Alef Is for Allah

Author(s):  
Jamal J. Elias

This book explores the emotional space occupied by children in modern Islamic societies. Focusing on visual representations of children, primarily from modern Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, it examines important concepts ranging from cuteness, innocence, devotion, violence, and sacrifice to emotion, aspiration, virtue, performance, nationhood, community, and gender. It grounds the study of the visual representation of children in a concise treatment of the history of childhood, education, and religion, as well as the national histories of the societies in question. In addition to exploring a topic that has never been studied comparatively before, it extends the boundaries of scholarship on emotion, religion, and visual culture, arguing for the centrality of conceptions of childhood to adult intentionalities at a societal level. It demonstrates the ways in which emotion is enacted in a sociocultural space that one might call an emotional habitus, ecosystem, or an emotional regime. It also uses the concept of an aesthetic social imagination to explain how public emotional acts shape the lives of more than the individual who enacts them. Emotions are kinetic and directional, directed inward at the individual's sense of self at the same time as they are directed at other members of society. This quality allows them to function morally as well as aspirationally.

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Whittle ◽  
Lewis Turner

Gender transformations are normatively understood as somatic, based on surgical reassignment, where the sexed body is aligned with the gender identity of the individual through genital surgery – hence the common lexicon ‘sex change surgery’. We suggest that the UK Gender Recognition Act 2004 challenges what constitutes a ‘sex change’ through the Act's definitions and also the conditions within which legal ‘recognition’ is permitted. The sex/gender distinction, (where sex normatively refers to the sexed body, and gender, to social identity) is demobilised both literally and legally. This paper discusses the history of medico-socio-legal definitions of sex have been developed through decision making processes when courts have been faced with people with gender variance and, in particular, the implications of the Gender Recognition Act for our contemporary legal understanding of sex. We ask, and attempt to answer, has ‘sex’ changed?


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Caroline Mezger

This chapter introduces the book’s key themes, historiographic framework, and research questions. It situates the book at the confluence of studies on National Socialism from a transnational and comparative perspective, experiences of Axis occupation during World War II, minorities and borderland nationalism in Central and Southeastern Europe, and the history of childhood and youth. Upon providing a brief historic overview of the ethnic Germans (Donauschwaben) in northern Yugoslavia’s Vojvodina and outlining the book’s key historiographic contributions, it reflects on the book’s multiscalar approach of interweaving archival, press, and original oral history sources to juxtapose and intertwine different levels of analysis. The chapter suggests that studying childhood and youth mobilization enables insight into larger historic conundrums, such as the interplay between categories like age, (ascribed) nationality, and gender in shaping historical experiences; the interaction between nationalizing forces “from above” and the lived, subjective experience of nationality “from below”; and questions of individual and collective agency in contexts of occupation and war. It presents the book’s main argument, that children and youth confronted with nationalizing projects themselves became agents of nationalization.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-64
Author(s):  
Erin Bartram

ABSTRACTIn the wake of the Civil War, Father Isaac Hecker launched several publishing ventures to advance his dream of a Catholic America, but he and his partners soon found themselves embroiled in a debate with other American Catholics, notably his friend and fellow convert Orestes Brownson, over the “use and abuse of reading.” Although the debate was certainly part of a contemporary conversation about the compatibility of Catholicism and American culture, this essay argues that it was equally rooted in a moment of American anxiety over a shifting social order, a moment when antebellum faith in the individual was being tested by the rights claims of women and Americans of color. Tacitly accepting and internalizing historical claims of intrinsic and through-going Catholic “difference,” claims offered both by American Protestants and American Catholics like Brownson, scholars often presume that debates within American Catholicism reflect “Catholic” concerns first and foremost, qualifying their utility as sources of “American” cultural history. By examining American Catholic discussions of reading, individual liberty, social order, and gender in the 1860s and 1870s, this essay argues that Brownson's arguments against the compatibility of American and Catholic life were in fact far more representative of ascendant ideas in American culture than Hecker's hopeful visions of a Catholic American future made manifest through the power of reading. In doing so, it demonstrates the ways that American Catholicism can be a valuable and complex site for studying the broader history of religion and culture in the United States.


