‘Clan’ and ‘Family’: Transformations of Sociality among the Wampar, Papua New Guinea

Changes in what anthropologists understand “clan” to refer to, and the social relations that many sociologists think of as constituting a “nuclear family” are at the centre of this article. It is based on ethnography among Wampar speakers in north-eastern Papua New Guinea (PNG). Among the Wampar, different, sometimes conflicting, transitions relevant to the emergence of the family as an accentuated social entity can be observed; yet all are a result of Christianisation and the local effects of capitalism. Nominally patrilineal clans (sagaseg), after a period when they seemed to have a somewhat diminished social significance, are again crucial social units: a result of the government’s requirement that statutory Incorporated Land Groups (ILGs) form the sole legal basis of compensation for land use. At the same time, there has been an increasing emphasis on the nuclear family, which, along with the aspiration for modern lifestyles (and their associated consumption patterns) and education for children, has reconfigured the gendered division of labour. Ideals of companionate marriage and values specific to the nuclear family have become much more critical to social practices. In some families, traditional notions of descent have lost importance to such an extent that some young people are no longer aware of their sagaseg membership. Wampar men and women discuss these conflicting tendencies and argue about the different values that ground them. Which argument prevails often depends on the specific position of the person confronting them.

Federalists and the Beginnings of the Council of Europe: Converting Institutions and Opinion to Supranationality (1949–1951)

In 1949, it seemed that Western governments were ready to accept some delegation of sovereignty, which met the ambitions of increasingly well-organised Europeanists. One of the most ambitious advances was the proposal for a European Assembly, which could have heralded the beginning of an integration process. However, on this point, as on many others, there was not total agreement between the unionists and the federalists: for some, the Assembly was simply a co-operation structure, while others thought it should be a constituent body. The federalists—who had been united since December 1946 within the European Union of Federalists (EUF), which claimed to have no fewer than 150,000 members—were very demanding. After the adoption of the Statute of the Council of Europe on 5 May 1949, the EUF Central Committee approved a “motion on the Consultative Assembly” in which it openly demanded the drafting of a federal pact that would lead to real European power. Faced with the modest intergovernmental status of the Council of Europe, the EUF proposed that the Assembly of this Council should be transformed from a “consultative” to a “constituent” assembly, which amounted to condemning any kind of conciliatory attitude. Therefore, the constituent path was becoming more and more important within the federalist organisation: it was now a matter of pressing, without restraint, for the triumph of ideals freed from initial reluctance, in the most diverse forums. The most important of these remained the Council of Europe, which was, in the eyes of the federalists, an institution that could be improved. Defending an integrated Europe, the federalists called for the creation of a democratic power on the scale of the challenges of the time, which seemed to them to exceed that of the nation states. To achieve this, they defended a “political” vision of integration, of which the Council of Europe could be the spearhead. It is this struggle, which took place at a time when the construction of Europe seems to be based on a simple but firm act of will, that this article will examine.

History from Scratch: Introduction to the Special Issue

This is the first Special Issue of the online journal “histories”, launched in 2020 [...]

Monuments and Monumentality in a Changing Socio-Political Landscape: A View from Udaypura

This work intends to explore the nature of socio-political change in historical periods usually referred to as interregnal which, for the purposes of this paper, is defined as a period of discontinuity or gap in political and social organization. It traces the survival of a historical monument through two interregnal centuries of medieval Indian sub-continental history (11th–12th and 14th) to argue that modern historiographical templates which study these periods as precursors or remnants of succeeding and preceding centuries, respectively, do not sufficiently explore the socio-political possibilities innate in these periods of distributed political agency. In the context of Indian history, while historians have focused on the confrontational aspect of Hindu-Muslim polities or communities in interregnal centuries, I suggest that these periods provided fertile ground for political innovation and negotiation, thus breaking the confrontational stasis usually associated with regnal centuries.

History and Its “Losers”

This article considers the historiography of the British Jacobites and American loyalists. It argues that they have been treated unfairly by history. In short, their importance has been minimized out of regard for dominant narratives. The article looks at older and newer historical accounts that reinterpret events in 17th and 18th century Britain and in revolutionary America to give Jacobites and loyalists a fairer share in these events. In conclusion, the article states that historiography will soon have to integrate the experience of these hitherto neglected currents into its main narrative.

What Difference Gender Makes: Obstetricians in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

Like in most places around the world, childbirth assistance in Brazil was traditionally performed by women. In 1832, however, a law was passed requiring a license for the exercise of medicine, pharmacy, and midwifery. That event marked the differentiation between the traditional and the modern kind of childbirth assistants, leading to an increasing process of medicalization of birth. Hence, the historiography on the subject has pointed out the appropriation by men of a traditional women’s world. This article seeks to understand the gender dynamics in the birthing room by focusing on the new kind of professional that emerged in Brazil in the early nineteenth century: the “graduated midwife.” To what extent was there cooperation or competition between physicians and graduated midwives? How different were their obstetrical practices? After examining the Annaes Brasiliensis de Medicina—the official publication of the Imperial Academy of Medicine—I argue that the graduated midwife was the historical intermediate in transitioning from traditional midwifery to scientific obstetrics. Finally, I conclude that, as a woman of science, the graduated midwife filled the gap that isolated the female sphere of care from the male sphere of science, paving the road for the entrance of women in medicine in 1879.

