scholarly journals A Journey to the West: The Ancient Dispersal of Rice Out of East Asia

Rice ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert N. Spengler ◽  
Sören Stark ◽  
Xinying Zhou ◽  
Daniel Fuks ◽  
Li Tang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Arid Regions ◽  
Human Adaptation ◽  
Important Ingredient ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
The Arid Regions ◽  
Culinary Uses

AbstractRice is one of the most culturally valued and widely grown crops in the world today, and extensive research over the past decade has clarified much of the narrative of its domestication and early spread across East and South Asia. However, the timing and routes of its dispersal into West Asia and Europe, through which rice eventually became an important ingredient in global cuisines, has remained less clear. In this article, we discuss the piecemeal, but growing, archaeobotanical data for rice in West Asia. We also integrate written sources, linguistic data, and ethnohistoric analogies, in order to better understand the adoption of rice outside its regions of origin. The human-mediated westward spread of rice proceeded gradually, while its social standing and culinary uses repeatedly changing over time and place. Rice was present in West Asia and Europe by the tail end of the first millennium BC, but did not become a significant crop in West Asia until the past few centuries. Complementary historical, linguistic, and archaeobotanical data illustrate two separate and roughly contemporaneous routes of westward dispersal, one along the South Asian coast and the other through Silk Road trade. By better understanding the adoption of this water-demanding crop in the arid regions of West Asia, we explore an important chapter in human adaptation and agricultural decision making.

The New Islamic State

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhad Khosrokhavar
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
The West ◽  
Patriarchal Family ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Creation

The creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS) changed the nature of jihadism worldwide. For a few years (2014–2017) it exemplified the destructive capacity of jihadism and created a new utopia aimed at restoring the past greatness and glory of the former caliphate. It also attracted tens of thousands of young wannabe combatants of faith (mujahids, those who make jihad) toward Syria and Iraq from more than 100 countries. Its utopia was dual: not only re-creating the caliphate that would spread Islam all over the world but also creating a cohesive, imagined community (the neo-umma) that would restore patriarchal family and put an end to the crisis of modern society through an inflexible interpretation of shari‘a (Islamic laws and commandments). To achieve these goals, ISIS diversified its approach. It focused, in the West, on the rancor of the Muslim migrants’ sons and daughters, on exoticism, and on an imaginary dream world and, in the Middle East, on tribes and the Sunni/Shi‘a divide, particularly in the Iraqi and Syrian societies.

Islamic International Relations Towards a Theoretical Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubara Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World

The Western originators of the multi-disciplinary social sciences and their successors, including most major Western social intellectuals, excluded religion as an explanation for the world and its affairs. They held that religion had no role to play in modern society or in rational elucidations for the way world politics or/and relations work. Expectedly, they also focused most of their studies on the West, where religion’s effect was least apparent and argued that its influence in the non-West was a primitive residue that would vanish with its modernization, the Muslim world in particular. Paradoxically, modernity has caused a resurgence or a revival of religion, including Islam. As an alternative approach to this Western-centric stance and while focusing on Islam, the paper argues that religion is not a thing of the past and that Islam has its visions of international relations between Muslim and non-Muslim states or abodes: peace, war, truce or treaty, and preaching (da’wah).

scholarly journals Historiographical traditions and modern imperatives for the restoration of global history

2006 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Global History ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Globalizing World ◽  
The World ◽  
The Times

This essay has been written to serve as a prolegomenon for a new journal in Global History. It opens with a brief depiction of the two major approaches to the field (through connexions and comparisons) and moves on to survey first European and then other historiographical traditions in writing ‘centric’ histories up to the times of the Imperial Meridian 1783–1825, when Europe’s geopolitical power over all other parts of the world became hegemonic. Thereafter, and for the past two centuries, all historiographical traditions converged either to celebrate or react to the rise of the ‘West’. The case for the restoration of Global History rests upon its potential to construct negotiable meta-narratives, based upon serious scholarship that will become cosmopolitan in outlook and meet the needs of our globalizing world.

