Nixon,Kissinger and the rapprochement with China, 1969–1972

Few would have predicted in 1969 that the new Republican administration of Richard Nixon would initiate a rapprochement between the United States and communist China during his first term as president. That he succeeded in doing so was helped by the severity of the Sino‐Soviet dispute, which erupted into armed clashes in the spring and summer of 1969. By the end of 1970 China made it clear that it would not only be willing to receive a presidential envoy, but also the president himself. Two missions to Beijing by Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger—one secret in July 1971 and the other public in the following October—paved the way for a presidential visit in February 1972. The talks in July and October 1971 and February 1972 covered a whole range of issues including the war in Indochina, the potential threat from Japan and relations with the Soviet Union. The most dif cult problem, however, proved to be that of Taiwan, where the American‐backed Nationalist government not only laid claim to be the legitimate government of the whole of China, but occupied the Chinese seat in the United Nations. A modus vivendi was eventually reached in February 1972, helped perhaps by the United Nations General Assembly vote in October 1971 which unseated the Taiwan regime in favour of mainland China. The US negotiating position was not made any easier by the intense rivalry between Kissinger and the State Department and the latter's exclusion from much of the negotiation process led to a last‐minute crisis which threatened the success of the entire project. While neither the United States nor China achieved all that they had hoped, Nixon's visit to China had an enormous symbolic impact and contributed to a reconfiguration of the global balance of power.     

Civilized Borders: A Study of Israel's New Crossing Administration

Abstract: At Israel's new border crossings with the West Bank, modernization has become the buzz‐word: not only referring to modernized mechanical means—a Wall, newly designed crossings, and micro‐mechanics such as turnstiles, signs, and fences—but also to new and sophisticated scientific technologies, such as sensor machines and scanners, and to modernized means of identification, such as advanced computer systems and biometric cards. This paper considers the transformation of the Israel–West Bank border to be a result of four major processes: reterritorialization, bureaucratization, neoliberalization, and de‐humanization. I utilize in‐depth interviews with top military and state officials and with human rights activists as well as a series of participatory observations to explore the on‐the‐ground implications of the borders’ transformation.     

Lobbying after 9/11: Policy Regime Emergence and Interest Group Mobilization

Does the emergence of a new boundary‐spanning policy regime shift the focus of well‐established organized interests, or does it mobilize new ones? In this article, I show that interest groups with a presence in Washington before 9/11 rapidly—but temporarily—shift their attention to the homeland security issues. Established groups' entrenchment in antecedent subsystems appears to buffer against widespread policy disruption and interest upheaval. However, a new set of previously latent groups opportunistically mobilizes after the regime is institutionalized. Newly mobilized groups replace those that retreat back to the regime's antecedent subsystems. Though the policy regime fails to resolve the jurisdictional turf conflicts that triggered its creation, the institutionalization of homeland security generates its own original, distinct government demand for lobbying. Interests that previously had no business in Washington before 9/11 took advantage of the new opportunities the regime offered without supplanting interests established long before the Department of Homeland Security and its congressional committees existed.     

“All Gone Now”: The Material,Discursive and Political Erasure of Bank and Building Society Branches in Britain

Abstract: This paper examines an apparent anomaly that lies at the heart of processes of financial exclusion within Britain. Given that the branch networks of banks and building societies have shrunk in size by about one‐third since 1989, a period during which the Government has launched a wide‐ranging set of policies to tackle financial exclusion, why is it that the issue of branch closure has been neutralised as a political issue? After providing evidence to show the extent of branch closure in Britain and illustrating the ways in which geographical research in particular has drawn attention to the nature of this problem, we look at the way the issue of physical access to financial services has been discursively and politically marginalised. We undertake a detailed history of public policy in the area, and the ways in which research funded by industry bodies and Government departments has been used and framed to build a pro‐market, neoliberal policy programme that constructs branch closures as natural and inevitable.     

Off‐road policing: communications technology and government authority in Somaliland

Prompted by the trend to see information and communications technology (ICT) as a tool for capacity building, this article asks whether the use of ICT has—or can—recast centre–periphery relations in a hybrid country such as Somaliland. Taking as its departure point Herbst's observation that a fundamental problem confronting African leaders concerns how to extend or consolidate authority over sparsely settled lands, it uses recent developments in Somaliland's coast guard and immigration police to assess ICT's contribution to changing security provision in remote and coastal areas. This allows for an analysis of Somaliland's law enforcement framework, the relationship between its politics and practice, the practical application of its coercive resources, and the Silanyo government's priorities and preference for consensus and co‐existence whenever security imperatives allow. It suggests that ICT can be a desirable operational tool or a variable in existing power networks, but that it does not represent a new mode of security governance. ICT's potential to connect Somaliland's government and populace, and politics and practice, is for now minimal, but identifying the ways in which security actors such as coast guards actually use ICT allows for a more accurate assessment of the variables shaping centre–periphery relations. Contrary to Herbst's observation, the Silanyo government does not need to overtly or systematically extend, consolidate or exert its authority in remote and coastal areas. Spatial metaphors such as centre–periphery help to clarify the situation, but the significance invested in them reflects western rationalities, rather than Somali realities.     

