Judith Beyer
Biographic Data
| ID | 3586413 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Judith Beyer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Judith |
| FAMILY NAME | Beyer |
| SIGNATURE | BEYER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Max Planck Society |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1540-932X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 60 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Fashion Auteurs: Yves Saint Laurent , Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas
Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion , by Eleanor Medhurst
In many ways, 2024 was a visible year for lesbians and queer women in pop culture, from Kristen Stewart’s suggestive Rolling Stone cover and Billie Eilish’s and Chappell Roan’s sapphic songwriting to movies such as Love Lies Bleeding (directed by Rose Glass) and Drive-Away Dolls (directed by Ethan Coen). Eleanor Medhurst’s 2024 publication Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion thus fits well into a pop-cultural zeitgeist that embraces stories …
Community as a category of empire: ‘The work of community’ among Burmese Indians in Myanmar
In this article I argue that ‘community' is a category that is inextricably bound up with the historical development of the British empire. It was in this context that modern social theory took root, including, eventually, publications on community in anthropology and sociology that profoundly influenced nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought and that continue to shape everyday understandings of the category within and beyond academia. I first…
Exiled Activists from Myanmar: Predicaments and Possibilities of Human Rights Activism from Abroad
In this article, we put forward the concept of the ‘exiled activist’ to highlight the predicaments and the possibilities that practicing human rights activism from abroad bring with it. Human rights activists from Myanmar struggle to continue their work after the military regime forced them to flee their home country over four and a half years ago. Since the attempted military coup on 1 February 2021, 30,074 citizens have been imprisoned and 7,51…
Knitting masculinities: How men are challenging masculinity and needlework in a post-pandemic age
The JW Anderson patchwork cardigan from the spring/summer 2020 menswear collection has become an iconic fashion item during the COVID-19 pandemic. Worn by Harry Styles, the cardigan inspired a worldwide TikTok trend of crafting and DIY-ing a replica at home with over 90 million views to date. In response, JW Anderson published the pattern online and the V&A museum acquired the knitwear for its permanent collection. One year later, Olympic gold me…
Out of reach: Gucci’s ‘Tian’ Suit between material culture and gender-fluid imagination
Gender fluidity plays an increasing role in today’s fashion industry. This study focuses on the incorporation of the notion of gender fluidity in Gucci’s ‘Tian’ Suit from the Spring/Summer 2016 menswear collection. Drawing from gender theory and philosophy, this study investigates how the Suit might challenge contemporary gender norms and their representation. Taking on an object-based study deriving from material culture, the study proposes thre…
The common sense of expert activists: Practitioners, scholars, and the problem of statelessness in Europe
In this article, I follow a group of professionals in their efforts to address the problem of statelessness in Europe. My interlocutors divide the members of their group into “practitioners,” on the one hand, and “scholars” on the other. Relating this emic dichotomization to Antonio Gramsci’s dialectical take on common sense, I argue against a theoretical reductionism that regards expertise and activism as two essentially different and mostly sep…
The State of Custom: Gerd Spittler’s “Dispute settlement in the shadow of Leviathan” (1980) today
In our article, we engage with the anthropologist Gerd Spittler’s pathbreaking article “Dispute settlement in the shadow of Leviathan” (1980) in which he strives to integrate the existence of state courts (the eponymous Leviathan’s shadow) in (post-)colonial Africa into the analysis on non-state court legal practices. According to Spittler, it is because of undesirable characteristics inherent in state courts that the disputing parties tended to …
Women of protest, men of applause: Political activism, gender and tradition in Kyrgyzstan
Tradition has come to play an important role throughout Central Asia in a number of new ways since independence, but has been predominantly investigated regarding nation building. In this article, we show how tradition is being used operationally in the context of activism and political conflict. We expose the various motivations and tactics pursued by aksakals (lit., whitebeards) and by a movement of mature women called OBON (lit., Women Units f…
Practices of Traditionalization in Central Asia
Practices of traditionalization in Central Asia
Over the last two centuries, ‘tradition’1 has been invoked in Central Asia by Russian and Soviet regimes, as well as by local Central Asian elites, largely in two ways: either as a deficiency to be
