Prelapsarian landscapes and post-diluvian politics in mid-century Iraqi art

The 1950s was a decade marked by radical artistic, environmental and political transformations in Iraq. The decade began with an elite-driven programme of national development and ended in a popular anti-monarchic revolution on 14 July 1958. Between these competing visions of development and revolution, members of the Baghdad modern art scene negotiated between a drive towards institutionalization and state patronage with more radical critiques of the status quo. In 1950, for instance, the artist Faiq Hassan founded The Pioneers (Ar-Ruwwād) collective. It grew out of La Société Primitive, which Hassan originally established under the guiding principle that art should be taken outside the studio and into the streets. Their objective was to paint ‘directly from the surrounding environment’ (Floyd n.d.). But what exactly did Iraqi artists consider to be the environment? This article addresses this question by examining the divergent modes of representation adapted by mid-century Iraqi artists to reflect their environmental imaginations. These imaginations ranged from romantic depictions of prelapsarian landscapes to devastating floods, migration and dispossession faced by the majority of the country’s poorer inhabitants who disproportionately bore the consequences of environmental catastrophes and interventions alike.

Elite Competition, Social Movements, and Election Violence in Nigeria

Election violence varies significantly within countries, yet how and why are undertheorized. Although existing scholarship has shown how national-level economic, institutional, and contextual factors increase a country's risk for violence during elections, these studies cannot explain why elites organize election violence in some localities but not others. An analysis of gubernatorial elections in Nigeria reveals the conditions under which elites recruit popular social-movement actors for pre-election violence. Gubernatorial elections are intensely competitive when agreements between governors and local ruling party elites over the distribution of state patronage break down. To oust their rivals and consolidate power, elites recruit popular reformist groups for pre-election violence and voter mobilization. Conversely, when local ruling-party elites are aligned over how state patronage is to be distributed, the election outcome is agreed to well in advance. In this scenario, there is little incentive to enlist social movement actors for violence. Case studies of the Ijaw Youth Council and Boko Haram provide empirical support for the argument. The theory and evidence help explain subnational variation in election violence as well as the relationship between intraparty politics and violence during elections, and speak to broader questions about political order and violence.

History Writing and Canon-making: the Place of Women in Narratives of the Iran–Iraq War

This chapter explores why women were by and large excluded as producers of cultural products during the Iran Iraq war, despite the state’s ‘progressive’ discourses and the immense and unprecedented growth of the novel during this period under state patronage. It argues that due to a combination of ideological and pragmatic reasons, female perspectives and voices were marginalized in state sponsored texts, be they from the earlier periods of the war when memoirs from the frontline-style texts were favoured, or in the civilian accounts of the later period. The chapter ultimately points to a shift towards conservative discourses and practices which led to setbacks in the gains made by Iraqi women before the war.

Incentives for Organizational Participation: A Recruitment Experiment in Mexico

While the presence of a strong civil society is recognized as desirable for democracies, an important question is what motivates citizens to join organizations. This article presents novel experimental evidence on the conditions under which citizens join interest organizations. We presented 1,400 citizens in two Mexican states with fliers promoting a new local interest organization. These fliers contain one of four randomly selected recruitment appeals. We find evidence that both brokerage of state patronage and demand-making for local public goods are effective recruitment appeals. The effect for patronage brokerage is especially pronounced among respondents with prior organizational contact, supporting our hypothesis of a “particularistic socialization” effect wherein organizational experience is associated with greater response to selective material benefits. Our findings suggest that under some conditions, rather than generating norms of other-regarding, interest organizations can reinforce members’ individualistic tendencies.

The Mughal State and the Sikh Panth

The framework of the Mughal state has been outlined in this chapter in terms of the central and provincial administration, the jagirdari system, the zamindari system, and the pattern of state patronage. The autonomous chieftains as subordinate rulers or vassals were integral part of this framework. The Punjab hill states or its autonomous chiefs provide the immediate context for the activities of Gobind Singh. For a proper background for his activities and the development of the Sikh Panth before the time of Guru Gobind Singh, the confrontation between the Mughal state and the Sikh Panth is relevant. Placed in this broad context the life of Guru Gobind Singh acquires a profound importance in terms of the long term effect on the Sikh movement and in moulding its character.

State Patronage on Heat and Electricity Markets of the Russian Far East

The paper examines the conditions and goals of state patronage on heat and electricity markets of the Russian Far East. The distinct characteristic of market organization in the region is the lack of a unified energy system, high share of districts with decentralized energy supply, and segmentation of the electricity market. Based on the technological and institutional similarities, scale and form of state patronage, three zones of electricity market were established: market, semi-market, and regulated. The forms of state patronage on heat and electricity markets of the Far East are the following: state regulation of heat and electricity tariffs, setting the tariffs below actual costs, subsidies for providers and consumers of energy, state-sponsored construction of energy capacities. The paper evaluated the scale of patronage on heat and electricity markets and reached the conclusion that without state patronage the Far Eastern consumers of heat and electricity will not be able to purchase energy in market conditions.

Self-Patronage versus State Patronage: Polish and Polish-Jewish Artists React to the Trauma of March ’68

Social tensions in communist Poland were exacerbated with the launching of anti-Zionist propaganda in June 1967. Warsaw students organized numerous protests after the authorities tightened censorship, and later banned the staging of Adam Mickiewicz’s Dziady at the National Theater, considering it to be anti-Soviet. Government forces stifled student protests with numerous arrests, at times causing serious injuries, dismissals from the university, and ultimately the expulsion of Polish citizens of Jewish origin from Poland. The restrictions affected Holocaust survivors who were employed in art schools and cultural institutions. This group included Artur Nacht-Samborski, Jonasz Stern, Eugeniusz Eibisch, and Gizela Szancerowa, among others. Notable artistic testimonies of the experience of March ’68 events and their effects were left by painters and sculptors from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, its students, graduates, and lecturers: Witlod Masznicz, Artur Nacht-Samborski, Krystiana Robb-Narbutt, Ewa Kuryluk, Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, and others in his studio - Barbara Falender, Henryk Morel, Grzegorz Kowalski, and Krzysztof M. Bednarski. In Cracow, artists belonging to the Wprost (Explicit) group, including Maciej Bieniasz, Zbylut Grzywacz, Leszek Sobocki, and Jacek Waltoś, commented on the events of March ’68 boldly and on an ongoing basis.