William F S Miles
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 86857 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | William F S Miles |
| NOMBRES | William F S |
| APELLIDO | Miles |
| FIRMA | MILES W F S |
| AFILIACIONES | Northeastern University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5557-9222 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 80 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 293 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 79 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1985 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
Alzheimer’s and Anthropologists
From “dark” and “darker” to “gray” tourism
Almost a mother tongue
Passage of Israel’s Jewish nationality law in 2018 shined more than usual light on the Druze citizens of Israel. It put into painful question their integration into Israeli society. Key to that integration is Druze mastery of the Jewish State’s official language; hence the question, “How do Israeli Druze learn Hebrew?” The answer is multivariable: pedagogy, gender, bilingualism, technology, religion, conscription, and socialization are all factor…
Niger’s Long Cycle of Poverty and Coups
In July 2023, Niger experienced the latest in a long series of military coups. Now afflicted by climate change, the country continues to rank as one of the poorest in the world. Poverty and perceptions of corruption limit public confidence in democratic governance. Led by Nigeria, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) imposed sanctions on the new junta and threatened a military intervention, adding to the suffering of the populat…
Africans and the Holocaust
After Israel’s Nationality Law of 2018
This article examines the medium-term effects of Israel's 2018 Nation-State legislation on Druze consciousness and prospects for the future. It is informed by interviews with fourteen Druze political thought leaders (more than half of whom are current or former Members of Knesset). From the founding of the State of Israel, the relationship between the Druze minority and the Jewish majority has been constructed on the narrative of a "covenant of b…
When Men Become Orthodox in Israel
Novitiates to the study of Middle Eastern faiths ‘know’ that much of the Druze religion is—paradoxically—unknowable: Druze sacred texts are regarded as closely guarded secrets. Not even Druze themselves are granted access to these scriptures if they have not taken a vow to become normatively observant. However, the decision to become Orthodox is not subject to similar confidentiality. Interviews with over a dozen religious Druze men in Israel on …
Black Islands, White Ocean
Black Islands, White Ocean:Postcolonial Paradoxes in a Caribbean "Paradise" William F.S. Miles (bio) Welcome to "Paradise" Vauclin, French West Indies Let's play a geographical word association game: I say "Martinique," and you say _______ (fill in the blank). Plausible answers may be "beach," "tropics," "Caribbean." Somewhat informed players might add "French," "sugar," or "rum." But few will think "misery" or "prison." It was quite by accident …
As the Druze Go, So Goes the Middle East
The Druze, despite being a small minority faith group, have long survived in a challenging region, thanks in part to a doctrine of deference to whatever state they live in. In the past few years, however, the three largest Druze populations—in Israel, Lebanon, and Syria—have each faced some of their most difficult challenges yet, from a downgrading of their citizenship status to economic collapse and civil war. An increasingly active diaspora has…
Who Is an African Jew
A new book explores how a community in southern Africa has turned to genetic testing to advance a claim to Jewish ancestry. The reviewer puts the episode in the broader context of diverse Jewish groups across the continent for whom religion is a matter of practice, not just identity
Camille LEFEBVRE, Frontières de sable, frontières de papier. Histoire de territoires et de frontières, du jihad de Sokoto à la colonisation française du Niger, XIX-XX e siècles , Paris, Publications d…
Who Is a Jew (in Africa)? Definitional and Ethical Considerations in the Study of Sub-Saharan Jewry and Judaism
In recent decades, the fulcrum of African Jewry has shifted from long-established Ethiopian communities to emerging ones in West and Central Africa. This transition from “old” to “new” expressions of Judaism in Africa reanimates the question, “Who is a Jew?” The matter is problematized by the existence of multiple and diverse communities who purport Israelite lineage but eschew normative Judaism. This article offers a “concentric circles” model t…
The Divided Druze
Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 42, No.4, Summer 2019 The Divided Druze: Legacies of Colonial Partition for an Historically Persecuted Minority William F. S. Miles* Abstract One hundred years after colonial partition of the Levant, the fate of the Druze differs dramatically depending on whose imperial legacies their territorially divided communities have inherited: French, in the case of Lebanon and Syria; British, in the c…
Strange Bedfellows at the United Nations
