Kill me a mosquito and I will build a state: political economy and the socio-technicalities of Jewish colonization in Palestine, 1922–1940

Theory and Society - Scholars see Israel as a settler state, comparable with North American, South African and Oceanian cases. But how was Jewish settlement-colonization in pre-Israel Palestine...     

Becoming citizens of empire: Albanian nationalism and fascist empire, 1939–1943

Theory and Society - This article uses the case of Albanian nationalism during the period of Italy’s occupation of Albania (1939–1943) to challenge prevailing conceptions of nationalism...     

The interrupted chain: traditional receiver countries,migration regimes,and the East European Jewish diaspora, 1918–39

This article focuses primarily on countries that had been, prior to 1914, among the most favored destinations for East European Jewish migrants: chiefly the United States, Canada, Palestine, Brazil and Argentina. In the inter-war years, these ceased to be the only ports of final entry for Jewish migrants. However, despite restrictive migration regimes and unfavorable economic conditions, traditional receiver countries continued to absorb the largest share of such migrants (the U. S. and Palestine, between them, accounting for over 800,000). Jewish migration to countries other than the United States peaked around 1933; was just about equal to the U. S.-bound migrant stream by 1938; and fell off in 1939–1940. The Jewish case raises several theoretical and methodological issues, including the definition of migrant motivation as well as the framing of immigration policy as products of mixed factors – both political and economic.     

Corporate political power and US foreign policy, 1981–2002: the role of the policy-planning network

Theory and Society - Recent empirical work has offered strong support for ‘biased pluralism’ and ‘economic elite’ accounts of political power in the United States, according...     

Britain and the Jewish community of Iraq, 1948–51: An aspect of British policy in the Middle East

British policy after the Second World War was designed to maintain her influence in the Middle East. As a result, she worked to prevent any destabilization of the region's nations and especially to preserve the existent pro‐British regimes.

The Iraqi royal government was weak, depending mainly on its army. The riots of January 1948 proved how tenuous the government's position was. Here Britain invested great efforts in preventing conditions from damaging the regime or destroying it. This explains why the British were not active on behalf of the Jewish community, which at the time suffered from a policy of discrimination and persecution.

The British assumed that the problem of the Jewish minority in Iraq could not be divorced from overall Jewish‐Arab relations or those between Israel and the Arab states, and that the Iraqi Jewish community's fate was inevitable given the events in Palestine. Moreover, despite the pressure from extremist quarters in Iraq to banish all the Jews and expropriate their property, the Iraqi government's policy was not that extreme, and it sought at least to defend their lives and prevent a recurrence of the June 1941 pogrom. Despite this, Israel exploited the Iraqi Jewish community's situation to attain her own political and economic ends.     

The Black Sheep of the Land: Bandits in the Polish Borderlands, 1918–1925

This article examines banditry in the northeastern provinces of the Second Polish Republic after the First World War and into the mid-1920s. It considers the devastating effects of the war, which ravaged the territory, together with policies of the Polish state that contributed to an increase in bandit activity in the eastern borderland region. This work argues that banditry here worked as a multi-level system and thrived due to the involvement of multiple social actors—the bandits themselves, locals, state authorities, and foreign aid. Furthermore, this article pushes for an examination of bandits—not merely as social outcasts or misfits—but as an integral part of the communities they emerged from. More broadly, the focus on banditry contributes to scholarship dedicated to better understanding the aftermath of the First World War and continued conflict from the perspective of everyday people.     

Corporate protectors of state sovereignty: Mitsubishi’s and a Taiwan affiliate’s accounts of relations with Taiwan Aborigines

This paper compares two related corporations’ accounts of enacting sovereignty with Taiwan Aborigines. First, Mitsubishi corporate webpage histories constitute mythic origin narratives about how their patriotic founder, Yataro Iwasaki, helped the Japanese government transport munitions and troops to Taiwan in 1874 and the government rewarded him with 30 ships, starting their close relationship. These narratives about this state-centred assemblage omit why Japan sent the military expedition, which ostensibly was a punitive expedition against Paiwan Aborigines for the 1871 massacre of 54 Ryukyu Islanders, but was actually part of the new Meiji state’s annexation of the Ryukyu Islands. Second, it analyses the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines which was founded in 1994 by the wealthy chair of the Shung Ye Group, a Taiwan-based Mitsubishi-affiliated conglomerate. The museum is a private assemblage organized around hero narratives in which the chair demonstrates his patriotism by rescuing Taiwan Aborigines and their cultures. The museum contributes to the Taiwan-centred identity project which challenges One-China sovereignty claims over Taiwan.     