Women of protest, men of applause: Political activism, gender and tradition in Kyrgyzstan
Tradition has come to play an important role throughout Central Asia in a number of new ways since independence, but has been predominantly investigated regarding nation building. In this article, we show how tradition is being used operationally in the context of activism and political conflict. We expose the various motivations and tactics pursued by aksakals (lit., whitebeards) and by a movement of mature women called OBON (lit., Women Units f…
Informal order and the state in Afghanistan
published
Sommaire Général pour l’année 2015 des n°s 1, 2, 3, 4 (mars, juin, septembre, décembre) (volume 46)
n'est autorise que dans les limites des conditions gnrales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas chant, des conditions gnrales de la licence souscrite par votre tablissement. Toute autre reproduction ou reprsentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manire que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord pralable et crit de l'diteur, en dehors des cas prvus par la lgislation en vigueur en France. Il est prcis que son stockage dans une base d…
Introduction: A Motto for Moral Diplomacy
Only connect ...," the epigraph of Forster's Howards End, offers itself as a model of moral diplomacy. The efficacy of genuine human connection-whether it takes the form of creative action or of decent human relations-in containing and civilizing force is an idea that informs the novel's conception of what constitutes and ensures civilized life. Forster regarded propriety and convention as expressions of force and so applauded any assault on conv…
Practicing Harmony Ideology
Twenty-five years ago, drawing on her fieldwork among the Zapotec, the legal anthropologist Laura Nader proposed the term harmony ideology to characterize postcolonial systems of justice. She found outward social harmony to be the result of coercion, as people were denied access to legal means and were forced either into alternative dispute resolution or into autocoercion, in which marginalized people presented unity to outsiders to avoid state i…
Customizations of Law: Courts of Elders (AksakalCourts) in Rural and Urban Kyrgyzstan
This article deals with a neotraditional institution: the aksakal courts (courts of elders, or "whitebeards") in Central Asian Kyrgyzstan. Founded in 1993 by the first president of the country, and based on an elaborate law enacted in 2002, the newly appointed aksakal judges were supposed to judge according to what were considered to be the customs and traditions of the Kyrgyz. In this article I show in what ways the judges' way of "being aksakal…
Finding the law in Myanmar
The law is difficult to find in Myanmar and the legal system is not accessible or transparent to its citizens. This article looks at some of the issues plaguing the country
Constitutional Faith Law and Hope in Revolutionary Kyrgyzstan
This article investigates the interrelation between law and hope in the context of constitutional change in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. Drawing upon ethnographic and textual data, it is shown that the constitution has acquired particular discursive importance in Kyrgyzstan each time the foundations of the state have been severely challenged or shattered. Paying particular attention to three major political conflicts, the article demo…
Legalism: Anthropology and historyby Dresch, Paul and Hannah Skoda
Ordering ideals: Accomplishing well-being in a Kyrgyz cooperative of elders
In May 2005, after a tumultuous parliamentary election campaign had led to factionalism among the village population, village elders in northern Kyrgyzstan formed the cooperative Yiman Nuru (Light of Faith). The institution, which is headed by the local imam, was set up with the explicit aim to restore harmony and unity among all villagers. This article deals with how people in rural Kyrgyzstan try to achieve a state of well-being for themselves.…
Donations by Strangers to Lutheran Churches during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
While the majority of donations to Lutheran churches during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was made by locals, foreigners not living in the parish contributed gifts, too. There were, firstly, donations made accidentally to the parish in question such as funeral monuments in the case of sudden death. Secondly, a large group of donations reflected attendance of a particular church, be that through economic connections, through former ties…
Settling descent: Place making and genealogy in Talas, Kyrgyzstan
This article explores how the inhabitants of two villages in northern Kyrgyzstan relate to one another and to their environment in terms of both place and genealogy. By performing relatedness, people make claims upon a physical landscape, while their relationships are simultaneously shaped by perceptions of the particular place they live in. The term ‘settling descent’ evokes this dialectic, in which people ‘settle’ descent in a literal sense in …
