Citra's Questions in KausU. 1, 1

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

Recent ceramic analysis: 1. Function,style, and origins

The recent literature on ceramic analysis, which has grown dramatically over the last 8 years, is reviewed in two articles. In this first article attention focuses on studies of function and use, stylistic analyses, and pottery origins. Functional analysis has been the most rapidly expanding segment of the field, particularly experimental, ethnoarchaeological, and residue analysis approaches. Stylistic analyses seem to be in a lull, following increasing dissatisfaction with information theory approaches. Questions of pottery origins are enjoying renewed interest and are briefly surveyed here. The second of the two articles will survey compositional investigations, pottery production, and approaches to ceramic theory. Both reviews close with observations on current directions in ceramic studies.     

Letter of Protest Regarding Yu. G. Saushkin's Article in Economic Geography, 1962, No. 1

An article published in Economic Geography, 1962, No. 1, by Prof. Yu. G. Saushkin of Moscow University in criticized by nine other Soviet economic geographers for alleged failure to give an objective appraisal of the current state of economic geography in the Soviet Union.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 1. February 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 1 Front cover ALTERNATIVE FACTS In response to discourses of alternative facts, denials of climate science and the undermining of science in the public sphere, on 22 April 2017, protestors marched for science in cities across the United States. In this image of the San Francisco march, a protestor holds a sign proclaiming ‘science is universal’. While some protestors' slogans assumed the objectivity of science and facts, others asserted the importance of diversity, equality and inclusion in science. Scholars of science and technology studies have long deconstructed claims of universality, but recently some have argued that the authority of science and facts must be reclaimed. Bruno Latour emphasizes that it is untenable to talk about scientific facts as though their rightness alone will be persuasive. Analyses of human rights and political violence disclose how narratives and propaganda shape not just individual attitudes but also the functioning of institutions. Contexts of gaslighting, repetition, distraction and undermining facts require different strategies for understanding how institutions and societies are perpetrating and perpetuating injustices. In this issue, Drexler's article develops a framework of multidimensional and intersectional justice for analyzing the layered, compounded, dynamic forms of power and inequality that contribute to particular injustices. Understanding justice as multidimensional and intersectional is part of a struggle from which new forms of knowledge and truth can emerge. Back cover ‘NEW SCHISM’ IN ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY? A supplicatory prayer service (Moleben) to Saint Emperor Nikolay II in an Orthodox church in the Russian Federation. On the commemoration day of his death, believers line up to venerate large icons of the tsar installed in the church, as in many other churches of the ‘Russian world’. When kissing the holy icons and listening to the words of prayer, they participate in a theopolitical performance of belonging to a community of co-believers and compatriots, of people who share the same faith and the same nation, an enactment of the model ‘one state, one church’ prevalent in Eastern Orthodoxy. What happens, however, when state borders change, when new sovereign states emerge or become stronger? Is it possible for Orthodox Christians to practise their faith outside the national-territorial logic? Since the summer of 2018, Jeanne Kormina and Vlad Naumescu have been observing a rapidly developing cold war within Orthodox Christianity. This war between different claims for sovereignty and jurisdiction over ‘canonical territories’ has followed clear logics of religious nationalism and imperialism. In this conflict, the less privileged — ordinary believers and local religious communities — have suffered most. In this issue, Kormina and Naumescu analyze the recent ‘schism’ in Eastern Orthodoxy to show how religion and politics are strongly intertwined in disputes over territory and sovereignty. Drawing a parallel between the post-socialist revival of religion in Ukraine and the current mobilization on the ground, they show how the theopolitics of ‘communion’ and ‘canonical territory’ shape the fate of people, churches and states.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 33, Number 1. February 2017

