Post‐Kyoto? Post‐Bush? Towards an effective ‘climate coalition of the willing’

Weak early compliance with the Kyoto Protocol's current emissions reduction targets and the longer term impact of the US's defection point to emerging problems for the Protocol's effectiveness and legitimacy. This article argues that such problems could in part be addressed by shifting the emphasis of negotiations over the Protocol's second commitment period away from attempts to reengage the United States. Instead, these negotiations and key actors like the European Union should aim for a framework and 'culture of compliance' that actively engage the 'emergent major emitters', China, India and Brazil, either by including them in the Protocol's Annex B list of states, or in a new annex created specially to accommodate them.     

History,Geography and Difference in the Post‐socialist World: Or,Do We Still Need Post‐Socialism?

Abstract: This paper seeks to build on ongoing work in east central Europe and the former Soviet Union—in geography and beyond—to think through the conceptualisation of post‐socialism. The rationale for this is threefold. Firstly, we see a need to understand post‐socialist conditions as they are lived and experienced by those in the region. Secondly, we seek to challenge the persistent tendency to marginalise the experiences of the non‐western world in a discourse of globalisation and universalisation. Thirdly, we identify a need to ask how the conditions of post‐socialism reshape our theorising more widely. Centring our analysis on history, geography and difference, we review a wide range of perspectives on the socialist and post‐socialist, but argue for a strategic essentialism that recognises post‐socialist difference without eclipsing differences. In outlining how we might understand history, geography and difference in post‐socialism, we draw on key theorisations from post‐colonialism (such as the articulation of the post‐ with the pre‐, the relationship to the west, the rethinking of histories/categories, the end of the post) and outline post‐socialisms that are partial and not always explanatory but nevertheless important.     

Try Again,Fail Again,Fail Better? War,the State,and the ‘Post–Conflict’ Challenge in Afghanistan

This article investigates the challenges currently facing Afghanistan. It argues that ‘post–conflict’ peace and reconstruction in Afghanistan may depend on a dramatic expansion of institutionalized economic interdependence: this will not necessarily require obeisance to standard international policy paradigms and it will have to draw on existing patterns of interdependence, even though many of these are rooted in brutally exploitative war economy conditions. The authors argue further that neither peace nor economic development will hold without a centralized, credible and effective state, that the emergence of such a state is a political problem more than a technical problem, and that it will depend on a monopolization of force by the state. Such developments cannot be envisaged without policy being based on a close reading of the long and decidedly non–linear, conflictual experiences in state formation and failure in Afghanistan, a history whose patterns and implications are summarized in this article.     

Post‐conflict Statebuilding and State Legitimacy: From Negative to Positive Peace?

This article is concerned with the potential that statebuilding interventions have to institutionalize social justice, in addition to their more immediate ‘negative’ peace mandates, and the impact this might have, both on local state legitimacy and the character of the ‘peace’ that might follow. Much recent scholarship has stressed the legitimacy of a state's behaviour in relation to conformity to global governance norms or democratic ‘best practice’. Less evident is a discussion of the extent to which post‐conflict polities are able to engender the societal legitimacy central to political stability. As long as this level of legitimacy is absent (and it is hard to generate), civil society is likely to remain distant from the state, and peace and stability may remain elusive. A solution to this may be to apply existing international legislation centred in the UN and the ILO to compel international organizations and national states to deliver basic needs security through their institutions. This has the effect of stimulating local‐level state legitimacy while simultaneously formalizing social justice and positive peacebuilding.     

