Drawing on ethnography from Mazu, a group of demilitarized islands between China and Taiwan, this article argues that contemporary pilgrimage is an imaginative work that generates hope and potentialities for the increasingly marginalized islanders. I explore the imaginative qualities of the rituals, qualities that I refer to collectively as “virtual recentralization.” “Recentralization” connotes the islanders' longing to regain their Cold War status as the focal point between China and Taiwan, even though the desired goal can only be “virtual” as cross-strait tensions continue to diminish. These pilgrimages, with their eclectic, improvisatory, and novel forms, differ from traditional pilgrimages in important ways: rather than transmitting permanent and solid religious values, they are oriented towards performance and are imbued with elements of fiction and fantasy. They are the means by which the Mazu islanders, in this neoliberal era, imagine their future, reconfigure political, economic, and religious space, and forge new connections between China, Taiwan, and even the wider world.

Beginning in 1613, when the Prussian royal family converted to Calvinism while the vast majority of its subjects remained part of the state-regulated Lutheran church, the Hohenzollern kings found themselves living with an anomalous religious situation. Royal discontent with this circumstance had always existed, but efforts to bring about a change failed until, in the years after the Napoleonic Wars, Frederick William III resolved to take decisive action. A pious man and conscientious theologian, the king was deeply troubled by the continuing existence among large numbers of his subjects of rationalism and religious indifferentism, legacies of the Enlightenment. Moreover, reflecting on the defeat of Prussia by the French in 1806, he was also committed to national regeneration, which seemed blocked not only by the lack of religiosity he perceived, but by the disunity inherent in the religious gulf which separated Reformed monarch and Lutheran subject. In 1817, with the three-hundredth anniversary of the Reformation in mind, he proclaimed the intention to merge the Reformed and Lutheran churches of Prussia, and proceeded actively to involve himself in framing a common agenda for the doctrine of the new church. Serving God and the state in one bold stroke, the king was doubtless proud of the decision, and the large majority of his Lutheran subjects and their pastors unquestioningly accepted it.

The existence of a widespread religious phenomenon in Africa appearing under many names, in corporate manifestations as new groups and in individual form as new prophets, is evidenced in many ways. Even the most casual observer driving through a large African town cannot fail to notice the succession of exotic names on sign boards or to meet a white-robed religious procession, and if he tries to trace the bell-ringing, drumming, and chanting that fill the night air for hours on end the chances are that he will be led to one of these sign boards and to some humble structure filled with tireless worshippers. Occasionally the bizarre behaviour of a prophet or “sect’ provides material for the journalist seeking sensation, or leads to an appearance in the police courts, or even to military action, as in Northern Rhodesia in 1964 against the Lenshina movement. Strange churches apply for membership of Christian councils, and ministers and missionaries are perplexed when some of their members secure spiritual help from a semi-literate prophet, or transfer their allegiance to an unknown church with an outlandish name.

In the three societies considered in this essay, there are three quite different kinds of relation of religion to the state. In Iran, there came to be a church and, consequently, a church-state relationship. In India, there was the oddest of all embodiments of religion, one which was entirely sui generis. China had a dead minimum of religious organization distinct from the organization of state. It would not be true to say that there were never any ecclesiastical institutions in China, but they were non-existent during much of China's history and, during most of the time when they did exist, they were marginal to the society's main form. The outward observances of religion in China were always conducted chiefly by state personages as a part of their proper functions. China offers, in fact, an extreme case of possible relations between religion and government, a case at the opposite end of the spectrum from the end where Strayer finds those relations in Europe. Indian ecclesiastical institutions are, of course, to be found in the caste system. Through the caste system the Brahmans have exerted their immense authority. The origin of caste remains a matter of dispute and its relation with and effect upon the state remain obscure. The Iranian church came to be a solid and very formidable body, offering a most instructive comparison with the Christian church in Europe. But the Iranian church did not begin to emerge until the Parthian period, reaching its full development in the Sassanian era, from the third to the seventh centuries A.D.

