As elsewhere in Europe after the First World War, the Balkans went through a process of “paramilitarization.” Unlike the rest of Europe, there existed a strong indigenous paramilitary culture originating from the time of Ottoman rule. In the interconnected, harsh political realities of victorious Yugoslavia and vanquished Bulgaria, both states and their political elites resolved to create new paramilitary formations. While in the case of Yugoslavia and its Organization Against Bulgarian Bandits there was a resurgence of an older style paramilitary formation, in Bulgaria leading figures of the ruling Bulgarian Agrarian National Union decided to create the Orange Guards—a completely new paramilitary formation based on the existing structure of their party. The common denominator for both formations was the threat posed by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization for security, territorial integrity, and the normal development of both states. As in most cases of paramilitary formation, their existence and actions were followed by violence, often marked by extreme brutality. Both the agrarian regime and Orange Guards perished in the violent summer of 1923, when a carefully planned and executed coup d’état ended the agrarian revolutionary attempt to transform Bulgarian society. The Organization Against Bulgarian Bandits, under the new name of Peoples Self-Defense, continued to function throughout the existence of the Yugoslav kingdom.

This article explores different approaches to assessing the effectiveness of non-state-based non-judicial grievance mechanisms (NSBGMs) in achieving access to remedy for rightsholders. It queries the approach that has been widely adopted as a result of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), which focuses on the procedural aspects of grievance mechanisms. Rather, it stresses the importance of analysing the outcomes of cases for rightsholders. This article tests this hypothesis by undertaking comprehensive empirical research into the complaint mechanism of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). RSPO is found to perform well when judged according to the UNGPs’ effectiveness criteria. However, it performs poorly when individual cases are assessed to ascertain the outcomes that are achieved for rightsholders. The article therefore argues for the importance of equivalent scrutiny of outcomes in relation to other NSBGMs and provides an approach and accompanying methodology that can be utilized for that purpose.

The packaging of meaning in verbs varies widely across languages since verbs are free to encode different aspects of an event. At the same time, languages tend to display recurrent preferences in lexicalization, e.g. verb-framing vs. satellite-framing in motion. It has been noted, however, that the lexicalization patterns in motion are not carried over to the domain of vision, since gaze trajectory (‘visual path’) is coded outside the main verb even in verb-framed languages. This ‘typological split’ (Matsumoto 2001), however, is not universal. This article contains the first extensive report of verb-framing in the domain of vision based on data from Maniq (Austroasiatic, Thailand). The verbs are investigated using a translation questionnaire and a picture-naming task, which tap into subtle semantic detail. Results suggest the meanings of the verbs are shaped by universal constraints linked to earth-based verticality and bodily mechanics, as well as local factors such as the environment and the cultural scenarios of which looking is a salient part. A broader look across the whole Maniq verb lexicon reveals further cases of verbally encoded spatial notions and demonstrates a pervasive cross-domain systematicity, pointing to the language system itself as an important shaping force in lexicalization.

The field of carceral geography was lately developed by critical human geographers grappling with the spatiotemporal modes of social control and coercion particular to institutions of incarceration (Moran et al., 2018; Moran and Schliehe, 2017). This has included – in keeping with Michel Foucault's (1991) genealogy of the carceral as an art of disciplinary power – studying the disparate ways in which carceral techniques proliferate from and beyond the built site of the prison, becoming incorporated into other spatial formations. Carceral geographers have characterised this extension as transcarceral (Moran, 2014) or heterotopic (Gill et al., 2018; Moran and Keinänen, 2012). However, despite frequent references to law and legal institutions, carceral geographers generally do not theorise about law. Through a case-study involving an Indigenous woman paroled in Toronto, the author theorises about how carceral spaces are expressed through legal forms and techniques, affecting how paroled individuals, particularly those Aboriginalised, are emplaced within urban space.

This paper expounds some critical reflections on Pierre Legrand's recent account of James Gordley's and James Whitman's comparative methodologies. Pushing his unconventional writing style to the limits and labelling Gordley's ‘positivist’ and Whitman's ‘cultural’ comparative law, Legrand's piece appears to be taking the first step towards a new, more sensitive phase for the comparative study of law and legal cultures. The paper argues that, contrary to what might be first thought, Legrand's ‘sensitive epistemology’ cannot act as a gateway to cultural otherness. This is because it is wholly in line with the constructivist objectification of life that characterises the study and practice of law both within and outside the comparative-law dimension.

The competing ideologies of nation and monarchy had a troubled beginning in the 19th century, insomuch as they derived partly from two opposing sources of legitimacy. However, from the 1830s on, their supporters achieved the establishment of an interspecific and mutually advantageous relationship. The nation gradually managed to prevail over the monarchy, justifying its presence in national terms. However, the monarchy possessed something longed for by liberal nationalists: historical legitimacy. Thus, the crown served Romantic nationalism in its search for national foundations and to generate national emotions of a collective sense of belonging. This article analyses this process by focusing on the Spanish case and using a vast range of cultural sources. I reason that the monarchy’s history was intensively used in Isabel II’s reign (1833–1868), both by the monarch herself as well as nationalist elites, to legitimate and justify their presence in the liberal world. The article is divided into three sections. The first part locates the problem into a general process that touched all the crowned heads of Europe. The second section studies the appeal of exemplary medieval monarchs in the liberal hunt for national roots. The final one focuses on the particular case of Isabel the Catholic because of the remarkable prominence it acquired.

Wine consumption is affected by intertwined needs generated by factors such as production and marketing methods, as well as by the individual's desire for social differentiation in a democratised mass drinking culture. Our study sought to determine whether consumption patterns have changed in the Italian province of Trentino and how such changes may have affected the meaning that wine drinkers living in this area assign to the concept of quality in wine. The paper presents a qualitative study (n=57 interviews) carried out in a wine producing region in north-east Italy. In addition to investigating the changes that have taken place in the area's wine drinking culture, the study also focuses on how consumers perceive and define wine quality. The findings show that economic, political and social factors have brought major changes in drinking culture and consumption over the last 50 years. In addition, changes in the wine industry have had a significant impact on how consumers’ views on wine quality and its key features have evolved. Nevertheless, the study found that some traditional aspects persist in the drinking culture and still determine the perception of quality.

The history of Israel's relationship with its Palestinian-Arab minority during the founding decades, from 1948 to 1968, is often portrayed as a story of formal citizenship that concealed large-scale, state-sanctioned oppression under military rule. This article excavates an untold history of employment affirmative action for Palestinian-Arab citizens of Israel during these two decades which does not fit neatly into this story. Drawing on original archival research, it reveals that, during Israel's founding decades, officials adopted hiring quotas for unskilled Arab workers and for educated Arabs; requirements and incentives for hiring Arabs in government offices, Jewish businesses, and organizations; earmarked jobs and established vocational training courses for the Arab population. It demonstrates that interests in safeguarding Jewish control and economic stability aligned with egalitarian aspirations, and motivated state officials to adopt measures that promoted the inclusion of the Arab population in the workforce, albeit on unequal terms. Furthermore, these measures were part of a transformation of the state's attitude towards Arab citizens, from strict military control to a regime of “hierarchical inclusion” entailing gradual integration into the Israeli economy — mostly though its lower tiers and with a second-class status. Tracing the use of these mechanisms, not then called affirmative action but recognizable as such today, to this period of subjected population management, complicates our understanding of both this chapter in Israel's history and of affirmative action more broadly.