Revitalisation, Invention and Continued Existence of the Kyrgyz Aksakal Courts: Listening to Pluralistic Accounts of History
This article investigates conceptions of history as perceived and theoretically embodied in terms such as revitalisation, invention, and continued vitality. These terms have been predominantly used for post-colonial and post-socialist societies. The article argues that these terms and the concepts behind them do not explain and elucidate the meaning of history for society and its members, but rather camouflage it. The case of the Kyrgyz courts of…
Practices of traditionalization in Central Asia
Over the last two centuries, ‘tradition’1 has been invoked in Central Asia by Russian and Soviet regimes, as well as by local Central Asian elites, largely in two ways: either as a deficiency to be
Constitutional Faith Law and Hope in Revolutionary Kyrgyzstan
This article investigates the interrelation between law and hope in the context of constitutional change in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. Drawing upon ethnographic and textual data, it is shown that the constitution has acquired particular discursive importance in Kyrgyzstan each time the foundations of the state have been severely challenged or shattered. Paying particular attention to three major political conflicts, the article demo…
Practicing Harmony Ideology
Twenty-five years ago, drawing on her fieldwork among the Zapotec, the legal anthropologist Laura Nader proposed the term harmony ideology to characterize postcolonial systems of justice. She found outward social harmony to be the result of coercion, as people were denied access to legal means and were forced either into alternative dispute resolution or into autocoercion, in which marginalized people presented unity to outsiders to avoid state i…
Finding the law in Myanmar
The law is difficult to find in Myanmar and the legal system is not accessible or transparent to its citizens. This article looks at some of the issues plaguing the country
Customizations of Law: Courts of Elders (AksakalCourts) in Rural and Urban Kyrgyzstan
This article deals with a neotraditional institution: the aksakal courts (courts of elders, or "whitebeards") in Central Asian Kyrgyzstan. Founded in 1993 by the first president of the country, and based on an elaborate law enacted in 2002, the newly appointed aksakal judges were supposed to judge according to what were considered to be the customs and traditions of the Kyrgyz. In this article I show in what ways the judges' way of "being aksakal…
Settling descent: Place making and genealogy in Talas, Kyrgyzstan
This article explores how the inhabitants of two villages in northern Kyrgyzstan relate to one another and to their environment in terms of both place and genealogy. By performing relatedness, people make claims upon a physical landscape, while their relationships are simultaneously shaped by perceptions of the particular place they live in. The term ‘settling descent’ evokes this dialectic, in which people ‘settle’ descent in a literal sense in …
Women of protest, men of applause: Political activism, gender and tradition in Kyrgyzstan
Tradition has come to play an important role throughout Central Asia in a number of new ways since independence, but has been predominantly investigated regarding nation building. In this article, we show how tradition is being used operationally in the context of activism and political conflict. We expose the various motivations and tactics pursued by aksakals (lit., whitebeards) and by a movement of mature women called OBON (lit., Women Units f…
Ordering ideals: Accomplishing well-being in a Kyrgyz cooperative of elders
In May 2005, after a tumultuous parliamentary election campaign had led to factionalism among the village population, village elders in northern Kyrgyzstan formed the cooperative Yiman Nuru (Light of Faith). The institution, which is headed by the local imam, was set up with the explicit aim to restore harmony and unity among all villagers. This article deals with how people in rural Kyrgyzstan try to achieve a state of well-being for themselves.…
The common sense of expert activists: Practitioners, scholars, and the problem of statelessness in Europe
In this article, I follow a group of professionals in their efforts to address the problem of statelessness in Europe. My interlocutors divide the members of their group into “practitioners,” on the one hand, and “scholars” on the other. Relating this emic dichotomization to Antonio Gramsci’s dialectical take on common sense, I argue against a theoretical reductionism that regards expertise and activism as two essentially different and mostly sep…
Revitalisation, Invention and Continued Existence of the Kyrgyz Aksakal Courts: Listening to Pluralistic Accounts of History
This article investigates conceptions of history as perceived and theoretically embodied in terms such as revitalisation, invention, and continued vitality. These terms have been predominantly used for post-colonial and post-socialist societies. The article argues that these terms and the concepts behind them do not explain and elucidate the meaning of history for society and its members, but rather camouflage it. The case of the Kyrgyz courts of…
