Decontextualized Knowledge,Situated Politics: The New Scientific–Local Politics of Rice Genetic Resources in Thailand

Recent practices of scientific–local knowledge interaction in Thailand surrounding rice genetic resources have led to a new phenomenon, which this article calls knowledge inclusion. This study explores several forms of knowledge inclusion —participatory science, localized science, scientized knowledge and hybridized knowledge— as new loci of political practices among government rice breeders, non‐governmental officials and farmers. Ethnographic studies are used to reveal that, through selectively incorporating elements of each other's knowledges, these scientific and local knowledge practitioners have drawn on the discourses of scientific–local knowledges to their political advantage. The ramifications of this new politics vary according to different political arenas in rice genetic resource management. Based on these findings, the article argues that recent practices of knowledge inclusion should not be obscured by the notion of situated knowledge, but should be understood as situated politics of decontextualized knowledge in genetic resource management. The argument reconceptualizes the new scientific–local politics as a synthesis between the power–knowledge relation and the power–structural context in which genetic resource management takes place.     

The President the US Needs Next?

Abstract

A New Bottom Line in American society should be the primary focus of America's next president. Institutions (including corporations and governments), social practices, and even personal actions should be judged rational, efficient and productive not only to the extent that they maximize money and power, but also to the extent that they maximize love and caring, ethical and ecological sensitivity and behavior, kindness and generosity, non-violence and peace, and to the extent that they enhance our capacities to respond to other human beings as embodiments of the sacred, and enhance our capacities to respond to the earth and the universe with awe, wonder and radical amazement at the grandeur of creation. Applying this focus to every aspect of American domestic and foreign policy would stimulate a spiritual revolution in American and global consciousness and open the possibility of global solidarity replacing chauvinist nationalism.     

‘White as Cheese’: A Discussion of ‘Jbene’, the Palestinian Oicotype of ATU 403

This article examines the oral versions of the Palestinian tale ‘Jbene’, an oicotype of ATU 403, focusing on the relationships between two plot details that neutralize each other: whitening the heroine, as an act of creation/blessing; and blackening her in an attempt to ruin/destroy her. Socio-cultural aspects are examined, taking into consideration the status of female sexuality in Palestinian society, as well as the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. The oicotype is viewed as both strengthening Palestinian collective identity and at the same time conveying messages to young women on how to handle their sexuality within a patriarchal society.     

Living With the Other's Pain: The Ethical Implications of Mitsein in Simone de Beauvoir's Le sang des autres

This article establishes that the suffering of the other represents a serious philosophical and ethical problem in Beauvoir's first post–World War II novel. In fact, the other's suffering poses such a complex problem in Le sang des autres particularly because Beauvoir depicts her characters’ world as a kind of Mitsein, which is Heidegger's word to describe how our lives necessarily intertwine with and envelop the lives of others while still allowing for the existential experience of separation. In the novel, the main characters’ potential responses to the other's suffering—quietism, indifference, charity, and empathy—fail according to the novel's existentialist ethical framework because of the ways these responses deny the fundamental ambiguity of Beauvoirian Mitsein. Only in accepting separation and connection as codependent ethical values do the characters find an ethically palatable response to the other's suffering at the end of the novel.     

Turn your trash into… Rubbish,art and politics. Richard Wentworth's geographical imagination

This paper analyses the photographs and installations of artist Richard Wentworth in order to examine his urban imagination and the cultural politics of rubbish that underlie it. In doing so this paper contributes more broadly to understandings of rubbish and material culture, and to geography's attention to artistic understandings and inhabitations of urban spaces. Central to this analysis are the geographies of Wentworth's work, its production, consumption and circulation. The paper attends to three nested sets of practices: the ‘everyday’ practices of people which draw Wentworth's eye, the potential of creative cultural practices for developing critiques of space and place, and the practices of the artist. As a result the paper pushes forward debates around the relationship between geography and art, reflecting on the analytical value of art practice to contemporary social-cultural geographies.     

