Iran and the emergence of information and communications technology: the evolution of revolution?

This study examines the emergence of information and communications technology (ICT) in facilitating political protest in the Middle East, with a focus on the Iranian experience. With the rise of ‘emancipating technology’ to mobilise popular support, many had hoped that the incumbent regime in Iran would be steered towards a more democratic and less authoritarian path. At the same time, the Iranian regime itself has shown an increasingly sophisticated technical nous, constructing a centralised censorship network and using available technology to proliferate propaganda and control and subdue cyber-protest. As such, ICT has acted as a complex dual-edged sword in both mutually supporting and suppressing political activism in modern-day Iran.     

Epistemic Ignorance and the Indonesian Killings of 1965–1966: Righting the Wrongs of the Past and the Role of Faith Community

ABSTRACT

This study demonstrates how ignorance works in the Indonesian massacres of 1965–1966. This atrocity, which claimed roughly five hundred thousand lives, is one of the most forgotten human tragedies of the twentieth century. For many years, the massacres were hidden from public view. Ignorance was reinforced by the New Order under the presidency of Suharto. Drawing on contemporary political philosophers’ studies on the epistemology of ignorance, I contend that ignorance, like knowledge, has structures, criteria, and practices. Ignorance, thus, is not merely a “lack of knowledge” or a state of not knowing, but epistemic and political. By appropriating the epistemology of ignorance, I seek to show how the Indonesian people remember the historical wrongs and how Christian theology provides resources for right remembrance. To confront the epistemic ignorance of the Indonesian mass killings, I argue that the churches must assert their identity as the community of memory and lament.     

Abolish the army? The ideal of democracy and the transformation of the Czechoslovak military after 1918 and 1989

This article deals with the relationship between the democratic transformations in Czechoslovakia after 1918 and 1989 and the armed forces. The democratic ideal of transformation seemed to be alien to the military institution, which upheld the old regime and paradigmatically represented undemocratic patterns of governance. In order to accommodate the popular demand to ‘abolish’ the army, the new political elite strived to initiate an institutional transformation that would re-legitimize the armed forces. Whereas after 1918 the military improved its reputation by changing into a ‘school of nation’, after 1989 the military, expected to become fully professional, went through a period in which its inner organisational culture was liberalized and personal freedoms of the soldiers were strengthened. The decline of previous authorities and the rise of civic self-confidence connected to the process of democratisation also led to the demoralisation of the soldiers. The liminal phase of military transformation was marked by the experience of the first ‘post-war war’, the Czechoslovak-Hungarian War in 1919 and the Gulf War in 1991, which indicated the needs of the new security environment and gave the idealistic thinking about the democratic military a touch of reality.     

LGBTTs of Turkey between the east and the west – the city and the world through their eyes in the case of Izmir

The profession of city planning in Turkey does not consider groups such as LGBTTs (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transvestite (Cross-dressing)). This study aimed to draw attention to the need for Turkish city planning to consider LGBTT people by presenting the results of a survey conducted in Izmir, one of the leading cities in Turkey. The study examines the reasons that LGBTTs, as ordinary individuals in society, become closeted in the urban sphere and how city planning can overcome this challenging problem of a Muslim country that is between the East and the West and is a European Union (EU) nominee. To examine this delicate issue that has not previously been considered in urban/rural planning studies in Turkey, the main discussion first elaborates the nationwide conception of and attitude towards LGBTTs and a wide range of social and economic variables to assess the quality of LGBTTs’ urban living. Then, based on results of the survey, this study attempts to formulate how an inclusive city can be planned for all groups, including LGBTTs. The scope of this study covers the legal and social status of LGBTTs in Turkey, the overall profile of LGBTT survey respondents, these respondents’ place in Izmir and the specific characteristics of an LGBTT-inclusive city. The unique contribution of this study is that it is the first to examine LGBTT individuals’ demands from the city on the basis of their different socioeconomic profiles.     

The Eighteenth-Century ‘Restoration’ of the West Portals of Saint-Denis and the Problem of the Lintels

Abstract

The west portals of Saint-Denis are believed to have incorporated lintels which would have been engaged with the doorposts below impost level. The lintels are presumed to have been removed in 1771 when various damaging work was carried out on the doorways. Irregularities in the upper courses of the doorposts appear to confirm this theory and many scholars have speculated upon the form of the lost lintels. It can be demonstrated, however, that the narrow nineteenth-century lintels in situ above impost level follow the original twelfth-century design: substantial lintels were at no time engaged with the doorposts. The disorder of the upper doorposts can nevertheless be attributed to the 1771 campaign. At that time the doorposts were dismantled and reassembled carelessly, without leaving enough room for the reinsertion of the upper courses: those of the central portal were merely trimmed while those of the lateral portals were replaced.     

René of Anjou,King of Sicily,and the order of the Croissant

Founded in 1448 by René, Duke of Anjou and titular King of Sicily, the Order of the Croissant represents one of many secular orders of chivalry established by late medieval rulers. An examination of the Order's statutes and membership indicates that the Croissant was more than a colourful convocation of knights. As René's personal creation, the Croissant served as a political instrument not only for controlling his vassals, but also for advancing his territorial claims.     

Imagining the Grand Duchy of Lithuania: The Politics and Economics of the Rebuilding of Trakai Castle and the ‘Palace of Sovereigns’ in Vilnius

Abstract

In 1884 the prominent nation-builder Jonas Basanavi?ius declared that castle mounds and literature were the only appropriate elements from which to build the Lithuanian nation. Basanavi?ius’s view, this article suggests, had a lasting influence on the public uses of history in twentieth-century Lithuania. The study explores the construction of two iconic images of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Trakai Castle and the ‘Palace of Sovereigns’ in Vilnius. Built in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Trakai Castle was once the seat of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, but fell into neglect before its reconstruction in the 1960s. Dating back to the thirteenth century, the Palace in Vilnius deteriorated during the eighteenth century, was dismantled at the beginning of the nineteenth, and has been completely rebuilt since 2000. It is striking that the reconstructions of castles were the largest state investments in culture in both the Soviet and post-Soviet regimes. The reconstruction of Trakai Castle was criticized on economic and ideological grounds by Nikita Khrushchev. The rebuilding of the Palace polarized Lithuanian intellectuals. The presentation compares the intellectual, social, and political rationales which underpinned the two projects and explores the changes and continuities in the uses of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania under the Soviet and post-Soviet regimes.