Avar Linguistics in the Novocherkassk Gymnasium in the 1850s — 1860s: the Experience of the Incorporation of the Caucasian Highlanders into the Imperial Cultural Space

The presented article is devoted to one of the little-known historical plots related to the scientific and educational practices of the Department of Oriental Languages of the Novocherkassk Military Gymnasium in the middle of the 19th century. The consistent creation of methodological manuals on the Avar language and specialized training in the “native dialect” of future officers are considered as an important element of the administrative and cultural incorporation of the Caucasus into the Russian imperial space, which was not limited to the well-known Russification. The empirical basis of the article under consideration was formed as a result of a comprehensive study of differentiated documentary and narrative sources, some of which are being introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The author's reflections are determined by the established historiographical tradition devoted to the systemic interaction of the Russian Empire and mountain communities, an organic element of which were specialized educational practices.

Zionist Detection through Indirection in Jonathan Wilson’s A Palestine Affair

This paper explores Jonathan Wilson’s A Palestine Affair (2003), reflecting on the parallels between its underlying logic on one hand and the illogic of liberal Zionism and the state of Israel on the other hand. The paper revolves around the rationalizing, detective apparatus deployed in the novel both thematically and formally. More specifically, it dwells on the ways in which the form of the novel buttresses its ideological underpinnings, or rather its content. I argue that the form selected by the writer; that is, the detective novel, mirrors the Zionist quest for colonizing Palestine, especially in the context of Jerusalem. I further suggest that by means of detection, Jerusalem is familiarized in the text so much so that readers might think of it as a new London, with the “here” of Britain expanded and its cultural incorporation into the Zionist imaginary facilitated. That familiarity obfuscates and negates the presence of Palestinians in Jerusalem and Palestine at large, who are mostly portrayed as marginal, inconsequential, and criminal characters. At the same time, the novel gives rise to an alternative creative, detective vision that does not necessarily entail the use of typical methods of detection, a vision that mirrors the Zionist conquest, especially in its so-called liberal form. Employing what I call counter-detection, I aim to excavate the problematic aspects of both detection and creative detection (detection through indirection) and show their complicity with the conquest of Palestine through paying close attention to the writer’s Zionization of the artist on whose life the protagonist is modelled.

„Pozdrawiam Fanki i Sułtanki”. Internetowe praktyki polskiego fandomu serialu "Wspaniałe stulecie"

The article discusses fan practices of Polish viewers of the Turkish TV series Magnificent Century (Muhteşem Yüzyıl, Wspaniałe stulecie). Using this example, the author analyzes the issue of cultural incorporation, recontextualization and reinterpretation of foreign narrative conventions. The article also describes how people digitally excluded join the fandom and get `infected` by the need for `drilling` down into their favorite text. As a result, they acquire new technological skills and build online knowledge communities described by Henry Jenkins.

The Practice Of Trust, Disclosure, And Collaboration With Guatemalan Refugees

My practice of anthropology is guided by the constant development of trust, disclosure, and collaboration. I will discuss how trust was fostered and disclosure deployed in a multi-year collaboration to obtain legalization for indigenous Mayans from Guatemala who for more than thirty years remained stateless in Mexico. I will identify how reduced legal options to regularize status created barriers to political, economic, and cultural incorporation in Mexico and left significant family members—documented and undocumented alike—vulnerable to deportations and family separations. I will also highlight our success to obtain legal status for twenty-six stateless subjects in late 2016. My practice of anthropology has resulted in productive ways of “giving back” to study participants, fostering a type of liberatory praxis that motivates our efforts to assist others who fled military conflict in Guatemala and remain stateless in Mexico.

Rock and Roll

Rock and roll, a popular music craze of the mid-1950s, turned a loud, fast, and sexy set of sounds rooted in urban, black, working class, and southern America into the pop preference as well of suburban, white, young, and northern America. By the late 1960s, those fans and British counterparts made their own version, more politicized and experimental and just called rock—the summoning sound of the counterculture. Rock’s aura soon faded: it became as much entertainment staple as dissident form, with subcategories disparate as singer-songwriter, heavy metal, alternative, and “classic rock.” Where rock and roll was integrated and heterogeneous, rock was largely white and homogeneous, policing its borders. Notoriously, rock fans detonated disco records in 1979. By the 1990s, rock and roll style was hip-hop, with its youth appeal and rebelliousness; post‒baby boomer bands gave rock some last vanguard status; and suburbanites found classic rock in New Country. This century’s notions of rock and roll have blended thoroughly, from genre “mash-ups” to superstar performers almost categories unto themselves and new sounds such as EDM beats. Still, crossover moments evoke rock and roll; assertions of authenticity evoke rock. Because rock and roll, and rock, epitomize cultural ideals and group identities, their definitions have been constantly debated. Initial argument focused on challenging genteel, professional notions of musicianship and behavior. Later discourse took up cultural incorporation and social empowerment, with issues of gender and commercialism as prominent as race and artistry. Rock and roll promised one kind of revolution to the post-1945 United States; rock another. The resulting hope and confusion has never been fully sorted, with mixed consequences for American music and cultural history.

From Neural Synapses to Culture-Historical Boundaries: An Archaeological Comment on the Plastic Mind

This paper contributes with a study of how something that is initially introduced as a ‘technology of spatial distribution’ develops into a ‘technology of the mind’. Boundaries are a phenomenon deeply rooted in social perception and cognitive categorization, which also involves material processes that can sometimes be studied in an archaeological record. In later prehistory, the physical instantiation of this technology offered a solution to a wide range of economic and social problems, posed by an increasingly filled-in and more permanently settled landscape. Important aspects of its initial conceptual and cultural incorporation lasted more than a millennium. However, once this technology attached conceptually as well as culturally, it entailed a quantitative acceleration and became part of a long-term development, the social and juridical consequences of which can be traced far up in historical times. This case is used to discuss the importance of unfolding both the plastic aspects of human cognition and the slow, protracted and long-term aspects involved in cultural changes.

Segmented Incorporation: The Second Generation of Rural Migrants in Shanghai

This article looks at the changing frameworks for the institutional and cultural incorporation of second-generation rural migrants in Shanghai. Beginning in 2008, Shanghai launched a new policy of accepting migrant children into urban public schools at primary and secondary levels. I show that the hukou (household registration) is still a critical social boundary in educational institutions, shaping uneven distribution of educational resources and opportunities, as well as hierarchical recognition of differences between urbanites and migrants. I have coined the term “segmented incorporation” to characterize a new receiving context, in which systematic exclusion has given way to more subtle forms of institutional segmentation which reproduces cultural prejudice and reinforces group boundaries.