“UNABLE TO RESIST”: ON THE “POSSIBILITY” OF “IMPOSSIBILITY” AND CHRISTOPHE BOUTON'S TIME AND FREEDOM

This essay reflects critically on Martin Heidegger's remarks about authenticity and death with the aid of Christophe Bouton's Temps et liberté (2002), translated by Christopher Macann as Time and Freedom (2014). It first raises general questions concerning the possible thematic relationship between human endeavoring (action) and the experiences of finitude and freedom. Heidegger's Being and Time is particularly useful for exploring this relationship, but certain problems emerge when using this text for accessing the essay's themes. To wit: there are good reasons for mistrusting readings of Being and Time as a “practical” guide for grounding action. Against the practical reading, the essay wishes to reclaim the ontological‐existential significance of Heidegger's text. Although Bouton's treatment of Being and Time excludes its ontological dimensions and is entirely practical, even to the point of disregarding certain theoretical risks inherent in this approach, Bouton's study is indispensable for situating Being and Time in a historical‐intellectual context, whereby the experiences of freedom and time are understood within certain metaphysical presuppositions rendering them difficult to establish together on reliable grounds. Following Bouton's lead, the essay shows that the hermeneutic differences between practical and ontological readings of Being and Time can be explored through reflections on what Heidegger might have meant by the term “Möglichkeit” (“possibility”), from which Bouton infers “freedom.” It is alleged that Bouton does not fully consider all of Heidegger's assertions regarding Möglichkeit, most problematically the claim that the human being's most essential “possibility” is its “impossibility,” that is to say, its death.     

Migration Under Uncertainty: “Try Your Luck” or “Wait and See”

Two types of uncertainty enter into the migration decision. First, current conditions in the destination region may not be observable. Second, the future evolution of conditions in both the origin and destination regions may be unknown. The first type of uncertainty can encourage speculative or “try your luck” migration, whereas uncertainty about the future acts in the opposite direction, deterring relocation. This paper presents a dynamic optimizing model of migration that incorporates both types of uncertainty. The model shows that in equilibrium uncertainty about the future is likely to be more important than uncertainty about present conditions in the decision to relocate.     

Unpacking “Accumulation By Dispossession”, “Fictitious Commodification”, and “Fictitious Capital Formation”: Tracing the Dynamics of Bahrain's Land Reclamation

We explore the interrelationships between the concepts of fictitious commodities, fictitious capital and accumulation by dispossession. We do so through a detailed examination of the dynamics of land reclamation in the Kingdom of Bahrain during the years 2001–2014. Particularly, we dissect in‐depth the ensemble of social relations and chain of events involved in two specific real estate projects, Norana and Bahrain Financial Harbour, that have come to symbolize Bahrain's neoliberal era. Reclamation was a unique process in which land was explicitly produced as a commodity for market purposes. Primary material of land deeds, company registration documents, and news articles were used to map out the social relations across the state–finance–real estate nexus. We emphasize that our understanding of accumulation by dispossession involving land is greatly enhanced if we view it as a process of reconfiguring the ensemble of social relations using fictitious commodification and fictitious capital formation.     

THE “INS” AND “OUTS” OF HISTORY: REVISION AS NON‐PLACE

Revision in history is conventionally characterized as a linear sequence of changes over time. Drawing together the contributions of those engaged in historiographical debates that are often associated with the term “revision,” however, we find our attention directed to the spaces rather than the sequences of history. Contributions to historical debates are characterized by the marked use of spatial imagery and spatialized language. These used to suggest both the demarcation of the “space of history” and the erasure of existing historiographies from that space. Bearing these features in mind, the essay argues that traditional, temporally oriented explanations for revision in history, such as Thomas S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, miss the mark, and that a more promising line of explanation arises from the combined use of Michel Foucault's idea of “heterotopias” and Marc Augé's idea of “non‐places.” Revision in history is to be found where writers use imagery to move readers away from rival historiographies and to control their movement in the space of history toward their desired vision. Revision is thus associated more with control than with liberation.     

Challenging “Islamic Fundamentalism”

The Challenge of Fundamentalism: Political Islam and the New World Disorder, Bassam Tibi. Comparative Studies in Religion and Society Series #9, Mark Juergensmeyer, editor. Against Islamic Extremism: The Writings of Muhammad Sa^cid al-^cAshmawy. Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban, editor. Qur'an, Liberation & Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Inter-religious Solidarity Against Oppression, Farid Esack.     