scholarly journals Western Objections to the Islamic Concept of Gender Equality: A Critical Review

Fahm-i-Islam ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-70
Author(s):  
Dr Aurangzeb
Keyword(s):  
Gender Equality ◽  
Critical Review ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
View Point ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Viable Solution ◽  
The World ◽  
Islamic View

Over the past several years, despite the constant evolution of the legislation the problem of gender equality in the West has been steadily increasing. What is the reason why there is no significant progress in solving gender equality issues in the West yet? Several reports and researches have pointed out to this problem. On the contrary, Islam provides a viable solution to this ever increasing problem; for Islam has a comprehensive yet simple view of gender equality. But the West, instead of understanding Islamic principles objectively, raises objections without a thorough study. However, the Western principle of gender equality has completely failed. In this article a critical analysis of the western gender equality and Islamic principles has been carried out. It also highlights Islamic view point of gender equality. The study argues that the contemporary gender equality problems and issues that have engulfed the world particularly the Western countries can be mitigated by employing the Islamic principles of gender equality

scholarly journals The Arabs in the First Communication Revolution: The Development of the Arabic Script

2001 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Issam S. Mousa
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Communication Theory ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Arabic Script

Abstract: Scholars unanimously agree that the development of the alphabet is a cornerstone of civilization and that Greece played a central role in the spread of this medium in the West. Both Latin and Arabic scripts were derived from the Phoenician, which represents a shared cultural heritage between the Middle East and the West. However, the question of the development of the second most used alphabet in the world, Arabic, is riddled with uncertainty for scholars. They disagree on the origin of this significant medium, which has been used by Arabs, Persians, and other nations for the past 15 centuries. This paper examines how critical communication theory may help solve this enduring mystery and finds compelling evidence to suggest that the Arabic script evolved from the Nabataean rather than the Syriac. Résumé : Les spécialistes sont tous d'accord que le développement de l'alphabet a été une pierre angulaire de la civilisation et que la Grèce a joué un rôle primordial dans la diffusion de l'alphabet à travers l'Occident. Les textes latins et arabes sont tous les deux originaires du phénicien, représentant un héritage culturel partagé entre le Moyen Orient et l'Occident. Cependant, la question du développement de l'alphabet arabe, le deuxième plus répandu au monde, est entourée d'incertitude pour les spécialistes. Ceux-ci sont en désaccord sur les origines de ce mode de transmission important, que les Arabes, les Perses et d'autres nations utilisent depuis quinze siècles. Cet article examine comment la théorie critique en communication peut aider à résoudre ce mystère persistant et découvre des indices importants suggérant que l'écriure arabe a évolué du nabatéen plutôt que du syriaque.

Globalization and the Muslim World

2012 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 275-295
Author(s):  
Mohd Abbas
Keyword(s):  
Brain Drain ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
Electronic Media ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
The West ◽  
World Community ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Culture And Language

History indicates that before the coming of modern globalization, the Muslims had their own version of globalization. During the Muslim era of globalization which coincides with the Golden Age of the Muslims, the West benefited immensely from the scholastic works produced by Muslim scientists and scholars.  Modern globalization which started during the era of Western colonization of the East has now gone to every nook and cranny of the world. The usage of internet and other modern electronic media directly or indirectly has speeded up the process of transporting modern globalization to the world community. Modern globalization has brought about radical change in aims of education; it has marginalized local culture and language; it has caused brain drain everywhere in the world. Muslims, it seems, are perceiving globalization as identical to re-colonization. This paper intends to explore and investigate how modern globalization heralded by the west is different from Muslim globalization in the past.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – the Unorthodox “Orthodox”

2021 ◽  
pp. 146-156
Author(s):  
Elena A. Bitinayte ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Special Role ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Multidimensional Process ◽  
Human Destiny

