Industrial hemp (Cannabis sativa L., Cannabaceae) is an ancient cultivated plant originating from Central Asia and historically has been a multi-use crop valued for its fiber, food, and medicinal uses. Various oriental and Asian cultures kept records of its production and numerous uses. Due to the similarities between industrial hemp (fiber and grain) and the narcotic/medical type of Cannabis, the production of industrial hemp was prohibited in most countries, wiping out centuries of learning and genetic resources. In the past two decades, most countries have legalized industrial hemp production, prompting a significant amount of research on the health benefits of hemp and hemp products. Current research is yet to verify the various health claims of the numerous commercially available hemp products. Hence, this review aims to compile recent advances in the science of industrial hemp, with respect to its use as value-added functional food ingredients/nutraceuticals and health benefits, while also highlighting gaps in our current knowledge and avenues of future research on this high-value multi-use plant for the global food chain.
On 12 November 2024, the Institute of Oriental Studies of NAS RA, with the support of the Bryusov State University (BSU), organized an international conference entitled “The Modernization of China: Armenia-China Relations.” The conference addressed China's modernization, Beijing's vision for current international relations, global security issues, universal human development, and welfare issues. Moreover, the conference aimed to examine the dynamics of Armenia-China relations, their weak and strong sides, and current tendencies. Researchers from the Institute of Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a major partner of the Institute of Oriental Studies (IOS), Renmin University of China, and Beijing University of Aviation and Astronautics, participated in the conference. From the Armenian side, researchers from the Institute of Oriental Studies of the NAS RA, BSU, the Armenian State University of Economics, and representatives of institutions cooperating with China participated in the conference.
In this essay, I seek to illustrate the workings of rabbinic authority by means of a concrete historical example, a decision taken by Rabbi Elijah Mizraḥi (c. 1450–1526) in a particular constellation in Ottoman Constantinople around 1500. The insights of a historian of Jewish history may also be of interest to scholars of Ottoman Studies, at best stimulating interdisciplinary collaborations as well as comparative studies. After a brief introduction to the genre of responsa literature and its value as a source for political history, a specific conflict is presented, which was sparked by the question of whether Rabbanite Jews were allowed to teach Karaite Jews in religious and secular subjects. An appraisal of Mizraḥi’s reasoning reveals that the scholar who permitted the teaching espoused a rather liberal position. It was supported by halakhic tradition, but did not automatically follow from it. If Mizraḥi’s arguments are then placed in their historical context, the decision’s likely effects become visible, allowing a reconstruction of the rabbi’s strategies: an overall conciliatory approach appears to have enabled him to gain recognition of his authority among various groups of the city’s generally heterogeneous Jewish population. The example at hand thus offers an illuminating vantage for examining Jewish politics under the impress of continued migrations in the Ottoman lands and the Mediterranean region of the following 16th century.
Indo-Iranian languages and literature, Literature (General)
This article takes the “Fox Eye” challenge that trended on social media in 2020 as a case study in anti-racism activism by (East) Asian users on TikTok. The “Fox Eye” challenge was a trend in which both celebrities and ordinary users—often predominantly White women—posted photos and short videos on how to wear specific styles of make-up to achieve almond-shaped eyes or “fox eyes.” This was often accompanied with a “migraine pose” where a user pushes their index and middle fingers up against the temples on both sides of their head to “lift” the corners of their upper eyelids, and was colloquially referred to as a “Chinese” or “oriental” look. In response, (East) Asian users on TikTok called out the historically racist undertones of this seemingly superficial trend, using the features and affordances of the platform to produce everyday, nonheroic forms of digital activism, as an act of civic engagement and activist campaigning. Building on the scholarship on digital activism, we consider how TikTok has emerged as an alternative activist space for young people, specifically as it services users as a video production and sharing app. We specifically focus on the audiovisual aesthetics of the TikTok narratives in the counter-Fox Eye trend campaign, wherein the strategic and templatable deployments of vernacular TikTok aesthetics—curated image selections, creative uses of sound and audio memes, specific renders of visual filters and effects—play a central role in giving meaning to the online activist narratives created. This has given rise to platformed activism in the TikTok vernacular that we term “gesticular activism,” which focuses on the generation of visibility and virality as awareness-building and consciousness-raising tactics.
The journal Türk Amacı, published in Istanbul between 1942 and 1943, was – according toits subtitle – intended as a ‘propagator of Turkic cultural unity.’ As such, it is an outstandingexample of the discourse of the time and offers interesting insights into how the editor andthe authors constructed and negotiated the borders of the ‘Turkic world’ they had in mind. Ina close qualitative discourse analysis, which also considers the political and social conditionsof that time, this article will show how debates about the history, language, literature, and cultureof the Turkic people(s) and neighbouring communities – as well as the existing ideologiesof Pan-Turkism – influenced the journal. To this end, it focusses on how Turkic culture andgeographical aspects are combined, how the various (sub)groups are represented in the contributions and how the authors deal with issues of language(s). Through their selection of topics and the wording used, the articles in the journal constructed a more or less unified cultural and linguistic space, a ‘Turkic world,’ that largely ignored the question of real existing borders.
