28 October 2024, Issue 4

    

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  The “Intermediate Classes” and the Expansion Limits of the Bharatiya Janata Party—A Political Economy Analysis of the Changing Landscape of Indian Political Parties

  Yang Yishuang, Lei Dingkun

  Area Studies. 2024, (4): 5-33.

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  The Indian “intermediate classes” represents a primary challenge faced by India's vertical governance, impeding the nation's effective exercise of power. Different rulers across various eras have attempted to overcome this challenge multiple times. This class often intertwines with local politics, manifesting as local or caste-based political parties. The increasing tensions between the rural “intermediate classes” and the urban industrial elite backing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) inevitably intensify the friction between the centrifugal forces represented by the “intermediate classes” and the centripetal forces embodied by the rulers. Thus, the fundamental dynamics and principal resistance behind the BJP's rise lie in the fluctuating power balance between it and the classes. The contradictions between these two forces constitute the primary driving mechanism behind India's current complex political landscape. The effectiveness of the BJP's strategies in addressing and suppressing the “intermediate classes” also determines the limits of the party's expansion.
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  The Hybrid Regime in Tanzania: Historical Trajectory and Contemporary Controversies

  Alexander Makulilo, Xiao Qijia

  Area Studies. 2024, (4): 34-65.

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  Amidst the third wave of democratization, numerous African nations have undergone a political transformation, resulting in hybrid regimes that exist on a spectrum between democracy and autocracy. Prior studies have predominantly concentrated on the macro-level correlation between electoral systems and the process of democratization. However, there remains a dearth of comprehensive comprehension concerning the specific institutional practices within countries characterized as hybrid regimes. This paper meticulously investigates the historical trajectory and ongoing political controversies surrounding Tanzania's hybrid regime, thereby providing an innovative perspective on this matter. Tanzania's political system, after gaining independence, underwent transitions from a multi-party structure to a one-party system and subsequently returned to a multi-party arrangement. Nevertheless, the prolonged historical inertia of one-party rule, coupled with influences of the international system, has led to the enduring presence of hybrid attributes within Tanzania's political landscape. Consequently, this regime persistence has given rise to a multitude of controversies spanning legal frameworks, party politics, and political culture. Given the diversity inherent in democratic values and institutional development, while hybrid regimes are anticipated to endure across Africa, the trajectory of these regimes is likely to transcend the conventional dichotomy between “the democracy” and “the autocracy”, paving the way for novel directions for political development.
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  Migration and the Soviet Frontier Development Policy: Population Migration to Kazakhstan in the 1930s-40s

  Tang Lu

  Area Studies. 2024, (4): 69-98.

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  During the 1930s and 1940s, the Soviet government moved 2.01 million people into Kazakhstan. In Tsarist Russia, in order to consolidate frontier areas, the Russian government increased the Slavic population in Kazakhstan by emigrating Cossacks and free peasants. However, it also triggered ethnic tensions. In the mid-to-late 1920s, the Soviet central government and the Kazakhstan local government gradually formed a policy to develop and remold Kazakhstan, and immigrants played an important role in this way. After the beginning of the collectivization, the Soviet government moved kulak and ethnic minorities into Kazakhstan to exploit natural resources. On the one hand, economic structure and composition of nationalities in Kazakhstan were significantly changed. On the other hand, the immigrant activities had brought about a series of negative consequences.
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  An Exploration of Civil-Military Relations in Yemen—From Dual Perspectives of State and Society

  Su Ying, Xu Tong

  Area Studies. 2024, (4): 99-124.

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  The history of civil-military relations in Yemen in recent times is a history of military, tribal and governmental competing and cooperating with each other. From the perspective of top-down state-building theory, Modern state-building in Yemen has not changed the political habits of the traditional political environment, exchanging patronage relations for government control over regions, reaching compromises with traditional political elites represented by tribes in order to integrate tribal societies. The non-responsive path of state-building also means that the military has not fulfilled the historical task of providing strong guarantees for the government in the construction of the modern state. In terms of a bottom-up perspective on the interaction between tribal societies and state construction, the penetration and control of tribal society over the military and the tribalized characteristics given to the military have strengthened the multipolarity of power in the military, which not only makes it impossible to form an effective communication mechanism between the military and the government, but also makes the military duty a way of gaming to share power and economic interests. At the same time, the tribal culture embedded in the state and society profoundly influences national politics and society. So the thoughts and practices of political elites strengthen the influence of tribal culture on national political culture.
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  West Asian and North African Studies from the Perspective of Legal Anthropology: Review and Enlightment

  Wang Weichen

  Area Studies. 2024, (4): 127-147.

