Tokelau 1852 Exodus

The images of Fiji (and the Pacific generally) that were both employed and consumed at the international exhibitions of the late-19th and early-20th centuries — together with the stereotypes associated with such representations — exhibited a continuity that can be traced back to earlier accounts and displays of Pacific Island peoples. While attempts were made at later exhibitions to shift the focus of displays away from tales of ‘savagery’ and ‘cannibalism’ to those of ‘progress’, ‘civilisation’ and even ‘modernity’, the apparent popularity of Fiji's displays — as evidenced in contemporary accounts — remained firmly located in the appeal of the already existing ‘idea’ of Fiji. This article focuses on the representation of Fiji at two British imperial exhibitions: the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition, and the 1924 British Empire Exhibition, and demonstrates that the ‘idea’ or ‘knowledge’ of Fiji that audiences brought to the exhibitions, and despite the best efforts of display organisers — usually representatives of the colonial administration — to reposition Fiji within the minds of the metropolitan audience, visitors — as always — saw what they wanted to and in so doing reconfirmed their ‘knowledge’ of Fiji.     

Eric Voegelin as a Teacher's Teacher

ABSTRACT

Eric Voegelin was never interested in forming a school—his quest for truth was so Socratic that the last thing he wanted was people simply commenting on his own work. At the same time, his approach to the key texts of Western experience—and in his later years, of Eastern and archaic Neolithic and Paleolithic—blazed the way for his readers to get out there into that wide field of the human quest for transcendence and expand on his work in their own way. What this essay attempts, however sketchily, is to record his impact on my own teaching, with five samples of Voegelin-inspired courses I've developed. I begin with headlines from a philosophical effort at articulating an Irish Neolithic experience at Newgrange (3200 BC)—elsewhere, and following Voegelin, I've pushed that work back through Lascaux to Chauvet (32,000 BC). Then a brief mention of a Voegelinian reading of the beautiful Hindu Bhagavad Gita, followed by interpretations of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and finally, a critique of Richard Dawkins' God Delusion. While, over the years, my classes also expanded on The World of the Polis and Plato and Aristotle, what Voegelin always seemed to demand was for us to engage in what he calls ‘the quest of the quest,' rather than simply repeat him. That's why I see him as the teacher's teacher: he wanted you, as a philosophy lecturer, to get on with your own search, and to awaken in your students what he called ‘the Question as a constant structure in the experience of reality.’     

Grief as method: topographies of grief,care, and fieldwork from Northwest Arkansas to New York and the Marshall Islands

Abstract

When we grieve during fieldwork, our grief forms new geographies of knowledge production and emotion. In this article, I use autoethnography to theorize my grief during fieldwork following the death of my sister. I examine grief’s methodological implications using the concept of ‘grief as method,’ an emotionally-inflected practice that accounts for the vulnerability produced by grief. By centering vulnerability, ‘grief as method’ also urges researchers to consider the practices and politics of ‘caring with’ our research subjects and caring for ourselves, raising larger questions about the role of care in research. Furthermore, this article demonstrates how grief’s geographical features—its mobility, its emergence in new sites and landscapes, and its manifestation as both proximity and distance—shape ‘grief as method’ profoundly. I examine grief’s spatial implications by building on Katz’s ‘topography’ to theorize a ‘topography of grief’ that stitches together the emotional geographies of researchers, blurring both spatial divisions (‘the field’ vs. ‘the not-field’) and methodological ones (the ‘researcher-self’ vs. the ‘personal-self’). If we see grief as having a topography, then the relationships between places darkened by grief come into focus. Moreover, by approaching grief methodologically, we can better understand how field encounters—relationships between people—are forged through grief. ‘Grief as method,’ in offering a spatial analysis of grief’s impact on fieldwork, envisions a broader definition of what engaged research looks like and where it takes place.     

‘Knowledge that moves’: emotions and affect in policy and research with young migrants

ABSTRACT

Migration is an emotional experience, and so is the policy and research work associated with it. Yet, discussions on emotions and affect remain largely absent from the literature on children and youth migration. Writing auto-ethnographically, I revisit my research with/about young Lao migrants with the aim of teasing out how emotions, of young migrants, of my own and in policy making emerged in relation to various dimensions of young people’s migration. On this basis I make the case for appreciating emotions as knowledge. While emotions are ‘moving’ in an affective sense, I proceed by arguing the productive dimension of emotions through the idea of the emotive as ‘knowledge that moves’. I substantiate this point by discussing instances in which emotions as a particular form of knowledge ‘move’ research decisions, policy making processes, theorizing the youthful dimension of migration as well as the interpersonal relations through which ethnographic research is realized.     