Ethnic Minorities and the Politics of Identity in Iran

The present review essay is of a novel format: two authors working in the same field introduce each other's works, and then pose a number of questions to each other. The aim is to facilitate dialogue between scholars occupied with similar issues, theories, methods or problems, and to share their discussions with others. Here, Alam Saleh, Lecturer in Middle Eastern Politics, University of Exeter, and Rasmus Christian Elling, Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies, University of Copenhagen, introduce each other's recent books on ethnic minorities, identity and nationalism in post-revolution Iran. These introductions are then followed by questions and answers in relation to the topics covered by the books.     

Legal Pluralism and Hybrid Governance: Bridging Two Research Lines

Legal pluralism and hybrid governance are two lines of research that address the interactions between state (official) and non‐state (unofficial) norms. Both come to similar observations, yet they seem hardly aware of each other's existence. With very few exceptions, the one does not refer to the other. This article seeks to explore whether links can be established. It presents both lines of research, identifies common ground, explores what they can learn from each other, and seeks to find whether the distance can be bridged. It concludes that legal pluralism and hybrid governance could be mutually reinforcing if scholars in the two lines were aware of and used each other's findings and methods, and saw each other as complementary.     

The Meaning of Local in a Global Economy: The 'Region's Advocacy of Local Interests' as a Necessary Component of Current Global/Local Theories

Today's corporate strategy is resulting in the creation of a network enterprise. As geographic space is integrated in this strategy, it is not only the network enterprise that functions in a polycentric way, but also space. Therefore, a networked territory exists as another reality alongside the existing socio-political entities. In a global/local perspective, recent models of local economic development emphasize the role of the 'local' in local economic development. These theories stress the importance of socio-cultural environment, institutions and networking in local economic development. Without denying the importance of these characteristics, it is clear that even perfect 'local' conditions are not infallible localization forces. Just as globalization is not a kind of mystical force, neither are the forces of localization. To understand why there are winners and losers, localization forces must be regarded from the point of view of existing or absent common local interests and the local capacity to organize them. They are not mystical but they have very much to do with relationships of power not only within, but - resulting from the emergence of a networked territory - also outside the region. From this perspective the existence and the safeguarding of common local interests are not apparent. Local advocacy is therefore a necessity from the region's point of view.     

Science and society The natural–unnatural dualism

Abstract

Science provides knowledge that technology transforms into means of action. Their impact on society will depend on effective use being made of these means. The chemical and physical sciences have profoundly modified mankind's living conditions, chemistry in particular playing a central role. Its creative power has made available new materials and a range of new processes for transforming matter. As a result, the question of control of science by society has become more and more relevant. Effective control requires that the public and decision makers be provided with information for evaluating the potential impact of technology on society as well as for preserving the necessary freedom of scientific research and safeguarding the quest for knowledge.     

CONSUMING THE TOURIST GAZE: IMAGINATIVE GEOGRAPHIES AND THE REPRODUCTION OF SEXUALITY IN LUGU LAKE

Imaginative geographies engage with the understanding and experiencing of place and place‐based social and cultural specificities through a process of re‐creation and reproduction. In this article, we explore the imaginative geographies of Lugu Lake, a tourist destination in China's Yunnan Province, and of the Mosuo people, the local minority which practices a unique marriage system. We investigate how Mosuo society has been imagined in popular discourses and representations through two cultural labels: matriarchy and free sex. We also discuss how the imaginative geographies of Lugu Lake have restructured the encounters between the local people, especially the young men, and the incoming tourists in the context of tourism development. We interrogate the complex processes of identity formation in which both the tourists and the indigenous people renegotiate and reconstruct their cultural identities within various inside–outside connections and interactions. Our central argument is that the sex encounters between tourists and the local Mosuo are conditioned by popular imaginative geographies of the sexual practices of the Mosuo. But the encounter in tourism between the gazer and the gazed also accommodates complex identity formations and the renegotiation of social relations. The empirical observations are twofold: first, the locality of Lugu Lake has been reproduced with folk and tourist imaginative geographies into an erotic frontier of free sex; second, we also argue that the geographical imagination in this case is a reciprocal process which involves the local Mosuo's renegotiation of place‐based identity, in a pursuit of imagined progress and modernity.     

