Meenakshi Malhotra
Meenakshi Malhotra
Institution: HansrajCollege, University of Delhi, India
Email: meenakshi.chat@gmail.com
The article explores aspects of Hinduism in some writings by British writers E.M.Forster and Edward Thompson in the early twentieth century, and tries to read nuance into the Orientalist project of mapping India. Unlike some writers like Kipling who wrote in the period of high imperialism and create...
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The article explores aspects of Hinduism in some writings by British writers E.M.Forster and Edward Thompson in the early twentieth century, and tries to read nuance into the Orientalist project of mapping India. Unlike some writers like Kipling who wrote in the period of high imperialism and created colonial and racial stereotypes, Forster and Thompson seem to be aware of the complexities of Hinduism, of a God who can laugh and play. This article discusses Forster and Thompson’s understanding of and views on Hinduism.
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1 year ago
Elisabeth Santos
Elisabeth Santos
Institution: Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, Pernanbuco, Brazil.
Email: elisabeth.csantos@ufpe.br
Purpose – The purpose of this article is to conduct a systematic review of the literature on business history and management history in specialized journals in the area. Design/methodology/approach – We conducted a systematic review of the literature in the journals: Business History, Business...
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Purpose – The purpose of this article is to conduct a systematic review of the literature on business history and management history in specialized journals in the area. Design/methodology/approach – We conducted a systematic review of the literature in the journals: Business History, Business History Review, Journal of Management History, and Management & Organizational History, between 2011 and 2020. In all, we analyzed 231 articles using the open, axial coding technique, and selective. Findings – We answered two central analytical questions about the researchers' theoretical-methodological choices and summarized the results in six research lines. Historiographic approaches are presented from the epistemologies, theories, methods, contributions, limitations, and research problems chosen by the researchers in their articles. Originality/value (mandatory) – The article is contributory when it assumes the central premise that the understanding of the researchers' theoretical-methodological decisions results in the historiographic approaches adopted in business and management research. Also, we offer a research agenda concerned with problems about (1) marginal empirical contexts, (2) the comparative approach to history; and (3) the perception of the past as a historical narrative.
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1 year ago
Hege Leivestad
Hege Leivestad
Institution: Stockholm University, Stockholm 106 91, Sweden; Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Oslo 0316, Norway
Email: hege.leivestad@socant.su.se
When the Ever Given became stuck in the Suez Canal, the megaship was carrying 18,300 rectangular, steel boxes on her back. In the weeks and months after the incident, the concealed contents of the shipping containers – stuck in legal limbo – captured global attention. Technologically developed i...
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When the Ever Given became stuck in the Suez Canal, the megaship was carrying 18,300 rectangular, steel boxes on her back. In the weeks and months after the incident, the concealed contents of the shipping containers – stuck in legal limbo – captured global attention. Technologically developed in the years after the Second World War, the standardized shipping container has featured as one of the protagonists of the transformations in international trade. But the container’s logic of concealment and transaction has made ‘the box’ a common figure also in popular culture and social theory. This essay interrogates the shipping container’s multiple repertoires by focussing on containers at work. By tracing how the shipping container moves through the port infrastructure this essay takes us from the Suez Canal towards another central maritime passageway: the Strait of Gibraltar. This essay reflects on the different scales at which the shipping container functions in the port: from heavy materiality to abstracted codes and units of measurement.
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1 year ago
When Australian economist Ross Garnaut proposed to increase the commercial kangaroo industry in 2008, it started a national debate on the supposed edibility of kangaroos. Campaigns against the commercial kangaroo industry and hesitance amongst many consumers to eat kangaroo reflect concerns about vi...
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When Australian economist Ross Garnaut proposed to increase the commercial kangaroo industry in 2008, it started a national debate on the supposed edibility of kangaroos. Campaigns against the commercial kangaroo industry and hesitance amongst many consumers to eat kangaroo reflect concerns about viewing kangaroos as food. This article explores the reactions and challenges that originate from the kangaroo’s changing role in society by using Judith Butler’s concept of grievable lives. Using this framework shows that what animals we eat goes beyond nutritional value; it symbolizes deeper values regarding human–animal relations and illustrates why and how not all animals are seen and treated as the same.