Front and back cover caption, volume 33 issue 1 Front cover COOPERATION & COMPETITION In May 2010, we paid a visit to our friend Aurora';s grandparents in Valea Mic? (Moldova). They greeted us and agreed to pose for this photo at the family house. Aurora presented them with a small gift and we were served sweet bread and pálinka (the traditional homemade spirit based on plums). They spoke with us in Romanian, but they also speak Csango, a Hungarian dialect used by most of the Catholic minority in this part of Moldova. They had lived through dramatic changes: having grown up in a peasant community, they were forced to become ‘agricultural workers’; during the Socialist regime, after which they became peasants again, harvesting part of their former lands. This vignette illustrates how, behind the cultural diversity that can be found in every corner of the world, some basic principles are pervasive: the norms of etiquette to welcome guests accompanied by the exchange of food and gifts. Such token exchanges are a common characteristic of humanity: the tendency to cooperate and initiate and maintain relations through reciprocity. In this issue, J.L. Molina et al. review how different disciplines respond to the question of why humans cooperate. While contributions from sister disciplines tend to explain cooperation as an adaptive response to competition, social anthropology studies cooperation and competition simultaneously through the basic mechanism of reciprocity, or deferred mutual exchanges. This mechanism is present in hunter‐gatherer societies, where generalized reciprocity dominates; in prestige economies, where valuables are exchanged in specific spheres or given away in agonistic institutions; and also in peasant communities, where cooperation and competition coexist but never at the cost of putting at risk the reproduction of the community itself. Back cover ZOMIA Daily scene of agricultural life in the highlands of the Sino‐Vietnamese borderlands. The village, San Sa Ho, is located in Sa Pa District, Lao Cai Province, Vietnam. In May 2010, adults and children – in this case belonging to Hmong Leng ethnicity (Miao‐Yao language family) – transplant rice shoots from nurseries into recently flooded paddy fields. The extended family joins forces for such periods of intensive farming, bartering labour along a balanced reciprocity model involving all levels of economic and ritual life. Rice is the staple crop, supplemented by maize, cassava, and a few vegetables. The limestone geology and rough landscape of western Sa Pa district is unforgiving and farmers have to work extremely hard for modest results. Cash crops are uncommon in this region, even if opium had been a mainstay until the state forbade its production and sale in the early 1990s. This important loss in cash income has hit local farmers very hard and is only partially compensated today by the cultivation and sale of black cardamom, illegal logging, and poachng of wildlife. Vietnam is still under a communist regime but the agrarian transition and the economic turn towards a market economy are now decades old and nearing completion in the crowded lowlands. However, in these remote mountains – which are part of James C. Scott's Zomia – its reach is slowed down by the cultural resistance of egalitarian societies and world views not entirely compatible with the capitalist model. In this issue, Jean Michaud looks at certain limitations in Scott's model.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 38, Number 1. February 2022

Front and back cover caption, volume 38 issue 1 QANON This QAnon supporter was part of the crowd of demonstrators at the Washington DC ‘Million MAGA March’ shortly after Trump's 2020 electoral defeat. This woman's sign alludes to ‘The Storm’, a millenarian denouement that, in the QAnon imagination, will see Trump and his supporters rounding up and arresting top Democrats so as to retake power. In this issue, McIntosh describes the verbal art with which the mysterious and oracular figure of ‘Q’ managed to enlist millions of enthusiasts through the Internet. Q specialized in cryptic messages and urged online followers to decode and interpret them. These exercises fostered the notion that supporters themselves were engaging in high-stakes interpretive work, and that a digital army of Q followers could see through fraudulent politicians and experts, ultimately garnering their own knowledge and expertise. At the same time, Q used the power of secrecy to impart the conviction that Q was connected to a new alt-right state waiting in the wings. McIntosh also argues that the alt-right — including but not limited to Q — have increasingly encouraged the idea that reality or truth may lie somewhere behind or beneath the unreliable sign vehicle. Communications from political enemies should be read with suspicion, while communications from Q and Trump alike should be decrypted for their underlying encoded meanings, particularly dark portents. This oracular semiotic ideology now thrives alongside conventional liberal understandings of rational political processes. MAGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS Pagan shaman Gordon MacLellan, also known as Creeping Toad, is an environmental educator who helps people find their own stories in nature. Here, he is storytelling in Plas Power Woods, Wales, UK. Gordon's stories are inclusive to anyone who wants to listen without discrimination. In this issue, Susan Greenwood characterizes magical consciousness as a pan-human participatory and analogical mode of thought that underpins mythopoetic expressions ranging from the ancient narratives of the Australian Aboriginal Rainbow Snake and the life-enhancing ecological stories of Gordon MacLellan to the alt-right conspiracy theories fostering racial hatred embraced by ‘shaman’ and QAnon supporter Jake Angeli, a central figure in the storming of the US Capitol in 2021. Stories and storytelling are the modus operandi of magical consciousness. Essentially amoral, magical consciousness engages the emotions and helps create meaningful patterns that encompass varieties of human expression cross-culturally. Magical consciousness manifests itself along a spectrum. It can sometimes lead to divisive actions fuelled by conspiracy theories such as QAnon. Analysis of magical consciousness may add a further dimension to the investigation of Western post-truth societies whereby the Enlightenment notion of reason and scientific facts — as the only locus of ‘truth’ — contrasts with ways of engaging with reality primarily through emotions and beliefs. A better understanding of magical consciousness may help build bridges between Western cultures and the world views of indigenous peoples. In replacing machine metaphors with metaphors drawn from nature, such understandings may help shape our future responses to our planet's ecological, economic and social crises.