Competing Sovereignties in Eighteenth-Century South Asia: Afghan Claims to Kingship

Ahmad Shah Abdali-Durrani’s court chronicle, Taʾrīkh-i Aḥmad Shāhī, written by Mahmud bin Ibrahim al-Husaini and completed soon after Ahmad Shah’s death in 1772, provides an eighteenth-century perspective on the criterion for kingship and sovereignty. Unsurprisingly, the only person who fulfills these requirements, according to the historian, is Ahmad Shah. While this is standard practice in most Persianate and Islamic histories about a king, the text deviates from a number of other literary conventions. The historian deemphasizes Ahmad Shah’s genealogy and connection to Sufi saints; instead, he focuses on Ahmad Shah’s inner piety and morality by attributing to him the concept of ilhām (direct revelation from God)—an attribute more generally characteristic of prophets and saints, not kings. The double move of deemphasizing lineage and Sufi connection while privileging personal, God-bestowed attributes is sharpened through comparison: Mughal governors and emperors are depicted by the author as descendants of noble, dynastic genealogies, but govern incompetently because they do not have the clarity of vision and fate of victory on their side, as God has not bestowed them with ilhām.

Ascending from the Abstract to the Concrete in School Teaching — the double Move between Theoretical Concepts and Children’s Concepts

Vasily V. Davydov’s solved the problem between situated and abstract knowledge and integrated these conceptions into a connected theory of knowledge and thinking. His use of germ-cell models as a methodological tool is the key to understand this integration of abstract knowledge with the concrete complex and situated knowledge of a domain. I will show how I built on these ideas in my research of children’s learning and development by presenting a design experiment I conducted. The aim in this article is to illustrate the importance but also the complexity of using germ-cell models in developmental teaching as a tool focusing on the students’ activity that orient children to formulate core models as their own tool to, reflect and analyse within the complexity of concrete life scenarios. The design experiment demonstrates that a primary-substantial abstraction may be a first step in formulating germ-cell models that can evolve so different subject areas can be connected when ascending to the concrete in developmental teaching. To accomplish this, it was important to take the children’s perspective in the teaching process as a ‘double move’ between children’s motive orientation and the subject matter area. The design experiment included the subject areas of biology, history and geography focusing on the evolution of animals, the origin of man and the historical change of societies.

Sociology or Psychology?

The article is an attempt at the reverse engineering of conceptual architecture and logic of David Bloor's Strong Programme (SP) in the sociology of scientific knowledge via explicating key resources and interpretative techniques for constructing it. To do this I show how problematic is a conventional interpretation of the SP as a radicalization of Kuhn's theory of science and as a sociologization of epistemology. This problematization allows me to put anew three questions concerning the SP. In what sense it is post-positivist? In what sense it is sociological? Does it belong to social epistemology? To answer these questions I set myself four tasks. First, Bloor’s theoretical position concerning the Kuhn-Popper debate is located. Second, I point to and present Mary Hesse’s network model of science (NM) as a crucial theoretical source for the early SP. Third, I analyze in detail how Bloor interpreted and appropriated NM. Finally, I show what theoretical and methodological effects this interpretation had for the SP as presented in 1976. The general layout of the conceptual architecture of SP is modeled on the Hesse’s NM. It combines the principle of correspondence and that of coherence and sees the language of science as a network of predicates and laws segmented by contingent and empirical boundaries and not a priori logical divisions between theory and observation. But Bloor creatively interprets and appropriates NM by the double move of generalization and specification. Whereas Hesse’s NM refers to the functioning of scientific language, in Bloor’s hands, it comes to describe human learning in general inscribed in psychological processes (perception and thinking). As a result, SP is based on a form of psychological empiricism that sees science as a two-storied building. The first floor (perception) ensures correspondence and the second one (thinking) provide conditions of coherence. SP of 1976 is a specific model for the sociological segmentation of the second floor.

Elimination Politics

Focusing on punishment and imprisonment across three time periods, this essay explores the two-pronged attack on Palestinian politics that has characterized the settler-colonial project in Palestine over the past one hundred years. This double move entails an attempt to deny or destroy Palestinian political community, while simultaneously identifying Palestinians as political actors, specifically as bad actors. The aim is to undermine Palestinian political capacity by disrupting connection and organizing, while still deploying the weapon of categorizing Palestinians, individually and collectively, as enemies—under labels such as insurgents, terrorists, and enemy combatants. The struggle over elimination in Palestine has continued through multiple changes in governing regime and across territorial reconfigurations. The different tactics deployed against Palestinians over these decades are a product both of these changes and of the continuing Palestinian refusal to acquiesce to their elimination.

How Do We Know Security When We See It? Problematisation as Method

This chapter tackles a methodological problem posed by the premise of the book: if ‘security’ cannot be recognised by its ‘anti-political’ logic, then how can we know ‘security’ when we see it? The chapter sets out a methodology for identifying and analysing ‘security’ as a historical and contextual moving target, based on Michel Foucault’s notion of problematisation. This methodology is four things: first, empiricist - it analyses what people said and did when they articulated (security-related) problems and responded to them. Second, historical - it assumes that problematisations are specific to certain times and places and change over time. This negates any core logic or objective definition of ‘security’, leaving only historically specific problematisations of security. Third, reflexive - it reflects on the role of the critical analyst, who does not have an objective God’s eye view, but holds a particular position within history and a critical intent to challenge prevailing theoretical and political assumptions in the present. Fourth, the method of problematisation is a double move: it identifies and describes problematisations in context, and then amplifies and problematises them further for critical purposes. This makes the analyst an active player in the problematisation, not a disinterested observer.

From welfare to lawfare: Environmental suffering, neighbour disputes and the law in UK social housing

Social housing authorities in the UK frequently invoke a language of ‘anti-social behaviour’ and neighbour nuisance in dealing with disputes between tenants. But this language fails to recognise the poor environmental conditions that cause disputes between tenants in the first place. An ethnographic analysis of neighbour disputes identifies a double move from a politics of welfare to one of lawfare: just as housing providers shift the blame onto individual tenants for tenants' perceived failure to act in socially appropriate manners, so tenants end up calling for more policing and tougher neighbourhood control. This politics of lawfare not only places a moral economy of blame at its core but further undermines the possibilities of transforming environmental suffering into redistributive struggles.