This article introduces the Third Space of Indian child welfare to theorize how Indigenous nations simultaneously engage and disrupt settler legal systems while building sovereign, care-based alternatives. Drawing from legal analysis, Indigenous political thought, and sociohistorical synthesis, I trace the historical continuity from boarding schools to today’s foster care removals, showing how child welfare operates as a colonial apparatus of family separation. In response, Native nations enact governance through three interrelated strategies: strategic legal engagement, kinship-based care, and tribally controlled family collectives. Building on Bruyneel’s theory of third space sovereignty, Simpson’s nested sovereignty, and Lightfoot’s global Indigenous rights framework, I conceptualize the Third Space as a dynamic field of Indigenous governance that transcends binary settler logics. These practices constitute sovereign abolitionist praxis. They reclaim kinship, resist carceral systems, and build collective futures beyond settler rule. Thus, rather than treating the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) as a federal safeguard, I argue that tribes have repurposed ICWA as a legal and political vehicle for relational governance. This reframing challenges dominant crisis-based narratives and positions Indigenous child welfare as the center of a “global Indigenous politics of care” with implications for theories of sovereignty, family, and abolitionist futures across disciplines, geographies, and social groups. The article concludes by reflecting on the broader implications of the Third Space for other Indigenous and minoritized communities navigating state control and asserting self-determined care.
This article formulates and evaluates historical hypotheses on the origin and formation of the Villafañe lineage in Santiago del Molinillo (León) within the broader dynamics that connected the urban patriciate and the rural hidalguía (minor nobility) of late medieval and early modern Castile. Through an integrated examination of population registers, parish records, hidalguía lawsuits, and notarial protocols, the study reconstructs the family’s trajectory and its institutional anchoring in the concejo and parish. The evidence suggests an urban origin on León’s Rúa through Doña Elena de Villafañe y Flórez, whose marriage to Ares García—an hidalgo from the Ordás area—established the local house and the compound surname “García de Villafañe” as both an identity marker and a patrimonial device. The consolidation of the lineage resulted from deliberate family strategies, including selective alliances with neighboring lineages (Quiñones, Gavilanes, Rebolledo), participation in municipal and ecclesiastical offices, and the symbolic use of heraldry and memory. The migration of Lázaro de Villafañe to colonial La Rioja and Cordova in the seventeenth century extended this social status across the Atlantic while maintaining Leonese continuity. Although the surviving evidence is fragmentary, convergent archival, onomastic, and heraldic indicators support interpreting the Molinillo branch as a legitimate and adaptive extension of the urban lineage. By combining genealogical and microhistorical analysis with interdisciplinary perspectives—particularly gender and genetics—this article proposes a transferable framework for testing historical hypotheses on lineage continuity, social mobility, and identity formation across early modern Castile and its transatlantic domains.
We propose a new stochastic epidemiological model defined in a continuous space of arbitrary dimension, based on SIS dynamics implemented in a spatial $Λ$-Fleming-Viot (SLFV) process. The model can be described by as little as three parameters, and is dual to a spatial branching process with competition linked to genealogies of infected individuals. Therefore, it is a possible modelling framework to develop computationally tractable inference tools for epidemics in a continuous space using demographic and genetic data.We provide mathematical constructions of the process based on well-posed martingale problems as well as driving space-time Poisson point processes. With these devices and the duality relation in hand, we unveil some of the drivers of the transition between extinction and survival of the epidemic. In particular, we show that extinction is in large parts independent of the initial condition, and identify a strong candidate for the reproduction number R 0 of the epidemic in such a model.