Author(s):  
Gláucia De Oliveira Assis

No final do século XX, a recente emigração de brasileiros para o exterior inseriu o Brasil nos novos fluxos da população mundial. Uma das características desses fluxos é o crescimento da participação feminina. Pesquisas recentes têm demonstrado a importância das mulheres nos fluxos migratórios contemporâneos como articuladoras de redes sociais na migração. Essas redes familiares e de parentesco são fundamentais tanto para aqueles que pretendem empreender a ‘aventura’ de migrar quanto para auxiliar nos momentos da chegada ao local de destino. Este artigo pretende demonstrar que a migração não é resultado apenas de uma escolha ‘racional’, mas de estratégias familiares nas quais homens e mulheres estão inseridos. Para percorrer a trajetória dos emigrantes o trabalho de campo se realizou em dois lugares: a cidade de Criciúma (SC) e a região de Boston, nos Estados Unidos. Os dados coletados a partir de entrevistas e de observação participante têm revelado que as mulheres não apenas esperam por seus maridos ou filhos, mas participam efetivamente do processo, integrando e articulando redes de migração. Os dados também sugerem que a migração provoca rearranjos familiares e de gênero ao longo do processo. Abstract The recent emigration of Brazilians, in late XXth century, has inserted Brazil into the new worldwide population flow. One characteristic of these flows is the growth of women in international migration. In the migration literature women participation in international flows has long been analyzed as subordinated to man, but recent research has illustrated the importance of women in migration flows. This paper intends to demonstrate that migratory process is resulted not only the individual choice, but also social networks (family, kingship, friendship), in which men and women are inserted. The work discusses data from fieldwork in Criciúma (SC) and in the Boston area, in United States. The data emerged from the interviews and participant observation showing that women not only wait for their husbands or children, but also participate in the process integrating and articulating migration networks. The data also made evident the changes in the family and gender relationships, suggesting that the migratory process rearticulate these relationships. This study therefore evidences that other factors, along with the ones of economics nature, contribute for the decision of migrating and make the history of this flow.


2015 ◽  
Vol 58 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 21-55
Author(s):  
Astrid Meier ◽  
Tariq Tell

Environmental history provides a perspective from which we can deepen our understanding of the past because it examines the relationships of people with their material surroundings and the effects of those relationships on the individual as well as the societal level. It is a perspective that holds particular promise for the social and political history of arid and marginal zones, as it contributes to our understanding of the reason some groups are more successful than others in coping with the same environmental stresses. Historians working on the early modern Arab East have only recently engaged with the lively field of global environmental history. After presenting a brief overview of some strands of this research, this article illustrates the potential of this approach by looking closely at a series of conflicts involving Bedouin and other power groups in the southern parts of Bilād al-Shām around the middle of the eighteenth century.


2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-375 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley McAra ◽  
Susan McVie

This article explores the role which formal and informal regulatory orders play in the development of offender identity. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime, it argues that the cultural practices of formal orders (such as those imposed by schools and the police) and informal orders (such as the rules governing peer interactions) mirror each other in respect of their fundamental dynamics – animated primarily by an inclusionary–exclusionary imperative. Formal orders differentiate between categories of young people on the basis of class and suspiciousness. Informal orders differentiate between individuals on the basis of adherence to group norms, territorial sovereignty, and gender appropriate demeanour. Being excluded by either set of orders undermines the capacity of the individual to negotiate, limits autonomy and constrains choice. This renders the individual more likely to absorb identities ascribed to them with damaging consequences in terms of offending behaviour and the individual’s sense of self.


