The book The Red Mirror: Putin’s Leadership and Russia’s Insecure Identity by Gulnaz Sharafutdinova is a valuable contribution to the literature on post-Soviet Russian politics, as well as to identity studies. Scholars of international relations largely succeeded in demonstrating the relevance of national identities for foreign affairs. However, there are not so many works exploring their effects for domestic political regimes. Sharafutdinova explains Putin’s lasting popular support by his contribution to the “sense of national identity and collective purpose that Russian citizens relate and value” (19–20). She relies on the social identity theory that posits a sense of belonging, pride, and self-esteem, provided to individuals by their respective groups, as an important driver of social behavior. According to Sharafutdinova, Putin’s leadership rested upon a crafty exploitation of group emotions associated with “two central pillars of the Soviet collective identity, including a sense of exceptionalism … and a sense of a foreign threat to the state and its people” (18). Such manipulations were facilitated by using the state-controlled media to broadcast the proper messages, on the one hand, and “the contextual variables” that made the Russian population sensitive to them, on the other (35). Among such variables, the author particularly emphasizes “the Russian citizen’s collective experience of the Soviet collapse and the ensuing transition” (35). Of course, this is not the first work exploring the political outcomes of the national identity construction in Russia (e.g., Morozov 2009) or pointing to the contrast between the hardships of the early years of Russia’s

On 10 May 1964, on his return trip to the United States from Mecca, Malcolm X landed in Accra for a weeklong visit to the capital of the ‘Black Star of Africa’. This high-profile visit, which took place only nine months before Malcolm X's assassination, has assumed an important place in biographical accounts of his life, as key to understanding his religious and political transformation or ‘conversion’. Yet we know surprisingly little about how Malcolm X's visit resonated locally, what kinds of meanings it generated, especially in the new nation's capital. Based on newspaper accounts, private paper collections, and written and oral reminiscences, this article explores Malcolm X's visit as a significant moment for accessing the conflicting interpretations of race and liberation politics that converged, cohered, and collided in Ghana during the first decade of independence.

A number of philosophers from Hobbes to Mill to Parfit have held some combination of the following views about the Golden Rule: (a) It is the cornerstone of morality across many if not all cultures. (b) It affirms the value of moral impartiality, and potentially the core idea of utilitarianism. (c) It is immune from evolutionary debunking, that is, there is no good naturalistic explanation for widespread acceptance of the Golden Rule, ergo the best explanation for its appearance in different traditions is that people have perceived the same non-natural moral truth. De Lazari-Radek and Singer employ all three of these claims in an argument meant to vindicate Sidgwick's ‘principle of universal benevolence’. I argue that the Golden Rule is the cornerstone of morality only in Christianity, it does not advocate moral impartiality, and there is a naturalistic explanation for why versions of the Golden Rule appear in different traditions.

The Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 represents the most significant change to the rights of homeless people in England for decades. Through an analysis of the history of homelessness legislation in England, but focusing on the ‘ground-breaking’ 2017 Act, this paper explores how the homeless population is represented and ‘constructed’ in this new legislation and what this tells us about the place of homeless people in our society. In so doing, this paper exposes how the 2017 Act – a state instrument of apparent homelessness prevention – can be read and understood as contributing to rather than obviating the marginalisation and social exclusion of homeless people.

Attempts to create a national opera in Spain repeatedly failed throughout the 19th century. Some authors have attributed this phenomenon to a deficit in the nationalization process. Others, to the contrary, have proved that there was a strong sense of Spanish national musicality from the middle of the 19th century onward. This article tries to explain this paradox underlining some essential elements that are not always attended by specialists: the importance of transnational, social, and economic dynamics that interfered in the process of the cultural construction of modern national identities. The projects of the Spanish nationalist intellectuals of the 19th century in relation to the definition of a national music were marked by the Romantic construction of Spanish musical exoticism, the new industry of entertainment, the existential situation of Spanish musicians, the formation of new artistic and musical fields, and the appearance of new forms of social distinction in the aftermath of the Spanish Liberal Revolution of the 1830s.

In the years around 1900 one of the most significant practical consequences of new styles of bacteriological thought and practice was the development of preventive vaccines and therapeutic sera. Historical scholarship has highlighted how approaches rooted in the laboratory methods of Robert Koch, Louis Pasteur and their collaborators were transformed in local contexts and applied in diverse ways to enable more effective disease identification, prevention and treatment. Amongst these, the anti-anthrax serum developed by the Italian physician Achille Sclavo (1861–1930) has received little to no attention from historians. This article positions Sclavo's serum as a neglected but significant presence in British microbiology, which achieved widespread uptake amidst a wave of optimism, despite prolonged uncertainty about its mechanism of action and dosage. After being introduced to Britain in 1904 by the enterprising first medical inspector of factories Thomas Morison Legge, within a matter of months the serum became regarded by medical practitioners as an effective treatment of cutaneous anthrax, though access to ‘fresh’ serum and the necessary speedy diagnosis remained problematic. Like the disease anthrax itself, discussion of ‘Sclavo's serum’ was out of all proportion to the relatively low number of cases, reflecting a deep-seated fascination with the wider possibilities afforded by effective serum therapy.