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1 year ago
Bettina Bildhauer,
Bettina Bildhauer
Institution: University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland
Email: bmeb@st-andrews.ac.uk
Sharra Vostral
Sharra Vostral
Institution: Purdue University, Indiana, USA
Email: svostral@purdue.edu
In January 2021, Scotland became the first country in the world to make universal access to free period products a legal right, an initiative which attracted extraordinary international attention. This introduction outlines what is indeed new and ground-breaking about this law from the perspective o...
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In January 2021, Scotland became the first country in the world to make universal access to free period products a legal right, an initiative which attracted extraordinary international attention. This introduction outlines what is indeed new and ground-breaking about this law from the perspective of the history of menstruation, and what merely continues traditional and widespread conceptions, policies and practices surrounding menstruation. On the basis of an analysis of the parliamentary debates of the Act, we show that it gained broad political support by satisfying a combination of ten different political agendas: promoting gender equality for women while acknowledging broader gender diversity, practically alleviating one high-profile aspect of poverty at a relatively low overall cost to the state, tackling menstrual stigma, improving access to education, working with grassroots campaigners, improving public health, and accommodating sustainability concerns, as well as the desire to pass world-leading legislation in itself. In each case, we show to what extent the particular political aim is typical of, or departs from, recent wider trajectories in the history and politics of menstruation, and, where pertinent, trajectories in Scottish political history. The ten agendas in their international context provide a kaleidoscopic insight into the current state of menstrual politics and history in Scotland and beyond. This introduction also situates this Special Collection as a whole in relation to the field of Critical Menstruation Studies and provides background information about the legislative process and key terminology in Scottish politics and in the history of menstruation.
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1 year ago
Koh Hwee
Koh Hwee
Institution: University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA
Email: chkoh@history.ucla.edu
Abstract In the 1690s, Ottoman bureaucrats reformed the sprawling postal system, a vital communications infrastructure that undergirded imperial power. Despite the expanding monitoring capacity that resulted, a constant shortage of horses regularly left couriers stranded for days and delayed officia...
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Abstract In the 1690s, Ottoman bureaucrats reformed the sprawling postal system, a vital communications infrastructure that undergirded imperial power. Despite the expanding monitoring capacity that resulted, a constant shortage of horses regularly left couriers stranded for days and delayed official correspondence. This essay investigates this paradox and draws on a series of fifty-one Ottoman imperial decrees and reports from 1690 to 1833 to make three arguments. It first shows how bureaucrats perceived and tried to fix the problem by rationing horse usage and strengthening enforcement of rules. Second, it reveals that a range of official and non-official actors were diverting horses toward profit-making ventures in what I call a “shadow economy.” Third, it explains why Ottoman bureaucrats were unable to recognize the existence of this shadow economy. Like contemporary administrators in Qing China who found it hard to synthesize intelligence from different frontiers, Ottoman bureaucrats treated multiple reports of missing horses as discrete, unconnected events rather than connected evidence of a competing market demand for horses. Compounding this problem of a blinkered informational order, profound economic and social changes meant that bureaucrats in the capital were slow to realize that long-held official entitlements regarding horse usage for personal uses were aiding the growth of the shadow economy. I conclude by considering some social consequences of commercial forces in Ottoman society and contemporary France, and the stakes of this study with respect to the rise of anonymity in market exchanges, a property of capitalism.
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1 year ago
Bryan Roby
Bryan Roby
Institution: Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
Email: robyb@umich.edu
In the wake of Israeli Black Panther activism in the mid-1970s, the Arab League invited Mizrahi (AfroAsian) Jews, especially those in Israel, to return to their homeland. Some Israelis used the invitation as an opportunity to highlight the extent of anti-Mizrahi discrimination by departing for the A...
