bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Unseeing Eyes
Authors: El Refaie Elisabeth
Published: January 2019

This chapter focuses on visual metaphor in graphic illness narratives about cancer, which takes its course inside the body and is beyond the conscious control of the patient. Even when there are external, visible symptoms of the disease, we nevertheless require imaging technologies to see what is occurring beneath the surface of the skin. However, the images produced by these technologies are unfathomable to the untrained eye, which unsettles conventional metaphorical connections between human vision and knowledge. Issues of visibility and invisibility are, inevitably, always at the forefront of artists’ minds when they are creating work in this medium. Taken together, these factors motivate the prevalence in comics about cancer of metaphors that reflect people’s anxieties about internal physical processes, while also often functioning as a form of resistance against the all-powerful “medical gaze.”
Trapped in Spacetime
Authors: El Refaie Elisabeth
Published: January 2019

This chapter applies the notion of dynamic embodiment to graphic illness narratives about depression, a disease that typically involves a range of both mental/cognitive and physical symptoms, including low mood, feelings of worthlessness, and altered perceptions of time. These symptoms lead to an inability to engage actively in the world and a tendency to spend many hours in a prostrate position. Correspondingly, in comics depressed characters are frequently drawn lying down and at the bottom of panels and pages, which reflects the close links between feelings of hopelessness and the effects of gravity on the body (SAD IS DOWN). Many metaphors of depression in these works also convey a sense of what shall be termed “temporal entrapment.” This is due to the unique process of translating time into space in the comics medium, which foregrounds temporal aspects of the depression experience when artists are communicating through the graphic pathography genre.
Conclusion
Authors: El Refaie Elisabeth
Published: January 2019

The conclusion outlines how the notion of “dynamic embodiment” developed throughout the book may challenge traditional notions of embodiment in Conceptual Metaphor Theory, by revealing the complex, shifting nature of individuals’ experiences of their bodies. The new tripartite taxonomy for analyzing visual metaphors draws attention to the many different aspects of visual meanings that are capable of conveying metaphorical meaning, including spatial composition and the stylistic features of both drawings and written words. Another aim of the book has been to raise awareness of the many creative metaphors that tend to occur in graphic illness narratives, which makes this genre particularly well suited to the task of highlighting aspects of the illness experience that may otherwise go unnoticed. These findings have the potential to change the attitudes and practices of both patients and healthcare professionals, encouraging a more thoughtful and imaginative use of illness metaphors.
Introduction: Why This Book?
Authors: Metcalf Gilbert E.
Published: January 2019

The introduction provides an overview of the argument of the book that climate change has real costs we are paying right now. Greenhouse emissions are changing our climate and our current policies are inadequate to the task of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A carbon tax uses the power of the market to reduce emissions without onerous regulations. It uses the power of market forces to reduce emissions without burdening businesses with paperwork and red tape. As such, it should have bipartisan appeal.
Climate Change: What’s the Big Deal?
Authors: Metcalf Gilbert E.
Published: January 2019

Droughts, floods, soaring temperatures, sea-level rise, and melting ice are just some of the damages brought about by climate change. Chapter 1 details the cost of our failure to cut our emissions, from crop-destroying droughts to devastating floods. It also documents the inexorable build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as demonstrated by the Keeling curve and observations from Antarctic ice core samples. The chapter then provides a brief history of the science linking the build-up of atmospheric greenhouse gases and climate damages.
Cap and Trade: The Other Way to Price Pollution
Authors: Metcalf Gilbert E.
Published: January 2019

This chapter reviews another way to put a price on pollution: establishing a cap and trade program. It describes what cap and trade is, how it puts a price on pollution, and its use around the world. The chapter then goes on to make a case for why a carbon tax is a better approach than cap and trade for pricing carbon pollution in the United States. While either cap and trade or a carbon tax is preferable to the other options discussed in chapter 4, a carbon tax still has significant advantages over cap and trade.
What to Do with $200 Billion: Give It Back
Authors: Metcalf Gilbert E.
Published: January 2019

This chapter discusses how economists measure the burden of a carbon tax—which households have less spending power because of the tax. It also discusses fairness in the tax code and how the revenue, which can be substantial, from a carbon tax can be returned to households and businesses in ways that enhance the fairness and efficiency of the overall tax system. A common belief is that a carbon tax is regressive—that it disproportionately burdens poor households. Studies discussed in this chapter refute this belief and argue that judicious use of the carbon tax revenue can make a carbon tax reform (tax and return of the revenue) even more progressive.
Objections to a Carbon Tax
Authors: Metcalf Gilbert E.
Published: January 2019

