Time protagonists: student migrants,practices of time and cultural construction of the Singapore-educated person

This paper analyses the cultural production of the ‘educated person’ through student migrants' engagement with ideas and practices of time. In particular, it pays attention to how these young people negotiate identities and develop unique strategies to achieve personal goals of education. Drawing on the works of Pierre Bourdieu and Michael Flaherty, I conceptualise time as both a discursive structure and cultural resource to forward two interrelated arguments. First, I argue that time is an important discourse in the ways that ideas about education and becoming educated are imagined, performed and negotiated. Second, I suggest more attention needs to be placed on time as a central facet of cultural (re)production. This study focuses on one particular student flow from Southeast Asia to Singapore as a case to illuminate the role of time in cultural production, based on research with thirty students conducted between 2010 and 2011 primarily through biographical interviews.     

No longer good girls: sexual transgressions in Indian women's writings

Indian women's writing in English has long depicted Indian women as victims of society, whose rights are routinely exploited and whose welfare and happiness are commonly sacrificed for the good of their families and communities. The literature has often depicted the women as complicit, accepting and upholding the definition of a good woman as one who is faithful, virtuous, self-effacing and obedient. This definition is also one the women instil in their daughters, thus reinforcing this code of ethics. This article observes that there is a tide running contrary to this and that there is a new breed of women in twenty-first century Indian literary fiction in English: women who are single and married, working and non-working, middle and upper-middle class and wives and mothers, who are no longer prepared to be ‘good girls’. These women knowingly, thoughtfully and successfully defy societal conventions to have pre and extramarital affairs, divorces and even custody battles for children, without shame, guilt, dire consequences or even societal condemnation. This article argues that these writings represent a quietly radical departure from the conventional depictions of the roles, expectations and morals of middle-class urban twenty-first century Indian women.     

On Academic Foucauldian‐dramaturgy and Modernity in Melanesia

This short paper offers a critical reflection on the uses of Michel Foucault's ideas and the notion of ‘modernity’ which mark a current trend among so many ethnographers of Melanesian life‐worlds. Through the examination of several ethnographic cases I show the limitations of these usages and, correlatively, advocate a more mindful epistemic regard for the cultural realities and the processes of transformations of Melanesian life‐worlds in the present‐day world‐historical context.     

Beyond the Mirrored Horizon: Modern Ontology and Amodern Possibilities in the Anthropocene

Early talk of the Anthropocene has been prompted by material evidence of the incoherence of ontological divisions between humanity and the rest of Earth. Yet, ironically, it has also been dominated by modern narratives about human distinction, autonomy, and dominion. Along with recrimination about the death of nature, the modern Anthropocene carries hope of human redemption through natural evolution or technological progress. The resulting narratives of enlightened planetary stewardship reduce earthly multitudes to a common denominator, shoring up the mirrored horizons within which modern humans encounter only themselves. In response, I explore amodern possibilities for action in an Anthropocene beyond modern referents of nature and culture. These possibilities open up choices within planetary dynamics that are inherently human but not reducible to human agency. This is a politics of sustenance attuned to difference and relation and directed to the multitude of human‐other‐than‐human collectives, to the specific shared projects of existence, in which human interests are composed.     

Copper worlds: a historical archaeology of Abraham and Jakob Momma-Reenstierna and their industrial enterprise in the Torne River Valley,c. 1650–1680

This article analyses the industrial enterprise of the Dutch-born brothers Abraham and Jakob Momma-Reenstierna and their investments in Sápmi and the upper parts of the Torne River Valley, northern Sweden, during the second half of the seventeenth century. The aim is to explore the driving forces behind the industrial projects of the two brothers in a larger global and colonial context. With inspiration from recent critical studies on the simplifications, and Eurocentrism, in earlier understandings of the birth of modernity, we focus on the modernizing processes taking place in the upper part of the Torne River Valley as a meeting zone between local populations and landscapes and external capital. Metal extraction was booming in the seventeenth-century Sámi areas. Both the Danish-Norwegian and the Swedish Crowns invested heavily in the mining of silver, copper and iron. The scientific focus in archaeology and history has hitherto been very much on the state-governed projects, and limited interest has been directed towards the private enterprises. Moreover, there is also a need to study the roles of the local Finnish and Sámi populations, as well as the global connections, in these colonial industrial projects.     

