Bringing Chinese Law in Line with Western Standards? Problematizing “Chinese” and “Western” in the Late Qing Debate over the New Criminal Code of Great Qing

This article examines the intense debates over the New Criminal Code of Great Qing (Da-Qing xin xinglü) in the National Assembly (Zizheng yuan) during the Qing empire’s New Policy Reform (1901–11). The focus is on the conflict between those who drafted and supported the new code and those who expressed reservations, especially over reform of the laws on filial piety and fornication. The issue of reconfiguring the family and social order through law was closely related to the overarching agenda of twentieth century legal reform in China—making an empire that “ruled through the principle of filial piety” into a modern nation-state that had direct relationships with its citizens. More importantly, an analysis of the late Qing debate over family law enables this article to problematize such concepts as “Chinese” and “Western” during this crucial moment of China’s empire-to-nation transformation. It showcases the paradox of China’s modern-era reforms—a contradiction between imposing Western-inspired order with a largely indigenous logic and maintaining existing sociopolitical order in the name of preserving national identity.     

Studying Immigrant Policy One Law at a Time

This article shows that, in the study of immigrant integration policy in the U.S. states, it is critical to report data and coding decisions for individual laws. This analysis uses an updated and public database of law‐level decisions, which includes 2,703 legislative actions recorded by the National Conference of State Legislatures from 2005 to 2016. These data are used to estimate models of aggregate state policy activity in a variety of ways: as a single continuum of policy balance versus separate models of welcoming and hostile, lumping all policy subareas together versus analyzing a specific subarea, and lumping all years together in one cross section versus panel analysis. The results in these models differ enough to indicate that reporting codes for individual‐level laws is absolutely essential so that each researcher easily can construct the measure that fits his or her theoretical framework best.     

Weathering the Storm: Social Policy and the Great Recession

This review discusses recent challenges to the welfare state arising from the Great Recession (GR). The GR was a significant event for social policy analysts, as it tested the responsiveness of welfare systems in the midst of a recent trend toward austerity politics in advanced economies. Social policy changes were part of the toolkit advanced democracies used to respond to the GR, and the welfare state mitigated the consequences of the GR. However, a stark limitation of the social safety net in the United States was the failure to assist immigrant households. The nexus of immigration and social policy is likely to be a significant controversy as we consider the meaning of social citizenship.     

古典阿拉伯——伊斯兰舆地文献所记欧亚陆路交通

根据阿拉伯——伊斯兰舆地文献,结合汉籍文献记载,考辨了9—10世纪自地中海到中国的陆路交通路线。中亚到中国的道路起于呼罗珊的木鹿,中亚地区的布哈拉、撒马尔罕、扎敏、怛逻斯和碎叶是重要的交通枢纽,而花剌子模是中亚与东南欧及北欧贸易的中心及货物集散地。     

The supermarket revolution in developing countries: tidal wave or tough competitive struggle?

An extensive literature on the transformation of food retailingin developing countries by the expansion of supermarkets hashighlighted the implications of the concentration of food valuechains for the continued incorporation of small farmers in freshproduce supply. A critical examination of this literature showsthat extent of the transformation of retailing, and also offood production as a consequence of it, is overestimated, particularlyfor fresh produce. The future landscape of food retailing willbe more varied than the supermarket revolution hypothesis predicts.     

Reading politics through emotions: ontological ressentiment as the emotional basis of current politics in Turkey

For almost sixteen years now, politics in Turkey have been analysed with reference to the theme of victimhood. It is true that the political discourse of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi or AKP) gained its power by the mass response to its victimhood claims. Nevertheless, as this article argues, the legitimacy of the victimhood claim rests mainly on the already‐existing emotions of masses, aroused and triggered by political elites. Thus, Turkish politics during the AKP period cannot be thoroughly understood without taking into consideration the emotions of both political elites and the masses. This article shares insights into the sixteen‐year‐long AKP reign of power based on Recep Tayyip Erdo?an's appeals to such emotions as humiliation, envy, disgust, hatred, anxiety, and anger. It further argues that these emotions reveal a much deeper and stronger emotional trait which we identify as ontological ressentiment.     

