Some Remarks on a Tenth-Century Paraphrase of the “Epitome de Caesaribus”1

This article analyses several passages from a tenth-century paraphrase of the Epitome de Caesaribus, an anonymous and epitomized collection of imperial lives originally produced around the year 400. The analysis shows that among the many textual changes of linguistic, stylistic and ideological nature, errors did also occur during the rewriting process. The author explores some possible approaches to these passages.     

Remarks on the Text of the Kubjikāmatatantra

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

Doing is Learning: Analysis of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Adapt TEK/IK Methodology to Norwegian Sámi Circumstances

Abstract

This article describes a case where an attempt was made to introduce TEK/IK into a conflict between Sámi reindeer owners and environmental institutions. The conflict was brought on by the establishment of a national park in Southern Sámi areas in Norway. At first, the Sámi were in favour of the park, but later on their attitudes changed as the content of planned national park developed. The reindeer owners discovered that the size of the park would be reduced, leaving out what they thought were significant areas in need of protection. They saw the encouragement of increased tourism activities as a threat to reindeer herding and felt alienated by the number of representatives they received in the park management structures. On the basis of these observations reindeer owners protested, but were ignored. As researchers well-established in the Southern Sámi area, we were brought into conversations regarding the park as the local reindeer owners searched for ways of bringing new arguments into the process. At this point we thought TEK/IK represented an opportunity to add weight to Sámi perspectives. As the title of this article indicates, as push came to shove we did not succeed in making room for local participation in our TEK/IK project, despite these existing on-going relations. The article attempts to understand what happened. Our analysis is based upon a perception of TEK/IK as not one, but at least two co-constituted knowledge practices. The premise is that research failures are as important to publish as successes. Our joint ethnographic experience has methodological implications for future TEK/IK research.     

“Northern Girls”: Cultural Politics of Agency and South China’s Migrant Literature

Abstract:

This paper is concerned with the cultural politics of agency, and explores the relationship between cultural form, migrant experience and social change. It traces the emergence of a range of literary forms in south China and how these new cultural forms provide hitherto unavailable space to contest the state- and market-driven narratives, which tend to link dagongmei’s (rural migrant women’s) sexuality with inexperience and vulnerability on the one hand, and criminality, immorality and incivility on the other. The paper suggests that these newly emerging cultural forms present alternative perspectives on the practical circumstances, moral rationalities and emotional consequences that condition and shape migrant women’s sexual experience, and for this reason, they constitute important points of intervention.     

The ILO: An Agency for Globalization?

The International Labour Organization, set up in 1919 to develop and promote labour standards, is at a crucial point. It has preached that labour is not a commodity and in 1969 received the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then it has run into trouble. This article considers how the ILO has failed to come to terms with the Global Transformation, seeing it as trying to play three roles — a standard‐setter, a technical assistance agency and a knowledge generator — without developing the professional capacity to do so. The big question is whether the ILO could become an effective development agency given the changing character of work and labour in globalizing labour markets and its antiquated governance structure.     

Thirty Years on: Iran's “Silent Revolution”

2009 is the thirtieth anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. In 2006 the Bush administration ranked Iran as posing arguably the greatest single threat to America. And throughout 2008 that administration insisted all options were open in dealing with Iran, including preventative strikes. Yet, unlike its decisive intervention to establish Iran as a client state in the 1950s, the US has thus far been unable to force the changes it desires in and from Iran's leadership. This article argues that to help understand this situation it is important to recognize that the Iranian Revolution was and remains nurtured by a contemporaneous “silent revolution” in the international oil industry, even if the Ahmadinejad regime's economic policies especially threaten currently to squander some of the potential afforded by it.     

“Dear Diary” revisited: reflecting on collaborative journaling

The genesis of this article was a request from the Journal of Geography in Higher Education to provide a reflection piece about our article ‘Dear Diary: Early Career Geographers Collectively Reflect on their Qualitative Field Research Experiences’ (2011) that won the journal's biennial award for 2009–2011. This request has afforded us the opportunity to reconnect as a team and, through self-directed interviews, to reflect upon how writing ‘Dear Diary’ continues to influences our current perceptions of journaling in qualitative research. More specifically, we focus here on the relationships between journaling and our approach to research, team-based collaboration, and our current teaching and mentoring practices. We all continue to keep fieldwork journals and perceive reflexive journaling as a crucial tool for qualitative methods and other collaborative ventures.     

Doing Justice to Bodies? Reflections on Food Justice,Race, and Biology

Abstract: The food justice concept takes disproportionate prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes among people of color as evidence of injustice. Yet several measurements of obesity are based on norms derived from white bodies, which can also be a source of injustice. Part of the conceptual problem lies with reticence to discuss questions of material bodily difference as it relates to race given the legacy of racial science. Noting the distinction between racialism and racism, this article explores ways to think about biological difference in raced bodies, without reducing it to genetics. It draws on insights from Foucauldian notions of race and the new science of epigenetics to suggest that biological difference is more an effect of racism than a cause. Several pathways to obesity exist that have less to do with current day food access or genetic inheritance than with differential exposures that are somatized epigenetically.     

Politics of Immortality: Hobbes on “Humane and Divine Politiques”

Hobbes anticipates many important features of liberalism, including rights, the sovereign state, social contract and constitutionalism. Yet in his insistence that the sovereign will have final authority in matters of faith he appears to repudiate what we have come to consider the core liberal assumptions regarding separation of church and state. In this article, I argue that Hobbes takes this approach because of the political challenge posed by immortality (the promise of eternal rewards and the threat of eternal torment and damnation after death). Hobbes regards immortality as one of the most important factors that transform a religion from a means to strengthen the sovereign's authority, a “humane politiques,” to a “Divine politiques,” where others come to exercise countervailing claims on subjects' loyalty. Because immortality presents such a profound challenge to Hobbes' political remedy founded on the judicious use of fear, he adopts a twofold strategy to moderate its political influence. The first is a redefinition of who shall speak and what shall be said about immortality. The second strategy is to elevate the demands of this-world, by promising an eternal peace that will ensure a commodious life.     

Two Remarks on Michael Attaleiates’ Account of the Preliminaries to the Battle of Mantzikert†

The ability to extract fully the contextualized interpretations of Michael Attaleiates’ Historia is a rather difficult task without the parallel study of sources chronicling the same period. This article reconsiders Attaleiates’ justification for the division of the army by Diogenes before the battle of Mantzikert in 1071, and argues that the author is as critical of this emperor’s strategy as his close contemporary, Psellos, though his criticism is more subtly formulated. Another section discusses a gap in the narrative structure of the Historia and goes on to fill it with information derived from the Hyle Historias of Bryennios and from the chronicles of al-Bundari and Ibn al-‘Adim.     

Doing gender,doing safety? Young adults’ production of safety on a night out

This article explores the ways in which young adults produce a sense of safety in pubs and clubs. Despite considerable anxiety around issues pertaining to safety and violence in the night-time economy, there is little consideration of how young adults themselves feel about their safety on a night out, or how they achieve a sense of safety in a seemingly ‘risky’ social space. Drawing on mixed-methods research conducted in Melbourne, Australia, in this article I consider the strategies that young adults used to feel safe on a night out. I argue that feeling ‘safe’ is something that is actively produced through the use of these strategies, as well as providing an avenue for ‘doing’ gender.