This chapter addresses common objections to a carbon tax including whether the science is settled enough to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, whether the tax will hurt economic growth, or whether the tax will kill jobs. It dispels a number of myths about climate policy and coal mining while making the case for providing transitional relief to coal miners and other groups particularly hard hit by the tax. It also discusses how the tax can be designed to ensure that long-term emission reduction goals are met.
What Next?
Authors: Metcalf Gilbert E.
Published: January 2019

This brief chapter moves from explaining why a carbon tax is smart policy to showing how the reader can learn more and get engaged in shaping the policy debate. It provides information for individuals or groups interested in taking action on a carbon tax. It provides links to various groups that carry out research on climate policy that should inform policy making as well as to groups working to enact a carbon tax. It also explains how to engage with politicians and encourages readers to reach out to their Representatives and Senators to support smart climate policy like a carbon tax.
Like a Phoenix from the Ashes
Authors: Salkind Micah E.
Published: January 2019

Chapter 1 begins with a detailed historical account of rock radio station WLUP’s 1979 Disco Demolition Night promotion at Comiskey Stadium. The infamous event, at which baseball fans detonated a pile of disco records, was a flashpoint that presaged the codification of Chicago house music as a distinct set of cultural practices and sounds. Building on the work of urban cultural historians studying Chicago’s Black and brown cultural economies (Mumford, 1997; Heap, 2010; Green, 2007), this chapter historicizes the geographic and social frameworks that gave rise to house by showing how the demolition of musical artifacts surrogating queerness, blackness, and Latinidad sutured post-Great Migration histories of residential and economic segregation to new spaces for queer of color conviviality near Chicago’s central business district. Unlike previous accounts of the demolition (Cowie, 2010; Echols, 2010) that connect it to a national homophobic backlash against disco music, Do You Remember House? addresses the promotion as a phenomenon tied to Chicago’s particular histories of racial apartheid.
Remediating the Underground
Authors: Salkind Micah E.
Published: January 2019

The third chapter of Do You Remember House? traces the routes by which mostly straight, Black, and middle-class teenagers accessed and adapted the social and sonic templates developed by house music’s queer of color progenitors. Using close readings of radio “hot mixes” and oral history interviews with DJs, promoters, and dancers involved in the city’s all-ages “juice bar” scene, this chapter also suggests that house music radio was made by an emergent cohort of middle-class, Black, radio entrepreneurs who remediated Chicago musical repertoires for increasingly heterogeneous listening publics. The term remediation (Bolter & Grusin, 1999) helps account for the ways that the WBMX and WGCI hot mix shows incorporated and transformed the aesthetic priorities of teen juice bars, gay discotheques, and Black appeal radio programs to promote house music as a shared, if often contested, soundscape in greater Chicagoland.
“Is It All over My Face?”
Authors: Salkind Micah E.
Published: January 2019

Chapter 5, whose title is taken from dance music pioneer Arthur Russell’s classic vocal house anthem, examines the ways that dancers, DJs, and other cultural entrepreneurs who came of age in the teen scene central to the third and fourth chapters of the book memorialize and perform affiliations with house music culture at the Chosen Few Old School Reunion Picnic, a massive yearly celebration on Chicago’s South Side. Drawn from ethnographic fieldwork conducted at The Picnic in 2012, 2013, and 2014, and multiple modes of ethnographic engagement therein, this chapter interrogates Chicago house music’s classic repertoire in motion. Its close readings of musical performances are braided with analysis of Picnic space, foodways, dance, and adornment, elements that help sustain the trans-generational love ethic hailed by the event’s DJs.
Are You Ready to Get Your Life?
Authors: Salkind Micah E.
Published: January 2019

Chapter 6 takes its title from club performer Mister Wallace’s invitation to Smart Bar dancers to get their lives, or discover their authentic selves, on the venue’s dance floor. Working from field notes written during over ten months’ performance ethnography at Chicago’s Chances Dances and Queen! parties, this chapter unpacks the often subtle ways that house music’s alternately “neostalgic” (Madrid, 2008) and “wild” (Muñoz, 2013) sonic and social genealogies are performed not only on the dance floors, but also in the DJ booths, and through the marketing and promotional efforts of the city’s queer nightlife producers between 2013 and 2014. It situates Chicago’s contemporary queer clubbing communities in terms of how they intentionally, and unintentionally, invoke house history as they get their lives together.
Coda
Authors: Salkind Micah E.
Published: January 2019

Do You Remember House? concludes with a brief examination of Chicago’s Honey Pot Performance, and the group’s “Chicago Black Social Culture Map.” It also looks at Chicago’s tentative steps towards creating landmarks and official, city-sponsored programming to celebrate house music heritage. This coda suggests that house music’s unstable repertoire in motion, and its maroon, queer of color roots, have made it difficult to codify and market like other popular genres of Black music, such as jazz and blues, and argues for more research that attends to intersectional experiences of social and economic marginality in the cultural sphere. Ultimately, this research has the potential to yield innovative modes of preservation and promotion for musical cultures that, like house, are sustained in and across communities characterized by difference rather than sameness.
Conclusion
Authors: Sacks Tina K.
Published: January 2019

