Current HistoryPub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.348
Stephen J. King
{"title":"Racism and the Rollback of Tunisian Democracy","authors":"Stephen J. King","doi":"10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.348","url":null,"abstract":"Tunisia was the last surviving democracy to emerge from the Arab Spring, and had recently enacted legislation to combat racial discrimination. But President Kais Saied, since coming to power in a 2019 election, has returned the country to authoritarian rule. He has also rolled back progress on race relations, scapegoating sub-Saharan African migrants for Tunisia’s economic troubles. The failure of previous governments to root out corruption and consolidate the democratic transition with a new socioeconomic pact opened the way for a return to dictatorship.","PeriodicalId":45614,"journal":{"name":"Current History","volume":"184 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138615155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current HistoryPub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.342
Yael Berda
{"title":"The Citizenship Regime Change Behind Israel’s Rule-of-Law Crisis","authors":"Yael Berda","doi":"10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.342","url":null,"abstract":"This article delineates the relations between the judicial overhaul launched by Israel’s right-wing government in 2023 and the mechanisms of Israel’s control over Palestinians, demonstrating that they are two parts of a regime change. The essay traces a series of changes in Israel’s citizenship regime the past decade: the enactment of an anti-terrorism law and a nation-state law that defined the exclusive right of Jews to self-determination in Israel; the domestic application of surveillance and control practices developed in the occupied territories; and finally legislation allowing the revocation of Palestinians’ citizenship and the de facto annexation of the occupied territories.","PeriodicalId":45614,"journal":{"name":"Current History","volume":"103 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138623195","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current HistoryPub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.329
Elizabeth Saleh
{"title":"‘There Is No Value’","authors":"Elizabeth Saleh","doi":"10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.329","url":null,"abstract":"This article draws on narratives from middle-class households in Beirut to examine their disenfranchisement amid the country’s financial collapse. A common expression, “There is no value,” is often used in allusion to extreme price fluctuation that has punctuated everyday life since the end of 2019. The phrase also speaks to the undoing of a middle-class lifestyle that emerged with the pegging of the Lebanese lira to the US dollar in the 1990s. Reflecting on how value is conceptualized at the level of the everyday leads into exploring some of the complex ways in which this middle-class milieu accessed credit following Lebanon’s civil war, and how everything has changed during the current dollar shortage.","PeriodicalId":45614,"journal":{"name":"Current History","volume":" 13","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138611639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current HistoryPub Date : 2023-12-01DOI: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.335
K. Öktem
{"title":"The Elections that Unmade Turkey’s Democracy","authors":"K. Öktem","doi":"10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2023.122.848.335","url":null,"abstract":"Elections under authoritarian regimes rarely deliver democratic outcomes. Still, most observers and pollsters expected Turkey’s May 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections to be different. A deepening economic crisis, a botched rescue effort after a devastating earthquake, and discontent with a ruling party in power for more than two decades seemed to fuel the rise of a united opposition. But the return to democracy did not happen, and this cannot be credited solely to an unlevel electoral playing field. Turkey offers a case study in electoral autocracy, with incumbent tactics of repression and co-optation that disarm opposition parties by drawing them into the logic of autocratic politics.","PeriodicalId":45614,"journal":{"name":"Current History","volume":" 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138617098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current HistoryPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.308
Hirofumi Katsuno, Daniel White
{"title":"The Japanese Pursuit of Human–Robot Companionship","authors":"Hirofumi Katsuno, Daniel White","doi":"10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.308","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.308","url":null,"abstract":"Building on global advances in artificial emotional intelligence, Japanese companies have increasingly invested in developing social robots with capacities to express and evoke emotion. In some cases, they can even read the emotional expressions of human users. These efforts parallel a broader trend in state support for developing technological solutions to socioeconomic problems, such as social isolation and a deficit in care workers. The rise of companion robots has elicited excitement about potential futures of human–robot existence as well as concerns over data privacy and the loss of inter-human connection, embodying the dynamic emotional dimensions of Japan’s social transformation.","PeriodicalId":45614,"journal":{"name":"Current History","volume":"365 6","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135112412","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current HistoryPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.317
Keith Makoto Woodhouse
{"title":"Saving Nature and Ourselves","authors":"Keith Makoto Woodhouse","doi":"10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.317","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.317","url":null,"abstract":"If exploitation of nonhuman nature is bound up with the exploitation of other humans, how can these chains be broken?","PeriodicalId":45614,"journal":{"name":"Current History","volume":"364 7","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135112417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current HistoryPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.301
Tanya Richardson
{"title":"Interspecies Relations in the Midst of the Russia–Ukraine War","authors":"Tanya Richardson","doi":"10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.301","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.301","url":null,"abstract":"To convey the scale of destruction that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused to animals, plants, and ecosystems, analysts frequently use national-scale maps, aggregate figures, and the concept of ecocide. Although necessary, these moves risk portraying Ukraine exclusively as a zone of catastrophe, while obscuring the character of on-the-ground socioecological relations. This article enlarges the space for environmental narratives about war between catastrophe, heroism, and resilience by describing interspecies encounters along Odesa’s Black Sea Coast, in the Askania-Nova Biosphere Reserve, and in the Kharkiv Region.","PeriodicalId":45614,"journal":{"name":"Current History","volume":"366 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135112406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current HistoryPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.295
Annah Lake Zhu
{"title":"China’s Ecological Engineering in the Anthropocene","authors":"Annah Lake Zhu","doi":"10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.295","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.295","url":null,"abstract":"China is the largest contributor to global greening trends over the past two decades, pursuing large-scale tree planting and revegetation initiatives. This type of ecological engineering is controversial, given concerns about China’s authoritarian environmentalism. This essay examines such Chinese efforts and how they diverge from Western environmental approaches based on nature preservation. Chinese environmentalism is based on a tradition that does not delineate nature from culture, the natural from the engineered. This distinction has consequences for global environmental governance in the Anthropocene as China promotes its approach to the global South.","PeriodicalId":45614,"journal":{"name":"Current History","volume":"365 1-3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135112415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current HistoryPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.314
J. W. Traphagan
{"title":"Chasing Extraterrestrial Intelligence","authors":"J. W. Traphagan","doi":"10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.314","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.314","url":null,"abstract":"The search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe has continued for decades without yielding any tangible results, as experts debate active versus passive approaches and the risks involved in sending signals of humans’ presence.","PeriodicalId":45614,"journal":{"name":"Current History","volume":"364 8","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135112416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Current HistoryPub Date : 2023-11-01DOI: 10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.289
Krithika Srinivasan, Rosemary Collard
{"title":"Nature without Conservation","authors":"Krithika Srinivasan, Rosemary Collard","doi":"10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2023.122.847.289","url":null,"abstract":"The predominant approach of protecting or restoring floral and faunal life after harming, displacing, or destroying them in service of human interests does not hold much promise for nature on Earth in the age of the Anthropocene. Such approaches fail to address the ethical and political-economic cores of what tend to be presented as techno-scientific or ecological problems. If the planet is to remain home to life beyond the human, mainstream human societies need to rethink their place, role, and entitlements on Earth, and relearn to cohabit with human and nonhuman others, even in the face of risk and uncertainty.","PeriodicalId":45614,"journal":{"name":"Current History","volume":"365 7","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135112411","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}