The past in the middle ages

In spite of the great variety of historical writing in the middle ages it has often been maintained that certain attitudes to the past were held in common between 500 and 1500 A.D. A sort of medieval vision of the past has been conjured up which is alleged to have been providential, if not apocalyptic, universalizing, Christocentric and strongly periodized. Medieval ideas about the past, as expressed in a handful of well-known writers, including Bede, Caffaro, Otto of Freising, Matthew Paris and Ranulph Higden, are considered here particularly with reference to the structure of the past, namely how, if at all, it was thought of as divided into periods, and its content. God's role in human history, it is argued, was neglected in practice; it was not the Christian Church which provided the medieval ‘universal’ historian with his main subject matter, but classical Rome; it was Rome, too, which was his inspiration and supplied his models.     

The present tense of Afghanistan: accounting for space,time and gender in processes of militarisation

Based on ethnographic research among women married to servicemen, this article explores the diffusion of militarisation across time as well as social space. The study setting is a garrison town in Germany during the deployment of women's husbands to Afghanistan. Rather than prioritising the grand narratives of linear time prevalent in IR and military history, however, this article takes into account cyclical and everyday modes of temporality that have traditionally been associated (and undervalued) as feminised ‘zones’, including reproduction, the domestic sphere and local social space. The article explores the temporal register of an operational tour and demonstrates the material, discursive and emotional labour undertaken by military wives in smoothing and converting this rupture into stability through everyday practices. Accounting for the diffusion of militarisation over time as well as space in this way provides further evidence that its causes and effects are intricately gendered.     

The role of the past in late medieval hidalgo historical writing and memory

ABSTRACT

This essay is structured around two themes: the writing of history and memory. On the one hand, it analyses the use of the past in Lope García de Salazar's Libro de las buenas andanças e fortunas (1471–5). His approach to history is imbued with nostalgia for a legendary past, and more specifically for a political arrangement between the Lord of Biscay and the lesser nobility (hidalgos) which ensured respect for their privileges. This is set in contrast to a second group of material, legal documentation relating to the town of Escalante in Cantabria. Historically under seigniorial control, the inhabitants created a collective memory that framed a past prior to the fourteenth century which was free of lords and feudal obligations.     

The futures past of the Women,Peace and Security agenda

The Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has developed at the United Nations over the course of the past 15 years, and there have been critical engagements with it for nearly as long. In this article, we first take stock of the operationalization of the WPS agenda, reviewing its implementation across a number of sectors. In the second section, we expose the tensions that have marked the WPS agenda from the start. With others, we argue that there has been a narrowing of the agenda's original scope, reducing it to the traditional politics of security rather than reimagining what security means. We highlight this reduction primarily through an analysis of the tension between the ‘participation’ and ‘protection’ pillars of the agenda. Further, we argue that the WPS agenda faces a current challenge in terms of the actors entrusted with it. Although in some ways involving civil society, the consolidations and implementation of WPS principles at the national and international levels have become increasingly state‐centric. Third, we imagine some possible futures of the agenda, from a trajectory characterized by increasing marginalization or even irrelevance, to new avenues like the emergent, albeit tentative, ‘Men, Peace and Security’ agenda. We close with an argument for a revival of the WPS agenda beyond a fixation on states, beyond a narrow heteronormative or essentialist focus on the ‘Women’ of the WPS resolutions, and moving towards the radical reimagining of security as peace that inspired the original architects of these important resolutions.     

The United Nations: past and present

The UN is approaching its seventieth birthday in 2015. Kofi Annan, its seventh secretary general, and the only incumbent not to have come from a national government, has written the most honest and insightful memoir of any occupant of the thirty‐eighth floor, Interventions. Despite terrible setbacks in Bosnia and Rwanda, the United Nations remains the most representative and successful international organization in history. As Mark Mazower points out in his Governing the world, an acutely penetrating history of international governance, the successes of the UN are more than the founders of the ill‐fated League of Nations could have dreamt of. Mazower's tour de force combines a history of the intellectual ideas of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and their eventual realization in the League of Nations and the UN. While his conclusions question whether faith in international institutions has been lost, the reality of universal membership of the UN and establishment of an International Criminal Court might suggest otherwise.     

The world-systems perspective and archaeology: Forward into the past

This article reviews previous attempts to extend world-system theory from the modern era to prehistoric and archaeological settings. It summarizes major debates among scholars from several disciplines who are comparing the modern world-system with earlier world-systems. Special attention centers on the problems of conceptualizing world-systems, the spatial bounding of world-systems, and understandings of systemic logics.     

The Byzantine silk industry: Lopez and beyond

The Byzantine silk industry played a major role in the history of the Byzantine Empire. Silk, a key economic asset, had strong political overtones, and the effects of its multiple influences were felt far and wide, both within Byzantium and abroad. This article highlights some of the difficulties encountered in the interpretation of important documentation surrounding the Byzantine silk industry in the period up to 1204 A.D.     

The Byzantine silk industry: Lopez and beyond

The Byzantine silk industry played a major role in the history of the Byzantine Empire. Silk, a key economic asset, had strong political overtones, and the effects of its multiple influences were felt far and wide, both within Byzantium and abroad. This article highlights some of the difficulties encountered in the interpretation of important documentation surrounding the Byzantine silk industry in the period up to 1204 A.D.     

The discourse of the past: phenomenology,structuralism and historical geography

Historical geography has to be predicated on a critical examination of past and present discourses, and this necessarily involves a rejection of positivist epistemology. This was, in more general terms, the basis of Husserl's critique, but two alternatives to this are the constitutive phenomenology of Alfred Schutz and the linguistic structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. Both present major difficulties. Schutz fails to recognize the necessity of a hermeneutic understanding of past societies and cannot account for the genesis and temporality of meaning, while Lévi-Strauss provides for a formalism which is directed towards the structure of the human mind rather than the historically specific structures of particular discourses. The connections and contrasts between these two positions suggest several ways in which the examination of discourse might be constituted in order to contribute to a structural history.