This chapter summarizes the book’s main points including the idea that stereotype threat negatively affects Black women during the healthcare encounter and that women feel they must adjust their behavior to mitigate pervasive stereotypes. It also critiques the prevailing framework in health disparities research as being ahistorical and decontextualized. The chapter summarizes the women’s healthcare experiences, pointing to prevailing negative stereotypes about Black women that follow them into the doctor’s visit despite their class or educational status. Women tried to emphasize certain elements of their persona particularly vis-à-vis their cultural health capital. In other words, to be visible to their providers, they tried to leverage certain skills that are valued in the contemporary healthcare space, such as the ability to convey health information in a rational and efficient manner or take an instrumental approach to one’s body. The chapter closes with a discussion of structural interventions to address differences in treatment.
Mind and Body in Early China
Authors: Slingerland Edward
Published: January 2019

Drawing upon cutting-edge knowledge and techniques from the sciences and digital humanities, Mind and Body in Early China employs the lens of mind-body concepts to critique Orientalist accounts of early China. Views of China as the radical, “holistic” Other are unsupportable for a variety of reasons. The idea that the early Chinese saw no qualitative difference between mind and body (the “strong” holist view) has long been contradicted by traditional archaeological and qualitative textual evidence. New digital humanities methods, such as large-scale textual analysis, make this position even less tenable. Finally, a large body of empirical evidence suggests that “weak” mind-body dualism is a psychological universal, and that human sociality would be fundamentally impossible without it. More broadly, this book argues that the humanities need to move beyond social constructivist views of culture and embrace instead a view of human cognition and culture that integrates the sciences and the humanities. Methodologically, it attempts to broaden the scope of humanistic methodologies by employing team-based qualitative coding and computer-aided “distant reading” of texts, while also drawing upon current best understanding of human cognition to transform the basic interpretative starting point. It has implications for anyone interested in comparative religion, early China, cultural studies, digital humanities, or science-humanities integration.
Introduction
Authors: Slingerland Edward
Published: January 2019

The Introduction makes the case that the study of China is still dominated by “neo-Orientialism,” a combination of classic Orientalism with postmodern cultural relativism and a normatively positive view of the exotic East. It would be better to adopt an “embodied” stance that takes as its starting point basic commonalities among human beings and explores cultural difference against this shared background. The idea of a “holistic” early China, seen through the specific lens of mind-body holism, can serve as a good case example of how an embodied, science-humanities integrated approach is more helpful.
Soul and Body
Authors: Slingerland Edward
Published: January 2019

This chapter presents traditional archaeological and textual evidence against the strong soul-body holist position—that is, the claim that the early Chinese lacked any sense of a qualitative distinction between an immaterial soul and a physical body. This evidence includes afterlife beliefs as gleaned from mortuary practices and textual evidence drawn from both the received corpus and archaeologically recovered texts. The early Chinese appear to have distinguished between a relatively corporeal, physical body and a relatively incorporeal soul (or set of souls). The former was part of a material, visible world and was viewed ultimately as peripheral to the essence of one’s personal identity. The latter was the focus of ancestor cults, sacrifices, and oracles, and partook of an invisible, numinous world, qualitatively distinct from our own. The “specialness” of the next world and the beings that inhabited it lent to them, and to items and practices associated with them, a degree of numinosity that is not at all alien to conceptions of the holy or sacred in Judeo-Christian traditions. The chapter concludes with the argument that soul-body dualism is ultimately parasitic on basic mind-body dualism, which sees mental states or consciousness as somehow qualitatively distinct from the material world of things.
Mind-Body Dualism in the Textual Record
Authors: Slingerland Edward
Published: January 2019

The xin is most commonly characterized in pre-Qin texts as a locus of thought and decision making, sometimes linked to cognition or moral emotions like worry or compassion, but primarily concerned with what we could very well call “reason.” Especially once we enter the Warring States, it is represented as at most only vaguely located in the body, with an extremely tenuous relationship to both the body itself and other bodily parts. It is reasonable to describe the xin as metaphysical, somehow free of the limitations of the physical world. Focusing on the term xin (heart, heart-mind, mind), this chapter uses qualitative textual analysis to make the case that early Chinese texts were written by people who embraced, at least implicitly, a “weak” form of mind-body dualism. This includes the idea that the mind is at least somewhat immaterial, qualitatively different from the other organs, and the seat of reason, free will, and the individual self.
Conclusion
Authors: Slingerland Edward
Published: January 2019