Prisoners have long been recognised as a disenfranchised group. This paper positions non-religious prisoners as further excluded from pastoral care. While chaplaincies aim to serve prisoners of all faiths and none, this paper suggests a hierarchy of access in which the benefits of chaplaincy are more available to some prisoners than others. Shortcomings in secular care mean that non-religious offenders are often the only group unable to connect with like-minded people and it is argued that they are disadvantaged as a result. The paper also explores the challenges for pastoral carers seeking to support inmates equally. It considers the barriers on both sides of the care relationship, specifically the disincentives to chaplaincy engagement faced by prisoners of no faith and the obstacles encountered by the Non-Religious Pastoral Support Network in accessing service users and delivering care. Finally, recommendations are made to narrow the gaps between religious and non-religious prisoners.

In December 1967, South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard astonished the world by becoming the first to successfully transplant a human heart. In the months that followed, a French Anti-Apartheid Committee proposed an international law to prohibit the harvest of prisoners' organs as French activists combined human rights and legal strategies to question the legality and ethics of Barnard's success. From a South Africa eager to present itself as modern and technologically advanced came an attempt to legislate use of organs from “living donors” in unspecified “authorized institutions.” In physicians' professional discussion of donor selection at an international heart transplantation symposium that Barnard convened in Cape Town, capital punishment figured as a proxy for race. Moving between South Africa, France and the United States, this article examines anti-apartheid activism, legislative innovation, and heart surgeons' attempts to normalize cerebral death and increase donors that followed the medical breakthrough in Cape Town, South Africa. It contributes to human rights history by showing how the French Anti-Apartheid Committee drew on transnational advocacy networks and legal strategies that predated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, emphasizing collective over individual rights, deploying strategies of rupture, and actively pursuing a racially conscious, anticolonial solidarity.

This paper examines how deportation became a solution to rough sleeping in pre-Brexit England. It identifies relationships between the social regulation of vulnerable and marginalised adults, contemporary governance arrangements and bordering practices characteristic of Britain's ‘hostile environment’. Drawing on media reports and grey organisational literature, the focus of discussion is events across 2015–2018 in which three London-based charities were criticised for working with the Home Office to deport homeless migrants under its European Economic Area Administrative Removal policy. The overall tenor of criticism was that collaboration with the government compromised the organisations’ independence and charitable missions and aims. This diminished their capacity to both advocate for vulnerable adults and effectively challenge oppressive state practices. The paper observes how state and nonprofit relations structure institutional and socio-legal responses to marginalised and ‘othered’ adults through commissioning and contracting mechanisms. It demonstrates that the social and legal control of homeless migrants may be differently constituted by institutions delivering services in relation to citizenship, vulnerability and marginalisation. This analysis incorporates a broader appraisal of institutional motivations, values and beliefs in social welfare delivery, including the historic role of charitable agencies in the criminalisation of social welfare users. Taken together, the paper offers an interdisciplinary critique of the relationships between border control, neoliberal governance and the sociocultural and historic construction of homeless migrants.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Europe was a popular migration destination for Turkish people due to its employment opportunities. Today, however, these labor market drivers of migration destinations in the EU-28 have been superseded. This article empirically investigates the drivers of the migration destinations of Turkish newcomers to EU countries between 2008–2018. It contributes to the literature by focusing only on Turkish newcomers, whereas other studies rely on migration stock data. Using data provided by the OECD, Eurostat, and the World Bank, the findings show that security-based and social drivers mostly attract Turkish newcomers to EU-28 destinations, specifically a demand for democracy and social networks.

This paper examines the current legal framework in relation to minors who are the recipients of exorcism. Such individuals are ordinarily doubly marginalised, by virtue of their membership of a minority religious or cultural community and their disempowered position as children. This piece aims to assess whether the current arrangements strike an appropriate balance between respecting personal and collective autonomy, as well as protecting vulnerable young people, paying particular attention to the impact of their intersectional position and multiple marginalising factors at play. It seeks to define exorcism and emphasise the very diverse settings in which it arises within twenty-first-century England and Wales. It examines proposals being made for a blanket prohibition in relation to children, considering both the desirability and viability of a ban. It also highlights that exorcism is not the only context in which religious minors will find themselves in a position of multiple marginalisation, and explores what debates in this area might reveal about the wider operation of Article 9 and the ECHR.

The English homelessness scheme has been lauded as being one of the most progressive in the world for offering an individually legally enforceable right to housing to those people who meet the statutory criteria. Its definition of homelessness is also liberal by comparison with many other countries within Europe and beyond, extending significantly beyond the stereotypical rooflessness experienced by rough sleepers. Nevertheless, the scheme is highly selective and targeted, and assesses homelessness through a test of relative need, rather than enshrining a minimally acceptable standard of housing. It thereby creates a category of the marginally housed whose housing needs are assessed as insufficiently poor to be officially categorised as homeless, yet who are living in severely inadequate housing. To reduce the uncertainty and contingency of the current test, the paper proposes the adoption of a new test of habitability.

This paper draws on historical institutionalism to consider the impact of housing-policy responses following the Grenfell fire on the marginalisation of the social-housing resident. We consider three specific policy responses: reform focused on conditions of rented properties; the social-housing White Paper; and building regulation and building-safety reforms. We suggest that, in historical institutionalist terms, each is part of a matrix of reform in which understandings of the social-housing resident play a critical role. We argue that rather than the fire provoking a paradigm shift in the recognition that government accords to the ignored and stigmatised citizens who live in social housing, the policy initiatives to date indicate a much more limited adjustment of policy within a normal frame. We suggest that this is because housing policy is dominated by a consumerist ideology that is self-reinforcing and ignores the social, economic and political complexity of tenure.