Oceania, 800-1800CE

Over a span of 1000 years beginning around 800CE, the people of the Pacific Islands undertook a remarkable period of voyaging, political evolution, and cross-cultural interactions. Polynesian navigators encountered previously uninhabited lands, as well as already inhabited islands and the coast of the Americas. Island societies saw epic sagas of political competition and intrigue, documented through oral traditions and the monuments and artefacts recovered through archaeology. European entry into the region added a new episode of interaction with strange people from over the horizon. These histories provide an important cross-cultural perspective for the concept of 'the Middle Ages' from outside of the usual Old World focus.

Companions of the Prophet as Anti-Colonial Fighters: The Political Evolution of ʿAlī Tales in Siberia and the Kazakh Steppe

Tales about the caliph ʿAlī have circulated as popular entertainment throughout the Islamic world since the medieval era. While their meaning to their audiences has varied, on the frontiers of Islam, including in Siberia and the Kazakh steppe, the battles of ʿAlī and other companions of the Prophet against infidels took on special meaning. Among Kazakh nomads under Russian rule, these tales gained broad popularity in the second half of the nineteenth century as the status of Kazakhs as a Muslim community came under threat from changing Russian policies. It was at this time that Kazakh-language ʿAlī tales were composed and published by Muslim publishers in Russia. One of these was the Qiṣṣa-yi Ṣalṣāl, by the Siberian poet Mäulekey Yumachikov, in which the infidels whom ʿAlī and the other companions battle are clearly identified as being Russians, although placed in the earliest period of Islam. This tale enables us to see the political evolution of such tales, which constitute a response to the cultural and political pressures of Russian colonialism.

The Omnipresent Past: Dystopian Trends in Nadine Gordimer’s No Time Like the Present

This paper seeks to analyze the dystopian character of Nadine Gordimer’s No Time Like the Present and demonstrate the claustrophobic nature of post-apartheid South Africa. The problem in this paper is to investigate the way in which Gordimer’s novel interprets the perceived socio-political evolution of her country. Our point of departure is that post-apartheid South Africa is not healed of its turbulent past and this past haunts and torments it till date. This article foregrounds the argument that the dystopian nature of Gordimer’s last novel is evident in the fact it captures the crash of dreams for an egalitarian, non-racial society; it portrays the repression and failure of individual efforts to improve society; and it describes poverty, violence and anarchy as society’s unchanging norms. Using postcolonial literary theory, this paper shows how No Time Like the Present narrates the entanglement of South Africans at a time when political morass and socio-economic inequalities abort anti-apartheid expectations. This paper arrives at the conclusion that No Time Like the Present is a dystopian novel in which grim, absurd realities are portrayed to show how remote and unfamiliar the present is when compared with expectations nurtured in the past.

The Mexican social unconscious—part II: Politics and group analysis

The origins of the Mexican people and their impact on their social unconscious have been presented in the first part of this article. This second part starts with a discussion of the unavoidable need to include the political dimension in any group-analytic theory and enquiry. It then sketches the socio-political evolution of the country up to the present and its impact on the collective mood and relations among individuals and groups.

Travel and Escapism: Elvira Bogdan and Olga Caba

"Travel and Escapism: Elvira Bogdan and Olga Caba. Olga Caba and Elvira Bogdan are female writers for whom travelling became an escapist strategy. Thus could they express, in diluted Aesopic terms, their discontent with Romania’s political evolution in the 1940’s and afterward, under the more acceptable mask of longing for other realms. Elvira Bogdan’s lyrical outbursts in Rome or on the Valley of the Loire and Olga Caba’s enthusiastic soliloquies in Scotland turned into double emphasis discourses under the restrictive travelling mode that prevailed before 1990. Keywords: travel, gender, France, Italy, escapism, discontent "

The Hellenic Parliament’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Because of their particular nature, representative institutions around the globe are usually well equipped, both legally and capacity-wise, to adequately respond to political crises; this is what political evolution has taught them. Responses to political crises have been developed and take the form of formal or informal rules of procedure that lie at the disposal of the Speaker or other parliamentary functionaries. On the contrary, battling a health crisis does not immediately belong to the issues a parliament under normal circumstances deals with. Hence, the scattered responses by the world’s parliaments, as pointed out by recent studies, come as no surprise. This article showcases the Hellenic Parliament, which constitutes a classic example of a legislature combating the pandemic situation through a gradual and multidimensional response. Its relevant actions are displayed and analysed vis à vis the average global response. As the pandemic seems far from being over, the article attempts a series of future projections on how to deal with it in the long run.

From Victim to Hangman? Ennahda, Salafism and the Tunisian Transition

The article revisits the notion of post-Islamism that Roy and Bayat put forth to investigate its usefulness in analysing the Tunisian party Ennahda and its role in the Tunisian transition. The article argues that the notion of post-Islamism does not fully capture the ideological and political evolution of Islamist parties, which, despite having abandoned their revolutionary ethos, still compete in the political arena through religious categories that subsume politics to Islam. It is only by taking seriously these religious categories that one can understand how Ennahda dealt with the challenge coming from Salafis.

Marketing the 1970 Agreement

The basic feature of the 1970 Agreement between the EEC and Spain, Chapter 6 explains, was the negotiated asymmetry in favour of Spain. Franco’s governments succeeded in securing irreversible access to the Common Market, with the most favourable terms possible for a non-EEC country. This was despite the increasing political costs for the Six/Nine and Madrid not having to pay the price of political evolution. The Spanish administration accepted that the Franco regime should evolve but only if the speed and the destination were left up to Madrid. The 1970 Agreement represented a shield granted by the Six in favour of Franco Spain. The Six and the EEC Council and Commission dealt with a relatively weak partner. Meanwhile, Spain faced a set of countries that together formed an omnipotent trading bloc and embodied the highest democratic values. Despite this, Franco’s negotiators succeeded in imposing the essential aspects of their objectives.

Opposing Fascism or Accommodating Its Last Remnant?

Chapter 3 demonstrates that in the late 1950s, the pro-Europe group in the Spanish administration decided that trade liberalization and European integration were required to assure the survival of the Franco regime. The liberal officials in Madrid were cautious about progressive Europeanization. The official request of February 1962 to open negotiations with the EEC expressed Spain’s goal to obtain a commitment from the Six in favour of the country’s economic development and political evolution at the Franco regime’s desired pace. The official Spanish request brought the Six to assess their responsibility towards Spain’s future economic stability. The critical moment in the European rescue of the Franco regime took place in 1964 when the Six accepted that the Europeanization of Spain should not be limited to solving bilateral disputes, but should address Spain’s place in the future integration of Europe.