“An alternative discourse”: Local interpreters of antiquities in the Ottoman Empire

Abstract

The premise of Ottoman indifference to “antiquities” was already widely assumed by early modern travelers and archaeologists and continues to inform contemporary discussion of cultural patrimony in post-Ottoman nations. However, it is contradicted by numerous accounts of local interpretations of ancient monuments and local resistance to the efforts of outsiders to remove antiquities. Local interpretations of monuments constituted an alternative discourse that cohered around a set of recurring concerns, while also developing over time. The potential of these local interpretations to expand the discourse of academic archaeology has been obscured by their classification as elements of a timeless folklore, which is understood to speak to the customs and manners of the interpreters, not to the objects of interpretation.     

The Archaeology of El Niño Events and Other “Natural” Disasters

Archaeological research on disasters has increased substantially since Sheets's 1980 review of the topic, and with heightened media coverage and funding for the study of such events, archaeological interest will continue to grow. This paper examines how prehistorians have incorporated disasters into their research since 1980, using the literature on El Niño as an illustrative case, and assesses this work in relation to geographical approaches to disaster as well as concepts that have been developed within the new ecologies.     

“Reading the riot act”;: The discourse of law‐enforcement in 18th century England

During the past two decades historians have devoted much attention both to the crowd as a socio‐cultural phenomenon and a political force, and to the discontinuities between the increasingly Draconian legal discourse of the 18th century and the discretionary practice which accompanied it This article combines both concerns: study of the working of the Riot Act in 18th century England, by focussing on the use of penal law against crowds rather than single offenders, brings into particularly sharp relief the contradictions of a legal system which depended heavily on the support of the general public both for law‐enforcement and for the efficacious operation of the practice of ‘exemplary’ public execution of selected offenders. Government was particularly anxious in the case of riots that the law should be seen to be effectively enforced, yet reluctant to abandon the ‘rule of law’ for indiscriminate use of troops against rioters. The ambiguities of the situation are well reflected both in the ostensible respect for law which characterised debates on interpretation of the Riot Act at all levels from the Privy Council to the popular press, and in the wide discretion tacitly used in applying the law by judges and juries.     

The Calibanisation of the South in the German public ‘Euro crisis’ discourse

This article highlights the renaissance of the essentialist topos of the ‘lazy and irrational’ ‘Südländer’ (Southerner, Southern countries, South) in the German political and media discourses during the ‘Euro crisis’. It argues that it served to legitimate the political and economic measures taken in Southern European countries that pushed them into still more peripheral positions within the European Union (EU) and deepened the cleavage between North and South. Culture, or better culturalism and racism as its political ideological version, thus were used as a trap, as an intellectual battleground for justifying extremely complex economic and political decisions in a simplistic fashion throughout a crucial period of European history. The article furthermore demonstrates how a postcolonial reading may productively decode the processes of Othering taking place within Europe itself, especially between the so-called core and peripheral countries.     

Sovereignty for security?: the discourse of sovereignty in Estonia

This investigation of the construction and operationalisation of state sovereignty in Estonia specifies how international integration is constituted in the Estonian sovereignty discourse, particularly how the inside and the outside of the state are demarcated in that discourse. The focus on this post-Soviet European Union applicant state is significant because if we understand sovereignty as a discourse, its political functions are inseparable from the specific context in which the inside and the outside of the state are constructed. Broadening the empirical scope of the constructivist international relations and critical geopolitics research on sovereignty therefore also enables me to substantiate and elaborate arguments made in that research.The Estonian sovereignty discourse hinges on the question as to whether or not international integration strengthens Estonia’s national security against the Russian threat. Different assumptions and positions on that issue make possible a highly selective deployment of pro- and contra-EU arguments that promulgate Estonia as European while minimising the influence of foreign institutions on Estonia’s citizenship and minority rights policies. While eagerly pursuing EU and NATO memberships, Estonia is not passively adopting but selectively appropriating political rhetoric and practices from these organisations. Concerns about the loss of sovereignty in Estonia are not examples of mere ignorance or irrational fear of changes, as is conventionally assumed, but are integral to, and reinforced by, the ways in which international integration is framed in political debates.     

Globalization and the closing of the universe of discourse: the contemporary relevance of Marcuse's “Marxism”1

This paper assumes that there is something in the logic of the capitalist mode of production such that, in the words of Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, it “must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere,” giving a “cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.” It assumes, that is, that there is an inherent tendency in capitalism to seek to globalize. Further, it is argued that one can plausibly claim that the capitalist mode of production has succeeded, or is succeeding, in globalizing against the countervailing forces of the managing state and organized labor. It is argued that this development represents, to use Marcuse's words, something like a “closing of the universe of discourse” or a “paralysis of criticism” and the emergence of a “society without opposition,” but in a context, in crucial respects, fundamentally different from that analysed by Marcuse in the 1960s.     

