The best of times,the worst of times: Community-sector advocacy in the age of ‘compacts’

The recent introduction of written ‘compacts’ between government and community services organisations (CSOs) in Australia offers the promise of meaningful co-production of policy. However, recent research has highlighted that many in the community sector continue to perceive that there are significant constraints on their capacity to engage in advocacy. This paper examines the impact of the current governance regimes on the Australian community sector and explores the dimensions of these perceived constraints. The paper argues that both government and community sectors must make concessions and adjustments. Governments must accept that the use of contracting monopolies to stifle advocacy has weakened their capacity to deliver responsive services, while community organisations must accept that new governance regimes require new modes of participation in the policy process.     

Mitterrand’s Europe: functions and limits of ‘European solidarity’ in French policy during the 1980s

Abstract

This paper explores the conceptualization and interpretation of ‘European solidarity’ by the French President François Mitterrand. It discusses the relevance of former concepts of foreign and European policy. It differentiates between a European idea and European institutions, also taking into account personal experiences. Finally, it analyses the correlation between different concepts such as ‘European solidarity’, ‘transatlantic solidarity’, ‘West European solidarity’ and ‘pan-European solidarity’.     

Feminism and its ‘other’: representing the ‘new woman’ of Bangladesh

This essay examines women's oppression and organizing against gender violence in contemporary Bangladesh through the lens of television. I argue that the telefilm Ayna (The Mirror, 2006), written and directed by popular film actor and women's rights activist Kabari Sarwar, offers a window into the changing social and economic landscape of contemporary Bangladesh and the complex negotiations of power and inequality across gender, class and community. Furthermore, it offers an opportunity to unpack the social messages underlying development and modernization initiatives, the new kinds of alliances as well as dependencies engendered by them, and their multiple and uneven consequences. An investigation of the representations of competing and contradictory notions of women's subjectivity and agency in this telefilm allows us to understand how these intersect with shifting notions of local/global patriarchies, feminist solidarity and women's empowerment in Bangladesh today. Further, this essay illuminates the disjunctures between representations of the ‘new woman’ circulated through development and certain feminist advocacy narratives with women's lived realities of oppression, and survival.     

‘Cruising toward nuclear danger’: Canadian anti-nuclear activism,Pierre Trudeau’s peace mission,and the transatlantic partnership

In March 1982, news broke that the US Air Force planned to test cruise missiles in Canada. The issue brought the Euromissiles Crisis home to Canada, as Canadians took to the streets in record numbers to oppose the tests. Anti-nuclear activists linked their ‘refuse the cruise’ protests to anti-nuclear demonstrations taking place across the West. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau too saw testing in a transatlantic context, insisting they were part of Canada’s NATO obligations. Neither European nor American, the Canadians had an unusual place in NATO. Often, this translated to being completely ignored: transatlantic issues, including the decade-long Euromissiles Crisis, tended to be seen as US–Western European issues. This article considers the ways in which the Euromissiles Crisis came home to Canada and situates Canada in a broader transatlantic landscape. The Euromissiles Crisis framed Canadian debates over cruise missile testing, encouraging activists and politicians to think about how the threat of nuclear war could be reduced.     

Heritage and gastronomy: The pursuits of the ‘new tourist’

Abstract

The main thrust of this text is to acknowledge the relationship between gastronomy and heritage as a key motivator for travel. Gastronomy, as a central part of culture, and its influence on other aspects of culture has received scant recognition from the academic world generated by tourism. Gastronomy, heritage and tourism are old friends; the relationship between them is mutually parasitic. Gastronomy's role as a cultural force in developing and sustaining heritage tourism is addressed, as is its increasing role as a catalyst in enhancing the quality of the tourist experience. Today's consumers’ search for an individual lifestyle is changing tourism and the ‘new tourist’ is using the holiday for acquiring insight into other cultures. Recent research and current market trends are examined to reveal the increasing significance of gastronomy to holiday choice. It is argued that gastronomy brings culture and cultures together. Place and setting enhance the food experience and arguably vice‐versa. Heritage and gastronomy combined make for an excellent marriage of tourist resources. The text argues that this combination is both used and viewed by the tourist. As such the tourist becomes engaged in cultural heritage to a deeper level.     

‘English Vinglish’ and Bollywood: what is ‘new’ about the ‘new woman’?

Bollywood’s transnational mechanisms offer a unique space to study gendered subjectivity. My article studies a specific Bollywood movie, English Vinglish (2012) to draw out the profile of the ‘new woman.’ Persistently, I question the ‘new-ness’ to the construction of women when the ‘new’ reiterates the values of tradition, nation, and family. The ‘new’ seems to exist as a particular and unique transaction between local traditions and the global spread of populations that make limiting conceptions of woman, nation, or family, anomalies in a world propelled by expanding market needs and demands. The ‘new’ while offering possibilities for women, concomitantly carries different exclusions based on class, religion, language, and other identities. Understanding the formation of gender under contemporary conditions of transnationalism requires attentiveness to an insidious partnership of possibilities and exclusions that makes it simplistic to think in terms of progress or regress.     

