From the last decades of the nineteenth century through the late 1930s, the West Bohemian spa towns of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and Marienbad were fashionable destinations for visitors wishing to "take ...a cure"-to drink the waters, bathe in the mud, be treated by the latest X-ray, light, or gas therapies, or simply enjoy the respite afforded by elegant parks and comfortable lodgings. These were sociable and urbane places, settings for celebrity sightings, match-making, and stylish promenading. Originally the haunt of aristocrats, the spa towns came to be the favored summer resorts for the emerging bourgeoisie. Among the many who traveled there, a very high proportion were Jewish. InNext Year in Marienbad, Mirjam Zadoff writes the social and cultural history of Carlsbad, Franzensbad, and Marienbad as Jewish spaces. Secular and religious Jews from diverse national, cultural, and social backgrounds mingled in idyllic and often apolitical-seeming surroundings. During the season, shops sold Yiddish and Hebrew newspapers, kosher kitchens were opened, and theatrical presentations, concerts, and public readings catered to the Jewish clientele. Yet these same resorts were situated in a region of growing hostile nationalisms, and they were towns that might turn virulently anti-Semitic in the off season.Next Year in Marienbaddraws from memoirs and letters, newspapers and maps, novels and postcards to create a compelling and engaging portrait of Jewish presence and cultural production in the years between thefin de siècleand the Second World War.
Reform by Numbers Thomas Cantens, Robert Ireland, Gaël Raballand
2013, 2012, 10-31-2012, 20130101
eBook, Book
Open access
This paper is organized as follows. In chapter two, Samson Bilangna and Marcellin Djeuwo from the Cameroon customs administration present the history and the outcomes of the performance measurement ...policy launched by their administra-tion: the General Directorate of Customs signed 'performance contracts' with the frontline customs officers in 2010 and with some importers in 2011. In chapter three, Jose-Maria Munoz, an anthropologist, offers a complementary view of the introduction of figures in the Cameroon tax administration. The fourth chapter ends the book's first part, which focuses on performance measurement. Xavier Pascual from the French customs administration describes the system implemented by his administration to measure the collective performance of customs units and bureaus. In chapter five, Anne-Marie Geourjon and Bertrand Laporte, who are both economists, and Ousmane Coundoul and Massene Gadiaga, who are from the Senegalese customs administration, present the use of data mining to select imports for inspection. This project is being developed in Senegal and embodies the concept of risk analysis. Sharing the same global aim to make controls more efficient, economists Gael Raballand and Guillermo Arenas from the World Bank and anthropologist Thomas Cantens from the World Customs Organization suggest, in chapter six, using mirror statistics to detect potentially fraudulent import flows. Mirror statistics calculate the gaps of foreign trade statistics between two trading partner countries. To conclude the second part on the integration of measurement in information systems, Soyoung Yang from the Korea Customs Service (KCS), in chapter eight, offers a case study on KCS's implementation of a single window system. With respect to risk analysis, the concept of single window is widespread in the trade and customs environments, but few concrete achievements have been presented and analyzed.
Through literary and historical documents from the early sixteenth to late seventeenth centuries-epic poetry, private correspondence, secular dramas, and colonial legislation-Carmen Nocentelli charts ...the Western fascination with the eros of "India," as the vast coastal stretch from the Gulf of Aden to the South China Sea was often called. If Asia was thought of as a place of sexual deviance and perversion, she demonstrates, it was also a space where colonial authorities actively encouraged the formation of interracial households, even through the forcible conscription of native brides. In her comparative analysis of Dutch, English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish texts, Nocentelli shows how sexual behaviors and erotic desires quickly came to define the limits within which Europeans represented not only Asia but also themselves. Drawing on a wide range of European sources on polygamy, practices of male genital modification, and the allegedly excessive libido of native women,Empires of Loveemphasizes the overlapping and mutually transformative construction of race and sexuality during Europe's early overseas expansion, arguing that the encounter with Asia contributed to the development of Western racial discourse while also shaping European ideals of marriage, erotic reciprocity, and monogamous affection.
Trade integration contributes substantially to economic development and poverty alleviation. In recent years much progress was made to liberalize the trade regime, but customs procedures are often ...still complex, costly and non-transparent. This situation leads to misallocation of resources. Customs Modernization Handbook provides an overview of the key elements of a successful customs modernization strategy and draws lessons from a number of successful customs reforms as well as from customs reform projects that have been undertaken by the World Bank. It describes a number of key import procedures, that have proved particularly troublesome for customs administrations and traders, and provides practical guidelines to enhance their efficiency. The Handbook also reviews the appropriate legal framework for customs operations as well as strategies to combat corruption.
