"Weapons of the Meek": Ecstatic Ritualism and Strategic Ecumenism among Tamil Hindus in Malaysia

This article examines the politics of Hindu revivalism among Tamils in Malaysia. In examining the dramatic pilgrimage and ritual of Thaipusam and the activities of a leading Hindu reform and performing arts organization, it is argued that the present resurgence of Hinduism is related to a growing sense of displacement experienced by Tamils in Malaysia. Thaipusam, while representing a collective assertion of Tamil and Hindu identity, also signifies "Indian" within an Islamic-modernist discourse of the Malaysian nation. Becoming an ethnic subject within a multicultural nationalist discourse, in turn, produces ambivalence among some Tamils which is manifested in status concerns and social distancing within the Tamil community. Many elite Hindus, in turn, are drawn to the apparently ecumenical and modernist teachings within Hindu reform organizations. The vicissitudes of Malaysian Hinduism bring into focus some of the complex ways that diasporic sentiments are produced and differentiated along lines of status and class within and against modernist state-ideologies.     

Inside the Museum: Curating between hope and despair: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

The reception of the core exception of POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which opened in Warsaw on 28 October 2014, is the focus of this essay. While eschewing a master narrative, the exhibition is guided by metahistorical principles and a distinctive approach to mode of narration. Both have proven controversial as evidenced by answers to the following questions. What is the difference between a history of Polish Jews and a history of Polish Jewish relations? What is the most important period in the history of Polish Jews? Can visitors be trusted to draw the proper conclusions from a multi-voiced narrative based largely on quotations from primary sources, supported with scholarly commentary? Is a museum whose core exhibition features relatively few original objects a museum? What is the role of intangible heritage in such a museum?     

A skeleton in Poland's closet: The jedwabne massacre

This paper presents a case study of the Jewish ethnic economy in the Moldovan town of Belz across a number of historical periods, with particular emphasis on the Soviet era. Economic practices are seen as embedded in a larger context of ongoing social relations at various levels, both within the Jewish community of the town and across ethnic borders. The author argues that the ethnic economy under socialism may be conceived as a non-market response to the ideologically imposed prohibition of private entrepreneurship, and focuses on the Jewish involvement in the second/ shadow socialist economy. Within this approach, economic ideas and practices emerge as markers of Soviet collective Jewish identity.     

Between Philosophy and Art: The Avant-Garde Work of Debora Vogel

ABSTRACT

Debora Vogel (1900–1942) helped develop modernism in Lviv in the interwar period. As a philosopher and writer, she was able to make connections between the dominant Polish school of philosophical logic (the so-called Lviv-Warsaw School) and the artistic circles in Lviv, to which Bruno Schulz, Stanis?aw Ignacy Witkiewicz and Leon Chwistek belonged.

Inspired by Cubism and Surrealism, but also by recent philosophical discussions, Vogel developed a writing technique called montage. In her poems and prose written in Yiddish and Polish, she reflected on the relationship between humans and modern urban architecture, playing with mathematical or geometric words and color predicates. At the same time she abandoned traditional narrative models with her style of writing.

In view of the above, this article presents Vogel's experimental writing practices and aesthetics concepts by locating her work in Lviv's culture of knowledge.     

Claiming Lesbian History: The Romance Between Fact and Fiction

The contested field of lesbian history exists along a continuum, with undisputed evidence on one end and informed speculation on the other. Lesbian historical fiction extends the spectrum, envisioning the lives of lesbian pirates, war heroes, pioneers, bandits, and stock romantic characters, as well as the handful of protagonists examined here whose quests specifically highlight the difficulty and importance of researching the lesbian past. The genre blossomed in the 1980s, just as the Foucauldian insistence that homosexual identity did not exist before the late nineteenth century gained sway in the academy. The proliferation of lesbian historical fictions signals the growing desire for more thorough (if not completely factual) historical underpinnings of the burgeoning lesbian identities, communities, and politics set in motion in the 1970s.     

浅析行业企业参与职业院校教育现状与发展对策

职业院校教育的发展与行业企业密不可分,促进行业企业与职业院校深度融合,是培养高技能型应用人才的主要方式。但由于行业企业参与职业院校教育意识淡薄,政府激励机制不完善,职业院校本身教育不足,使得行业企业参与职业院校教育存在诸多问题。本文主要从职业院校教学模式、行业企业自身发展和政府政策制度三方面,分析了行业企业与职业院校教育发展对策。     

