azidahak (zahhak) has always been a strange myth among the other mythological characters in pre-islamic literature. is it possible to figure out a specific historical period for his life? or as avesta's image shows, we should consider him as a semi-human, semi-monster notion with three ugly heads on his shoulder? this article tries to put this figure on the spotlight and illuminate his rea...

At this fin-de-siècle, the “post” that was meant to mark off the modern, or perhaps to qualify it, has turned out to be a looking-glass of sorts, reviving engagements with the question of modernity. However, lurking in the shadows of this discourse is the “constitutive outside” that makes possible such narratives: tradition. In this article, I explore the question of modernity through the trope...

Introduction. The transformation of the animal from the Other of Cartesian modernity to a central actor in late modern culture has been registered in recent literary and cultural studies, such as Huggan and Tiffin’s Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment and Philip Armstrong’s What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity. Literary texts, as Armstrong claims, have for a lon...

Sweden is often described as an environmental forerunner and one of the most ecologically modernized countries in the world, one where social welfare, economic growth and environmental protection mutually support each other. Examining the case of Swedish forestry, we discuss a number of tensions in this sector that mirror some general tensions in Swedish society and explore how these tensions c...

While demography has made many valuable contributions to the analysis of contemporary demographic reversals, the discipline seems as far as ever from explaining the dynamics of fertility change. Commentaries on “populations” routinely link fertility control and small families with progress, modernity, and western values; in “traditional” societies, fertility regulation is left to chance, God, a...

Honey is a natural product with recognized physical and chemical properties, which contribute to its biological activity. However, honey is currently being sold at low prices, making it imperative to find alternatives to make apiculture a viable national enterprise. One of these alternatives could be mead production. Despite the excellent properties of honey, mead production faces several probl...

Why did conversion to Christianity take place in some Asian areas and not others? What happened when sacred and religious texts from Abrahamic traditions, especially Christianity, were translated into Chinese? What were the effects when the secular and the religious were asserted to be separate realms? What were the consequences for ideas about the private, the public, and the state? How did re...