Waṭan before Waṭaniyya: Loyalty to Land in Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Syria

This article argues that the term wa?an (“homeland”) was used in new ways in Arabic texts describing Syria from the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries. The authors of these texts understood wa?an in its older sense as an affective attachment to land but assigned it new meaning as a territorial category of political and religious belonging. By analysing first the use of wa?an in Arabic literature from the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries and then its use in these later texts, this article proposes a re-evaluation of our assumptions about the role played by territory in defining political and religious allegiances in the pre-modern era and, thus, about the relationship between the pre-modern concept of wa?an and the modern concept of wa?aniyya, or “nationalism”.     

Islamic Historians of the Ayyūbid Era and Muslim Rulers from the Early Crusading Period: A Study in the Use of History

This article examines the presentation of Muslim rulers from the early crusading period, 490–540/1097–1146 in six of the main chronicles written during the first half of the seventh/thirteenth century. It discusses the themes, ideas and topoi in each, demonstrating that the historians appear to have been divided into two ‘camps’ over their presentation of these rulers, based on their personal views of the rulers of their time. The article also examines why this division may have occurred, and considers its ramifications for modern scholarship of Arabic historiography, Islamic history and the history of the Crusades, in both the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries.     

Beyond the residents–businesses clash – urban movements and cultural struggles in Shida,Taipei (2007–2015)

Between the mid-2000s and the early 2010s, the neighborhoods around National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), an area widely known as Shida, unexpectedly became a tourist hotspot due to the rapidly expanding night market there. Dissatisfied residents mobilized, and for several years they engaged in intense legal and discursive clashes with area businesses, the Taipei City government, and other groups in the community. Drawing on long-term observation, ethnographic research, and in-depth interviews, this article explains Shida’s spatial change from the perspectives of urban movements and cultural struggles. Specifically, it describes how three groups in Shida became organized around divergent purposes, values, and imaginations of the community. Deploying different cultural resources – ranging from civic culture, subcultural ethics to community building – the groups further enter into complex negotiation with the spheres of politics and economics. Ultimately, there was no consensus reached in the Shida case, and though many lament the passing of the area’s unique culture and many of its businesses, the dynamics between the small-scale mobilizations in Shida generated invaluable critical local wisdoms that acknowledge the desire for multiple communities in a physical locality.     

Declining and splitting: Opposition to immigration in the United States, 1996–2018

The ‘competitive threat’ theoretical model leads to the expectation that flows of documented and undocumented immigrants, economic downturns, and spread of conservative-nationalist ideologies would increase opposition to immigration. Recent studies on attitudes toward immigrants in American society do not show any increase in anti-immigrant sentiment. In the present study, we use data from the General Social Surveys (GSS) and American National Election Survey (ANES) to study change in opposition to immigration between 1996 and 2018. The findings obtained from the two data sources are strikingly similar and lead to the following conclusions. First, opposition to immigration had steadily and monotonously declined throughout the period. Second, the decline is evident even after considering variations and changes in the composition of the population, shifts in political ideologies, regional variations and cohort replacement. Third, the trend of decline in opposition to immigration takes a linear form. Fourth, opposition to immigration is stronger among Republicans and Independent voters than among Democrats. Fifth, the overtime decline in opposition to immigration was evident mostly among supporters of the Democratic Party increasing the division along party lines. The findings suggest that immigration is becoming a major political issue that is steadily polarizing American society.     

Special Needs,Cheerful Habits: Smoking and the Great War in Britain, 1914–18

This article applies an interpretive anthropological and phenomenological approach to the Great War in Britain, 1914–18, focusing on the cigarette as a cultural artefact and material commodity, and smoking as a cultural motif and social practice. The primary material featured includes personal correspondence from soldiers and civilians, newspaper articles, advertising and fictional literature. The fundamental task carried out by this study is the connection of developments in technology and distribution accelerated by the Great War, with smoking as a practice bound up with the social, cultural and material conditions in which those on the front found themselves.     

College Students’ Perspectives in Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs) in Malaysia,Singapore, England,and the US: Formative Evaluation Insights and Implications

The purpose of this study was to elicit college students’ knowledge and perceptions about sexually transmitted infections (STIs), attitudes and practices regarding condom use, and information about what educational and prevention materials that they think would be most effective for their peers. As part of a larger study, data was collected using focus groups and questionnaires. While American and Malaysian college students in the US participated in the focus groups, the open-ended questionnaire was emailed to college students recruited in Malaysia, Singapore, and England. Participatory communication was used as the theoretical framework to generate information and message concepts necessary for the design of effective health education and promotion materials. This study revealed that college students, regardless of nationality, should be informed and educated of the STIs problem on a gradual basis through various means and communication channels.     

Islam,Jews and Eastern Christianity in Late Medieval Pilgrims’ Guidebooks: Some Examples from the Franciscan Convent of Mount Sion

The Holy Land was described, not just in the accounts of the pilgrims who visited the most sacred land of Christianity, but also in several compilations and collections of texts conceived as guidebooks for clerics and pilgrims. From the fourteenth century onwards, many of these collections are clearly linked to the Franciscan Convent of Mount Sion. These assemblages often include texts on customs and religious beliefs of the peoples of the Near East and on the history of the Holy Land. One of the aims of the compilers seems to have been to prepare the reader to meet unorthodox practices and beliefs, emphasising the contrast between Latin Christianity and Eastern Christianity or Islam.