‘English Vinglish’ and Bollywood: what is ‘new’ about the ‘new woman’?

Bollywood’s transnational mechanisms offer a unique space to study gendered subjectivity. My article studies a specific Bollywood movie, English Vinglish (2012) to draw out the profile of the ‘new woman.’ Persistently, I question the ‘new-ness’ to the construction of women when the ‘new’ reiterates the values of tradition, nation, and family. The ‘new’ seems to exist as a particular and unique transaction between local traditions and the global spread of populations that make limiting conceptions of woman, nation, or family, anomalies in a world propelled by expanding market needs and demands. The ‘new’ while offering possibilities for women, concomitantly carries different exclusions based on class, religion, language, and other identities. Understanding the formation of gender under contemporary conditions of transnationalism requires attentiveness to an insidious partnership of possibilities and exclusions that makes it simplistic to think in terms of progress or regress.     

The Frankish tradition and new perceptions of the monarchy: Louis XV—the new pharamond?

During the last century of the ancien régime in France, perceived notions of history, the rediscovery of the past, and the recourse to tradition were closely linked to each other as well as to political considerations or implications. Notions about the past and interpretations of tradition had relevance and meaning for the political élites, enabling them to explain the origins of the monarchy as well as its nature. The purpose here is to explore these links and to show how, in one particular instance, they came to affect the artistic representation of the monarch himself.     

Where is the state? How is the state? Accessing water and the state in Mumbai and Johannesburg

This article examines the water distribution systems in Johannesburg and Mumbai to argue that the political and institutional contexts of service delivery shape people’s access to the state and its resources, and also mediation between citizens and government institutions by councillors. Through ethnographies of water supply and distribution systems in Mumbai and Johannesburg, I explain how the organizational structure of the water utility, institutional arrangements of service delivery, regulatory systems, councillors’ proximity to decision makers and their relationship with municipal officials, civil servants and party members variously influence councillors’ mediation capacities and their ability to fulfil the claims of their constituencies for piped water supply and connections.     

Mary douglas and the “new anthropology”

Mary Douglas. Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology. London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975. xxi + 325 pp. Figures and index. $23.50.     

The new refugees and the “old ethnicity”

Haines, David W., ed. Refugees in the United States: A Reference Handbook. Westport, Connecticut: Westport Press, 1985. viii + 243 pp. including chapter references, annotated literature guide, and index. $39.95 cloth.     

Cultural retaliation: the cultural policies of the ‘new’ Front National

This study examines the conception of culture and the cultural policies of the French Front National. Tracing the developments of the party’s cultural agenda before and after Marine Le Pen took over the leadership of the party from her father, I show how the Front National has adapted its discourse on cultural policy to its wider programmatic profile. In the context of a strategy of de-radicalisation promoted by Marine Le Pen, recent years have witnessed focussed efforts by the party leadership to professionalise and modernise the party’s cultural policy programme. However, the analysis of the party’s current cultural policy agenda reveals a remarkable continuity in the way the party leadership conceives of national culture and of what cultural policy should promote. This programmatic continuity becomes apparent in the analysis of the local cultural policies of municipalities won by the Front National in 2014. Exploring the cultural agendas of ten local governments with a Front National majority, I argue that the cultural policies of the Front National remain deeply rooted in a nativist understanding of culture and a dirigiste approach that wilfully excludes postcolonial minorities.     

Where is the Caribbean? French Colonial Archaeology in the English Lake

Archaeological investigation of the Caribbean region has generally incorporated unquestioned assumptions about the nature and scale of the context. Most work has been done in the Anglophone Caribbean, and has implicitly taken the English colonial world as the normative context for comparative analysis. This view leaves out a significant portion of the Caribbean colonial world—that of the French imperial program. The French colonial venture in the Caribbean has, until recently, been overlooked by historical archaeology. Recent survey and excavation of sugar, indigo and coffee plantation sites, as well as urban archaeological work, has begun to shed light upon the nature of French colonial life as distinct from that in the Anglophone Caribbean, and also on the ways that the experiences on specific French islands were different from each other. The individual histories of Martinique and Guadeloupe are contrasted in this paper, with reference to the nature of the archaeological record that has been explored, and that remains to be investigated.     

Russia's European policy under Medvedev: how sustainable is a new compromise?

This article argues that Dmitry Medvedev's term in office, despite the continuity in Russia's foreign policy objectives, brought about a certain change in Russia's relations with the European Union and the countries of the Common Neighbourhood. The western perceptions of Russia as a resurgent power able to use energy as leverage vis‐à‐vis the EU were challenged by the global economic crisis, the emergence of a buyer's market in Europe's gas trade, Russia's inability to start internal reforms, and the growing gap in the development of Russia on the one hand and China on the other. As a result, the balance of self‐confidence shifted in the still essentially stagnant EU–Russian relationship. As before, Moscow is ready to use all available opportunities to tighten its grip on the post‐Soviet space, but it is less keen to go into an open conflict when important interests of EU member states may be affected. The realization is slowly emerging also inside Russia that it is less able either to intimidate or attract European actors, even though it can still appeal to their so‐called ‘pragmatic interests’, both transparent and non‐transparent. At the same time, whereas the new modus operandi may be suboptimal from the point of view of those in the country who would want Russia's policy to be aimed at the restoration of global power status, it is the one that the Kremlin can live with—also after the expected return of Vladimir Putin as Russia's president. Under the current scheme, the West—and the EU in particular—does little to challenge Russia's internal order and leaves it enough space to conduct its chosen course in the former Soviet Union.     

Tzvetan Todorov,the ‘Responsible Intellectual’, and the new world disorder

This article assesses Tzvetan Todorov's intellectual evolution from structuralist literary critic to ‘responsible intellectual’. It contrasts his notion of the responsibility of the intellectual with traditional definitions of commitment, and analyses why for Todorov figures such as Camus, Aron, and Tillion are exemplary, whereas Communist intellectuals are not. The article examines Todorov's positions vis‐à‐vis current crises and controversies, including the bombing of Kosovo, the validity of the ICT, and America's war in Iraq. Finally, it discusses Todorov's ideas for a stronger and more independent Europe as articulated in his most recent book, Le Nouveau Désordre mondial.