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    ‘Alien’ Lamas: Russian Policy toward Foreign Buddhist Clergy in the Eighteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries
    (Inner Asia, 2012) Tsyrempilov, Nikolay
    This article analyses the Russian policy towards foreign Buddhist clergy who penetrated into the Russian Empire from Mongolia and Tibet between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on archive materials, the origins of this policy are identified. The attitude of the official Buddhist administration of East Siberia led by Khambo Lama to the so- called alien lamas is discussed.
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    ‘Applied Orientalism’ in British India and Tsarist Turkestan
    (2009-07) Morrison, Alexander Stephen
    ‘We cannot promise to those who may choose Oriental scholarship, that they shall find themselves abreast, in all the various high-roads of life which lead to profit and distinction, with the men who shall have devoted themselves to acquiring the knowledge which in these days is power, the intellectual treasures which make fifty years of Europe better than a cycle in Cathay, which are the sinews of peaceful empire as surely as money is the sinew of war.’
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    Camels and Colonial Armies. The Logistics of warfare in Central Asia in the early 19th century
    (2014) Morrison, Alexander Stephen
    This article explores the use of camels for baggage transport by European colonial armies in the nineteenth century. It focuses in particular on two episodes: the Russian winter expedition to Khiva, and the march of the Army of the Indus into Afghanistan, both of which took place in 1839. However sophisticated their weapons and other technology, until at least the 1880s European colonial armies were forced to rely exclusively on baggage animals if they wanted to move around: railways arrived very late in the history of European expansion. In Central Asia this meant rounding up, loading, managing and feeding tens of thousands of camels, which could only be furnished by the pastoral groups who inhabited the region, who in some cases were also the objects of conquest. Camel transport placed certain structural constraints on European conquest in Central Asia: firstly it meant that the forces involved were almost always very small; secondly it prevented the launching of spontaneous or unauthorised campaigns by “men on the spot,” as every advance had to be preceded by the rounding up of the necessary baggage animals, and the creation of a budget to pay for then. Finally, the constraints imposed by camel transport ensured that British and Russian armies would never meet in Central Asia, and that a Russian invasion of India was a chimera.
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    Central Asia as a part of the Russian Empire
    (2011) Morrison, Alexander Stephen
    An excessively lengthy review article analysing the collectively-authored volume 'Tsentral'naya Aziya v Sostave Rossiiskoi Imperii', published by 'Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie' in 2007
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    EMBODIED COGNITION: DIMENSIONS, DOMAINS AND APPLICATIONS
    (Adaptive Behavior, 2021-02-01) Farina, Mirko
    This article is intended as a response to Goldinger et al. and to all those, an increasing minority in the sciences, who still belittle the contribution of embodied cognition to our understanding of human cognitive behaviour. In this article (section 1), I introduce the notion of embodiment and explain its dimensions and reach. I review (section 2) a range of embodied cognition theories and highlight the principles and criteria on which they rely or draw from. I focus (section 3) on three crucial empirical domains in which an embodied perspective has driven novel insights about the relationship between mind and cognition. I argue that embodiment is not just a philosophical mantra empty of empirical content. I draw attention (section 4) to some of the recent ways in which principles underlying embodied cognition have begun to be applied in different fields (contemporary psychology). I review some of these interventions and suggest that discussing these applications not only provides additional evidence against any poverty claim but can also help moving the field forward in important ways. Contra Goldinger et al., I therefore conclude (section 5) that embodied cognition is a very fruitful research programme for the empirical sciences and that can adequately explain many aspects of human cognitive behaviour.
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    FACT-TRACKING BELIEF AND THE BACKWARD CLOCK: A REPLY TO ADAMS, BARKER AND CLARKE
    (Manuscrito, 2018-09-08) WILLIAMS, JOHN
    In “The Backward Clock, Truth-Tracking, and Safety” (2015), Neil Sinhababu and I gave Backward Clock, a counterexample to Robert Nozick’s (1981) truth-tracking analysis of knowledge. In “Knowledge as Fact-Tracking True Belief” (2017), Fred Adams, John Barker and Murray Clarke propose that a true belief constitutes knowledge if and only if it is based on reasons that are sensitive to the fact that makes it true, that is, reasons that wouldn’t obtain if the belief weren’t true. They argue that their analysis evades Backward Clock. Here I show that it doesn’t. Backward Clock likewise shows their analysis to be too weak. The broader lesson seems to be that Backward Clock tells us the time is up for purely modal analyses of knowledge....