Settling descent: Place making and genealogy in Talas, Kyrgyzstan
This article explores how the inhabitants of two villages in northern Kyrgyzstan relate to one another and to their environment in terms of both place and genealogy. By performing relatedness, people make claims upon a physical landscape, while their relationships are simultaneously shaped by perceptions of the particular place they live in. The term ‘settling descent’ evokes this dialectic, in which people ‘settle’ descent in a literal sense in …
Ordering ideals: Accomplishing well-being in a Kyrgyz cooperative of elders
In May 2005, after a tumultuous parliamentary election campaign had led to factionalism among the village population, village elders in northern Kyrgyzstan formed the cooperative Yiman Nuru (Light of Faith). The institution, which is headed by the local imam, was set up with the explicit aim to restore harmony and unity among all villagers. This article deals with how people in rural Kyrgyzstan try to achieve a state of well-being for themselves.…
Donations by Strangers to Lutheran Churches during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
While the majority of donations to Lutheran churches during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was made by locals, foreigners not living in the parish contributed gifts, too. There were, firstly, donations made accidentally to the parish in question such as funeral monuments in the case of sudden death. Secondly, a large group of donations reflected attendance of a particular church, be that through economic connections, through former ties…
Legalism: Anthropology and historyby Dresch, Paul and Hannah Skoda
Sommaire Général pour l’année 2015 des n°s 1, 2, 3, 4 (mars, juin, septembre, décembre) (volume 46)
n'est autorise que dans les limites des conditions gnrales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas chant, des conditions gnrales de la licence souscrite par votre tablissement. Toute autre reproduction ou reprsentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manire que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord pralable et crit de l'diteur, en dehors des cas prvus par la lgislation en vigueur en France. Il est prcis que son stockage dans une base d…
Introduction: A Motto for Moral Diplomacy
Only connect ...," the epigraph of Forster's Howards End, offers itself as a model of moral diplomacy. The efficacy of genuine human connection-whether it takes the form of creative action or of decent human relations-in containing and civilizing force is an idea that informs the novel's conception of what constitutes and ensures civilized life. Forster regarded propriety and convention as expressions of force and so applauded any assault on conv…
Practicing Harmony Ideology
Twenty-five years ago, drawing on her fieldwork among the Zapotec, the legal anthropologist Laura Nader proposed the term harmony ideology to characterize postcolonial systems of justice. She found outward social harmony to be the result of coercion, as people were denied access to legal means and were forced either into alternative dispute resolution or into autocoercion, in which marginalized people presented unity to outsiders to avoid state i…
Customizations of Law: Courts of Elders (AksakalCourts) in Rural and Urban Kyrgyzstan
This article deals with a neotraditional institution: the aksakal courts (courts of elders, or "whitebeards") in Central Asian Kyrgyzstan. Founded in 1993 by the first president of the country, and based on an elaborate law enacted in 2002, the newly appointed aksakal judges were supposed to judge according to what were considered to be the customs and traditions of the Kyrgyz. In this article I show in what ways the judges' way of "being aksakal…
Finding the law in Myanmar
The law is difficult to find in Myanmar and the legal system is not accessible or transparent to its citizens. This article looks at some of the issues plaguing the country
Constitutional Faith Law and Hope in Revolutionary Kyrgyzstan
This article investigates the interrelation between law and hope in the context of constitutional change in the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan. Drawing upon ethnographic and textual data, it is shown that the constitution has acquired particular discursive importance in Kyrgyzstan each time the foundations of the state have been severely challenged or shattered. Paying particular attention to three major political conflicts, the article demo…
Informal order and the state in Afghanistan
published
Practices of traditionalization in Central Asia
Over the last two centuries, ‘tradition’1 has been invoked in Central Asia by Russian and Soviet regimes, as well as by local Central Asian elites, largely in two ways: either as a deficiency to be
Women of protest, men of applause: Political activism, gender and tradition in Kyrgyzstan
