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The inhabitants of Pororan Island, a small group of 'saltwater people' in Papua New Guinea, are intensely interested in the movements of persons across the island and across the sea, both in their everyday lives as fishing people and on ritual occasions. From their observations of human movements, they take their cues about the current state of social relations. Based on detailed ethnography, this study engages current Melanesian anthropological theory and argues that movements are the Pororans' predominant mode of objectifying relations. Movements on Pororan Island are to its inhabitants what roads are to 'mainlanders' on the nearby larger island, and what material objects and images are to others elsewhere in Melanesia.

The Kurds, who number some 28 million people in the Middle East, have no country they can call their own. Long ignored by the West, Kurds are now highly visible actors on the world's political stage. More than half live in Turkey, where the Kurdish struggle has gained new strength and attention since the U.S. overthrow of Saddam Hussein in neighboring Iraq. Essential to understanding modern-day Kurds-and their continuing demands for an independent state-is understanding the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party. A guerilla force that was founded in 1978 by a small group of ex-Turkish university students, the PKK radicalized the Kurdish national movement in Turkey, becoming a tightly organized, well-armed fighting force of some 15,000, with a 50,000-member civilian militia in Turkey and tens of thousands of active backers in Europe. Under the leadership of Abdullah Ocalan, the war the PKK waged in Turkey through 1999 left nearly 40,000 people dead and drew in the neighboring states of Iran, Iraq, and Syria, all of whom sought to use the PKK for their own purposes. Since 2004, emboldened by the Iraqi Kurds, who now have established an autonomous Kurdish state in the northernmost reaches of Iraq, the PKK has again turned to violence to meet its objectives. Blood and Beliefcombines reportage and scholarship to give the first in-depth account of the PKK. Aliza Marcus, one of the first Western reporters to meet with PKK rebels, wrote about their war for many years for a variety of prominent publications before being put on trial in Turkey for her reporting. Based on her interviews with PKK rebels and their supporters and opponents throughout the world-including the Palestinians who trained them, the intelligence services that tracked them, and the dissidents who tried to break them up-Marcus provides an in-depth account of this influential radical group.

Despite ongoing instability and underdevelopment in post-Saddam Iraq, some parts of the country have realized relative security and growth. The Kurdish north, once an isolated outpost for the Iraqi army and local militia, has become an internationally recognized autonomous region. In The Kurdish Quasi-State, Natali explains the nature of this transformation and how it has influenced the relationship between the Kurdistan region and Iraq’s central government. This much-needed scholarship focuses on foreign aid as helping to create and sustain the Kurdish quasi-state. It argues that the generous nature of external assistance to the Kurdistan region over time has given it new forms of legitimacy and leverage in the country. Since 2003 the Kurdistan region has gained representation in the central government and developed commercial, investment, and political ties with regional states and foreign governments.

Why are some challenges to the territorial unity of democratic states more tractable than others? The literature has focused on numerous explanatory factors, including the impact of institutional reforms and government policies implemented in response to subnational mobilization and the ethnic identity of subnational groups. Building on the insights of a large literature on the political consequences of religious mobilization, this article analyzes a new dataset on the trajectory of 181 subnational political organizations active in India between 1952 and 2002. The article shows that demands for autonomy or secession put forward by religious organizations are likely to prove much more resilient over time than identical demands advanced by nonreligious organizations. The analysis has important implications for the study of secessionism and ethnic politics in general.

The Iraqi Kurds now not only possess their most powerful regional government since the creation of Iraq following World War I (the Kurdistan Regional Government-krg), but also play a prominent role in the Iraqi government in Baghdad, holding the posts of president, foreign minister and several other cabinet positions. After a great deal of wrangling, the Kurds managed to maintain their strong position in al-Maliki's new Baghdad government finally cobbled together in December 2010. This dual governmental role stood in marked contrast to the situation that existed before the events of 1991 and 2003, when the Kurds were treated as second class citizens and worse. The ultimate question is for how long this unique Kurdish position of strength will last. Many Arabs still resent the Kurdish claims to autonomy as a challenge to the Arab patrimony and see a federal state for the Iraqi Kurds within Iraq as simply a prelude to secession forced upon the Arabs at a moment of temporary weakness following the war in 2003. When will the Iraqi Arabs organise themselves and start trying to reduce the power of the Kurds again? This paper will analyse this developing situation and tentatively conclude that the two sides are most likely to continue to coexist in a troublesome but peaceful relationship.

