Qomolangmo:A World Full of Life

Whoever hasnot set footto theQomolang-mo tends to think it is aworld ot sterile whitenessdevoid of any life.My tripthere in May last year, how-ever, showed it to be aworld full of life.     

A Report on the British Premiere of Death of Yazdgerd: A Cross-cultural Adaptation?

In the spring semester of 2010, the students of the module “Non Western Performances” at Loughborough University were directed by Sudipto Chatterjee to stage the UK premiere of Bahram Beyzaie's canonical play, Death of Yazdgerd (1979). The play, which was initially supposed to be a student-led workshop as part of the module's practice, took a life of its own and turned into a full-blown production. The production consisted of all the registered students of the module who formed the cast and the crew, the main tutor and director Sudipto Chatterjee, the co-tutor and dramaturge Proshot Kalam) and the two technical tutors (Dave Hill and Mark Simpson). The present essay is an attempt to analyze the cross-cultural aspects and the practical approaches undertaken by the crew for the production of the play.     

Derrida’s Paralogism of Writing: A Critique of Deconstructive Reasoning

This article is a critique of the flawed logic Derrida employed in articulating his program of a Grammatology for “deconstructing” Western philosophy. I argue that Derrida in several instances built his arguments around what Kant called the “paralogism.” I look at an often cited case in order to substantiate my claim: Derrida’s reading of Saussure, where his argument is based on a paralogism. Derrida misinterprets Saussure by seeing his alleged rejection of graphical writing as a rejection of his own idiosyncratic notion of “writing” (alias différance, trace, generalized writing, etc.), which only corresponds to Saussure’s own notion of “linguistic value,” produced in a system of differences without positive terms.     

Approximating the Face of ‘Aunty’: A Question of Likeness

This paper describes two approaches to the facial approximation of three individuals from the Wairau Bar burial site (New Zealand). Two individuals were approximated working in direct reference to the remains and incorporated manual drafting. The third individual, ‘Aunty’ (the respectful title given by the iwi Rangitane elders) was approximated from CT scans and using computer graphics. The computer graphic approach enabled a greater level of precision in the application of the research and recommendations that inform a facial approximation, and facilitated collaboration with appropriate expertise. The computer-graphic approach, however, also resulted in a more photographic facial appearance, which can imply a greater level of knowledge about hard/soft tissue relationships than is currently available.     

Human Rights: A New Standard of Civilization?

This is an edited text of the fifth John Vincent Memorial Lecture delivered at the University of Keele on 9 May 1997 in which Jack Donnelly attacks the still common scepticism about international human rights - although from an unorthodox angle.     

Trepanations from Oman: A case of diffusion?

Trepanations have been described from various locations around the world leading to a suggestion that this is a cultural practice that has widely diffused from one or two centres ( 1 ). In the UAE the earliest trepanations date to the Neolithic, significantly earlier than trepanations in surrounding areas. The discovery of at least two crania in Oman, dating apparently to the early third millennium and resembling in technique and placement trepanations from north India may be evidence of the diffusion of a therapeutic practice from the Gulf to the subcontinent. However, the lack of any trepanation among the numerous contemporary skeletons from Bahrain suggests that any diffusion has distinct limits and that, as anthropological work from the South Pacific ( 2 ) indicates, practices like trepanation are often heavily embedded in broader, culturally located explanatory models.     

Nyang River Valley: A Land of Arrow Songs

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‘Reassessments of Winston Churchill’: A Reply

LINDA GRANT DE PAUW. Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Pp. xvii, 395. $24.95 (US). Reviewed by Frances Early

JEFFREY D. LERNER. The Impact of Seleucid Decline on the Eastern Iranian Plateau: The Foundations of Arsacid Parthia and Graeco-Bactria. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999. Pp. 139. DM 68.00. Reviewed by Richard Fowle

GOCHA R. TSETSKHLADZE, ed. The Greek Colonisation of the Black Sea Area: Historical Interpretation of Archaeology. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998. Pp. 336. DM 148.00. Reviewed by Vanessa B. Gorman

DANIEL POWER and NAOMI STANDEN, eds. Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700–1700. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xxiv, 293. $59.95 (US). Reviewed by Peter C. Perdue

JAMES MULDOON. Empire and Order: The Concept of Empire, 800–1800. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. viii, 209. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by John M. Headley

