Studies investigating motivations for political participation in receiving-state politics among immigrant groups typically follow a traditional approach to understanding the process behind political engagement. In this work, the authors argue that this approach is insufficient if we want to understand the motivations of diasporic groups, notably in cases in which they are geographically close to home and influenced by both origin and receiving-state politics. This study examines the motivations for political party engagement among members of Bosnian diaspora in Austria and elucidates the links between political party membership and receiving-country political opportunity structures which formally result in political detachment from homeland politics. It does so through twenty-five interviews with Bosnian members of Austrian political parties conducted in fourteen cities in Austria. The article focuses on motivations for engagement in political parties which result in detachment from homeland politics and an identification with receiving-state politics. The findings reveal that pre-migratory experiences of war and membership in diasporic associations do not drive the motivations for engagement. Instead, their participation evolves from motives that are embedded in local experiences, while motives related to origin-state opportunity structures are negative or feebly present.

This article examines the evolution of breastfeeding practices in twentieth-century China, focusing on the complex interplay between medical knowledge, state policies and social transformation. This study demonstrates how medical recommendations concerning lactation timing, intervals and weaning were shaped by factors beyond purely scientific developments. Mid-twentieth-century biochemical studies validated traditional practices while revolutionising attitudes towards colostrum, marking a critical juncture in Chinese infant nutrition science. Following the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, maternal and child health initiatives underwent fundamental changes. Drawing on new understanding of breast milk’s nutritional value, health benefits, and economic advantages, healthcare professionals and state authorities actively promoted scientific breastfeeding methods. Their multifaceted approach reflected both the dissemination of medical knowledge and the state’s strategic consideration of female labour force participation. This study analyses how women’s liberation from feudal constraints, changing employment patterns, Soviet medical influence, and advances in artificial feeding technologies shaped breastfeeding practices. Through examining the intersection of medical advice, health policies, and women’s labour liberation, it provides fresh insights into the evolution of breastfeeding discourse within Chinese medical circles. Situating these developments within broader medical, social and cultural contexts, this research not only illuminates the multiple factors that shaped modern Chinese infant feeding practices but also contributes to our understanding of the complex relationships between medical practice, state policy, and social change in twentieth-century China.

This article offers a forensic analysis of one key archive of sexual violence: The official record of a congressional investigation of the Ku Klux Klan and federal trials of Klan members in the years immediately after the American Civil War. The 13 volumes constitute the single most important source of victim testimony on white supremacist violence and are used widely by historians. It also presents daunting problems of interpretation particularly with respect to sexual violence. This analysis challenges historians’ traditional accounts of the Klan as overly reliant on the Republican party narrative that it constituted the terrorist arm of the Democratic party intent on suppressing black men’s new constitutional right to vote.

As I argue here, the Klan’s campaign of terror aimed at something far more, as the routine deployment of sexual violence against women reveals. Sexual regulation was the very core of white supremacy. The representation of the Klan in the official record—its signature acts, motives, and victims—was shaped not by the patterns of the violence itself but by the objectives of the investigation in the battle over public opinion and political strategy. In time and place, I argue, the narrow framing of Klan violence around electoral politics involved real costs to black women victims of the Klan with respect to the protection of their civil and political—or human—rights.

As part of the seventeenth colonial conflagration, known as “Wars of the Three Kingdoms,” incidents of sexual violence—stripping, castration, mutilation, rape, gang rape, and reproductive violations—occurred against women and some men across Ireland. The historical and legal evidence for this violence was recorded in witness statements that form part of an archive, known as the “1641 Depositions.” This article examines this extraordinary archive, now housed in Trinity College Dublin and published online, especially the witness testimony provided by Protestant women. It explores how sexual violence was reported and then politicized. Though testimony that related to sexual violence was rarely used in the courtroom, Protestant propagandists—from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries—manipulated these accounts to instill fear and justify retribution.

The rise of neoliberal statism in Turkey, where the state acts as a developer in both urban and rural contexts, illuminates the multi-scalar, negotiated, and power-laden nature of frontier-making in the twenty-first century. The expansion of export-oriented sweet cherry production in western Turkey’s peri-urban landscapes exemplifies the uneven, non-linear, and contested trajectories of contemporary agrarian capitalism. This paper examines how a niche-commodity frontier is produced not only through shifts in political–economic and socio-ecological relations of production, but also through articulations of nationalism and moral authority grounded in religion. Among the various actors involved in this process, smallholders occupy a paradoxical position: structurally subordinated within export value chains yet discursively mobilized as key agents of frontier expansion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, the paper argues that the ideological hegemony underpinning the frontier hinders the formation of smallholder class consciousness. Instead, the articulation of agrarian capitalism with nationalist and developmental imaginaries, expressed through the party politics of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), secures widespread allegiance to Turkey’s current iteration of neoliberal development.