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  Legal anthropology research refers to legal research based on participatory observation. In chronological order, the study of legal anthropology in West Asia and North Africa can be divided into four stages. Before the 1960s, legal anthropology had only one work on West Asia and North Africa, which could be described as a missing territory. After the 1960s, with the advocacy and practice of Laura Nader and his disciples, a study that can be named Dispute Resolution Typology emerged. In the 1980s, legal anthropology emerged as a research approach to legal culture in West Asia and North Africa. This is mainly represented by Lawrence Rosen's research. In the past 20 years, the study of legal anthropology in West Asia and North Africa has shown an increasingly diverse and progressive feature. Specifically, it can be divided into three legal dimensions: the daily dimension of law, the historical dimension of law, and the transnational dimension of law. This type of research is relatively scarce in terms of quantity; from a regional perspective, the main focus is on countries with higher levels of secularization; from the perspective of issues, it has always been at the forefront of the discipline; from a methodological perspective, the ethnographic method is adopted, and there is a clear tendency towards comparison. The study of legal anthropology in West Asia and North Africa has not formed a unique paradigm. The function and contribution of legal anthropology in regional and national studies mainly lie in the universality of methods.
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  Creating Women's Discourse: Field Research of Kurdish “Jineology”

  Huang Yushan

  Area Studies. 2024, (4): 148-171.

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  The expansion of the Kurdish Freedom Movement in the late 1970s paralleled the development of the Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement. While accruing practical experience within the political sphere, the movement simultaneously endeavoured to innovate indigenous gender theories. In 2005, the concept of “Democratic Confederalism” was introduced, affirming the pivotal role of gender equality and women's liberation within the Kurdish movement's ideology. With the exploration of the history of women's oppression and the crystallization of the decades-long struggle of Kurdish women, “Jineology” (women's science) was proposed. These ideological frameworks have since steered the contemporary women's movement and regional development initiatives. The notion of “Jineology” has been instrumental in the creation of a discourse system dedicated to women, representing a significant attempt to re-evaluate historical narratives from women's point of view. Meanwhile, it challenges the established male monopoly on knowledge production as a resistance to the prolonged silencing of women in Middle Eastern patriarchal societies. This paper employs the “muted group” theory as an analytical tool to briefly retrace the trajectory of Kurdish women from a state of “silence” to one of “expression”. Through this lens, the paper scrutinizes the theories of “Democratic Confederalism” and “Jineology”, along with the gender-based movements shaped by them, with the objective of unearthing the real rights and situations of women in Rojava.
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  Modern Languages and/as Area Studies: Towards a New Humanities or Path to Oblivion?

  Stephen Hutchings

  Area Studies. 2024, (4): 200-223.

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  There is an ambivalence regarding the traditional disciplinary affiliation of Modern Languages, split between Area Studies, with its ori-entation to the social sciences, and an arts wing aligned with literary and cultural studies. The Area Studies contingent has itself been hampered by its struggle to convince social scientists that linguistic expertise is any-thing more than a practical tool enabling them to extend their research agendas to non-English speaking environments. My article will argue that the apparent incoherence highlighted by this double tension provides an impulse for Modern Linguists to renew their discipline by forging a more equal partnership with the social sciences and enhancing their significance within the humanities. It focuses on the renewed social scientific interest in spatio-temporal situatedness, contending that language's critical role in the lives of humans as spatio-temporally embodied beings can transform lin-guistic expertise from a mere facilitating skill into the intellectual core of a reconceived New Area Studies (NAS). It will demonstrate how, freed from Cold War geopolitics and from its attachment to the Great Power as its pri-mary unit of analysis, NAS rejects the very notion of areas as bounded en-tities, privileging what ‘flows through' them )media, artistic forms, images and knowledge, as well as people) over what is ‘in' them. I will discuss what this means for the future of Modern Languages in the academy, con-cluding that the discipline's ability to operate across multiple boundaries in this context gives it the power to reassert itself in the forefront not just of NAS, but of a revitalised humanities more generally.