Militarized Masculinities: Shaped and Reshaped in Colonial South-East Punjab

AbstractThis paper offers a gendered perspective to British domination in India through the British Indian Army—which in many ways was central to their entire structure of economic and political domination in India. Locating its understanding drawn from the political economy of south-east Punjab, it argues that the designated martial castes and military recruitment structurally and ideologically identified with and privileged those trends of existing masculinities in this region which suited their power structure and empire building. It was a constellation of marital caste status, land ownership, dominant caste syndrome and good bodily physique or physical strength that ideologically came to connect and configure dominant masculinity in colonial Punjab. An Army profession fully supported it. During the two world wars it emerged as the militarized masculinity, amply supported by legal and administrative measures introduced or apparently adopted in deference to certain popular cultural practices. The associated economic and political privileges turned ‘loyalty’ into an inherent and special ingredient of ‘masculinity’ which the nationalists had to confront and deal with till such times that it came to be firmly linked with nationalism and patriotism.

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TANGIER IN THE RESTORATION EMPIRE

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x11000215 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 54 (4) ◽

pp. 985-1011 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

TRISTAN STEIN

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Seventeenth Century ◽

The Political ◽

Empire Building ◽

The Face ◽

The Creation ◽

Free Port ◽

The Mediterranean ◽

Commercial Organization ◽

The City

ABSTRACTThis article reintegrates the colonization of Tangier into our understanding of the development of the English empire in the latter half of the seventeenth century. At its acquisition in 1661, Tangier appeared integral to the imperial ambitions of the restored monarchy and promised to carry England's commercial and maritime empire into the Mediterranean. This article argues that the particular conceptions of imperial and commercial organization that underlay the occupation of Tangier isolated the city from England's wider empire and contributed to its failure. The creation of a free port and crown colony at Tangier reflected prevalent perceptions of the political economy of trade in the Mediterranean, but added to a wider process whereby ideological debates over the organization of trade and empire helped to create legal and jurisdictional boundaries that differentiated oceanic space. As a free port, Tangier was out of place within an empire increasingly defined by exclusive and restricted trade. It was, however, the ideological significance of Tangier's status as a crown colony that made it unsustainable. Unable to sustain or surrender its sovereignty over Tangier, the crown abandoned the city in the face of Moroccan empire-building.

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World Literature, Globalization, and The Loss Of Stories: On the Political Economy of Narrative Today

Cognitive Semiotics ◽

10.1515/cogsem.2012.4.2.88 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 88-104

Author(s):

Patrick Colm Hogan

Keyword(s):

Political Economy ◽

Global Economy ◽

World Literature ◽

Cultural Practices ◽

The Political ◽

Global Literature ◽

Literary Traditions ◽

Global Standardization ◽

Identity Based ◽

Convergence And Divergence

Abstract ‘World literature’ has several distinct meanings. Most important for the present study, it may refer to the products of increased interaction across literary traditions in a globalized political economy. The resulting ‘global literature’ involves extensive convergence in narrative practices. The result is a diminishing of cultural diversity in storytelling. Globalization may also lead to certain sorts of divergence. This may seem to partially counterbalance the convergence. However, in an unequal, global economy, divergence is most often guided by hegemonic cultural practices, even if this occurs negatively. Specifically, such divergence commonly operates through identity-based repudiation of global standardization with a consequent simplification and distortion of putatively indigenous traditions. Thus, in unequal global conditions, both convergence and divergence have the effect of reducing the diversity of narrative cultures. In consequence, the globalization of literature may have deleterious effects on the aesthetics - and indeed the ethics and politics - of narrative. The essay ends with some possibilities for reversing this trend.

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