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    Introduction
    (Etudes Mongoles et Siberiennes, Centrasiatiques et Tibetaines, 2016) Tsyrempilov, Nikolay
    Present-day scholarship on the Buryats, or Buryat-Mongols, consciously or otherwise considers the people in question and the areas they inhabit as a marginal part or periphery of the Mongolian or Russian worlds ; the logic of this marginality is determined by the history of this ethno-cultural group formation at the civilizational juncture between Asia and Europe, and furthermore acquires its historical and cultural identity from this marginality. Indeed, most of the few Western Buryatologists approach their area specialization from one of two dominant perspectives. The majority of them initially had, and still have, an established basic interest in Russian studies or, to be precise, studies in Russian Siberia. In this perspective the Buryats are viewed as the largest indigenous people of Siberia, culturally and historically one of the most curious minorities of Asiatic Russia.
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    The Ismaili of Central Asia
    (Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History., 2018) Beben, Daniel
    The Ismailis are one of the largest Muslim minority populations of Central Asia, and they make up the second largest Shiʿi Muslim community globally. First emerging in the second half of the 8th century, the Ismaili missionary movement spread into many areas of the Islamic world in the 10th century, under the leadership of the Ismaili Fatimids caliphs in Egypt. The movement achieved astounding success in Central Asia in the 10th century, when many of the political and cultural elites of the region were converted. However, a series of repressions over the following century led to its almost complete disappearance from the metropolitan centers of Central Asia. The movement later reemerged in the mountainous Badakhshan region of Central Asia (which encompasses the territories of present-day eastern Tajikistan and northeastern Afghanistan), where it was introduced by the renowned 11th-century Persian poet, philosopher, and Ismaili missionary Nasir-i Khusraw. Over the following centuries the Ismaili movement expanded among the populations of Badakhshan, reaching a population of over 200,000 in the 21st century. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the Ismailis suffered a series of severe repressions, first under local Sunni Muslim rulers and later under the antireligious policies of the Soviet Union. However, in the decades since the end of the Soviet period, the Ismailis of the region have become increasingly connected with the global Ismaili community and its leadership. While many aspects of the history of Ismailism in the Badakhshan region remain obscure and unexplored, the discoveries of significant corpuses of manuscripts in private collections since the 1990s in the Badakhshan region have opened up wide possibilities for future research.
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    Metropole, Colony, and Imperial Citizenship in the Russian Empire
    (2012) Morrison, Alexander Stephen
    This article reviews recent literature on legal and civic ideas of citizenship within the Russian empire, arguing that much of it fails to take into account the many legal and administrative inequalities which existed between European and Asiatic Russia, with Central Asia in particular emerging as a separate, military-ruled 'colony', not just in cultural, but also in institutional terms.
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    A NATION’S HOLY LAND: KAZAKHSTAN’S LARGE-SCALE NATIONAL PROJECT TO MAP ITS SACRED GEOGRAPHY
    (Nationalities Papers, 2022) Tsyrempilov, Nikolay; Bigozhin, Ulan; Zhumabayev, Batyrkhan
    This article focuses on the project Sacred Geography of Kazakhstan, launched in 2017 in Kazakhstan as part of the nationwide program Ruqani Zhangyru (Modernization of Spirituality). The officially stated goal of the project is to cultivate a sense of patriotism in the country’s residents related to places and geographic sites that are important for the historical memory of independent Kazakhstan. The authors assume that the real goal of the project is national territorialization, or recoding of the semantics of space, by selecting, codifying, and articulating some symbols and practices, while leveling and “forgetting” others. The analysis, which is based on expert interviews and official documents, shows that this postcolonial process fits into the tendency toward ethnonationalization of Kazakhstan, in which discourse on the civil nation continues to be reproduced at the official level, while real activity is more focused on reinforcing the idea of Kazakhstan as the state of the Kazakh nation. The institutionalization of organizing and recoding the sacred landscape involves a wide variety of groups and actors. These factors may explain the success of the project in comparison to other projects being implemented under the Ruqani Zhangyru program.
