Transnational Social Engineering Project of Turkish Islamists

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ihsan Yilmaz

Eurostudia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hélène Thibault

This article investigates the effects of the Soviet social engineering project and forced secularization in Central Asia. Emphasis is placed on the ideological foundations of Marxism-Leninism, its stance on atheism, its holistic character, and its ideological exclusivity. The article details the measures taken by authorities to eradicate religious beliefs during the seventy years of Soviet rule. Taking the case of Tajikistan, it highlights the remaining influence of Soviet policies on state-religion relations by reviewing the functions and responsibilities of current regulatory institutions as well as laws and official discourses framing religious practices.



Transfers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 250-269
Author(s):  
Olga Povoroznyuk

The construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) in East Siberia and the Russian Far East in the 1970s and 1980s was the largest technological and social engineering project of late socialism. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the BAM was dogged by economic bust, decline, and public disillusionment. BAM-2, a recently launched state program of technological modernization, aims to complete a second railway track. The project elicits memories as well as new hopes and expectations, especially among “builders of the BAM.” This article explores continuity and change between BAM-1 and BAM-2. It argues that the reconstruction efforts of the postsocialist state are predetermined by the durability of the infrastructure as a materialization of collective identities, memories, and emotions.



2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 351-369 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURA ALMAGOR

This article demonstrates the connection between the ideology and activities of the Jewish Territorialist Movement and broader geopolitical trends and discourses during the late interwar and immediate post-war period. The Territorialists, active from 1934 within the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonisation, were representative of such contemporary trends and discourses, especially those connected to prevailing approaches to peoplehood, territory and space. The Freelanders relied on accepted notions and practices such as colonialism and colonisation, ‘whiteness’, race, biopolitics and agro-industrial science, as well as (empty) spaces and un(der)developed territories. The Territorialists’ alignment with geopolitics makes the movement's little studied history a relevant chapter in the larger story of Jewish political behaviour. Moreover, the continuities in Territorialism's aspired social engineering project help to problematise the notion of 1945 as a turning point in twentieth century geopolitical thinking.



2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
STEPHANIE QUINN

AbstractThis article uses the copper mining town Tsumeb to examine urban infrastructure, ethnicity, and African political solidarities in apartheid Namibia. To translate apartheid to Namibia, South Africa re-planned Namibian towns to reinforce colonial divisions between two classes of African laborers: mostly Ovambo migrant laborers from northern Namibia and Angola and, secondly, ethnically diverse laborers from the zone of colonial settlement and investment, the Police Zone. Housing and infrastructure were key to this social engineering project, serving as a conduit for official and company ideas about ‘Ovambo’ and Police Zone laborers. Yet Africans’ uses of infrastructure and ethnic discourses challenged, and provoked debates about the boundaries of urban social and political belonging. Between the 1971–2 general strike of northern contract workers and the 1987 strike against the multinational Tsumeb Corporation Limited, which involved northern contract workers and community members, Africans built a political community that challenged both company and colonial state.



Transfers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 250-269
Author(s):  
Olga Povoroznyuk

Abstract The construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) in East Siberia and the Russian Far East in the 1970s and 1980s was the largest technological and social engineering project of late socialism. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the BAM was dogged by economic bust, decline, and public disillusionment. BAM-2, a recently launched state program of technological modernization, aims to complete a second railway track. The project elicits memories as well as new hopes and expectations, especially among “builders of the BAM.” This article explores continuity and change between BAM-1 and BAM-2. It argues that the reconstruction efforts of the postsocialist state are predetermined by the durability of the infrastructure as a materialization of collective identities, memories, and emotions.



2011 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Senem Aslan

AbstractThis article analyzes the exercise of state authority in Kurdish areas in the early Turkish Republic and discusses the state's ineffectiveness in dominating these areas. It argues that the mere existence of a highly ambitious social-engineering project, increased state presence in the region, and military power does not mean high levels of state capacity. Based on primary documents, this article discusses the problems of autonomy, coherence, and implementation that the Turkish state encountered in its nation-building project. It shows how the state's ideological rigidities and its shortage of resources and dedicated personnel undermined its capacity to control and shape the Kurdish areas. While the state attempted to regulate citizens’ private lives in Kurdish areas, the local society also tried to mold state employees in accordance with its own interests. A blurred boundary between the state and society was one of the unintended consequences of increased state presence in everyday life.



Author(s):  
Luigi Tomba

This article looks at the factors that contributed to the production of a Chinese middle class during the reform period and to the role that a growing group of big spenders and consumers play for China’s economic growth and political stability. It argues that a dramatic status enhancement for wage-earning Chinese professionals was among the major determinants of social change in the late 1990s and that this process happened despite the market more than because of it. The ongoing development of a high-consuming urban society in China has been as much the outcome of the social engineering project of the contemporary reformist state and its agencies as it has been a consequence of the opening up of the economy and society.



2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qina Yan ◽  
Praveen Kumar ◽  
Yunqiang Wang ◽  
Yali Zhao ◽  
Henry Lin ◽  
...  

Abstract Massive gully land consolidation projects, launched in China’s Loess Plateau, aim to restore 2667 $$\mathrm{km}^2$$ km 2 agricultural lands in total by consolidating 2026 highly eroded gullies. This effort represents a social engineering project where the economic development and livelihood of the farming families are closely tied to the ability of these emergent landscapes to provide agricultural services. Whether these ‘time zero’ landscapes have the resilience to provide a sustainable soil condition such as soil organic carbon (SOC) content remains unknown. By studying two watersheds, one of which is a control site, we show that the consolidated gully serves as an enhanced carbon sink, where the magnitude of SOC increase rate (1.0 $$\mathrm{g\,C}/\mathrm{m}^2/\mathrm{year}$$ g C / m 2 / year ) is about twice that of the SOC decrease rate (− 0.5 $$\mathrm{g\,C}/\mathrm{m}^2/\mathrm{year}$$ g C / m 2 / year ) in the surrounding natural watershed. Over a 50-year co-evolution of landscape and SOC turnover, we find that the dominant mechanisms that determine the carbon cycling are different between the consolidated gully and natural watersheds. In natural watersheds, the flux of SOC transformation is mainly driven by the flux of SOC transport; but in the consolidated gully, the transport has little impact on the transformation. Furthermore, we find that extending the surface carbon residence time has the potential to efficiently enhance carbon sequestration from the atmosphere with a rate as high as 8 $$\mathrm{g\,C}/\mathrm{m}^2/\mathrm{year}$$ g C / m 2 / year compared to the current 0.4 $$\mathrm{g\,C}/\mathrm{m}^2/\mathrm{year}$$ g C / m 2 / year . The success for the completion of all gully consolidation would lead to as high as 26.67 $$\mathrm{Gg\,C}/\mathrm{year}$$ Gg C / year sequestrated into soils. This work, therefore, not only provides an assessment and guidance of the long-term sustainability of the ‘time zero’ landscapes but also a solution for sequestration $$\hbox {CO}_2$$ CO 2 into soils.



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