Machiavelli against Method: Paul Feyerabend's Anti-Rationalism and Machiavellian Political ‘Science’

Contemporary scholars seeking to advance the study of political phenomena identify their inquiry as a ‘science' that attains success through rigorous method. Thus the ‘methodological anarchism' of Paul Feyerabend's philosophy of science might seem an inauspicious place to find a fruitful disciplinary vision. Nonetheless, it echoes a longstanding conception of the ‘science' of politics articulated by Niccolò Machiavelli. Looking to Feyerabend, we propose to surmount the impasse between Machiavelli's account of politics and the demands of modern science and recover his contribution to the scientific study of politics. In doing so, Machiavelli illustrates the potential of a Feyerabendian political science.     

Theorising other, ‘other childhoods’: Issues emerging from work on HIV in urban and rural Zimbabwe

This paper agrees that universal models of childhood must be unpacked in order to reveal the diversity of ‘other childhoods’ in the global south, but argues that local, culturally specific understandings of childhood also need to be theorised and deconstructed. We attempt to do this by exploring experiences that are ‘other’ to ‘other childhoods’ and so examine the ‘un-childlike’ issues of young peoples' sexual health and child household headship in Zimbabwe. We contend that a century of contestation around the social production of identities in and through space has produced local contemporary understandings of childhood that seriously endanger youngsters in an era of HIV/AIDS. We argue both that other dimensions of ‘other childhoods’ must be recognised locally and that local understandings of childhood require greater international recognition if the pandemic is to be tackled. Finally, our exploration of these ‘margins’ of human experience lead us to believe that children must be understood both as competent and independent agents of social change and as vulnerable social becomings in need of protection.     

1948 and All That: A New Chronology for the History of Palestine?

DEREK J. PENSLAR. The Engineering of Jewish Settlement in Palestine, 1870–1918. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. Pp. xiv, 210. $25.00 (us).

JACOB BARNAI. The Jews in Palestine in the Eighteenth Century: Under the Patronage of the Istanbul Committee of Officials for Palestine, trans. Naomi Goldblum. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1992. Pp. xi, 305. $39.95 (us).

BARUCH KIMMERLING and JOEL S. MIGDAL. Palestinians: The Making of a People. New York: Free Press (Macmillan), 1993. Pp. xix, 396. $29.95 (us).

MAYIR VERETÉ. From Palmerston to Balfour: Collected Essays of Mayir Vereté, ed. Norman Rose. London: Frank Cass, 1992. Pp. xiv, 233. £28.00.

ISSA KHALAF. Politics in Palestine: Arab Factionalism and Social Disintegration, 1939–1948. Albany: State University Press of New York, 1991. Pp. xix, 318. $19.95 (us).

ANITA SHAPIRA. Land and Power: The Zionist Resort to Force, 1881–1948, trans. William Templer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Pp. x, 446. $59.00 (CDN).     

“Art is a Sincere Martyrdom”: Circumventing Censorship by Encryption in the Work of Alireza Espahbod

This paper focuses on various aspects of Alireza Espahbod’s style of painting that encrypt his work. The period considered is from the just after the Iranian revolution until the artist’s death in 2007: in these years censorship had become severe, resulting in banning prohibition on his work being exhibited. Apart from the striking symbols that recur throughout his work, it is noticeable that he favors certain visual metaphors for encryption of humanitarian and satirical meanings. The discussion also focuses on the ways in which sequences of his individual paintings create narratives, like scenes in a play or a film. Unlike some preceding modernists, Espahbod is firmly rooted in his Iranian cultural milieu, and is in a line of artists who have used surrealism, beginning with Sadegh Hedayat in the modern literary world. He also follows a much older tradition that goes back to classical poetry and miniature art, in which image and word coalesce and are interchangeable, and where literature and visual art reflect one another. He uses these older techniques to comment allusively on the dramatic events and conditions of his own time. It is argued that his work amounts to more than that of an artist who merely fought against censorship, as his art rises above it and responds to it with a positive message for his audience.     

Comments on: Rock Art Preservation: Improved and Ecology‐based Methods can give Weathered Sites Prolonged Life

Colin Renfrew: Archaeology and Language. The Puzzle of Indo‐European Origins. Jonathan Cape, London, 1987.

J. P. Mallory: In Search of the Indo‐Europeans. Language, Archaeology and Myth. Thames and Hudson, London, 1989.

T. L. Markey and John A. C. Greppin: When Worlds Collide. Indo‐Europeans and Pre‐Indo‐Europeans. Karoma, Ann Arbor, 1990.     

Feminism and its ‘other’: representing the ‘new woman’ of Bangladesh

This essay examines women's oppression and organizing against gender violence in contemporary Bangladesh through the lens of television. I argue that the telefilm Ayna (The Mirror, 2006), written and directed by popular film actor and women's rights activist Kabari Sarwar, offers a window into the changing social and economic landscape of contemporary Bangladesh and the complex negotiations of power and inequality across gender, class and community. Furthermore, it offers an opportunity to unpack the social messages underlying development and modernization initiatives, the new kinds of alliances as well as dependencies engendered by them, and their multiple and uneven consequences. An investigation of the representations of competing and contradictory notions of women's subjectivity and agency in this telefilm allows us to understand how these intersect with shifting notions of local/global patriarchies, feminist solidarity and women's empowerment in Bangladesh today. Further, this essay illuminates the disjunctures between representations of the ‘new woman’ circulated through development and certain feminist advocacy narratives with women's lived realities of oppression, and survival.     

Mother Scorpion: Women’s Politics and Affinal Relations among the Miskitu and other “Brideservice Societies”

This article is concerned with modelling the logic of social processes and cultural representations that inform “politics and gender in simple societies” (Collier and Rosaldo 1981 Collier, J. F. and Rosaldo, M. Z. 1981. “Politics and Gender in Simple Societies”. In Sexual Meanings, Edited by: Ortner, S. and Whitehead, H. New York: Cambridge University Press.  [Google Scholar]), and considers the well‐known ideal type presented by Collier and Rosaldo in which particular gendered practices and ideas are organized around a style of marriage commonly termed “brideservice”. These authors’ modelling of the cultural logic of so‐called “brideservice societies” provides in many ways a satisfyingly coherent analysis of this institution that offers considerable predictive power, but it remains in some respects a partial account neglecting important aspects of older women’s political motivations and representations and the role of these women in the context of corporate groups. I consider here ethnographic materials from the Miskitu of eastern Nicaragua, amongst whom brideservice is widely practiced, to highlight some limitations with Collier and Rosaldo’s ideal type, arguing that their model should be modified to accommodate these limitations.