Brody always on my mind: the mental mapping of a Jewish city

Once overwhelmingly inhabited by Jews, the Austro-Galician border town of Brody, in present-day Western Ukraine, has retained an important place on Ashkenazi mental maps until today, even though scholarly studies on Brody are scarce. The present article tries to capture the elements that allowed Brody to inscribe itself so successfully in Jewish memory. Therefore, this paper analyses several lieux de mémoire underlining Brody's enduring perception as a town closely related to Jewish issues. These places, however, are not only physical spots in the cityscape, like the ruins of the synagogue and the cemetery, but also images of and texts about Brody. Whether intended or not, pictures and postcards also have an impact on how Brody has been remembered; and so do memory books, be they written in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish or Ukrainian. This study argues that Brody appears on the mental maps of Eastern European Jewry as an amalgam of physical places, icons and texts linked to a multi-layered and multifaceted urban history     

Post-Soviet Nostalgia in Israel? Historical Revisionism and Artists of the 1.5 Generation

ABSTRACT

The article examines contemporary Israeli poetry and visual art by Russian-Jewish artists of the 1.5 generation, artists who were born in the Soviet Union but resettled in Israel during the 1990s. By focusing on the representation of the Soviet–Jewish past in their works, I show that in contrast to the largely negative view of the Soviet experience by the previous generations of Russian-Israeli authors, the historical understanding of the 1.5 generation is fundamentally different. This cohort of artists resists the lachrymose portrayal of Jewish life in the USSR and the “Happily Ever After” finale in Israel. Instead, they propose a counter-narrative that is hinged on a romanticized depiction of life in the USSR and disillusionment in Israel that followed. I argue that nostalgic representations of the Soviet–Jewish past by these artists derive from the suffering, humiliation, and rapid downwards social mobility that the Russian-speaking community experienced in Israel.     

Moderating masculinity in women-dominated digital spaces: Men and masculinity in the sims 4 online community

This article examines gender dynamics within a women-dominated online community centered around The Sims, a feminine-coded simulation computer game in which women are the majority of players. Based on qualitative analysis of 10 threads and approximately 400 comments from both the official Sims 4 forums and unofficial Sims 4 subreddit, as well as online ethnography, I find that some men responded to their minority status within the Sims community by arguing that men were neglected by the developers at the expensive the inclusion of women and LGBTQ players, for instance, due to an imbalance of content designed for men versus women. However, these men experienced pushback against these ideas in such a way that minimized their voices. I argue that this pushback is a form of moderating masculinity to defend the safety of the community for women. This study contributes to our understanding of gender dynamics in digital spaces, particularly those dominated by women.     

Norbert Elias, maritime supremacy and the naval profession: on Elias' unpublished studies in the genesis of the naval profession

In 1950 Norbert Elias published the first of three studies on 'The Genesis of the Naval Profession' in the British Journal of Sociology. At the time Elias was not the established scholar that he was to become in later days. In the 1950s his work on the 'Naval Profession' was not well received by the audience, even though all the major themes of the 'civilizing process' were interwoven in the article. The other two studies were never published in English journals (only one was published in a Dutch journal but received no international attention). A perusal of the Norbert Elias Archive in Marbach am Neckar in Germany--shows that the 'Naval Profession' project is larger than the intended three part series of articles for the BJS. From an outline to the project found in the archive it can be concluded that Elias intended to write a book with six to seven chapters. The key to the studies is a sketchy theory of institutions, which states that conflict promotes institutional development. Through the conflict between two occupational groups, sailors and soldiers, the naval officer becomes institutionalized as a new profession. During the period this process takes place England acquires maritime supremacy, secures the passages to the colonies and becomes an empire.     

The City as a Sexual Laboratory: The Queer Heritage of the Chicago School

This article documents the pioneering—and largely overlooked—sociological studies of sexuality undertaken by scholars at the University of Chicago during the first decades of the twentieth century. Focusing primarily on their investigations of a wide range of non-normative sexualities, including prostitution, cross-racial sexuality and homosexuality, it argues that these studies provided the foundation for a radical new understanding of sexuality that emphasized the social context and meaning of sexual practices and types, rather than their biological or psychological determination. Finally, it demonstrates the forgotten centrality of these studies to the establishment of the field of urban sociology by explicating the sexual subtext of several key concepts from the so-called Chicago School, including natural areas, concentric zones of urban development, mobility, social personalities and the marginal man.     

‘Between underground and over ground: narratives on the identity of women insurgents in Assam’

ABSTRACT

The Assam Movement (1979–1985) has been a turning point in the politics of Assam in India that has raised the question of identity and at the same time triggered the struggle to self-determination by the insurgent organization United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). This paper aims to take identity as the point of departure to mark the transition of women’s role from the Assam Movement into their underground roles in ULFA. In such narratives of hero-making and patriotism, under-representation of women’s strategic involvement and self-sacrifices in the insurgent outfit often leaves the lives of the women members misrepresented and fails to highlight the in-betweens of life and death. This paper pushes the idea of identity assertion in Northeast India beyond citizenship and questions the way women’s presence in the insurgent organization gets narrated, documented, and established. Oral histories are crucial sources of data for this study.     

