectify the local tensions that emerge in a post-revolutionary context where people are disconnected from global-level activism. A significant aspect of this analysis is our interlocutors’ imaginative capacity to draw from other people’s experiences through cultural and visual artefacts and integrate them into their own life history with the intention to address national or group-specific dilemmas. While some have drawn attention to the importance of noting how spaces for activism are remade in the post-revolutionary context due to such sentiments as disappointment, we instead examine the formation of conceptual spaces of activism within the context of isolation in contemporary Iran. Empirically, we bring together a political analysis of the novel Bevatan by Reza AmirKhani, and interviews conducted with English literature students in Shiraz.

Challenging the Externalised Obstruction of Asylum – The Application of the Right to Asylum to EU Cooperation with Libyan Coast Guards

This article analyses the strategy of the European Union (EU) towards the movement of asylum-seekers from Libya to Europe in respect of the right to asylum in Art 18 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. It first outlines the characteristics and effects of the European response to migration through Libya in its post-revolutionary context, taking into consideration the route via Niger. The second chapter presents an interpretation of the right to asylum that allows an encompassing perspective on the situation. It claims that Art 18, understood as a right of the individual to overcome rightlessness through accessing asylum, can serve as a well-suited instrument to challenge the strategy of externalised obstruction.

Utopias of youth: politics of class in Maoist post-revolutionary mobilisation

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the changing role of youth in Nepali Maoism following their transformation from a guerrilla army to a parliamentary party after 2006. Drawing on 1 year of ethnographic fieldwork, I trace how the category of youth gained renewed relevance after the war and allowed the Maoist movement to sidestep complicated issues of class in the urban fabric. Building on a Gramscian framework of subaltern politics and Harvey’s ‘dialectical utopianism’, I argue that youth in the post-revolutionary context have become aligned with the political project of building ‘New Nepal’ and that this allows youth, as both a category and a subject position, to emerge as tools for utopian communist politics. Through an analysis of a divided class landscape in Kathmandu, the article documents the new and difficult alignments between Maoist ideals and positions of youth in the city with lasting outcomes for the party’s revolutionary project.

Retour au Syllabus. Pie IX et les erreurs de la société moderne : Réexamen de la genèse d’un texte

This paper proposes a novel interpretation of a key document in the contemporary history of the Church, the Syllabus complectens praecipuos nostrae aetatis errores by Pius IX. Historians usually place the genesis of the Syllabus, condemning the errors of modern society, into the post-revolutionary context of the 1850s and 1860s, or link it with the struggle for Italian unification. Nobody, however, has investigated the ambiguous and very strange form of this text. In fact, the list of modern errors was a rather haphazard collection of propositions compiled by the Barnabite Luigi Bilio ; these propositions were extrapolated from official texts authored by the pope himself, while at the same time being manipulated by Bilio. Thus, in condemning the errors of modern society, Pope Pius IX chose to define those errors by using his own words, not those of his enemies. How can this decision be explained ? The answer can be found in two main causes : first, the last controversial composition in 1864 under the eyes of Holy Office ; furthermore, the reappraisal of Mastai Ferretti’s first years of pontificate, when he was first considered by public opinion as a ‘reformer’ and a ‘liberal’ sovereign, and than condemned as a betrayer. By adopting this double perspective, then, it becomes possible to find the deeper sources of the Syllabus in Church’s reaction to the struggles of Pius’ pontificate, and in his ambiguous relationship with modern society.

Peripécias na alcova de Sade: A mulher em La philosophie dans le boudoir

The article analyzes the way the female characters appear in the book A Filosofia na alcova of Marquis de Sade. It highlights the author’s recurrent themes, such as space, private life and freedom, relating them to the discussion about the role of women during the eighteenth century in France. Such a thematic-spatial option analyzes, therefore, points that were not thoroughly studied and that, for a long time, were only considered in addendums within the studies about the French post-revolutionary context. The discussion is part of the theoretical intersection between History and Literature, using as reference the works of Georges Bataille, Michele Perrot, Eliane Robert Moraes and Lynn Hunt.

Unfree labour after the Maoist Revolution in western Nepal

What does ‘unfree labour’ mean in a post-revolutionary context? Based on an ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2008 and 2009 in the far-western lowlands of Nepal, this article argues that the brick kiln owners on the Nepal–India border continued their attempts to bind labour by handing out advances and delaying payments, despite the fact that the state had prohibited all forms of bonded labour under the Bonded Labour Abolition Act of 2001. However, the employers and the workers accepted this system of unfree labour only as long as it remained within certain boundaries. I conclude by suggesting that the Maoist Revolution should be judged as a partial revolution: although it addressed some inequalities, it neglected others due to an ideologically narrow framing of the meaning of unfree labour.