From Missionaries of Socialism to Spies of Imperialism: The Shifting Position of Soviet Women in Communist Albania

After the establishment of the communist regime in Albania, many Albanian students, mainly males, went to study in the Mecca of Revolution—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR). Many of them fell in love there and married Soviet girls who returned with them to the tiny Balkan country to build socialism with their Albanian husbands. These women were considered as missionaries who were helping Albania to build a communist future. In 1960, however, their position changed when the Albanian leadership refused de-Stalinization and denounced the Soviet Union as an imperialist power. After Enver Hoxha’s split with Khrushchev, many Soviet women left Albania, but others decided to remain with their husbands in that country. Albanian authorities, considering Soviet women spies of the KGB (The Soviet Committee of State Security), persecuted many of them.

De-Historicizing (Mainstream) Ottoman Historiography on Tanzimat and Tahdith: Jus Gentium and Pax Britannica ViolateOsmanli Sovereignty in Arabia

The (secular-humanist) philosophical theology governing (positivist) disciplines such as International Law and International Relations precludes a priori any communicative examination of how the exclusion of Arab-Ottoman jurisprudence is necessary for the ontological coherence of jurisprudent concepts such as society and sovereignty, together with teleological narratives constellating the “Age of Reason” such as modernity and civilization. The exercise of sovereignty by the British Crown—in 19th and 20th century Arabia—consisted of (positivist) legal doctrines comprising “scientific processes” denying Ottoman legal sovereignty, thereby proceeding to “order” societies situated in Dar al-Islam and “detach” Ottoman-Arab subjects from their Ummah. This “rational exercise” of power by the British Crown—mythologizing an unbridgeable epistemological gap between a Latin-European subject as civic and an objectified Ottoman-Arab as despotic—legalized (regulatory) measures referencing ethno/sect-centric paradigms which not only “deported” Ottoman-Arab ijtihad (Eng. legal reasoning and exegetic hermeneutics) from the realm of “international law”, but also rationalized geographic demarcations and demographic alterations across Ottoman-Arab vilayets. Both inter-related disciplines, therefore, affirm an “exclusionary self-image” when dealing with “foreign epistemologies” by transforming “cultural difference” into “legal difference”, thus suing that it is in the protection of jus gentium that “recognized sovereigns” exercise redeeming measures on “Turks”, “Moors”, or “Arabs”. It is precisely the knowledge lost ensuing from such irreflexive “positivist image” that this legal-historical research seeks to deconstruct by moving beyond a myopic analysis claiming Ottoman-Arab ‘Umran (Eng. civilization) as homme malade (i.e., sick man); or that the Caliphate attempted but failed to become reasonable during the 18th and 19th century because it adhered to Arab-Islamic philosophical theology. Therefore, this research commits to deconstructing “mainstream” Ottoman historiography claiming that tanzimat (Eng. reorganization) and tahdith (Eng. modernization) were simply “degenerative periods” affirming the temporal “backwardness” of Ottoman civilization and/or the innate incapacity of its epistemology in furnishing a (modern) civil society.

From Cyberpunk to Cramped Dweller: The Peculiar History of Hong Kong ‘Heterotopias’

75.6% of land comprising Hong Kong remains undeveloped according to the special administrative region’s planning department. In turn, Hong Kong’s constricted real estate, now estimated to be the world’s costliest, has created eye-popping living arrangements historically and contemporarily. Denizens’ colorful reputation and imagination for flouting city ordinances, zoning laws, and spatial management stand emblematic of tenacious self-sufficiency and a free-spirited brand of runaway capitalist initiative. Why is this conspicuous trademark of Hong Kong’s societal fabric very much alive in the 21st Century? Why does this matter in a rapidly urbanizing world witnessing the ascension of mega-urban centers alongside ever-widening socioeconomic chasms? This paper intends to illuminate the peculiar origins and longevity of the Kowloon Walled City, an urban monolith of notoriety and autonomy that blossomed in a semi-legal grey zone unencumbered under British protectorate rule for nearly a century. Parallels will connect the linear trajectory between Kowloon’s hardnosed living to today’s comparable Chungking Mansions and the hundreds of thousands of cage homes appearing in all corners of the city. This paper aims to answer why these residential paradoxes continue to function with efficiency and relevancy, posing solutions for indigent housing while exacerbating the stigma of social and economic ostracism.

How to Write a Positivist Legal History: Lessons from the 18th and 19th Centuries English Jurists William Blackstone and James Fitzjames Stephen

This paper is about the shaping of the law understood as a positivist enterprise. Positivist law has been the object of contentious debate. Since the 1960s, and with the surfacing of revisionist histories, it has been suggested that the abstraction of the doctrine of criminal law is due to its categorisation in early histories. However, it is argued here that positivism was hardly an intentional master plan of autocratic social control. Rather, it is important to recognise that historians do not provide a value-free recount of history. This paper examines this assertion by drawing on the writings of the English jurists William Blackstone and his work Commentaries on the Law of England (1765), and James Fitzjames Stephen’s A History of the Criminal Law of England (1883). Taking these scholars not as mere a-historical writers but reflecting on the fact that they inevitably ‘functioned’ as conduits of their own social practise opens an inquiry into the social response to a social need, which was already under way long before their time.