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    ‘Nechto Eroticheskoe’, 'Courir après l'ombre'? – logistical imperatives and the fall of Tashkent, 1859 – 1865
    (2014-05) Morrison, Alexander Stephen
    This article explores the debates that preceded the Russian conquest of Tashkent in 1865. It argues that none of the explanations usually given for this – the ‘men on the spot’, ‘cotton hunger’, or the Great Game with Britain – is satisfactory. Instead, it shows that the War Ministry and the governors of Orenburg had advocated the capture of Tashkent from the late 1850s, and that General Cherniaev's assault in 1865 was at least tacitly authorized. The motives for the Russian advance combined the need for better supply chains to the steppe fortresses, a desire to ‘anchor’ their new frontier in a region with a sedentary population, and concern for security from attacks by the Khoqand Khanate. Economic considerations and rivalry with Britain played very minor roles.
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    A neonatal perspective on Homo erectus brain growth
    (Journal of Human Evolution, 2015-04-01) Cofran, Zachary; DeSilva, Jeremy M.; Zachary, Cofran
    Abstract The Mojokerto calvaria has been central to assessment of brain growth in Homo erectus, but different analytical approaches and uncertainty in the specimen's age at death have hindered consensus on the nature of H. erectus brain growth. We simulate average annual rates (AR) of absolute endocranial volume (ECV) growth and proportional size change (PSC) in H. erectus, utilizing estimates of H. erectus neonatal ECV and a range of ages for Mojokerto. These values are compared with resampled ARs and PSCs from ontogenetic series of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas from birth to six years. Results are consistent with other studies of ECV growth in extant taxa. There is extensive overlap in PSC between all living species through the first postnatal year, with continued but lesser overlap between humans and chimpanzees to age six. Human ARs are elevated above those of apes, although there is modest overlap up to 0.50 years. Ape ARs overlap throughout the sequence, with gorillas slightly elevated over chimpanzees up to 0.50 years. Simulated H. erectus PSCs can be found in all living species by 0.50 years, and the median falls below the human and chimpanzee ranges after 2.5 years. H. erectus ARs are elevated above those of all extant taxa prior to 0.50 years, and after two years they fall out of the human range but are still above ape ranges. A review of evidence for the age at death of Mojokerto supports an estimate of around one year, indicating absolute brain growth rates in the lower half of the human range. These results point to secondary altriciality in H. erectus, implying that key human adaptations for increasing the energy budget of females may have been established by at least 1 Ma.
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    Noble Paganism. Orientalist Discourse on Tibetan Buddhism in Nineteenth-Century Russian Polemic Literature
    (Inner Asia, 2016) Tsyrempilov, Nikolay
    Tibetan Buddhism, in the eyes of Orthodox Christian polemicists, was always seen as a harmful paganism, and fifighting against this ‘superstition’ was a high priority. Based on analysis of nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox missionary articles, this paper examines the stereotyped portrayal of Tibetan Buddhism as a civilisational opponent to Christianity, and the ways Russian scholars, ethnographers, philosophers, and offiffcials either supported or challenged this view. In this paper, I argue that, in Russia, the Orientalist paradigm is common to a greater degree among Christian clergy than in academic circles due to the status of a dominating religion the Orthodoxу enjoyed in Russia. The Russian missionaries’ support of imperial power was the essential fac-tor. The clerics viewed themselves as carriers not only of Christian values, but also of the idea of Russian statehood and European civilisation in general. Russian Christian intellectuals repeatedly attempted to comprehend Buddhism rationally, but these attempts were highly formalistic. For them, academic study was never an end in itself, but, I argue, a convenient tool to achieve ideological domination and establish moral authority. However, their intellectual and psychological inability to view other reli-gions as different, rather than false, was, and still is, an obstacle to mutual understand-ing and respect between Christianity and Buddhism in today’s Russia.
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    On the Local Origins of the Soviet Attack on “Religious” Waqf in the Uzbek SSR (1927)
    (Acta Slavica Iaponica, 2015) Penati, Beatrice
    This article studies when, how, and by whom the decision to nationalise land properties the rent from which supported mosques, shrines, and hostels (rather than schools) was first taken in Soviet Uzbekistan. Through a quasi-philological reconstruction of the drafting process behind the land reform decree in a peripheral area of Fergana, the article demonstrates how local power dynamics produced incentives for provincial Party and Soviet leaders to prove themselves better Bosheviks than their neighbours. A close scrutiny of chains of command is essential for capturing the importance of local political agency, pace top-down interpretations that privilege Moscow's or Samarkand's viewpoints instead.
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    On the Soviet discovery of rural Central Asia. The Karp commission in context
    (Revue Monde(s). Histoire, Espaces, Relations, 2013) Penati, Beatrice
    In 1925, the USSR communist party’s Central Asian Bureau ordered an inquiry on the countryside, resulting in the series The Modern Central Asian Village. It combined pre-revolutionary methods with Soviet attention to social stratification, while the benchmark of the pre-1917 economy and the composition of the commission revealed the heritage of Tsarist colonial rule.
