The treatment of Proto-Iranian *θw (PIE *t) is one of the isoglosses distinguishing Middle Persian from Parthian and thus important for Western Iranian dialectology. The re-discussion of the Parthian development of this consonant cluster by Nicholas Sims-Williams presents a welcome opportunity for some notes on the matter. I will argue that there is some additional evidence in favour of his suggestion that the Parthian result is not -f- as previously assumed, but a consonant cluster. I will also suggest a modification of the steps that the development takes. The Middle Persian development of *θw as well as some related issues of historical phonology and Pth. orthography and Western Ir. are likewise discussed.

Popular music is a dynamic portal through which to gain a greater understanding of a vast array of social phenomena within Asia. In particular, the power of pop to actively shape conceptions of self and inform the ways in which we interact with others at the individual, communal, and even national and transnational levels has taken center stage, but understanding just how these identities are formed through the performance of popular music is quite complex in the current global moment. Through comparison of recent scholarship covering diverse types of popular music throughout Asia, this article explores how identity formation is informed by an increasingly nuanced understanding of globalization. Moving from a most intimate sense to broad transnational and inter-ethnic contexts, it not only expands the concept of identity in Asia, but also reveals how the study of popular music in general can illuminate other social issues important to Asianists.

Although China's Tibetans profoundly mistrust the ideologies of the party-state, associating them with illegitimate practices of domination, protest and revolt are rare and effectively suppressed. This might be seen as quasi-colonial domination, the state securing subjection through the performance of paramount power, demonstrated by its suppression of the 2008 protests, or it could be attributed to a form of indirect rule, by which local officials engage with local leaders to generate hegemonic consent. While both dynamics are present on the Tibetan plateau, ethnographic fieldwork among the Tibetan populations of Qinghai and Gansu Provinces reveals that consent is primarily generated by local officials who negotiate a form of local order with religious and tribal leaders. Ignoring the ideological demands of their superiors, they engage constructively with the expectations of the Tibetans about how order should be maintained and, in doing so, subvert the state's ideal of uniform and unitary sovereignty.

Officials in China claim that voting rates in rural village elections are high. However, the true voting rate is lower, especially for women. We postulate that women are less likely to vote owing to insufficient knowledge about their rights. The objective of this paper is to test whether the knowledge levels of women and village leaders about women's voting rights can affect women's voting behaviour. We report on the results of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) involving 700 women in China's Fujian and Liaoning provinces. Villages were randomly assigned to either a control group or one of three intervention groups. One intervention provided voting training to women only, another provided training to both women and village leaders, and the third provided training to village leaders only. After women received training, their scores on a test of voting knowledge increased, and they more fully exercised their voting rights. When only village leaders were trained, test scores and voting behaviour were not statistically different from the control villages.