In the late 1930s Viscount Lymington—born Gerard Wallop, and from 1943 the 9th Earl of Portsmouth—emerged as a vocal champion of an “authentically English expression of fascism” rooted in the countryside and agriculture. An aristocrat and Conservative member of Parliament (MP; 1929–1934) turned dissident, Lymington railed against the perceived decline of Britain and the empire from an agrarian vantage point. His most famous work, Famine in England, published in 1938, warned that Britain’s overreliance on imported food and its neglect of the land had pushed the nation to the brink of catastrophe. On the surface, this text was a passionate call for agricultural revival in the face of looming war. Yet at its core, Famine in England was far more than a rural policy manifesto. It was a statement of fascist blood and soil philosophy in which race operated as the grammatical structure ordering ideas of food, land, and national renewal. In Lymington’s vision, the health of the soil and the health of the “British race” were inextricably entwined. Saving one meant the salvation of the other. Race, in other words, was the invisible architecture—the grammar—underlying his prescriptions for Britain’s agrarian crisis.

From its founding in 1938 onwards, the activities of the Confederation of Latin American Workers (CTAL) were rooted in anti-imperialist struggle. Initially, this was in response to the plundering of Latin America in the service of US economic interests, while later anti-imperialist efforts were directed against the hegemony that Europe and the US exerted over markets and territories in Africa and Asia. In the immediate post-war period, the CTAL engaged in a markedly anti-imperialist discourse. The confederation established solidarity alliances and trade union campaigns committed to supporting causes in distant, culturally diverse places, because they were considered part of the same history of dependence, neglect, and exclusion that had to be overcome to build autonomous nations. This article covers meetings between trade union leaders from different continents, as documented in letters, magazine and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, and the records of workers’ organizations. Working through the CTAL and the World Federation of Trade Unions, these individuals disseminated their beliefs and sought to achieve widespread mobilization for their union and political struggles, with the goal of eradicating imperialism from the Americas, Africa, and Asia.

This article investigates the lives of Sufi leaders following the Turkish state’s abolition of Sufism in 1925. Examining the professions and career paths of Sufi shaykhs, it demonstrates that Sufi masters worked primarily in government jobs and institutions, and maintained a relatively high social status in the new nation-state, despite official denunciations of shaykhs as spiritual charlatans and parasites. As such, it argues that the state pursued a policy of inclusion and integration rather than one of persecution or elimination. While acknowledging that some Sufi leaders were victims of state policy, this article casts doubt on the persecution narrative and demonstrates a broad range of experiences and trajectories for Sufis in the early Turkish Republic. It illustrates that the state welcomed many shaykhs into the new institutions of the nation, including the Grand National Assembly, local government, schools, and libraries, as well as academia and the Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet).

This article examines the history of Richard Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal, in Central Europe between roughly 1870–1932 as a way to promote new perspectives on the relationship between music and the city during the height of European urbanization. Although Parsifal was conceived as an anti-urban opera, and until 1913 its performance was restricted to provincial Bayreuth, even during this period the work’s performance and reception were affected by urban-based cultural systems. With the end of copyright protection for Parsifal in 1913, the process of Parsifal ‘becoming urban’ began in earnest. While the flood of new productions in Europe’s cities during 1914 marked the work’s urban debut, it was only in the late 1910s and the 1920s that it became more fully integrated into the urban cultural environment. This development was marked by a growing distance from certain Bayreuth performance traditions and participation in early urban radio culture.

This article investigates whether state efforts to combat violence against women (VAW) shape personally held stigmatizing attitudes toward victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) and views of the stigma society attributes to them. Drawing on the policy feedback effect and source cues literature, we argue that credible sources delivering messages about anti-VAW laws can reduce stigmatizing attitudes toward IPV victims and persuade people that society is more welcoming to victims, thereby reducing public stigma. Using survey experiments collected from Mexico and Guatemala, we find that credible sources matter in predicting a host of attitudes related to personally held and public stigma toward victims, but these effects are conditional on gender and hostile sexism. This article demonstrates that even in contexts of impunity, state efforts can positively shape social norms on VAW.

This paper examines letters from the casebooks of the Valkenberg Lunatic Asylum in the Cape Colony during the South African War. Valkenberg was opened in 1891 in Cape Town, and was the only asylum established exclusively for white patients in the Cape. The South African War took place between 1899 and 1902, and several soldiers serving in the War were treated at Valkenberg during this period. The letters were written by a male patient who used bureaucratic and legal channels to claim his sanity and secure release from the asylum, showcasing a rare example from the archive of a patient’s voice as well as a view into the inner workings of a colonial asylum in South Africa. These letters allow a view into the personal lives of patients and attendants, the medical rules doctors followed, and instances of racism, unexpected solidarity, and loneliness. Analysing these letters reveals the changes taking place in a turbulent South Africa, including the tensions and conflicts of a country at war, the racism and nationalism of early twentieth-century South Africa, and the violence present within the asylum network. By examining letters written directly by a patient, which give voice to a perspective that official institutional records would not ordinarily allow, this paper seeks to contribute to the literature on patient voices in the history of psychiatry.

The Rohingya refugee crisis, a major humanitarian tragedy in contemporary global politics, has gradually precipitated major security challenges to Bangladesh and other states. This paper employs the Copenhagen School’s securitization theory to examine how securitization, especially by the Bangladeshi government and media, has framed these challenges as existential threats. It makes two basic contributions to existing literature on the Rohingya crisis. Firstly, it provides a theory-informed analysis of the security dimensions of the crisis, considering the interplay between the refugee crisis and national and regional security dynamics. Secondly, the paper explores how the refugees securitize their current plight. Empirically, the study utilizes interview data from 60 local residents, law enforcement agencies, and employees of local and international NGOs. The discussion suggests the possibilities and limitations of the securitization theory in the field of refugee or forced migration studies in the Global South.

In this essay, “Writing Gone Wao,” I begin by reiterating my own sense of the book’s (Junot Díaz: On the Half-Life of Love, Duke UP, 2022) priorities. I then turn to the probing and generous responses by Glenda Carpio, Mónica González García, Gerald Torres, Marina De Chiara, and Ato Quayson to my work. I conclude by examining Díaz’s recent writings published after my book appeared, including his complex, erudite Substack series “StoryWorlds with Junot Díaz,” and his short story, “The Ghosts of Gloria Lara” (The New Yorker, 2023), where he explores dramatic issues of decolonial love and the political unconscious.