Exactly As People Tell,or an Ethnography of the (In)Visible Things of Mayajigua

This paper explores some of the consequences of using archival materials produced by an anthropologist's informants. What happens when a resident from a rural area of Cuba is hired to write about the “world”, a term used by Carl L. Withers, in which he, his relatives and his neighbours live? By reading letters and other papers sent during the late 1940s, and kept by Withers for more than thirty years, my hypothesis is that his informants took seriously their capacity to create something other than a simple “testimony”. Withers's principal informant, created himself, his neighbours, strange beings and the world in which they cohabited as a certain type of artefact, as “data”.     

Colonial Rule,Cultural Relations and the British Council in Cyprus, 1935–55

ABSTRACT

This article offers an examination of the British Council’s early stages of expansion in Cyprus under British rule, from 1935 to 1955, before the start of the Greek Cypriot anti-colonial struggle (1955–59). It argues that the British Council’s development and quality of activities in the British colony were affected by various factors such as the peculiar political difficulties encountered in the island due to the rise of Greek nationalism and the growing influence of the Church of Cyprus over the local public; the mismanagement of the local British Institutes by some of the Council’s representatives; and the financial stringencies hindering the Council’s ambitions. Through the investigation of primary material, accessed at the Cyprus State Archive in Nicosia (Cyprus) and at the National Archives in London (UK), the article traces and critically analyses for the first time the Council’s early steps in colonial cultural policy-making, using Cyprus as a case study. During the 20-year period under examination, British experiments in culture attempted to attract the Cypriots’ interest and convince them of the importance of the British connection. The British and colonial governments envisaged that through cultural influence they could safeguard the consent of the governed. In this way, British presence in Cyprus could be retained and Britain would be able to protect its strategic, political and economic interests in the region. However, research reveals that the Council’s efforts in the colony were more often than not misguided, its activities proving ineffective, its hopes misplaced. Although the aspiration was that the British Council should be a powerful instrument of Britain’s foreign policy in the colonies, this article shows that in Cyprus it had a tumultuous childhood. Caught up in the realities of the Second World War, the rise of nationalism, the thread of communism, and amid the climate of Cold War, the British Empire was coming at an end, while the British Council was fighting to survive.     

Catholic Mission and Conversion in Scandinavia

The relation between mission, religious conversion and identity construction is the subject of my paper. On a concrete level, I discuss the Catholic mission and conversions in Scandinavia from the middle of the 19th century to the present time. Up to the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), the Catholic Church strongly emphasised its claim to be the only true church, and as a consequence, all non-Catholic regions were regarded as missionary areas. Most of the priests and sisters working in Scandinavia were foreigners, whereas converts from Protestantism dominated the parishes. I pay special attention to the question of national and religious identity and the changing discourses of Catholic conversion, reflected in conversion narratives.     

The burden of choosing wisely: biopolitics at the beginning of life

Recent transformations in French maternal health care demonstrate how the government of the beginning of life encompasses an individual woman's desires and aspirations for the uses of her own body. Women are increasingly solicited by the French health care system to express their feelings, their wishes, and their distress to a medical professional for whom the solicitation of such narratives has become a professional specificity. This essay focuses on transformations of governmental power in the realm of reproduction articulated within French maternal health care policy, professional midwifery journals, and women's health activist literature. Crucially, the regulation of reproduction in France no longer takes place primarily through sanction or prohibition, but rather through what sociologist Dominique Memmi claims is the solicitation of narratives about one's own desires and hopes for the fate of one's body, a ‘delegated biopolitics’ of reproductive control. This essay suggests that the contemporary government of reproduction entrusts individuals with little more and no less than the imperative to ‘choose wisely.’     

The family,sexual morality and gender identity in the communist tradition in Italy (1921–1956)

This essay will compare the model of the communist family during the era of Palmiro Togliatti's ‘partito nuovo’, beginning with the famous ‘svolta di Salerno’ in 1944, with the model outlined when the Italian Communist Party (PCdI) was first founded in 1921. The sources used vary, spanning memoirs, literature, the press and autobiographies of political activists. The aim of this essay is to expand the research on the ‘communist tradition’; to examine the characteristics of both its theoretical thinking and pedagogic structure; to explore the nature of its propaganda; and to study the individual experiences of activists.     

Reviews

Authority and Political Culture in Shi'ism, Said Amir Arjomand, ed., Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1988, 393 pp., index. $19.95, paperback. $49.50, cloth.

