God,not Caesar: Revisiting National Socialism as ‘political religion’

This article argues that use of the concept of ‘political religion’ to describe the radicalized political movements of the twentieth century has again gained currency in recent years as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as the global upsurge of religiously inspired violence and that research with respect to religion proper – what religion is, its role in public life, its evolving reception by ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ – can advance the discussion. The article subsequently offers the author's own research as evidence of the concept's applicability to the case of National Socialism. Analysis focuses, specifically, on a movement in nineteenth century Germany to develop a secular system of ethics, a project that eventually led, ironically and tragically, to the emergence of a new faith in a absolutized ‘collective will’ as the transcendent source of all moral values. The National Socialist movement subsequently co-opted this article of faith, the article argues, by transforming Hitler into a holy medium for the salvific dictates of what became, by the early 1930s, an unimpeachable ‘Volkswille.’     

Unsocial analyses: Habitus,Hegemony, and self

Bourdieu, Pierre. The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. 330 pp. including appendix, references, and index. $39.50 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff. Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. xx + 414 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $60.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.

Crapanzano, Vincent. Hermes’ Dilemma and Hamlet's Desire: On the Epistemology of Interpretation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. ix + 386 pp. including notes, references, and index. $45.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.     

Fisherwomen,fisheries policy,and maritime anthropology

Allison, Charlene J., Sue‐Ellen Jacobs, and Mary A. Porter. Winds of Change: Women in Northwest Commercial Fishing. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990. xliv + 203 pp. including time‐line, photographs, map, place‐name locator, glossary, bibliography, and index. $25.00 cloth.

Cole, Sally, Women of the Praia: Work and Lives in a Portuguese Coastal Community. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. xvii + 189 pp. including photographs, tables, maps, notes, glossary, bibliography, and subject index. $52.50 cloth, $12.95 paper.

McGoodwin, James R. Crisis in the World's Fisheries: People, Problems, and Policies. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. viii + 235 pp. including photographs, bibliography, and subject index. $35.00 cloth.

Pálsson, Gísli. Coastal Economies, Cultural Accounts: Human Ecology and Icelandic Discourse. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991. xvii + 202 pp. including figures, photographs, notes, bibliography, and index. $69.95 cloth.     

Ethnicity,politics, and history in Mexico and Central America

Wilson, Richard. Maya Resurgence in Guatemala: Q'eqchi’ Experiences. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995. xiv + 373 pp. including tables, figures, photographs, appendices, notes, glossary, bibliography, and index. $32.95 cloth.

Frye, David. Indians into Mexicans: History and Identity in a Mexican Town. Austin; University of Texas Press, 1996. viii + 250 pp. including figures, photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $40.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

Hale, Charles R. Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 1894–1987. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1994. ix + 296 pp. including tables, figures, photographs, appendices, notes, bibliography, and index. $42.50 cloth.     

The safe spaces ‘in-between’ – plays,performance and identity among young ‘second generation’ Somalis in London

ABSTRACT

The article elaborates on how young UK-born self-identifying Somalis use performance to create ‘liminal’ spaces that allow them to explore and express the often contradictory registers of self and belonging through play and the carnivalesque. The plays they write, practise and perform transform community places into ‘safe spaces’ that open and invite dialogue on the intergenerational conflicts they experience around identity and expected behaviour. Far from being fictions, in making visible the liminality in the daily lives, these young people communicate ‘the reality behind the role playing mask’ [Turner, Victor. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre – The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ, 155]. This research is based on 6 months ethnographic research with the Mustaqbal youth group based in London. It contributes to rethinking ‘safe space’ by illuminating how young people use the ‘stage’ to express elements of their lives they are otherwise unable to voice.     

Creativity,geopolitics and ontological security: satire on Russia and the war in Ukraine

ABSTRACT

Some states create geographical imaginaries that envision the homeland as coherent and good, and the spaces of Others as disordered, dangerous and therefore legitimate objects of violence. Such ‘violent cartographies’ serve not only to justify policy actions, but constitute bordering practices aiming to provide stability, integrity and continuity to the Self, sometimes referred to as ‘ontological security’. This article examines the role of creativity and artistic imagination in challenging dominant geopolitical narratives. It examines satire on the Russian-language internet, which played upon the Russian state’s geopolitical narrative about the war in Ukraine 2014–15. Three themes within this dominant narrative – (1) the imperialist idea of Russia as a modernising force, (2) the gendering of Ukraine as feminine and Europe as homosexual and (3) the idea that the current war was a re-enactment of Russia’s historical battle against fascism – all became the object of fun-making in satire. I argue that satire, by appropriating, repeating but slightly displacing official rhetoric in ways that make it appear ridiculous, may destabilise dominant narratives of ontological security and challenge their strive towards closure. Satire may expose the silences of dominant narratives and undermine the essentialism and binarism upon which they rely, opening up for estrangement and disidentification.     

