This article considers the history of Egypt’s mid-twentieth-century Spiritualist movement through an examination of its periodical, a monthly Arabic magazine called ʿAlam al-Ruh (The World of the Spirit) (1947–1960). As it shows, Egyptian Spiritualists defended and promoted their project by crafting an experimental cosmology, one that blended claims about empirical verification with elements of Islamic and Spiritualist cosmologies. It further shows how this combination of scientism and cosmology reflects a core dynamic within the history of scientific exploration in the Islamic world. Like spiritual seekers and occult practitioners in Muslim societies elsewhere, Egyptian Spiritualists positioned their project as one of eradicating superstition from religion, modernizing the nation, and advancing science. By attending to the Egyptian Spiritualist effort to scientize religion and spiritualize science, this article foregrounds the Islamic tradition’s entanglements with scientific discourses and navigates beyond claims about epistemological rupture that often characterize the study of Islam’s relationship to modern science.

This paper investigates the dynamics of legislative politics within the unique political context of the Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China. Drawing on recently collected data from roll-call votes and committee deliberations taken during the fifth and sixth legislative assemblies, this study shifts the focus from electoral processes and resolution proposals to an analysis of bill proposals with the potential to become law. The findings reveal a structural dichotomy between a large, cohesive pro-establishment faction and a smaller, more fragmented opposition, which contrasts with the findings of previous research that suggest a more balanced opposition. Further analysis of committee deliberations indicates that this stable dichotomy allows regime loyalists to voice dissent without appearing rebellious, enabling ruling elites to gauge and respond to constituents’ preferences on non-sensitive issues. This dynamic highlights the distinct legislative practices of Macau SAR under the “one country, two systems” framework.

This paper presents the results of recent geophysical survey work in the vicinity of the Roman town of Isurium Brigantum (Aldborough, North Yorkshire). It combines results from research projects with information from developer-funded work to assess the nature of settlement in the area at the time of the foundation of the Roman town and through the period of its use. The work confirms that there was no major pre-Roman Iron Age centre in the area at the time of Roman annexation. It does, however, provide new evidence to show that the landscape was heavily exploited and occupied by rural settlements. The evidence revealed suggests that Iron Age society in this area may have been heterarchical.

From 1967 onward, the ANC in exile recruited young non-South Africans classified as “white” to carry out clandestine solidarity missions because of their ability to travel freely around the country. Drawing on the recollections of these recruits, as documented in two books and presented in a series of webinars, this article examines how they exploited their white privilege to support the liberation struggle. By foregrounding female perspectives and focusing on the tensions caused by concealing political convictions, the article provides new insights into daily life in the underground movement and sheds light on this lesser-known dimension of international solidarity.

Rhizoliths, cylindrical concretions formed primarily by CaCO3 accumulation around plant roots, serve as valuable indicators of past environmental conditions, including hydrology, redox dynamics, and carbon cycling. Despite growing interest in paleo-reconstructions, the lack of quantitative studies on formation mechanisms complicates interpretation. We present “RhizoCalc”, the first mechanistic model (deployed in HYDRUS-1D) computing rhizolith formation in CaCO3-containing loess soils, integrating water fluxes, root water uptake, and (Ca)-carbonate chemistry to simulate conditions under which rhizoliths develop. Hydraulic fluxes drive Ca2+ transport (0.13–1 mmol/L) toward the rhizosphere, governed by root water uptake under low (ETo = 0.03 cm/d) and high (ETo = 1 cm/d) flow rates at optimal (ho = –100 cm) and intermediate (ho = –1000 cm) moisture conditions. The simulations show that hydraulic constraints and calcite-induced jamming of the porous medium are key inhibitors of rhizolith growth, distinguishing physical limitations from biogeochemical feedbacks in the rhizosphere. On top of this, our work reveals root encasement and reliquary varieties, linking their physical and biogeochemical mechanisms to rhizolith transformations and offering insights into paleosol hydrology and redox dynamics. Under intermediate soil-water conditions with 1 mmol/L Ca2+, concentric rhizoliths with 0.2–3 cm radii form chrono-sequentially over 1.5–150 years. Each layer preserves CaCO3 constituents (δ18O, δ13C, 44Ca, 46Ca, 48Ca), root-derived biomarkers (e.g., lignin), and clumped isotopes (Δ47), preserving environmental signatures across time into the future. Therefore, this framework conceptualizes each rhizolith as a ‘time-capsule’ with each successive CaCO3 layer encapsulating a snapshot of vital environmental proxies, providing a window into otherwise inaccessible historic ecosystem dynamics. Refining reconstructions of Earth’s paleoclimatic history requires cross-sectional isolation of concentric layers in well-preserved rhizoliths, capturing distinct isotopic bands and their stratigraphy.

This article examines the politics of restitution within the Black Atlantic through the case of the Restitution Study Group’s legal challenge to the Smithsonian Institution’s return of Benin bronzes to Nigeria. While most scholarship frames restitution as a struggle between Western museums and postcolonial states, this article shifts the lens to intra-Black debates that complicate inherited frameworks of return, foregrounding the unresolved legacies of slavery and the claims of Black American and broader diasporic communities. At the same time, it situates these debates within the larger global landscape in which Western institutions and nation-states continue to define the terms and tempo of restitution. By challenging the assumption that restitution is solely a matter between source nations and former colonial powers, the Restitution Study Group brings attention to how African elites’ historical participation in the transatlantic slave trade and the ongoing marginalization of diaspora communities shape contemporary claims. The article also places these interventions alongside disputes within Nigeria over custodianship between the federal government, Edo State, and the Benin royal court. By tracing these overlapping histories, ethical claims, and political stakes, the article argues that returns of looted artifacts are not simply acts of restitution, but processes of decolonial repair that reconfigure authority, belonging, and historical responsibility across diasporic and national contexts.

