Die frühe Sultanatsarchitektur in Nordindien im 12.–14. Jahrhundert als herrschaftspolitisches, identitätsstiftendes Ausdrucksmittel im Spannungsfeld wechselnder Legitimierungsstrategien

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-28
Author(s):  
Daniel Redlinger
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Historical Images ◽  
Visual Systems ◽  
Friday Mosque

Abstract The following paper discusses how the experience and perception of contingency and strategies to cope with it are evident in the architecture of the Muslim ruling class during the early Delhi Sultanate (1190–1320). The discussed building is the most important Friday Mosque in this context, a quasi-visualized symbol of the thematic concept of rulership for the new Muslim political elite. This ruling class established itself in Northern India in the late 12th century within a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and socially heterogeneous society, in which extremely different forms of communication, social hierarchies, worldviews, religious concepts, social norms and perceptions of historical images and experiences met. From the 13th century onwards, the countless immigrants and refugees from Persian-speaking areas had a remarkable influence on the local culture which was already multifaceted due to the various indigenous Northern Indian conceptions of life, faith and perception. Examining the architecture of the mosque as well as its decoration and systems of inscriptions, it will be shown how these almost text-like visual systems where adapted and used by different rulers as part of their diverging strategies of legitimization of their rule and how they created visualized reference systems to promote a coherent, specific historical narrative and a visual experience and language of a meaningful collective past to which all social and religious groups in Northern India could relate.

scholarly journals Returning urban political elites to the research agenda: the case of the Southern Low Countries (c. 1350 – c. 1550)

Urban History ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 568-588
Author(s):  
Frederik Buylaert ◽  
Jelten Baguet ◽  
Janna Everaert
Keyword(s):  
Special Section ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
High Turnover ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of

AbstractThis article provides a comparative analysis of four large towns in the Southern Low Countries between c. 1350 and c. 1550. Combining the data on Ghent, Bruges and Antwerp – each of which is discussed in greater detail in the articles in this special section – with recent research on Bruges, the authors argue against the historiographical trend in which the political history of late medieval towns is supposedly dominated by a trend towards oligarchy. Rather than a closure of the ruling class, the four towns show a high turnover in the social composition of the political elite, and a consistent trend towards aristocracy, in which an increasingly large number of aldermen enjoyed noble status. The intensity of these trends differed from town to town, and was tied to different institutional configurations as well as different economic and political developments in each of the four towns.

Turkey

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Turkish Republic ◽  
Modern Development ◽  
Recurrent Theme

Turkey is a country that has been the outcome of domestic and global political, economic, societal challenges over two thousand years of massive transformations, from the nomadic Asian steppe to the Mediterranean agrarian world, to Islam, and to modernity, as well as from the cosmopolitan Ottoman ruling class to the modern Turkish nationalist elite and, recently, globalization and identity politics. Turkey’s history has been marked by confusion about the Ottoman Empire, which has been viewed as too European/Roman to be considered distinctly Asian and too Eastern to be considered European. Its successful centuries-long rule in Southeastern Europe has been a matter of curiosity, as has its turbulent modernization, which started pretty soon after the French Revolution. Its heir, the Turkish Republic, has been a typical modern state in accordance with the European political geography. Yet another recurrent theme has perhaps been the curious paradox of strong state and low state capacity. No matter whether foreign or domestic policy, economy or politics, history or present-day, (self-)perceptions and studies have oscillated between a strong Turkish state and its lower capacity on such issues as institutions, identity cleavages, class, gender, regional inequalities, protracted poverty and deprivation, and so on. Turkey has often been thought of as a latecomer to modern development, and this tension of missing and catching universal development has often been a recurrent theme since the Ottoman modernization in the 1830s or the proud new Republic’s substantial reforms in the 1920s, and at a level ranging from everyday life conversations to the highest level of official discourse. The political elite have often failed in state-society relations, but the country has often been subject to discussions on democratic consolidation; the economy has often been unstable, but it is still a member of the G20. In sum, the Republic of Turkey has been but one manifestation of world history: a modern state heir to a universal agrarian empire that disappeared like its fellows, a swift authoritarian modernization in the interwar years whose heritage still occupy minds, a Cold War security state that has developed in America-centered global capitalism, a post–Cold War state of neoliberal globalization trying to find its way in the turbulences of world politics and economy, with a failed desire of leadership in its neighborhood. Accordingly, the more than eighty sources cited and annotated here guide the readers through various manifestations of Turkey within historical, political, cultural, societal, economic, and foreign policy (with focus on the regional and the European dimensions) contexts. All in all, Turkish society has always been able to cope with all the above-mentioned challenges and manifestations, but it has been often very difficult for those earning and enjoying life with their honest labor.

