Polygamy and Legislation in Contemporary Iran: An Analysis of the Public Legal Discourse

The purpose of this article is to analyze the interaction between different interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence in Iran and state law. It focuses on the public legal discourse about the new Family Draft Law in 2007–08, especially Article 23 regulating polygamous marriages and removing necessity for the first wife's permission. The participants in this public legal debate, which took place on the internet and in the media, were civil society organizations, especially women's organizations, the Shiite clergy, and state representatives. The article argues that even in a non-democratic, theocratic state such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, public discourse promoted by the named actors can challenge and influence state legislation. The removal of Article 23 from the Draft confirms this argument, but in the law of 2013 the requirement for the first wife's permission is not found. By looking at the arguments brought forward in the public discourse, the article demonstrates that the arguments are mainly “Islamic,” and none refers to international human rights, as this seems to be a kind of taboo in the political discourse.     

Interacting,sharing and bonding: ‘notes of personal experience’ by nineteenth-century women travellers

As early as the seventeenth century, women have been going from one corner of the world to the other recording their experiences and reasons for publishing. Exploring, working and residing in regions of the East considered ‘safe for dynamic men only’ (Smith 1887, Through Cyprus, Author of ‘Glimpses of Greek life and Scenery, etc’. London: Hurst and Blacket), western women interacted with the peoples of Ottoman society, enjoying their warm and generous hospitality. Their gender allowed them to study, learn and become experts in areas where men had no access: the Ottoman harems, women's daily life, social gatherings and celebrations. Western and eastern women discuss harem slavery, marriage, adultery, childbirth, abortion, divorce, religion and women's rights. In reconsulting primary sources and focusing on the writings of nineteenth-century British women in Asia Minor (Turkey), this article contributes additional evidence on women's alternative representations or less degrading gaze, while revealing a patriarchal system's domestic-social reality that was founded on the institution of slavery. In other words, it differs from other studies in spotlighting the accounts that are illustrative of the polyethnic synthesis of the Ottoman households, i.e. the discourse on the multiethnic harem slavery institution, which distinguished Ottoman society, so as to provide a bigger picture and inspire new discussions.     

Contemporary French philosophy

Scholarship on the French Atlantic empire traditionally and uniquely focuses upon Africa as a source of slave labour for the American colonies. However, this article explores how, in the second half of the eighteenth century, Africa emerged as a viable alternative for colonial expansion. Uncertainties about a colonial future in the New World directed French expansionist attention away from the Americas and towards the African continent, expanding its role beyond a source of labour. The intellectual underpinnings for a transfer of empire first surfaced within the Physiocratic School of political economy. The article examines the emergence of such ideas and their reception within the colonial administration of the Ancien Régime. It also shows how expansion into Africa became central to the imperial agenda of the first French Republic. Exploring Africa as a substitute to colonial America helps expand the lens through which Africa is examined as part of the Atlantic World. It also reveals continuities between Ancien Régime colonialism and later French republican imperialism.     

Tell formation processes as indicated from geoarchaeological and geochemical investigations at Xeropolis,Euboea, Greece

Xeropolis is a tell site on the island of Euboea, Greece just to the east of the village of Lefkandi, and was occupied from the Early Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. Excavations in recent years have provided an opportunity to investigate site formation processes using geoarchaeological and geochemical techniques. Sediments derived from the tell on the southern side have been lost by coastal erosion whilst those on the north mantle the flanking slope. Of particular interest is a homogeneous and unstratified deposit of over 2 m which overlies the archaeology near the southern perimeter of the summit area. The soil structure as evident in thin sections indicates a high degree of bioturbation, probably stimulated by recent manuring and cultivation. The implication is that tillage erosion has had a major impact on the morphology as well as on the surface soils of the tell. Despite such reworking and redeposition of near surface materials, it is still possible from multi-element analysis to identify the geochemical distinctiveness of six archaeological contexts (pit, house, plaster floor, alley, road and yard); pits and floors have high loadings of all elements except Pb; in contrast pits and floors have the lowest elemental concentrations.