It is time for naturalistic hermeneutics to replace the hermeneutics of the free-floating Geist, explained by nothing, explaining nothing, completely sui generis and shrouded in holy mystery. Once the shift from radical cultural-linguistic constructivism to embodied commonality is made, the landscape of comparative thought begins to appear in a very different light. Not only does comparison as a very project actually begin to make sense, but perhaps the ambitions of some of the early pioneers of comparative religion also begin to seem a bit less sinister or ridiculous. The conclusion sums up the case for a “naturalistic hermeneutics,” an interpretative strategy that begins from an assumption of embodied commonality between humans, and one that also takes advantage of both content knowledge and methodological techniques drawn from the natural sciences. The larger implications for the humanities and the future of the academy are explored.
Introduction
Authors: Long William J.
Published: January 2019

This study asks, “How does democratic governance and economic development differ when founded on Eastern, Buddhist principles, rather than dominant Western, liberal, and Enlightenment values and beliefs?” The small, remote country of Bhutan, the only democratic, market-based state in the world rooted constitutionally and culturally in Mahayana Buddhist principles and ethics, provides a heuristic case study for comparing two distinct approaches to democracy and development. Because the two approaches—Eastern and Western—are based on distinctive philosophical traditions that differ on important, first-order principles, comparison can bring to light new questions, frames of inquiry, and alternative approaches to contemporary democratic theory and practice and broaden our conceptualization of, and policies directed toward, human development.
A Buddhist Approach to Politics and Economics
Authors: Long William J.
Published: January 2019

Because Buddhists view political and economic systems as an instrument to a higher end not an end in themselves, Buddhist teachings do not offer a systematic prescription for social organization that one might expect from a Western treatise. Instead, Buddhist social theory can be distilled from a collection of axioms, instructions, and observations that guide possible forms of political and economic organization and practice that can provide conditions conducive to the transcendence of suffering—the uniquely Buddhist dimension of “happiness.” Buddhist political and economic thinking parallels Western thought in many ways, but differs in its emphasis on virtuous government, the duty of care owed to others (not just individual freedoms), and its environmental sustainability ethos. This chapter identifies the points of congruence and departure between Western and Buddhist notions of the good polity and economy.
Gross National Happiness
Authors: Long William J.
Published: January 2019

Chapter 5 examines Bhutan’s singular approach to economic development; pursuing Gross National Happiness rather than the maximization of Gross National Product. “Happiness” in the Bhutanese context does not equate with Western notions of hedonic (“feel good”) pleasure, nor is it fully analogous to Aristotle’s notion of happiness as eudemonia, the sense of deep contentment arising from living a virtuous life. Rather, in the Bhutanese approach, true happiness comes from relieving the suffering of others, living in harmony with nature, and realizing the potential of one’s mind. This deep philosophical and soteriological difference in meaning is what makes the pursuit of “Gross National Happiness” so profound and why it is not merely a multi-dimensional measure of development as it is seen in the West. This chapter explains how Bhutan translates this unique orientation into policies that seek to modernize its economy without sacrificing its cultural traditions.
Current Challenges
Authors: Long William J.
Published: January 2019

Can a small, landlocked country sandwiched between the world’s two most populous countries open itself to the global economy without losing the values that make it a separate sovereign nation? Chapter 6 looks at critical challenges facing contemporary Bhutan such as maintaining its spirituality in the face of global consumer culture, the transmission of traditional values to its next generation, and the protection of minority rights. These assessments draw from longitudinal data on Bhutanese society and its national happiness surveys to offer a real-time assessment of the country’s well-being. The chapter concludes with a historical examination of the impact of Bhutanese government policies on Nepali Bhutanese.
The Dragon’s Roar
Authors: Long William J.
Published: January 2019

What insights, if any, might modern Western democracies extract from Bhutan’s approach to the challenges of democratization and development? Bhutan’s very distinctiveness, while warning against simplistic attempts to extend Bhutan’s experience beyond its borders, also makes Bhutan particularly intriguing and possibly instructive. Simply put, Bhutan’s approach to democracy and development is “outside the box” of prevailing approaches and therefore, to the extent it is not wholly culturally specific, could provide a genuine alternative way of thinking about longstanding and emerging challenges facing democracies today, including: increasing political polarization, economic inequality, low levels of citizen confidence in the efficacy of governmental institutions, and the environmental and psychological sustainability of the prevailing economic-development model, which is oriented to the goal of ever-increasing national production and consumption. This chapter offers a limited and an extensive view of Bhutan’s relevance to social thinking and practice.
Introduction
Authors: Gegout Catherine
Published: January 2019

Why do France, the United Kingdom and the European Union intervene militarily in some African conflicts? Is it because European leaders feel responsible for the people who face conflicts in Africa? Do they always have several interests and values at stake when they decide to intervene? The first sections on ‘theorizing European military intervention’ and ‘security, prestige and the weight of neo-colonialism’ give an overview of the major theoretical and empirical contributions of the book. The following section shows how the book offers a new light on intervention, and how it rejects Eurocentrism. There is then a discussion of the research design, methodology and case selection of the present study, and an explanation of the importance given to history. The last section discusses the larger African context in which European military intervention takes place.
Historical Background
Authors: Gegout Catherine
Published: January 2019

