Naturalis, the Dutch national museum of natural history, celebrated its bicentennial in 2020 by launching the special exhibition, Nature’s Treasure Trove, featuring 25 ‘crown jewels’ from the... Show moreNaturalis, the Dutch national museum of natural history, celebrated its bicentennial in 2020 by launching the special exhibition, Nature’s Treasure Trove, featuring 25 ‘crown jewels’ from the collection – of which five are extinct. As a celebratory look back on the museum’s history of collecting, the exhibition navigates tensions between national culpability and national pride: culpability for colonialism and species loss, and pride in the Dutch tradition of scientific discovery. We argue that the exhibition can be seen as an exercise in repurposing a cultural memory that is essential to Dutch national identity, in a world that can no longer ignore the harm done by humans, including the Dutch. Show less
This article identifies patronage networks in three Ukrainian regions and develops some ideas on the relation between these networks, economic and political openness, and the provision of public... Show moreThis article identifies patronage networks in three Ukrainian regions and develops some ideas on the relation between these networks, economic and political openness, and the provision of public goods. The research represents a rich empirical study linking business and politics in three regions (Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, and Ivano-Frankivsk) with different levels of openness and democratic reform. Formal and informal ties between politics and business are identified using primary (interview) and secondary data. By focusing on the local rather than national level in Ukraine, the article provides a comparison between different levels of patronage and type of networks. This study relates the empirical exploration of patronage networks in post-communist setting to a broader theoretical framework of limited access orders. Our findings show that although a multiplicity of networks might be a necessary condition for the opening of access to political and economic resources, it is not a sufficient one. We find that a single dominant network achieves a relatively high level of citizen satisfaction with public service provision, while the presence of multiple networks is not necessarily associated with citizen satisfaction with public goods provision. Show less
This study analyses official Russian foreign policy discourses to contribute to our understanding of how Russia portrays its role in world politics and vis-à-vis neighbouring states. Building on... Show moreThis study analyses official Russian foreign policy discourses to contribute to our understanding of how Russia portrays its role in world politics and vis-à-vis neighbouring states. Building on previous studies, we offer a new, comprehensive analysis of Foreign Policy Concepts and the annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly during President Vladimir Putin’s third term (2012–2018). By systematically coding these documents, counting references to particular discourses and undertaking a careful interpretation of the texts, we provide insights about three broader discourses related to foreign policy: the world order and sovereignty; civilisation, identity and values; and economics and modernisation. Show less
It is with great pleasure that we introduce Leidschrift’s first special issue devoted to ‘LGBT History’. Or to phrase it in less of an anachronistic way—as the term ‘LGBT’ only gained prominence... Show moreIt is with great pleasure that we introduce Leidschrift’s first special issue devoted to ‘LGBT History’. Or to phrase it in less of an anachronistic way—as the term ‘LGBT’ only gained prominence since the 1990s—this special issue historicizes today’s LGBT identities, communities, and movements via four new studies of homosexuality and gender non-conformity in history. Two of the articles focus on late-medieval and early-modern Europe (roughly 1400-1700); and two look at the twentieth century, with a focus on the radical changes of the 1960s-70s. In situating their studies within larger histories—of religion, medicine, literature—the authors not only provide ‘queer’ histories of sexual and gender deviations, but they also demonstrate how ‘to queer’ more established areas of history. Show less
In the face of immense pressure from Spanish, the national language, a group of educators in Michoacán are committed to prioritising P’urhepecha in two local primary schools where P’urhepecha is... Show moreIn the face of immense pressure from Spanish, the national language, a group of educators in Michoacán are committed to prioritising P’urhepecha in two local primary schools where P’urhepecha is the dominant community language. The history of educational initiatives among the P’urhepecha people illustrates the inconsistent and primarily assimilationist educational environment faced by indigenous populations in Mexico, providing context for the schools’ efforts, which encourage literacy skills in both languages. We analyse the biliteracy development of a group of 4th grade students, qualitatively analysing written production in both P’urhepecha and Spanish, with a focus on patterns in orthographic conventions, lexicon (including borrowing and language mixing), sentence structure, and morpho-syntactic complexity. The students clearly have more developed writing skills in P’urhepecha than in Spanish, producing longer, more coherent texts in their mother tongue, and using more variation in vocabulary and tenses. Yet in both languages, the students find creative and unconventional ways to represent oral language in writing. Through this initial analysis of 24 student essays, we consider the interrelationship among literacy skills in two languages, the impact of this educational initiative in terms of biliteracy development, as well as practical implications for educational practices at the bilingual schools. Show less
