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Allison Weir sets forth a concept of identity which depends on an acceptance of nonidentity, difference, and connection to others, defined as a capacity to participate in a social world. Weir argues that the equation of identity with repression and domination links ""relational feminists"" like Nancy Chodorow, who equate self-identity with the repression of connection to others, and poststructuralist feminists like Judith Butler, who view any identity as a repression of nonidentity or difference. Weir traces this conception of identity as domination back to Simone de Beauvoir's theories of the

Fires of Gold is a powerful ethnography of the often shrouded cultural, legal, political, and spiritual forces governing the gold mining industry in Ghana, one of Africa's most celebrated democracies. Lauren Coyle Rosen argues that significant sources of power have arisen outside of the formal legal system to police, adjudicate, and navigate conflict in this theater of violence, destruction, and rebirth. These authorities, or shadow sovereigns, include the transnational mining company, collectivized artisanal miners, civil society advocacy groups, and significant religious figures and spiritual forces from African, Islamic, and Christian traditions. Often more salient than official bodies of government, the shadow sovereigns reveal a reconstitution of sovereign power--one that, in many ways, is generated by hidden dimensions of the legal system. Coyle Rosen also contends that spiritual forces are central in anchoring and animating shadow sovereigns as well as key forms of legal authority, economic value, and political contestation. This innovative book illuminates how the crucible of gold, itself governed by spirits, serves as a critical site for embodied struggles over the realignment of the classical philosophical triad: the city, the soul, and the sacred..

Overseas Chinese -- The greater Malaysia plan -- The Sri Aman Treaty -- Any other day at the bus station -- What's there to tell? -- Virtuous subjects -- Sites of impermanence -- Facing the artefact

After the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945, both nations experienced a profound need for a new and encompassing story of what it meant to be Japanese, and to be American, in the permanent nuclear age. This article is a thought experiment to juxtapose the writings and personas of two people who helped their respective societies answer those needs and questions during the early Cold War: Takashi Nagai—medical radiologist, and survivor of the American atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and Albert Wohlstetter—leading American civilian nuclear strategist for the RAND Corporation in the 1950s. Using a combination of mythopeic analysis, biography and illuminative juxtaposition, the study discovers surprising similarities and analogies between the two cases. They each enact and propose interesting variations of sacrificial causalities—claims that human nuclear sacrifices past or promised can bring peace by deterrence now or peace by abolition soon enough. This is an important study now, as both Japan's nuclear pacifism and the American nuclear umbrella in Northeast Asia are coming under more severe questioning than perhaps ever before.

Previous studies on the Nanhaishen Temple 南海神廟 (Temple of the South Sea God) in Guangzhou in the Tang dynasty focus mainly on the South Sea God as the patron of the Maritime Silk Road, without thoroughly discussing the state ritual and the sacrificial right of the Tang government. This paper illuminates five new points concerning the ritual. First, the sacrificial ritual to the South Sea God developed from the suburban rituals in previous dynasties into both forms of suburban and local rituals, which was also categorized as the medium sacrifice among the three major sacrifices in the state ritual system of the Tang dynasty. Second, the first commissioner who was sent by the central government to perform the sacrificial ritual to the South Sea God was Zhang Jiuling, and henceforth the temporary assignment of court officials to the ceremonies became institutionalized. In the tenth year of Tianbao (751), the South Sea God was entitled Guangliwang 廣利王 (King Guangli), and the commissioner sent on this mission was Zhang Jiuzhang, Zhang Jiuling's third younger brother, rather than his second younger brother Zhang Jiugao as seen in some records. Third, most of the commissioners were dispatched by the central government in the early Tang, and therefore the sacrifice to the South Sea God was related to the state ritual system ; but in the late Tang local officials became dominant in the ritual ceremonies, and thus good harvests and social stability in the Lingnan region became the major concern of the sacrifice. Fourth, the legend that the Buddhist Master Xiujiu 休咎禪師 took over the temple and accepted the South Sea God as his disciple reflected the reciprocity between Buddhism and the South Sea God belief. Last but not the least, the sacrificial ceremonies to the South Sea God established in the Tang dynasty and performed by the officials of both the central and local governments had a significant influence on the ritual in the following dynasties.