“Lachkabinett” und “großes Fest” der Physiker. Walter Grotrians “physikalischer Einakter” zu Max Plancks 80. Geburtstag

“Funhouse” and “Big Celebration” of the Physicists. Walter Grotrian's ?Physical One‐Act Play”? for Max Planck's 80th Birthday. On the occasion of Max Planck's 80th birthday on April 23, 1938, a “big celebration of the physicists” (großes Fest der Physiker) was celebrated at the Harnack‐House in Berlin. The festivities were organized by the German Physical Society. Part of the ceremony was a “Physical One‐act‐play” (Physikalischer Einakter) written by the Potsdam astrophysicist Walter Grotrian. The actors of the humorous play were chief protagonists in the development of quantum theory such as Debye, Sommerfeld and Heisenberg. In this essay we analyze Grotrian's drama against the background of both the festive event and the professional and social setting of the physicists. We argue that below the level of comedy a number of characteristic and normally unexpressed aspects of the epistemic culture of the German physics by the end of the nineteen‐thirties is treated in the play.     

BETWEEN GENOCIDE AND “GENOCIDE”

The two books discussed here join a current pushback against the concept (thus also against claims for the historical occurrence) of genocide. Nichanian focuses on the Armenian “Aghed” (“Catastrophe”), inferring from his view of that event's undeniability that “genocide is not a fact” (since all facts are deniable). May's critique assumes that groups don't really—“objectively”—exist, as (by contrast) individuals do; thus, genocide—group murder—also has an “as if” quality so far as concerns the group victimized. On the one hand, then, uniqueness and sacralization; on the other hand, reductionism and diffusion. Alas, the historical and moral claims in “defense” of both genocide and “genocide” survive.     

Proselytizing Islam — Problematizing “Salafism”

This article discusses the contemporary European setting pertaining to Islamic interpretations, mainly so called Salafi Islam. The empirical material is based on publications by a Swedish group that conducts street da?wa, aiming to proselytize among non‐Muslims. The ideology, as presented in official publications to be used for da?wa, is described and analyzed as part of a larger da?wa‐movement with Salafi‐inclinations in Europe. The group is not unique, but rather one example of many in Europe, at least concerning the activism advocated. The presentation of the group serves to reflect upon global influences and similarities among contemporary Islamic da?wa activism, as well as effects that the national context has on the choice of predominant themes addressed by the group as well as interpretative strategies used. The overarching aim with the article is to problematize the common usage of the concept Salafi among scholars of religion to describe and characterize contemporary Islamic groups of various kinds. The conclusion calls for a more nuanced approach concerning conceptualizations and the use of typologies in studying contemporary Islamic groups in a minority setting.     

U.S. Latina/o Muslims Since 1920: From “Moors” to “Latino Muslims”

This article provides a historical overview of the development of the U.S. Latina/o Muslim community. U.S. Latina/os have been converting to Islam since the 1920s. Early converts were primarily found in African‐American‐majority Islamic communities, though there were some others who entered Islam through ties to Muslim immigrants. In both cases, the U.S.'s racist social system had brought the two communities together. In New York City during the 1970s, however, a group of around a dozen Latina/o Muslims felt that neither the African‐American‐majority nor the immigrant‐majority communities sufficiently addressed Latina/os' particular culture, languages, social situations, and contributions to Islamic history. To correct this, they created the first known U.S. Latina/o Muslim organisation, the Alianza Islamica, a group which fostered a “Latino Muslim” identity. Since that time, due to the growing numbers of U.S. Latina/o Muslims, as well as a tendency to foster ties with Latina/o Muslims in countries outside of the U.S., U.S. Latina/o Muslims are more and more adopting the “Latino Muslim” identity, which is now being promoted by several organisations and prominent leaders.     

Human capital sorting: The “when” and “who” of the sorting of educated workers to urban regions

The sorting of high‐ability workers is often advanced as one source of spatial disparities in economic outcomes. There are still few papers that analyze when human capital sorting occurs and whom it involves. Using data on 16 cohorts of university graduates in Sweden, we demonstrate significant sorting to urban regions on high school grades and education levels of parents, i.e., two attributes typically associated with latent abilities that are valued in the labor market. A large part of this sorting has already occurred in deciding where to study, because the top universities in Sweden are predominantly located in urban regions. The largest part of directed sorting on ability indicators occurs in the decision of where to study. Even after controlling for sorting prior to labor market entry, the “best and brightest” are still more likely to start working in urban regions. However, this effect appears to be driven by Sweden's main metropolitan region, Stockholm. We find no influence of our ability indicators on the probability of starting to work in urban regions after graduation when Stockholm is excluded. Studies of human capital sorting need to account for selection processes to and from universities, because neglecting mobility prior to labor market entry is likely to lead to an underestimation of the extent of the sorting to urban regions.     