Chapter two places European intervention in its historical context, as current political decisions are taken by leaders situated within colonial history. It analyses the first two waves of intervention by European actors. Motivated by security and greed, European states colonized and enslaved African people and exploited resources. The second wave took place after decolonization, and the move of African states to independence. Britain and France, operating in the wider context of the Cold War, had different motives. The United Kingdom made sure its former colonies did not turn to communism, and then it withdrew from Africa. France remained active in African states for motives of security and economic benefit, and to gain or retain prestige with Africa, the United States and the international community.
The Persistence of the French Pré Carré
Authors: Gegout Catherine
Published: January 2019

Chapter four shows that France has reduced its economic impact in Africa in comparison with other world powers; but as core realists would expect, France still maintains an important ad hoc and permanent diplomatic and military presence in Africa. Case studies of French intervention and non-intervention show that French leaders have always acted first and foremost to ensure security interests, that is, the support for ‘cooperative’ regimes and the removal of ‘uncooperative’ regimes in African states, the safety of France’s own military bases and citizens, and the fight against terrorism. They also want to gain personal prestige, prestige for French citizens, and prestige for France in the international community (the United States, the United Nations, and the Arab world). France promoted its economic interests through intervention in the 1990s, but after 2000 it merely made sure those were not harmed. France is still tied to its colonial past, even if it has declined to help only three former colonies in the past ten years. Humanitarianism is never the only motive for French intervention, but it has been one of the motives, especially in operations since 2004.
European Intervention in Africa
Authors: Gegout Catherine
Published: January 2019

The book has surveyed thirty years of interventions in Africa. Chapter seven is divided into three sections. It first gives an assessment of the most appropriate theoretical approaches for understanding motives of European military intervention in Africa. The second section highlights the importance of EU state control of military intervention, and argues that EU actors are likely to remain motivated by security interests and prestige, to the detriment of humanitarian motives. It looks at the implications of this for Africa in international relations: African states and organizations will continue to be needed to address security concerns of European actors, but their economic relations with European actors are likely to be reduced. As expected by the decolonizing school, African states are likely to become more prominent security and economic actors within the African Union in order to address conflicts and economic problems in Africa. The final section offers a more optimistic analysis of how humanitarian concerns could drive European intervention for both better and equal relations with African actors, and for improved security (with less economic violence) in Africa and Europe.
Islamic Democracy by Numbers
Authors: Kazmi Zaheer
Published: January 2019

This chapter focuses on the ideological uses of the concept of al wasatiyya, as a means of propagating moderation, by prominent contemporary Muslim scholars engaged in countering extremism. It focuses on the ways in which, through the idea of the “middle way”, a particular theology combines with a majoritarian narrative of Islamic history, politics and civilization to produce a potent synthetic ideology which often serves to exclude, anathematize or marginalize. While it has become a commonplace among liberals to debate the fluid interpretations of Islamic concepts which legitimize violence, less attention, if any, has been given to the equally unstable categories associated with antidotes to religious violence. By deploying the majoritarian dimensions of a concept like “the middle way”, leading scholars today expose the multivalent and volatile nature of theological categories associated with countering extremism. Perhaps, most significantly, it points to some of the limits encountered in searching for correspondence between Islam and the West by way of such categories.
Bourgeois Islam and Muslims Without Mosques
Authors: Kersten Carool
Published: January 2019

Within the context of Indonesia’s encounters with liberalism in late colonial and postcolonial times, this chapter examines Muslim discourses that are critical of both Western liberal ideology and its Islamist detractors. After problematizing the existing categories of Islamic neo-modernism, Liberal Islam, and Islamic liberalism, the chapter focuses on alternative discourses formulated by Muslim intellectuals from both traditionalist and modernist-reformist Islamic backgrounds during the Reformasi era when Indonesia transitioned from a military autocracy to a democratic system of governance. Islamic Post-Traditionalists draws on poststructuralism and postcolonial theory to offer an emancipatory trajectory for Indonesian Muslims in the twenty-first century, while modernist-reformist intellectuals have drawn on the social sciences to develop a new paradigm referred to as Transformative Islam. Instead of presenting sweeping ideas, this younger generation is more concerned with translating new regimes of knowledge into applied thinking about concrete issues, such as democratization, development, justice and battling corruption.
Islamic Secularism and the Question of Freedom
Authors: Adib-Moghaddam Arshin
Published: January 2019