Tehran’s subway: gender,mobility, and the adaptation of the ‘proper’ Muslim woman

Tehran’s subway, the most affordable means of public transportation in the city, offers a useful context to study the relationship between women’s spatial mobility, the construction of self, and social production of space. This study focuses on Line 1 of Tehran’s subway that connects Tehran’s Bala Shahr (Northern Tehran) and Paeen Shahr (Southern Tehran) neighborhoods. This study draws upon 46 semi-structured interviews with women who were using subway Line 1 in the fall and winter of 2012. The average hour-long interviews examine how women’s emotional states as well as their perceptions of self and space vary as they traverse the city on Line 1. Representing a cultural as well as a spatial transect through the city, the perceptions of women on subway’s Line 1 convey the repudiation of the state’s attempt to promote a singular Muslim female identity. The findings suggest that similar to women’s perception of space, their gendered identities are constantly changing through the enhanced mobility that is facilitated by Tehran’s subway system. In contrast to what is presumed in the West, with a simple change in their hijab style or make-up, Iranian women innovatively negotiate contrasting spaces.     

Cultural attraction, ‘soft power’ and proximity: the popularity of Japanese language in Hong Kong since the 1980s

This paper discusses the cultural attraction, ‘soft power’, and importance of cultural proximity to the popularity of the Japanese language in Hong Kong over the last three decades. Exploration of both primary and secondary sources constitutes the main research methodology employed. Email surveys and face-to-face interviews were undertaken to ascertain the nature and degree of the cultural attraction that stimulates local people's interest in learning Japanese language and culture. The paper concludes that Japan's ‘soft power’, i.e., popular culture and cultural products, are the most influential driving forces behind the popularity of Japanese language in Hong Kong. Also, the Japanese cultural proximity to the Chinese is another factor that excites local people's interest in learning Japanese as a foreign language. In the Hong Kong context, geopolitical and national identity factors do not seem to detract from the popularity of the Japanese language.     

New regionalism in Turkey: questioning the ‘new’ and the ‘regional’

Turkey’s regional policies are inspired by the new regionalism theory. During past two decades, key concepts of new regionalism, including knowledge economies, specialization, networked cities and innovation, have been incorporated in policy documents. At the same time, Turkey comes from a strong central state tradition that controls local and regional development. At first insight, new regionalism and strong central state control do not fit in the same frame. This research analyses the trajectory of regional policies in Turkey with the aim of explaining how these seemingly incompatible policies can coexist. It argues that regional policies developed at the central state level utilized new regionalism as a part of the strategy to maintain power in the course of transformation of the nation state.     

The ‘radical humanism’ of ‘Cap Anamur’ / ‘German Emergency Doctors’ in the 1980s: a turning point for the idea,practice and policy of humanitarian aid

Abstract

Historiographies of humanitarian aid and aid agencies alike had suggested an ever-growing politicization and militarization following the end of the ‘cold war’. But already in the 1980s, the field of humanitarian aid underwent extensive changes; new aid agencies no longer relied on Christian ideas of charity or leftist internationalism, short-term aid gained new importance and an ever-growing disaster awareness can be observed. The relief organization ‘Cap Anamur ’/’ German Emergency Doctors’ (GED) was founded in 1979 with the purpose of saving the so-called ‘boat people’. Typical for its time, it ascribed to a pure and innate humanitarian impulse summarized under the term ‘radical humanism’. Using the example of GED the article sets out to scrutinise the policies of this new humanitarianism that can be summarized as ‘controlled demerging’. The article brings into focus humanitarian aid as such, its own logic deriving from a particular idea of humanitarianism, considering both site-specific practices and also specific policies that are not necessarily congruent with political or economic interests. It becomes clear that the basis for the new political meaning humanitarian aid gained from the 1990s onwards was already laid by the humanitarian-aid agencies themselves.     

‘Our lives,our fortunes,and our sacred honors’: The Kansas Civil War and the revolutionary tradition

New England settlers used the history of the American Revolution in their struggle against the proslavery party in Kansas territory. As the settlement of Kansas became increasingly politicized over slavery, New England settlers drew on the history of their Puritan and Patriot ancestors to legitimize their actions. Although the New Englanders were a minority of the Kansas population, they nonetheless claimed a privileged understanding of the meaning of liberty in the United States. The free‐state political movement used these claims as an effective propaganda tool. The New England settlers, and the free‐state movement, claimed to be acting on the principles of the Revolution. At times, free‐staters argued that their struggle surpassed the Revolution in significance. Eventually, later Kansans concluded that the Kansas Civil War had been, not a revolution itself, but the prelude to a national Civil War of revolutionary significance in its spread of human liberty.     

