This article examines the ways in which global heritage discourse has operated across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, from an ideological and historical perspective. Ideologically, I consider tensions between heritage preservation practice and religious traditions that share the same landscape or material culture. This discussion, which is relatively marginalized in the heritage literature, has an adverse effect on many attempts by heritage preservationists to mediate or resolve conflicts and contradictions surrounding this type of historic resource. Historically, I revisit the presence and inclusion of experts from the MENA region in the formative years of a global heritage ideology. In this discussion, I juxtapose the relative marginalization of the Middle East and North Africa in global heritage debates against the frequency with which sites and communities across this region are put in the spotlight of religion-driven heritage conflict. Addressing these two forms of (mis)representation, I aim to bring to the foreground the way in which heritage studies is implicated in the constructions of narratives about – not from or by – the MENA region.

Contrary to what is often assumed, norm-internalisation does not always lead to compliance. Normative judgements may be simultaneously internalised and outwardly rejected. Non-compliance is at times a result of hyper-awareness of the particular origin of norms, rather than an unwillingness of the would-be-recipients to do ‘good’ deeds, or their inability to understand what is ‘good’. Such is often the case for non-Western states, as I demonstrate in this article by utilising the sociological concepts of stigma and stigmatisation. In its inability to acknowledge this dynamic, which has its roots in the colonial past of the international order, the constructivist model of norm-diffusion commits two errors. On the one hand, it falls short as a causal explanation, conflating internalisation with socialisation, and socialisation with compliance. On the other hand, it reproduces existing hierarchies in the international system, treating only non-compliance as endogenously driven, but compliance as a result of external stimuli. As there is a great deal of correlation between non-compliance and political geography, such a depiction, coupled with the fact that most norms under scrutiny are ‘good’ norms, once again casts non-Western states as having agency only when they commit ‘bad’ deeds.

This article re-examines our understanding of modern sport. Today, various physical cultures across the world are practised under the name of sport. Almost all of these sports originated in the West and expanded to the rest of the world. However, the history of judo confounds the diffusionist model. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a Japanese educationalist amalgamated different martial arts and established judo not as a sport but as ‘a way of life’. Today it is practised globally as an Olympic sport. Focusing on the changes in its rules during this period, this article demonstrates that the globalization of judo was accompanied by a constant evolution of its character. The overall ‘sportification’ of judo took place not as a diffusion but as a convergence – a point that is pertinent to the understanding of the global sportification of physical cultures, and also the standardization of cultures in modern times.

Background: There has been an increased effort to understand the nature of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in non-Western cultures. In particular, growing research has examined OCD in China, but there are no comprehensive instruments that measure both OCD severity and heterogeneity for characterizing samples. Aims: A validated, comprehensive measure that could be used in China would provide researchers with a useful instrument for evaluating severity and heterogeneity of OCD in a non-Western culture, allowing researchers to better understand the universal and cultural components that play a role in the nature of OCD. Method: The current investigation presents data on the reliability and validity of a Mandarin translation of the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (CH-OCI) using both a student (n = 1950) and clinical sample (n = 50 patients with OCD; n = 50 patients with anxiety as a comparison group). Results: Results support the factor structure, convergent and discriminant validity, criterion-related validity, test-retest reliability, and internal consistency of the CH-OCI. Conclusions: Validation of the instrument permits researchers and clinicians to measure OCD presentation in Mandarin-speaking samples.