The Role of Azerbaijani Turkish in Safavid Iran

Turkic languages and dialects played a much more important role in Safavid Iran than is generally thought, while Azerbaijani Turkish in particular was widely spoken and written in Safavid Iran. It was not only the language of the court and the army, but it was also used in poetry, even by renowned poets who usually wrote in Persian. The Safavid shahs, many of whom wrote poetry in Turkish themselves, promoted its literary use. Also, Turkish was used in the court's official correspondence, for both internal and external affairs.     

The new water architecture in southern Africa: reflections on current trends in the light of 'Rio+10'

UN Secretary–General Kofi Annan has identified water and sanitation as a principle area of focus for the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). It is fitting that this meeting is being held in Johannesburg, as water resources management issues are of primary importance to the southern African region. There is a new water architecture being developed in the region, one that hopes to correct abiding structural inequalities of access between and among states, communities and peoples. Part of this new water architecture includes an enhanced role for the private sector and 'the market' in the provision and management of this crucial resource. This is a role that many feel will exacerbate rather than alleviate historically derived problems of underdevelopment. It is a role, therefore, that may undermine many of the positive developments that have taken place in the region over time. If regional leaders are interested in sustainable and equitable water resources management, they must be prepared openly to debate this issue with all interested parties not only at the WSSD, but also in the region and beyond.     

Robert Frost's ambivalence: Borders and boundaries in poetic and political discourse

Phrases from Robert Frost's well-known poem “Mending Wall” are often used to frame discussions of borders in academic and political discourse. Used by some to justify the construction of physical barriers, others have used excerpts from the poem to fundamentally question the truism it appears to project. In light of recent interest in borders, our paper returns to Frost's full poem and its contexts in order to define, theorize, and critically mobilize what we take to be a useful ambivalence regarding fences. We use Frost's formulations to address the universal difficulty of moving beyond the borders of our daily lives, whether imposed at the edges of the nation-state, inscribed in our social relations, or inferred within the formal dimensions of a poem. Working at the crossroads of political geography, psychoanalytic theory, and literary analysis we argue that addressing the central role of borders in our lives and Frost's deep ambivalence about fences and borders is a useful step in any political and aesthetic movement forward. We cannot be “good neighbors” in other words or even good co-inhabitants until and unless we acknowledge that we are ambivalent not only toward the Other, but also about the very concept of borders and boundaries itself. Ideas presented about ambivalence provide border scholars and political geographers with an opportunity to re-evaluate our positionality and recognize how our own humanity intersects with that of others.     

Recent research in the archaeology of architecture: Beyond the foundations

Although architectural remains have always been a principal focus of archaeological investigation, research on such remains, particularly small-scale structures, has taken on new importance because of the information they can offer on human behavior. This article provides a review of recent trends in the archaeology of architecture (mainly domestic in nature), including current work in household archaeology and spatial patterning analysis of architectural remains, and discusses the new models and methodologies being generated to interpret these remains. The main areas covered in this review include the New World, Mesoamerica in particular, Europe, and general focus on recent work in the Near East.     

Atomic structures: the architecture of nuclear nationalism in India and Pakistan

Abstract

A half-century after their completion, India’s Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology (PINSTECH) stand out as unchallenged architectural advertisements for ‘nuclear nationalism’. Elsewhere, Atoms for Peace reactors made no pretence to architectural refinement. In the right hands, however, ‘Cold War Modern’ could express the hard power of the nuclear age. For India and Pakistan, these nuclear laboratory complexes became the public faces of the peaceful atom that held out the promise, and masked the peril, of the atomic age at home and abroad, and deliberately deflected attention away from clandestine nuclear weapons programmes. BARC and PINSTECH, envisioned as cornerstones for self-confident and self-reliant programmes of nuclear physics, embodied the paradox of postcolonial science, necessarily borrowing from the West but determined to break the cycle of dependency, in defiance of Western expectations.