Brazilian Historiography in the 19th Century

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thiago Lima Nicodemo ◽  
Pedro Afonso Cristovão dos Santos ◽  
Mateus Henrique de Faria Pereira
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Independence ◽  
Personal Archives ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Public Archives ◽  
The 19Th Century

Brazilian historiography in the 19th century stands for a variety of practices and ways of doing history. In the beginning of the century, the writing of history assumed a specific color after the arrival of the Portuguese Court in 1808, who were escaping the invasion of Portugal by Napoleonic troops. After political independence from Portugal (1822), this writing had to deal with the questions that occupied the minds of its authors, people mostly close to or part of the political elite of the country. Forging a nationality through history, dealing with the tensions between local affiliations and the nation-state, placing indigenous and African peoples in the historical narrative, combining an exemplary history with future-oriented thinking, and using history for international relations issues (such as boundaries disputes) were among the motivations and preoccupations involved in that work. Underlying it all, the myriad ways of writing history in the 19th century had to do with the ways the authors circulated among a world of public archives in the making, personal archives available through certain connections, booksellers, publishers, oral informants, and a changing community of readers and critics that were conforming and disputing rules of acceptability as to what could be considered a work of history. Thinking about the Brazilian historiography of the 1800s as a way of combining practices of archiving, reading, copying, writing, and evaluating can help us understand the remarkable variety of histories and historiographical works written in the period.

State and Class in Kenya – Notes on the Cohesion of the Ruling Class

1984 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 559-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Currie ◽  
Larry Ray
Keyword(s):  
Vice President ◽  
General Election ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Class Context ◽  
Run Up ◽  
Consistent Support

This article attempts to situate the recent power struggle between President Daniel arap Moi and the ex-Minister for Constitutional Affairs, Charles Njonjo, in the context of class antagonisms in the Kenyan state. Over the past few years, Moi survived a number of crises partly as a result of the consistent support he has received from Njonjo. During the run-up to the general election of 26 September 1983, however, Moi was hoping that he could mobilise sufficient support amongst Kenya's political élite to be able to dispense with Njonjo, and thereby remove the only politician powerful enough to pose any threat to his leadership. SinceJomo Kenyatta's death in 1978, Njonjo had been regarded as the third member of a ruling triumvirate, with Moi and Vice-President Mwai Kibaki. In the following analysis, we examine the class context for conflict with the figure most closely associated with the conservative, capitalistic, and pro-British tendency in Kenyan nationalism.

The World of Labour in Mughal India (c.1500–1750)

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (S19) ◽  
pp. 245-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shireen Moosvi
Keyword(s):  
Caste System ◽  
Market Mechanism ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Village Community ◽  
Northern India ◽  
Wage Rates ◽  
The World ◽  
Manual Labour ◽  
The Village ◽  
The City

SummaryThis article addresses two separate but interlinked questions relating to India in Mughal times (sixteenth to early eighteenth century). First, the terms on which labour was rendered, taking perfect market conditions as standard; and, second, the perceptions of labour held by the higher classes and the labourers themselves. As to forms of labour, one may well describe conditions as those of an imperfect market. Slave labour was restricted largely to domestic service. Rural wage rates were depressed owing to the caste system and the “village community” mechanism. In the city, the monopoly of resources by the ruling class necessarily depressed wages through the market mechanism itself. While theories of hierarchy were dominant, there are indications sometimes of a tolerant attitude towards manual labour and the labouring poor among the dominant classes. What seems most striking is the defiant assertion of their status in relation to God and society made on behalf of peasants and workers in northern India in certain religious cults in the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries.

scholarly journals The Interminable Transition; An Analysis of the Electoral Behavior in Albania (1991-2017)

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 129
Author(s):  
Kledja Lazebeu
Keyword(s):  
Transition Process ◽  
Electoral Behavior ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
New Phase ◽  
Difficult Transition