This article compares differential African religious responses to United Nations initiatives on human rights versus UN development and peace-promoting activities. From family planning to gay rights, what some UN members have promoted as human rights others have characterized as neo-cultural imperialism. In West Africa, the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was seen as anti-Islamic and triggere…
Minority Arab voting
William F.S. Milesa Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, Boston, USA Prof William F.S. Miles is professor of political science at Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. His books on electoral politics include Elections in Nigeria. A Grassroots Perspective and Elections and Ethnicity in French Martinique. A Paradox in Paradox
African Border Disorders
Since the end of the Cold War, the monopoly of legitimate organized force of many African states has been eroded by a mix of rebel groups, violent extremist organizations, and self-defence militias created in response to the rise in organized violence on the continent. African Border Disorders explores the complex relationships that bind states, transnational rebels and extremist organizations, and borders on the African continent. Combining cutt…
Spatial and temporal diffusion of political violence in North and West Africa
This chapter explores the spatial and temporal diffusion of political violence in North and West Africa since 1997. Focusing on the distance and time between attacks and taking into consideration the transaction costs that state boundaries impose, the contribution analyzes what induces a group leader to attack at a location other than the one that would seem to yield the greatest overt payoff. The result is a “map” of North and West Africa that r…
Hausaland Divided
How have different forms of colonialism shaped societies and their politics? William F. S. Miles focuses on the Hausa-speaking people of West Africa whose land is still split by an arbitrary boundary established by Great Britain and France at the turn of the century
Malagasy Judaism
With the virtual disappearance of the centuries-old Jewish community in Ethiopia through wholescale emigration to Israel, African Jewry is in the process of reconstituting itself into new Jewish movements (NJMs). One of these NJMs is emerging in Madagascar. However, the number of Malagasy adherents to normative (i.e. rabbinic) Judaism is eclipsed by those within the larger society who affirm genealogical descent from ancient Israel - and therefor…
Postcolonial Borderland Legacies of Anglo-French Partition in West Africa
More than five decades after independence, Africa still struggles with the legacies of colonial partition. On the territorial frontiers between the postcolonial inheritors of the two major colonial powers, Great Britain and France, the continuing impact of European colonialism remains most acute. On the one hand, the splitting of erstwhile homogeneous ethnic groups into British and French camps gave rise to new national identities; on the other h…
Between Ashkenaz and Québécois
As a result of its historical cleavage on the basis of language (English and French) and the continuing importance of a majoritarian Francophone province (Québec), Canada is proactive about protecting communal identity. This double context of a proactive Canadian commitment to identity and Québécois commitment to Francophonie inadvertently encourages the preservation of ethnolinguistic distinctions within the Jewish community. Diasporic Jewish ex…
Deploying Development to Counter Terrorism
Since September 11, 2001, the aid component of American foreign policy toward Africa has undergone a significant evolution: U.S. security has come to rival development as an increasingly explicit rationale. Development programming and project implementation now contain a security dimension that is underpinned by Pentagon strategists working through AFRICOM as much as by USAID officers partnering with the State Department. This article argues that…
Schizophrenic Island, fifty years after Fanon
Although Frantz Fanon did not employ the term as such, the contemporary paradigm of 'social suffering' captures much of the angst that Fanon diagnosed in his treatments of fellow Martinicans as individuals and of Martinique as a society. Ambivalent relationships based on race (French whites vis-à-vis islanders 'of colour') and law (assimilationist statehood versus regional autonomy) continue to problematize Martinican society and polity. This is …
Border pedagogy in Israel
Sense of geographical place is an essential element in students' understanding of their own place in the world. For a country such as Israel, with numerous neighbors with which it has had contentious relations, the idea of place and especially the conception of takes on an even greater importance. This article examines in detail the teaching of borders in the Israeli secondary school curriculum by examining the maps and language used to describe …
New Children of Israel
What do Ghana, Cameroon, and India have in common? For sure, the first two are both middle-sized West African nations, but even there the similarities end: Ghana, a former British colony, has exper
Auschwitz