Ecological Modernisation and the Governance of Carbon: A Critical Analysis

Abstract: In this paper, we use insights derived from a critical evaluation of ecological modernisation theories to examine the origins and influence of new, market‐based, forms of carbon governance. Focusing on two key examples—emissions trading in Europe and the global market in offsets—we argue that ecological modernisation theories can help us understand the processes through which the seemingly intractable problem of climate change has been reframed as an opportunity to construct a new carbon economy and anticipate some of the tensions, contradictions and limits of such an approach. We then explore the governance dimensions of these novel market mechanisms, look at how they work, and then discuss whether, to what extent and for whom they work. We highlight a series of (un)‐intended consequences that flow from these practices and modes of governing. We conclude by discussing the significance of these observations both for debates on climate change and the governance of carbon and for theories of ecological modernisation.     

Pre‐Black Futures

Abstract: In this essay I look at the contemporary production of surplus life in liberal democracies, and how it manifests a new type of sovereign spatial power. This power operates through the capacity to exile individuals and populations who are defined—in advance—as risk failures. I investigate further the ways that these pre‐known risk failures are determined through historical and geographical processes of racial formation, arguing that certain kinds of bodies have become vessels for concepts of risk formed in anticipation of an inevitable future. This “inevitable future” involves the formation of populations, which I term Pre‐Black, who are projected as outside of the enabling web of pastoral power. Moreover, as a consequence of this pre‐failure, individuals and populations can be forcefully and, more importantly, “justifiably” removed from commonly held spaces and resources in a contemporary liberal form of sovereign dispossession.     

Complex security and strategic latency: the UK Strategic Defence and Security Review 2015

Whichever party or parties form the next UK government, a Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) is expected to begin soon after the general election in May. The review might be a ‘light touch’ exercise—little more than a reaffirmation of the SDSR produced by the coalition government in 2010. It seems more likely, however, that the review will be a lengthier, more deliberate exercise and one which might even last into 2016. For those most closely engaged in the process the challenge is more complex than that confronted by their predecessors in 2010. The international security context is more confused and contradictory; the UK's financial predicament is still grave; security threats and challenges will emerge that cannot be ignored; the population's appetite for foreign military engagement appears nevertheless to be restricted; and prevailing conditions suggest that the risk‐based approach to national strategy might be proving difficult to sustain. Two key questions should be asked of the review. First, in the light of recent military experiences, what is the purpose of the United Kingdom's armed forces? Second, will SDSR 2015–16 sustain the risk‐based approach to national strategy set out in 2010, and if so how convincingly? Beginning with a review of the background against which SDSR 2015–16 will be prepared, this article examines both enduring and immediate challenges to the national strategic process in the United Kingdom and concludes by arguing for strategic latency as a conceptual device which can complement, if not reinvigorate, the risk‐based approach to national strategy and defence.     

Utopian Promise or Burdensome Responsibility? A Critical Analysis of the UK Government's Building Schools for the Future Policy

Abstract: This paper critically analyses a nationwide school‐building programme in England: Building Schools for the Future (BSF). It is argued that, between 2003 and 2010, the UK Government's policy guidance for BSF represented a (re)turn to utopian discourse in governmental policy‐making, mobilised in order to justify a massive programme of new school building in the UK. In doing so, BSF connected with the promise of three further discourses: school(‐children), community and architectural practice. It anticipated that new school buildings would instil transformative change—modernising English schooling, combating social exclusion and leaving an architectural “legacy”. However, it is argued that BSF constituted an allegorical utopia: whilst suggesting a “radical” vision for schooling and society, its ultimate effect was to preserve a conventional (neo‐liberal) model of schooling. The paper highlights the critical role that notions of utopia might have in negotiating—and challenging—promise‐laden mega‐building policies like BSF. In doing so, it develops recent geographical research on utopia, education and architecture.     

New‐Build Gentrification and the Everyday Displacement of Polish Immigrant Tenants in Greenpoint,Brooklyn

In response to research that has downplayed or denied the reality of gentrification‐induced displacement, critical urban geographers have called for rethinking the concept of displacement. This article takes up that call by examining the impact of new‐build gentrification on the everyday place‐making abilities of Polish immigrant tenants in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Based on nearly four years of work as a tenant organizer, this article looks at the forms of “everyday displacement”—the ongoing loss of the agency, freedom, and security to “make place”—experienced by immigrant tenants who struggle to remain in the neighborhood. Drawing upon Lefebvre's spatial triad and Blomley's work on the social relations of property, this article argues that everyday displacement is experienced through the production of new spaces of prohibition, appropriation, and insecurity that constitute a form of neighborhood erasure.     

