Social policy and inequality: A case study of problems in a planned society

Richard W. Casteel and George I. Quimby, eds. Maritime Adaptations of the Pacific. The Hague and Paris: Mouton Publishers, 1975. Distributed in North America by Aldine Publishing Company, x + 319 pp. Tables, figures, biographical notes, and index. $28.50.     

History of a renegade revolutionary: revolutionism and betrayal in colonial India

This paper highlights an understudied aspect of the history of anti-colonial resistance – the role of people who sat on the fence, displayed ambivalence, or at times played an active role in wrecking, damaging and sabotaging resistance against the state. Such people appear, if at all, in popular parlance as ‘traitors’ and in academia as ‘collaborators’, labels which carry a categorical moral bias. By examining nationalism through the lens of betrayal, this paper engages with a methodological question – is there a way of broadening the scope of the history of anti-colonial nationalism which incorporates acts of collaboration (e.g. spying, informing, perfidy, denunciation), without the implicit moral judgment embodied in each term? To tackle this question, this paper reconstructs the history of one renegade revolutionary, Hans Raj Vohra (1909–1985), a government witness who testified against his comrades, the revolutionaries of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army in the Lahore Conspiracy Case trial (1929–30). This paper contextualizes Hans Raj Vohra's decision to become an ‘approver’, or a government witness, demonstrating the difficulties in framing his perfidy as a form of collaboration.     

A fertile mother Russia: pronatalist propaganda in revolutionary Russia

The Soviet consultation with its attendant propaganda, visiting nurses, and vacation homes attempted to set science and the doctor as the ultimate authority in matters of child rearing in place of old authorities, deny the contention that motherhood was a natural ability of women, and take over the father's place in the home. Soviet health care policy bridges pre- and postrevolutionary thought, blurred the boundaries between public and private, and mirrored international natalist policies. However, the application of these policies conformed to Soviet concepts of citizens' duties and state imperatives.     

French adventures in solidarity: revolutionary tourists and radical humanitarians

This article uses the adventures in solidarity of French tiers-mondistes and sans-frontiéristes to introduce these two movements and indicate their position within the intellectual paradigm shift that occurred in France during the 1970s. Focusing on the case of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), it draws attention to the important position of humanitarianism during and following the decline of revolutionary frameworks in French intellectual and public life. The study posits that a fuller appreciation of humanitarianism's relationship to political engagement will be necessary to better understand its contribution to internationalism and contemporary activism.     

Church-in-a-box: making space sacred in a non-traditional setting

ABSTRACT

How are non-traditional sacred spaces experienced and sacralized? Non-traditional sacred sites offer a unique and useful perspective for exploring notions of sacralization, the process of making space sacred. This paper explores sacralization through an investigation of Unity of Fredericksburg, a non-traditional spiritual community that meets in an executive office building, using in-depth interviews with church leaders and members. These interview findings help shed light on how the process of sacralization occurs and suggest that it is the collective, emotional engagement with space that makes it sacred. Non-traditional houses of worship, though not imbued with conventional notions of “sacredness”, serve as functionally sacred for believers and the transiency of their sacred qualities provides a useful foundation for geographers of religion to explore how the sacred is made and experienced.     

Teaching revolutionary archaeology: African experiments in history making and heritage management

Este ensayo se enfoca en la experiencia de estudiantes africanos intentando estudiar y lograr administrar herencia en Tanzania y eritrea. El autor ilustra la necesidad de métodos prácticos que enfatizan hacer decisiones independientes y el crecimiento de la auto-confianza personal en los contextos del desarrollo rápido y disturbios políticos. Estas perspectivas de ense?anza ofrecen una respuesta positiva de los estudiantes que ven oportunidades para realizar la arqueología de su propia herencia desde su propio punto de vista.

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Résumé Ce papier se concentre sur l'expérience d'étudiants africains qui ont étudié et tenté de mettre en oeuvre la gestion du patrimoine en Tanzanie et en Erythrée. L'auteur illustre la nécessité d'avoir des approches pratiques qui favorisent la prise de décisions indépendante et l'augmentation de la confiance personnelle, dans le cadre professionnel, dans des contextes de développements rapides et de changements politiques brusques. Cette perspective pédagogique induit une réponse positive des étudiants qui voient des opportunités de faire l'archéologie de leur propre patrimoine selon leurs propres points de vue.