Indo-Iranian languages and literature, Literature (General)
Panax ginseng is a medicinal plant belonging to the Araliaceae family. Ginseng is known as the king of oriental medicine, which has been practiced since ancient times in East Asian countries and globally in the modern era. Ginseng is used as an adaptogen, and research shows that it has several pharmacological benefits for various ailments such as cancer, inflammation, diabetes, and neurological symptoms. The pharmacological benefits of ginseng are attributed to the triterpenoid saponin ginsenosides found throughout the Panax ginseng species, which are abundant in its root and are found exclusively in P. ginseng and Panax quinquefolius . Recently, with the completion of the entire ginseng genome sequencing and the construction of the ginseng genome database, it has become possible to access information about many genes newly predicted to be involved in ginsenoside biosynthesis. This review briefly summarizes the current progress in ginseng genome analysis and genes involved in ginsenoside biosynthesis, proposing directions for functional studies of the predicted genes related to ginsenoside production and its regulation.
In an ethnically mixed village in the Chitwan district of Nepal, large numbers of young Tharu men are migrating for labor to the Arab Gulf countries and Malaysia. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this essay examines the impact labor migration has on the lives of women who stay behind. I focus on two ways that local women participate in this process: first, by financing migration through microcredit loans and second, by managing the remittances they receive from abroad. I argue that, while women now play a significant role in helping finance migration, they are still subject to societal oversight when it comes to managing the remittance money, which creates new sources of conflict within families, and reinforces women’s desires to become more independent. Microcredit loans and remittances, as a social agreement and the material outcome of migration, are altering traditional gender roles, although it is still too early to determine their lasting effect.
What makes a family? On the one hand, tangible aspects such as a shared household, eating practices, and marriage alliances come to mind. On the other hand, that ineffable dominium of feelings of attachment that is difficult to articulate also must have its role. I define the former a ‘substantial’ dimension, and the latter an ‘ontological’ dimension of kinship. Substantial and ontological dimensions are often profoundly intertwined in familial groups in most societies, yet in differing ways. Also, while substantial elements are not necessary for a group to identify as a family, as demonstrated by transnational family arrangements that do not share a household or eating practices, at the same time the expected exchange of substances might also follow obligations that do not correspond to one’ s personal sense of belonging. The present essay visualizes the intersubjective processes through which middle-class people conceive of the family in the Newar city of Bhaktapur (Nepal), through the negotiation of domestic spaces and practices. Drawing upon fifteen months of ethnographic research in 2018-2019, I show how ontological and substantial dimensions come together to shape modern ideas of family.
“My immigrant experience is not the same as these women, but I felt it in my bones. Because to be here is to be the same,” laments Eileen Cheng-Yin Chow, a professor of Asian American and diaspora studies at Duke University, following the Atlanta Spa killings. The sexualization of Asian women has persisted since their first arrival to the Americas in the 20th century. Not only has this caused direct violence, like the Atlanta Spa shooting in March 2021, which resulted in the death of 6 Asian women, but also the ‘orientalizing’ perception and self-perception of Asian American Women (AAW). In this paper, I explore the historical origins of this orientalization as it relates to media and then analyze contemporary art media (poetry, photography, etc.) from AAW to explore how this has affected modern self-perception. By focusing on the direct perspective of AAW, I explore different ways orientalism is synthesized through AAW identity, dissonance, fragmentation, and rebellion. Through my paper, I conclude that the intersectionality between orientalism, gender, and nationality has caused a profound disillusion from traditional and cultural expectations of the ‘homeland’ as well as disillusioned from the stereotypical expectations of the Americas. This, however, may contribute to the creation of a new identity, which hinges on the unique aspects of intersectionality, which focuses on the AAW voice instead of the colonial voice.
Many Christian converts in the Sinja Valley of Jumla, northwest Nepal, reveal that they have been struck by the Bible because it referenced real events, especially miraculous cases of healing. These miraculous events provide tangible ‘evidence’ of God’s power that somewhat replicate the expectations that people nurture with respect to the Hindu deities. In such way, miracles play an especially crucial role in supporting the conversion of women and youngsters living in large families, who, partaking as veritable protagonists in Biblical events, are turned into the as quintessentially Christian subjects of a conversion narrative that helps substantiating their radical decision vis-à-vis the rest of their family.
This paper aims to explore the roots of the nativist discourse among Iranian intellectuals in the 20th century prior to the Islamic Revolution, a discourse based on Eastern authenticity and the felt need for a return to Islamic, Persian, or Asian traditions. This general tendency took various forms among anti- and even pro-regime intellectuals, including severe anti-modernist evaluations of Al-e-Ahmad, Hossein Nasr, Ahmad Fardid, and Ehsan Naraqi. This nativist movement, as some scholars have shown, played a significant role in the victory of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. This paper aims to discuss some philosophical origins of these East-based and anti-West ideologies in the specific interpretation of Henry Corbin of the East/West spiritual split. This paper demonstrates that these ideas, to a considerable extent, stemmed from Corbin’s “Eastern scheme,” based on the authenticity of spiritual illumination. This paper explores how this Oriental philosophy, rooted in ancient Persia and medieval Iranian wisdom, has been used for political purposes through the ideologization of tradition in contemporary Iran. Therefore, it discusses Corbin’s theological scheme’s political and social ramifications to demonstrate the traces of his scheme in the works of a few nativist intellectuals in an ideologized form.
The Featured Creatures collection provides in-depth profiles of insects, nematodes, arachnids and other organisms relevant to Florida. These profiles are intended for the use of interested laypersons with some knowledge of biology as well as academic audiences.
Megalurothrips usitatus (Bagnall, 1913) is a small sized (3-4 mm) insect in the order Thysanoptera and family Thripidae, commonly known as bean flower thrips, oriental bean thrips, and Asian bean thrips. It is an important economic pest of legumes. Megalurothrips usitatus was first reported in the USA in Florida in 2020 (Soto-Adames, F. N. 2020).