Author(s):  
Ibtissem SMARI ◽  
Ildikó HORTOBÁGYI

"In a multicultural and multilingual world, people negotiate their identities along contextual lines. Online mediated information about countries and cultures build bridges at the individual level and create a sense of “global citizenship” (Hortobagyi 2015; 2017). Languages policies and linguistic landscapes facilitate the exploration of the multilingual texture of a country, thus research in imminently multicultural environments fosters a better understanding of multiple linguistic identities. Situated at the intersection of social and language sciences, drawing on relevant literature and using a comparative approach, the presentation highlights Tunisia’s long history of linguistic and political confrontation since its independence from France (Riguet 1984) and focuses on the educational reforms that have been undertaken, particularly on the various policies and guidelines pertaining to modifying the language policy of the country. Since the 1970s, a significant process of Arabization has been underway, alongside the strengthening of bilingual education, which was launched as early as 1956. Considering that English started to be taught in Tunisian schools shortly after the independence (Battenburg 1997), Tunisian education has always been trilingual with English as the most common foreign language added to Arabic and French. The first years of the 21st century were marked by the introduction of additional foreign languages in secondary education, such as Russian, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German, and Turkish among others. All these policies have allowed Tunisia to access modernity (Messadi 1967 cited in Belazi 1991, 53). Currently, Tunisian Arabic and Berber are languages that have not yet been added to the political agenda. Nevertheless, the return to the standardization of Arabic through teaching, the noticeable decline of the use of French, and the emergence of English as a new alternative, indicate linguistic policies in which multilingualism is becoming the new norm, with manifest representations both at the societal level and in the new media communication."


Author(s):  
Nancy Shoemaker

This introductory chapter discusses why, despite the negative assumptions regarding the islands of Fiji during the nineteenth century, Americans still went there. Indeed, several thousand of them voyaged to Fiji on merchant, whaling, and naval vessels in the decades before British colonization of the islands in 1874. And more than a hundred Americans lived and died there. From a macro perspective, explaining the American presence in Fiji seems simple. Their rationale was economic: Americans went to Fiji to extract resources to sell in China. Fiji became one leg in the U.S.–China trade and a source of great wealth for the American merchants who gambled their fortunes on it. However, a closer inspection reveals that the foot soldiers of early U.S. global expansion, the individual Americans who ventured overseas, did so for more complicated reasons. An assortment of personal ambitions impelled Americans to travel to distant locales. Their motivations, albeit multiple and divergent, often derived from a desire to be respected by others and thereby attain a sense of self-worth. Their strivings to rise in others' estimation influenced the course of Fiji's history and, albeit more subtly, the history of the United States.


1997 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Young-Loveridge

This paper presents my own personal perspective on the challenging behaviour of my son, and my attempt to theorise about that behaviour using the work on ‘temperament’. The history of ‘attention and behaviour problems’ is briefly outlined, culminating in the most recent work on neuropsychological factors. The paper then considers the ways that various approaches assign the blame/responsibility for ‘problems’ to different locations, including the individual child, the family, and the wider social context. Consideration is given also to the connections between ADHD and gender.


2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Sarah Fishman

Since the publication in 1960 of Philippe Ariès’s foundational, if problematic, Centuries of Childhood, the history of childhood has developed into a rich and varied field. At the annual conference of the Western Society for French History in 2018, a call for panelists for a roundtable on the history of childhood expanded into two separate panels ranging from the medieval era through the thirty glorious postwar years. The panelists and the audience grappled with questions about the social construction of age, the ages of childhood, and the challenges of finding sources for a group that left few “ego documents.” Although children per se never exercised political or global power, attention to children clarifies how critical children were to political and international systems. Material generated by children themselves can be difficult to locate, but adults generated plenty of material about children. The intersectionality of the history of childhood with fields like labor history, urban history, the history of the welfare state, and the history of psychology parallels the intersectionality of children themselves, who come from every race, social class, and gender. All humans, it turns out, start out as children.


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