Ran Boytner, Lynn Swartz Dodd, and Bradley J. Parker, eds. Controlling the Past, Owning the Future: The Political Uses of Archaeology in the Middle East. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010. Acknowledgments + 312 pages, Notes, Bibliography, About the Editors, About the Contributors, Index. Cloth US$60 ISBN 978-0-81652-795-3.

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 210-212
Author(s):  
Janet E. Levy
2004 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-200
Author(s):  
Bradley J. Parker

On April 23-24, 2004 the conference “Filtering the Past, Building the Future: Archaeology, Tradition and Politics in the Middle East,” was held in the Tanner Humanities Center at the University of Utah. Funded by a grant from the United States Department of Education with supplemental funds provided by various contributors at the University of Utah, this conference was meant to act as a forum for participants to present and discuss innovative means of understanding the uses of the past and of archaeology in politicized cultural discourse in the Middle East. The conference organizers hold the view that multiple, competing versions of the past are mobilized in service of varying agendas both within and between cultural groups. Participants were invited to discuss theories, explore methods, or present case studies that illustrate the manipulation of archaeological data and practice to promote political goals in the Middle East, and within world communities that interact with and respond to each other on topics that concern the Middle East. The papers presented at this conference are currently being edited and the resulting collection will be submitted to the University of Arizona press in the coming months.


2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-52
Author(s):  
Miroslav Tuđman

The author gives an overview of the history of National Security and the Future (NSF). The first editorial board accepted a clear vision and mission of the NSF. That is why the NSF had to react to the political circumstances in which the journal has operated for 20 years. In the first period, international circumstances and the policy of detuđmanization directly influenced the choice of topics and papers published in the journal. For the past five years, the NSF has paid particular attention to the security of national and European critical infrastructure. A total of 257 texts were published on more than 8,000 pages and authored by 134 authors from 25 countries. The NSF has published studies on historical forgery, information operations, production of "fake news" and contributions to the theory and methodology of intelligence activities.


1974 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 5-7

During the past forty years the dominant preoccupation of scholars writing on Livy has been the relationship between the historian and the emperor Augustus, and its effects on the Ab Urbe Condita. Tacitus’ testimony that the two were on friendly terms, and Suetonius’ revelation that Livy found time to encourage the historical studies of the future emperor Claudius, appeared to have ominous overtones to scholars writing against the political backcloth of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Though the subject had not been wholly ignored previously, the success of the German cultural propaganda-machine stimulated a spate of approving or critical treatments. While some were hailing Livy as the historian whose work signalled and glorified the new order, others following a similar interpretation were markedly scathing.


2021 ◽  
pp. 281-298
Author(s):  
Joseph D. Kearney ◽  
Thomas W. Merrill

This chapter reviews how the political settlements and legal understandings canvassed in the account continue to affect the Chicago lakefront today. It offers brief snapshots of five more recent developments on the lakefront that reflect the influence of the past — and that may be indicative of the future. The chapter begins by recounting the boundary-line agreement of 1912 which planted the seeds of the Illinois Central's demise on the lakefront. Today, the railroad has largely disappeared from the lakefront, in both name and fact. The chapter then shifts to discuss the Ward cases, which continue to affect the shape of the lakefront. It chronicles the success of Millennium Park and the Illinois Supreme Court's demotion of the public dedication doctrine to a statutory right limited to Grant Park. The chapter also recounts the Deep Tunnel project and the challenges in the South Works site. Ultimately, it discusses the appearance of the public trust doctrine on the lakefront, being invoked by preservationist groups to challenge both a new museum and the construction of President Barack Obama's presidential library (called the Obama Presidential Center).


