scholarly journals Introduction: the transformation of Tibet’s language ecology in the twenty-first century

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 (245) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerald Roche
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Minority Languages ◽  
Language Loss ◽  
Focus Attention ◽  
The West ◽  
Language Ecology ◽  
Twenty First Century

AbstractTibet’s linguistic diversity is undergoing drastic transformations in the twenty-first century. In this article, I begin my examination of this issue by outlining the extent of Tibet’s linguistic diversity, including not only its numerous Tibetic languages, but also its non-Tibetic minority languages. Using a “language ecology” approach, I examine the mechanisms that have produced and maintained this diversity, as well as the ways this diversity was spatially and socially patterned. I argue that these processes and patterns were largely maintained up until the twenty-first century, when the Chinese state’s program to “Open the West” unleashed an ideologically driven modernization program on Tibet, radically altering its language ecology. I argue that the present trends emerging from this process are likely to continue throughout the twenty-first century, resulting in both language loss and the emergence of new languages, leaving the overall language ecology fundamentally altered by the beginning of the twenty-second century. It is hoped that this article will not only provide a useful framework for future discussions on linguistic diversity in Tibet, but will also focus attention on the challenges facing individual languages in Tibet today.

Slavery and the Trumpocene: It's Not the End of the World

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-50
Author(s):  
Claire Colebrook
Keyword(s):  
Living System ◽  
Racial Violence ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
End Of The World ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Geological Period

There is something more catastrophic than the end of the world, especially when ‘world’ is understood as the horizon of meaning and expectation that has composed the West. If the Anthropocene is the geological period marking the point at which the earth as a living system has been altered by ‘anthropos,’ the Trumpocene marks the twenty-first-century recognition that the destruction of the planet has occurred by way of racial violence, slavery and annihilation. Rather than saving the world, recognizing the Trumpocene demands that we think about destroying the barbarism that has marked the earth.

Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
First Century ◽  
Care Of The Self ◽  
The West ◽  
City Life ◽  
Good Citizen ◽  
The Past ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Point Of Departure

What does it mean to be a good citizen today? What are practices of citizenship? And what can we learn from the past about these practices to better engage in city life in the twenty-first century? Ancient and Modern Practices of Citizenship in Asia and the West: Care of the Self is a collection of papers that examine these questions. The contributors come from a variety of different disciplines, including architecture, urbanism, philosophy, and history, and their essays make comparative examinations of the practices of citizenship from the ancient world to the present day in both the East and the West. The papers’ comparative approaches, between East and West, and ancient and modern, leads to a greater understanding of the challenges facing citizens in the urbanized twenty-first century, and by looking at past examples, suggests ways of addressing them. While the book’s point of departure is philosophical, its key aim is to examine how philosophy can be applied to everyday life for the betterment of citizens in cities not just in Asia and the West but everywhere.

‘I Have Heard from Some Teachers’: the Second-Century Struggle for Forgiveness and Reconciliation

2004 ◽  
Vol 40 ◽  
pp. 5-28
Author(s):  
Christine Trevett
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
South Wales ◽  
Fictive Kinship ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Brothers And Sisters ◽  
Forgiveness And Reconciliation

In the close-knit valleys communities of South Wales where I was brought up, some fingers are still pointed at ‘the scab’, the miner who, for whatever reason, did not show solidarity in the strike of 1984-5, cement the definition between ‘them’ and ‘us’. In trouble-torn Palestine of the twenty-first century, or among the paramilitary groups of Northern Ireland today, suspected informers are summarily assassinated. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee continues its work in the post-apartheid era. In second-century Rome and elsewhere, the ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ who made up the fictive kinship groups – the churches – in the growing but illicit cult of the Christians were conscious both of their own vulnerability to outside opinion and of their failures in relation to their co-religionists. The questions which they asked, too, were questions about reconciliation and/or (spiritual) death.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina Bildhauer ◽  
Chris Jones
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century

Here the editors review the long history of medievalism, starting with its origins as a period designation and continuing to survey its use in contemporary public discourse as a term of political opprobrium, and its influence as a source of inspiration and creativity in cultural and artistic endeavour in the twenty-first century. An overarching historical narrative of medievalism is therefore sketched out, in order that the detailed studies of individual chapters may be better contextualised. It is suggested that medievalism remains one of the main tropes by which the West figures itself as ‘modern’, and governs its relationship with the rest of the globe.

Zooming In Rome, the Middle Euphrates, and Dura

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon James
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Its Region ◽  
Second Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
The Military