Knowing “Good Food”: Immigrant Knowledge and the Racial Politics of Farmworker Food Insecurity

Abstract: This article explores the ways that farmworkers, many of whom come from a culture deeply rooted in food and agricultural practices, cope with food insecurity by utilizing their agricultural and nutritional knowledge. Food assistance providers in the USA often treat farmworkers' inability to afford healthy food as a lack of knowledge about healthy eating, reinforcing racialized assumptions that people of color don't know “good” food. I argue that in contrast to food banks and low‐income nutrition programs, home and community gardens provide spaces for retaining and highlighting agricultural, cultural, and dietary practices and knowledge. This paper investigates the linkages between workers' place in the food system as both producers and consumers, simultaneously exploited for their labor, and creating coping strategies utilizing agrarian and culinary knowledge. I argue that food security and healthy eating, rather than being a matter of consumers making healthy “choices”, is a matter of class‐based and racial differences in the food system.     

Organic Public Geographies: “Making the Connection”

Abstract: A new field of “public geographies” is taking shape ( Fuller 2008 ) in geography's mainstream journals. While much is “traditional”, with intellectuals disseminating academic research via non‐ academic outlets ( Castree 2006 ; Mitchell 2008 ; Oslender 2007 ), less visible is the “organic” work and its “more involved intellectualizing, pursued through working with area‐based or single‐interest groups, in which the process itself may be the outcome” ( Ward 2006 :499; see Fuller and Askins 2010 ). A number of well‐known projects exist where research has been “done not merely for the people we write about but with them” ( Gregory 2005 :188; see also Cahill 2004 ; Johnston and Pratt 2010 ). However, collaborative writing of academic publications which gives research participants authorial credit is unusual ( mrs kinpainsby 2008 ; although see Sangtin Writers and Nagar 2006 ). This paper is about an organic public geographies project called “Making the connection”. It is written by a diverse collection of (non‐)academic participants who contributed to the project before it had started, as it was undertaken, and/or after it had finished. This is a “messy”, process‐oriented text ( Cook et al. 2007 ) working through the threads (partially) connecting the activities of its main collaborators, including a referee who helped get the paper to publication.     

“Fraudulent” Citizens of a Small Town: Occidentalism in Turkey

Abstract: By looking at the electoral politics in a small town in Turkey, this article aims to illustrate how the political scene is polarised with counterpoised representations of East and West, alongside Occidentalist aspirations. The division supplies a set of ready‐made explanations regarding “backwardness, poverty and corruption”. However, although different frameworks are employed in line with the political orientations of respective parties, particular political demands and courses of action are systematically dismissed. The poor and the repressed are hardly listened to. Yet worse, they are “explained” in advance by the antagonistic pair of the East and the West. This article is an ethnographic exploration of how their demands fall in neither side, and how attending them could challenge the existing political realm.     

Das Problem der “entscheidenden Experimente”

In this historical essay an attempt is made to discuss the problem of decisive experiments both from the point of view of History of Science and of Philosophy of Science. The first part deals with Francis Bacon's idea of instantiae crucis and with the use of the term experimentum crucis mainly in optics. With respect to the experimental confirmation of Maxwell's electrodynamics the Duhem-Quine Thesis is discussed. Duhem had argued that not a single hypothesis but only a complete theory is examined by experiment. So a single experiment neither can prove nor can disprove a single hypothesis. With regard to Bucherer's and Neumann's data concerning the velocity-dependence of the electron's mass the question of the certainty of conclusions arising from experimental tests is treated. In the last parts the really historical problem of the decisive experiments is considered, namely the gap between the context of design of an experiment and the context of evaluation of an experiment in retrospect. The examples here are the Michelson-Morley experiment, the Franck-Hertz experiment, and the Compton-Effect. In the conclusion parity violation is discussed. Perhaps due to the possibility of a single alternative in theory and an unambiguous result of the experiment this test really was crucial. In general, however, the experimentum crucis will prove to be a very seldom event.