Deconstructing/Reconstructing Ethnicity

Abstract. Ethnicity is here viewed as a continuum, varying widely in terms of salience, intensity and meaning, along which several types of ethnicity can be distinguished. Domination ethnicity is where a nation imposes monocultural control – it can be regarded as a form of ethnicity. Enclosure ethnicity has three variants – dormant ethnicity, cultural confinement, and inward-looking ethnicity. Competition ethnicity competes over resources of the state and development. Finally, optional ethnicity is of low intensity and is light, volitional and fluid, as in the case of ethnic entrepreneurs and symbolic ethnicity. What is considered as well are the dynamics of ethnicity, shifting from one mode to another. The politics of ethnicity is here taken up in terms of emancipation and domination. Perspectives on ethnicity are framed by the changing meanings of ethnicity over time. The final question concerns the endgames of ethnicity, or the paths of change of different types of ethnicity, and how each relates to ethnic conflict regulation.     

Deconstructing the Financialization of Healthcare

Financialization is promoted by alliances of multilateral ‘development’ organizations, national governments and owners and institutions of private capital. In the healthcare sector, the leveraging of private sources of finance is widely argued as necessary to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 3 target of universal health coverage. Employing social science perspectives on financialization, the authors of this article contend that this is a new phase of capital formation. The article traces the antecedents, institutions, instruments and ideas that facilitated the penetration of private capital in this sector, and the emergence of new asset classes that distinguish it. The authors argue that this deepening of financialization represents a fundamental shift in the organizing principles for healthcare systems, with negative implications for health and equality.     

Deconstructing Context: Exposing Derrida

Deconstruction has become a theme in various strands of geographical research. It has not, however, been the subject of much explicit commentary. This paper elaborates on some basic themes concerning the relationship between deconstruction and conceptualizations of context, with particular reference to issues of textual interpretation. The double displacement of textuality characteristic of deconstruction is discussed, followed by a consideration of the themes of 'writing' and 'iterability' as distinctive figures for an alternative spatialization of concepts of context. It is argued that deconstruction informs a questioning of the normative assumptions underwriting the value and empirical identity of context.     

China in Australia: The Discourses of Changst

Abstract

China matters significantly to contemporary Australia in terms of trade relations, capital movements, education and global order. Australian public discourse on China, however, inhabits two conflicting parallel universes, one a narrative of economic complementarity, the other of fear and anxiety. The spectre of the rise of China haunts Australian society in and among these two spheres: one in which China’s economic rise is to be encouraged as a sign of it joining the capitalist world system, and the other in which China’s ascent is regarded as a threat to be contained. The paper examines this problematic discourse, calling it Changst [China angst], arguing that it is permeated with a developmentalist logic (Chakrabarty, 2000) that misreads China through the homogenising history of both capitalism and Eurocentrism. This reading of China as but a copy of Western capitalism evokes anxiety because its distinctive forms of capital flow disrupt the comforting teleology. Equally, when Chinese society, including its education system, is perceived as not-yet modern, this induces fear of cultural contamination from the outpouring of Chinese international students. The exploration of this anxiety is conducted via six Australian case studies, showing how China’s engagement with Australia produces intense but unwarranted angst.     

Deconstructing the Lapita Cultural Complex in the Bismarck Archipelago

Within the Pacific Islands, the archaeological phenomenon called the Lapita Cultural Complex is widely regarded as first appearing in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea and then spreading southward. This complex supposedly represents the sudden arrival of migrants from Island Southeast Asia with new technologies, foreign languages, and a different worldview. We question these interpretations and the assumptions behind them and suggest instead that current evidence supports the introduction of new cultural traits over several centuries, rather than the sudden intrusion of foreign migrants.     

