The New Wars: On the Return of a Historical Model

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 181-216
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
International Crime ◽  
Regulatory System ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
Criminal Violence ◽  
New Wars ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Historical Model

The article is devoted to the development of the theory of “new wars.” The author maintains that the system for regulating war developed after the Peace of Westphalia (1648) has ceased to function under current conditions. The structural changes introduced in the new wars are: 1) re-commercialization of military violence, which once again turns war into an instrument for advancing certain (not necessarily political) interests; 2) merging military and criminal violence as warlords and their entourages make their living by profiting from war and forge alliances with international crime; 3) using strategic asymmetries in which the party with inferior power does not try to capture territory and win recognition by the state, but instead uses the expansion of the war (in space and time) to obtain advantages. The author analyses the Westphalian conception of sovereignty in which war and peace are understood as equally valid states for political aggregates. The transition from one to the another comes through an exercise of the will of the sovereign, whose right to wage war (jus ad bellum) is not limited to external campaigns (as the power of the Emperor or the Pope was in the Middle Ages). However, as war became accepted as a state monopoly, there was a codification of the rules of conducting it (jus in bello) that resulted in the adoption of the Geneva and Hague Conventions. The author also analyses the Thirty Years’ War as a typological model which differs from the Westphalian type by not being governed by a unitary regulatory system. The extraordinary duration and brutality of this type of conflict comes from blurring the boundaries between war and peace and between inter-state and civil war. The characteristic features of this non-Westphalian historical model are found in some modern wars, especially in the Middle East. The author develops this analogy and recommends using historical experience in order to prevent the conflicts in the Middle East in from merging into a single devastating war.

The Making of the Medieval Middle East

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Tannous
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Religious History ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Christian Communities ◽  
Conversion To Islam ◽  
History Of ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
The Middle Ages

In the second half of the first millennium CE, the Christian Middle East fractured irreparably into competing churches and Arabs conquered the region, setting in motion a process that would lead to its eventual conversion to Islam. This book argues that key to understanding these dramatic religious transformations are ordinary religious believers, often called “the simple” in late antique and medieval sources. Largely agrarian and illiterate, these Christians outnumbered Muslims well into the era of the Crusades, and yet they have typically been invisible in our understanding of the Middle East's history. What did it mean for Christian communities to break apart over theological disagreements that most people could not understand? How does our view of the rise of Islam change if we take seriously the fact that Muslims remained a demographic minority for much of the Middle Ages? In addressing these and other questions, the book provides a sweeping reinterpretation of the religious history of the medieval Middle East. The book draws on a wealth of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic sources to recast these conquered lands as largely Christian ones whose growing Muslim populations are properly understood as converting away from and in competition with the non-Muslim communities around them.

scholarly journals Electronic Circular Dichroism of the Cas9 Protein and gRNA:Cas9 Ribonucleoprotein Complex

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 2937
Author(s):  
Monika Halat ◽  
Magdalena Klimek-Chodacka ◽  
Jagoda Orleanska ◽  
Malgorzata Baranska ◽  
Rafal Baranski
Keyword(s):  
Circular Dichroism ◽  
Conformational Changes ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Electronic Circular Dichroism ◽  
Guide Rna ◽  
Cas9 Protein ◽  
Rnp Complex ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Circular Dichroïsm

The Streptococcus pyogenes Cas9 protein (SpCas9), a component of CRISPR-based immune system in microbes, has become commonly utilized for genome editing. This nuclease forms a ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex with guide RNA (gRNA) which induces Cas9 structural changes and triggers its cleavage activity. Here, electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectroscopy was used to confirm the RNP formation and to determine its individual components. The ECD spectra had characteristic features differentiating Cas9 and gRNA, the former showed a negative/positive profile with maxima located at 221, 209 and 196 nm, while the latter revealed positive/negative/positive/negative pattern with bands observed at 266, 242, 222 and 209 nm, respectively. For the first time, the experimental ECD spectrum of the gRNA:Cas9 RNP complex is presented. It exhibits a bisignate positive/negative ECD couplet with maxima at 273 and 235 nm, and it differs significantly from individual spectrum of each RNP components. Additionally, the Cas9 protein and RNP complex retained biological activity after ECD measurements and they were able to bind and cleave DNA in vitro. Hence, we conclude that ECD spectroscopy can be considered as a quick and non-destructive method of monitoring conformational changes of the Cas9 protein as a result of Cas9 and gRNA interaction, and identification of the gRNA:Cas9 RNP complex.

The Great War of the Postcards

2021 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-568
Author(s):  
Johann Strauss
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Book Illustrations ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War

This article examines the functions and the significance of picture postcards during World War I, with particular reference to the war in the Ottoman Lands and the Balkans, or involving the Turkish Army in Galicia. After the principal types of Kriegspostkarten – sentimental, humorous, propaganda, and artistic postcards (Künstlerpostkarten) – have been presented, the different theatres of war (Balkans, Galicia, Middle East) and their characteristic features as they are reflected on postcards are dealt with. The piece also includes aspects such as the influence of Orientalism, the problem of fake views, and the significance and the impact of photographic postcards, portraits, and photo cards. The role of postcards in book illustrations is demonstrated using a typical example (F. C. Endres, Die Türkei (1916)). The specific features of a collection of postcards left by a German soldier who served in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq during World War I will be presented at the end of this article.