Nationalism Versus Ethnic Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa
Part and parcel of the conventional wisdom about rural publics in Africa is that populations on the periphery will accord ethnic solidarity greater significance than national consciousness. A survey of neighboring Hausa villages on different sides of the Niger-Nigeria boundary counters this myth. Probing issues of self-identity and ethnic affinity, we found that most Hausa villagers on the frontier did not place their Hausan ethnic identity above…
Hausaland Divided
The Politics of Language Equilibrium in a Multilingual Society
Language is political. Yet the politics of language rarely determines elections or changes of government. In late 1995 rulership in one of greater Africa's two continuously performing democratic systems became unhinged over a proposed change in language policy. Ramifications of the fall ofAnerood Jugnauth's government extend well beyond the Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius. They highlight the delicate nature of linguistic balance in plural…
Deploying Development to Counter Terrorism
Since September 11, 2001, the aid component of American foreign policy toward Africa has undergone a significant evolution: U.S. security has come to rival development as an increasingly explicit rationale. Development programming and project implementation now contain a security dimension that is underpinned by Pentagon strategists working through AFRICOM as much as by USAID officers partnering with the State Department. This article argues that…
The Mauritius Enigma
The Mauritius Enigma William F.S. Miles (bio) In a region of the world where poverty and undemocratic government seem to be the rule, why is Mauritius such an exception? Long cited as one of only two African nation-states enjoying a continuous spell of democracy since independence (the other being Botswana), and with an impressive record of economic growth over the last two decades, Mauritius has been the darling of the World Bank and of other de…
The Creole Malaise in Mauritius
Although they are the most geographically close to their continent of origin, the African diasporas of the Indian Ocean are among the most culturally remote from it. In Mauritius, where a highly developed form of multicultural pluralism has become the modus vivendi of the ‘rainbow society’, Creoles of African descent have developed the weakest sense of group identity among the various components of island society. Yet for that very reason Creoles…
Tragic Tradeoffs
Anarchic tendencies in Chad serve as a cautionary example of what the on-going reconfiguration of Africa may entail. Interim institutions of government set up by a Sovereign National Conference, which was convened two years after the downfall of the despotic régime of Hissène Habré in December 1990, have generated deep disappointment. Democratisation has proceeded fitfully. The economy remains stagnant. Strikes in the public sector reflect the 's…
Traditional rulers and development administration
Partitioned Royalty
Amongst commentators and scholars of the turn-of-the-century partition of Africa, it has become virtually axiomatic to note the 'artificial' nature of the boundaries drawn up by the colonial powers. Cutting, as they often did, through otherwise homogeneous ethnic, religious, linguistic, and even geographic clusters, the European remapping of the continent is criticised, at least implicitly, for its allegedly blind or indifferent disregard for ind…
Colonial Hausa Idioms
Understanding how Westerners have been perceived by the African cultures they are ostensibly studying constitutes an instructive reversal of the classical subject-object relationship in Africanist research. By examining the perception of the White Man as embodied in Hausa folklore pertaining to the colonial era we gain a firmer grasp of the indigenous perspective on this period of Nigerien and Nigerian history and better appreciate the significan…
The Rally as Ritual
The dramatic aspects of politics in general, and electoral campaigns in particular, have increasingly drawn the attention of students of the American political scene. In addition to Nimmo's scholarly investigations of these phenomena,2 even the general public has been exposed to the consumeristic and entertaining aspects of U.S.-style campaigning by such popular-selling books as The Selling of the President.3 However valuable the task of unmaskin…
Hausaland Divided
Minority Arab voting
William F.S. Milesa Department of Political Science, Northeastern University, Boston, USA Prof William F.S. Miles is professor of political science at Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts. His books on electoral politics include Elections in Nigeria. A Grassroots Perspective and Elections and Ethnicity in French Martinique. A Paradox in Paradox
Development, not division
This article traces the evolution of the Nigérien-Nigerian boundary over the past 20 years. It focuses in particular on a single border crossing that separates two neighbouring Hausa villages of equivalent demographic size, administrative status, and economic importance. During the past two decades, border control, monitoring and surveillance have gradually intensified, resulting in the establishment of immigration and customs offices on the Nige…