The relationship between Nepal and China during the 1910s to 1940s remains an underexplored topic. This article revisits this thirty-year period by examining Chinese knowledge production on Nepal as an early instance of inter-Asia engagement. First, it demonstrates how epistemological barriers – shaped by coloniality and asymmetrical worldviews – severely hindered direct Chinese understanding of Nepal, despite sustained intellectual efforts. It then interrogates the in-betweenness of this disconnection, arguing that these mediated engagements were not merely failures of direct contact. Instead, the article contends that the liminal, hybrid, and shifting nature of these mediated encounters enabled forms of subjectivity transference and affective affiliation that were productive in sustaining inter-Asian referencing. To support this claim, the article examines the writings of various Chinese political critics, officials, and diplomats on Nepal. Despite their limitations, these intellectual engagements are ultimately seen as productive. First, they expose the liminal, shifting, and dynamic nature of knowledge production, in contrast to the fixed forms associated with colonial epistemologies. Second, they enable forms of subjectivity transference that foster affective affiliations. They also offer renewed possibilities for understanding inter-Asian referencing as a methodological strategy for rethinking inter-Asian relationalities.

In the social sciences and policymaking, life satisfaction surveys are increasingly taken as the best measure of wellbeing. However, the life satisfaction theory of wellbeing (LST) barely features in philosophers’ discussions of wellbeing. This prompts two questions. First, is LST distinct from the three standard accounts of wellbeing (hedonism, desire theories, the objective list)? I argue LST is a type of desire theory. Second, is LST a plausible theory of wellbeing? I raise two serious, underappreciated objections and argue it is not. Life satisfaction surveys are useful, but we should not conclude they are the ideal measure of wellbeing.

Religious poems sung with music, the Alevi deyiş are an integral part of Alevi ritual and social life. Due to the dynamics of oral transmission, the same deyiş can be performed with all kinds of music, the words of the deyiş can change from one performance to the next, and pen names can multiply. The unique experiential function of the deyiş lies precisely in this dynamic and fluid plurality. The deyiş serve as the anchor of communal identity, linking the group to a mythico-historical past that also constitutes the hermeneutical background for making sense of the present and near past. Born from an affect that is at once personal and communal, the oral tradition of deyiş is an experience of collective and personal agency, re-created at each moment in the acts of performance and active listening. Grounded in conceptual frameworks on emotion, embodiment, and orality, the article explores the transmission of deyiş through the cases of early Republican singer–poet Âşık Veysel (d. 1973), poems by Kaygusuz Abdal (flourished late fourteenth–early fifteenth century) and Pir Sultan Abdal (flourished sixteenth century) in the compilation of Ottoman palace musician Ali Ufuki (d. 1675), and modern musical interpretations of Kaygusuz Abdal’s poem.

Sexual slavery has been an ongoing human rights issue within South Korea since World War II, yet discourse has almost exclusively centred on World War II sex slaves. Redress efforts typically focus on these survivors, their bodies symbolising the Korean nation, with post-World War II Korean sex slaves generally seen as ‘willing’ prostitutes. Nevertheless, the bodies, experiences and victimhood of all survivors remain contested. This paper discusses the connection between the ‘ideal’ victims, the World War II Korean sex slaves, and an example of ‘non-ideal’ victims, the gijichon women of the 1970s. Drawing upon recent judgments, Korean law and society, it analyses the impact of an ‘ideal’ victim construct upon survivors’ pursuit of redress in the Korean courts. In this paper I argue that, despite some success within domestic courts, the ‘ideal’ victim construct can explain why all survivors remain marginalised and have yet to receive full truth and justice.

The corporate responsibility to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is seen increasingly as having a legal dimension, grounded in human rights, due diligence laws, and tort law. Corporate climate strategies often rely on carbon credits to offset emissions, but available credits typically fail to deliver real reductions. This raises doubts about their suitability for meeting responsibilities to reduce emissions.

This article examines the issue through the lens of due diligence, a key concept in defining corporate obligations. Due diligence demands that firms prioritize preventive and effective action to address the climate impacts of their business activities. Available carbon credits meet neither condition; accordingly, they are, as a rule, unsuitable for fulfilling a corporate duty to reduce GHG emissions.

The article also evaluates exceptions suggested in guidance documents, particularly the use of credits for offsetting residual and Scope 3 emissions. It concludes that these exceptions are difficult to justify from a due diligence standpoint, given the limited effectiveness of credits.

From the 1890s to the 1920s across the American Midwest, newspapers reported arrests and altercations in ‘Cocaine Alleys’. Not all of these arrests involved people under the influence of drugs, but the term nevertheless became a non-geographic cultural construct highlighting readers’ fears about racialized drug use. By describing low-income Black women as ‘queens’ central to these spaces, newspapers mingled gender, race, criminality and drug use. The ‘Cocaine Alley Queen’ stereotype applied to Black women obscured the reality of White women’s greater propensity to recreational and medical narcotic addiction. As Black migrants moved from Southern states to Northern Midwestern industrialized cities, this reporting trend appeared in cities with higher Black populations than the state average. Newspapers created an intersectional, geographic identity that collected fears and stereotypes about drug use and Black communities when narcotics were accessible, and reformers sought to discipline Black, urban, female working-class bodies and impose middle-class behaviours on them.