Educated non-elites’ pathways to cosmopolitanism: the case of private degree students in Singapore

In this article, I explore a range of actually existing cosmopolitanisms performed by young people studying at a private higher educational institute in Singapore. Based on fieldwork over a period of eleven months conducted with these educated but non-elite youths between 2013 and 2014, I discuss how private degree students (a vernacular term) draw on various resources across different sites and domains of their everyday life to construct themselves, as well as their campus experiences, as ‘cosmopolitan’. Adopting an understanding of cosmopolitanism as a social practice, I argue that these young people perform three criss-crossing pathways to become cosmopolitan that unsettle dominant conceptions of cosmopolitanism as an elite cultural capital, disposition, and subjecthood within extant scholarship on international/transnational education. In particular, I explore these pathways through the framing themes of ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’, ‘cosmopolitan learning’, and ‘unanticipated cosmopolitan’. In doing so, the article adds texture and complexity to existing discussion about young people’s subjective views as well as practices of cosmopolitan citizenship in and through international/transnational higher education.     

Pocock,Machiavelli and Political Contingency in Foreign Affairs: Republican Existentialism Outside (and Within) the City

SUMMARY

In this essay, inspired by J.G.A. Pocock's appropriation of Machiavelli's theory of political contingency, and building upon my previous engagements with Pocock's ‘republican existentialism’, I focus on the role played by ‘accidents’ in Machiavelli's analysis of war and foreign affairs within The Prince and the Discourses. In so doing, I consider the following issues: the ways through which a potential imperial hegemon might consolidate control over nearby lesser powers—and, conversely, how such less powerful polities might resist imperial encroachments on their autonomy; the contrasting military modes and orders characteristic of ancient and modern republics; and the extent to which Machiavelli actually thought that accidents in foreign affairs were ever truly ‘accidental’ in light of his determinations concerning well- versus badly ordered domestic institutions.     

The map drawings of Aegidius Tschudi (1505–1572)

‘On a visit to Leningrad some years ago I consulted a map to find out where I was, but I could not make it out. From where I stood, I could see several enormous churches, yet there was no trace of them on my map. When finally an interpreter came to help me, he said: “We don't show churches on our maps.” Contradicting him, I pointed to one that was very clearly marked. “That is a museum,” he said, “not what we call a ‘living church.’ It is only ‘living churches’ we don't show.”

It then occurred to me that this was not the first time I had been given a map which failed to show many things I could see right in front of my eyes. All through school and university I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance to the conduct of my life. I remembered that for many years my perplexity had been complete; and no interpreter had come along to help me. It remained complete until I ceased to suspect the sanity of my perceptions and began, instead, to suspect the soundness of the maps.’

E. F. Schumacher, ‘On philosophical maps,’ A guide for the perplexed (New York, 1977).     

Teaching foreign policy analysis in Australia: on cultivating an ‘FPA disposition’

ABSTRACT

The United States-centric nature of the Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) subfield poses a range of pedagogical challenges, especially when the subject is taught outside North America. The preponderance of FPA literature written by US scholars and examining US cases can frustrate non-US students, who often wish to study decisions they consider more directly relevant to their own region and experience. I this piece, I reflect on how I have grappled with this tension in teaching a postgraduate FPA course at the Australian National University. I discuss my choice to prioritise cultivating an ‘FPA disposition’ among students and how, as a means of doing so, I chose to design a curriculum based on a semester-long case study examining the US decision to invade Iraq in 2003. While this pedagogical approach may initially seem contradictory to my long-term aim of contributing to the expansion of FPA beyond North America, it reflects my conviction that instilling an ‘FPA disposition’ in the next generation of graduate students is essential to growing and enriching the subfield in the long term.     

Distinctions,distinctions: ‘public’ and ‘private’ force?

This article evaluates recent literatures within International Relations on so‐called ‘private force’. It suggests that the conceptual weaknesses of much of this literature can be accounted for, in part, by a misunderstanding of the historical and sociological importance of the way power is organized and legitimated through shifts in the public—private distinction. This distinction is one of the primary mechanisms, if not the primary mechanism, for organizing political, economic and, therefore, military power. For the sake of historical accuracy and conceptual integrity scholars should abandon the terminology of ‘public’ and ‘private’ force. Tracing how public‐private distinctions shift and change as an effect of political power is a joint task for historical sociology and international political theory     

Going Against the Flow: Sinn Féin’s Unusual Hungarian ‘Roots’

Can states as well as non-state political ‘actors’ learn from the history of cognate entities elsewhere in time and space, and if so how and when does this policy knowledge get ‘transferred’ across international borders? This article deals with this question, addressing a short-lived Hungarian ‘tutorial’ that, during the early twentieth century, certain policy elites in Ireland imagined might have great applicability to the political transformation of the Emerald Isle, in effect ushering in an era of political autonomy from the United Kingdom, and doing so via a ‘third way’ that skirted both the Scylla of parliamentary formulations aimed at securing ‘home rule’ for Ireland and the Charybdis of revolutionary violence. In the political agenda of Sinn Féin during its first decade of existence, Hungary loomed as a desirable political model for Ireland, with the party’s leading intellectual, Arthur Griffith, insisting that the means by which Hungary had achieved autonomy within the Hapsburg Empire in 1867 could also serve as the means for securing Ireland’s own autonomy in the first decades of the twentieth century. This article explores what policy initiatives Arthur Griffith thought he saw in the Hungarian experience that were worthy of being ‘transferred’ to the Irish situation.     