The meaning of freedom in Iran cannot be exclusively unraveled from an “Islamic” perspective. At the same time, liberal concepts and the idea of freedom itself have repeatedly figured prominently in the writings of leading Islamic theoreticians and philosophers in the country. In order to give a brief overview of these ideas and the debates they have provoked, this article will follow three steps. Firstly, it will demonstrate that the idea of freedom has been at the heart of political events in modern Iran. I will start by sketching some of the major political upheavals in the country, with a particular emphasis on the events surrounding the Iranian revolution of 1979. In a second step, I will look at the nexus between Islam and liberal ideas in the political philosophy of major contemporary Iranian thinkers. And thirdly, I will sketch some of their flaws with a short philosophical critique.
Militancy, Monarchy and the Struggle to Desacralise Kingship in Arabia
Authors: Dailami Ahmed
Published: January 2019

Thirty years of scholarship on Saudi Arabia has assumed a fused relationship between religious and political authority at the helm of a petro-state. This chapter questions the fundamental theoretical assumptions about that relationship both historically and in the contemporary era. By examining the tensions between religious violence, the state’s political authority, and the liberal solutions that have emerged to resolve them, the chapter both draws out the ideological lineage of Saudi reformism for the post-Islamist era, while suggesting new ways to conceptualize political power as distinct from religious authority or economic capacity. In the process, the chapter takes stock of Saudi Arabia’s puritan tradition as its monarchy leads the regional drive against Political Islamism.
Preliminary Thoughts on Art and Society
Authors: Abbas Sadia
Published: January 2019

This chapter argues that anti-aesthetic tendencies in postsecular thought tend to obscure the complexity of society by dividing social practices with an aesthetic and aesthetically performative component along religious and secular lines. In everyday life, however, art, devotional music and Na’at performances coexist and are often imbricated. We need a more dynamic conception of society, state and art, attentive to these intimacies.
Of History and Biography
Authors: Yavari Neguin
Published: January 2019

Is there an essentially “Islamic” tradition of biographical writing? To put this to the test, the chapter focuses on the roughly contemporaneous medieval biographies, by Einhard (d. 840) and Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam (d. 829)—both secular firsts—of two non-contemporary rulers: Charlemagne (r. 768-814) and ‘Umar b. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (r. 717-20). Accounting for similarities or differences in both style and content of biographical writings in different historical milieus induces a new understanding of the relationship between text and context, and offers new modes of reading. A more complex ancillary of this revision is a fresh look at exchange, transmission or crosspollination to explain instances of convergence between alien texts. The distant objective is a new model for global history that has the conceptual arsenal to explain what specific role representations play in the history of the social order.
Origins
Authors: Yavari Neguin
Published: January 2019

In the pursuit of political thought on authoritative and efficacious rule, this chapter contains a brief introduction to those currents that shaped the eleventh century: the coming of the Turks to the eastern Islamic world, and the interaction of Turkic rulers with the Abbasids and local elites, to which Nizam al-Mulk belonged, as narrated in the medieval histories with a particular élan. Drawing on new scholarship on ethnicity, ethnogenesis, and nomadic polities, it argues that normative assumptions that color medieval accounts of Saljuq tribal and political organization offer insights that have hitherto been neglected. Ethnonyms and toponyms are frequently used in medieval sources as situational constructs, camouflaging alliances and ideological proclivities.
Nizam al-Mulk Remembered
Authors: Yavari Neguin
Published: January 2019

The focus in the fifth and final chapter is on the afterlife of Nizam al-Mulk, of his legacy as well as of his representations. By the late fifteenth century, in Timurid Iran, Nizam al-Mulk is already the stuff of legend. In one historian’s estimation, the vizier is a veritable eleventh-century avatar of the martyr par excellence of Shi’i lore Husayn b. ‘Ali (d. 680), and the progenitor of modern Iran. But the story of Nizam al-Mulk does not end with his metamorphosis into a crypto-Shi‘i and a proto-Iranian patriot. In the 2010s, it is Nizam al-Mulk who is the most regularly invoked exemplar of legitimate Islamic governance, exhorting prudence and expedience to guide the Iranian polity through the treacherous waters of nuclear negotiations with the West, and to domesticate outlier and extremist fervor. The Iranian invocation of Nizam al-Mulk differs radically from his depiction in modern Sunni—Arab or Turkish—historiography. That living legacy is the true history of the laureled vizier.
Introduction
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

Osama bin Laden, may God have mercy on him, went to his Lord after he achieved what he desired. He was aiming to incite the ummah [nation or community] to Jihad, and his message reached from East to West and all over the world. The Muslims answered it, as did all the oppressed on the face of the earth....
The Noble Knight Dismounted
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