J. H. ELLIOTT and L. W. B. BROCKLISS, eds. The World of the Favourite. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999. Pp. xv,320. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by John C. Rule

PHILIP BENEDICT, GUIDO MARNEF, HENK VAN NIEROP, and MARC VENARD, eds. Reformation, Revolt, and Civil War in France and the Netherlands, 1555–1585. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999. Pp. vii, 298. NLG 95.00, paper. Reviewed by Mark Konnert

MICHAEL LEROY OBERG. Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native America, 1585–1685. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. x, 239. $42.50 (US). Reviewed by Ian K. Steele

HERBERT S. KLEIN. The Atlantic Slave Trade. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xxi, 234. $49.95 (US), cloth; $15.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by John Thornton

AGNES LATHAM and JOYCE YOUINGS, eds. The Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999. Pp. bdii, 403. £45.00. Reviewed by Harry Kelsey

COLIN KIDD. British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. viii, 302. $59.95 (US). Reviewed by Arthur Williamson

VICTOR TREADWELL. Buckingham and Ireland, 1616–1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998; dist. Portland: ISBS. Pp. 443. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Mark A. Kishlansky

DEREK CROXTON. Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe: Cardinal Mazarin and the Congress of Westphalia, 1643–1648. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1999. Pp. 397. $52.50 (US). Reviewed by Paul M. Sonnino

STUART BANNER. Anglo-American Securities Regulation: Cultural and Political Roots, 1690–1860. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xviii, 318. $69.95 (US). Reviewed by John A. James

EDMOND DZIEMBOWSKI. Un nouveau patriotisme français, 1750–1770: La France face à la puissance anglaise à l'époque de la guerre de Sept Ans. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999. Pp. vii, 566. £75.00. Reviewed by Lucien Bély

MAX M. MINTZ. Seeds of Empire: The American Revolutionary Conquest of the Iroquois. New York: New York University Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 232. $28.95 (US). Reviewed by Colin G. Calloway

ALEX CALDER, JONATHAN LAMB, and BRIDGET ORR, eds. Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769–1840. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. Pp. viii, 344. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by I. C. Campbell

JERZY LUKOWSKI. The Partitions of Poland, 1772, 1793, 1795. London and New York: Longman, 1999. Pp. xv, 232. £42.00, cloth; £13.99, paper. Reviewed by Robert E.Jones

NORMAN HAMPSON. The Perfidy of Albion: French Perceptions of England during the French Revolution. New York: St Martin's Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 181. $59.95 (US). Reviewed by Michael Duffy

KEN POST. Revolution and the European Experience, 1789–1914. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 227. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Peter N. Stearns

FREDERICK W. KAGAN. The Military Reforms of Nicholas I: The Origins of the Modern Russian Army. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 337. $49.95 (US). Reviewed by Marc Raeff

T. R. MOREMAN. The Army in India and the Development of Frontier Warfare, 1849–1947. New York: St Martin's Press, 1998. Pp. xxiii, 258. $72.00 (US) Reviewed by David Omissi

JOSE C. MOYA. Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Pp. xviii, 567. $25.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Monica Quijada

STEFAN LIPPERT. Felix Fiirst m Schwarzenberg: Eine politische Biographic. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998. Pp. 445. DM 168.00. Reviewed by Lawrence Sondhaus

STEPHEN M. HARRIS. British Military Intelligence in the Crimean War, 1854–1856. London and Portland: Frank Cass, 1999. Pp. xxiv, 182. $52.50 (US). Reviewed by Ann Pottinger Saab

KOJI KAWASHIMA. Missionaries and a Hindu State: Travancore, 1858–1936. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. x, 252. $43.50 (CDN). Reviewed by Penelope Carson

DAVID ALAN RICH. The Tsar's Colonels: Professionalism, Strategy, and Subversion in Late Imperial Russia. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp. xiv, 293. $49.95 (US). Reviewed by W. Bruce Lincoln

GREG MARQUIS. In Armageddon's Shadow: The Civil War and Canada's Maritime Provinces. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998. Pp. xx, 389. $34.95 (CDN). Reviewed by Eric W. Sager

IRVING STONE. The Global Export of Capital from Great Britain, 1865–1914: A Statistical Survey. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 430. $75.00 (US). Reviewed by C. H. Feinstein