Erdoğan’s pragmatism and the ascension of AKP in Turkey: Islam and neo‐Ottomanism

This article aimed to analyze the ascension of Justice and Development Party—Adalet ve Kalk?nma Partisi (AKP)—in Turkey and its political measures regarding both Islam and the country's Ottoman past, in order to comprehend the party's role in a potential shift of Turkish national identity and in Turkey's relationship with the Middle East. The article does this through a content analysis of decrees, laws, and other measures taken by the AKP that emphasizes its cultural and religious policies, as well as revisiting literature produced about the subject. Analyzing Recep Tayyip Erdo?an's government during his time as Prime Minister (2003–2014), two noteworthy features come to light: its Islamic influence and its so‐called neo‐Ottomanist outlook. However, this article argues that besides an identity‐ and ideology‐based motivation, the AKP had pragmatic intentions in adopting such approaches, aiming to gather support both domestically and regionally.     

British national interest in the Gulf: rediscovering a role?

The British government is in the process of re‐energizing its relations with the Gulf states. A new Gulf strategy involving a range of activities including more frequent elite bilateral visits and proposals sometimes touted as Britain's military ‘return to east of Suez’ are two key elements of the overarching strategy. Such polices are designed to fall in line with British national interest as identified by the government‐authored 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS), which emphasizes the importance of security, trade, and promoting and expanding British values and influence as perennial British raisons d'etat. In the short term, the Gulf initiatives reflect and compliment these core interests, partly based on Britain's historical role in the region, but mostly thanks to modern day trade interdependencies and mutually beneficial security‐based cooperation. However, there is yet to emerge a coherent understanding of Britain's longer‐term national interest in the region. Instead, government‐led, party‐political priorities, at the expense of thorough apolitical analysis of long‐term interests, appear to be unduly influential on the origins of both the Gulf proposals and the NSS conclusions themselves. Without a clear strategic, neutral grounding, both the Gulf prioritization and the NSS itself are weakened and their longevity undermined.     

Scenarios for the digital age: Convergence,personalization, exclusion

The new media system that has emerged worldwide since the early 1990s is characterized by increasing use of digital technologies in every area and convergence between once distinct media. In Italy there have been a number of national variations on this global pattern: relative weakness of state regulation, a move away from the dominance of the system by 'generalist' television, a high rate of cellular phone use and a slower than average growth of Internet use. As far as consumption is concerned, the most common categories used to describe the emergent system—personalization of media, increased individual choice and mobility—do manage to capture some important aspects, in Italy as elsewhere, but they obscure others, notably the structural constraints limiting individual choice, the formation of new media microcommunities and, conversely, the exclusion of particular groups of citizens from full participation in the new system.     

BEYOND THE FOOD DESERT: FINDING WAYS TO SPEAK ABOUT URBAN FOOD SECURITY IN SOUTH AFRICA

Urban food security is a significant development challenge in sub‐Saharan Africa. However, the field is currently under ‐researched and under‐theorized. Urban food insecurity, where it is considered, has been viewed through a development studies lens that views food insecurity as a household‐scale problem. There has been significant focus on food deserts in developed countries as one way of engaging with such insecurity. The food deserts research views food insecurity through a social exclusion and food justice lens. This article introduces the food desert concept to provide a conceptual tool to begin to understand the spatial determinants of urban food insecurity, which are not well captured by the existing framings of food security in the region. Using data from a 2008 household food security survey conducted in Cape Town, the paper highlights gaps in the food deserts approach, most significantly its neglect of non‐market sources of food and of household decision‐making processes. The paper therefore concludes by suggesting a new approach which takes the household's assets, abilities and decision‐making as the starting point and overlays this with the market and non‐market foodscapes accessed by these households.     

Populism,Hegemony, and the Politics of Natural Resource Extraction in Evo Morales's Bolivia

Is populism necessary to the articulation of counter‐hegemonic projects, as Laclau has long argued? Or is it, as ?i?ek maintains, a dangerous strategy, which inevitably degenerates into ideological mystification and reactionary postures? In this paper, I address this question by exploring the politics of discourse in Evo Morales's Bolivia. While, in the years leading to the election of Morales, a populist ideological strategy was key to challenging neoliberal forces, once the hegemony of the new power bloc was stabilised, indigenous demands for emancipatory socio‐environmental change began to be perceived as a threat to resource‐based accumulation. In this context, the populist signifiers that originated in indigenous‐popular struggles were used by the Morales government to legitimise repression of the indigenous movement. I argue, therefore, that ideological degeneration signals a problem not with populism per se, but rather with the class projects and shifting correlations of forces that underpin it in changing conjunctures.     