Ayman al-Zawahiri’s first statement as leader of Al-Qaeda. Issued weeks after Osama bin Ladin was killed by US special forces in his Abbottabad compound in north-east Pakistan, Zawahiri seeks to combine his eulogy of the fallen leader—heavily reliant on poetry—with his vision regarding the challenges the ummah [nation or community] is facing and how to address them. He reiterates bin Ladin’s ‘oath’, promising to inflict casualties on the oppressors as long as they make the Muslims suffer. Reflecting on bin Ladin’s objectives, he argues that the late leader had been successful in rousing the ummah, which he claims was his principal goal.
Support for Islam Document
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

In this short, but important document, published during Ramadan in 2012 (1433 according to the Islamic calendar), Zawahiri identifies four key issues that are wrong with the current international order (the five permanent members of the Security Council, rule by majority, the legitimization of usurped land, and subjugation of Muslims) and presents a seven-part pathway to upturning this order, around which he urges coreligionists to unify. The document is an opportunity to reiterate the relevance of Al-Qaeda in a rapidly changing world, both locally and globally
General Guidelines for the Work of Jihad
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

In addition to the ‘Support for Islam’ document, Zawahiri frequently referred to his ‘General Guidelines’ on subsequent occasions as key texts defining the way in which he sought—via Al-Qaeda—to chart a sustainable and ultimately successful course for Islamist militancy worldwide. In his Guidelines, Zawahiri sets out his strategic and tactical priorities, emphasizing the need to target America as ‘the head of unbelief’. The main focus of the document is to rein in fighters who were seen to have engaged in excessive violence, avoiding the reputational hazards such targeting would incur. The document is thus interesting not only in relation to Al-Qaeda’s immediate prehistory at this point, where allies and affiliates had carried out mass-scale attacks against civilians that ultimately undermined Al-Qaeda, but also of course in relation to what came after: where the sectarian bloodshed inflicted by ISIS/IS became a major theme in Zawahiri’s attempts to delegitimize that group. Zawahiri referred to his Guidelines on many subsequent occasions, pointing out that had it been heeded more widely the turmoil and infighting between groups in Syria and beyond could have been avoided.
Emancipation from the Cycle of Failure and Frivolity
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

This publication is typical of Zawahiri’s ‘big films’. Like a contemporary Hollywood blockbuster, it is repetitive and overlong. Yet it comes at an important time in the aftermath of the toppling of Mohammed Morsi as the Muslim Brotherhood president of Egypt. Here, therefore, Zawahiri moves on from his focus on reshaping or reframing the Arab Spring according to his framework and agenda to dissecting the reasons for its failure. He presents Chechnya as an example for Arabs to follow, whereby the enclave persevered in protracted conflict against the Russian state. Zawahiri seeks to construct an uninterrupted rhetorical thread where the current struggle of believers echoes that of the first generation of Muslims, including the venerated battles they fought and won during the formative years of Islam. He uses the aftermath of the Arab Spring to re-illustrate the fallacy of the democratic method, reiterating his demand that Sharia becomes that which governs the affairs of men, as oppose to that which is governed by man. He speaks about the Coptic Christian minority in Egypt, warning its leadership against shoring up secular authoritarianism, whilst noting his desire to avoid direct confrontation with normal members of that faith community.
The Seventh Interview with Sheikh Ayman Al-Zawahiri Reality Between Pain and Hope
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

This is the seventh ‘interview’ between Al-Sahab, Al-Qaeda’s media production department, and Zawahiri, a tradition which started in 2005. This format gives Zawahiri the opportunity to discuss a wide variety of matters in great detail, whilst giving the impression that critical issues have been addressed and approached from different viewpoints. This is the first significant statement about infighting among jihadis in Syria and whilst Zawahiri seems keen to blame the turmoil on ‘external’ factors such as criminality or alleged infiltration by the Assad regime, two key historical analogies that subsequently became prominent in his denunciation of this ‘fitna’ [sedition/strife] emerge. These are comparisons with the fate of the Groupe Islamique Armé (GIA) that fought in the civil war in Algeria and became widely condemned as a jihadi outcast and the infighting that spread throughout Afghanistan after Soviet withdrawal in 1989.
Indeed, Your Lord is Ever Watchful
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

In this second example of key texts from the Islamic State group, the IS spokesperson, Abu Mohamed al-Adnani presents his group as a force that emerged in defense of believers which will ultimately spread to conquer the world. He promises to defeat Rome, representing Christian-dominated hegemony, enslaving the infidel women and defeating its Arab ‘guard dogs’, such as the Saudi military. He speaks directly to Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and elsewhere, in direct competition with Zawahiri. Contrasting his stance, he welcomes the slaughter of nonbelievers and calls for IS loyalists to carry out attacks wherever they can. The disbeliever can be killed like a dog. This is sanctioned by God, Adnani insists. The contrast with Zawahiri’s message at this time, therefore is stark.
The Islamic Spring, Part 2
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