THE PRINCIPLE OF EQUALITY OF STATES IN THE WAKE OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

International law can be viewed as a project of exclusion and inclusion of events and ideas into its narrative. Some shake the pillars of international law, while others, influence its progressive development. Widespread wars and revolutions and events and ideas behind them occupy special place in this project: they expose irregularity in the system and at the same time may threaten its existence. The immediate and long-term effects of such events on international law can only be seen with a passage of time. The 1917 Russian Revolution marking its 100th anniversary this year is an illustrative example to this statement. Though it did not end to be the event in international law when the soviet law as predicted by some Soviet scholars replaced bourgeoisie law, it significantly contributed to disseminate ideas that laid foundation of the general international law. Though in post-revolutionary context Soviet Russia advanced different radical approach to universal social and economic justice and criticized the pre-existing international law, international law remained resistant to extremes and capable of encompassing constructive ideas. The most spectacular example of this approach is Soviet attitude towards equality of states – one of the main international law axioms and utopias and at the same time a cornerstone of Marxism- Leninism theory – and Russia’s early attempts to give it more precise legal meaning. This article briefly describes the bumpy way that this principle undertook before the Russian Revolution, to depict the background against which Soviet Russia started to advance its understanding of equality, in some sense, picking up and developing the ideas of the 1789 French Revolution. It further considers the meaning, that the early Soviet doctrine attached to equality and concrete legal mechanisms through which the Soviet approach was translated into international law, specifically focusing on the works of Vladimir Lenin. The article then studies the actual early soviet international law practice, through the lens of predominant soviet theoretical approaches. Two conclusions are made: Marxism-Leninism had limited impact on the Soviet early practice of international law (1) and inconsistent application of principle of equality in the postrevolutionary context should not lead to its complete disregard (2). To the contrary, it is here argued that the Revolution has been influential in the democratization of international law by developing the following legal dimensions of the equality principle. First, it restated equality in the terms of status, meaning equality in acquisition and exercise of rights (1). Second, it helped to eliminate “dual standards,” which meant the cases where a state could treat one state as dependent and the other – as independent (2). Third, it projected the concept of states’ equal rights to nations and peoples (3). Finally, in the early Soviet Russia practice, the idea that states have equal rights stopped to be confined to any group of states, as compared to international law at that time. To the contrary, it implied equality between all states, even in relations between socialist and capitalist states, thus helping in long-term perspective to abandon “civilization test” (4).

Nation and Migration: The Making of British Atlantic Literature, 1765–1835 by Juliet Shields

Reviewed by: Nation and Migration: The Making of British Atlantic Literature, 1765–1835 by Juliet Shields Robin Runia Juliet Shields, Nation and Migration: The Making of British Atlantic Literature, 1765–1835 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). Pp. 195. $74.00. Juliet Shields's aim to "decenter the Anglo-American focus of transatlantic literary studies by extending the reach of archipelagic criticism to include the literature of the early American republic" is fully realized in this systematic study of Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and American identities on both sides of the Atlantic (139). She organizes her study around each of these regions and the literary genres in which they are represented in order to complicate scholarly narratives that continue to position them against a metropolitan England. Chapter 1 examines Samuel Johnson's Taxation No Tyranny alongside Edmund Burke's "Speech on Conciliation with America" and John Jay's contributions to the Federalist Papers. This comparative approach enables Shields to examine [End Page 352] the strategic deployment of racialized discourses by an English center and its subordinate and colonized possessions. In particular, she demonstrates how while Johnson defines English public spirit as the foundation of liberty, Burke insists on Ireland's and Scotland's resistance to submission as definitive of a British love of liberty. Interestingly, Shields also outlines how Jay and his detractors deploy both of these concepts in defense of America as an ethnically homogeneous republic. The role of the Gothic in Romantic Irish and American novels produces an opportunity for Shields to reconsider the nature of political threat within an American post-revolutionary context. In chapter 2, she examines Charles Brockden Brown's fiction as both an American response to the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and a manifestation of the motives behind the United States' 1798 Naturalization Act and the Alien and Sedition Acts. Through close reading of the relationship between the Irish, the American Indians, and the occult in Brockden Brown's work, Shields reveals American anxieties about the role of homogeneity, both racial and cultural, in the new republic. Chapters 3 and 4 explore the depiction of American Indians in the work of James Fenimore Cooper, William Joseph Snelling, and early nineteenth-century repetitions of the Welsh legend of Prince Madoc, the purported twelfth-century discoverer and settler of the North American continent. Shields first focuses on representations of the Scottish to come to opposing conclusions about the role of racial purity in The Last of the Mohicans and Snelling's Tales of the Northwest; or Sketches of Indian Life and Character. Specifically, she identifies how both fictions rely on a Scottish identity "defined by chivalry and cunning, courtesy and prudence" and perceived as archaic and ultimately disposable in its replacement by more commercially progressive behaviors (90). Shields subsequently focuses on the complexity of Welsh history to explain Robert Southey's Madoc and its descriptions of an alternative American tradition of martial valor and colonial resistance. She also analyzes Gilbert Imlay's novel The Emigrants; or the History of an Expatriated Family as an example of England's ongoing interest in and claim upon Western American territories. The literary sketch is the target of Shields's last chapter, in which she considers how American writers, like those in Ireland and Scotland, challenged London's literary centrality within the British Atlantic. Washington Irving's The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon is celebrated for its innovations of addressing both American and British readers while simultaneously offering tales of life in both the old world and the new. However, Shields compares Sidney Owenson's Patriotic Sketches of Ireland to Mary Russell Mitford's Our Village to conclude that while both Irish and American writers recognized regional identities as components of a national one, American writers were distinct in their incorporation of migration and emigration on both the regional and national levels. Shields's monograph is essential reading for anyone engaged in research on the Anglophone Atlantic world. Not only does she provide essential political and historical context for the focus of each chapter's reasoned literary analysis, she proves, unquestionably, the ongoing and transformative role of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales in shaping regional, British, and American identities. Shields's study...