Maria Vladimirovna Korogodina, Aleksey Vladimirovich Sirenov
This article addresses the question of the authenticity of the names attributed to two early Novgorod princesses, the mother and the wife of the 11th-century Prince Vladimir Yaroslavich, founder of Novgorod’s oldest cathedral, St Sophia. Through an analysis of written sources, the authors establish that the name Anna, attributed to Vladimir’s mother, first appears in the early 16th century during the episcopacy of Archbishop Gennady, in manuscript Euchologia. The name Alexandra, ascribed to his wife, surfaces in the Synodikon of Orthodoxy compiled in 1559 for the St Sophia Cathedral. There is no evidence of either name in Novgorod prior to the 16th century. The article proposes that the attribution of the name Anna likely arose from the location of the princess’s burial near the Chapel of Joachim and Anna, with the dedication to Saint Anne being retrospectively interpreted as an indicator of her personal name. The name Alexandra, meanwhile, appears to result from a confusion of identities in the 1558 commemorative Synodikon. Rather than referring to Vladimir’s wife, it originally denoted Alexandra, the second wife of the 14th-century Muscovite prince Ivan Kalita. When compiling the Novgorod Synodikon of Orthodoxy, this later Muscovite princess was erroneously identified as the wife of the 11th-century Novgorod prince. The study concludes that both names, Anna and Alexandra, assigned to the earliest Novgorod princesses are products of mistaken medieval attribution and cannot be regarded as historically authentic.
This interview, first published in the columns of BibliObs in 2016, outlines a genealogy of the work of the linguist and psychoanalyst Anne-Marie Houdebine-Gravaud, a specialist in linguistic imaginaries and sexism in language.The interview takes the form of a biographical narrative, showing how feminist inquiry and research themes were intertwined throughout her life and work. For this abridged republication, we have chosen to foreground Houdebine-Gravaud’s relationship to feminist movements, as well as to highlight her crucial role within the commission on terminology established in 1984 by Yvette Roudy, then Minister for “women’s rights,” and chaired by the writer Benoîte Groult.
Resumen: Hayek es uno de los más célebres filósofos liberales. Suele ser presentado como un campeón de los mercados libres. En realidad, Hayek es más partidario de un tipo de reformismo estatal. En su última etapa intelectual teorizó sobre lo que sería la evolución cultural. Este último paradigma ocasiona una tensión dentro de su visión social, ya que suscita la paradoja de que para salvar el liberalismo como marco político sería necesario una intervención cultural en la sociedad. Trataremos de resolver la paradoja, primero mostrando la genealogía de su aparición y, finalmente, proponiendo posibles salidas a la misma.
Abstract: Hayek is one of the most celebrated liberal philosophers. He is often portrayed as a champion of free markets. In reality, Hayek is more a proponent of a type of state reformism. In his last intellectual stage, he theorized about what would be cultural evolution. This last paradigm causes a tension within his social vision since it raises the paradox that to save liberalism as a political framework would require a cultural intervention in society. We will try to resolve the paradox, first by showing the genealogy of its appearance and, finally, by proposing possible ways out of it.
This article examines the migration patterns that shaped the early settlement of Dorchester County, Maryland. Dorchester County is located on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, an area distinctive in terms of its geography, history, and culture. In U.S. history, migration has generally proceeded from eastern areas to western ones and from northern areas to southern ones, a pattern dating back to the earliest colonial settlements. Settlement in Dorchester County proceeded primarily from east to west and south to north, with additional migration streams coming from the north out of Delaware and from the west out of Somerset County. This gave Dorchester County an unusual historical dynamic because of the different socio-cultural and religious backgrounds and settlement patterns from the regions in which those migrants came. The Eastern Shore’s geography, shaped by an extensive coastline and major riverways, contributed to this settlement pattern, for the Chesapeake Bay region, with its complex network of rivers and streams, forms one of the world’s three largest natural estuaries. In terms of genealogy and family history, this mix of settlers importantly shaped the cultural dynamics of the Eastern Shore, leading to complex family histories that blended different cultural, religious, and linguistic influences. Free European-American settlers dominated migration into early Dorchester, but unfree laborers, including slaves and, early on, white indentured servants, came to Dorchester in substantial numbers along these same routes and made important contributions to the cultural development of Dorchester and surrounding areas. In later years, out-migration from the Eastern Shore took settlers of all backgrounds throughout the growing United States and carried the influence of the Eastern Shore to the south and west as well as into the urban areas of the northeast.
“Genealogy is the retrieval of vital and familial data from records of various types, and its ordering into meaningful relationship patterns” (Durie 2017, p [...]
