Airing imperium: A historiography of radio governance in South Asia

The 1920s emerged as a landmark decade in the world history of radio, more particularly in South Asia. About a century later, this paper seeks to stitch together a critical historiography of radio governance in colonial South Asia. In doing so, the paper seeks to unravel colonial constructions, norms and rationalities associated with the modern medium of radio in the South Asian context. This paper draws on the works of Pinkerton, Zivin, Brayne, Potter and gleanings in their work of the autobiographical writings of Fielden and Reith, the first broadcasting controller of All India Radio and the general manager of the British Broadcasting Corporation, respectively, besides some official documents cited in these works pertaining to the goings-on in British South Asia and its broadcasting. Ultimately, this paper seeks to not only historicize the eventual decolonization and democratization that occurred, but also sets the stage to locate, understand and move towards sustainable media governance in a post-2015 world.

REACTION TO THE BLACK CITY AS A CAUSE OF MODERN CONSERVATISM

Social scientists in a variety of fields have long relied on economic-structuralist theories to understand the ascendance and hegemony of the modern Conservative Movement in the United States. In the materialist theory of political change (MTPC), structural crisis in the 1970s destabilized Keynesian-managerialism, and paved the way for neoliberalism. Key weaknesses of this approach include its relatively aspatial scope—comparatively less attention to the spatial variation of neoliberalism’s popularity—and its demotion of other elements of the Conservative Movement into a veritable super-structure of secondary movements. This paper offers a “racial amendment” to the MTPC, and an application to electoral geographies in the state of Ohio since 1932. This amendment synthesizes group threat theory, critical historiography, and Du Boisian theories of Whiteness to suggest that the growing influence of suburban conservatism is not reducible simply to class interest.

The Historian and the Sexologist

This article investigates how twentieth-century historians' reliance on pathologizing discourses about transvestism produced the distorted historical account of the premodern “transvestite saint.” The essay begins with a critical historiography aimed at unraveling the intertwined writings of historians and sexologists. European sexological writing on Christian saints rendered them little more than pathologized subjects stripped of their religious context, and historical narratives that drew on pathologizing sexological paradigms frequently interpreted these religious figures as premodern examples of transhistorical sex-gender transgression. After examining the development of the interpretive model of the transvestite saint and its dependence on tropes of disguise and deception, the author argues that this framework should be abandoned. Considering the limitation of this interpretation, the essay proposes a more capacious historical method termed the apophasis of transgender.

Introduction

The introductory chapter situates the civil rights movement within the political theory literatures on civil disobedience—old and new—and traces the way that the debate has shifted since the mid-century (from a decidedly liberal framework to various democratic ones) as well as broadened (bringing attention to new movements and forms of action). Despite the important insights generated out of these shifts, the civil rights example remains at once central and marginal—operating as a key proving ground for the political purchase of liberal and deliberative theories but also attesting to their limits, without making the movement itself the subject of sustained analysis or theoretical interest. In contrast, drawing on—but also departing from—the insights of the critical historiography of the “long civil rights movement,” the introduction presents the case for returning to the civil rights movement as a site of (and source for) political theorizing about civil disobedience.

The Veneration of Holy Great Martyr John the New of Suceava as the Patron of the Moldavian Land

The article focuses on critical historiography and hagiography of the veneration of Holy Great Martyr John the New of Suceava as the patron saint of the area for the population with hagiographic coordinates – the cities of Akkerman (Bilhorod- Dnistrovskyi, Ukraine) and Suceava (Romania). The church veneration of the Saint John the New of Suceava helps to overcome prejudices and other negative ethnic phenomena and contributes to the economic development of a multinational society. A similar study of the veneration (in the ethnology of the cult) of the Saint John The New of Suceava in both hagiology and history of the Church, studies of medieval Slavic writing of Moldavian origin in connection with the world processes of social optimization would help pastors as well as all Orthodox people in everyday church-practical activities.

Historical Master Narratives and the Master Narrative of the Bulgarian Middle Ages

The article is a brief and schematic presentation of the notion of a “master narrative” and of the master narrative of the Bulgarian Middle Ages, which is the subject a detailed book of mine in Bulgarian. This master narrative was constructed starting with what is known as “Romantic” historiography (from Monk Paisij’s “Istorija Slavjanobolgarskaja” [Slavonic-Bulgarian History] in 1762 to Vasil Aprilov’s writings in the first half of the nineteenth century) but it was elaborated especially with the development of “scientific” (or critical) historiography first by Marin Drinov (1838–1906) and mainly by the most significant Bulgarian historians from the “bourgeois” era: Vasil Zlatarski (1866–1935), Petăr Mutafčiev (1883–1943), and Petăr Nikov (1884–1938). Then it was interrupted by the (crude) Marxist counter-narrative of the late 1940s through the 1960s. Starting in the late 1960s there was a gradual return to the nationalism of the master national narrative, which reached a peak with the celebration of the 1,300th anniversary of the founding of the Bulgarian state in 1981. The same line continued after 1989 (stripped of the Marxist vulgata), yet some new tendencies appeared.

Investigations into Asatru

“Asatru”, the modern worship of the Heathen deities of Scandinavia and Northern Europe, is a relatively young, internationally developing religious phenomenon. Since the 1990’s researchers have gradually built a body of academic literature seeking to chronicle and contextualize Asatru’s multifaceted histories, beliefs, practices and social developments within the larger arena of Western societies. This critical historiography provides an over-view of the most influential extant research of Asatru and frames the developing academic discourse. The article shows that Asatru is a dynamic, heterogenous web of intersected movements which are both rapidly developing, and prone to the influences of overarching societal discourses, and that this is especially true of popular and academic discourses aimed at Asatru itself. This historiography serves as a landmark demonstrating where we have come so far as researchers with our study of and relationship with Asatru, and what steps we might consider taking in the future.

Power relations in the production of historical context in disaster inquiry reporting

Purpose This study aims to examine the textual performance of the Ocean Ranger Disaster inquiry, thus responding to recent calls to “practice context” in historical writing. This study goes beyond the epistemological assumptions about the grounds for knowing about the past as the authors explore how history is produced in the context of power relations. Design/methodology/approach This paper imagines history-making as a storytelling performance. The authors combine critical historiography and critical sensemaking because these qualitative perspectives help us to understand the composition of the Ocean Ranger Royal Commission Report. Findings This case study makes a contribution within the genre of disaster inquiry reporting. The study explains how a formal historical record (the public inquiry report) may be created and how the report is related to aspects of power embedded in a writer’s sense of reality. Social implications The Ocean Ranger Disaster continues to be of tremendous importance to the people of Newfoundland, Canada. There have been numerous studies of the disaster, but these have been overwhelmingly focused on technical matters. To authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to consider the inquiry from an historical context perspective. Originality/value The study site enables reflection on a question not often asked in the management history literature: How can we critically understand the composition of an official disaster inquiry report in the context of its power relations?