“The Gudeman of Ballangeich”: rambles in the afterlife of James V

This article concerns a corpus of legends in which James V of Scotland disguised himself as the “Gudeman of Ballangeich” in order to enjoy amorous adventures. The traditions may or may not be contemporary, and equally there is no certainty about whether they reflect actual behaviour (although kings in general, including the Stuart kings, have been known to disguise themselves for a variety of reasons, including pleasure). However, in later centuries, allusions to the “Gudeman of Ballangeich” were used by Scots to refer surreptitiously to a Scots king, by Jacobites to refer to a Stuart king, and members of The Beggar's Benison, an eighteenth‐century libertine club, used tales of James V to evoke memories of a better, pre‐Union, pre‐Calvinist Scotland of cultural creativity and sexual liberty. The legends of James V helped maintain the positive, popular image of this monarch as the “poor man's king” in the face of less kind judgements from contemporary elites and subsequent generations of historians.     

“The Balkans’ Other within”: Imaginings of the West in the Republic of Macedonia

Using the case study of the Republic of Macedonia, I explore how people who live in a realm conventionally cast as insufficient of “the European Self” imagine “the West”. Such imaginings are important because they are intertwined with negotiations of nationhood and citizenship. I argue that in local constructions of the global social order, Macedonia emerges in an interstitial position between “the Balkans” and “the West” as “the Balkans’ Other Within”. Social actors craft this position out of Western hegemonic constructions of the Balkans as a socio‐political anomaly and portray “the Other within” (Macedonia) as the engulfed land of promise. The case study of Macedonia allows us to refine the concepts of “Balkanism” by underlining local perspectives on the promise that “the West” carries for the Balkans and “Orientalism” by emphasizing the possibilities that the construction of the Orient charts for the future advancement or demise of the Self.     

“The Painter in Two Frames”: An Archaeological Investigation of Kamal-ol Molk’s Agency in the Field of Art and Politics

An agent’s actions in different fields and its changes can leave material traces. Therefore, archaeology in its broadest methodological meaning surveys material culture and seeks to investigate an agent’s action in a process. Our archaeological excavation in Neshat Garden led to the discovery of material traces of lifestyle changes of a well-known agent from the late Qajar/early Pahlavi era. Mohammad-e Qafari, nicknamed Kamal-ol Molk, was a famous painter of the Qajar court. He left the court in middle age and entered politics as an agent of opposition. Kamal’s journey to Europe was a turning point that extended to the end of his life. At the same time, Iran’s sociopolitical context experienced significant evolution, including the Mashroute Movement and the rise of Pahlavi dynasty to power. Such mutations made Kamal-ol Molk abandon/change his activities in the field of art, sponsored by the power structure, to engage in political activity. His exile/compulsory migration to a faraway village in northeastern Iran is the outcome of his political activities. The present research is based on archaeological surveys and excavations in two sites: Kamal-ol Molk’s house and Neshat Garden. The archaeological investigation of Kamal’s life in context, his paintings, letters, and photos as a long-term process reveals an artist who was also political. His agency in politics was so effective that in order for the “holy honorable party” to survive, he sometimes ordered assassinations.     

“Tell Thou the Tale”: Shakespeare's Taming of Folktales in The Taming of the Shrew

William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew adapts two European folktales, “The Taming of the Shrew” (ATU 901) and “Lord for a Day” (ATU 1531). The playwright adapts these tales in order to negotiate his role as storyteller with the audience, alternately insisting on his right to innovate and deferring to the audience by allowing them to choose among multiple possible endings.     

“The Delicious Sense of Foreignness”: American Transcendentalism in the Atlantic

Abstract

This essay presents one example of the ways in which place, transiency, and change have shaped the American experience. In the mid-nineteenth century a diverse group of American Transcendentalists came together on the island of Fayal in the Azores. The Transcendentalists' reaction to the Portuguese Catholic culture they encountered in the Azores indicates a broader pattern among nineteenth-century American liberals. These tourists operated within a larger transatlantic atmosphere of uncertainty characterized at times by hope but also by crisis. This culture of uncertainty, moreover, was one of the key factors in shaping how American liberals struggled with their conceptions of religion and nation.