Riding the Dialectical Waves of Gay Political Economy: A Story from Birmingham's Commercial Gay Scene

In this paper I aim to contribute to work addressing the relationship between dissident sexuality and gay political economy by providing a reconfigured Marxist exploration into the ambivalence of commercial gay space. Through the application of a central theme from Marx's Grundrisse—the civilising influence of capital—I propose a means to move beyond an Althusserian view of commercial gay space as a contained ideological incorporation of capitalist hegemony, to that of a capitalist embodiment of constraints and radical possibilities. Focusing on the commercial gay scene of the UK's second largest city, Birmingham, and the survival of a monthly British Asian gay club night therein, I explore the dialectical waves of capitalism. These waves drive conditions which both differentiate identity‐based production/consumption to the assimilative relations of exchange value, and accommodate moments of cultural creativity that feed off this continual differentiation and escape its economic relations in the formation of radically new use‐values.     

Globalisation Lived Locally: A Labour Geography Perspective on Control,Conflict and Response among Workers in Kerala

Abstract: Supported by the labour geography framework, I analyse how spatial practices of labour shape the economic geography of capitalism, by looking into a model not at a global but at a very local scale of organisation and showing its effectiveness while confronting social actors organised at global or extra‐local scales. Questioning global stereotypes on economic responses to globalisation, I argue that labour becomes actively involved in the very process of globalisation and the expansion of capital, empirically demonstrating the relevance of this in the globalisation literature. I deal with one region—Kerala—and processes in its labour markets, taking the case of apparel workers in an export‐promoting industrial park.     

Historic and symbolic violence in the Romani Fuenteovejuna by TNT-El Vacie: Gender,ethnicity, and interculturalism

Abstract

I address here the performance of Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna undertaken by TNT-El Vacie, giving particular consideration to the ways in which Antonio Álamo’s adaptation, Pepa Gamboa’s direction, and the staging of El Vacie, a company composed exclusively of Roma women, constitute a site of resistance as well as a performance of gender, identity, and place. From this vantage point, I wrestle with issues of agency, dialogism, and intercultural communication to make sense of ontological as well as hermeneutic aspects of the performance text: deletions and additions; orality and authority; meta-theatricality and self-reflexivity; acting and becoming. In addition, I bring to bear the fact that the name of the company, El Vacie, bears witness to the impoverished settlement or shantytown where the women reside, which stands within a mere two hundred yards of the theater where the play is performed. The name of the company signals the identification of the actresses with the marginal space in which they live, enriches the text, and further complicates their reading of Fuenteovejuna by adding levels of referentiality and indexicality that redefine boundaries as well as processes of exclusion and inclusion. While this is not the first collaboration between TNT and El Vacie—it was preceded by the successful and award-winning 2009 staging of La Casa de Bernarda Alba—I consider this performance a particularly important contribution to the construction of a historicized cultural politics of identity that makes the Romani community visible by positioning the women of El Vacie center stage as participants, creators, and interpreters of the national cultural patrimony. Through this cultural intervention, certain spaces and markers of the Roma community acquire visibility as they get inserted into a national historical discourse from which they previously had been historically excluded.     

Emissions Trading,New Enclosures and Eco‐Social Contestation

Abstract: The central operating strategy within the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and most of the advanced capitalist world's environmental policy is to address climate change through the market mechanism known as emissions trading. Based upon government issuance and private trading of emissions reductions credits and offsets, this approach quickly rose to $135 billion in annual trading. But in the wake of the collapse of climate negotiations in Copenhagen and a world financial crisis which undermined market faith in derivative investments, carbon trading has an uncertain future. Linkages between deep‐rooted financial market and emissions market problems are revealing in spatio‐temporal terms, especially in the context of a deeper overaccumulation crisis and investors’ desperate need for new speculative outlets. It is in the nexus of the spatial and temporal aspects of carbon financing amidst resistance to “new enclosures” by adversely affected peoples, that broader‐based lessons for global/local environmental politics and climate policy can be learned.     

“Peace is Our Only Shelter”: Questioning Domesticities of Militarization and White Privilege

Abstract: This paper traces how Los Angeles peace activists tried to make visible the grave domestic effects of Cold War militarization. Women Strike for Peace went beyond a focus on the productive relations between the state, military and industry captured by the term “military–industrial complex” to analyze how reproductive spaces were part of this complex. In opposing war, they challenged what I am calling militarized domesticities: how war‐making shapes the ‘home front’ and home as the spaces national security states claim to protect. I build on feminist antiracist intersectionality theories to situate the military–industrial complex per se within broader processes of the militarization of society and daily life. The questions become how do gendered processes of militarization—that work in conjunction with relations of white privilege—produce and connect differently situated “private” spaces or home places? How might strategies for dismantling the military–industrial complex emerge from the contradictions of these processes?