Shari'aas De-Africanization
Terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 overlapped with ongoing movements of Islamic fundamentalism in sub-Saharan Africa; however, these movements have not been identical, nor have they encountered uniform responses from the governments overseeing them. This is evident in the Hausa borderlands of Niger and Nigeria, where I conducted fieldwork (first begun in the early 1980s) two months after the attacks. Differences in the ap…
Hamites and Hebrews
Political para-theology
Who Is a Jew (in Africa)? Definitional and Ethical Considerations in the Study of Sub-Saharan Jewry and Judaism
In recent decades, the fulcrum of African Jewry has shifted from long-established Ethiopian communities to emerging ones in West and Central Africa. This transition from “old” to “new” expressions of Judaism in Africa reanimates the question, “Who is a Jew?” The matter is problematized by the existence of multiple and diverse communities who purport Israelite lineage but eschew normative Judaism. This article offers a “concentric circles” model t…
Border pedagogy in Israel
Sense of geographical place is an essential element in students' understanding of their own place in the world. For a country such as Israel, with numerous neighbors with which it has had contentious relations, the idea of place and especially the conception of takes on an even greater importance. This article examines in detail the teaching of borders in the Israeli secondary school curriculum by examining the maps and language used to describe …
Third World views of the Holocaust1
Shari'a as De-Africanization
Terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001 overlapped with ongoing movements of Islamic fundamentalism in sub-Saharan Africa; however, these movements have not been identical, nor have they encountered uniform responses from the governments overseeing them. This is evident in the Hausa borderlands of Niger and Nigeria, where I conducted fieldwork (first begun in the early 1980s) two months after the attacks. Differences in the ap…
The irrelevance of independence
Focuses on the Martinican votes for the French presidential elections of 2002, and compares it with earlier elections, especially the one of 1981. Author surveys in this light the societal and political transformations that occurred in and regarding Martinique between 1981 and 2002. He discusses French policy in this period, and explains that while both left-leaning and right-leaning parties wanted to keep the island's "département" status intact…
Pigs, Politics and Social Change in Vanuatu
Pigs have long held great symbolic import for the people of Vanuatu, a sprawling archipelago 1,000 miles northeast of Australia. In most of the indigenous, small-scale communities which comprised traditional Vanuatu society, pig ownership and pig killing conveyed status, wealth, and informal power. Such rituals were the sole measure of social standing and political rank. In this study, I show how the cultural valuation of an animal, in this case …
Self‐identity, ethnic affinity and national consciousness
1986). Self‐identity, ethnic affinity and national consciousness: An example from rural Hausaland. Ethnic and Racial Studies: Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 427-444
Mitterrand in the Caribbean
May 10, 1981, not only ushered in a political surprise for France, as well as for its European and American allies, but sent positive shockwaves throughout that part of the Caribbean which is still French. On that date François Mitterrand came to power in the Metropole of France at the same time that the Départements d'Outre-Mer (DOM or overseas departments) of Martinique, Guadeloupe and Guiana rejected his candidacy with a unanimity as stunning …
Islam and development in the Western Sahel
Self‐identity, ethnic affinity and national consciousness
1986). Self‐identity, ethnic affinity and national consciousness: An example from rural Hausaland. Ethnic and Racial Studies: Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 427-444
Partitioned Royalty
Amongst commentators and scholars of the turn-of-the-century partition of Africa, it has become virtually axiomatic to note the 'artificial' nature of the boundaries drawn up by the colonial powers. Cutting, as they often did, through otherwise homogeneous ethnic, religious, linguistic, and even geographic clusters, the European remapping of the continent is criticised, at least implicitly, for its allegedly blind or indifferent disregard for ind…
Motives, Morality and Methodology in Third World Research
The Rally as Ritual
The dramatic aspects of politics in general, and electoral campaigns in particular, have increasingly drawn the attention of students of the American political scene. In addition to Nimmo's scholarly investigations of these phenomena,2 even the general public has been exposed to the consumeristic and entertaining aspects of U.S.-style campaigning by such popular-selling books as The Selling of the President.3 However valuable the task of unmaskin…
The Nigerian State
Citizens without soil
