{"title":"Political Martyrdom Revisited: Iran’s Contemporary Perspective and Insights from the Woman-Life-Freedom Uprising","authors":"Oksana Didyk","doi":"10.22439/cjas.v41i2.7109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v41i2.7109","url":null,"abstract":"Martyrdom holds significant cultural and historical importance in Iranian culture. It has deep roots in Shia Islam, the predominant religion in Iran, and frequently appears in Iranians’ collective memory. The concept of martyrdom gained significant prominence during the Iran-Iraq War (1980 - 1988) when many Iranians, including soldiers and civilians, lost their lives while defending their country. The war led to a surge in a culture surrounding martyrdom, with commemorations, ceremonies and rituals that continue today. Years after the war, new conceptions of martyrdom appeared, and the traditional ones transformed. The latest uprisings in Iran in 2022, with the slogan ‘woman-life-freedom’, have spurred a lively discussion as to how to consider martyrdom nowadays. This article examines the concept of martyrdom, offering fresh interpretations influenced by generational shifts and the rise of social activism in the 2020s, which diverge from traditional revolutionary ideologies. Drawing from survey data and qualitative interviews, the research proposes a taxonomy of martyr categories.","PeriodicalId":328613,"journal":{"name":"The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies","volume":" 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140994559","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Twisted Trajectories and Jewish-Muslim Interfaces: Bukharan Jews of Central Asia in Vienna","authors":"Vera Skvirskaja","doi":"10.22439/cjas.v41i2.7107","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v41i2.7107","url":null,"abstract":"This article discusses migration of Bukharan Jews – an ethnic-religious minority in (post-)Soviet Central Asia – and the establishment of multi-confessional, multi-ethnic Central Asian diaspora in the city of Vienna, Austria. During the Cold War period, Vienna was transformed from being a major transit hub for Soviet Jews moving from the USSR to Israel, USA and other destinations to a site of the most numerous and prominent Bukharan Jewish diaspora in Europe. Using the concept of ‘migration infrastructure’, the article investigates the ways in which this transformation took place. Furthermore, it focuses on Jewish-Muslim interfaces, both in Soviet Uzbekistan and present-day diaspora, to document the ongoing, albeit changing, coexistence and collaboration across ethnic-religious boundaries that facilitate transnational migration. I argue that the Jewish infrastructure, which emerged in Vienna’s historically Jewish district of Leopoldstadt in the last decades, has also become a migrant infrastructure for the post-Soviet Tadjik-speaking Muslim migrants from Central Asia.","PeriodicalId":328613,"journal":{"name":"The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies","volume":" 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140995356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A Circulation Society, Reconsidered: Syrian Jewish Merchant Networks after the Exodus from Aleppo","authors":"Paul Anderson","doi":"10.22439/cjas.v41i2.7106","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v41i2.7106","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the durability of transregional Syrian Jewish merchant networks through the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, when the centre of these trading networks shifted several times in response to economic transformations and political pressures. Migration patterns from Aleppo following the Ottoman collapse and the exodus after 1947 call for a modified conceptualisation of centres, peripheries and circulation from dominant approaches to merchant networks and circulation societies. Centres are generally thought of as the origin points of persons and goods – namely, women, religious specialists and collateral-free credit – which circulate exclusively within the network; peripheries are nodes which merely receive and depend on centres in these respects. I add to this by analysing central or critical nodes as those where different kinds of mobility intersected to inject new vitality into the networks. Peripheries are not only dependent nodes, but vital points of refuge and transition in times of duress. Furthermore, beyond persons and credit, the circulation of aesthetic and ethical standards, in addition to name values, has helped to maintain the integrity of the network in a period of geographic reconfiguration.","PeriodicalId":328613,"journal":{"name":"The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies","volume":" 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140995459","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Merchant Networks of Afghan Sikhs: The Cold War, its Legacies and Beyond","authors":"Magnus Marsden","doi":"10.22439/cjas.v41i2.7105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v41i2.7105","url":null,"abstract":"This article documents the migration of Afghanistan’s Sikh communities to Asia and Europe during the Cold War and its aftermath. It analyses these migratory trajectories both in the context of conflict in Afghanistan and the refugee flows it created as well as in relation to the long-term role of Afghan Sikhs in transregional trade. The article argues that exploring Sikh migration from Afghanistan through the twin analytical lenses of trade networks and the Cold War helps to illuminate a more complex range of identities and experiences than allowed for by a singular focus on their status as either ‘refugees’ or migrants from ‘the Global South’.","PeriodicalId":328613,"journal":{"name":"The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies","volume":" 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140995058","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mikkel Bunkenborg, Morten Nielsen and Morten Axel Pedersen, Collaborative Damage: An Experimental Ethnography of Chinese Globalisation. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2022. 277 pp. ISBN 978-1-5017-5983-3","authors":"Caroline Humphrey","doi":"10.22439/cjas.v41i2.7110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.22439/cjas.v41i2.7110","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":328613,"journal":{"name":"The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies","volume":" 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140994734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}