That Undisclosed World: Eric Shipton’s Mountains of Tartary (1950).

Mountains of Tartary (1950) recounts Eric Shipton’s mountaineering and travels in Xinjiang during his two postings as British Consul-General in Kashgar in the 1940s. An accomplished Himalayan mountaineer of the 1930s, Shipton was a successful author of mountaineering travel books. During the 1930s his work with the Survey of India saw him increasingly drawn into the workings of the imperial security state in the geopolitically sensitive border regions of the Karakoram. Shipton’s proven ability to travel in arduous mountain terrain and gather geographical intelligence led to his posting to Kashgar. Details of his diplomatic work are almost entirely absent from Mountains of Tartary and only became known in outline in 1969, with the publication of his autobiography. With unparalleled knowledge of the geo-political situation in Xinjiang in the 1940s, Shipton was prevented from publishing anything that revealed the details of his role in Great Game politics in 1950, not least by the fact that he still held a consular position in Kunming, Yunnan. Thus at the heart of Mountains of Tartary is an occlusion. This paper will examine the rhetorical strategies Shipton employed in writing a book in which so much had to remain undisclosed. He was aware that the roles he played, as mountaineer, explorer and traveller had multiple meanings on the borders of British India, that to situate his narrative within an Orientalist and Great Game tradition risked unwanted disclosure. The essential unreliability of the narrative emerges as a consequence of writing under such constraints. Intentionally aporetic, the text is riven by chronological and biographical voids, unintentionally reveals the strain of inhabiting multiple personas and keeping track of the competing demands of different audiences. Shipton’s failure of self-censorship erupts in transgressive revelations, concealed messages to certain sections of his readership able to read between the lines, revealing Mountains of Tartary to be a steganographic text, one that needs not just decoding but looking beyond, to what is undisclosed and unsaid

Globalization Redux: Can China’s Inside-Out Strategy Catalyze Economic Development Across Its Asian Borderlands and Beyond [post-print]

As the narrative of globalization in crisis heats up, China has stepped up as a new champion of globalization with its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This article repositions ‘China in the Global South’ to the front and center of the globalization discourse. Through a triangular framework, I differentiate and reconnect the three ‘master’ processes of urbanization, development and globalization to understand the inside-outside connections between China’s domestic transformation and strong impact in the Global South. Using China vs. Southeast Asia and Central Asia, I evaluate if and how China’s inside-out strategy can catalyze mutually beneficial development across some Asian borderlands and beyond

A SEMIOTIC STUDY OF THE MYSTICAL SYMBOLS OF KAMAL AL-DIN BEHZAD’S “DANCING DERVISHES” MINIATURE BASED ON JAMI'S IDEOLOGY

One of the Exquisite Manifestations in the compounding of literary and artistic sciences is the synthesis between the Study of Para-Textual branch of Art and Literature. The explicit schema that derives from combining Art and Literary sciences is that the sciences mentioned, Para-Textually, have similar semantic layers that can be analyzed in a convergent way by analyzing Semiotic Methodology. In this article, based on the Para-Textual and semantic roots of Persian Sufism literature and Persian Miniature, the "Dancing Dervishes" Miniature by Kamal al-Din Behzad has been analyzed with looking at Jami's Epistemological Ideas. Since the language of Persian Sufism Literature and Miniature is symbolic, this paper aims to decode symbols to examine the History of Persian Sufism and a review of Behzad's Miniatures and his thoughts based on the Jami's Epistemological Ideas in order to analyze Sufi rituals in Ancient Iran

Eniatype: Transdisciplinary Practice for Methodologies of Communication

Full version unavailable due to 3rd party copyright restrictions.The thesis demonstrates a rethinking of methodologies of communication through ecological design. Human communication and ecological accountability are inextricably linked in architectural design: the current global ecological crisis underscores this fundamental connection. Within architectural practice the communication from architect to participant or environment is not at all straightforward. This is also true of the dyadic relation between context, design and communication in architectural education. Notational systems within architectural education used as a communication tool have made the composition of architecture an activity like the composition of fiction: the activity of communication. So deep is the connection between architecture and communication in our culture that for much of the time we ignore it and behave as if notation were really a transparent window – just as in reading a working drawing in architectural practice we may ignore the intermediacy of notation and imagine that thoughts are reaching us directly from the architect’s mind. The most important criterion of notational systems, whether literally or architectural, is precisely that it should not draw attention to itself, nor disturb the illusion of neutrality and faithfulness. Through original design exploration, this work proffers a critical vision towards the built environment. These conceptions challenge the everyday education of architectural design by offering a transdisciplinary framework for design production. The work concludes with the necessity for a new design field entitled ‘Eniatype’. Eniatype is still in its nascent stages. It has the potential to become a far-reaching awareness that bonds the disciplines of design ecologies, theory of notation, instructional design and aesthetics; together they form the acronym ENIA. The work establishes the theoretical foundation for Eniatype in four parts. Part one, ideation, is a survey of visions on architectural practice illustrating original concepts such as ‘Correalism‘, ’Reflexive Architecture‘ and ’Recursive Vision‘. Part two, Enia, illustrates the principles of design ecologies, theory of notation, instructional design and aesthetical strands in projects such as ’Basque Enia‘ and ’Beijing Enia‘. Part three, Type, conveys the principles of the logical theory of types in ’Working Drawing, Participant and Environment‘. Part four, Eniatype, synthesise these approaches through a series of research sessions towards a transdisciplinary idea of architectural education and practice. The work describes a burgeoning field, Eniatype, which promotes ecological transitions within local and global contexts through architectural education. By linking working drawing and environment within architectural education, unique ecological design proposals were produced, which promote a new role in defining the ciphers of future design thought