The dairymaid and the prince: race,memory, and the story of Benjamin Banneker’s grandmother

The list of white Englishwomen, who formed intimate relationships with African men between 1680 and 1750 in Maryland, is impressive, more so because by 1664, Maryland laws made interracial marriages between white women and African men illegal. Court records exist documenting the punishment of women both for ‘fornicating’ with men of African descent and for having children by them, though how rigorously early colonial Maryland marriage laws were enforced remains unknown. What is known and what increasingly stringent marriage laws in Maryland suggest is that after 1664 white English women continued to choose black partners (both slave and free), regardless of serious social consequences that included social exclusion, lengthened indenture service, forced servitude of their children and of their sexual partners, and public physical punishment including whipping. By 1715, it became illegal in Maryland for black women to engage in intimate relationships with men. Mixed-race women, commonly called ‘mulatto’ in early records, found themselves with few choices in their sexual partners, since legally they were not allowed to engage in intimate relationships with either white or black men. One of these women, Molly Welsh, serves as a reminder of the unusual and unique position for women during the seventeenth century as servants, slave owners, property owners, and as partners in interracial relationships.     

Double Jeopardy in Hollywood: Age and Gender in the Careers of Film Actors, 1926–1999

There have been few studies of the concept of double jeopardy as it pertains to the effects of gender and aging on occupational outcomes. This research examines the utility of this concept in the field of film acting, traditionally a gender-integrated occupation. The results confirm significant negative effects of being female and being older on the number of film roles received by actors and their average star presence. Moreover, the gendered effects of aging on the career opportunities of actors have diminished somewhat over time with respect to number of film roles but not with respect to star presence.     

Forget “militarization”: race,disability and the “martial politics” of the police and of the university

This article investigates the limits of the concept of militarization and proposes an alternative concept: martial politics. It argues that the concept of militarization falsely presumes a peaceful liberal order that is encroached on by military values or institutions. Arguing instead that we must grapple with the ways in which war and politics are mutually shaped, the article proposes the concept of martial politics as a means for examining how politics is shot-through with war-like relations. It argues that stark distinctions cannot be made between war and peace, military and civilian or national and social security. This argument is made in relation to two empirical sites: the police and the university. Arguing against the notion that either the police or the university have been “militarized,” the article provides a historical analysis of the ways in which these institutions have always already been implicated in martial politics – that is, of producing White social and economic order through war-like relations with Indigenous, racialized, disabled, poor and other communities. It concludes by assessing the political and scholarly opportunities that are opened up for feminists through the rejection of the concept of militarization in favor of the concept of martial politics.     

The ingathering: Reasons of state,logic of capital and the assimilation of immigrants in Israel 1948–60

After more than 50 years of statehood ethnicity still looms large in Israeli politics as the division between Israelis of non‐European and European descent plays a central part in Israeli politics. This article, examining patterns of immigrant assimilation in the 1950s, seeks to explain why, despite an all embracing Jewish identity and the massive efforts of the state to erase ethnic identities, the categories have retained so much of their weight. Assimilation and modernization, directed towards immigrants, were both constituted and limited by the mutually constitutive, yet sometimes contradictory dictates of state building and the formation of a market economy. Assimilation facilitated the settlement of immigrants along the frontier, mobilized and motivated them into shouldering security demands, and helped to create a productive labour force. But, contrary to the inclusive military apparatus, the policies of settlement and employment relegated immigrants to the periphery. Consequently, while immigrants assimilated and gradually achieved some economic progress and political leverage due to the remaining disparities and past resentments ethnic identity persisted.     

Latin American immigration policy and the Jews, 1938–43: The discrepancy between word and deed

This article deals with a distinct minority group, the Jews, and Latin American perceptions of them as well as perceptions of Jews as immigrants and the discrepancy between official statements and actual policy. A main point of the article is that this discrepancy between word and deed was evident prior to the Marín survey of 1942–43, as epitomized by the Evian Conference of 1938 on refugees and immigration, and continued into the Second World War, at a time when more open immigration policies were so desperately needed.     

‘The Sunshine of Manly Sports and Pastimes’: Sport and the Integration of Jewish Refugees in Britain, 1895–1914

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Jewish refugees arriving in Great Britain were exposed to an ‘anglicisation’ campaign designed to aid their integration into British society and their assimilation of British character traits and cultural values. Within this campaign, especially the element focusing on the children of the migrants, interest and participation in sport was consciously ‘transferred’ through the medium of youth and sporting organisations in order to help in their ‘anglicisation’. This essaywill show how physical recreation was promoted by the English Jewish establishment and how participation in sport amongst young Jews grew.     

One doesn't make out much with furs in Palestine: the migration of Jewish displaced persons, 1945–7

Based on the interviews David Boder conducted with Holocaust survivors in 1946, this article explores the realm of migration choices that were available to Jewish survivors in European Displaced Persons camps. The article argues that, aided by Jewish philanthropic and self-help organisations, many Displaced Persons had already established long-term strategies for their postwar lives by 1946.