1990). Citizens without soil: The French of India (Pondicherry) Ethnic and Racial Studies: Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 250-273
Comparative Decolonization
Ne pas confondre decolonisation et independance : etude des modalites des rapports France-colonies en fonction de la nature des pays consideres
Nationalism Versus Ethnic Identity in Sub-Saharan Africa
Part and parcel of the conventional wisdom about rural publics in Africa is that populations on the periphery will accord ethnic solidarity greater significance than national consciousness. A survey of neighboring Hausa villages on different sides of the Niger-Nigeria boundary counters this myth. Probing issues of self-identity and ethnic affinity, we found that most Hausa villagers on the frontier did not place their Hausan ethnic identity above…
Traditional rulers and development administration
Colonial Hausa Idioms
Understanding how Westerners have been perceived by the African cultures they are ostensibly studying constitutes an instructive reversal of the classical subject-object relationship in Africanist research. By examining the perception of the White Man as embodied in Hausa folklore pertaining to the colonial era we gain a firmer grasp of the indigenous perspective on this period of Nigerien and Nigerian history and better appreciate the significan…
Francophonie in post‐colonial Vanuatu∗
(1994). Francophonie in post‐colonial Vanuatu. The Journal of Pacific History: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 49-65
Imperial Burdens
Miles explores the modern-day legacy of French colonialism in India and comes to the unorthodox conclusion that the nature of the fledgling French decolonization process, contrary to what might be expected, created a relationship whereby the former colonized are now exploiting the former colonizers
Minoritarian Francophonie-The Case of Israel, with Special Reference to the Palestinian Territories
William F. S. Miles, Minoritarian Francophonie-The Case of Israel, with Special Reference to the Palestinian Territories, The International Migration Review, Vol. 29, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 1023-1040
Minoritarian Francophonie – The Case of Israel, with Special Reference to the Palestinian Territories
This article examines the minoritarian status of a nonethnic group identity: Israeli Francophonie. Nonethnic minority status is particularly interesting for it represents a nonascriptive and voluntary category of group identity. In the case of Israel, Francophonie has evolved from its mainly North African (and hence socially disparaged) associations in the 1950s and 1960s to becoming an immigrant Ashkenazi and “frenchified Sephardic” phenomenon t…
Tragic Tradeoffs
Anarchic tendencies in Chad serve as a cautionary example of what the on-going reconfiguration of Africa may entail. Interim institutions of government set up by a Sovereign National Conference, which was convened two years after the downfall of the despotic régime of Hissène Habré in December 1990, have generated deep disappointment. Democratisation has proceeded fitfully. The economy remains stagnant. Strikes in the public sector reflect the 's…
Hausaland Divided
Hausaland Divided
Decolonization as Disintegration
Decolonization in Francophone Africa today entails a double disengagement: 1) state disengagement from the classic colonial power (i.e. France) and 2) societal disengagement from the inheritor of the colonial apparatus (i.e. the sovereign African state). Under these conditions, decolonization, otherwise welcomed as a positive development for the African polity, is accompanied by negative consequences for the people so affected. The principal draw…
Political para-theology
Hausaland Divided
Pigs, Politics and Social Change in Vanuatu
Pigs have long held great symbolic import for the people of Vanuatu, a sprawling archipelago 1,000 miles northeast of Australia. In most of the indigenous, small-scale communities which comprised traditional Vanuatu society, pig ownership and pig killing conveyed status, wealth, and informal power. Such rituals were the sole measure of social standing and political rank. In this study, I show how the cultural valuation of an animal, in this case …
Linguistic Cohabitation
La Cohabitation linguistique: "Frenglish " dans la presse mauricienne "Frenglish" se refère à l'emprunt fréquent de mots et d' expressions anglaises dans le français écrit. C'est un phénomène que repoussent les puristes linguistiques, particulièrement en France et au Québec. Dans la société multilingue de l'Ile Maurice, au contraire, le "Frenglish" est un fait commun et non controversé. Il est le résultat linguistique naturel d'un colonialisme di…
Francophonie and Zionism
Diaspora 7:2 1998 Francophonie and Zionism: A Comparative Study in Transnationalism and Trans-statism1 William F.S. Miles Northeastern University Gabriel Sheffer The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Introduction For about four decades now, practitioners and scholars have been examining transnational organizations, the networks that they create, their varied activities, and the economic and political ramifications of these activities. Initially thes…
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