Chile,October and November 2019: ‘Feel’ and field-work in times of crisis

One of the most important social upheavals in Chile since the end of the dictatorship started in October 2019, and continued until the coronavirus outbreak in March 2020. The event affected the ethnographic fieldwork that we, four anthropologists, were conducting at that time. This article draws on the recognition that, while being in different geographical locations, our respective experiences involve similar affects. Drawing on feminist epistemology, we have utilized these emotional experiences as a methodological tool to spark curiosity and open up a space for reconsidering fieldwork as ‘feel-work’. Our respective positioning, in terms of national and emotional feelings of belonging as well as physical location, created affective dissonances that raised uneasiness while at the same time opening up a productive space to think about fieldwork as an experience of ‘out-of-place’ bodies and ‘out-of-place’ feelings.     

‘Enlightenment takes hold of our lands’: translating and publishing in Volhynia and Podolia in the 1800s–50s

ABSTRACT

This article uncovers the role of self-employed translators in one of the distinctive regions of Eastern Europe – the Volhynian and Podolian provinces. These lands belonged to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until they became governorates of the Russian Empire in the 1790s. By exploring the memoirs of the landed nobility and cultural elite from this geographically and intellectually contested area, this article discusses the importance of translation during the crucial period of search for national and cultural identity, and debates the cultural transfer of ideas in the homes of local petty nobility in the 1800s–50s. The article also analyses the problem of reading, discusses the book’s importance and the variety of ways it could be read in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By tackling these problems, the article attempts to decode the meaning of Enlightenment for the provincial szlachta in the 1800s–50s.     

‘What’s left of the flag’: the Confederate and Jacobite ‘lost cause’ myths,and the construction of mythic identities through conflict commemoration

The use of battlefields and associated conflict sites provide tantalising hooks upon which to hang tapestries of grand narratives relating to regional and national identities, often defined by what the identities are not. This paper examines the unlikely connection between Jacobite and Confederate romanticism, and how battlefields, conflict related sites, and symbolic material culture are mobilised through active commemoration by some heritage groups in support of a created, mythic identity of a ‘Southern Celt’. Furthermore, it examines the production of a mythic history that whitewashes and recasts the Confederacy, the reality of the Civil War, and the Confederate Flag, while at the same time minimising, hiding, or ignoring competing narratives.     

America’s ‘Religion of Civility’ and the Calvinization of the World

This article examines the importance of Calvinism in producing the public/political “mind-set” of the United States, and how, after the Second World War, the export of this mind-set was as significant as the export of democracy, rock-’n’-roll, jeans, and Coca-Cola. It discusses the historical legacy and evolution of Calvinism from a civil religion to a religion of civility, and how the form and manner of Calvinist thinking—more specifically its ethic and aesthetic—has persisted in a secular manner so that much that Calvin would have found damnable is now intrinsic to the “religion of civility.” It then concludes that the central principles and practices of this religion of civility have had success within nations already “Christianized” but, perhaps understandably, not outside of that sphere.     

Tibetan livelihoods and the ‘Great Development of the West’:Modernization,pastoral resources,and the ‘urban future’ of the grasslands

1.Introduction Rural livelihoods in Tibet2 have,during the last fifteen years,undergone fast and profound processes of economic transformation and state-led modernization,both in the TAR and the Eastern parts of the Tibetan plateau.Local life styles have changed at a pace rarely seen in an area where people subsisted,until the late 1990s,almost entirely on nomadic mobile livestock production.New local socio-economic structures with peculiar characteristics have emerged.They include the decline of traditional livestock-based (mobile) pastoralism;the emergence of a ‘post-pastoral’ economy based on the extraction of medicinal fungi for Chinese and international markets;and the emergence,often from below,of new arrangements governing rangeland access and usage.     

‘Poor heathens’, ‘Cone-headed natives’ and ‘Good water’: the production of knowledge of the interior of Australia through German texts from around the 1860s

This essay critically reviews the textual archive related to the two German mission stations in the South Australian Lake Eyre basin: the Lutheran Hermannsburg mission at Killalpaninna and the Moravian mission at Kopperamanna. The multiple entanglements of these stations far beyond their missionary activity become evident through examining distinctly religious material, such as mission journals, and secular texts, in German-language newspapers and scientific journals. These include entanglement in German domestic affairs as well as German diasporic politics; and in debates over scientific advancement and British colonial expansion.