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This volume is written for anyone who has wondered about the growth of Chinese businesses and their relation to Chinese family and government institutions. Making full use of its partner volume's findings on village institutions in the southern prefecture of Huizhou, this volume explains how late imperial China's key regional group of merchants emerged from this prefecture's village lineages. It identifies the strategies they deployed to overcome the serious obstacles to their domination of major financial transactions and commodity markets throughout much of China from 1500 to 1700. At the same time it describes how the commercial success enjoyed by these 'house firms' undermined their lineages' social stability, making them vulnerable to competition from popular religious cults back home. In recounting how rural and urban institutions interacted through state and economic development, McDermott provides a powerful new framework for understanding late imperial China's distinctive trajectory to social and economic transformation.

SUMMARY: Blending Soviet archival materials with Kyrgyz lineage genealogies, this article examines how the coming of the Soviet regime, with its emphasis on antagonistic classes, affected hierarchical power relationships within traditional Kyrgyz lineage society. In doing so, the article analyzes the history of Kyrgyz lineage relations from the imperial to the Soviet periods. It argues that the emergence of contested politics was a result of deliberate efforts by the Soviet authorities to elevate previously disenfranchised and weak ( bukara ) lineages in Kyrgyz nomadic society, which had formerly been dominated by established, powerful ( manap ) lineages. This situation was a direct result of the Soviet regime's attempt to promote class conflict in Soviet Kyrgyzstan. The Soviet principle of the clash between classes, imposed on the Kyrgyz lineage society, evolved into a confrontation between powerful and weak lineage groups, the latter officially supported by the state. In the long run, attempts to create "lineage proletariats" had lasting effects on the Soviet project in Central Asia. The fact that a self-proclaimed socialist regime promoted lineage stratification by exploiting preexisting hierarchies to further its cause ultimately contributed to the conservation of lineage identities in the region. Резюме: Сочетая анализ советских архивных материалов и кыргызских генеалогических источников (санжыра), статья исследует влияние со-ветской власти, с ее акцентом на классовой борьбе, на иерархические властные отношения внутри кыргызского традиционного родового общества в 1920-е гг. Реконструируя динамику межродовых отношений в позднеимперский и раннесоветский период, статья показывает фор-мирование и активизацию конкурентной политики среди кыргызских родов в результате вмешательства советских властей в эти отношения. Поддерживая традиционно бесправные и слабые (букаринские) роды, над которыми прежде господствовали основные (манапские) роды, советский режим надеялся разжечь классовый конфликт в кыргызском кочевом обществе. Навязанный киргизскому родовому обществу, советский принцип классовой борьбы перерос в противостояние сильных и слабых родо-вых групп, в которой последние пользовались официальной поддерж-кой советского государства. В долгосрочной перспективе попытки создания "родового пролетариата" имели последствия для советского проекта в Центральной Азии. Продвижение родовой стратификации самопровозглашенным социалистическим режимом, эксплуатировав-шим существующие иерархии в своих целях, в итоге способствовало сохранению родовой идентичности в регионе.

1. Philosophical Urbanism of Walter Benjamin -- 2.Sky and Gender Myths in the Founding of Early Built Environments -- 3. Aristotelian Streetscapes in the Rise of Modernity -- 4. From Body Without Organs to City Without Streets -- 5. LIA and the Iron Age Cold Epoch: Similitudes and Sequels

Iran is hardly perceived as a normal country, whether it be by Western commentators and politicians critical of the government, Iranian leaders who impart special distinction to it, or ordinary Iranians protesting against it. This sense of anomaly has become so ingrained that some factions of the Iranian opposition take to social media to express their yearning for a "normal life." Economic peculiarities form one aspect of Iran's supposed abnormality, and the solution to them is posited as the establishment of a free market economy. Without denying the specificities of contemporary Iran, in this contribution I seek to scrutinize the very norms against which it is compared. I challenge the pathologizing approach that identifies Iran outside of or at the margins of history as a failing or stagnating polity and economy. This approach presupposes that a singular pattern of capitalist modernity is capable of yielding progress and prosperity, and diagnoses developmental shortcomings as the automatic outcome of deviating from a normal path of development.