GEORGE VON RAUCH. Conflict in the Southern Cone: The Argentine Military and the Boundary Dispute with Chile, 1870–1902. Westport: Praeger, 1999. Pp. xii, 229. $69.50 (US). Reviewed by David Rock

CLAUDIA LINDA REESE. Neuseeland und Deutschland: Handelsabkommen, Aufienhandelspolitik und Handel von 1871 bis 1973. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998. Pp. xxv, 378. DM 148.00, paper. Reviewed by John A. Moses

GERALD FRIEDMAN. State-Making and Labor Movements: France and the United States, 1876–1914. Idiaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 317. $55.00 (US). Reviewed by Samuel Cohn

ANDREAS ECKERT. Grundhesitz, Landkonflikte und kolonialer Wandeh Douala 1880 bis 1960. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999. Pp. x, 503. DM 144.00, paper. Reviewed by Dierk Walter

WOLFRAM HARTMANN, JEREMY SILVESTER, and PATRICIA HAYES, eds. The Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian History. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999. Pp. vii, 220. $29.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Subhash Jaireth

JULIE F. CODELL and DIANNE SACHKO MACLEOD, eds. Orientalism Transposed: The Impact of the Colonies on British Culture. Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998. Pp. xiii, 249. $84.95 (US). Reviewed by John M. MacKenzie

ANGEL SMITH and EMMA DÁVILA-COX, eds. The Crisis of l898: Colonial Redistribution and Nationalist Mobilization. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. ix, 221. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Jules R. Benjamin

STEPHEN M. MILLER. Lord Methuen and the British Army: Failure and Redemption in South Africa. London and Pordand: Frank Cass, 1999. Pp. 279. $57.50 (US), cloth; $26.50 (US), paper. Reviewed by Ian F. W. Beckett

DAVID A. LAKE. Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy in Its Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 332. $60.00 (US). Reviewed by Alfred E. Eckes

JONATHAN SCHNEER. London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999. Pp. ix,336. $29.95(US). Reviewed by Peter Cain

DARSHAN SINGH TATLA. The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 327. $22.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Hugh Johnston

CHRISTOPH JAHR. Gewöhnliche Soldaten: Desertion und Deserteure im deutschen und britischen Heer, 1914–1918. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &; Ruprecht, 1998. Pp. 419. DM 78.00. Reviewed by Jay Winter

JAN HEITMANN. Unter Wasser in die Neue Welt: Handelsunterseeboote und kaiserliche Unterseekreuzer im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Kriegführung. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1999. Pp. 365. DM 78.00, paper. Reviewed by Holger H. Herwig

ALEXANDRU CRETZIANU. Relapse into Bondage: Political Memoirs of a Romanian Diplomat, 1918–1947, ed. Sherman David Spector. Ia?i: Center for Romanian Studies, 1998; dist. Portland: ISBS. Pp. 351. $50.00 (US). Reviewed by Dov B. Lungu

INBAL ROSE. Conservatism, and Foreign Policy during the Lloyd George Coalition, 1918–1922. London and Portland: Frank Cass, 1999. Pp. xxix, 289. $54.50 (US). Reviewed by Alan Sharp

PATRICK PASTURE and JOHAN VERBERCKMOES, eds. Working-Class Internationalism and the Appeal of National Identity: Historical Debates and Current Perspectives. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998. Pp. vii, 263. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Carl Strikwerda

JOHN E. MOSER. Twisting the Lion's Tail: American Anglophobia between the World Wars. New York: New York University Press, 1999. Pp. x, 263. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by John A. Thompson

DAVID F. SCHMITZ. Thank God They're on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921–1965. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 383. $18.95 (US)> paper. Reviewed by Anders Stephanson

MALCOLM ANDERSON and EBERHARD BORT, eds. The Irish Border: History, Politics, Culture. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999; dist. Portland: ISBS. Pp. 286. $21.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by S. J. Connolly

AZAR GAT. Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, LiddeU Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists. New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. viii, 334. $130.50 (CDN); BRIAN HOLDEN REID. Studies in British Military Thought: Debates with Fuller and LiddeU Hart. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Pp. xviii, 287. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by Robert H. Larson

ALEX DANCHEV. Alchemist of War: The Life of Basil Liddell Hart. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998. Pp. xiv, 369. £25.00. Reviewed by John P. Campbell