The Immemorial Iranian Nation? School Textbooks and Historical Memory in Post‐Revolutionary Iran

Abstract. This paper is concerned with the fortunes of the pre‐revolutionary, Pahlavi nationalist narrative in post‐revolutionary Iran. The study analyses and compares pre‐ and post‐revolutionary school textbooks with the aim of demonstrating that, for all its revolutionary and Islamic‐universalist hyperbole, the Islamic Republic of Iran remained committed to the Pahlavi dynasty's conception of the ‘immemorial Iranian nation’ (or the ‘Aryan hypothesis’) as it was first articulated by European scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Post‐revolutionary Iran clung to the European/Pahlavi master narrative of Iranian history, its very basic ‘story line’. It was, therefore, subject to the same evolution, the same dialectic of remembering and forgetting, the same successive deformations, and the vulnerability to the very same manipulation and appropriation. This study, then, attempts to establish that the Islamic Republic's apparent shift from ‘Iran Time’ to ‘Islam Time’, though it reaches far beyond Iranian borders, nevertheless remains wedded to, and embedded in, the dominant European, secular traditions of the Pahlavi era. Islamic consciousness in Iran does not in any way constitute the basis for an alternative myth to the national myth. Rather, it adds Islamic terminology to the very same myth. Political Islam thus remains within the confines of Iranian nationalism. It is articulated in the framework of the symbols of Iranian nationalism, endowing them with a meaning that is supposedly religious.     

Whose Minerals,Whose Development? Rhetoric and Reality in Post‐Conflict Sierra Leone

Despite boosts in mineral exports, popular post‐conflict minerals‐for‐development reforms in Sierra Leone have failed to significantly reduce poverty. This article uses power as an analytical lens to explore the reasons for this failure, with empirical material from the diamond sector's mining cooperatives scheme (2005), the Diamond Areas Community Development Fund (DACDF), and Kono District. The study shows that there was no significant improvement along four dimensions: material deprivation, education and health, vulnerability, and powerlessness. The authors argue that understanding the impact of these reforms requires a nuanced multi‐scalar examination of power relations, actors, and the social, political, economic and historical context within which mining is embedded. Their findings point to: 1) limits to mineral‐led poverty reduction and the need for realistic expectations and diversification of livelihood opportunities; and 2) the need for interventions that balance power asymmetries and the way that power is exercised among diverse actors, wherein decentralization offers early hope.     

When Was Post‐Fordism? The Uneven Institution of New Work Practices in a Multinational

This paper considers the lineage of flexible or post-Fordist work practices. It traces the introduction and diffusion of new work practices within a major multinational enterprise (MNE), Eaton Corporation. The case study illustrates an important discontinuity in the way in which, in the US, the company abandoned its older established production locations in order to introduce its new work practices and philosophy. However, it also illustrates some of the continuities apparent across continents within the corporation's workplace restructuring from the 1960s through the 1980s. In the absence of significant union responses, the paper highlights the temporally and geographically uneven effects of a unified corporate strategy to introduce a new workplace philosophy and practices, highlighting the need for sensitivity to national and subnational contexts.
The word "restructuring" is cold and abstract and perhaps fails to convey the explosive change which has been taking place in Eaton. (Eaton Corporation 1983:2)     

AD536 – BACK TO NATURE?

A spate of archaeological, historical and scientific publications have recently argued that the dust veil from a volcanic eruption (or series of eruptions) caused climatic change, which ‘forced’ significant historical transformations in the middle of the sixth century AD. In this paper, I situate this phenomenon within a more general return to environmental determinism in archaeological explanation, a return which itself needs to be understood in the context both of contemporary fears about the devastation to be unleashed by the climatic change we have made, and of the rise of precise measurement in environmental and archaeological science. I do not doubt the reality of the climatic change reconstructed for AD536/546 but, given the coarseness of the dating of the historical transformations, I do question the causal connections drawn between the former and the latter. I suggest that for many archaeologists, the AD536 event (and similar phenomena) functions much as written texts once did – as both the framework for analysis and as the explanation of historical process.     

2Precious2Mine: Post‐politics,Colonial Imaginary,or Hopeful Political Moment?