Neo-Latin literature in nineteenth-century Europe: an overview

To date, neo-Latin studies have been hardly concerned with the nineteenth century, let alone the twentieth century. It would seem that literature written in Latin (called ‘neo-Latin literature’ from the Renaissance onwards) had completely lost its significance. However, recent research has shown that Latin verses were still quantitatively and qualitatively important, even if they no longer enjoyed the same popularity as in previous centuries. This article is a synthesis of what we know about neo-Latin literature in nineteenth-century Europe. The first section discusses the question of its quantitative and qualitative significance. Section 2 deals with the specific features of the neo-Latin literature in the nineteenth century. Section 3 presents the situation in Germany in order to give a more precise idea of the phenomenon. The aim of this article is to provide an impetus for further investigation in the field and to cast light on a facet of the nineteenth century that has long been forgotten.     

Varieties of mystical experience in William James and other moderns

ABSTRACT

In 1902, William James gave his Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh, entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience, in which he claimed that such experience was a part of human nature, and was necessarily the foundation of all institutional religion. His work has often been singled out as leading to an increasingly private and individualistic understanding of religion, but this paper places his work in a broader movement of the early twentieth century that heralded a revival of interest in religious experience and, especially, mysticism. It explores the work of two English writers, W.R. Inge and Evelyn Underhill, in relation to James, and argues that the revival of interest in mysticism was a significant response to the intellectual challenges to faith in modernity.     

Michael Oakeshott and Hans-Georg Gadamer on Practices,Social Science,and Modernity

This article compares Michael Oakeshott and Hans-Georg Gadamer, in particular examining the different ways they conceptualise human practices and the relationship between theory and practice. First, I highlight where the two agree. Both are sceptical of causal explanations of human behaviour, and instead advocate understanding human conduct intersubjectively, using Aristotle's concept of ‘practical wisdom’. Second, however, I also highlight important areas of disagreement. Oakeshott maintains that non-philosophical but non-practical theoretical disciplines are possible; by contrast, Gadamer stresses the intrinsically practical nature of all understanding. More practically, they also differ over how useful Aristotelian insights are politically. Gadamer claims (like Aristotle) that we can seek an objective common good; Oakeshott rejects this, due to his commitment to pluralism. Finally, I suggest that these divergences are due to different conceptualisations of ‘experience’ and the Western tradition. First, Oakeshott and Gadamer differ over how authentically we can know human experience, and therefore over how important the right discipline for investigation is. Second, they differ over the degree to which we can interrogate the Western tradition. For Oakeshott, we must accept its pluralist inheritance; for Gadamer a healthy dialogue with it is essential—only thus can we unearth the (Aristotelian) insights vital for us to live well.     

Omstrede Land – Die Historiese Ontwikkeling van die Suid-Afrikaanse Grondvraagstuk, 1652-2011

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the water policy of the French Protectorate in Morocco (1912–1956). After the proclamation of the protectorate, actions on the part of the new rulers affected both the modern and traditional water sectors. The authorities aimed to regulate water resources to help economic growth and favour the settlers living in the occupied areas. On the management side, they tried to adapt traditional institutions and practices to those of metropolitan France, while respecting tradition to some extent. During the first half of the 20th century, these colonial interventions caused profound changes in the established order, which can still be seen at the heart of water management systems used today in this part of the Maghreb. For the purposes of this article, we have adopted evolutionary and institutional theories and applied a methodology based on historical and anthropological analysis, with contributions from the fields of law, economics and geography.     

Wuming: an underground art group during the Cultural Revolution

The Wuming painting group opened its first public exhibition in Beijing in 1979. The hundreds of small paintings exhibited were accumulated through years of clandestine art practice stretching back to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. This article traces the history of the Wuming group and its art – describing the social identities of the artists, exploring the historical context of the group's formation, reconstructing the underground art and cultural activities, and contextualizing the group's artistic innovations. The history of this underground art group addresses larger debates over Chinese modernity, and over the interpretation of the history of the Cultural Revolution in today's global context.