In the second part of the series on the ‘Islamic Spring’, and following a traditional division between ‘far’ and ‘near’ enemies, Zawahiri separates the ‘internal’ struggle in Syria, Iraq and neighboring regions from the external battle targeting Western heretics. Echoing the laissez-faire approach to violence adopted by IS, albeit within the boundaries of legitimate targeting, Zawahiri urges followers to carry out improvised attacks using whatever means are at their disposal, whilst warning believers that if they do transgress and commit sin the fact that they were following orders will not absolve them when it comes to answering for their deeds in front of God.
The Islamic Spring, Part 3
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

In the third part of his ‘Islamic Spring’ series, Zawahiri expands upon the necessary preconditions for the declaration of a legitimate caliphate and the duties that the caliph will have to respect as well as the qualities that he will have to represent. He then follows each point in seeking to demonstrate how IS and its declaration of caliphate is unjust and in violation of scripture and the prophetic method. He addresses questions concerning some of these points in more detail in the fourth instalment which, for the sake of space, I do not include here.
The Islamic Spring, Part 5
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

In the fifth episode of the ‘Islamic Spring’ series Zawahiri continues to explore the conditions necessary to establish a Caliphate. In doing so he seeks to undermine the appeal of IS’s leadership by lauding Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which IS recognizes as its forefather, and other leaders of the Islamic State of Iraq, whom Zawahiri had of course criticized in the past. He demonstrates their apparent loyalty towards the Al-Qaeda leadership (represented, of course, at that time by bin Ladin), whilst reiterating his vision for the creation of a Caliphate through solidifying existing ‘emirates’ in Afghanistan and the Caucasus, that are loyal to Al-Qaeda.
Let us unite to Liberate Al-Quds [Jerusalem]
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

In times of crisis and turmoil, Zawahiri revisits a traditional rallying call to make the case for Al-Qaeda’s continued relevance: the ‘liberation’ of Jerusalem. This process, he argues, will have two components; the first would be to target the West, especially in the United States and their interests across the world as it is this support that is key to Israel’s survival. The second component is the establishment of an Islamic state, centered in Egypt and the Levant to create powerful staging posts to conquer Palestine. The purpose, of course, is to remind audiences that the major jihadi objectives remain unfulfilled and have become side-tracked due to the infighting in Syria.
We Shall Fulfil our Pledge
Authors: Moore Cerwyn
Published: January 2019

This is Zawahiri’s pledge of allegiance to the new leader of the Taliban, Mawlawi Haibatullah, which is combined in this statement with a eulogy of Mullah Akhtar Mohamed Mansour, who was killed in a US drone strike in May 2016. Zawahiri uses the opportunity to emphasize the loyalty and steadfastness of jihadi stalwarts within both the Al-Qaeda central command and the leadership of the Islamic State in Iraq, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, thus accentuating his depiction of the Islamic State organization as a transgressor, disrupting a noble legacy of jihadi activism reaching, in modern times, back to the venerated conflict against the soviets and Afghanistan and—ultimately—back to the precedent set by the Prophet Mohammed and his companions
The Changing Nature of Socialization among Arab Youth
Authors: Allagui Ilhem
Published: January 2019

This article examines online relationship activities among Arab youth, paying particular attention to micro-practices of engagement and the ways on which socio-cultural contexts shape social interactions online. Youth resort to a range of strategies to develop friendship and interact with evolving technologies. In negotiating and managing their relationships, they take into account not only their identities, cultures, and values but also the images they want to project to the users and online groups they interact with. Drawing on narrative analysis and personal stories of informants, this chapter discusses the dynamic relationship between online and offline interactions in relation to socialization. It explores how everyday practices inform the reconfiguration of the culture of connectivity in social media times. The chapter points to the multimodality of social lives and suggests that offline and online interactions are deeply intertwined.
Mediated Experience in the Egyptian Revolution
Authors: Peterson Mark Allen
Published: January 2019

Reconciling large scale political and social change with everyday lived experience has always been a fundamental problem for understanding social and political change. This chapter offers a conceptual framework that recognizes the intricacy of interaction between mediation and revolutionary social change by looking at the lived experience of Egyptians during the Egyptian revolution. The experience of collective events is mediated through information and communication technologies; these mediated experiences are both collective, in that people are connected by media uses and practices and by common activities and spaces, and yet they are also deeply personal and individualized, in that specific sets of technologies, interpersonal relationships and embodied practices that comprise one person’s unfolding experience are different from another’s. The chapter argues that these two dimensions could be theorized using the concepts of network and assemblage. On a broader scale, we can understand the relationship between mediated experiences of events and agent-driven uses of media technologies by turning to processual analysis of the sort called field theory, which allows us to see the revolution as a series of struggles over the symbolic meaning of revolutionary activities, in which media practices play a crucial part.