Good Tongues,Bad Tongues: Denunciation,Rumour and Revenge in the French Basque Country, 1943–1945

This article provides the first ethnographic study of denunciation and rumor during the Gernam Occupation and its aftermath. In one French Basque village, “a good tongues” accused a female shopkeeper of adultery, multiple denunciations and economic collaboration with the enemy. She, in turn, played wtth “public rumour”, a product of human communication and imagination that citizens constantly reshaped as they evaluated and responded to accusations of wrongdoing. By making public, oral denunciations to the Germans, the shopkeeper competed with a female arch rival in the Resistance.

Basques had their own traditional means of sanctioning moral treachery in their community. I show how one particular practice, La Jonchée, provided an anonymous, non‐violent alternative to female head‐shaving, carried out by men who wished to punish women for sexual collaboration.     

The politics of the Shanghai courts: the state,local elites,and social networks in Nationalist China, 1927–1937

This article explores the ways in which the Nationalist Party established dominance over the Shanghai courts in the foreign concession area to use them as weapons against political dissidents, and it analyzes the intricate relations among the Nationalist Party, local elites, and the Shanghai courts during the Nanjing decade (1927–1937). Building on recent studies that pay attention to the limited success of the Nationalist Party’s policy of putting the judiciary under Party control, this study demonstrates that the process of establishing the Nationalist Party’s dominance over the Shanghai courts was highly contested. The interplay between the Nationalist Party’s effort to gain control over the Shanghai courts by building formal and informal institutions and the local elites’ appropriation of their own social networks rendered the Shanghai courts vulnerable not only to the Party’s intervention, but also to the influence of social forces. I argue that due to the weak authority of the Shanghai courts, the Nationalist Party’s use of law against political foes could be a double-edged sword.     

Defenders of the state: the Irish Labour Party,coalitionism and revisionism, 1969–77

Irish Labour Party politics underwent a significant transformation during the period 1969–77. During these years, the party moved from a position of opposition to coalition and apparent support for socialist politics to involvement in a coalition government with Fine Gael and an abandonment of its previously stated goal, the thirty-two-county socialist republic. This paper locates the main factor behind this shift in Labour’s attachment to the institutions of the Republic of Ireland state. As that state was threatened by the crisis in Northern Ireland from 1969 onwards, so the Labour Party was compelled to shift ground politically and move towards agencies that could offer stability. This led to permanent shifts in Labour policy and strategy.     

A Review of “Cultures of the Erotic in Spain, 1898–1939, and A Virtual Wunderkammer: Early Twentieth Century Erotica in Spain”

Abstract

Christopher Rivers. Face Value: Physiognomical Thought and the Legible Body in Marivaux, Lavater, Balzac, Gautier, and Zola. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1994. xii + 275 pp.

Brian T. Fitch. The Fall: A Matter of Guilt. (Twayne's Masterwork Studies.) New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995. xii + 136 pp.     

‘Between Two Fires’: Racial Populism,Indian Resistance and the Beginnings of Satyagraha in the Transvaal, 1902–06

In revisiting the historical circumstances leading up to the birth of satyagraha in the Transvaal in September 1906, this article seeks to place white popular protests against Asians within the same frame of analysis as Indian active nonviolence. In doing so it makes two interrelated arguments. First, I suggest that the evolution of satyagraha is better understood when examined in tandem with racial populism. Indian resistance to Transvaal laws was forged in a hostile, violent and racially charged environment. Gandhi and his followers were well aware of the power of white populism and its political influence over the Transvaal administration, and came to realise that some form of mass action of their own would be needed to counter this influence and achieve their political objectives. Second, I argue that it was the express intention of both white racial populists and the Gandhian resistance movement to exploit the competing imperial priorities of the Transvaal and British governments. The widespread agitation led by the White League and other organisations threatened the stability and authority of the colonial state; and so governors Milner and Selborne sought to appease settler opinion by enacting discriminatory legislation. However, London’s and Calcutta’s sensitivity to prejudice directed against British Indians in southern Africa also opened the door to anti-colonial protest, with Gandhi and his supporters generating support and sympathy in Britain and India by agitating for the repeal of unjust laws. The Transvaal administration was therefore forced to pick its way between white populists, Indian protesters, and imperial oversight and censure; and its anti-Indian policies were shaped by these contradictory pressures.