scholarly journals “Pagan Christmas: Winter feast of the Kalasha of the Hindu Kush” and the true frontiers of ‘Greater Peristan’

1970 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Peter Zoller
Keyword(s):  
Geographical Area ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Cultural Dimension ◽  
High Mountains ◽  
Cultural Traditions ◽  
Hindu Kush ◽  
Northern Regions ◽  
The One ◽  
Indian Himalayas

As can be seen, the title and subtitle of the book under review are part of the title of the following review article. A normal book review starts with some sentences describing what the book is about, followed by a discussion what the reviewer particularly likes about the book, and then followed by bringing up anything the reviewer dislikes about it. This is then rounded up with some general observations and appraisals. This strategy is also a broad guideline for the first third of the following text. However, the text also oversteps considerably the boundaries of a standard book review for the following reasons: Augusto Cacopardo defines his ‘Peristan’2 as a culturally quite coherent area extending through the high mountains from northwestern Afghanistan throughout the northern regions of Pakistan to the southwestern border of Tibet.3 The traditional cultures of this ‘Peristan’ have Indo-Iranian and even Indo-European roots, yet they are, in his opinion, remarkably little affected by the high civilizations of India and pre-Islamic Iran.4 However, it is important to understand that ‘Peristan’ has, on the one hand, indeed preserved archaisms not found elsewhere in South Asia, but due to strong influence of Islam it has also simultaneously lost, or preserved only sporadically, cultural traditions still authentically preserved e.g. in the Indian Himalayas. Cacopardo’s analysis of the Kalasha winter feasts has a strong historical-cultural dimension and he repeatedly refers to cultural parallels in the Himalayas (see section 7. ‘The Hindus of the Himalayas’, pp. 235ff.). His observations on these parallels – which are absolutely justified – nevertheless also caused me to trespass the boundaries of a book review and extend it considerably into a review article. Since the true frontiers of ‘Greater Peristan’ enclose in my view a significantly larger geographical area than envisaged by the Cacopardo Brothers,5 the following article presents also very many data not found or discussed in the publication under review. In order to keep a clear overview of this long review article, it has been divided into four main sections. However, ‘Section I’ only follows after the ‘Preliminary remarks’ and the ‘Opening’:

El Prestige: comparativa de los regímenes internacionales de responsabilidad civil

2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 31
Author(s):  
Raquel Fernández González ◽  
Marcos Íñigo Pérez Pérez
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Economics ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
New Institutional Economics ◽  
Rigorous Analysis ◽  
Judicial Process ◽  
Main Research ◽  
Civil Responsibility ◽  
The One ◽  
High Degree ◽  
The Prestige

The return of institutions to the main research agenda has highlighted the importance of rules in economic analysis. The New Institutional Economics has allowed a better understanding of the case studies that concern different areas of knowledge, also the one concerning the management of natural resources. In this article, the institutional analysis focuses on the maritime domain, where two large civil liability regimes for pollution coexist (OPA 90-IMO), each in a different geographical area (United States - Europe). Therefore, a comparative analysis is made between the two large regimes of civil responsibility assignment applying them to the Prestige catastrophe. In this way, the allocation and distribution of responsibilities in the investigation and subsequent judicial process of the Prestige is compared with an alternative scenario in which the applicable compensation instruments are governed by the provisions of the Oil Polution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), in order to establish a rigorous analysis on the effects that the different norms can have in the same scenario. In the comparative established in the case of the Prestige, where the responsibilities were solved very slowly in a judicial process with high transaction costs, the application of rules governed by the OPA 90 would not count with such a high degree of imperfection. This is so, since by applying the preponderance of the evidence existing in OPA 90 there would be no mitigation for the presumed culprits. On the other hand, the agents involved in the sinking would not be limited only to the owner, but also that operators or shipowners would be responsible as well. In addition, the amount of compensation would increase when counting in the damage count the personal damages, the taxes without perceiving and the ecological damage caused in a broad sense, damages not computable in the IMO.

