Introduction

2013 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-128
Author(s):  
Nile Green
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The Other ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Past ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Cross Fertilization ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Way

Compared to its neighboring countries, Afghanistan remains something of a blank on the historiographical map. Falling between Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Central Asian fields of expertise, it is in many respects the last great unclaimed territory of historical studies, not so much competed over as ignored by scholars trained in these areas. Despite a rich burst of scholarship in the 1960s, and the efforts of a small but distinguished cadre of scholars since then, Afghan history has neither truly developed as a historical field in its own right nor been successfully absorbed into the study of any of its adjacent regions. This is not to deny that Afghanistan has received some expert (and inexpert) attention since the U.S.-led intervention in late 2001: several important analytical works stand out among the shelves of other, more or less hastily written, books of the past decade. But anthropologists and political scientists have led the way; historians’ interventions in this burgeoning literature have been few. Of the three most significant books on Afghan history published since 2001, two deal with Afghanistan in relation to colonial India, and the other is a survey work written by an anthropologist (albeit benefiting from the analytical cross-fertilization).

Sacraments of Memory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erin Michael Salius
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
African American Literature ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
The Past ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The U.S ◽  
New Framework ◽  
The Way

This study argues that Catholicism informs a major genre of African American literature in ways and with a significance that has gone largely unrecognized. Since their emergence in the 1960s and 1970s, contemporary narratives of slavery have challenged the traditional historiography of American slavery, radically revising how we remember that “peculiar institution.” These fictional works disrupt the form and content of slave autobiography, suggesting that the conventions of Enlightenment rationalism to which antebellum texts were bound could not adequately represent the experience and memory of enslavement. Scholarship on the genre has thus tended to focus on the way it undermines the rationalizing impulse of Enlightenment discourse, which in the U.S. as well as in Europe was determined by the ideals of the Protestant Reformation. But while the scholarly attention to Protestantism has yielded valuable insights, it cannot account for the striking presence of Catholicism at the margins of these texts, nor for the way that the religion is imaginatively linked to radical moments of historical revision. Sacraments of Memory thus proposes a new framework for understanding the revisionist aims of these works, contextualizing the skepticism they exhibit towards historical realism in terms of a Catholic counter-tradition in American literature that has long been associated with superstition and irrationality. The authors in the books all marshal this anti-Enlightenment orientation of Catholicism to disrupt the conventional historiography of American slavery and, this book argues, ultimately, to imagine and embody radically different means of remembering the past.

Translating the Past: Rethinking Rajatarangini Narratives in Colonial India

2011 ◽  
Vol 70 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chitralekha Zutshi
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Relative Significance ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The Past ◽  
Its Regions ◽  
English Translations ◽  
The Status ◽  
Multiple Levels

The status of Kalhana's poem Rajatarangini was mediated in colonial India in part through its English translations. However, the intent of the translations has been insufficiently analyzed in the context of the interrelationship between Orientalist and nationalist projects and the historical and literary ideas that informed them. The translators of Rajatarangini framed the text as more than a solitary example of Indian historical writing; rather, they engaged with it on multiple levels, drawing out, debating, and rethinking the definitions of literature and history and the relative significance of and relationship between them in capturing the identity of the nation and its regions. This article examines two translations of the text—one “Orientalist” and the other “nationalist”—with the purpose of interrogating these categories, by drawing out the complex engagement between European and indigenous ideas, and the dialogue between past and present that informed their production.

The “Hollow Prospect” of Integration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward G. Goetz
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Community Development ◽  
Black Power ◽  
The Other ◽  
African American Community ◽  
Fair Housing ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One ◽  
The U.S

This chapter describes the tension between integration and community development from the 1940s through the end of the 1960s. It describes the conflict within the African-American community between efforts to achieve integration on the one hand and building power and capacity within the community on the other. It describes the emergence and evolution of the fair housing movement in the U.S. Finally, the ways in which this conflict played out during the civil rights and Black Power eras is highlighted.

“We are the 99%”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Heldman
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Ease Of Use ◽  
Consumer Activism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Politically Active ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the contemporary era of consumer activism in the U.S. that started in the mid-2000s with the advent of social media. Contemporary consumer activism is distinct in its ease of use, transnational focus, effectiveness, and popularity. Americans have become more politically active through the marketplace in the past decade, and this has altered the way companies do business. The chapter concludes that the current era of marketplace activism strengthens democracy through higher rates of participation in the marketplace for political ends.

Afterword

2021 ◽  
pp. 244-248
Author(s):  
Michael J. Rosenfeld
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
Marriage Equality ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Many ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Way

Gay rights and marriage equality have advanced so far in the U.S. in the past decade that it would be all too easy to assume that the struggle is over. The opponents of gay rights, however, remain powerful. Readers can take inspiration from how dramatically attitudes toward gay rights have liberalized in the past two decades and how transformative the liberalization of attitudes has been. We live in a world where political lies often seem to have the upper hand. It is worth remembering that despite the many short term advantages that lies can yield in politics, the truth has some long term advantages as well. The way the marriage equality movement prevailed should be a lesson to anyone who wants to make progressive social change.