Tradition has come to play an important role throughout Central Asia in a number of new ways since independence, but has been predominantly investigated regarding nation building. In this article, we show how tradition is being used operationally in the context of activism and political conflict. We expose the various motivations and tactics pursued by aksakals (lit., whitebeards) and by a movement of mature women called OBON (lit., Women Units f…
Women of protest, men of applause: Political activism, gender and tradition in Kyrgyzstan
Tradition has come to play an important role throughout Central Asia in a number of new ways since independence, but has been predominantly investigated regarding nation building. In this article, we show how tradition is being used operationally in the context of activism and political conflict. We expose the various motivations and tactics pursued by aksakals (lit., whitebeards) and by a movement of mature women called OBON (lit., Women Units f…
Practices of Traditionalization in Central Asia
The State of Custom: Gerd Spittler’s “Dispute settlement in the shadow of Leviathan” (1980) today
In our article, we engage with the anthropologist Gerd Spittler’s pathbreaking article “Dispute settlement in the shadow of Leviathan” (1980) in which he strives to integrate the existence of state courts (the eponymous Leviathan’s shadow) in (post-)colonial Africa into the analysis on non-state court legal practices. According to Spittler, it is because of undesirable characteristics inherent in state courts that the disputing parties tended to …
The common sense of expert activists: Practitioners, scholars, and the problem of statelessness in Europe
In this article, I follow a group of professionals in their efforts to address the problem of statelessness in Europe. My interlocutors divide the members of their group into “practitioners,” on the one hand, and “scholars” on the other. Relating this emic dichotomization to Antonio Gramsci’s dialectical take on common sense, I argue against a theoretical reductionism that regards expertise and activism as two essentially different and mostly sep…
Knitting masculinities: How men are challenging masculinity and needlework in a post-pandemic age
The JW Anderson patchwork cardigan from the spring/summer 2020 menswear collection has become an iconic fashion item during the COVID-19 pandemic. Worn by Harry Styles, the cardigan inspired a worldwide TikTok trend of crafting and DIY-ing a replica at home with over 90 million views to date. In response, JW Anderson published the pattern online and the V&A museum acquired the knitwear for its permanent collection. One year later, Olympic gold me…
Out of reach: Gucci’s ‘Tian’ Suit between material culture and gender-fluid imagination
Gender fluidity plays an increasing role in today’s fashion industry. This study focuses on the incorporation of the notion of gender fluidity in Gucci’s ‘Tian’ Suit from the Spring/Summer 2016 menswear collection. Drawing from gender theory and philosophy, this study investigates how the Suit might challenge contemporary gender norms and their representation. Taking on an object-based study deriving from material culture, the study proposes thre…
Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion , by Eleanor Medhurst
In many ways, 2024 was a visible year for lesbians and queer women in pop culture, from Kristen Stewart’s suggestive Rolling Stone cover and Billie Eilish’s and Chappell Roan’s sapphic songwriting to movies such as Love Lies Bleeding (directed by Rose Glass) and Drive-Away Dolls (directed by Ethan Coen). Eleanor Medhurst’s 2024 publication Unsuitable: A History of Lesbian Fashion thus fits well into a pop-cultural zeitgeist that embraces stories …
Community as a category of empire: ‘The work of community’ among Burmese Indians in Myanmar
In this article I argue that ‘community' is a category that is inextricably bound up with the historical development of the British empire. It was in this context that modern social theory took root, including, eventually, publications on community in anthropology and sociology that profoundly influenced nineteenth- and twentieth-century thought and that continue to shape everyday understandings of the category within and beyond academia. I first…
Exiled Activists from Myanmar: Predicaments and Possibilities of Human Rights Activism from Abroad
In this article, we put forward the concept of the ‘exiled activist’ to highlight the predicaments and the possibilities that practicing human rights activism from abroad bring with it. Human rights activists from Myanmar struggle to continue their work after the military regime forced them to flee their home country over four and a half years ago. Since the attempted military coup on 1 February 2021, 30,074 citizens have been imprisoned and 7,51…
Fashion Auteurs: Yves Saint Laurent , Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas
Political science (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · History (9 works) · Art (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Soviet and Russian History (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works)