Reform Transplanted: Parsi Agents of Change amongst Zoroastrians in Nineteenth-Century Iran

In the mid-nineteenth century, Parsis reestablished ties with Zoroastrians in Iran that had languished due to decades-long internal unrest in Iran. In 1854 reformists in India established the Society for the Amelioration of Conditions in Iran and sent a representative to Iran—Maneckji Hataria. Hataria was charged with eliminating the onerous non-Muslim tax owed by the Zoroastrians (the jaziyeh). Hataria also organized the Iranian Zoroastrian community, and funded a variety of community projects. He also brought Parsi reformist ideas to Iran, and attempted to reshape Iranian religious practice and belief along Parsi lines. This article explores the effects of Parsi reformist ideas on Iran, and Hataria's own writings concerning Zoroastrianism and its relationship to Iranian national identity.     

Revamping community‐based conservation through participatory research

Community‐based conservation is experiencing a crisis of identity and purpose as a result of a disappointing track record and unresolved deficiencies. The latter include over‐simplified assumptions and misconceptions of “community,” the imposition of externally designed and driven projects at the community level, a focus on conservation outcomes at the expense of community empowerment and social justice, and limited attention to participatory processes. New approaches are urgently needed to address these weaknesses and to counter a rising trend towards environmental protectionism and a preference for conservation approaches at an eco‐regional scale that threaten the interests of local and Indigenous communities. We propose that three core principles of community‐based participatory research (CBPR)—(1) community‐defined research agenda; (2) collaborative research process; and (3) meaningful research outcomes—hold much promise. Drawing on the experience of a research partnership involving the James Bay Cree community of Wemindji, northern Quebec, and academic researchers from four Canadian universities, we document the process of applying these principles to a community‐based conservation project that uses protected areas as a political strategy to redefine relations with governments in terms of a shared responsibility to care for land and sea. We suggest that basic assumptions of CBPR, including collaborative, equitable partnerships in all phases of the research, promotion of co‐learning and capacity building among all partners, emphasis on local relevance, and commitment to long‐term engagement, can provide the basis for a revamped phase of community‐based conservation that supports environmental protection while strengthening local institutions, building capacity, and contributing to cultural survival.     

The Nanjing Courtesan Ma Shouzhen (1548–1604): Gender,Space and Painting in the Late Ming Pleasure Quarter

The city of Nanjing in the late Ming period (1550–1644) was a bustling commercial and cultural centre. In its pleasure quarter along the Qinhuai River, literati and officials mingled with elite courtesans who, educated in painting, poetry and music, used their cultural capital in order enhance their visibility and sociability, and obtain the literati's patronage. The extraordinary gender relations of the entertainment district were specific to its socio‐historical environment, where courtesans, although still highly dependent on men, partook in the public scene and exceeded some gender stereotypes and Confucian values, as they owned material goods and enjoyed higher physical mobility than their female counterparts in the gentry. The geographical space shared by courtesans and literati was principally a social and intellectual space, where they generated cultural productions and established social practices. In order to explore the concepts of gender and space in urban settings, this article analyses the case of the as redundant elite courtesan Ma Shouzhen (1548–1604), who was a renowned painter and poetess. A close look at her case contributes to further understanding the construction of social space and expressions of gendered subjectivity in the southern metropolitan courtesan environment.     

Gorgobad: reflections on a German-Australian family biography

This article continues the focus on German-Australian militarised modernities through the Second World War to the present day. It draws on the author’s own family history, beginning with the memories evoked by her grandparents’ house in northern Sydney, built between 1950 and 1953. Named ‘Gorgobad’, Persian for ‘place of the wolves’, it resonates with a family history that involves German colonial investments in post-First World War Iran, the global geopolitical upheavals of the Second World War, which drew her family into separate histories of refuge, British imprisonment and deportation and, finally, building a new home in Australia. The essay asks pertinent questions about the entanglement of hegemonic racialised orders in Europe with the very racialised orders of the grounds on which Gorgobad was built.     

Theorising other, ‘other childhoods’: Issues emerging from work on HIV in urban and rural Zimbabwe

This paper agrees that universal models of childhood must be unpacked in order to reveal the diversity of ‘other childhoods’ in the global south, but argues that local, culturally specific understandings of childhood also need to be theorised and deconstructed. We attempt to do this by exploring experiences that are ‘other’ to ‘other childhoods’ and so examine the ‘un-childlike’ issues of young peoples' sexual health and child household headship in Zimbabwe. We contend that a century of contestation around the social production of identities in and through space has produced local contemporary understandings of childhood that seriously endanger youngsters in an era of HIV/AIDS. We argue both that other dimensions of ‘other childhoods’ must be recognised locally and that local understandings of childhood require greater international recognition if the pandemic is to be tackled. Finally, our exploration of these ‘margins’ of human experience lead us to believe that children must be understood both as competent and independent agents of social change and as vulnerable social becomings in need of protection.     

Metaphysics,Metaphor and Multiplicity: A Postmodern Womanist Theology for Today's Thorniest Religious Issues

This article offers the story of Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai as a starting point for investigating pressing issues in twenty-first century liberation theologies. Maathai’s story reveals that liberation theologies must still wrestle with the complexity of ongoing oppression and its maldistributed suffering, and a spirituality that is multiply religious. The argument begins by addressing William R. Jones’ challenge to early black theologies with the proposal of a postmodern womanist theology. The author also suggests embracing W.E.B. DuBois’ understanding of double consciousness as a metaphor for discussing religious pluralism that straddles religious categorization. Drawing from the resources of black and womanist theologies, postmodern process metaphysics and black studies, this article offers a framework to understand oppression, human agency, divine justice, and the constructive possibility of narratives and language that allows us to understand and articulate creative ways of speaking about religious pluralism and theorizing liberation theologies outside Christian paradigms.     

Jewish spaces and Gypsy spaces in the cultural topographies of a New Europe: heritage re-enactment as political folklore

The European phenomenon of Jewish spaces was first described in the mid-1990s. They were then defined as themed environments initiated and operated by non-Jews, often located in historical Jewish neighbourhoods. Since then Jewish spaces have become a well-established concept in the media and among academics. This article explores Gypsy spaces as analogous to Jewish spaces. The paper compares two cases, the Gypsy pilgrimage to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in southern France and the Jewish Culture Festival in the Polish town of Kraków. There are striking parallels between the thriving Gypsy music festivals, Gypsy horse fairs and Gypsy pilgrimages on the one side, and Jewish Culture Festivals on the other. The author formulates some hypotheses as to why Gypsy spaces have not yet been recognised and dealt with more extensively. To conclude, the Jewish and Gypsy spaces are situated in a European landscape of remembrance and interpreted as heritage re-enactment within the framework of European integration.