The disciplinary politics of antagonistic nationalism in militarized South and North Korea

After the Korean War (1950–53), the two militarized Koreas governed each and every member of society in similar ways through their disciplinary politics of antagonistic nationalism. The existing studies of state formation in the two Koreas have neglected an aspect of state power that was neither necessarily top‐down nor violent from above but also reproduced from below. In both South and North Korea, especially from the 1960s to the 1970s, state power had internal dynamics that penetrated the day‐to‐day activities of most citizens and led them to actively accept and participate in nationalist rule. This article explores an understudied aspect of the two Koreas' state power that was disciplinarily diffused in people's everyday practices through reproduction of aggressive nationalism from below and the organic construction of the individual body and nation.     

Chopsticks,phone bells and farms: Fuyuko Taira's diasporic spatial practice

In this article, I revisit my earlier project on local poetry practices by Japanese ‘war brides’ from the Second World War and explore a creative, transnational home-making activity by focusing on one of my informants, Fuyuko Taira's senryu poetry. Drawing on theories of global space and diasporic home-making practices, I suggest that her engagement in senryu involves a transnational spatial practice through the use of familiar everyday language. While the experience of displacement among Taira and other so-called ‘war brides’ cannot be understood without a consideration of socio-historical and economic constraints that characterized their emigration, my aim here is not to analyse how Taira's senryu simply reflects her diasporic victimhood but to explore how she exercises her creative agency to make her new home familiar and habitable by engaging with the everyday poetry practice of alternation between ‘pause’ and ‘move’ in the midst of changing landscapes. I argue that to a member of the Japanese diaspora like Taira senryu can be thought of as a different mode of experiencing at once the local and the global in an organic way.     

Not a Priority: Infertile Women and the Symbolic Politics of IVF in 1980s Britain

This article considers the early debates over state funding for in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment following the birth of Louise Brown in 1978 as a lens through which to re-evaluate attitudes towards womanhood, maternity and sexuality in 1980s Britain. The state's reluctance to devote resources to IVF reflected, in no small part, the financial imperatives on an overstretched National Health Service. Beyond financial considerations, the question of IVF funding sparked deeply gendered debates over the politics and social significance of motherhood and mothering, and the state's role in family planning and maternal and child welfare. In short, debates over IVF operated as a form of symbolic politics. Stakeholders – including patients’ advocates, women's associations, feminist activists and religious leaders – drew a clear link between the female body and the body politic and sought to articulate a policy towards both IVF treatment and infertile women more broadly that reflected their understanding of women's place within modern British society. Despite holding widely divergent views about gender, sexuality and motherhood, women's and religious groups found common ground in opposing state funding of IVF. This coalition facilitated the state's decision not to prioritise funding for IVF even as neighbouring countries, including Germany and France, embraced the procedure to help combat demographic decline.     

Home as a Pocket of Local Order: Everyday Activities and The Friction of Distance

Discourse on the information society currently highlights issues of networks, flows and mobilities as prime organizers and re‐organisers of time—space relationships. Such discourse promotes notions of the flexible use of time and space, of people's decoupling from place and even of the end of geography — the belief that distance does not matter. Yet, in this article we argue that the roles of geographical stationarity and proximity in everyday life — understood as the creation and maintaining of pockets of local order — indicate the continuing and often neglected importance of the friction of distance. We demonstrate this empirically by focusing on the home as a pocket of local order, investigating the intensity and spatial extension of people's everyday activities, projects and contacts — their corporeal, virtual and medial (media‐related) mobilities — with the world outside. We support our thesis with data from the population, household and individual levels.     