The reference to the native tradition by thinkers of modernizing societies is a complex, multidimensional process. It includes endeavours of rational recon­sideration of their own religion, which as a rule are accompanied with reformers’ declarations about revival of true ancient essence of faith and about their ortho­doxy. The typical example of the last one is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s ar­ticle “Who is a ‘Sanatani’ Hindu?”. Translation of this text into Russian is pre­sented to the readers. And though the question about consideration Gandhi as а reformer of Hinduism is debatable, his approach to religion has many similar features with reformative practice by Rammohun Roy (1772–1833) and his fol­lowers. Reflection on originality of the Indian civilization and particularly on Hinduism, which is characteristic for the thinkers of that period, can’t be under­stood without analysis of modernization context and especially for Gandhi with­out attention to anti-colonial struggle. The meet with the West divided Indian so­ciety to three parts: those who gladly copied European lifestyle, others who refused all foreign and those for whom the discovery of new culture became the reason for the recognition of the past and the present of their native country. The last thinkers weren’t contented with just safe-keeping of Indian civilization in the situation of the colonial crisis and therefore they defined another aim – to revive its ancient greatness. Every reformer created his own project of religious renaissance based on his own conception of ‘true’ ancient Hinduism, which was corrupted in time. But there is something common in interpretation of Hinduism by different thinkers of that direction, and by Gandhi too. All of them tried to find the essence of Hinduism, which brings it together with other religions and which defines its uniqueness in order to show to the compatriots and to the world the special role which Indian civilization should play in all-human destiny.

Review and prospect: where do we go from here ?

1977 ◽  
Vol 278 (962) ◽  
pp. 611-614
Keyword(s):  
Arid Regions ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Less Developed Countries ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Arid Regions

I cannot presume, in the time at my disposal, to sum up so diverse and excellent a series of addresses as we have heard during these two days. I propose instead to review what seem to me to be the most significant issues they raise affecting action for the future of the arid regions, with particular reference to those which form parts of the less-developed countries of the world.

scholarly journals Editorial: Time Travel

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-248
Author(s):  
PAUL RAE
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
The West ◽  
American Power ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aesthetic Form ◽  
The World ◽  
And Performance ◽  
The Way

One of the most forbidding and yet rewarding challenges in a substantive internationalization of arts scholarship is accounting for the experience and passage of time. The extent to which developments in theatre and performance over the past 150 years have been tied up with the larger social, economic and technological transformations reflexively understood as ‘modernity’ is a key reason an international journal readership is able to find interest and value in scholarship on performances they may not have seen, that are practised in places they have never been. At the same time, any such research – it is tempting to say ‘from outside the West’, but in fact the requirement holds everywhere – must register how the work under discussion complicates an otherwise oversimplified narrative of developmental modernity. This narrative treats a homogenized industrial and postindustrial ‘West’ as having led the way and established a model for how other parts of the world would modernize subsequently. The assumption is quickened in discussions of art because arguably one characteristic of those transformations as they happened in numerous centres of Euro-American power was the role that artists played in giving them aesthetic form and expressing their meanings. This is prominent in the emergence of modernism and the avant-garde, and it is logical that in recent times scholars of modernism have been particularly energetic in questioning the developmental narrative and demonstrating not only how such phenomena were constitutively reliant on processes elsewhere, but also how artistic developments everywhere both informed each other (often inequably) and manifested local and highly contingent characteristics.

scholarly journals Paɣiba Salma | Women's Gold

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eza J. Doortmont
Keyword(s):  
Social Space ◽  
Northern Region ◽  
Safe Space ◽  
Shea Butter ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Production Space ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future

Shea butter is a product traditionally made solely by women. The demand for this product in the world has grown drastically over the past decades and this has changed the production and production space of the commodity significantly.  Women’s Gold is an observational film, telling the story of the shea butter processing women of Tampe-Kukuo, a community on the outskirts of Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region in Ghana. This documentary investigates ideas of social space, dignity and gaining more than material independence, connected to the shea butter industry. The growing demand in the west means bigger productions, exporting the butter and growing profit, but it also means that the sole women-safe space is not guaranteed for the future.

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