Changing Space,Making Race: Distance,Nostalgia, and the Folklorization of Blackness in Puerto Rico

In this article, I critique some of the discursive terms in which blackness is folklorized and celebrated institutionally as part of the nation in Puerto Rico. I examine a government-sponsored housing project that meant to revitalize and stylize the community of San Ant n, in Ponce, as a historic black site. Although government officials tried to preserve what they considered to be traditional aspects of this community, conflict arose because not all residents agreed with this preservationist agenda. I document the controversy, linking the government's approach to racial discourses that represent blackness as a vanishing and distant component of Puerto Rico. I argue that this inclusion and celebration complements ideologies of blanqueamiento (whitening) and race-mixture that distance blackness to the margins of the nation and romanticize black communities as remnants of a past era. I link these dynamics to modernizing State agendas and discourses of authenticity that fuel cultural nationalism worldwide.     

Epistemology of the Bottle: The Social Construction of Alcoholism and Alcoholics in Social Work Literature in the United States Between 1950 and 1959

ABSTRACT

This article examines selected social work literature that has been published in mainstream social work journals in the United States from 1950 to 1959 in order to deconstruct how alcoholism and alcoholics have been historically constructed within the social work profession. The theoretical framework employed is that of social constructionism and deconstruction. The methodology is qualitative research, specifically historical analysis. The findings of this article are discussed for their relevance to social work practice and social work education.     

Gating Union: The Politics of Making a Historically Black Community

ABSTRACT

In 1999, Union was officially recognized as a Historic District by the National Register of Historic Places. Although approximately 80 percent of the residents are raced white, Union was identified as a historically black space. The recognition, premised on Union's origins as a town founded by freed slaves in the late nineteenth century, was the culmination of efforts by the Union Community Association. Its members, who are predominantly white, middle class, and newcomers to the area, took on the role of “protecting” their community by gaining official historic recognition, a task that established them as the gatekeepers of history, and black residents as historical artifacts. As Union became established as a historically black community, its social and legal boundaries could act to protect the place against unwanted land developers. While (white) residents took on the role as history's gatekeepers, (black) descendent residents were turned into tangible metonyms for history, authenticating by their presence Union's historic status. Official recognition has allowed the Union Community Association to fence in an oasis of rustic living at the edge of development, while less affluent residents find themselves gated into a stagnant social landscape in which social and economic opportunity has been effectively gated out.     

Science and social work: a sketch

While recognizing that understanding of ‘science’ varies across time and countries, there are strands of a shared albeit diverse inheritance. Failures to see where we are located within this inheritance make the social work community vulnerable to simplistic claims regarding what, for example, ‘doing science’ is like. This in turn makes it difficult to deal adequately with questions such as in what ways can or should we distinguish social work science from other kinds of knowledge? Is science in some recognizable way a unified form of knowledge? How ought we to deal with disputes and disagreements in social work science? What kinds of consequences might we envisage from social work science? I deal in turn with each of these questions.     

Promoting Health and Wellness in African American Males through Rites of Passage Training

The current work presents exploratory research findings related to the effectiveness of Let the Circle Be Unbroken, an African-centered “rites of passage” training program, to promote health and well-being in a sample of high-risk, African American males. An abbreviated version of the ADPRC-TADPOLE questionnaire was administered to 39 African American boys, between the ages of 8 and 16 years, who were participating in a community-based “rites of passage” training program. Findings suggest that the Let the Circle Be Unbroken training program is a viable program for improving self-esteem among young African American males. The implications of this research are relevant to the reduction of some health disparities observed among underrepresented populations, especially African American males.     

Pretending to be a normal human being: Peep Show,sitcom, and the momentary invocation of disability

This interdisciplinary article presents research about the place of disability in the British sitcom Peep Show, whose 54 episodes span more than a decade in their transmission (2003–2015). The methodology of critical discourse analysis is employed to probe the relationship between casual word choice and broader themes such as normalcy, humour, and social attitudes. This analysis is informed by classic and new work in cultural disability studies, as well as by work in literary studies and television studies. The conclusion is that, despite its apparent irrelevance to disability studies, Peep Show reveals much about conversational invocations of disability.     

People in a World Between: Psychodynamic Themes in the Treatment of Bisexual Patients

Normal sexual behavior is on a continuum—with homosexuality at one end, heterosexuality at the other, and bisexuality at the midpoint. Most people have some bisexual potential. A bisexual person is capable of having intimacy with either a man or women but may be made uncomfortable by the ambiguity of their libidinal longings, feel different, isolated, and long to make a clearer gender choice—homosexuality or heterosexuality. The sacrifice to the self and the psychic conflicts that block such a lifestyle resolution brings these bisexuals into treatment and clinicians are confronted with a need to apply psychodynamic theory in new and more flexible ways. Using two case studies this paper discusses forms of androgynous transference, pregnancy fantasy, and dream interpretation that can unfold in the psychotherapy of bisexual patients.