Youth and Decolonial Politics in a Relational Context

The lives of children and young people are conditioned in important ways by the imperial and colonial intimacies that have shaped our world. Yet, we know relatively little about how they encounter and comprehend the histories, legacies, and continuities of colonisation and racial capitalism, nor how this comes to shape their political orientations and practices. This article introduces a series of five papers that examine the everyday practices, reflections, and desires of young people in different parts of the world as they seek to understand where they fit in imperial constellations that cross generations, borders, and oceans.     

Socialist statuary as post-socialist hybrids: following the statues of Dr Petru Groza in Romania

This paper is concerned with the post-socialist lives of Communist statues. While acknowledging that post-socialist transformation frequently involves searching for new identities based on the disavowal of the communist past and the de-communisation of cultural landscapes, the paper stresses the importance of exploring complex continuities from the state-socialist period. This is illustrated by a case study of the fates of three socialist-era statues of the Romanian Communist leader Dr Petru Groza which were erected in Bucharest, Deva and B?cia. The paper examines how these socialist-era statues have been de- and re-contextualised, translated and re-valued into ‘post-socialist hybrids.’ The analysis explores the complexities of the historical geographies of these statues after 1989, particularly the way that they continue to play a role in the shaping of identities, societies and politics.     

A Mediaeval Case of Lepromatous Leprosy from 13–14th Century Orkney, Scotland

Erosion in the 1960s resulted in exposure of human skeletal remains from a Norse Christian cemetery at Newark Bay, Orkney, Scotland. One set of remains showed osteological evidence of advanced lepromatous leprosy, but the absence of bones from the lower limbs precluded definitive diagnosis. The aim of the present study was to determine whether Mycobacterium leprae could be detected in bone extracts, as a means of confirming the diagnosis of leprosy. Bone samples were examined from the suspected leprosy case and from a second contemporary burial thought to be free of disease. DNA was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using primers specific for a repetitive element (RLEP) characteristic of M. leprae. Additional PCR tests specific for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and for amelogenin (a human gene suitable for sex determination) were also applied to the samples. M. leprae DNA was detected only in the skull sample from the suspected leprosy case. The DNA sequence was identical to that found in present day isolates of M. leprae. Positive results were obtained only using a PCR reaction designed to amplify relatively short stretches of DNA (<175 bp), suggesting the microbial DNA had undergone extensive fragmentation. There was no evidence of M. tuberculosis DNA in bones from the leprosy suspect or control individual. The ability to recover ancient samples of DNA provides an opportunity to study long-term evolutionary changes that may affect the epidemiology of microbial pathogens.     

Place, national identity and post-socialist transformations: an introduction

This paper serves as an introduction to this theme issue on the topic of post-socialist identity politics surrounding nation building, national identity and nationalism. It presents an overview of the key processes of post-socialist identity formation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union (FSU) in order to contextualise this collection of papers. This introduction outlines the key processes of identity formation and the treatment of nationalism under conditions of state-socialism, and then identifies the main processes of identity formation which have emerged in discourses surrounding nations and nationalities in post-socialist CEE and the FSU. A short account of each of the papers in the theme issue is then presented to identify the common strands of their analyses of post-socialist nationalisms.     

J.W. Burrow: A personal history

The late John Burrow, one of the most stimulating promoters of the distinctively interdisciplinary enterprise that is Intellectual History, was a vital member of what has become known as the ‘Sussex School’. In exploring the resonances of his singular and richly idiosyncratic contribution, this article places his unique historical sensibility within a series of interpretative contexts, demonstrating the vitality of writings that will continue to inspire and inform scholarship in the field for decades to come.