Making Girls and Boys in Twentieth-Century China

This chapter explores the making of girls and boys in twentieth-century China, utilizing sources produced between the 1910s and the 1970s. Prescribing how to raise or educate “new” subjects, these materials outlined the ideal child persona: the rescuer or constructor of China. According to a template proposed to boys and girls across political regimes, these prototypes of rejuvenated subjectivity were characterized by industrious vigor, techno-scientific competence, patriotism, and group commitment. Emphasizing traits that we now code as masculine, the ideal child persona may appear to have been gendered male. Yet, this culturally contingent reading would assume the disappearance in twentieth-century China of earlier gendering processes, in which role and position could sometimes matter more than bodies. Suggesting instead its persistence, this chapter argues that the ideal child persona—whether boy or girl—is best understood as gendered outer, because of the public, conspicuous positioning that its exemplary roles entailed

Parsi Communities and Zoroastrian Esotericism in South Asia

In Episode 14 of Om-gnosis, host Keith Edward Cantú is joined by Mariano Errichiello, PhD, the Shapoorji Pallonji Lecturer in Zoroastrianism at SOAS University of London, for an insightful discussion on some social and esoteric dimensions of Zoroastrianism as practiced in South Asia. They discuss methodology and ethics around how a non-Zoroastrian scholar navigates fieldwork when ethnic and spiritual boundaries restrict access to Fire Temples; Zoroastrian Esotericism—a look at Ilm-e-Khshnoom and the concept of “hermeneutical polyphony”; defining the “occult”—the utility and problems around the word “occult” within South Asian studies; and how the Shapoorji Pallonji Institute is bridging the gap between research and the public through artist-in-residence programs

The Annulment of Arbitral Awards in Nigeria

This chapter examines the grounds for the annulment of arbitral awards under Nigerian law and the interpretation provided by Nigerian courts. Disputing parties go through the arbitration process with the legitimate expectation that, though the arbitral award will be final and binding on them, such award may be annulled or set aside on limited grounds. Such grounds are usually set out in national arbitration law and most such laws mirror the provisions of Article V of the UN Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, 1958 (New York Convention). This provides some convergence in the text of the laws, though interpretation by national courts may vary. This chapter engages with these issues from the perspective of Nigerian law

Trade Barriers or Catalysts? Non-Tariff Measures and Firm-Level Trade Margins

This paper empirically examines how standards and technical regulations affect export margins in three African countries at the firm level. The approach involves combining detailed customs transaction data at the firm-product level with bilateral information on non-tariff measures within a gravity model of trade framework. The findings show standards and technical regulations have no impact on the extensive margin of firm-level trade. However, they do diminish trade at the intensive margin in both the agriculture and manufacturing sectors. Small firms are more affected at the intensive margin compared to medium and large firms, and similarly, final goods are more affected compared to inter-mediate goods. Moreover, in the manufacturing sector, firms with initially higher product quality experience a reversal of the trade-reducing effect of standards and technical regulations, whereas in the agriculture sector, this effect is less pronounced for their counterparts. The results also suggest that African exporting firms face equivalent impacts in both regional and global markets

Commodified by displacement: the effects of forced displacement on Syrian refugee women in Lebanon’s agricultural sector

In an effort to contribute to an emergent body of ethnographic work addressing the labour economy of forced displacement and the contribution of women refugee-labour more precisely, the article uses the case-study of Syrian refugee women in Lebanon’s agriculture to uncover how forced displacement has contributed to the exploitation of an already-commodified, invisible, and migrantized workforce. While there is an established and diverse body of literature that investigates female labour invisibility in agriculture (on the one hand), and the relationship between labour commodification and agriculture (on the other hand), less discussed is the relationship between forced displacement and female labour commodification. Based on ethnographic research including interviews and participant observations conducted between May 2018 and September 2019 in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, this article demonstrates how refugee-labourers are subjected to various tactics and instruments of labour coercion, which affect their decision-making power in both the work sphere and the domestic sphere, reinforcing their invisibility as cheap labour and docile refugees. A closer investigation into the labour dynamics on site yet reveals a much more complex reality where women engage in various acts of negotiations by making instrumental use of their femaleness. Notwithstanding the situation of forced displacement, the conditions facing the case of these female refugee-labourers mirrors more broadly the structural problems inherent to contracted labour regimes in corporatized sectors like agriculture

Refusing the ancestry test: Malagasy Ethnic Identity and Genetic Testing

Through navigating personal and socio-political planes, this essay problematises the use of genetic testing in the Malagasy context, and in its invocation as a form of identity formulation that privileges scientific rationality over storied histories. Through considering the social roles of genetic data, this piece interrogates how DNA fails to acknowledge ethnic variation, ancestral histories and storied identify formulation in Madagascar

Embracing the messy realities of social media and artificial intelligence in higher education: considerations for learning communities

In the digital age, university boundaries are increasingly porous, with student interactions extending into opaque, ephemeral, and algorithmically mediated online spaces. These digital environments expose students to misinformation, synthetic media, and ‘dark participation’, where engagement is driven by provocation rather than constructive discourse. Artificial intelligence (AI) further complicates this landscape, blurring distinctions between human and synthetic interactions while reshaping knowledge production and academic integrity. While Peirce's concept of Communities of Inquiry offers an ideal model for collaborative learning, today's digital spaces challenge its core tenets of mutual respect and shared goals. Universities must navigate this rapidly evolving landscape, where neither strict restrictions nor uncritical technological adoption provides a sustainable solution. This chapter examines institutional responses to social media and AI, advocating for a flexible, interdisciplinary approach to curricula that equips students with the vision and skills to engage meaningfully with emerging technologies while resisting the erosion of democratic discourse

Immediacy in contemporary culture

This chapter discusses immediacy’s embeddedness in contemporary cultural discourses by examining debates on Japanese literature, popular culture, and the arts. This focus recontextualizes notable postulations such as Azuma Hiroki’s database theory, describing the habits of fans of popular culture to “consume” works as combinations of immediately familiar tropes, as well as less-studied approaches, such as Uno Tsunehiro’s views on popular culture, for example his survive-kei theory describing narratives of the vacuum and constant action. In the final section, the chapter discusses a reduction of culture to an endless present by analyzing Murakami Takashi’s “Superflat” and psychiatrist Kumashiro Tōru’s “rejuvenation depression.” While stemming from different fields, both theories share the view that contemporary Japan has witnessed a cultural flattening to an endless elongated space where differences coalesce, be it that between high and low art, and that of age phases