A Review of “Inventing the Job of President: Leadership Style from George Washington to Andrew Jackson”

Howell, William G. Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003. Pp. xx, 239. $45.00 hardbound, $19.95 softbound.

Lewis, David E. Presidents and the Politics of Agency Design. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003. Pp. xiii, 224. $45.00 hardbound.

Rudalevige, Andrew. Managing the President's Program: Presidential Leadership and Legislative Policy Formulation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. Pp. xiii, 274. $60.00 hardbound, $18.95 softbound.     

The “historical question” at the end of the Scottish Enlightenment: Dugald Stewart on the natural origin of religion,universal consent,and religious diversity

ABSTRACT

This study examines the leading early nineteenth-century Scottish moral philosopher Dugald Stewart’s discussion of the origin and development of religion. Stewart developed his account in his final work, The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man (1828), in an effort to show that the fact that polytheism was the first religion of humankind does not undermine the truth of monotheism. He wrote in response to similar discussions presented in David Hume’s “Natural History of Religion” (1757), which argued for the primacy of polytheism, and Stewart’s old moral philosophy tutor Adam Ferguson’s Principles of Moral and Political Science (1792), which argued for the primacy of monotheism. Stewart accepted the conclusions of the Scots’ enlightened study of religion, which argued for truth of Hume’s account, but aimed to reassert many of the natural theological arguments about the naturalness of religion that the “Natural History” had challenged. Stewart’s discussion acts as a useful way by which we can assess the achievement of the literati’s study of religion.     

Hans Kohn: the idea of secularized nationalism

More than seventy years after its publication, Hans Kohn's 1944 The Idea of Nationalism is still regarded as a ground‐breaking contribution to the study of nationalism. This essay is aimed to highlight a significant theme in this work which has largely gone unnoticed, namely, the pivotal role of religion and secularism in Kohn's account of nationalism, and especially, in his persistent struggle for a ‘perfect’ nationalism. Kohn's conception – and personal experience – of the relationship of nationalism and religion will be examined through several stages of his turbulent life. First, as a young Zionist in Prague, when he parlayed Martin Buber's Zionist creed into an ethnic concept of nationalism. Then, in Kohn's journalistic writing in the 1920s and in his first theoretical works on nationalism in the years 1929–1942. Finally, Kohn's more mature and crystallized account of nationalism in his 1944 book will be revisited from the perspective of the nationalism–religion relationship.     

Western leveraged pedagogy of Central and Eastern Europe: discourses of homophobia,tolerance, and nationhood

This article focuses on the relations between the two geo-temporal categories – Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and West/Europe – in discussions about sexual politics, homophobia, tolerance, and nationhood. It contributes to the existing literature about homonationalism and sexual nationalisms by introducing CEE to the debate's geographical loci, so far mostly invested in West/Europe and its relations to Islam. It argues that it is important to consider CEE in sexual nationalism debates because of its framing as the European (homophobic) Other in the emerging discourses of ‘homoinclusive Europe’. This article introduces the concept of leveragedpedagogy, which captures the specificity of the West/Europe – CEE discourses of sexual liberation, advancement, and backwardness. Leveraged pedagogy is a hegemonic didactical relation where the CEE figures as an object of the West/European ‘pedagogy’, and is framed as permanently ‘post-communist’, ‘in transition’ (i.e. not liberal, not yet, not enough), and homophobic. Such ‘taking care of’ CEE, it is argued, is a form of cultural hegemony of the Western EUropean liberal model of rights as the universal.     

Young people’s everyday landscapes of security and insecurity

Abstract

Debates about ‘security’ rarely feature children or younger people, whilst research with children and young people seldom focuses upon issues traditionally found within security studies. Building upon long-standing debates about political geographies of youth and political participation as well as feminist geopolitics and emerging discussions about children’s and young people’s geopolitics, we chart young people’s everyday landscapes of security and insecurity. Key themes explored here include: secure pasts and insecure futures; ontological security and insecure selves; online security and digital insecurities; home(land) securities and insecure households and families; and global securities and insecure worlds.     