Many of the traditions which we think of as very ancient in their origins were not in fact sanctioned by long usage over the centuries, but were invented comparatively recently. This book explores ...examples of this process of invention – the creation of Welsh and Scottish 'national culture'; the elaboration of British royal rituals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the origins of imperial rituals in British India and Africa; and the attempts by radical movements to develop counter-traditions of their own. It addresses the complex interaction of past and present, bringing together historians and anthropologists in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism which poses new questions for the understanding of our history.
In the urban communities of medieval Germany and northern France, the beliefs, observances, and practices of Jews allowed them to create and define their communities on their own terms as well as in ...relation to the surrounding Christian society. Although medieval Jewish texts were written by a learned elite, the laity also observed many religious rituals as part of their everyday life. InPracticing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz, Elisheva Baumgarten asks how Jews, especially those who were not learned, expressed their belonging to a minority community and how their convictions and deeds were made apparent to both their Jewish peers and the Christian majority.
Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenazprovides a social history of religious practice in context, particularly with regard to the ways Jews and Christians, separately and jointly, treated their male and female members. Medieval Jews often shared practices and beliefs with their Christian neighbors, and numerous notions and norms were appropriated by one community from the other. By depicting a dynamic interfaith landscape and a diverse representation of believers, Baumgarten offers a fresh assessment of Jewish practice and the shared elements that composed the piety of Jews in relation to their Christian neighbors.
In the Andalusian communities throughout the olive-growing region of southeastern Spain men show themselves to be primarily concerned with two problems of identity: their place in the social ...hierarchy, and the maintenance of their masculinity in the context of their culture.
In this study of projective behavior as found in the folklore of an Andalusian town, Stanley Brandes is careful to support psychological interpretations with ethnographic evidence. His emphasis on male folklore provides a timely complement to current research on women.
Biologists studying large carnivores in wild places usually do so from a distance, using telemetry and noninvasive methods of data collection. So what happens when an anthropologist studies a clan of ...spotted hyenas, Africa’s second-largest carnivores, up close—and in a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants? In Among the Bone Eaters , Marcus Baynes-Rock takes us to the ancient city of Harar in Ethiopia, where the gey waraba (hyenas of the city) are welcome in the streets and appreciated by the locals for the protection they provide from harmful spirits and dangerous “mountain” hyenas. They’ve even become a local tourist attraction.
At the start of his research in Harar, Baynes-Rock contended with difficult conditions, stone-throwing children, intransigent bureaucracy, and wary hyena subjects intent on avoiding people. After months of frustration, three young hyenas drew him into the hidden world of the Sofi clan. He discovered the elements of a hyena’s life, from the delectability of dead livestock and the nuisance of dogs to the unbounded thrill of hyena chase-play under the light of a full moon. Baynes-Rock’s personal relations with the hyenas from the Sofi clan expand the conceptual boundaries of human-animal relations. This is multispecies ethnography that reveals its messy, intersubjective, dangerously transformative potential.
Through the Window brings an original perspective to folklore of Bosnians at a certain period of time and the differences and similarities of the three main ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ...It examines the transethnic character of cultural heritage, against divisions that dominate their tragic recent past. The monograph focuses in particular on customs shared by different ethnic groups, specifically elopement, and affinal visitation. The elopement is a transformative rite of passage where an unmarried girl becomes a married woman. The affinal visitation, which follows, is a confirmatory ceremony where ritualized customs between families establish in-lawships These customs reflect a transethnic heritage shared by people in Bosnia as a national group, including Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats.
Being Together in Placeexplores the landscapes that convene Native and non-Native people into sustained and difficult negotiations over their radically different interests and concerns. Grounded in ...three sites-the Cheslatta-Carrier traditional territory in British Columbia; the Wakarusa Wetlands in northeastern Kansas; and the Waitangi Treaty Grounds in Aotearoa/New Zealand-this book highlights the challenging, tentative, and provisional work of coexistence around such contested spaces as wetlands, treaty grounds, fishing spots, recreation areas, cemeteries, heritage trails, and traditional village sites. At these sites, activists learn how to articulate and defend their intrinsic and life-supportive ways of being, particularly to those who are intent on damaging or destroying these places.
Using ethnographic research and a geographic perspective, Soren C. Larsen and Jay T. Johnson show how the communities in these regions challenge the power relations that structure the ongoing (post)colonial encounter in liberal democratic settler-states. Emerging from their conversations with activists was a distinctive sense that the places for which they cared had agency, a "call" that pulled them into dialogue, relationships, and action with human and nonhuman others. This being-together-in-place, they find, speaks in a powerful way to the vitalities of coexistence: where humans and nonhumans are working to decolonize their relationships; where reciprocal guardianship is being stitched back together in new and unanticipated ways; and where a new kind of "place thinking" is emerging on the borders of colonial power.