A very important yet little known front in the Russian Civil War existed in neighbouring Xinjiang, a region in China's northwest, that was at that time self-governing. In Xinjiang, Russian White Commanders and their troops gained sanctuary, financial assistance, food and shelter from Chinese provincial leaders, and then used those sanctuaries to launch operations against Soviet forces. However, by 1921, Red Army troops destroyed any remaining organised White forces, which then melted into the Chinese landscape. The ramifications of the Russian Civil War in Xinjiang had important impacts on the people of Xinjiang, and on Russia and China as well.

Contrary to the widespread assumption that Belgium is a bilingual French/Dutch country, German is also an official language in Belgium. The German-speaking part of Belgium achieved its cultural autonomy in 1970, which made the approximately 73,000 German-speaking Belgians one of the best protected minorities in Europe. This achievement cannot be understood without reference to the Flemish emancipation and the transformation of the original conception of Belgium as a unitary nation, built on the foundation of shared values, into a federal nation with autonomous communities according to linguistic principles. Reprinted by permission of the German Studies Review

Am 11. September des Jahres 2012 gingen in Barcelona wohl weit über eine Million Menschen auf die Straße und forderten \"Katalonien, einen neuen Staat in Europa\". Schon 1977 hatte die katalanische Hauptstadt einen Millionenmarsch erlebt - damals aber war ein Autonomiestatut gefordert worden. Glaubt man den von der führenden Tageszeitung La Vanguardia zwischen September und November 2012 veröffentlichten Umfragen, so würden 47,7 bis 55% der Katalanen für die Unabhängigkeit stimmen - dagegen wären 33,1 bis 40,2%. Als 1976 gegen Ende des Frankismus von Juan Linz die ersten Umfragen veröffentlicht wurden, hatten ganze 2% der Befragten die Unabhängigkeit Kataloniens den anderen angebotenen Alternativen (Autonomie, Zentralismus und Föderalismus) vorgezogen. Diese Zahlen stiegen trotz mancher Ausschläge bis in die achtziger Jahre hinein kaum an (1982 4% für die Unabhängigkeit; Zahlen jüngst abgedruckt in Martínez-Herrera/Miley 2010:13). Noch im März 2006 hatte das katalanische öffentliche Meinungsforschungsinstitut CEO erst 14% \"independentistes\" ermittelt (die Alternativen waren einfache Region Spaniens, Autonomie - status quo -, und Föderalismus). Im Jahre 2012 waren es dann 31% (Muñoz/Tormos 2012:6). Laut der Ende September - Anfang Oktober durchgeführten Umfrage des CEO würden 89% der Katalanen das Ergebnis eines Referendums zur Unabhängigkeit akzeptieren. 49% bejahten die Frage, ob Katalonien in den nächsten Jahren ein unabhängiger Staat in Europa werden sollte, überzeugt (\"totalment a favor\"), weitere 19,4% waren eher dafür (\"més aviat a favor\"), während nur 10,6% eher dagegen und 13,5% total dagegen waren.1) Der katalanische Wahlkampf des Jahres 2012 wurde trotz der grassierenden Wirtschaftskrise von der Frage beherrscht, ob eine Volksabstimmung zur katalanischen Unabhängigkeit abgehalten werden sollte - und die Befürworter einer solchen Befragung gewannen die Wahl. Reprinted by permission of Wilhelm Braumüller, Universitäts-Verlagsbuchhandlung Ges.m.b.H.

Building autonomy in the Sierra Norte of Oaxaca has not depended on the development of Zapotec ethnic identities, isolation or rejection of the integration of outsiders into the communities. The communities of Ixtlán and Guelatao have developed strong local identities and strategies related to the appropriation of external legal categories, and the combination of these with their own customary practices to integrate newcomers into their social, political and economic organisation. Dialogue has been one of the main tools for building autonomy and achieve the integration of outsiders, while continuing the dynamic reproduction of their internal organisation and way of life.

In 2007 the former federal government introduced a far-reaching ‘intervention’ into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. The government claimed that the coercive measures outlined in this policy were aimed at combating child abuse and welfare dependency, arguing that ‘old approaches’ – such as self-determination – had ‘not worked’. In contrast, Sarah Maddison argues that meaningful self-determination has never in fact been tried in Australia, and is likely to be far more effective in addressing indigenous disadvantage than the overtly xenophobic and paternalistic approaches evident in the current policy approach.