World War I: A War (and Peace?) for the Middle East

2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 776-785
Author(s):  
M. F. Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
War And Peace ◽  
World War

scholarly journals Weber’s ‘Ackerbürgerstadt’ in the Nineteenth Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 140-165
Author(s):  
Maximilian Martsch
Keyword(s):  
Economic System ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Socioeconomic Development ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Agricultural Sector ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Small Towns ◽  
Northwestern Part ◽  
Early Modern History ◽  
The City

In his treatise “The City”, Max Weber introduced the concept of the Ackerbürgerstadt (agrarian city), a type of city whose economic system is primarily rooted in agricultural production. Since then, Weber’s concept has been frequently applied to historical studies on urban economies, especially in the Middle Ages and early modern history. However, by taking a closer look at the socioeconomic fabric of small towns in the prelude to industrialization, many characteristics of Weber’s Ackerbürgerstadt still seem to be applicable. The paper investigates the development of the economic system of the rural small town of Zwettl, situated in the northwestern part of Lower Austria. Zwettl and its surrounding region were left mostly untouched by economic progress. The city had one of the lowest growth rates in Lower Austria and was excluded from the infrastructural expansions of the industrial period. However, Zwettl did not dwindle into a remnant of pre-industrial times. Changes in the social and economic fabric happened on a more subtle level. Structural changes, for example in the agricultural sector, impacted long-term business opportunities, household management, and market development in Zwettl—for better or worse. The paper offers a case study-based examination of Weber’s Ackerbürgerstadt. It questions the rigid separation between urban and household economy, as well as the functional distinction between the city and its hinterland. Thus, the paper provides a contribution to the historical exploration of the socioeconomic development of small towns in the rural periphery.

scholarly journals Between health and pleasure

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 182
Author(s):  
Hélène Jawhara Piñer
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Healthy Food ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Good For ◽  
Medical Treatises ◽  
Medical Recommendations

Between pleasure and health, why should we have to choose? Though this combination did not mainly concern the culinary tradition of the Christian Middle Ages, on the other hand, it fits fully into an Arabic tradition of both East and West of the said period. In the late Middle Ages under Islamic domination, doctors, agronomists or botanists, offer –through multiple medical treatises on food or agriculture–, culinary recipes good for health. Thus, for Ibn Rush, Ibn Rāzī, Avicenne or Maimonides –as for many others scholars–, foodstuffs play a key role in its benefits for health. In this way, cookbooks occupy pride of place in this alliance between health and cooking. Therefore, the culinary recipes of half a dozen cookbooks of the Muslim Middle East dating back to the 10th-14th centuries, suggest this combination: listen to your body, take pleasure when you eat, do it according to your health and eat in a measured way. Cookbooks of the Iberian Peninsula written in Arabic in the Dar al-Islam testify to the transmission –from the Muslim Middle East– of the medico-culinary tradition based on humoral theory and culinary practices. This paper will focus on the place occupied by dietetic in the first known cookbook of the Iberian Peninsula: the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ [The cookbook]. Its anonymous author quote Galen and Hippocrates that, therefore, inscribes the Kitāb al-ṭabīẖ in the influence of the Greek dietetic tradition. Furthermore, the knowledge of the anonymous author concerning medicine, dietetic, and cuisine is undeniable. Through half a thousand recipes, I will first present a reflection on this source commonly named “The Cookbook”, and then underscore the proportion of dishes containing medical recommendations. Then I will offer an approach to frequently used foodstuffs in the recipes where health seems to take precedence over the pleasure of eating the dish. Curing the illness, avoiding it, take pleasure, what is the goal of the culinary recipes? Thus, the aim is to identify both the most common dietetics recommendations and the disease that seem the most important to avoid. Finally, I will provide a glimpse of one of the most characteristic culinary recipes of this alliance health/pleasure that can offer the Andalusian cookbook. A brief reflection can be conducted on the current phenomenon that shows the willingness to return to healthy food which recommendations can be found in the cookbooks dating from the Middle Ages.

Structural changes in the modern urban lifestyle

2020 ◽  
pp. 37-42
Author(s):  
Madina Arif kyzy Mekhdieva
Keyword(s):  
Structural Changes ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
Ancient History ◽  
Geographical Environment ◽  
Urban Settlements ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Historical Nature

The article deals with the issues of urban settlements and urban lifestyle from the point of view of structural changes under the influence of transformational processes in the development of productive forces, tools and means of production. The author notes the historical nature of this process associated with the geographical environment, resources and migration flows under the influence of the development of capitalist relations. Some peculiarities of lifestyle in Baku as a city with an ancient history, with a number of characteristic features of a distinctive way of life, combining the traditions of several generations and different civilizations, are analyzed.

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