Dura-Europos was a product and ultimately a victim of the interaction of Mediterranean- and Iranian-centred imperial powers in the Middle East which began with Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Achaemenid Persian empire in the later fourth century BC. Its nucleus was established as part of the military infrastructure and communications network of the Seleucid successor-state. It was expanding into a Greekstyle polis during the second century BC, as Seleucid control was being eroded from the east by expanding Arsacid Parthian power, and threatened from the west by the emergent imperial Roman republic. From the early first century BC, the Roman and Parthian empires formally established the Upper Euphrates as the boundary between their spheres of influence, and the last remnants of the Seleucid regime in Syria were soon eliminated. Crassus’ attempt to conquer Parthia ended in disaster at Carrhae in 53 BC, halting Roman ambitions to imitate Alexander for generations. The nominal boundary on the Upper Euphrates remained, although the political situation in the Middle East remained fluid. Rome long controlled the Levant largely indirectly, through client rulers of small states, only slowly establishing directly ruled provinces with Roman governors, a process mostly following establishment of the imperial regime around the turn of the millennia. However, some client states like Nabataea still existed in AD 100 (for overviews see Millar 1993; Ball 2000; Butcher 2003; Sartre 2005). The Middle Euphrates, in what is now eastern Syria, lay outside Roman control, although it is unclear to what extent Dura and its region—part of Mesopotamia, and Parapotamia on the west bank of the river—were effectively under Arsacid control before the later first century AD. For some decades, Armenia may have been the dominant regional power (Edwell 2013, 192–5; Kaizer 2017, 70). As the Roman empire increasingly crystallized into clearly defined, directly ruled provinces, the contrast with the very different Arsacid system became starker. The ‘Parthian empire’, the core of which comprised Iran and Mesopotamia with a western royal capital at Ctesiphon on the Tigris, was a much looser entity (Hauser 2012).

17. Russia, China, and the Middle East

2019 ◽  
pp. 394-414
Author(s):  
Roland Dannreuther
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
East Russia ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter addresses the important relationships that are currently evolving between Russia, China, and the Middle East. Russia and China have emerged as increasingly powerful actors in the Middle East and their presence and influence in the region has grown significantly. While both states have had longstanding historical links with the region, the twenty-first-century panorama is a quite distinctive one, with new economic and geopolitical factors driving a return to Middle East and North Africa (MENA). In addition, significant Muslim populations in both countries add another dynamic to contemporary Russian and Chinese relations with MENA. The chapter then identifies the challenges this presents for the United States and the West, and how the states and peoples of the Middle East are responding to the resurgence of Russian and Chinese power in the region.

“The Wizard of Oz and Wicked”

2018 ◽  
pp. 205-222
Author(s):  
Paul R. Laird
Keyword(s):  
Young Woman ◽  
First Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Wizard Of Oz ◽  
Successful Attempt ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
New Interpretation

This chapter brings new insights to Wicked, the most successful attempt to rework Baum’s story since the 1939 movie. Wicked is the biggest musical hit of the early twenty-first century, but its phenomenal success would never have been possible without its close ties to The Wizard of Oz. Based on Gregory Maguire’s novel by the same name that turns L. Frank Baum’s story on its head, the musical Wicked makes the Wicked Witch of the West a misunderstood young woman doing battle with a wizard who is an interloper from another world that has taken over Oz and made the Talking Animals scapegoats for all of the land’s ills. Despite their new interpretation of the familiar tale, the show’s creators wanted to include as many resonances as possible from the famed MGM film, a crusade that took them into difficult legal waters that resulted in unwelcome changes to the show courtesy of lawyers at Universal Pictures, the show’s principal producer. This chapter is a consideration of how Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman, the writers of Wicked, appropriated narrative and musical aspects of Baum’s original book and the 1939 film, where they ran into problems in doing so, and how some of those problems were solved.

Conflicts Within the Anglican Communion

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
First Century ◽  
Sex And Gender ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The West ◽  
Same Sex Couples ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Church

The churches of the Anglican Communion discussed issues of sex and gender throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Arguments about gender focused on the ordination of women to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate. Debates about sexuality covered polygamy, divorce and remarriage, and homosexuality. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, these debates became intensely focused on homosexuality and were particularly fierce as liberals and conservatives responded to openly gay bishops and the blessing and marriage of same-sex couples. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the sex and gender debates had become less acrimonious, the Anglican Communion had not split on these issues as some feared, but the ‘disconnect’ between society and the Church, at least in the West, on issues such as the Church of England’s prevarication on female bishops and opposition to gay marriage, had decreased the Church’s credibility for many.

scholarly journals Coupled Model Simulations of the West African Monsoon System: Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Simulations

2006 ◽  
Vol 19 (15) ◽  
pp. 3681-3703 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kerry H. Cook ◽  
Edward K. Vizy
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
West African Monsoon ◽  
West African ◽  
First Century ◽  
Gulf Of Guinea ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
The West ◽  
African Monsoon ◽  
The Third ◽  
Twenty First Century

Abstract The ability of coupled GCMs to correctly simulate the climatology and a prominent mode of variability of the West African monsoon is evaluated, and the results are used to make informed decisions about which models may be producing more reliable projections of future climate in this region. The integrations were made available by the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison for the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The evaluation emphasizes the circulation characteristics that support the precipitation climatology, and the physical processes of a “rainfall dipole” variability mode that is often associated with dry conditions in the Sahel when SSTs in the Gulf of Guinea are anomalously warm. Based on the quality of their twentieth-century simulations over West Africa in summer, three GCMs are chosen for analysis of the twenty-first century integrations under various assumptions about future greenhouse gas increases. Each of these models behaves differently in the twenty-first-century simulations. One model simulates severe drying across the Sahel in the later part of the twenty-first century, while another projects quite wet conditions throughout the twenty-first century. In the third model, warming in the Gulf of Guinea leads to more modest drying in the Sahel due to a doubling of the number of anomalously dry years by the end of the century. An evaluation of the physical processes that cause these climate changes, in the context of the understanding about how the system works in the twentieth century, suggests that the third model provides the most reasonable projection of the twenty-first-century climate.

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