scholarly journals ISLAM AS ADAT OR ADAT AS ISLAM? REEXAMINING MINANGKABAU IDENTITY IN CONTEMPORARY GLOBAL CONTEXT

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-218
Author(s):  
Mufdil Tuhri

This article aims to know why “adat bersendi Syara, Syara bersendi kitabullah” is so important today for Minangkabau community? In this sense, why is Islam so important to the Minangkabau community? Is it true that the need to reemerging Islam in Minangkabau as it was in the early days, was running similarly or was deviating from its direction and purpose? I will put this on the grassroots view as reflected from the various academic resources of the Minangkabau history of the pre-Colonial and Colonial Islam which became the basis

Author(s):  
Gus Van Harten

Governments are rightly discussing reform of investment treaties, and of the powerful system of ‘investor–state dispute settlement’ (ISDS) upon which they rest. It is therefore important to be clear about the crux of the problem. ISDS treaties are flawed fundamentally because they firmly institute wealth-based inequality under international law. That is, they use cross-border ownership of assets, mostly by multinationals and billionaires, as the gateway to extraordinary protections, while denying equivalent safeguards to those who lack the wealth required to qualify as foreign investors. The treaties thus have the main effect of safeguarding an awe-inspiring set of rights and privileges for the ultra-wealthy at the expense of countries and their populations. This book shows how ISDS came to explode in a global context of extreme concentration of wealth and of widespread poverty. The history of early ISDS treaties is highlighted to show their ties to decolonization and, sometimes, extreme violence and authoritarianism. Focusing on early ISDS lawsuits and rulings reveals how a small group of lawyers and arbitrators worked to create the legal foundations for massive growth of ISDS since 2000. ISDS-based protections are examined in detail to demonstrate how they give exceptional advantages to the wealthy. Examples are offered of how the protections have been used to reconfigure state decision making and shift sovereign minds in favour of foreign investors. Finally, the ongoing efforts of governments to reform ISDS are surveyed, with a call to go further or, even better, to withdraw from the treaties.


2022 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Torkil Lauesen

Abstract This article tells the story of an organization based in Copenhagen, Denmark, which supported the Liberation struggle in the Third World from 1969 until April 1989. It focus on the support to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (pflp). The story is told in a historical and global context. The text explains the strategy and tactic behind the support-work. It explains how the different forms of solidarity work developed over two decades (for a more detailed account of the history of the group, see Kuhn, 2014). Finally, the article offers an evaluation of the past and a perspective on the future struggle for a socialist Palestine.


2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 215-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
RYAN GINGERAS

AbstractAlthough the Turkish mafia is increasingly recognised as a powerful force in the ongoing trade in weapons, narcotics and people in Europe and beyond, there are few critical histories of organised crime's origins in Turkey. Rather than present some pedantic general survey of the history of organized crime in modern Turkey, this essay attempts to address two broader critical points of departure. First, how did Anatolia's journey from imperial to republican rule impact, and how was it impacted by, criminal gangs? Second, how do we situate the experience of modern gangs in Turkey in a global context? In attempting to answer these questions, this paper looks at the development of criminal syndicates among Laz migrants in the greater Istanbul area during the first half of the twentieth century. The case of the Laz shows particularly how war, migration, imperial politics, urbanisation and the rise of the international drug trade shaped the parallel development of organised crime and the nascent Turkish Republic.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-76
Author(s):  
John Donoghue

The differences between slavery now and then are less important than the historical links that bind them, links in an awful chain of bondage that bind the history of the transatlantic slave trade from Africa to the resurgence of slavery in Africa today. As this article illustrates, nowhere is this truer, both in historical and contemporary terms, than in the Congo. The links binding the Congo to the history of human bondage were first forged in the crucible of early modern capitalism and they have been made fast by the proliferation of “free market reform” today, which despite the fundamentalist cant of its advocates, has hardly proven to be a force of human liberation; instead, placing the last 500 years of the Congo region in global context, we can see how capitalism has proven to be the world’s greatest purveyor of human bondage. The article concludes with an argument that the reconstruction of civil society in the Democratic Republic of Congo after decades of war, dictatorship, and neo-colonial rule depends crucially on the continued success of an already impressive Congolese abolitionist movement. Without making an end to slavery, once and for all, civil society can hardly prosper in a country where slavery has historically brought about its destruction.


