The Islamist Challenge in the Middle East and North Africa
Abstract : The Islamist movements in the Middle East and North Africa have caused a great deal of concern for many in the West, as they are seen as a monolithic, fundamental religious phenomenon run by fanatical terrorists. The fact is most Islamist movements develop along local or national lines in response to a variety of social, economic, and political problems. While Islamists do want to increase the importance of their religion in the secular sphere, it is not obvious their goals are antithetical to democracy, their own national interests, or those of the United States. Algeria and Egypt provide two interesting and different examples of the development of national Islamist movements and possible futures. Unfortunately, while it is in the United States' interest to help mediate the conflicts between Islamists and regional governments and alleviate the conditions which give rise to radical Islamism, there is actually very little that the West has the power or influence to do.
Biologisms on the left and the right
ABSTRACT Victorian Britain saw the rise of biologism, the practice of attributing biological cause to that which is explicable either wholly or in part by environment. Its most extreme expression was eugenics, first disseminated by Galton through Macmillan’s Magazine in 1865. I explore early British eugenics as a biologistic discourse centred on class which took aim primarily at the “residuum”, or “submerged tenth”, the section of the working class alleged to be least productive. It was framed by racism, the biologism on which much late-Victorian imperialism was based. I consider ways in which biologisms inform distinct twenty-first-century discourse and practice, from policies around child benefit to Covid19, and focus on one thread of biologistic thought as it extends to debates on gender identity – the idea that gender is both a feeling but also innate and brain-based. I conclude that gender identity theory risks, however inadvertently, reinscribing biologistic ideas and stereotypes.
Thermidor en Iran
Exploite avec une tres grande maturite par la diplomatie de Hachemi Rafsandjani, la nouvelle donne regionale, nee de la guerre du Koweit, impose a l'Europe occidentale de jouer avec determination la carte iranienne. D'autant que la demande de la republique islamique, ruinee par dix ans de guerre, de gestion erratique et de desinvestissement, est pressante. Indeniable, la decompression politique semble traduire la stabilisation du pouvoir au profit du president de la Republique et la perte d'influence des ultras, que devraient consacrer les elections legislatives de 1992. Neanmoins, les perspectives d'avenir de l'economie iranienne restent preoccupantes. La rente petroliere ne suffira pas a financer les besoins de reconstruction. Le recours aux financements exterieurs, que rend possible un faible taux d'endettement, risque d'accentuer la tendance speculative de l'economie, dans la mesure ou celle-ci a des causes plus profondes que le simple desordre monetaire et bancaire actuel. Le passage a une economie productive est d'autant plus problematique que l'Iran ne peut compter sur une couche de veritables entrepreneurs et que la necessaire intensification de la pression fiscale se heurtera a de solides interets constitues. On peut en realite se demander si la republique islamique dispose encore d'une credibilite economique et d'une legitimite politique suffisantes pour imposer un ajustement structurel que le pays, grise par l'argent facile du petrole, avait deja esquive en 1978-1979.