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Cosmos, Memory, Scale
Get PDFThe 2025 SOAS Artist-in-Residence Fellowship of the Shapoorji Pallonji Institute of Zoroastrian Studies presents a new major solo exhibition of Karl Singporewala’s sculptural interpretations of Zoroastrian symbolism. The exhibition features large-scale installations and new and past artworks from his catalogue which explore his heritage through art and architectural form. It also showcased historic objects on loan from cultural institutions and private collectors
The Mahdiyya in Sudan and the Problem of History
No full textThis article contends with two readings of the Mahdist insurgency. It reads it as a critique of the order in which it emerged—what might be called a historical reading—while exploring the tensions of narrating historically a movement that was decidedly anti-historical. For the Mahdi refused an order characterised by an accelerating temporality, compounding debt, and the rise of historical thinking. The article then turns to reading the Mahdist insurgency anti-historically, examining how its messianicity disturbs the complacencies of positivist knowledge. Its frontal challenge to shari‘a—which at the End of Time will be found to have been corrupted, in need of reassembling—calls into question epistemic certainties grounded in texts, in discursive traditions, and in the knowing subject. The Mahdiyya might be figured as a provocation, one which destabilises concepts. It illuminates the contingency of the conceptual arsenal of the Western social sciences, otherwise taken for granted: ‘religion,’ the ‘political,’ the ‘economic’ the ‘human’—and foremost ‘history’ itself
Recognising Shinji Yamashita, Dynamic Ethnographer Par Excellence: A Prologue
Get PDFThis Prologue provides introductory commentary about Shinji Yamashita, the Japanese anthropologist to whom this special issue is dedicated. His trajectory, from his early studies of Toraja (Indonesia) rituals to his work on tourism, migration, and Asian disasters, has been foundational for subsequent generations of anthropologists, as attested by this special guest-edited issue featuring research by his former graduate students. As I argue, in many ways Shinji Yamashita is the ultimate ‘dynamic ethnographer’ of Asian societies. I use this expression, inspired by his description of his book on Toraja highlanders, in several senses. First, his agenda has been continuously expanding to insightfully address dynamic events in the world, ranging from the tourism expansion in Indonesia, to international migration and intermarriage, to disasters. Second, Yamashita is himself a dynamic force. His research and professional travels have enabled him to forge new connective tissue between the anthropologies of Japan and the United States
AI and Arbitration in Sub-Saharan African Countries
No full textThis chapter discusses the adoption and regulation of AI in dispute resolution processes in SSA with particular focus on arbitration
What kind of a family should exist? Children and Russia’s use of ‘traditional family values’ narratives in the Russia-Ukraine war
No full textThe Kremlin’s rhetoric of defending ‘traditional family values’ has been central to Russian justifications for its invasion of Ukraine and policies towards its children. This study analyzes the relationship between family, state ideologies, and child protection within this context by examining: (1) How are children positioned within Russia’s framework of family values and the roles of the state in enforcing them? (2) How have discourses on family values and child protection been used to justify Russia’s expansionist geopolitical objectives and application of biopolitical power in the Russia-Ukraine war? Through thematic analysis of political discourse, our research reveals how, through instrumentalization of narratives on ‘traditional family values’, childhood becomes a critical site where geo- and biopolitical strategies intersect and play a central role in nation-building, expansionist foreign policy, and constructing collective identities by imposing control over human bodies. We also examine how these justificatory narratives converse with global human rights and child protection discourses. Our study contributes to the scholarship of childhood and family as sites of social and political relations and how states use cultural narratives to secure geo- and biopolitical objectives. Confronting and subverting these narratives becomes critical to any post-conflict settlement and holding Russia accountable for its actions in Ukraine
The Seventh Crusade: New Research Reveals a Different Story
No full textHistorians of the Seventh Crusade have usually told its story from the perspective of its most famous participant: King Louis IX of France. Chroniclers such as Jean de Joinville, Louis’s friend and biographer, painted the campaign as a tale of Christian courage, royal piety, and tragic defeat. In these familiar accounts, the focus has been almost completely on what the Crusaders did
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