This article explores the integration of digital games, specifically Minecraft, within Sámi educational contexts. The qualitative case study was based on a development project in Sámi teacher education, exploring key aspects highlighted by pre-service teachers when using Minecraft during their practice periods with primary school children. Given the significant role teachers play in instructional organisation, this article aims to identify specific areas where pre-service teachers may benefit from additional support and training to enhance their preparedness for the classroom. Incorporating Sámi educational frameworks and digital competencies into Sámi teacher education, we utilised the digital competence of future teachers (DCFT) model to guide data collection and analysis. This involved distributing anonymous online questionnaires to pre-service teachers (n = 17). Our findings indicate the transformative potential of digital games in Sámi education, particularly in the use of Sámi as a gaming language and Sámi cultural game content. The article emphasises the relevance of digital technologies in preserving and revitalising Indigenous languages and cultures to better understand how to leverage these tools effectively in culturally relevant ways. By utilising contemporary digital tools within an Indigenous education, educators can enhance cultural continuity and empower Indigenous communities in the digital age.
The desire of Gukurahundi survivors for cultural platforms that enable them to discuss, mourn, and commemorate their loved ones is now very loud in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland and Midlands provinces. While community-based organisations have provided platforms for Gukurahundi survivors, the children of survivors, and academics to interface and interact, the government’s gatekeeping processes remain a challenge for the community-wide memorialisation and documentation of the genocide. In this conceptual paper, I frame Gukurahundi as a meteorological event within a general Zimbabwean cultural context, foregrounding the desecration of the Ndebele people’s cultural practices, rituals, and ceremonies. Drawing from the documented legacies of this cultural violence within Matabeleland and south-western parts of the Midlands, through videos and the literature, I argue that this cultural violence resulted in the silencing of the remembrance of Gukurahundi, which remains critical to the resolution of the stand-off between the ZANU-PF government and the communities. In this paper, I further argue that this ecological symbolism provided a justification and legitimated direct brutal violence on presumed ZAPU and ex-ZPRA veterans who were largely Ndebele-speaking or of ethnic descent. Finally, I argue that it is not that the absence of alternative narratives but the sociopolitical and cultural environment that constrains these from being available and implemented.
A sequence of trees $(\mathcal{T}_{n})_{n \in \mathbb{N}}$ contains a \emph{persistent hub}, or displays \emph{degree centrality}, if there is a fixed node of maximal degree for all sufficiently large $n \in \mathbb{N}$. We derive sufficient criteria for the emergence of a persistent hub in genealogical trees associated with Crump-Mode-Jagers branching processes with independent waiting times between births of individuals, and sufficient criteria for the non-emergence of a persistent hub. We also derive criteria for uniqueness of these persistent hubs. As an application, we improve results in the literature concerning the emergence of unique persistent hubs in generalised preferential attachment trees, in particular, allowing for cases where there may not be a \emph{Malthusian parameter} associated with the process. The approach we use is mostly self-contained, and does not rely on prior results about Crump-Mode-Jagers branching processes.
This article examines the type of family lore that leads white Canadians and Americans to claim Indigenous identities. Using a case-study approach, I demonstrate how 2000 descendants of a French-Canadian couple, born in the early 1800s near Montréal, joined one of the largest land claims in Canadian history as “Algonquins”. The tools of critical settler family history provide the necessary theoretical scaffolding to unpack how genealogical and geographical proximity to Indigenous people in the past are the bases for the family lore that propelled these individuals to become card-carrying, voting members of the land claim. Despite continued opposition to their inclusion by the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, the only federally recognized Algonquin community involved in the land claim, these fake Algonquins remained potential land claim beneficiaries for over two decades, until an independent tribunal finally removed them in 2023. Family lore resolves the crisis in the family: no longer the colonizers responsible for Indigenous displacement and dispossession, white pretendians become the victims of settler colonial violence.
