Based on both archival research and oral interviews conducted in northern Namibia, this article traces the history of public flogging in Ovamboland throughout the twentieth century. In contrast to recent scholarship that views corporal punishment in modern Africa mainly through the lens of colonial governance, the article argues that because the South African colonial state never withdrew the power to punish from the region's traditional authorities, these indigenous leaders were able to maintain a degree of legitimacy among their subjects, who looked to the kings and headmen to punish wrongdoers and maintain communal norms. Finally, the article explores why nostalgia for corporal punishment remains a salient feature in Namibian society today, 25 years after the end of colonial rule.

In this latest work by one of our leading political and legal philosophers, Allen Buchanan outlines a novel framework for assessing the system of international human rights law—the system that he takes to be the heart of modern human rights practice. Buchanan does not offer a full justification for the current system, but rather aims “to make a strong prima facie case that the existing system as a whole has what it takes to warrant our support of it on moral grounds, even if some aspects of it are defective and should be the object of serious efforts at improvement” (p. 173).

This paper investigates the political subjectivities of Kurdish youth in Diyarbakır through the interplay of kinship and politics. We argue that it is through a framework of kinship that young people make sense of the Kurdish issue. We show that the war between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, PKK) and the Turkish military has reshaped the Kurdish family, leading to a crisis in the life cycle. We suggest that the young feel indebted to the Kurdish movement, which they express using the term bedel (“debt”). Debt is related to the family, as the individual becomes indebted as part of a kinship group. We argue that the expansion of public space in Diyarbakır has created alternative ways of paying debt and doing politics.

This article analyzes critical voices raised against the Bologna Process by various stake-holders of higher education in Turkey, such as rectors, professors, international office staff, students, and civil society organizations. The data collected through in-depth interviews were analyzed using the discourse analysis method on the basis of the interlocutors’ reflections on the Bologna Process. It is claimed in the article that most universities in Turkey have attempted a process of internationalization and institutionalization, but that there have been several impediments during the implementation of the Bologna Process. Rising Euroskepticism in Turkey has also changed the process of Europeanization in the universities. It is revealed that the structural changes made in line with the Bologna Process are perceived by several different stake-holders as neo-liberal acts, and are presented as activities of internationalization, but not of Europeanization.

Nez Perce is one among many ergative languages that consistently use nominative case, rather than ergative, for 1st and 2nd person transitive subjects. Two major lines of analysis have been proposed for the synchronic grammar of this type of ergative split. Morphological analyses approach the phenomenon as a case of syncretism between ergative and nominative in 1st and 2nd person; all transitive subjects are assigned an identical syntax. Syntactic analyses posit a featural or structural distinction between 3rd person subjects and 1st and 2nd person subjects, or the clauses containing them. On the basis of modification and coordination patterns, I argue that person-based split ergativity in Nez Perce requires a syntactic analysis. Comparison of the Nez Perce data with recent findings by Legate (2014) reveals variation among languages showing person-based split ergativity: some languages require a morphological analysis, and some (like Nez Perce) require a syntactic analysis. A treatment of the syntactic type of person-based split ergativity is proposed, making use of person-sensitive phrase structure as introduced by Bianchi (2006) and Merchant (2006).

This paper investigates the rise of aesthetic modernism in Turkey’s early republican era (i.e., the late 1920s and the 1930s), with an emphasis on the influence of international cultural currents on Turkey’s intelligentsia. The paper concentrates on the modernist ideas and works of the D Group, who advocated a high modernism in the plastic arts, and the literary modernism of the socialist poet Nâzım Hikmet (Ran). Firstly, it addresses the historiographical argument that aesthetic modernism in Turkey was a derivative enterprise, a low-grade replica of European modernism. Secondly, it argues that the early republican intelligentsia found itself in a dilemma with regard to modernist currents. For them, aesthetic modernism was a sign of the modern epoch, but it also carried a radical potential for a critique of bourgeois modernity. Aesthetic modernism not only promised change, functionality, and renewal, but also manifested such disturbing symptoms of modernity as individualism, melancholy, degeneration, and restlessness. The paper reaches the conclusion that figures such as the D Group artists and Nâzım Hikmet translated the avant-garde international currents of aesthetic modernism into the early republican context, opting for positive and optimistic versions of modernism rather than adopting its more alienating, pessimistic, and despairing features. Through their works, an intellectual debate on aesthetic modernism was initiated in early republican Turkey.

Islamic banks create an interest in their own right as a rising branch infinancial intermediation, particularly in the post-crisis era. In addition, theyalso deserve the attention of students of Islamism due to their possibleconnection with Islamic movements. Through a comparison of Islamic andconventional banking, we analyze the motivations and behavior of Islamiceconomic actors who determine the cash flow to Islamic banks. Our findingssuggest that, in contrast to popular views that portray these actors asideologues or financiers of radical Islam, they have pragmatic motivations andmay adapt to liberal systems in order to seize economic incentives.