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In the wake of Israeli Black Panther activism in the mid-1970s, the Arab League invited Mizrahi (AfroAsian) Jews, especially those in Israel, to return to their homeland. Some Israelis used the invitation as an opportunity to highlight the extent of anti-Mizrahi discrimination by departing for the Arab world. Albeit small in number in comparison to thosewho left Israel for other destinations, thosewho repatriated made a huge impact on perceptions of Israeli emigres. Their importance rested not in their numbers but in the significant threat posed to theIsraeli establishment. Afro-Asian Jewish repatriation sent amessage that the Zionist project, particularly as the opposing nationalist movement to Pan-Arabism, was a failure.
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1 year ago
Daniel Feather
Daniel Feather
Institution: Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK
Email: d.j.feather@ljmu.ac.uk
This article discusses the establishment of a British Council presence in South Africa through the appointment of a cultural advisor at the British High Commission in 1958. It analyses the role of cultural advisor, what policymakers hoped to achieve by creating it, and why they were initially hesita...
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This article discusses the establishment of a British Council presence in South Africa through the appointment of a cultural advisor at the British High Commission in 1958. It analyses the role of cultural advisor, what policymakers hoped to achieve by creating it, and why they were initially hesitant about establishing a British Council presence in South Africa. The article will highlight how the decision to appoint a cultural advisor was predicated on fears that the rise of Afrikaner cultural nationalism jeopardised British interests in South Africa. It, therefore, contributes to the emerging scholarship which positions Britain’s relationship with the independent Commonwealth members in the 1950s and 1960s within the established literature on the political decolonisation which was taking place at that time. The article also analyses the cultural advisor’s initial work focussing, in particular, on Britain’s contribution to the 1960 Union Festival. The debates over how best to represent British culture at the festival will be highlighted, and the reasons why a tour by the Royal Ballet Company was ultimately chosen as the main contribution will be discussed. Finally, the article will analyse the controversies surrounding this tour, and how the British government responded to them. This included the omission of Johaar Mossaval, a South African-born ‘coloured’ dancer from the touring party, and the decision to complete the tour as planned in the aftermath of the Sharpeville Massacre.
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1 year ago
The last decade saw a rapid increase in the number of studies where time–frequency changes of radiocarbon dates have been used as a proxy for inferring past population dynamics. Although its universal and straightforward premise is appealing and undoubtedly offers some unique opportunities for res...
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The last decade saw a rapid increase in the number of studies where time–frequency changes of radiocarbon dates have been used as a proxy for inferring past population dynamics. Although its universal and straightforward premise is appealing and undoubtedly offers some unique opportunities for research on long-term comparative demography, practical applications are far from trivial and riddled with issues pertaining to the very nature of the proxy under examination. Here I review the most common criticisms concerning the nature of radiocarbon time–frequency data as a demographic proxy, focusing on key statistical and inferential challenges. I then examine and compare recent methodological advances in the field by grouping them into three approaches: reconstructive, null-hypothesis significance testing, and model fitting. I will then conclude with some general recommendations for applying these techniques in archaeological and paleo-demographic research.
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1 year ago
Richard David Williams
Richard David Williams
Institution: School of Arts, SOAS University of London,
Email: richard.williams@soas.ac.uk
Over the seventeenth century, scholars working for courtly patrons extensively produced new treatises on the theory and practice of music in Sanskrit, Persian, and vernacular languages. This arena of musicology grew through to the eighteenth century, when Bengali vaisnava poets and lyricists began ...
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Over the seventeenth century, scholars working for courtly patrons extensively produced new treatises on the theory and practice of music in Sanskrit, Persian, and vernacular languages. This arena of musicology grew through to the eighteenth century, when Bengali vaisnava poets and lyricists began curating extensive song anthologies and expounding the aesthetic considerations derived from canonical works on poetics and the performing arts. This article explores the scholarly connections
between non-sectarian, courtly intellectual arenas and vaisnava religious communities by examining the musical works of Narahari Cakravarti (c.1698–1760), who lived in Vrindavan in the first half of the eighteenth century. His Sanskrit and Bengali works gesture to the transregional circulation of conversations and texts about musical aesthetics between northern and eastern India, and how intellectuals accommodated contemporary scholastic developments and trends in musical performance in
their theology and religious practices.
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1 year ago