The article applies the principles of microanalysis to a literary text using Crime and Punishment as an example. Through this lens, Raskolnikov’s “mistake” is revealed, specifically his historical “look back” at the great “founders and legislators of mankind.” Understanding Dostoevsky’s work also requires consideration of the context of Sacred History, which is equally important. The historical and value hierarchies of these contexts are shaped by the differing positions of the author and the protagonist in relation to the figure of Mohammed. Mohammed’s image, which simultaneously enters the perspectives of both the author and the protagonist, takes on different axiological meanings, particularly when compared with Christ: it is elevated in the author’s view and diminished in the protagonist’s. Raskolnikov’s “mistake” is intentionally “corrected” by the author, as evidenced by shifts in the stylistic register, changes in modality, and the distinctive use of quotations, keywords, and details, along with “plot criticism” of the protagonist. A microanalysis (including graphic and punctuation considerations) of the “strange” statement made by a Russian Orthodox student about Allah and his prophet reveals two levels of intertextual citation in the passage, aligning with both the author’s and the protagonist’s perspectives. Within the novel, the series of lawmakers and founders of humanity identified by Raskolnikov (Lycurgus, Solon, Mohammed, Napoleon) is replaced by another sequence (Abraham, Christ, Mohammed). This shift highlights Dostoevsky’s vivid exploration of the genealogical and spiritual connections among the Abrahamic religions and their prophets within the context of Sacred History. Without considering this religious genealogy, an adequate interpretation of Raskolnikov’s final vision of the “bosom of Abraham” is impossible. As he contemplates the “paradise valley,” the novel’s protagonist, like the prudent thief, finds himself alongside the forefather.
Slavic languages. Baltic languages. Albanian languages
In responding to the call for exploring and explicating aspects of the research process that remain unspoken about in most social science fields, this narrative asks deceptively simple questions: what does it mean to carry out research as an academic with a lived experience of displacement, loss and pain? What are the methodological choices available to me as a migrant scholar? What does it really mean to write (about) the displaced-turned-emplaced self from the margin—myself being a case in point—within contexts of loss and displacement? My aim is to present a personal narrative that is uniquely mine, a story that may work with or against what is thought to be the official story. I defend the use of fragments, theoretically and methodologically, to avoid the homogenisation of narratives and assumptions about how research is carried out, how knowledge(s) are produced and reproduced, and who has the power to produce them. Thus, building on established scholarship cutting across various fields and guided by postcolonial and postmodernist theories, I hope to unpack the tensions and possibilities inherent in thinking about borders and positionality in academia (when the researcher dwells at the margins), identity, its fragmentation, and its entanglement with questions of decoloniality, narrative and voice.
Creoles represent an under-explored and marginalized group of languages, with few available resources for NLP research.While the genealogical ties between Creoles and a number of highly-resourced languages imply a significant potential for transfer learning, this potential is hampered due to this lack of annotated data. In this work we present CreoleVal, a collection of benchmark datasets spanning 8 different NLP tasks, covering up to 28 Creole languages; it is an aggregate of novel development datasets for reading comprehension, relation classification, and machine translation for Creoles, in addition to a practical gateway to a handful of preexisting benchmarks. For each benchmark, we conduct baseline experiments in a zero-shot setting in order to further ascertain the capabilities and limitations of transfer learning for Creoles. Ultimately, we see CreoleVal as an opportunity to empower research on Creoles in NLP and computational linguistics, and in general, a step towards more equitable language technology around the globe.
Diasporic intimacies between Asian and Latinx groups have converged across the world for centuries; the mixing of these cultures and, as a result, mixed individuals are the effect of centuries of interactions with each other. In this article, I review the literature across Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) and Asian and Latinx interethnic relations to situate an AsianLatinx intervention to understand how AsianLatinxs have continually been relegated to the subaltern despite their strong presence in the U.S. I argue that it is necessary to center the AsianLatinx lived experience to understand the interconnectedness of global Asian and Latinx communities. An AsianLatinx intervention disrupts monoracial frameworks of diaspora, mixed identity and interethnic relations to (re)imagine a reality that situates the complexities of mixedness tangential to racialization processes, identity formation and transnationalism.
