Peripheral Ritualized Practices—Threads Connecting Decorations to the Cloak of Identity

This is an ethnographic study which investigates the practices of language maintenance and ethnic identity affiliation for immigrant/migrant Nepalese families with primary to middle school children in the United Kingdom. The study presents a comparative case study analysis of three Nepalese immigrant/migrant families. Participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and historical narrative interview were used. The study investigated prior exposure to home country, ethnic, cultural, and social literacy practices that occurred in various contexts during a nine-month period. This analysis revealed a phenomenon I termed peripheral ritualized practices. Exposure to peripheral ritualized practices over time creates positive changes in attitudes toward multilingualism and diversity.     

Fāṭimids,Crusaders and the Fall of Islamic Jerusalem: Foes or Allies?

The fall of Islamic Jerusalem to the crusaders during the first Crusade created a sense of agitation and anger amongst Muslims as Islamic Jerusalem had been under their rule for centuries before. A considerable number of scholars have pointed at the Fā?imids as the main cause of the fall of Islamic Jerusalem, claiming that the region would not have fallen had it not been for the alliance and collaboration between the Fā?imids and the crusaders. This article is an attempt to present a critical analysis of the historical narratives of Muslim and non-Muslim historians who have continued to accuse the Fā?imids of collaborating with the crusaders and depict them as the main cause of the fall of Islamic Jerusalem during the first Crusade. It also tries to answer the following two questions. Did the Fā?imids really invite the crusaders to invade al-Sham? And is it true that the Fā?imids misunderstood the crusaders’ aims and targets?     

Is Transracial the Same as Transgender? The Utility and Limitations of Identity Analogies in Multicultural Education

In June 2015, Melissa Harris-Perry infamously analogized the possibility of trans-Black identity to the reality of transgender identity. Such analogies happen often and are used mostly for the benefit of learning about a less familiar form of identity. Building from a recent article by Suthakaranm, Filsinger, and White (2013 Suthakaran, V., Filsinger, K., &; White, B. (2013). Using analogies as an experiential learning technique in multicultural education. Multicultural Perspectives, 15(2), 92–97.[Taylor &; Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) that presented a compelling argument for the use of analogies as an experiential learning tool in multicultural education, we advance the conversation by distinguishing a particular form of analogies: identity analogies. We explore the benefits and challenges of utilizing identity analogies as a tool for multicultural educators within U.S. higher education.     

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.     

Identity and Otherness: Maghribi Images in the Historiography about Alfonso XI of Castile (1311–1350)

This work studies the information that the historiography on King Alfonso XI of Castile offers on the Marīnid dynasty of Fes. In spite of the confrontation between the two states in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for the control of the Strait of Gibraltar and the southern part of Andalusia, the Alfonsine texts (the Crónica del Rey don Alfonso el Onceno, the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI and, to a lesser extent, the Poema of Alfonso Onceno) attempt to reconstruct the history of the rival sultanate through a verifiable and rigorous approach comparing with Arab sources from that period. In this regard, their ideological conception moves away from the usual stereotypes, which are generally negative in the way they portray the other, i.e. the Maghribi opponent. In contrast, Alfonsine historiography assumes the empathetic portrayal of the identity values of the rival as part of the task of the historian, and uses the history and deeds of the adversaries to highlight the victory of the Castilian monarch over them.     

Can Restorative Practices Help to Reduce Disparities in School Discipline Data? A Review of the Literature

Disparities in school discipline data is a national concern. Schools across the nation are working to eliminate these disparities. This literature review considers one response to the disproportionate data, restorative practices. This article examines why exclusionary approaches to discipline are ineffective, contribute to imbalanced discipline data, exacerbate the achievement gap, and push minority students into the juvenile justice system. Restorative practices are an inclusionary, nonpunitive alternative. This approach offers a preventive component as well as a responsive component. I will use this article as a platform to show readers how and why using restorative practices, as an alternative to punitive practices, will support a reduction in the number of referrals and suspension given in schools in order to reduce, and ultimately eliminate the disparities in discipline data across the nation. Limitations in the research are highlighted and recommendations of where to focus future research are provided.     

‘Facing’ Identity in a ‘Faceless’ Society: Physiognomy,Facial Appearance and Identity Perception in Eighteenth-Century London

English men and women confronted many new questions about the relationship between identity and appearance during the eighteenth century. How did the face reveal information about a person’s character, morality, health, class, gender, nationality and race? How should faces be perceived in forms of social interaction? Could appearances be trusted? Through analysis of physiognomic texts, urban literature, aesthetic treatises, conduct books and cosmetic manuals, this article examines the changing social and cultural meanings attached to the face, and developments in the ways contemporary authors advised it should be ‘read’ as a signifier of character, identity and social difference in eighteenth-century London.     