MBAH HENDRO KUSUMO BIN SYECH AHMAD MUTAMAKKIN: JEJAK SYIAR ISLAM DI WILAYAH PATI

EMPIRISMA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fathimatuz Zahra Dan Abdul Azis
Keyword(s):  
Central Region ◽  
Marital Relationship ◽  
Southern Region ◽  
North Coast ◽  
The North ◽  
Trace Back ◽  
Northern Regions ◽  
The One

Pati is a region on the north coast, according to the hypothesis of the researcher, the region is divided into three categories. The northern regions are more religious, the central is more plural, while the southern region is in the middle. In the central region there are many relics of tombs believed to be the those of the Muslim proselytizers in the area of Pati. The one that attracts the researcher is a tomb in the Gambiran area, where there are five local Muslim saints buried, one of them belons to mbah Hendro Kusumo, the son of Syech Ahmad Mutamakkin. This article attempts to trace back the spreading of Islam in Pati based on the existence of thetomb of Mbah Hendro Kusumo. It wants to answer question of whethere the existence of his tomb is due to his studying there or marital relationship, and how it relates to the spreading of Islam.Keywords: Mbah Hendro Kusumo, Traces of Islamic Dakwah, Islam

scholarly journals A novel methodology for epidemic risk assessment of COVID-19 outbreak

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Pluchino ◽  
A. E. Biondo ◽  
N. Giuffrida ◽  
G. Inturri ◽  
V. Latora ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Mobility ◽  
Risk Index ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Central Italy ◽  
Policy Model ◽  
Italian Regions ◽  
Northern Regions ◽  
Seasonal Flu ◽  
Epidemic Risk

AbstractWe propose a novel data-driven framework for assessing the a-priori epidemic risk of a geographical area and for identifying high-risk areas within a country. Our risk index is evaluated as a function of three different components: the hazard of the disease, the exposure of the area and the vulnerability of its inhabitants. As an application, we discuss the case of COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. We characterize each of the twenty Italian regions by using available historical data on air pollution, human mobility, winter temperature, housing concentration, health care density, population size and age. We find that the epidemic risk is higher in some of the Northern regions with respect to Central and Southern Italy. The corresponding risk index shows correlations with the available official data on the number of infected individuals, patients in intensive care and deceased patients, and can help explaining why regions such as Lombardia, Emilia-Romagna, Piemonte and Veneto have suffered much more than the rest of the country. Although the COVID-19 outbreak started in both North (Lombardia) and Central Italy (Lazio) almost at the same time, when the first cases were officially certified at the beginning of 2020, the disease has spread faster and with heavier consequences in regions with higher epidemic risk. Our framework can be extended and tested on other epidemic data, such as those on seasonal flu, and applied to other countries. We also present a policy model connected with our methodology, which might help policy-makers to take informed decisions.

Area Studies and Desire: Towards a Genealogy

1997 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Hye-Joon Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Area Studies ◽  
Western Area ◽  
The World ◽  
38Th Parallel ◽  
The One

Area studies, as a newly fashionable field of academic research, needs to recognize its less likely precedents if it is going to secure for itself a fresh start. The question of “desire” is relevant here because it indicates the less value-free aspects in its genealogy. As shown in Emma Bovary's embellished representation of Paris at her provincial home, an understanding of an area often reflects the particular needs and desires of the one who understands that area. Such restricted and restricting views of an area repeats itself outside the world of literary fictions, as is shown by the example of Guizot's picture of Europe in which his own country is given a privileged place as the very center of Western civilization itself. An instructive case showing the thin line between the projected desire of one who strives to know a geographical area and the scientific purity of the labor itself is further offered by Napoleon Bonaparte's heavy reliance on Orientalist scholarship in his invasion of Egypt. Moving further east from Egypt to China, we witness the denigrating remarks on China made by the great German thinkers of the past century, Hegel and Weber. Although their characterization of Chinese culture could find echoes in unbiased empirical research, they reveal all the same the trace of Europeans' desire to affirm their superiority over the supposedly inferior and false civilization of the East. Similarly, the Americans who divided the Korean peninsular at the 38th Parallel, with unquestioning confidence in their knowledge of the area and in the justice of their action, rightfully deserve their place in the tradition of Western area studies of serving the needs to dominate, control and exploit an objectified overseas territory. He assumed that words had kept their meaning, that desires still pointed in a single direction, and that ideas retained their logic; and he ignored the fact that the world of speech and desires has known invasions, struggles, plundering, disguises, ploys. From these elements, however, genealogy retrieves an indispensable restraint: it must record the singularity of events outside of any monotonous finality; it must seek them in the most unpromising places, in what we tend to feel is without history—in sentiments, love, conscience, instincts; it must be sensitive to their recurrence, not in order to trace the gradual curve of their evolution, but to isolate the different scenes where they engaged in different roles. — Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History” (Foucault 139–40).

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