Introduction: Foreign travel,transnational sex,and transformations of heterosexualities

Transformation of heterosexuality in the context of transnational mobility has been much neglected in the scholarly literature. In this themed issue we bring together four articles to contribute to the debates about negotiations of heterosexual sexual relations and practices between European and North American women and local men at holiday destinations. The focus is on Euro-North American women's performances of heterosexuality as bound up with gender, race, age, and nationality. Each article uses ethnographic methods to demonstrate how transformation of heterosexuality is spatially and culturally contingent and contested in relation to normative expectations of heterosexual love, sex, and romance regulating women's sexuality both in the women travellers' home countries and in the destination of the encounters. More broadly, articles in this themed issue contribute to the emerging literature aiming to re-think heterosexualities.     

The Construction of the League of Nations Secretariat. Formative Practices of Autonomy and Legitimacy in International Organizations

This article investigates the formative staffing practices of the League of Nations Secretariat. Drawing on the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu, it argues that core traits of the League's institutional capacity and identity was produced through the institutionalization of recruitment practices in the League's formative years from 1919 to 1923. Through an exploration of early negotiations and practices of staffing, we show how the League built and balanced legitimacy, by combining a clearly international make-up of the League Secretariat with acute sensitivity to state interests, and autonomy, by defending the Secretary-General's exclusive prerogative of staffing, in a way that has been defining for the trajectory of international organizations (IOs) until today. The article thus turns to the institutional landscape where the individual and its surroundings meet: through the daily staffing practices of the Secretariat, it explores how an institution came to be, function and assert its influence as an autonomous and legitimate diplomatic agent in a broader international field. As such, the article, as an innovative contribution to the field, argues that international historians should connect thorough institutional investigations with elements of the ‘cultural turn’ in International History, in order to properly engage with and understand IOs as diplomatic actors.     

The Autocracy of Love and the Legitimacy of Empire: Intimacy,Power and Scandal in Nineteenth‐Century Metlakahtlah

This paper examines the politics of intimacy, power, and scandal at Metlakahtlah, a Church of England mission village in northern British Columbia, Canada, from 1862 to 1885, in order to cast light on settler colonialism and its aftermath. It particularly examines Metlakahtlah's main missionary, William Duncan, his relationships with young female converts and missionary women, and, perhaps more importantly, the stories that were told about them. Stories of Duncan's relationships with young Tsimshian women that circulated throughout settler society reveal the central place of sexuality to both critiques and defences of imperialism, and cast new light on contemporary politics around the historical experience of Indigenous children in settler colonies like Australia and Canada.     

‘I'd do it for love or for money’: Vietnamese women in Taiwan and the social construction of female migrant sexuality

Drawing on an ethnographic research in Vietnam and Taiwan, this article seeks to contribute to the global scholarship on migration and sexuality. It reveals interesting contradictions between the seemingly homogeneous stereotypes of Vietnamese women's sexuality, on the one hand, and the multiplicity and fluidity of actual sexual practices in real-life contexts, on the other hand. First, the presence of a number of chaste migrant women in our study challenges the common stereotype of female migrants as hypersexual and promiscuous menaces on the loose. Second, we question the emphasis on women's material greed and instrumentalism in normative discourses about Vietnamese women's engagement in extramarital relationship. While for some women in our research, sexual liaisons outside marriage are indeed orchestrated for financial gains, for others, extramarital sex is principally sought as a form of self-actualisation or an exploration of sexual pleasure and freedom that is absent from their marriage. The article emphasises the highly contextual nature of sexual norms and practices as well as the intersectionality of race, class and gender in the social construction of female sexuality in the context of transnational labour migration.     

The impotence of being earnest? Avoiding the pitfalls of ‘creative middle power diplomacy’

This article critically evaluates Australia's ‘creative middle power diplomacy’, encapsulated in the three pillars of the Labor government's foreign policy platform. It notes that each pillar has been accorded specific roles in the implementation of Australian foreign policy and makes particular reference to the government's preference for multilateral engagement. The article subsequently demonstrates that such an agenda actually impedes a creative approach to key issues such as trade, climate change and non-proliferation challenges, as well as Australia's participation in Asia-Pacific order-building. It then offers some suggestions for a more flexible posture that is not inconsistent with past Labor approaches, but which also better appreciates regional and global complexities.