Author(s):  
Nadia Fahmy-Eid

In both Quebec and Canada as a whole, the history of women’s education is no longer a new appearance on the historiographical scene. As a field of research, this history has developed considerably in the last twenty years and can no longer be regarded as unknown territory. Whether it involves educational levels, specific educational paths, institutions, or programs intended for women, research has progressed sufficiently to allow an overview of this crucial component of women’s history to begin to emerge. As a result of such progress, henceforth no synthesis of the history of education worthy of the name can afford to ignore women’s education. However, there is a big difference between piecemeal integration and wholesale integration into the global context to which a synthesis refers and from which the overall perspective emerges. This raises the issue of the conditions necessary for such an integration. This paper examines a number of recent works in Canadian history and reflects on their treatment of the history of women’s education and history more generally, and the implications for the future.


Author(s):  
Ернст Вагнер

The first part of this paper asks how European art education traditionally positions itself despite an ever-changing world, mainly in respect to the question how to teach cultural heritage. Focussing the history of art we can see that teaching the canon connected with development narratives is still dominant. But some trends can be observed that open the chance to further develop those traditions, e.g. focussing intercultural entanglements, transcultural understandings of ‘objects’ and including the issue of power. These trends try to provide answers to today's challenges. The inquiry finally leads to an analytical grid as a model to understand contemporary complexities in a better way. In the middle section, this is discussed in more detail using a concrete example, the political demands for the return of cultural heritage, the Benin bronzes that were stolen by British colonialists in Nigeria in the 19th century and are now mainly in European museums. It gets clear that the application of the model – developed in the first part – to this example reveals its limits, as unsolvable problems occur. The case study of the Benin bronzes triggers a set of new questions that are becoming increasingly important for art education – at least in Germany – but which have hardly been asked so far. Examples are: Who speaks? In which language? With whom? Who owns? Is negation a model for intercultural dialogue? Etcetera. In the last part, this set of questions is posed to a concrete international project with partners in Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa that the author is co-ordinating at the Art of Fine Academy in Munich. The set of questions is used to critically explore this project in a way that could also be transferred to any other project in the field of art and cultural education in formal and non-formal settings.


2019 ◽  
pp. 11-18
Author(s):  
Michael A. Gomez

This chapter discusses the consistent omission of early and medieval Africa in world and imperial histories. West Africa is certainly left out of the narrative of early human endeavor, and only tends to be mentioned, with brevity, in conjunction with European imperialism. Nevertheless, substantial archaeological work has been underway in West Africa for decades, particularly in the middle Niger valley. For it was during the period of the Shang, Chou, Shin, Han, and Tang dynasties of China, the Vedic period in India, and the Mayans in central America, that another urban-based civilization flourished in West Africa, in the Middle Niger region. The chapter then considers the history of civilization in the Middle Niger, which is a study of the multiple ways in which communities continually adjust to and engage with one of the more “variable and unpredictable” environments in the world. Indeed, the story of the Middle Niger connects directly with the celestial preoccupations of big history in that much of its climatic variability is explained by slight alterations in solar radiation, produced in turn by the intricacies of the sun's cyclical patterns.


Author(s):  
Sameen Masood ◽  
Muhammad Farooq

It is believed that the economic participation of women in Pakistan has been intensively affected by an enduring male-capitalist social system. Moreover, the history of gender discrimination has been linked with the medieval cultural values that uplifted and empowered men over women in every sphere of life, especially in the economic realm. A typical case is believed to be the Pashtun culture. This chapter investigated indigenous values of Pashtun culture where women are underrepresented in the economy. Women did not see themselves as underprivileged. Rather, they perceived themselves as a vital and prestigious part of the family and the wider Pashtun society. For educated women in Pashtun society, the values system is guided by social structure, which is accounted for by stability and unity in society. Cultural values are operationalized as the mechanism of division of labor. The findings redefine female empowerment and propose a new paradigm in the global context. The indigenous value system guides the social structure which leads to stability and unity in the society.


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