Wednesday, January 28, 2015

"A Caste of Helot Labourers"

I have put up another older published piece of mine up on my academia.edu site. This one is from 2007. You can now go and read, "A Caste of Helot Labourers: Special Settlers and the Cultivation of Cotton in Soviet Central Asia: 1944-1956" there.  I figure if I am going to take the time to write these things that somebody somewhere should eventually read them. Unlike most US academics I don't care very much who constitutes my reading audience. In fact the whole idea of narrow specialists only writing for other narrow specialists is one of the major problems of academia.I have always been too much of a populist to fit into American academia.  Populism is much more accepted in Africa. At any rate I hope by putting this link here that I can garner at least one more reader for this particular piece of writing. If not then at least enjoy the awesome cartoon in the right hand corner.

1 comment:

derRach said...

Dear Otto,

I have been unable to download your two papers:
1.
A Caste of Helot Labourers: Special Settlers and the Cultivation of Cotton in Soviet Central Asia: 1944-1956
2.
Suffering in A Province of Asia: The Russian-German Diaspora in Kazakhstan

after several attempts each. When I use the supplied hyperlinks, I do reach that web page, however all it does is display the title and then halts. Thus I am unable to peruse your articles.

Is it possible for you to forward these two papers as email attachments?

Regards, derRach