1980 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Nicosia

When Winston Churchill visited Palestine in March, 1921, the debate over the future of Palestine and the recriminations over the broken promises of the past were at a fever pitch. It had become clear that British control over Palestine would be formalized by a League of Nations Mandate which would then irnplement the provisions of the Balfour Declaration. In Haifa, a delegation of Muslim and Christian Arabs met with Churchill to express their views on the intensifying conflict in Palestine. Churchill was given a prophetic warning, the accuracy of which has been of profound significance in the recent history of the Middle East:Today the Arabs belief in England is not what it was.… If England does not take up the cause of the Arabs, other powers will. From India, Mesopotamia, the Hedjaz andPalestine the cry goes up to England now. If she does not listen, then perhaps Russia will take up their call some day, or perhaps even Germany.


Author(s):  
Antoine Borrut

Writing the history of the first centuries of Islam poses thorny methodological problems, because our knowledge rests upon narrative sources produced later in Abbasid Iraq. The creation of an “official” version of the early Islamic past (i.e., a vulgate), composed contemporarily with the consolidation of Abbasid authority in the Middle East, was not the first attempt by Muslims to write about their origins. This Abbasid-era version succeeded when previous efforts vanished, or were reshaped, in rewritings and enshrined as the “official” version of Islamic sacred history. Attempts to impose different historical orthodoxies affected the making of this version, as history was rewritten with available materials, partly determined by earlier generations of Islamic historians. This essay intends to discuss a robust culture of historical writing in eighth-century Syria and to suggest approaches to access these now-lost historiographical layers torn between memory and oblivion, through Muslim and non-Muslim sources.


2008 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 496-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiří Večerník

The article describes the development of Czech policy after 1989 and the controversies it caused. It first looks at the ambiguous nature of the communist welfare state and then proceeds to outline the theoretical alternatives. After early and energetic changes in the system, stagnation set in around the mid-1990s. Despite some problems, the current performance of the system is satisfactory, but its outlook in terms of long-term efficiency is unsatisfactory, as it will generate a rising debt into the future. In particular, the disadvantaged situation for families, the insufficient work motivation, and the frozen pension system are all causes for concern. The political shift to the right after 2006 ushered in reform measures and new reform plans. While reforms are necessary, their feasibility is uncertain owing to the fragility of the Czech political scene.


2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Buchanan ◽  
Amy McPherson

Policy and technological transformation have coalesced to usher in massive changes to educational systems over the past two decades. Teachers’ roles, subjectivities and professional identities have been subject to sweeping changes enabled by sophisticated forms of governance. Simultaneously, students have been recast as ‘learners’; like teachers, learners have become subject to new forms of governance, through technological surveillance and datafication. This paper focuses on the intersection of the metrics driven approach to education and the political as a way to re-think the future of schooling in more explicitly philosophical terms. This exploration starts with a critical examination of constructions of teachers, learners and the digital data-driven educational culture in order to explicate the futures being generated. The trajectory of this future is explored through reference to the techno-educational models currently being developed in Silicon Valley. Drawing on Deleuze’s notion of control societies we contribute to the ongoing philosophical investigation of the datafication of education; a necessary discussion if we are to explore the future implications of schooling in a technologically saturated world. We present consideration of the past, present and future, as three ways of considering alternatives to a datafied education system. Alternative conceptualisations of the future of schooling are possible which offer ways of understanding and politicising what happens when we impose data-driven accountabilities into people’s lives.


2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vlasta Jalušič

Reinhard Koselleck has long been regarded as a particularly eminent theorist of socio-political concepts, while Hannah Arendt had not been in focus as a conceptual author until recent times. This article explores the common thinking space between Arendt and Koselleck through their thesis about the gap, rupture, crisis, or break in the tradition of political thinking and historical periods and how this is linked to their notion of conceptuality, i.e. Begreifen (understanding). Despite the impression that each of them focused on the one main break between the past and the future, Arendt and Koselleck both studied multiple breaks and crises in the Western political tradition. The article attempts to show how their distinctive thinking and rethinking of political concepts (Begreifen) are related to these breaks through several direct and indirect encounters and how these are both close and apart at the same time. While they have different concepts of politics and the political, their understanding of the breaks in time and crises can be read as complementary, especially considering their concern with returning the responsibility for actions and concepts to the human sphere.


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