Mihail Sebastian’s Journal 1935–1944 accurately reflects the changing historical realities in Romania in general and in the capital city of Bucharest in particular, before and during the Second World War. As a Jewish Romanian writer, Sebastian records a landscape of ideological change that has a clear impact on him as a lawyer, an intellectual and a member of the city’s literary high society. This article proposes a new reading and analysis of Sebastian’s work, by focusing on the close relationship between the writer and the city as a vibrant, organic space. My work introduces a new critical vocabulary to the literary analysis of Sebastian’s Journal, through the use of terminology commonly employed by performance studies. The Situationist practices of walking and drifting, further conceptualised by performance studies scholar Carl Lavery, will be utilised as methods of exploring the visual and emotional richness of Sebastian’s work. The intimate relationship between the writer and the city will be constantly framed by the historical and political realities of the time, ensuring a balanced discussion of both literary achievement and historical witnessing.
Critical family history analyses have generated powerful insights into the history and ongoing workings of colonization by bringing to light forgotten family histories and reframing them as stories of colonialism. Such work unsettles the descendants of early colonizers by compelling them to acknowledge the ways in which they continue to benefit from the colonizing actions of their ancestors. My family were colonizers, and some not-very-distant ancestors were part of the first wave of “settlers” who dispossessed Māori of their land in coastal Taranaki. Where my family differs from the families of many writers in the critical family history field is that they remain almost to this day on the land first taken by our direct ancestors. The question I address is how these settler farmers deal with the fact that the land that is now theirs is only recently so, and only became so through acts of violent dispossession, and that the descendants of the original possessors of that land continue to live on the Coast. I argue that one way that settler-colonizers deal with this uncomfortable history is to erase it. The erasure of this history is accomplished through the simple but effective strategy of not-talking about it, which leads to not-knowing about it. This practice, I suggest is critical for the subjective security of settlers, and it remains a crucial strategy in ongoing practices of quotidian colonization. My analysis emanates from a critically reflexive exploration of my memories, of what I know and what I do not know about the history of the farm I grew up on, and demonstrates that autoethnography as a methodology is particularly useful for interrogating and breaking the silences about colonization that contribute to its perpetuation.
The mixed-race family constellation has emerged as a regular feature of the Irish familial landscape. Such a demographic change invariably leads to the increased presence of white women who are mothering across racialised boundaries. Moreover, in the Irish context, the racial category of whiteness is privileged at a structural level and remains a central organising principle of Irishness as a mode of national belonging. This paper, therefore, sets out to address the specific gap in the literature related to the racialised experiences of the white mother of mixed-race (i.e., black African/white Irish) children in contemporary Ireland as these women are, in effect, mothering ‘outsider’ children in a context of white supremacy. More specifically, how does the positioning of these women’s mixed-race children impact their subjectivities as mothers categorised normatively as white and Irish? Framed by critical whiteness literature, this paper draws on in-depth interviews with twelve white Irish mothers. Data analysis broadly revealed three themes as relates to the women’s negotiations of the racialising discourses and practices which impact their family units. Findings suggest that these women no longer occupy the default position of whiteness as a category of racial privilege and a condition of ‘structured invisibility’. Perhaps, most significantly, the lived reality of these women disturbs the hegemonic conflation of the categories white and Irish. This paper, therefore, extends our theoretical understanding of both whiteness and mixed-race studies.
Star-shaped branching patterns of genealogies are common in marine species. High-fecundity marine populations are characterized by low ratios of effective to actual population size, which reflect high variance in reproductive success among parents in mass spawns. When extreme reproduction events occur, offspring from very few parents dominate the population (whereby multiple mergers, or subsets of lineages with star-like trees, arise) and thus, the loss of genetic diversity is significant. Under high reproductive-variance conditions (assuming that reproduction occurs by sampling from the Pareto distribution), this paper explores the distribution of heterozygosity across generations. The result shows that zero heterozygosity is not achieved, implying that the populations may decline without evident loss of genetic variation. It is also found that there are singularities in the heterozygosity distributions. However, in the case of high reproductive variance, the locations of the singular points subtly deviate from those of the case where reproduction occurs by Wright-Fisher sampling.