Film-viewing in Turkish and Moroccan diasporic families: a gender and place perspective

This article explores the relation between gender identities and spatial aspects of audience reception by means of a case study on film-viewing in the Turkish and Moroccan diasporic communities in the Belgian city of Antwerp. Drawing on feminist and gender approaches to audience reception on the one hand, and research into the spatial dynamics underlying audience reception on the other, we look at film-viewing as a socially and spatially meaningful practice that is relevant for the understanding of gender identities in diasporic families. This article is based on the results of a four-year project on diasporic film cultures in Antwerp that investigated how film-viewing practices relate to social and cultural dynamics within the Turkish and Moroccan communities. The data that are discussed include participant observations, in-depth interviews and group interviews with a varied sample of people with Turkish and Moroccan backgrounds. The results show that although film-viewing, especially in the public space of the film theatre, can be mobilized by women as an emancipating social practice, gendered power structures often prevail. Also in the domestic contexts, a more traditional gender division is articulated by the respondent concerning family viewing. We conclude that the space of the film theatre and film-going serve the continuity and stability of gendered family relations, rather than subverting them.     

The challenges facing the First Aliyah Sephardic Ottoman colonists

The case of the tiny Jewish colony of Har-Tuv, which was founded by Ottoman Jews who immigrated to Palestine in 1895 from Bulgaria, sheds light on Ottoman policies vis-à-vis settlement activity by Sephardic Jews in Palestine at a time when there were concerted efforts to limit the Jewish national activity there. The latter was mainly carried out by non-Ottoman Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to Palestine from eastern Europe. As the only colony established during the First Aliyah by Sephardic Jews, and also due to its geographical isolation, Har-Tuv was detached from the processes taking place within the other Jewish colonies and the New Yishuv. At the same time, Har-Tuv’s founders had a long tradition of living under Ottoman rule and were on good terms with the local Ottoman authorities in Palestine. This was often useful when the colony had problems with its Arab neighbors, and on several occasions Har-Tuv even served as an intermediary between the Arab rural population and the government.     

Zionism and Judaism: The Paradox of National Liberation

This article discusses the paradoxical history of national liberation and religious revival as manifested in three states that achieved independence after World War II: India, Algeria and Israel. Although the original leaders of all three national-liberation movements—the Indian National Congress, Labor Zionism, and the Algerian FLN—were secular, in the states that they created a politics rooted in what can loosely be called fundamentalist religion is today very powerful. The resistance of the traditional elites to national liberation, which is by definition a secularizing, modernizing and developmental creed, takes on a new ideological form after the achievement of political independence, when the defenders of traditional religion, themselves renewed and modernized, begin the construction of a counterrevolutionary politics.     

美国基督教锡安主义的发展及影响

美国基督教锡安主义是影响美、以关系和中东局势的一个重要因素。美国基督教主流一自由派主要出于世俗的、人道主义的考虑而支持或反对锡安主义,美国基督教福音一基要派则主要出于“神定时代论”的末世信仰而支持锡安主义和以色列。美国基督教锡安主义是美国长期偏袒以色列的社会文化基础。其宗教极端主义的成分加剧了中东的文明冲突,阻碍了中东的和平进程。     

The French Radical Right: From Anti-Semitic Zionism to Anti-Semitic Anti-Zionism

This article highlights the deep ambiguities of the French radical right's vision of the future of the Jews. While being hostile to the Jews' integration into the French nation—whose Catholic nature they are alleged to corrupt by promoting Anglo-Saxon liberal and cosmopolitan values—the far right at first manifested sympathy for Zionism, the perfect solution for expelling the Jews. At the same time, although it despised Arab immigrants in France, it nonetheless had a positive view of the values of the Arab world, seen as being hostile to money. Subsequently, except for the period of the Algerian War, when its interests seemed to coincide with those of Israel, the far right became fervently anti-Zionist. Today it rushes to the aid of the Arab world (from Palestine to Iraq), which is seen as dominated by the State of Israel, an instrument of international capitalism.     

The archaeology of place

It is suggested that if archaeologists are to be successful in understanding the organization of past cultural systems they must understand the organizational relationships among places which were differentially used during the operation of past systems. This point is illustrated by observations made among the Nunamiut Eskimo. Against this background it is demonstrated that the two most common forms of archaeological systematics, “assemblage”- versus “type”-based systematics, are not appropriate for the study of places. In the latter case, it is not possible to analyze places as such, while one cannot see places with different “content” as part of a single system in the former. It is concluded that current archaeological systematics are totally inappropriate for studying past systems of adaptation and their evolutionary modification.