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Abstract
This article focuses on an incident involving a series of evictions experienced by a group of Makrani laborers who made their living by earning daily wages at the Hyderabad railway station in early twentieth century Sindh. In this piece I critically analyze two imperial projects: first, the construction of the Indian railways and second, the promotion of “free” wage labor by the colonial regime in the aftermath of the abolition of slavery. By critically interrogating the promises of both “free labor” and “technological progress” this article argues that survival in the Sindhi countryside depended on a group’s ability to assert legible claims to both belonging and to land. Through an in-depth examination of the conflicting land claims, bureaucratic exchanges, and discourses around wage work that these evictions provoked, this paper reflects on the enduring entanglements of race, labor, technology, and empire in this region of British India.
Abstract
In this paper, I examine the drinking game of lot-drawing as a prophetic device in the novel The Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng
In my analysis, I show that the drinking game evokes a sense of the supernatural in the players for a reason: the drinking game resembles the qian
Abstract
From the ancient practice, implied by many textual sources although never formally prescribed, of identifying the twelve horoscopic places (the
The present volume is intended to historicize the question of religious authority in Muslim Central Eurasia, through historical and anthropological case studies about the exercise, negotiation, or institutionalization of authority, from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century; it thus seeks to frame Islamic religious history in the areas shaped by Russian and Soviet rule in terms of issues relevant to Muslims themselves, as Muslims, rather than solely in terms of questions of colonial rule.
Contributors are Sergei Abashin, Ulfat Abdurasulov, Bakhtiyar Babajanov, Devin DeWeese, Allen J. Frank, Benjamin Gatling, Agnès Kefeli, Paolo Sartori, Wendell Schwab, Pavel Shabley, Shamil Shikhaliev, and William A. Wood.
The present volume is intended to historicize the question of religious authority in Muslim Central Eurasia, through historical and anthropological case studies about the exercise, negotiation, or institutionalization of authority, from the nineteenth to the early twenty-first century; it thus seeks to frame Islamic religious history in the areas shaped by Russian and Soviet rule in terms of issues relevant to Muslims themselves, as Muslims, rather than solely in terms of questions of colonial rule.
Contributors are Sergei Abashin, Ulfat Abdurasulov, Bakhtiyar Babajanov, Devin DeWeese, Allen J. Frank, Benjamin Gatling, Agnès Kefeli, Paolo Sartori, Wendell Schwab, Pavel Shabley, Shamil Shikhaliev, and William A. Wood.
Abstract
The article investigates the emergence and transformation of humanitarian associations in Egypt from the late 19th to the mid-20th century. It argues that on the one hand these associations were new institutions echoing the foundation of new charitable organisations worldwide and in Egypt. The colonial domination of Egypt and its refusal by the Egyptians thereby played a prominent role. On the other hand, the humanitarian associations have to be seen in the continuity of long-established practices and discourses of charity, performed in particular by religious endowments (awqāf). Based on the example of the Egyptian Red Crescent, which is explored through a wide range of un explorer Egyptian, British and Swiss archives as well as a broad historiography in European and Arabic languages, this article emphasises the interconnections between international, regional, national and local institutions in Egypt in the field of philanthropy.
Abstract
At the end of the First World War, a profoundly transformed Middle East faced massive population displacements and health crises, which presented crucial challenges for humanitarian actors. North American philanthropy and charity played a decisive role in this context. Among the organisations involved, the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (cnewa) is not well known. It was established by American Catholics to help Eastern Christians – especially Greek Catholics – and to thwart the influence of Protestantism in the region, mainly by supporting local Churches and missions in their humanitarian and welfare work. cnewa was quickly placed under the supervision of the US episcopate and the Vatican, partly transforming its operations and purposes. Its activity became closely involved with the Eastern policy of the Holy See, which primarily focused on the “return” of Orthodox Christians to the Roman Church. This article, at the crossroads of the history of mission and humanitarian aid, examines the early developments of cnewa and highlights how the Catholic Church dealt with the emergence of modern humanitarian aid in the mid-twentieth century.