Radical democrats and geographers have argued that democracy requires a vibrant contestatory politics to challenge the contemporary “post‐political” conjuncture. Despite suggestions of post‐political processes in Aotearoa New Zealand, there are signs of a more vibrant politics. In 2010 an environmental campaign called “2Precious2Mine” captured the national geographic imaginary. Drawing on this example, we argue that although a space was opened for a vibrant contestatory politics, its effects were paradoxical. The campaign both reinforced the hegemonic narratives of neoliberal (post)colonial Aotearoa New Zealand, and simultaneously produced moments that challenged this apparent post‐politicising trajectory. While we argue that such frameworks are useful, there is a risk that without cognisance of the situated nature of politics and closure, they both lose their political and academic explanatory purchase. Post‐politics becomes at risk of constructing that which it seeks to describe, while radical democracy ends up falling short of its aims.     

Two medieval ‘trepanations’ – therapy or swindle?

During the 1991–1992 excavation of the ruins of the medieval cathedral in Hamar, Norway, the broken skull of an elderly man was found, showing evidence of an incomplete trepanation. The ‘surgeon’ had obviously tried to penetrate the skull surface around bregma in an irregular circle of 23 × 21 mm. Upon investigation, the skull revealed a reactive‐pathological area of the internal surface of the occipital bone, which probably represents a respite after a meningeal disorder (a tumour or an infectious process), causing us to suggest that the trepanation was meant to cure the patient's increasing headache. However, as a second skull with similar marks was found in the same churchyard, another explanation seems possible. Because the brain tumour in the first case may have altered the patient's mental state, we may surmise that these incomplete operations were an attempt to remove from these patients' heads the ‘Stone of Madness’, which was then commonly considered to be the reason for psychiatric diagnoses as well as persistent headache, and often depicted in European art, most notably in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. The second skull, revealing an even more incomplete attempt, did not show any skeletal pathology at all. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fulfilling Promises of More Substantive Democracy? Post‐neoliberalism and Natural Resource Governance in South America

Benefiting from the commodity boom, progressive governments across South America have sought to move away from the neoliberal policies adopted previously by strengthening the role of the state and using revenues from commodity exports to address social concerns. This approach, often called neo‐extractivism, has become the main development strategy over the past 15 years. Yet, the increasingly intensive and extensive natural resource exploitation underlying this development strategy has also led to multiple protests and contestations across South America. This article thus examines the relationship between neo‐extractivism as a development strategy and the quality of democracy under progressive governments in South America. On the one hand, neo‐extractivism has allowed states to become more inclusive by paying attention to social concerns which in turn has been an important element in the legitimacy of progressive governments. On the other hand, the reliance on neo‐extractivism as the main development strategy poses important constraints on the ability of post‐neoliberal states to build more substantive democracies which could take into account a variety of positions, give citizens a say in decisions directly affecting their livelihoods, and promote public debates on key questions confronting society.     

Linking Up to Development? Global Value Chains and the Making of a Post‐Washington Consensus

Over the last decade, the global value chain (GVC) approach, with its associated notions of chain governance and firm upgrading, has proliferated as a mode of analysis and of intervention amongst development institutions. This article examines the adoption and adaptation of GVCs at four multilateral agencies in order to understand the purchase of value chain approaches within the development field. Mixing GVC perspectives with other theoretical influences and applied practices, these institutions deploy value chain frameworks to signal a new generation of policies that promise both to consolidate, and to advance beyond, the market fundamentalism of the Washington Consensus. To achieve this, value chain development frameworks craft interventions directed toward various constellations of firm and non‐firm actors as a ‘third way’ between state‐minimalist and state‐coordinated approaches. The authors identify key adaptations of the GVC framework including an emphasis on value chain governance as an instrument to correct market failure in partnership with state and development agencies, and upgrading as a de facto tool for poverty reduction. They find that efforts are ongoing to construct a ‘post’ to the Washington Consensus and that the global value chain is enabling this process by providing a new language and new object of development intervention: ‘the chain’ and the local–global linkages that comprise it.     