Agency, Discourses of Power and Collective Representations: Socrates

Conference reviewed:
Socrates Intensive Programme 2003, University Of Vienna, 26 August–4 September 2003     

Scientific Discourse and Local Discourses: The Case of African Archaeology

To the extent that knowledge is the product of a complex construction of Nature-Culture facts more or less perpetuated, the challenge, for archaeology as science discovering and explaining the pasts for developees, is to learn how to manage: (1) its scientific “facts” more or less stabilized or hardened in function of precise, reproducible, universal “buildings of facts,” these facts being combined in networks and allied to specific societal facts, according to a dichotomy between Nature and Culture positioned as incommunicable poles of the world, and (2) traditional, ordinary, daily “facts,” local, contextual“facts” encountered during our activities, publications, lectures, and exchanges with everybody. These facts link approximately or unconsciously Nature and Culture, two poles we moderns have created and separated ontologically. How to produce a legitimate cooperation between these two conflicting discourses during the applications and the improvement of the processes which form, even in the case of archaeology, what is currently termed “development.”Pour l’archéologie en tant que science découvrant et expliquant les passés des peuples en voie de développement, le savoir étant le produit, selon les cultures, de fabrications complexes de faits de Nature-Culture plus ou moins pérennisés, le défi consiste à apprendre à gérer ensemble: (1) ses “faits” scientifiques, plus ou moins stabilisés ou durcis selon des “mises en fait” précises, répétables, universelles, ces faits étant établis en réseau et alliés à tel ou tel secteur de la société en question selon une dichotomie établissant la Nature et la Culture comme pôles incommunicants du monde; et (2) les “faits” de savoirs traditionnels, ordinaires, quotidiens, faits locaux, contextuels rencontrés durant nos activités, publications, cours et échanges avec tout le monde. Ces faits lient approximativement ou inconsciemment la Nature et la Culture, ces deux pôles que nous, modernes, avons créés et ontologiquement séparés. Comment légitimement, même en Archéologie, faire collaborer ces deux discours, en conflit lors des applications et améliorations des processus relevant de qu’on appelle couramment le Développement?     

Contemporary Iranian Art: The Emergence of New Artistic Discourses1

This article deals with the emerging discourses and concerns that have dominated the Iranian art community mainly since 1997. It discusses the existing, or rather conflicting, views of the current situation of the visual arts in Iran as expressed in recent artistic events, productions, and exhibitions as well as in critical reviews.² It does not fully discuss the variety of artistic genres in Iran, but examines the dominant ideas from the main opposing factions of cultural and artistic thought. It also aims at identifying the structural changes in Iranian art as well as the prevailing artistic policy of recent years.     

Coming to Terms with Asia in Discourses of Asia-Pacific Regional Security

Over the last decade there has been a proliferation of discourses on Asia-Pacific regional security. An analysis of the predominant discourses of regional security suggests that a new orthodoxy is emerging. This orthodoxy is characterised by attempts to create a 'fusion' between the dominant security and strategic concepts of neo-realism, neoliberalism and an 'Asian way' of security. Yet the way in which the difference of an Asian way of security is constructed in relation to the 'West' remains essentialist. Despite its regional focus, the new orthodoxy does not disturb the sanctity of the principle of sovereign statehood, nor does it unsettle the status quo of political communities within the nationstate. As a result, significant differences between and below the level of states in the region are not recognised.     

Ceramics and the Early Swahili: Deconstructing the Early Tana Tradition

Archaeological understandings of the Iron Age societies that developed on the East African coast and its hinterland have been transformed by exploration of locally produced ceramics. During the late first millennium, c. AD 600–900, sites across eastern Africa are characterized by ceramics known as early Tana Tradition or Triangular-Incised Ware, containing necked jars with incised decoration and a series of other jar and bowl forms in varying quantities. The recognition of this pan-regional tradition of pottery, known from an ever-growing number of sites, has been crucial in the reorientation of Swahili research to recognize the indigenous roots of the cosmopolitan coastal culture. This paper reports on the results of a ceramics project that has revisited excavated collections from a series of key ETT/TIW sites, analyzing sherds according to a single system and allowing true cross-site comparison for the first time. The results show regional diversity, in both form and decoration, particularly in the relative importance of the necked jar types that have come to stand for the early Tana Tradition more generally. While previous studies have hinted at regional diversity, such conclusions have been subsumed in discussion by the evident similarities between assemblages. Comparative results are here discussed against the background of previous research at the sites, and a series of conclusions about overlapping spheres of commonality are presented. Rather than critiquing previous work that has recognized this ceramic type, we seek to understand the remarkable distribution better by exploring its context and content.