The Political Environment of the Cities of Northern Kazakhstan at the Cusp of the 19th-20th Centuries

Cities of the northern part of Kazakhstan at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries had played the role of administrative units for a long period; however, the gradual development of the urban environment and the integration of the cities of the national outskirts into the system of socio-economic relations of the empire led to the formation cooperation of a citizen not only in the economic aspect, but also, in the political aspects. The research attempted to analyze the processes associated with the formation of a political space in a colonial city, where representatives of the national intelligentsia were the subjects, and the emerging media and public spaces were the tools. The author insists that the political component of the city had developed in the context of the all-Russian political situation. The systemic crisis in all spheres of the state's life demanded new formats of their rights struggle. Under these conditions, the intelligentsia takes the initiative and develops its own style of struggle, expressed in the creation of newspapers, which will later become the print organs of the parties. For example, the newspaper "Kazakh" will become the official organ of the Alash party. Thus, the author argues that the formation of the political space in the colonial city is the result of the activities of the intelligentsia. The article uses the data of the regional archives of Kostanay, Petropavlovsk and NurSultan cities. One of the methods of this research was the historical and genetic one, which allows considering the problems in its development and identifying patterns. The use of the historical-comparative method revealed differences in the development of Kazakhstan historiography.

A Dance of Shadows and Fires: Conceptual and Practical Challenges of Intergenerational Healing after Mass Atrocity

The legacy of mass atrocity—including colonialism, slavery or specific manifestations such as apartheid—continue long after their demise. Applying a temporal intergenerational lens adds complications. We argue that mass atrocity creates for subsequent generations a deep psychological rupture akin to witnessing past atrocities. This creates a moral liability in the present. Healing is a process dependent on the authenticity (evident in discourse and action) with which we address contemporary problems. A further overriding task is to open social and political space for divergent voices. Acknowledgement of mass atrocity requires more than one-off events or institutional responses (the grand apology, the truth commission). Rather, acknowledgement has to become a lived social, cultural and political reality. Without this acknowledgement, healing, either collectively or individually, is stymied. Healing after mass atrocity is as much about political action (addressing inequalities and racism) as an act of re-imaging created through constant and contested re-writing.

Review of Moscow’s Evolution as a Political Space: From Yuri Dolgorukiy to Sergei Sobyanin, by Marina Glaser, and Ivan Krivushin. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 158 p.

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Post-Hegemonic Regionalism

The concept of post-hegemonic regionalism describes the scenario that has characterized Latin American regionalism in the last two decades. It first builds from Amitav Acharya’s work, in which he envisaged the end of United States hegemony and a world order of multiple leadership and power competitions, a scenario that he calls a “multiplex world.” To a large extent, post-hegemonic regionalism grew at odds with U.S. regional and hemispheric ambitions of market-led governance and in a context of weakened U.S. hegemony in Latin America. As a concept, denotes the region as a political space in which transborder governance is anchored in a new consensus about what cooperation and diplomacy is and is for, giving way to a reorganization of the regional scenario and the emergence of diverse efforts in new areas of cooperation. With this in mind, post-hegemonic regionalism is both a theory-based concept, contributing to a debate and a research agenda that branched out in the study of southern regionalism, as much as a manifestation of governance that re-signified and valued the regional space as one of action and contestation.

Influence of the interrelations between power and opposition on democracy in Poland. Selected aspects

This article substantiates theoretical and methodological approaches regarding the impact of the power–opposition interrelations on strengthening and weakening of democracy. Based on the analysis of a number of indicators and modern political process in Poland, it has been established that democratisation takes place against the backdrop of the permanent formation and preservation of two opposed poles in the political space. Deflection from democracy increases the distance between two competing/conflicting parties – pro-government and opposition. This situation automatically accumulates the potential of pole's force. Therefore, the interrelations between the power and the opposition turn into the force of stratification and equalisation that allows reducing the "democracy deficit" and bring the political system into the state of equilibrium

Taking Back Civic Space: Nonviolent Protests and Pushbacks against Autocratic Restrictions in Thailand

The year of 2020 witnessed the eruption of Thailand’s largest and longest-lasting mass demonstrations since the 2014 military putsch. Despite threats of crackdown, protesters leveraged a host of innovative nonviolent actions to reclaim political space that the regime had previously squeezed. This article sheds light on key mechanisms that underpin nonviolent actions’ ability to push back against a trend of shrinking space. We argue that the logic of nonviolent action, tactical and digital creativity, and counteracting repression operates in tandem. First, specific forms of nonviolent action carved out space for popular protest and increased public participation in it despite regime hindrances. Second, particularly tactical and digital creativity sustained this mass participation by reversing some effects of repression. Third, nonviolent responses to this repression encouraged further anti-regime mobilization. We conclude our analysis with some caveats. The Thai case shows that keeping regained space can be difficult.

Citizenship as Politics and Performance of Religious Identity: Hindu Refugees from Sindh

Drawing from the ethnographic insights and experiences of Pakistani Hindu refugees in Rajasthan, India, this article examines their agency, politics and dilemmas. It illustrates how they actively participate in the process of their ‘becoming citizens’ by making use of the majoritarian political space and nationalist ‘Hindu India’ imagery. Their expressions of a cohesive Hindu identity, however, remain illusionary and incomplete as they do not correspond with the lived realities of fractures, antagonisms and heterogeneities within various Hindu communities. These differentiations also lay open the hierarchies within Hindu refugees and enable an analysis of citizenship as a continued, contested and differentiated process based on caste and class locations of the refugees. For the lower-caste/-class refugees, their citizenship assertions go beyond the point of acquiring legal citizenship and merges with the struggles of native Dalits. Through these variegated expressions and claims of citizenship of Hindu refugees, this article foregrounds the idea of citizenship as performative and processual, and not necessarily contingent on legal status or state’s sovereignty logic of citizen/non-citizen binary.

Beyond University: Photovoice portraits of some Cambodian young women’s education, identities, and rights

<p>‘Educate a Girl. Change the World.’ Faith in this universalising, simple creed permeates development discourse on education and empowerment. Yet these processes are complex, embedded in specific contexts, and dependent upon many factors outside of formal schooling. This research aims to cut through the vague mists of this discourse by exploring processes of education and empowerment for six young Cambodian women. A small minority of such women graduate from university, and their negotiations with personal, professional, and political life illustrate opportunities and constraints in claiming their education and rights. This research drew from feminist epistemologies and used participatory photovoice methodology. Each participant selected 20 of her photographs which addressed aspects of education and empowerment important to her. Those photographs then guided our semi-structured interviews. This epistemology and methodology allowed women’s images and words to be strongly represented in the thesis and effectively elucidated the complexity and interconnectedness of learning and empowerment processes in the many spheres of these young women’s lives. Through participants’ images and words, this study illustrates factors that supported and challenged the young women in claiming higher education, how that education influenced the many-layered personal and professional identities they formed, and how they engaged in efforts to build women’s networks and claim public political space. These findings indicate several factors deserving greater attention and research in development: the importance of siblings to educational attainment, the utility of interweaving traditional and alternate gendered identities, the value of women’s networks for transformational learning, and the challenges in claiming public political space when elite ownership of development is tacitly accepted. These findings demonstrate that many interwoven strands influence educational outcomes and processes of empowerment above and beyond formal schooling. These effects do not manifest in a linear fashion. When the education-women’s empowerment-development nexus is better understood and grounded in women’s rights, this enhances development outcomes for young women.</p>