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    Peasant settlers and the ‘civilizing mission’ in Russian Turkestan, 1865-1917
    (2015) Morrison, Alexander Stephen
    This article provides an introduction to one of the lesser-known examples of European settler colonialism, the settlement of European (mainly Russian and Ukrainian) peasants in Southern Central Asia (Turkestan) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It establishes the legal background and demographic impact of peasant settlement, and the role played by the state in organising and encouraging it. It explores official attitudes towards the settlers (which were often very negative), and their relations with the local Kazakh and Kyrgyz population. The article adopts a comparative framework, looking at Turkestan alongside Algeria and Southern Africa, and seeking to establish whether paradigms developed in the study of other settler societies (such as the ‘poor white’) are of any relevance in understanding Slavic peasant settlement in Turkestan. It concludes that there are many close parallels with European settlement in other regions with large indigenous populations, but that racial ideology played a much less important role in the Russian case compared to religious divisions and fears of cultural backsliding. This did not prevent relations between settlers and the ‘native’ population deteriorating markedly in the years before the First World War, resulting in large-scale rebellion in 1916.
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    The Role of Experts in the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Limits of Their Epistemic Authority in Democracy
    (Frontiers Media, 2020-07-14) Lavazza, Andrea; Farina, Mirko
    In the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, medical experts (virologists, epidemiologists, public health scholars, and statisticians alike) have become instrumental in suggesting policies to counteract the spread of coronavirus. Given the dangerousness and the extent of the contagion, almost no one has questioned the suggestions that these experts have advised policymakers to implement. Quite often the latter explicitly sought experts' advice and justified unpopular measures (e.g., restricting people's freedom of movement) by referring to the epistemic authority attributed to experts. The main goal of this paper is to analyze the basis of this epistemic authority and the reasons why in this case it has not been challenged, contrary to the widespread tendency to devalue expertise that has been observed in recent years. In addition, in relation to the fact that experts' recommendations are generally technical and supposedly neutral, we note that in the COVID-19 crisis different experts have suggested different public health policies. We consider the British case of herd immunity and the US case of the exclusion of disabled people from medical care. These decisions have strong axiological implications and affect people profoundly in very sensitive domains. Another goal is, therefore, to argue that in such cases experts should justify their recommendations-which effectively become obligations-by the canons of public reason within the political process because when values are involved it is no longer just a matter of finding the “best technical solution,” but also of making discretionary choices that affect citizens and that cannot be imposed solely on the basis of epistemic authority.
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    Russia, Khoqand, and the search for a "Natural" Frontier, 1863–1865
    (2014) Morrison, Alexander Stephen
    Abstract Russian expansion into Central Asia in the nineteenth century is usually seen either as the product of lobbying by big capitalist interests in Moscow or as a wholly unplanned process driven by “men on the spot” who slipped beyond St. Petersburg’s control. This article is a microstudy of one of the campaigns that immediately preceded the fall of Tashkent in 1865, during which Russian forces under General M. G. Cherniaev united the Orenburg and Siberian “lines” of fortification to create what was meant to be a permanent new frontier on the steppe. It demonstrates that neither of these explanations is satisfactory – economic calculations played a minor role in Russian decision making, while there was an authorized plan for expansion in the region. However this plan rested on the premise that the Russians could identify a “natural” frontier in the region, marked by a river, watershed, or mountain range. The instructions given to Cherniaev and other “men on the spot” reflected this, but a lack of detailed geographical knowledge meant that these orders were often contradictory or impossible to fulfill. It was this that allowed Cherniaev to determine the timetable (though not the direction) of Russian expansion, and that would see the fall of Tashkent in June 1865.
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    Russian Rule in Turkestan and the Example of British India ca1865 - 1917
    (2006) Morrison, Alexander Stephen
    This article argues that Russia's Empire in Central Asia is best understood in comparison with the other Western Colonial Empires of the nineteenth century, specifically Britain's Indian Empire. It examines nineteenth-century Russian travellers' accounts of British India, and the `Asianist' tradition which argued that Russians had a greater affinity with Asian peoples than other Europeans, and that the nature of their empire was consequently different. In the case of Turkestan it rejects this assumption on the basis of research in Russian and Uzbek archives, and of the differing views expressed in books and journals by Russian military officers and imperial administrators of the day