The subject of this study comprises how Turkey’s EU membership is seen by HDP-supporter Kurdish voters in Turkey, as a non-EU country that has on-hold negotiations but still an ostensible vision for membership. There is a dearth of literature regarding Kurdish voters’ views on the EU, and this study, employing the focus group method, aims to address this gap by providing insights into the perspectives of Kurdish voters who support the HDP on Turkey-EU relations and their attitudes toward the EU. The study employs focus group methodology to assess whether the independentist demands that began to spring in Europe are also becoming popular among Kurdish voters. The primary finding derived from the focus group study indicates that the interviewees exhibited limited interest in both the EU negotiations and the EU’s handling of the Kurdish issue, and that the EU accession process failed to evoke significant enthusiasm among the interviewees. Meanwhile, developments pertaining to the Kurdish population in Syria and Iraq have generated a significantly higher level of enthusiasm when compared to the negotiations with the European Union.

This article interrogates the entrenched binary between modernism and realism in postwar Korean art through an analysis of the multifaceted practice of Shin Hak-chul (b. 1943). While often associated with 1980s minjung (people’s) art, Shin’s work resists reductive classification, exploring both modernist experimentation and realist critique. From the 1960s to the 1980s, his trajectory challenged the formalism of institutional modernism while reimagining the conceptual, affective, and material scope of realism. Examining his use of object-installation, photomontage, sculpture, and painting, this study shows how his work rendered the real as a convergence of material presence, perceptual immediacy, and historical consciousness. Central to the analysis is Shin’s Modern Korean History series (1980–1985), which exemplifies what I term “monumental corporeality”: a visual language of embodied memory and historical trauma. Situating Shin’s practice within both the Korean art world and broader postwar currents, the article advances an original, elastic historiography of contemporary Korean art – one attentive to how artists negotiated intersecting esthetic and sociohistorical imperatives amid rapid modernization. More broadly, it reframes realism as both a critical method and a transhistorical form within global debates over history, form, and representation.

During World War II, condom consumption increased in both belligerent and non-belligerent countries, including Sweden. Yet the relationship between state-led initiatives and commercial marketing in driving this trend has received little scholarly attention. The main sources in this article consist of wartime public health campaigns and condom advertisements. Applying the concepts of social and consumer engineering, the article examines how government interventions, specifically through public health measures, influenced condom marketing practices. The findings show that wartime campaigns sought to engineer citizens’ sexual behavior and that businesses strategically aligned their messaging with government propaganda. This convergence was instrumental in positioning condoms as essential tools for public health and facilitated a more permissive attitude toward condoms as prophylactics, bridging state-led public health efforts with commercial objectives. By examining this dynamic, the article contributes to understanding how wartime policies shaped consumer behavior and forged enduring connections between public health and market strategies.

Contemporary research on politics and elections in Southeast Asia focuses heavily on clientelism in its analysis. Such analyses emphasise the rising importance of “brokers” who connect politicians to voters, often through vote-buying or other forms of corruption and dependency. Here we argue that the broker system can only be a temporary phenomenon, capable of reinforcing clientelistic ties in the short term, but subject to ongoing erosion of the same shifting relationships that made brokers necessary. Indeed, we argue, the broker system is already being replaced by different forms of networks that are less subject to vertical hierarchies and personal ties. This article examines the changing dynamics of political organisation in contemporary Thailand, concentrating on familial dynasties, Red Shirts, and student networks. The study argues that modern communication technologies enabled and political events motivated the creation of new types of networks to challenge the established clientelistic relationships. The Red Shirts network combines vertical patron-client relationships with horizontal, community-focused interactions afforded by modern media. Students’ networks have largely abandoned traditional hierarchical structures in favour of more egalitarian, decentralised, and online-oriented organisational forms. Even familial dynasties, which have relied most heavily on brokers, have begun to adapt new techniques to supplement their use of brokers. The article concludes that emerging participatory political networks, founded on innovative technologies and adaptive strategies and shaped by class, regional, and generational disparities, are transforming political engagement in Thailand and challenging the entrenched clientelistic relations that underpin the current conservative social order.

While Africa’s rapid urbanisation is expected to transform many aspects of political, economic and social life, decades of Africanist research shows that urban migration rarely severs rural ties. Building on this tradition, we use original survey data from 472 residents of Nairobi, Kenya, to examine how multiple forms of rural connection vary with urban duration and urban (re)orientation. We conceptualise four analytically distinct linkages – direct personal contact, provision of material support, anticipation of a rural safety net and spiritual connection – and measure each within a single empirical framework. We find that rural linkages do not diminish over time among first-generation migrants, but do decline across generations, with spiritual ties being especially persistent. Strong rural linkages are generally associated with weaker integration into urban social and political life. By disaggregating rural–urban connections and situating them in the temporal dynamics of urban residence, this article clarifies when and how African urbanisation transforms social and political orientations and provides a framework for cross-city and cross-country comparison.