Univocality within Multivocality

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elie Podeh
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Linear Process ◽  
History Textbooks ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
Third Generation ◽  
Gradual Improvement ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Way

Previous research on the way in which the Arab-Israeli conflict and the image of the Arab have been presented in Jewish history and civics textbooks established that there have been three phases, each typified by its own distinctive textbooks. The shift from the first to the third generation of textbooks saw a gradual improvement in the way the Other has been described, with the elimination of many biases, distortions and omissions. This article explores whether new history textbooks, published from 2000 to 2010, have entrenched or reversed this trend. With the escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the early 2000s, one might have expected that the past linear process of improvement would be reversed. However, textbooks written over the last decade do not substantially differ from those written in the 1990s, during the heyday of the peace process. The overall picture is, therefore, that the current textbooks do not constitute a fourth generation.

Reclaiming the Past, Building a Future: Māori Identity in the Plays of Hone Kouka

2001 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
World War I ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Future ◽  
The 1960S

Hone Kouka's historical plays Nga Tangata Toa and Waiora, created and produced in Aotearoa/New Zealand, one set in the immediate aftermath of World War I, and the other during the great Māori urban migrations of the 1960s, provide fresh insights into the way in which individual Māori responded to the tremendous social disruptions they experienced during the twentieth century. Much like the Māori orator who prefaces his formal interactions with a statement of his whakapapa (genealogy), Kouka reassembles the bones of both his ancestors, and those of other Māori, by demonstrating how the present is constructed by the past, offering a view of contemporary Māori identity that is traditional and modern, rural and urban, respectful of the past and open to the future.

1968: Towards a General Secularism

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Simon During
Keyword(s):  
Capitalist Society ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Middle Way ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Past Half ◽  
Radical Movement ◽  
Movement Politics

The numerous interpretations and evaluations of 1968 that have been developed over the past half-century can arguably be divided into two. On one side, there are those accounts that regard 1968 as the threshold across which an older form of modernity passed to become what student revolutionaries of the period began to call late capitalism; and although late capitalism itself quickly became a fissured thing, this view has become orthodox. On the other side, there are those who insist that ’68 was a Badiousian event, an outbreak of liberatory possibilities to which we not only have a responsibility to remain faithful, but which provided a template for later more or less insurrectionary movements; undoubtedly the strongest argument for ’68’s enduring radical meaning and potential has been made by Kristin Ross in her 2002 book, May ’68 and its Afterlives. This article is partly committed to arguing for a middle way between these two views. I accept that the processes leading to and following the events of 1968 triggered the development of a new kind of capitalist society as well as formed the template for the radicalisms we now have. This mediation might seem to involve a contradiction, but in the end it is more accurate not to see these two views as they see themselves, namely as enemies, but rather as dialectically and functionally united. Without the kind of capitalism that the 1960s triggered, no radical movement politics; without radical, post-communist movement politics, no such late capitalism. To see that, we need to think about ’68 in larger contexts and terms than is usual. I will call the context I wish to bring to bear general secularization.

scholarly journals Sayyids and Social Stratification of Muslims in Colonial India: Genealogy and Narration of the Past in Amroha

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 467-487
Author(s):  
SOHEB NIAZI
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Social Stratification ◽  
North India ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Historical Texts ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
History Of ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
Asian Context

AbstractWhile Islamic scriptures like the Quran and Hadith are often quoted to negate the existence of social stratification among Muslims, authors of genealogical texts rely on the very same scriptures to foreground and legitimise discussions on descent and lineage. In the South Asian context, several conceptions of hierarchy as practised by Muslims in north India evolved over the course of colonial rule and were deployed interchangeably by Sayyids. These were based on notions of race, ethnicity, respectability and nobility, and occupational distinctions as well as narratives that referred to the history of early Islam. This article contributes to the study of social stratification among South Asian Muslims by exploring the evolution of Urdu tarikh (historical texts) produced by Sayyid men in the qasbah of Amroha in the Rohilkhand region of the United Provinces during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Sayyid authors narrated the past through the medium of nasab (genealogy). While their texts place emphasis on lineage and descent to legitimise a superior social status for Sayyids, they also shed light on the changing social and material context of the local qasbah politics with the discourse on genealogy evolving into a form that engaged with social contestations.

Indigenous approaches to the past: ‘Creative histories’ at the Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kiera Lindsey
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Form And Function ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cultural Responses ◽  
And Function ◽  
The Way

This article discusses a recent art project created by the Wiradjuri and Kamilaroi artist Jonathon Jones, which was commissioned to commemorate the opening of the revitalized Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney in early 2020. Jones’ work involves a dramatic installation of red and white crushed stones laid throughout the grounds of the barracks, merging the image of the emu footprint with that of the English broad convict arrow to ‘consider Australia’s layered history and contemporary cultural relations’. This work was accompanied by a ‘specially-curated programme’ of performances, workshops, storytelling and Artist Talks. Together, these elements were designed to unpack how certain ‘stories determine the ways we came together as a nation’. As one of the speakers of the Artist Talk’s programme, I had a unique opportunity to experiment with what colleagues and I have been calling ‘Creative histories’ in reference to the way some artists and historians are choosing to communicate their research about the past in ways that experiment with form and function and push disciplinary or generic boundaries. This article reflects upon how these two distinct creative history projects – one visual art, the other performative – renegotiate the complex and contested pasts of the Hyde Park Barracks. I suggest that both examples speak to the role of memory and creativity in shaping cultural responses to Australia’s colonial past, while Jones' programme illustrates how Indigenous artists and academics are making a profound intervention into contemporary understandings of how history is ‘done’ in Australia.

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