India’s Approach to China’s Belt and Road Initiative—Opportunities and Concerns

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as a geoeconomic vision and geopolitical strategy is closely watched and scrutinised by Indian economists, diplomats, and strategists. Perspectives on India’s approach to the BRI can broadly be classified into three—the optimist, the sceptic and the cautionary. Whereas, economists generally appear optimistic, there is a sense of uneasiness within India’s strategic community that the BRI represents much more than China’s ambition to emerge as an economic leader in the region. This article argues that India’s approach to the BRI has largely been pragmatic, cautious and complex. Accordingly, India has taken an atomistic approach to the various components of the BRI depending on its security and economic needs, which explains why on the one hand India has become increasingly receptive of the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIM EC) and on the other continues to publicly oppose the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)

Verbal Morphology And Grammatical Aspect In Sarikoli

Grammatical aspect in Sarikoli, an Eastern Iranian (Pamir) language, has never been adequately described. This work fills a gap in the descriptive literature, beginning with a straightforward restatement of verbal morphosyntax, and moving to a discussion of verb stems and their uses. Verb stems in Sarikoli include the infinitive, imperfective, perfective, and perfect. Additional morphemes discussed in this work include the durative clitic, stative (resultative) suffix, cessative suffix, and agreement suffixes and clitics. Sarikoli verbal morphology encodes aspect, not tense. The major grammatical aspects of Sarikoli include perfective, imperfective, perfect, and durative. Verb stems and other aspectual marking in context give rise to a range of interpretations, explored in this thesis primarily through theory-neutral basic linguistic description

A systematic literature review of Gamification in Cultural Heritage: Where are we? Where do we go?

Gamification has become an important tool in many organizations and fields of study. Despite the growing body of work, there are still many open paths for new research. This paper aims look at the uses of Gamification in the field of Cultural Heritage, to take account of where the research is and to point the open paths for the future in a post pandemic word. To do this, this paper presents a systematic literature review on Gamification in Cultural Heritage. While other endeavors have been conducted by other authors to map out the field, the scope of this study aimed to be much broader. The goal was to understand who the main actors with publications in the field are, as well as for what purposes and to what forms of Heritage is gamification being applied to. The findings indicate that European institutions are the main publishers of research on Gamification in Heritage, with the field still being dotted with incidental, one-time, studies. Whist intangible forms of Heritage are gaining ground in the use of Gamification, the field is largely dominated by GLAM institutions and groupings of mutually diverse Cultural Heritage assets, such as in tourist destinations. This paper also argues for more substantial networks and collaborative work between researchers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Consuming identities: the culture and politics of food among the Uyghur in contemporary Xinjiang

This research is a study of food and identity among the Uyghur, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who live in the north-western region of Xinjiang (Chinese Central Asia) and are today one of the largest minorities in the People's Republic of China. It is based on fieldwork carried out from May 1996 to September 1997 among Uyghur urban intellectuals in Urilmchi, the provincial capital of Xinjiang. The underlying argument is that food, in all its related practices, is a powerful form of identity creation and maintenance. Through the preparation, the exchange, and the consumption of food social relationships are created, rules of inclusion and exclusion are established, boundaries are negotiated and maintained. In a context of volatile relations between the Uyghur Muslim minority and the dominant Han Chinese population, food represents a fundamental resource available to Uyghur intellectuals, who find themselves at the vanguard of both assimilation and differentiation and are currently engaged in a difficult process of negotiation and affirmation of their distinctive identity. In this context, food becomes a privileged arena for negotiation, providing an excellent vantage point to explore the dynamic and complex nature of social and cultural interaction in contemporary Xinjiang. In particular, the same tension between differentiation and assimilation is at work in the realm of food. If, on the one hand, a narrative of continuity, tradition, and discrete identities can be detected in the way Uyghurs talk and write about their food, on the other hand practices as well as discourses also show the syncretic nature of a culinary tradition