A Lonely Woman: Forugh Farrokhzad and her Poetry, Michael C. Hillmann, Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press and Mage Publishers, 1987, 181 pp.

The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan, Lisa Golombek and Donald Wilber, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988; Vol. 1: 510 pp. of text; Vol. 2: 16 color plates, 481 black‐and‐white photographs, 8 maps, 162 plans and sections. $130.

Timurid Architecture in Khurasan, Bernard O'Kane, Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1987, 418 pp., numerous figures and plates. $49.95.

Iranian Immigrants in the United States: A Case Study of Dual Marginality, Abdolmaboud Ansari, Millwood, N.Y.: Associated Faculty Press, 1988, xii + 148 pp.

Aux Sources de la Nouvelle Persane, Christophe Balay and Michel Cuypers, Paris: Institut Français d'Iranologie de Teheran, 1983, 222 pp., bibiography, indexes of proper names, books and journals. 124 Fr. paperback.

Post‐Revolutionary Iran, Hooshang Amirahmadi and Manoucher Parvin, eds., Boulder: Westview Press, 1988, 262 pp. $39.50.

Islamic Art and Spirituality, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987, 213 pp., 10 monochrome plates. $75.00.

Nishapur: Some Early Islamic Buildings and Their Decoration, Charles J. Wilkinson, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986, 328 pp., num. ill., 29 col. pl. $75.00.

The Making of Iran's Islamic Revolution: From Monarchy to Islamic Republic, Mohsen M. Milani, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988, xiv + 361.

The Poet Sa'di: A Persian Humanist, John D. Yohannan, (Persian Studies Series, No. 11) Lanham, Md.: University Press of America; Bibliotheca Persica, 1987, 149 pp.

The Destiny of a King, Georges Dum´ezil (translated by Alf Hiltebeitel), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988, 155 pp. $11.95.

Revolutionary Iran, R.K. Ramazani, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, xvi + 254 pp., appendix to p. 282, notes to p. 294, bibliography to p. 302, index to p. 311. $27.50.

A Bibliography of the Iran‐Iraq Borderland, Keith MacLachlan and Richard Schofield, Cambridge, U.K.: Middle East and North African Press, 1987, 383 pp.

Tales from Luristan (Matalya Lurissu): Tales, Fables and Folk Poetry from the Lur of Bala‐Gariva, Sekandar Amanolahi and W.M. Thackston, transcribed and translated with notes on the phonology, the grammar of Luri and Luri‐English vocabulary. Harvard Iranian Series, Vol. 4, 1986, XIII + 250 pp. $19.95 paperback.

Shi'ism and Social Protest, Juan R. I. Cole and Nikki R. Keddie, eds., New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986, x + 321 pp.

My Memories of Baha'u'llah, Ustad Muhammad‐'Aliy‐i‐Salmani, the Barber, translated from the original Persian by Marzieh Gail, Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1982, 122 pp., appendices, short biographies of Baha'is mentioned in the text, as well as notes, selected bibliography and selected love poems of Ustad Muhammad‐'Aliy‐i‐Salmani.

Agricultural Change and Rural Society in Southern Iran, C. Salmanzadeh, Cambridgeshire, England: MENAS Press Ltd., 1980, 275 pp. £17.00 hardback, £10.50 paperback.

Religion and Politics in Contemporary Iran: Clergy‐State Relations in the Pahlavi Period, Shahrough Akhavi, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980, xx + 255 pp.

Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution, Michael M.J. Fischer, Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1980, xviii + 314 pp.     

Urban shrinkage: an unspoken challenge of spatial planning in Russian small and medium-sized cities

Shrinkage since the collapse of state socialism has been evident in many Russian cities, especially in small and medium-sized (SMS) ones. The Russian state, de jure, has been promoting the idea of self-governance; thereby, urban municipalities ought to develop and adopt own planning decisions to cope with various challenges, including those related to depopulation. The current research focuses on planning responses to urban shrinkage. It aims at understanding how the phenomenon is conceptualized in the planning documents of Russian SMS cities and what solutions are proposed to cope with it in the conditions inherited from the Soviet times housing and infrastructural deficit. The empirical evidence for the analysis is drawn from over 70 SMS cities located in Central and Southern Russia. Results state that despite obvious and persisting urban shrinkage, most of the reviewed documents ignore or underestimate the phenomenon. Instead of suggesting flexible solutions, which would help overcome the shortage of urban infrastructure not aggravating shrinkages’ effects in the cityscape, long-term spatial plans are being developed with hope for future growth proposing measures that contribute to the intensification of urban sprawl and fragmentation.