This article argues that the 1980s and nineties popular literary magazine Joy-Ride attracted an exceptionally wide and regular readership by transposing the sensational aesthetics of Ghanaian oral narrative performance into the printed text. Joy-Ride retained its circulation in a period of devastating economic and sociopolitical tumult that resulted from an accumulation of natural disasters combined with the forced austerity measures of J. J. Rawling’s military government. Offering a collage of modern media such as serialized comics and photonovels, the magazine created intertextual associations with popular cultural experiences like Concert Party theatre and Ananse storytelling. Comics scholarship and affect and embodiment studies come together to support my position that the rich integration of text and image in Joy-Ride worked mnemonically to produce a sense of cultural vibrancy in the magazine narratives. This vitalism functioned, I argue, to sustain a feeling of cultural continuity for the magazine’s readership.

Current interpretations of North America's first Great Awakening present a paradox. Historians commonly interpret the Great Awakening as part of the revival of evangelical piety that affected widely scattered elements of the Protestant world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; however, studies of the Great Awakening have almost exclusively focused on the particular local circumstances in which the revival movements developed. Since historians of the Great Awakening have emphasized the peculiar circumstances of each of the regional manifestations, the Revival often appears in their writings to have been composed of several distinct movements separated in time, character, and cause and united only by superficial similarities. In contrast, to say that the local revival movements, despite their distinctive characteristics, were manifestations of a single larger movement is to imply that they shared the same general causes. If we suppose that the Great Awakening was part of the Evangelical Revival, our attempts to explain its origins should take into account those general causes.

Two recent reconsiderations of the eighteenth-century revival movements in their broader context come to opposite conclusions. Jon Butler underscores the span of time over which the revivals occurred across the British colonies, their heterogeneous character from one region to the next, and the differences in cultural contexts in which they appeared. He concludes that “the prerevolutionary revivals should be understood primarily as regional events.” Although he sees the eighteenth-century American revivals as part of the long-term evangelical and pietistic reform movement in Western society, he denies any common, single, overwhelmingly important cause.

There is a paradox in the legislative success of British antislavery that invites further inquiry. While one can hardly diminish the role of evangelical Christianity in the abolition of the slave trade and, decades later, of slavery in the empire, each bill was passed by an aristocratic government predominantly Whig in composition. The first measure, the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, was passed by the Ministry of All the Talents, a coalition of Foxite Whigs and Grenvillites, in a parliament that remained almost exclusively a body of the landed interest. While the first reformed parliament of 1833 may not have been quite so preponderantly landed in its composition, it abolished slavery in the empire under the leadership of Lord Grey's government, the most aristocratic of the century. Like the Talents Ministry, the government of Lord Grey was a coalition, at least in its inception. But its moving spirits were Whigs. Yet, with some few exceptions, the role of the Whigs in British antislavery has not received the attention it deserves. In particular, one must inquire how and why a group of worldly aristocrats, especially the older generation of Fox, Grey, and Holland, should have associated themselves with an evangelical crusade. Whig aristocrats, after all, subscribed to an ethic that Evangelicals disdained, particularly in its emphasis on worldly honor; and evangelical humility, in turn, often appeared to at least some Whigs as righteous humbug.

In this article, we investigate economic and political developments in Turkey’s construction sector over the last decade and consider their implications. We find that during the first term of the government of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP), thanks to administrative and economic incentives, both private and public construction rose considerably. Despite the construction sector’s contribution to growth, there is also evidence of a transfer from the industrial sector toward the construction sector, which led to significant decline in the trend growth of the industrial sector in the era prior to 2006. Such evidence disappears in the post-crisis period, when the growth of private construction slows. However, overcentralization, clientelism, an absence of transparency, and limitations on citizen participation in urban planning remain as problems that need to be addressed through urban reform.

Warfare is increasingly considered to have been a major field of social activity in prehistoric societies, in terms of the infrastructures supporting its conduct, the effects of its occurrence, and its role in symbolic systems. In the Bronze Age many of the weapon forms that were to dominate battlefields for millennia to come were first invented—shields and swords in particular. Using the case study of Ireland, developments in Bronze Age warfare are traced from the Early to the Late Bronze Age. It is argued that during this period there was a move from warfare that made use of projectiles and impact weapons to warfare that used both defensive and cutting weapons. This formed the basis for a fundamental reorganization in combat systems. This in turn stimulated change in the social organization of warfare, including investment in material and training resources for warriors and the development of new bodily techniques reflecting fundamental changes in martial art traditions. Metalwork analysis of bronze weapons and experimental archaeology using replicas of these are used to support this position. The article explores how developments in fighting techniques transformed the sociality of violence and peer-relations among warriors and proposes that these warriors be regarded as a category of craft specialist exerting significant social influence by the Late Bronze Age.