HORST BOOG, JÜRGEN FÖRSTER, JOACHIM HOFFMANN, ERNST KLINK, ROLF-DlETER MÜLLER, and GERD R. UEBERSCHÄR. Germany and the Second World War: IV: The Attack on the Soviet Union, trans. Dean S. McMurray, Ewald Osers, and Louise Wilmott. New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xxxi, 1,364. $362.50 (CDN). Accompanied by a booklet of maps: Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983. Reviewed by Lawrence D. Stokes

NATALIIA S. LEBEDEVA and M. M. NARINSKII, eds. Komintern i vtoraia mirovaia voina: I: 1939–1941. Moscow: Pamiatnikii Istoricheskoi Myslii (PIM), 1994. Pp. 554; II: Posh 22 Iuniia 1941. Moscow: PIM, 1998. Pp. 595. No Price Available. Reviewed by Anna M. Cienciala

PENNY SUMMERFIELD. Reconstructing Women's Wartime Lives: Discourse and Subjectivity in Oral Histories of the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998; dist. New York: St Martin's Press. Pp. xiii, 338. $29.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Nicoletta F. Gullace

DAVID B. WOOLNER, ed. The Second Quebec Conference Revisited: Waging War, Formulating Peace: Canada, Great Britain, and the United States in 1944–1945. New York: St Martin's Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 210. $49.95 (US). Reviewed by Geoffrey Hayes

NICHOLAS TARLING. Britain, Southeast Asia, and the Onset of the Cold War, 1945–1950. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. x, 488. $64.95 (US). Reviewed by Matthew Jones

ZACHARY KARABELL. Architects of Intervention: The United States, the Third World, and the Cold War, 1946–1962. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Pp. 248. $37.50 (US), cloth; $16.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by David S. Painter

IAN MCGIBBON, ed. Unofficial Channels: Letters between Alister Mclntosh and Foss Shanahan, George Laking, and Frank Corner, 1946–1966. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1999. Pp. 360. $39.95 (NZ), paper. Reviewed by Michael Bassett

SELIG S. HARRISON, PAUL H. KREISBERG, and DENNIS KUX, eds. India and Pakistan: The First Fifty Years. Washington and New York: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 216. $49.95 (US), cloth; $16.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Anita Inder Singh

NOEL E. FIRTH and JAMES H. NOREN. Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950–1990. College Station: Texas A &; M University Press, 1998. Pp. xix, 291. $49.95 (US). Reviewed by John P. Hardt

BERT EDSTRÖM. Japan's Evolving Foreign Policy Doctrine: From Yoshida to Miyazawa. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. x, 216. $72.00 (US). Reviewed by Christopher W. Hughes

NICK CULLATHER. Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Pp. xl, 142. $39.50 (US), cloth; $14.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by STEPHEN G. RABE

MOTTI GOLANI. Israel in Search of a War: The Sinai Campaign, 1955–1956. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1998. Pp. x, 236. $69.95 (US). Reviewed by Howard J. Dooley

CAMPBELL CRAIG. Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Pp. xiv, 216. $22.50 (US), paper. Reviewed by John Prados

CHRISTIAN BREMEN. Die Eisenhower-Administration und die zweite Berlin-Krise, 1958–1961. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998. Pp. xi, 625. DM 298.00. Reviewed by Wolfgang Krieger

ELIZABETH COBBS HOFFMAN. All You Need is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp. viii, 306. $27.95 (US). Reviewed by Jonathan S. Russ

KEN ENDO. The Presidency of the European Commission under Jacques Delors: The Politics of Shared Leadership. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xx, 260. $69.95 (US). Reviewed by G. W. Jones

WILLIAM E. ODOM. The Collapse of the Soviet Military. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 523. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by Lawrence Freedman

CHRISTOPHER C. JOYNER. Governing the Frozen Commons: The Antarctic Regime and Environmental Protection. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998; dist. Toronto: Scholarly Book Services. Pp. xvii, 363. $41.25 (CDN), paper. Reviewed by Maarten J. de Wit

JOHN BUCKLEY. Air Power in the Age of Total War. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999. Pp. ix, 260. $19.95 (US). Reviewed by Michael Sherry     

European Regional Studies: A Coming of Age?