I take it that this title, which was not of my devising, is intended to cover the contribution that the series of partial or comparatively comprehensive codifications of the law of personal status, which have appeared in recent years in one Muslim country after another, has played or might play in the development of social conditions in general, and of family relations in particular, in the area concerned. But I shall confine my remarks in this paper to those legislative enactments which codify or restate principles of family law which are, or profess to be, specifically Islamic, whether they are applicable to Muslims alone or to those of more than one religion, rather than make any attempt to deal with the family law peculiar to one or another of the non-Muslim communities–partly because any comprehensive consideration of the latter would be too wide and detailed a task for such a paper as this, partly because each of these other systems of law is of comparatively restricted application, and partly because it is the Islamic law which has been the subject of my own specialist study.

The study of economic growth would seem to offer unusual opportunities for the application of the comparative method. The number of cases is large, from the Egypt of the Pharoahs to the Egypt of Nasser, from the civilizations of the Indus, of Babylon, and the Mayas to the latest development programs of Pakistan, Iraq, and Guatamala. The practical significance of increased understanding of the process of growth could be great indeed. And economic growth theorists, after plunging ahead in the eary postwar years with unlimited confidence in the tools of their trade, have more recently issued open invitations to historians, anthropologists, and other scholars who deal with whole societies to assist in the formulation of hypotheses explanatory of economic growth. Recent textbooks and surveys of the field now include as a matter of course a section devoted to “the lessons of history”. More specialized works frequently include a chapter on the historical background of their subjects or numerous historical or comparative analogies. As yet, however, the actual contributions of comparative history to an understanding of the process of economic development have been limited, not to say negligible. Historical events and episodes have been used to illustrate this or that theory of development, but historical experience en grand has not yet been used satisfactorily to generate a theory of its own; nor have economic historians, the scholars indicated by training and professional orientation to bridge the gap between economic theory and historical experience, shown any great enthusiasm for the task. A prize competition recently opened by the Council (formerly Committee) on Research in Economic History for studies in comparative economic history failed to attract a single suitable entry.

What are the most important cleavages created by political struggles over redistributive economic policies? What are the likely policy outcomes of these struggles? The classic answer to the first question is that the most important cleavage is that of class, dividing rich and poor. The class-based model is usually not taken to yield clear predictions about outcomes, because rich and poor would be expected to engage in an inconclusive bidding war for the support of the median voter or pivotal middle stratum. A more recent answer is that the most important cleavages will reflect the position of a given country in the international economy, pitting those benefiting from international trade against those hurt by it. This trade-based model yields stronger predictions about outcomes, since there is usually a clear majority that either does or does not benefit from international trade. Finally, there is a long, though loose, tradition that largely grows out of empirical observation. This emphasizes the pivotal role that the agricultural population appears to play in the more important political battles concerning institutional development and economic policy.

It seemed to me a simple question. “What happens in this dance-drama? What is the storyline, the narrative?” I am met by puzzlement. The dancer explains that each such dance has its own set of instruments, its own special costumes and masks. For this one they use a simple, one-man marimba and the costumes come from the nearby town of Chichicastenango.

This paper explores the development of the Wang Jingwei personality cult during the Japanese occupation of China (1937–1945). It examines how the collaborationist Chinese state led by Wang sought to distinguish its figurehead from the person he had replaced, Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek. Drawing on visual, archival, and published sources, it traces the development of the Wang cult from the early years of the war, and argues that the unusual context in which the cult evolved ultimately undermined its coherence. The case of Wang Jingwei illustrates how the Chinese case more broadly can enhance our understandings of personality cults that develop under occupation. To this end, I compare the Wang regime with various European “collaborationist” governments that sought to promote their leaders in similar ways.

This paper interrogates the political economy of re-regulation in market-driven economies through the lens of transformations in contemporary Cairo. Focusing on property markets, the paper demonstrates that rather than reveling in the “freeing” of real estate through the reversal of rent control laws, private sector actors were working to re-regulate the real estate market. They were not turning to legal mechanisms or patronage networks, but invested in the production of local “community” in central Cairo as they worked to re-regulate the market. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork from 2011–2012, the paper compares how two private sector actors with varying relationships to the market reacted to the reversal of rent control. The paper demonstrates that both actors were mobilizing urban planning and architectural design as modes of societal engineering to foster local particularistic communities as they worked to corner real estate markets both upward toward a high-end clientele and downwards towards low-income residents. In unpacking how these actors mobilized community as they worked to intervene in markets, and their interventions’ contradictions, the paper challenges the idea that trust or relational networks are the most valued facets of community in market-transitioning economies. It shows that actors value the spatial boundary-setting and particularism of communities as they work to re-regulate markets, and accentuate difference rather than trust in those contexts.