The admission of China as an observer in the Arctic Council in 2013 was a significant step in the ongoing evolution of the country's Arctic policy, but Beijing is still concerned about being accepted as a regional player given its geography and arguably lack of an Arctic history. As the Arctic becomes more open to scientific and economic engagement, China wishes to develop the idea of the Arctic as more of an international space as opposed to strictly a regional one, and to allow non-Arctic states, such as China itself, to become accepted as Arctic actors. However, in order to avoid a backlash from the Arctic states and potential exclusion from the region's development, Beijing cannot effectively be a unilateral ‘norm-maker’ in the Arctic. Instead, China has sought to develop the identity of a regional ‘norm entrepreneur’, engaging the Arctic on many levels to promote the norm of partnerships between Arctic and non-Arctic actors to promote positive sum outcomes. Through engagement via several areas and governmental levels, Beijing hopes to succeed in being widely viewed as a ‘near-Arctic state’ which can contribute to new norms, and possibly new regimes, in an Arctic which shows many signs of becoming further internationalised.

As readers of the book will know, Revel, Riot, and Rebellion owes a lot to John Morrill. He asked the crucial question over the teacups; he has taught me a lot about localism and popular conservatism; and he has been an unfailingly generous source of advice and stimulating ideas. I am glad that he has considered the book so carefully and that when he is not entirely convinced by it he has expressed his reservations so temperately. It is gratifying to know that someone whose opinion I respect thinks that I have “changed the agenda of Civil War studies.” His review reinforces my hope that Revel, Riot, and Rebellion may indeed help to widen, rather than limit, the endless debate over the causes and significance of the English Revolution.

In September 2009, Turkey experienced a major reform of its pharmaceutical expenditure and price policy. By introducing a global budget, Turkey saved some 20 billion TL in public pharmaceutical expenditure in the 2010–2012 period. The lion’s share of this was achieved by introducing stricter price controls that reduced the profit margins of pharmaceutical producers and distributors (the populist policy solution), rather than by privatizing the cost of medicines through, for example, raising out-of-pocket payments (the neoliberal policy solution). This is a puzzle, given the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) government’s usual preference for lenient and business-friendly regulation. This article explains the policy reform with reference to (i) the pronounced electoral interests of the AKP’s political leadership in not substantially reducing access to public health services, (ii) the absence of powerful business interests in high medicine prices, and (iii) the absence of a developmentalist commitment to an industrial policy strategy for the pharmaceutical sector. This case study holds important lessons for scholars of Turkish politics. It suggests that externally the AKP’s economic and social policies are driven by the interests of its two major constituencies (namely, lower-class voters and “Anatolian capital”), while internally they are shaped by two camps of policy makers (namely, neoliberal-minded technocrats and election-focused party leaders).

Scholars of Roman archaeology, epigraphy, and history are increasingly discussing urban maintenance and waste disposal, but the impact of these phenomena on the archaeological record remains largely understudied. The presence of waste disposal systems in Roman towns entails that a large part of what was discarded was periodically removed from the urban area. This in turn implies that whole historical periods may be underrepresented by the finds recovered within the city. This aspect can be apprehended through the post-excavation analysis of the House of Titus Macer in Aquileia, whose mid-imperial phase, during which the domus was inhabited and regularly maintained, is poorly represented. What has been observed suggests that great caution must be exercised when using data collected within urban sites to draw conclusions on ancient economic trends. To tackle this problem, our research agendas should target large extra moenia dumps more frequently.

“The Mediterranean, central to the development of human civilization and lovingly celebrated in Euro-American historiography, from the viewpoint of human oppression has been a veritable vortex of horror for all mankind, especially for the Slavic and African peoples. The relationship was in no way accidental.”

Does legislation that grants land rights necessarily ensure justice? The Forest Rights Act of 2006 (FRA) in India, a landmark social justice law, aims to enhance land security for forest peoples. Increasingly displaced by development and extractive industries that intensify impoverishment, indigenous peoples in India should, with the FRA, be able to protect their land, their livelihoods and their culture. Continued government violations of forest land rights in the name of development highlight that economically vulnerable populations lack the power to take advantage of legislation. I examine the tension of current indigenous land struggles in the context of the legal frameworks of the FRA and the neoliberal culture of India.