Historical analysis of Ghana’s late colonial mine communities has been extensive and overwhelmingly dominated by organised and politically active male mineworkers. Questions regarding the linkages between formal and informal mining actors and cultural ideas in the broader mine communities have remained inadequately explored. This article makes a timely investigation by critically analysing a range of governmental and corporate archival documents and situating the discussion within the context of expansive literature on Asante, and complemented by oral histories. It centres on the Asante/Akan term “kankyema”—a sociocultural phenomenon which women transformed towards economic ends to navigate the late colonial political economy’s mining income disruptions. The article argues for the essential need to centre marginalised voices in understanding diverse agencies in African mining history and for a deeper reflection on the potentialities of contextual sociocultural ideas—notably, how marginalised actors invoke and evoke their capacities over different times.

Why has political representation by Scheduled Castes in post-colonial India failed to improve the lives of the vast majority of this population? One common answer rests on the assumption that caste inequality is upheld by dominant social groups who effectively resist progressive state policy. Others point to the institution of joint electorates: though constituencies are reserved for Scheduled Caste legislators, Scheduled Caste voters form a minority within them; the representatives thus elected are chosen primarily by others, and precisely because they will not challenge the status quo, it is said. But neither of these explanations, I argue, can adequately account for the minimal effects of Scheduled Caste representation, because both imagine states as confronting a distinct realm—‘society’—with pregiven interest groups that are then represented in legislatures. Instead, an examination of how state actions themselves govern, produce, and reproduce caste groups and intercaste relations is required. The argument is illustrated through episodes from the career of Dr Sathiavani Muthu, who sought to address injustices suffered by Scheduled Castes in Tamil Nadu from the late 1950s through to the 1980s. Muthu’s skill, diligence, and commitment make her an ideal representative, and Tamil Nadu as a state ought to provide a best-case scenario for the success of such an actor, given the scholarly consensus regarding its good governance and the pervasion of its society with a progressive ideology. An analysis of why her efforts nevertheless produced little fruit reveals pervasive deficiencies in current models of political representation.

Adding to the research on Guatemalan migration, this article analyzes semistructured interviews with young adults from the Guatemalan diaspora to understand how they experience exclusion and erasure in K–12 schools in Los Angeles, California. Using Critical Latinx Indigeneities as a framework, the author contextualizes these experiences within transnational histories of Indigeneity and race to unpack the various forms of erasure that students experience, including complex intersections of language, Indigenous background, and nationality. The findings note that Indigenous and non-Indigenous Guatemalans counter these erasures by finding sources of information to understand their community’s histories, including looking for information on their own, learning through student organizations, college courses or spaces, and community-based organizations. The author concludes by noting the need for Central American studies spaces that are informed by critical analysis of race and migration.

A growing body of evidence suggests that conditional cash transfers (CCTs) can shift voters’ electoral choices. Yet there remains a mismatch between reliance on aggregated municipal data and individual-level theories focused on retrospective rewards or reduced vulnerability to clientelism. Since CCTs also produce plausible spillovers on nonbeneficiaries, verifying who reacts, and how, is crucial to understanding their electoral effects. To empirically unbundle individual and spillover effects, the analysis exploits plausibly exogenous variation between beneficiaries of Brazil’s Bolsa Família and those on the waiting list. The evidence suggests that CCTs strengthen beneficiaries’ attitudes against clientelism, but they vote no differently than nonbeneficiaries. However, spillovers are strong: As CCT coverage expands, both beneficiaries and nonbeneficiaries turn against local incumbents. This pattern is inconsistent with existing theory, which relies on either polarization or positive spillovers. Instead, I propose a theory of collective confidence derived from strategic voting incentives in which CCT expansion fortifies all voters in resisting clientelism.

China’s gun-free society is maintained through a paradox—while the state’s disciplinary apparatus unmakes any exceptions to the norm by continuously disarming the wayward, it simultaneously perpetuates exaggerated narratives of threats posed by clandestine gun makers in the ethnic frontier regions. This article investigates the state’s construction of Hualong, in Northwest China’s Qinghai, as ‘the capital of China’s ghost guns’. By debunking the quasi-historical claim that Hualong was a major firearms manufacturing hub in the early twentieth century, the article reveals how the modern Chinese state uses this narrative to reinforce an ethnopolitical reset—placing the Han in exclusive control of both firearms’ regulation and the sovereign right to punish violators. Drawing on multiple archival sources, the article argues that monoethnic control of arms was a central tenet of twentieth-century ethnic nationalism. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that early twentieth-century Qinghai was adept in taking advantage of the mobility and fluidity of arms afforded by a trans-imperial infrastructure in its state-making enterprise. That infrastructure included Western missionary networks, treaty ports and foreign concessions inherited from the late Qing, a revitalized maritime hajj route, Japanese imperialism, as well as an expansionist Chinese nationalism struggling to find a foothold in the former empire’s legacy frontiers.