Walks on the dark side: “Sick societies,” Interpersonal violence,and anthropology's love affair with the folk society

Edgerton, Robert B., Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Societies. New York: The Free Press, 1992. vii + 278 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $24.95 cloth.

Scheper‐Hughes, Nancy, Death Without Weeping: The Violence of Everyday Life in Brazil. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. xiii + 614 pp. including notes, glossary, bibliography, and index. $35.00 cloth, $15.00 paper.

Linger, Daniel Touro, Dangerous Encounters: Meanings of Violence in a Brazilian City. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. x + 289 pp. including appendices, glossary, bibliography, and index. $42.50 cloth.     

Editorial Introduction 35(4)

O'Brien, Jay and William Roseberry, eds. Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. x + 288 pp. including references and index. $35.00 cloth.

Gallant, Thomas W. Risk and Survival in Ancient Greece: Reconstructing the Rural Domestic Economy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991. xvi + 267 pp. including notes, bibliography, and index. $39.50 cloth.

Abrahams, Ray. A Place of Their Own: Family Farming in Eastern Finland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xi + 205 pp. including photographs, charts, bibliography, and index. $59.95 cloth.     

Editorial Introduction 40(3): States,Rituals, Diseases

Bailey, F. G. The Prevalence of Deceit. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. xxii + 143pp. including references and index. $24.95 cloth, $7.95 paper.

Manganaro, Marc, ed. Modernist Anthropology: from Fieldwork to Text. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. xii + 337 pp. including bibliography and index. $45.00 cloth, $14.95 paper.

Ohnuki‐Tierney, Emiko, ed. Culture Through Time: Anthropological Approaches. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. xi + 330 pp. including references and index. $42.50 cloth, $12.95 paper.     

A ‘sense of failure’? Everydayness and research ethics

A key legacy of much recent theorising in Anglo-American Human Geography has been the realisation that the ‘excess’ and ‘messiness’ of (too-easily and too-often overlooked) everyday events, geographies and experiences ought to have far-reaching conceptual and methodological implications. The aim of this paper is to elaborate some (as yet relatively implicit) ethical dimensions of this challenge, via a consideration of one particular notion and domain of ethics (research ethics in Human Geography) and, then, via one specific case study (re-presenting moments from my experiences of – and small ‘failures’ in – conducting qualitative research with children, as an adult male, in the UK, in 2000–2002).     

Contrasting approaches to ethnohistory in Africa: Vansina,Dillon, Ferguson

Vansina, Jan. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. xx + 428 pp. including appendix, notes/references, and index. $45.00 cloth, $17.50 paper.

Dillon, Richard D. Ranking and Resistance: A Precolonial Cameroonian Polity in Regional Perspective. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990. xiii + 310 pp. including appendix, references, and index. $39.50 cloth.

Ferguson, James. The Anti‐politics Machine: “Development,” Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. xvi + 320 pp. including notes, references, and index. $49.50 cloth.     

Reinterpreting the economic and social history of Spanish South America

Haciendas and ‘Ayllus’: Rural Society in the Bolivian Andes in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. By Herbert S. Klein. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. Pp. xvi, 230.

Colombia before Independence: Economy, Society and Politics under Bourbon Rule. By Anthony McFarlane. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. xiv, 399.

Encomienda y encomenderos en el Perú. Estudio social y político de una institución colonial. By Jose De La Puente Brunke. Seville: Excma. Diputación Provincial, 1992. Pp. 536.

Deudas olvidadas. Instrumentos de crédito en la economía colonial peruana 1750–1820. By Alfonso W. Quiroz. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 1993. Pp. 233.

Coercion and Market: Silver Mining in Colonial Potosí, 1692–1826. By Enrique Tandeter. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993. Pp. xiv, 332.     

Things Japanese: Something old,something new

Bernstein, Gail Lee. Haruko's World: A Japanese Farm Woman and Her Community. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983. xvii + 199 pp. including maps, photographs. $15.00 cloth.

Lebra, Takie Sugiyama. Japanese Women: Constraint and Fulfillment. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984. xi + 315 pp. including notes, references, glossary, index. $18.95 cloth.

Smith, Robert J. Japanese Society: Tradition, Self and the Social Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. xii + 176 pp. including notes, bibliography, author ₍and subject indices. $19.95 cloth.

Smith, Robert J., and Ella Lury Wiswell. The Women of Suye Mura. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. xxxvii + 293 pp. including maps, photographs, glossary, index. $7.50 paper.