The Hegemonic Bourguibist Discourse on Modernity in Post-revolutionary Tunisia

This article examines the continued resonance of Bourguibist discourses on modernity within Tunisia, how his political legacy continues to serve as a point of reference for diverse political movements, and therefore seeks to question how this conceptualization of modernity remains hegemonic. I posit that the national narrative of “modernity” conveyed by Bourguiba in the post-independence era should be understood as an arena of struggle over power and identity, and accordingly that both serve to shed light on how collective memory is mobilized as a political idiom to legitimise certain ideological agendas and views on what is deemed the “right” Tunisian national identity. With specific reference to Ennahda and Nidaa Tounes, I argue that understanding the prevailing political and social scene of post-revolutionary Tunisia necessitates examination of the social construction of Bourguiba, how he has come to be “mythologised” in order to generate support at a national level, and more importantly how this functions within broader discursive strategies towards power. In seeking to move beyond the current binarism that situates Islamists and so-called “secularists” (supposedly heirs of Bourguibism) in opposition, this study seeks to demonstrate the commonalities within their respective appropriations of the Bourguibist legacy in the post-revolutionary context, and thereby to elucidate how his normative heritage serves as a touchstone for seemingly contradictory ideological currents.

Meek or oppressed? Reading Matthew 5:5 in context

According to the Gospel of Matthew 5:5, Jesus pronounces a blessing on “the meek” (Greek οἱ πραeῖς), promising that they will receive the inheritance of the earth (or land). The words of Jesus are a quotation from the LXX of Psalm 37:11 and each of the Hebrew terms (subject, object and verb) need careful consideration. Following, the Hebrew original we might translate the verse in Psalm 37:11 as “The oppressed/ humiliated will take possession of the land”. The force of the original saying finds its meaning in the wider context of the Psalm, where wealthy landowners threaten the interests of ordinary peasants and they cry out to God for justice. The variance between the Hebrew (MT) and the Greek (LXX) raises anew the interpretation of these words of Jesus. Who did Matthew’s Jesus have in mind - the meek of emerging Christianity or the poor and humiliated peasants, who made up the majority of his Palestinian audience? In this article, I consider the implications of Jesus addressing a peasant audience in a conversation about taking possession of farming land and then extend this discussion into the emerging peasant realities of the post-revolutionary context in Galilee and Judaea. In the light of the present archaeological data, and the rabbinic sources, peasant life continued more or less unchanged with little indication of large-scale estates.

The Creation of the National Museum of Colombia (1823–1830): A History of Collections, Collectors, and Museums

The National Museum of Colombia was inaugurated on 4 July 1824. This museum was created along with a mining school in a post-revolutionary political context during the wars of independence. Museums in South America created in the early nineteenth century are seen as state formulations embedded in nationalist rhetoric conceived within the newborn states. This paper argues against such postulates through a global scientific-geopolitics perspective. It focuses on the analysis of a broad circulation of knowledge, scientific practices, and individuals between Europe and some of the young Latin American republics. Institutional material and immaterial traces that survive today, such as scientific study collections, suggest the relevance of both individual particulars and official purposes for a museum in which the private and the public spheres converge in a scientific agenda of global character.

Accounting for strategic investment decision-making under extreme uncertainty

This study focuses on processes employed by organisational managers making strategic investment decisions (SIDs) in an environment of extreme uncertainty in post-revolution Egypt. Our study illustrates how significant social, political and economic uncertainty impacts upon the utility of capital investment appraisal techniques employed in management accounting decision-making. To engage in this analysis, we employ strong structuration theory as a lens to examine how local Egyptian managers (agents-in-focus) respond to the impact of emergent structures that emanate from the post-revolutionary context in their strategic investment decision-making (SIDM). Our empirical evidence includes focused interviews with twenty-one local managers to understand the experience of accounting for decision-making under extreme uncertainty. Our analysis demonstrates that non-financial considerations and objectives take precedence over the technical ‘accounting’ measures, for example net present value (NPV) in post-revolution SIDM processes. In particular, recognising and responding to shifting labour power and short-term sacrifices (such as rejecting merger opportunities) become comparatively more important than the pre-supposed rationality of the NPV criteria. However, as multi-national corporations insist on the calculation of NPV by their Egyptian subsidiaries, local managers reproduce the imperfect NPV as a communication tool in relation to capital investment decisions, whilst resisting its persuasiveness in favour of more qualitative criteria.

Wordsworth and the Enlightenment Idea of Pleasure. Rowan Boyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. v+241.

<i>Wordsworth and the Enlightenment Idea of Pleasure</i>. Rowan Boyson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. v+241.