This article reviews current developments in European regional studies. A brief history of settlement archaeology as practiced in Europe is followed by a discussion of new approaches to regional analysis and surface survey. I argue that recent, steady investments in the technology, methods, and theory of regional archaeological analysis and surface survey have stimulated advances in the study of settlement patterns and settlement pattern change through time in many parts of Europe. When innovative technologies (e.g., remote sensing, GPS, GIS), methods (e.g., geoarchaeology, “siteless” survey), and new theoretical frameworks (both processual and postprocessual) have been combined, breakthroughs in our understanding of European settlement have resulted. In the last half of the article, I describe some of these breakthroughs in a broad discussion of European settlement history, beginning with the earliest prehistory of Europe through the Middle Ages. Shifts in perspective are particularly apparent for phases of transition: from the Middle to Upper Paleolithic, Paleolithic to Mesolithic to Neolithic, and with the rise and expansion of states.     

The Samoan Farmer: A Reluctant Object of Change?

Stagnation and a failure to break out of a subsistence-oriented type of production continue to characterize the agricultural sector in Western Samoa. The lack of dynamism in agriculture has variously been ascribed to subsistence affluence and limited wants, the inhibiting impact of fa'asamoa – the Samoan way of life – and, more recently, to the effects of migration, remittances, aid and bureaucracy on economic development. This article suggests that the explanatory power of these factors by themselves is unsatisfactory. Instead, it argues that an absence of secure market outlets offering predictable and sufficiently attractive prices to farmers and the lack of rural-urban links in general are at the heart of the problem. The economy seems to be caught in a vicious circle where farmers fail to commit themselves to production for the market because of a lack of secure outlets, while adequate downstream distribution and processing channels do not develop for lack of secure supplies. The interchangeable nature of commercial and subsistence production in agriculture, widespread access to overseas remittances, and the smallness of the domestic economy serve to perpetuate the deadlock.     

Kamba:A Show of Garments,Hats and Boots

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Kurangara in Queensland?: A Critique of Duncan-Kemp's Account

A particular historical travelling religious complex in northern Western Australia, usually known as Kurangara, has been the subject of anthropological attention since the late 1930s. Overlooked in all the literature is a similar account assigned to 1912–1918, in the distant Channel Country of southwest Queensland. This is in Alice Duncan-Kemp's last book, published in 1968. My examination shows that a good deal of Duncan-Kemp's account repeated parts of a 1954 popular magazine about Kurangara in the Pilbara. In other respects Duncan-Kemp may have drawn on her own childhood experiences, but in the absence of corroboration her account has to be considered unreliable.     

The Arab Spring: A Fourth Wave of Democratization?

Between 1974 and 1990, over 30 countries in southern Europe, Latin America, some parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, and Africa made transitions to democracy, nearly doubling the number of democratic governments in the world. Samuel Huntington described this global shift as “Democracy's Third Wave” in an article published in 1991, which was later developed in a book titled The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century. In these two works, he discusses the causes, features, and transition processes of the third wave of democracy and examines its prospects for sustainability and possible expansion in a nondemocratic world. He argues that the first and second democratic waves “were followed not merely by some backsliding but major reverse waves during which most regime changes throughout the world were from democracy to authoritarianism” (Huntington, 1991a). He also addresses the causative factors of this reverse wave in some countries, and he claims that the third wave of democratization that swept the world in the 1970s and 1980s might become a dominant feature of Middle Eastern and North African politics in the 1990s. The delay in this prophecy for two decades motivates us to question whether the Arab Spring is part of Huntington's third wave of democratization or a new fourth wave of democratization, or even a false start to democracy, as described by Larry Diamond ( 2011 ). The purpose of this article is to examine the causes, features, and transition processes of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen in correlation with Huntington's theorization on the third wave of democratization which, along with other available literature in the field, will be combined in a theoretical framework that will enable us to discuss the abovementioned elements of the Arab Spring through the lens of the third wave of democratization. Special attention is paid to the question of whether the Arab Spring falls into the framework of Huntington's theory, or whether it can be classified as a new fourth wave of democratization in countries that have unfavorable environments for democracy. The first part of this article highlights the causative factors that eased the emergence of the third wave of democratization in different parts of the world. The second part provides a historical overview of the major events of the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, while the third and fourth parts analyze the causes, features, and transition processes of the Arab Spring from Huntington's third wave perspective.