The market of El Hueco in downtown Lima sits inside a large pit dug out for the foundation of a state building that was never built. The below-ground corridors and crammed vending stalls in this poorly regulated market are usually flooded with shoppers, yet government officials and the media frequently condemn it as a vile and dangerous place. But how and why does El Hueco offend? Through an ethnographic account of a day's events, cast against a discussion of Marxism's “lumpenproletariat” and Hernando de Soto's “informality,” I argue that implicit in El Hueco's challenge of state bureaucracy is a class critique that resists conventional class analysis and that affirms the “lumpen” as a politics in its own right. “Lumpen” here does not refer to categories of people but to a resource that can be appropriated and deployed freely. Linked to the anti-political tactics of President Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s, lumpen as a resource has changed the face of postwar Lima by defying and deforming from within the bourgeois ideals of urban development and bureaucratic form. It has also arguably changed the face of politics and played a role in the revival of fujimorismo during and since the 2016 presidential elections.

Beginning in the early 1970s, a large number of countries initiated transitions from forms of authoritarian rule to democracy.The research for this essay was made possible by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship as well as support from the American Research Institute in Turkey, the Institute for Turkish Studies, and Princeton University's Center for International Studies and Council on Regional Studies. The author wishes to thank John Waterbury, Atul Kohli, Jeffrey Herbst, Anna Seleny, and two anonymous reviewers for reading and commenting thoughtfully on earlier versions of this essay. This democratizing trend, dubbed “The Third Wave,” began in Southern Europe and continued in Latin America, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe.Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991). Similar transitions were also begun in parts of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The Middle East, by contrast, has remained untouched. Some instances of political liberalization (i.e., enlargement of the freedoms of speech and movement, and the freedom from arbitrary state action) have taken place in the region. But no country held democratic elections that contained the possibility of real change in the locus of political power.

This essay compares two communities of common origin that now dwell in separate rural lowland South American settings, one in the Bolivian Chaco and the other in the Paraguayan Chaco (maps 1 and 2). South America's Gran Chaco is sparsely populated, averaging one person per three square kilometers (Censo Nacional Indígena [Paraguay], 2002). Nevertheless, the present essay takes as its analytic-theoretical point of departure a phrase invoked by Michael Warner in his 1999 book on queer publics in New York City: “Urban space is always a host space” (1999: 190).

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, European planters manufacturing indigo on colonial plantations in Bengal faced a major challenge from synthetic indigo. Synthetic indigo was a symbol of the successful integration of chemistry into industrial manufacturing that had occurred in the second half of the century, and it threatened to displace the colonial commodity. It also fundamentally challenged the colonial program of “improvement” that agricultural indigo represented, and the mode of production consisting of stewardship of plants and the extraction of a commodity within the plantation system. The planters pushed back on the synthetic product by emphasizing the merits of agricultural indigo. As part of this resistance, they claimed that the plant-based dye was “natural” and superior because it was produced through agriculture, and they pointed to the grounding of their methods of production in the layout of land and farming. They argued that when setting their product's value the market should give weight to its unique attributes and the extraordinary quality that nature had bred into the dye. This study reads in this response a critique of the growing ties between manufacturing and science and technology. The planters' critique was not a straightforward critique of the vicissitudes of market, but rather a fight to retain a place for the sort of exchanges and value that plant indigo growers were accustomed to dealing in. They viewed plantation manufacturing as wholesome and organic, and defended it in the name of nature.

To the extent that the social sciences have been concerned with thestratification of Latin American societies they have shown a well-knowntendency to dichotomize their structures into a small upper class of wealthy and powerful landowners and a poor and powerless lower class hetero-geneously composed of rural workers, urban proletarians, petty traders, artisans, and the like. As a rule, the emergence of new classes and thegrowing internal differentiation of emergent or traditional classes are somewhat reluctantly admitted only as the societies of Latin America have demonstrated the ability to depart from their agrarian tradition and topursue the irreversible course of modernization. There has been a strong inclination to ignore or to minimize those aspects of the social structure which suggest a higher degree of complexity than the stereotype of a two-class system seems to indicate.