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The latest Citations Needed had a guest on to talk about how Iran is misrepresented in the US news. I want to learn more about life under the Shah and up to the present day. Does anyone know a good primer on Iranian history post-1950s?
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Jun 14, 2019 12:49
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StashAugustine posted:Yeah I was laughing along at the TFR thread until the bit where the protagonist violently rapes a teenage prostitute and it was just too much to even be ironically funny It owns that this post could apply to at least a few different books by John Ringo
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Jun 18, 2019 23:30
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I picked up Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson on a lark. I'm only a couple of chapters in but I have to ask: am I missing something? Most of what I've read seems incoherent. Sometimes he will jump to conclusions without explaining how he got there, or will be imprecise in ways that border on making his points flat-out wrong. It seems like he rarely explains why he picks certain examples, and doesn't address some parts that would be crucial for understanding the phenomena he brings up. For example, he treats nationalism as something that sprang out of the collapse of the feudal political order. Nothing wrong about that, that's a fairly standard interpretation of the French Revolution. But he treats the feudal hierarchy as something that existed only because people believed in God hard enough to slot themselves into these rigid social structures; rather than treating the feudal system as a social contract of sorts between sovereign and vassal, or lord and peasant. What's more, when he introduces the concept, he starts by mentioning that nationalism sprang from the decay of religious monarchy, and even mentions that there are certain dynamics at play in the collapse of that older system, but then hand waves it away saying it's not what's important at the moment. Am I misreading the work, or is my man trying to explain the transition to modern nationalism while desperately trying to avoid talking about historical materialism?
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Dec 27, 2019 03:52
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Hand Knit posted:Such that I remember the book, you're misreading the work. Basically what he's doing here is discussing the changes that had to happen for nations to become the dominant form of imagined communities. These changes are either preconditions for the nation (such as a change in conceiving of time), or clearing space through the collapse of the old imagined communities (local vernaculars replacing sacred latin as the administrative language). What's important here, and I think this is what you're missing, is that Anderson is pointedly not making a causal claim about these things driving the rise of national identities. A point he stresses repeatedly is that while languages are vehicles for common imaginings, they are pointedly not constitutive of national identities. Rather, what is constitutive of national identities is the content of the common imaginings. Oh, ok. Thank you for explaining! I suppose I just really wanted to interrogate casual claims so I conjured some up when Anderson wasn't trying to make them. In that case, I dont quite think Imagined Communities is quite my cup of tea. I think I'll move on to reading something else. Zesty Mordant posted:I'm fine and not at all depressed about labor, alienation, and america, no not at all Well then gee whillikers, maybe you should read the Bible!!! I'm only half-joking, Proverbs in particular has some stuff that helps me feel better about our garbage world. Same for the Koran though im not quite so familiar with that text. cool dance moves has issued a correction as of 01:44 on Jan 6, 2020 |
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Jan 6, 2020 01:42
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StashAugustine posted:i read adam tooze's The Deluge, which basically tracks the attempt by the allies in ww1 to impose a liberal world order from american entry into the war up to the great depression; and the factors that lead to the failure of the interwar period and the beginnings of ww2. there's quite a bit of interesting stuff in there- a big part of his argument was that the main problems were basically america refusing to cancel war debts owed by the allies and wilson's insistence on american dominance. I can take a stab at this! So, it's a bit hard to define what is "Soviet foreign policy" in the immediate post-revolution because so much of it is based on the successor conflicts that tend to crop up when an empire falls. For instance, I'm guessing Tooze makes specific reference to the Polish-Soviet War that began in 1919. The war began sort of by accident; Polish and Soviet armies sort of ran into each other and started skirmishing because the borders between the two countries hadn't really been defined. Then, once the shooting started, the Soviets made their play at spreading the revolution: the idea was that if Poland falls, the Germans--already spoiling for a revolution--would rise up, and from there to France, the UK, etc. That plan wouldn't collapse until the Soviet defeat at the Battle of Warsaw in 1920. By that point, the Western expeditionary forces were already in Russia. I guess you could make the argument that Lenin mismanaged by thinking he could spread the revolution like that. But it also wasn't a situation that allowed much room for error; the allies certainly had an interest in knocking the Bolsheviks out of power, if only to keep Russia in World War I. Nevermind the threat of communism.
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Jul 10, 2020 23:26
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Idia posted:Does anyone have a good recommendation on Yugoslavia and the conflict in Kosovo like in the 90s? I know so little of that place and time period. I can! Lucky for you I bookmarked this page a long time ago and got too lazy to actually delete it https://www.patreon.com/posts/ultimate-balkans-28148819
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Jul 31, 2020 22:26
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Idia posted:I'm finally reading The Black Jacobins which I kept putting off. I find that a lot of books written recently about the Haitian Revolution are incredibly dry but Black Jacobins which is so often cited is incredibly well written. Glad this thread is still active. I usually just lurk on a bunch of other CSPAM threads to find recommendations. CLR James is a magnificent writer. Hes got a page on the Marxist Internet Archive. Highly recommended
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Aug 31, 2020 17:04
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Im looking to learn more about the modern middle east. Anyone know a good book on the rise and fall of pan-Arabism? Or should I go with regional histories? In that case, I'm interested in the Levant. Any good books on Syria, Lebanon, and/or Palestine? Doesnt have to be books, either. Podcasts, videos, whatever it is. I just want to learn.
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Sep 2, 2020 03:02
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