Sovereign Power,Biopower, and the Reach of the West in an Age of Diaspora‐Centred Development

Why at this particular historical moment has there emerged a rousing interest in the potential contribution of diasporas to the development of migrant sending states and why is this diaspora turn so pervasive throughout the global South? The central premise of this paper is that the rapid ascent of diaspora‐centred development cannot be understood apart from historical developments in the West's approach to governing international spaces. Once predicated upon sovereign power, rule over distant others is increasingly coming to depend upon biopolitical projects which conspire to discipline and normalize the conduct of others at a distance so as to create self‐reliant and resilient market actors. We argue that an age of diaspora‐centred development has emerged as a consequence of this shift and is partly constitutive of it. We develop our argument with reference to Giorgio Agamben's “Homo Sacer” project and in particular the theological genealogy of Western political constructs he presents in his book The Kingdom and the Glory (2011). We provide for illustration profiles of three projects which have played a significant role in birthing and conditioning the current diaspora option: the World Bank's Knowledge for Development Programme (K4D); the US‐based International Diaspora Engagement Alliance (IdEA); and the EU/UN Joint Migration and Development Initiative Migration4Development project (JMDI‐M4D). Drawing upon economic theology, we make a case for construing these projects as elements of the West's emerging Oikonomia after the age of empire.     

Muslim Selbstverständnis: Ahmet Davutoğlu answers Husserl's Crisis of European Sciences

In formulating his understanding of Islamic history, thought and politics, the Turkish Muslim thinker Ahmet Davuto?lu approves and adopts the German philosopher Edmund Husserl's formulation of phenomenology — or, philosophy of consciousness. Both Husserl and Davuto?lu perceive a crisis in humanity and identify its causes in scientism and logical positivism, against which they develop their respective phenomenological alternatives. This article places in parallel Husserl's stylised history of Western thought and Weltanschauung method with that of Davuto?lu's Muslim worldview, in order to illuminate the latter's putatively comprehensive interpretation of Islam, diagnosis of the ills of secularism, modernisation, and crisis of values he finds in Muslim societies; and his prescribed treatment for those ills: the privileging of ontology over epistemology, and the full unfolding of core theological concepts of revelation, monotheism, and prophecy. Davuto?lu seeks to reconcile tensions and disputes within Islamic intellectual traditions concerning the nature of God and God's attributes, and the tension between mysticism and rationalism, and the historical and the atemporal. In summary, Davuto?lu's intervention in Islamic traditions is interesting in the effort it makes to appropriate elements of both Husserl and GWF Hegel for the purpose of reconciling a phenomenological reading of Islam with established Islamic authorities and commitments.     

Black-on-red ware in the levant: A neutron activation analysis study

Black-on-red ware was widely used throughout the Eastern Mediterranean between about the 11th and 8th centuries BC. Its origins have been much discussed: its ubiquitous appearance throughout the region could be a result of either several manufacturing regions or a single place of manufacture associated with considerable trading in the ware.In the present study, neutron activation analysis has been carried out for 15 chemical elements in 58 specimens of black-on-red ware from Cyprus (11), Syria (26) and Palestine (21). The analytical results clearly separate the ware into three major groups, corresponding to origins in Palestine, Syria and Cyprus. The hypothesis of a single source of the ware is therefore not tenable. All 14 of the Syrian finds of the single-handled neck ridge juglet are closely grouped with the Cyprus samples, indicating extensive trade in this vessel from Cyprus to Syria. The Palestine samples clearly separate into two sub-groups. Arguments are presented suggesting that this indicates the ware from the two sub-groups was made at different times. The Cyprus group provides tentative evidence of several sites of manufacture on the island.     

Dendroarchaeology of the mid-first millennium AD in Constantinople

The 1st millennium AD was a time of great transition in Europe and the Mediterranean. At the heart of the Byzantine Empire, Constantinople (modern day Istanbul) was a pivotal trade hub for the Aegean region. Establishing a precise and accurate dating framework for the development of this remarkable city and a chronological reference for this critical time period for the Mediterranean region is of great importance to a wide range of scholars. Here we present a new 213 year tree-ring record from 89 oak samples placed in time by dendrochronology and supported by radiocarbon analysis and historical documentation. It represents the middle of the first millennium AD in Constantinople. The tree-ring series are derived from pilings recovered from the extraordinary excavations of the so-called “Theodosian harbor” at Yenikap?, Istanbul, along with timbers from other sites and buildings around the city, including one of the most famous sites on the Istanbul sky-line—Hagia Sophia. They provide potential for new insight into a time period in which earthquakes, the Justinianic plague, and even a possible tsunami struck the city, and during which dramatic changes in climate have been recorded in other paleoenvironmental proxies. The chronology is the first published tree-ring series from the Aegean region to cover the ‘event’ years of AD 536–7 and 542 which are characterized by anomalous growth in other tree-ring series from around the world, but interestingly these event years are not evident in this tree-ring sequence.