A Moldovan ‘sheep'? – framing Moldovan passivity

This article offers a different perspective for understanding Moldovan discourses of passivity by turning its attention to representations of national identity. Its main focus is a Moldovan ballad, Miori?a, and the way in which it discursively both frames and legitimises inaction. It builds on the idea that Miori?a is a central part of the way in which Moldovans represent their identity with respect to the writings of Ion Dru??, its main promoter in Moldovan society. More importantly, the ballad is conceptually linked to national characteristics such as lamentation and kindness, characteristics that can be summed up under the headline of ‘passivity’. Thus, drawing from constructivist and post‐structuralist approaches, the article stresses how these elements inform the Moldovan view of the self, its identity and even its representations of foreign affairs, framing the Moldovan lack of agency on a discursive level.     

Respacing for Peace? Resistance to Integration and the Ontopolitics of Rural Planning in Post‐War Burundi

This article investigates the politics and social impact of post‐war ‘respacing for peace’ strategies in Burundi from within a set of contested spatial arrangements — or rather, post‐war socio‐spatial experiments — including peace villages, IDP site clearances and land sharing. The author takes a critical look at these reconfigurations, and the resistances and manipulations that result when people (or their remains) are moved or placed in the name of coexistence, integration and sharing after the war. In this way, the article contributes to a post‐conflict planning literature that is mostly concerned with overcoming segregation and cleansing through integration, by exploring some of the complexities and problems that can arise with unquestioned embrace of the latter. It shows that a very particular and problematic logic of ethnic coexistence and physical integration drives post‐war respacing in Burundi and that people resist it with strategies in both physical and reflexive space. Proceeding through a set of paradoxes — such as the refusal to return and staying put, or re‐emigration as a response to settling — the article explores how and why respacing‐for‐peace might produce, or fail to prevent, the opposite outcome: community conflict, social tension and segregation.     

Divided Post‐Soviet Small Cities? Residential Segregation and Urban Form in Leninogorsk and Zyryanovsk,Kazakhstan

This paper maps and analyses ethnic and socio‐economic residential segregation in two small post‐Soviet mining and enrichment cities in Eastern Kazakhstan, Leninogorsk and Zyryanovsk. The study is based on data collected by the author in collaboration with the Eastern Kazakhstan oblast' statistical authority in an extensive questionnaire survey carried out during January 2001. The paper investigates the linkages between the physical spatial structure of small post‐Soviet cities and the socio‐spatial landscape that has unfolded in their context, and attempts to identify the principal factors that underlie the observed segregation patterns.     

Did Children in Medieval and Post‐medieval Poland Suffer from Scurvy? Examination of the Skeletal Evidence

Late‐medieval and post‐medieval writings report that scurvy was a widespread condition in medieval and early historical Poland. Archaeological and historical data indicate that the diet of children was based on foods poor in vitamin C and contained small amounts of raw plant products. Also, historians emphasise that in medieval and post‐medieval Poland, there were seasonal fluctuations in food availability, frequently accompanied by poor harvests. Both resulted in long periods of poor nutrition, which affected children most severely. The aim of this study was to investigate skeletal manifestations of scurvy in subadult remains from medieval and post‐medieval Poland. Following standards described by Ortner and colleagues, anatomical sites pathognomonic of scurvy in subadults (<17 years) were assessed for abnormal porosity and hypertrophic bone among skeletons excavated from three sites: Ostrów Lednicki (dated to the 11th–14th centuries AD), Cedynia (10th–14th centuries AD) and Słaboszewo (14th–17th centuries AD). In total, 3.6% of all examined children were found to bear traces of vitamin C deficiency. The prevalence of scorbutic lesions was 4.5% for Cedynia, 2.6% for Ostrów Lednicki and 3.6% for Słaboszewo. The majority of affected children were less than 7 years of age. Scurvy was likely more widespread in the living populations than it appears from the calculation of skeletal markers, because some individuals might have recovered or died before obvious traces became apparent. Also, in some children, scurvy might not have reached an advanced stage, identifiable in the skeletal material. The prevalence of scurvy reflects not only dietary patterns but also food storage and preparation techniques adopted in the Polish territories during the Middle Ages, which contributed to low intakes of vitamin C. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.