Albania has been led by a communist regime, characterized by repression and isolationism for over 45 years. The transition, started at the ’90 toward a democratic system and to an open society based on the occidental model couldn’t be accomplished in a fast and bloodless way. There were too many reasons to explain this difficult transition, but just to mention, must be considered the absence of the democratic culture of the entire political ruling class (elite) (leadership). The transition process toward democracy in Albania began when the communist regime entered into crisis and its political elite (leadership) proclaimed the intention to open a new phase and to extend significantly freedom and rights. Starting from 1990 began to fail the obstacles that prohibited, till that time, the expression of the freedom, the disagreement and the pluralism. This transition process was characterized by its multiplicity, as the political changes was correlated with economic, cultural and social changes. Immediately after 1990, Albania had to face many challenges, but the most important concerned the institution of a new democratic order and the creation of a market economy, without, however, that this process was accompanied by a structural reform of the institutional framework. There is necessary to consider the communist heredity, while undertaking efforts to achieve a sufficient level of democracy. The heredity of the past means to consider dissimilar features like values, identity, standards, institutions, élite, behaviors and practices, that survived the transition and affected the later aspects, encouraging some changes, and hindering others.The communist regime let behind a flat socio-political landscape, a weak civil society, a fragile law domain, turbulent political coalitions and main political tendencies compromised. The experts that study this period state that Albania has undergone one of the most turbulent transformations at the post-communist world. There are, particularly, three dramatic moments that shook from the basis its institutions: a) the collapse of the communist regime at 1991-1992; b) the crisis of the financial pyramids at 1997; c) the influx of half million refugees from Kosovo in 1999. So, the transition process cannot be completely understood without considering the role of the old and new political elites, the mechanisms that regulates the internal activities of the parties, and the structure of the electoral behavior.

The two-visual-systems hypothesis and the perspectival features of visual experience

2015 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 225-233 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert T. Foley ◽  
Robert L. Whitwell ◽  
Melvyn A. Goodale
Keyword(s):  
Visual Experience ◽  
Visual Systems ◽  
Two Visual Systems

scholarly journals Heroic Masculinity in Post-Soviet Ukraine: Cossacks, UPA and “Svoboda”

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tetyana Bureychak ◽  
Olena Petrenko
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Hegemonic Masculinity ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Common Trend ◽  
Historical Periods

<p class="EW-abstract"><strong>Abstract:</strong> Revisiting the national past and searching for new heroes has become a common trend in many post-communist states, including Ukraine. An aspect that commonly remains invisible when imagining national heroes is gender. Cossacks and fighters of the UPA (<em>Ukrains'ka povstans'ka armiia</em>; Ukrainian Insurgent Army) exemplify some of the most common historical models of Ukrainian heroes. Although the two warrior groups represent rather different historical periods and are treated as national heroes in different ways, this paper seeks to uncover commonalities between them, while pointing out their specificities. In particular, the analysis here looks at the mechanisms that mythologize and naturalize Cossacks and the UPA as an integral part of the current discourses on national identity and hegemonic masculinity. Separately, we focus on the role played by the far-right party, the All-Ukrainian Union “Freedom” (“Svoboda”) in these processes. The paper also addresses broader processes of renegotiation of the national historical narrative and promotion of its androcentric heroic version, which strengthen<strong> </strong>gender neotraditionalism and social hierarchies in post-Soviet Ukraine.</p><p class="EW-Keyword">Keywords: Masculinity, Cossacks, Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), Gender</p>

The primacy of patrimony: kinship strategies of the political elite of Turin in the late Middle Ages (1340–1490)

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-321 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTA GRAVELA
Keyword(s):  
Family History ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Ruling Class ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Urban Elite ◽  
Crucial Part

ABSTRACTCombining family history and the analysis of political elites, this article explores the development of the urban elite of Turin (Piedmont) in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, through an analysis of the transformations in the kinships forming the ruling class, with particular regard to their structures and strategies for social and economic reproduction. The deep changes that affected this group and eventually led to its extinction and replacement by a new elite are addressed. It is argued that, alongside institutional rearrangements determined by the Dukes of Savoy, the inheritance strategies pursued by the kinships in order to preserve their economic and political role played a crucial part in their demise.

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