The ‘Non‐dit’ in the Zenana: representations of Muslim women in Islamic canonical texts,the neo‐colonial imagination and a feminist response from Bangladesh

Abstract

This essay recognizes that representations of the ‘Muslim woman’ as the Othered ‘object’ of the ‘Western’ gaze and the domesticated ‘object’ which the Islamic apologists strive hard to defend, are both constructions and false antitheses of each other. It seeks not the ‘truth’ regarding the Muslim women in the world of social reality but to examine how various representations of the women are constructed and to what effects and consequences these representations are mobilized. The essay proceeds in three stages. The first stage shows how the patriarchy mobilizes the Qur’an and the Hadith in order to construct the woman as the negative, the inessential and the abnormal of the man so as to exert complete subordination over her. However, the very act of attempting to mute the woman in Islam is the most strident proof that she is engaged in resistance against patriarchal control and the degree of resistance must be judged by the degree of patriarchal control. The second stage demonstrates how patriarchy operates in colonial and neo‐imperial landscape: it legitimizes the appropriation of Muslim woman ‘possessed’ by the Other (as exemplified by the orientalist seduction fantasy in William Dalrymple’s The White Mughals), but, haunted by the fear of rape and anxieties regarding the sexuality of the White woman possessed by the Self, it attempts to maintain strict control over her (as in the cases of Miss Wheeler in the ‘Mutiny’ of 1857 and Private Jessica Lynch in the Iraq War). This struggle over the feminine body is perfectly in line with Islam’s hyper‐anxiousness to hide the female body and rigorously ensure monopolic possession over her. The third stage shows how Taslima Nasreen, a late‐20th century feminist from Bangladesh, speaks the unspoken and thereby attempts to subvert the normative representation of the muted women in her autobiographical novella, entitled āmār Meyebelā. In thus examining the representations of the Muslim women, this essay seeks an alternative ‘third space of enunciation’ and takes a distinct political stand located outside of the axis of the dichotomy of the ‘Western’ gaze and the construction of the Islamic theologians.     

Made in China: the cultural logic of OEMs and the manufacture of low‐cost technology

Abstract

This paper investigates the conditions of the manufacture of low‐cost technology in China with the examples of ‘pirated’ VCD players, ‘no‐name’ DVD players, and Shenzhen’s development as a techno‐urban city. It emphasizes the significance of the cultural logic of original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and argues that the various transformations and deflections that are derived from ubiquitous OEM experiences have gone beyond the original model of an authorized OEM, experiences that are to some extent embodied in the transgression of brand name and patent hegemonies, which are mainly controlled by high technology companies. OEMs have been associated with China’s current imperative and uninhibited development of low‐cost technology capitalism. ‘Made in China’ signifies the production of any product, legal or illegal, for transnational high technology giants or domestic technology manufacturers. Learning to ‘become an OEM’ in China has partly resulted in excessive technological mimesis that may be part of an unauthorized, underground economy that is based on low‐cost technology. Based on the Shenzhen experience, part of this study will show industrial production‐oriented OEM cultures in which illegal operations and counterfeit trade are incorporated, even in city projects that are shared by municipal governments and Chinese technological companies, and undergo spatial restructuring in the development of the economy, consumerism, and urbanism.     

Travelling Without Risks? Itinerant Entertainers in the Duchy of Brabant and their Uses of Passports at the End of the Eighteenth Century

This article examines the uses of passports among itinerant entertainers travelling through the Duchy of Brabant. Making their living with public performances ranging from singing, making music, acting and puppetry to acrobatics and bear dancing, they travelled on a daily, weekly or monthly basis over short and long distances with their shows. Their high level of mobility met with multiple restrictions imposed by the authorities. Travellers with little or no means were often arrested for vagrancy or begging on the charge of having no fixed residence or a steady job. Passports could help itinerant entertainers preventing their possible arrest. This article addresses the question how ambulant entertainers made use of passports for their travels. To this end I used passport registers on the one hand and vagrancy files of arrested itinerant entertainers on the other hand. The passport registers (available for the cities of Brussels and Antwerp) provide insight into who applied for a passport. Meanwhile, the vagrancy files shed light on entertainers travelling without a passport or with invalid ones. As such, this body of sources provides us with an exceptional insight into the variety of uses of passports by itinerant entertainers in Brabant at the turn of the century.