Mill’s closet: J.S. Mill on solitude and the imperfect democracy

This paper focuses on the role solitude played in John Stuart Mill’s political thought. By doing so, it challenges contemporary appropriations of Mill’s thought by participatory, deliberative and epistemic theories of democracy. Mill considered solitude to be contrary to political participation and public debate, but nonetheless regarded it as essential for democracy and for intellectual progress. Since the early 1830s Mill began developing an idea of solitude while simultaneously forming a particular kind of a democratic model which I refer to as ‘imperfect democracy’. According to this model, democracy is restrained by non-democratic elements which offer a contrary spirit and are not incorporated by democracy. At first Mill believed the ‘leisured class’ would fulfil this task, but later considered solitude as a possible solution. This paper follows the way in which these ideas were crystallised in Mill’s thought, and by doing so offers a novel interpretation of Mill’s political thought and his nuanced understanding of solitude, political participation and democracy.     

The future could be too much fun

Abstract

More than ever before, the twenty-first century is likely to throw into focus the age old question: ‘what am I doing with my life?’ Recent developments in neuroscience mean that a scientific understanding of consciousness is no longer out of the question. The rapidly expanding field of genetic medicine will soon allow single gene disorders such as cystic fibrosis to be treated routinely by gene ‘therapy’ and has already thrown up complex ethical questions surrounding the idea of genetic screening for insurance purposes. And the latest directions in computer science have the potential to challenge our ideas of reality, as well as confusing our understanding of the distinction between information and knowledge. In this paper I revisit the notions of human nature and personal identity in the light of these advances.     

Hearing girls’ silences: thoughts on the politics and practices of a feminist method of group discussion

Many contemporary feminist research methods employed in the interest of realizing social justice advocate ‘listening’ to subordinated others, groups variously categorized and marginalized by gender, sexuality, race, age, and so on, in order to examine the sources and workings of knowledge construction and social power. Increasingly, feminist scholars are using group discussion or focus groups, in an effort to give subordinated others ‘a voice.’ Group discussions are seen as potentially empowering in exploring and enabling group members’ social agency and knowledge production while at the same time diminishing the unequal power relations between the researched and researcher. In this article, I argue that the attention given to ‘voices’ in group discussions (dis)misses meaning‐ful silences thereby limiting its political potential. There exists an ‘epistemological messiness’ inherent in a feminist group discussion method that makes it difficult to hear meaning‐ful silences. Through reflection on my own research into the spaces of adolescent Latina gender identities, this article offers some insights into this messiness and recommends that a feminist group discussion method be guided by a politics of voice which includes ‘silence within voice.’     

The Electrophoretic Revolution in the 1960s: Historical Epistemology Meets the Global History of Science and Technology**

This paper uses zone electrophoresis, one of the most frequently used tools in molecular biology, to explore two ideas derived from Hans-Jörg Rheinberger's reflections on experiments. First, the constraining role played by technical objects—instrumentation and material conditions—in the production of knowledge or epistemic things. Second, the production of interconnected experimental systems by such technical objects, which results in the unexpected entanglement of research fields and experimental cultures. By the beginning of the 1960s, the inception of zone electrophoresis in laboratories around the world transformed—some say, revolutionized—the study of proteins. Even today, electrophoresis continues to open research venues and questions in biomedicine, molecular biology, human genetics, and in the field of molecular evolution. In my essay, I seek to look at the interconnected lives of zone electrophoresis and address the broader social, and even global context, in which this apparently humble technique became a salient tool in the production of biological knowledge. In so doing, I aim to take the past and present of the history and historiography of experimental systems to the future, where experiments and technologies are interrogated as they are used in different geographies and contexts, including contexts of poverty.     

Warrior Women,the Holy Spirit and HIV/AIDS in Rural Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT This article analyses a group of Gogodala Christian women in the Western Province of Papua New Guinea who are referred to as ‘Warrior women’ and who pray, sing and call upon the Holy Spirit to cleanse their own bodies and ‘turn their eyes’, so that they are able to see those who threaten the health and well‐being of the wider community. These women have focused primarily on bringing male practitioners of magic — iwai dala — shadowy and powerful men who operate covertly and away from the gaze of others, out into the open. Whilst this has been happening for many years, the spread of HIV and AIDS into the area, fuelled by what many in the area believe is the rise of unrestrained female and male sexuality and the waning of Christian practice and principles, has meant that those perceived to bring harm to the community through their sexual behaviour have become recent targets for Warrior women. HIV/AIDS, referred to in Gogodala as melesene bininapa gite tila gi — the ‘sickness without medicine’ — is understood as a hidden sickness, one that makes its way through the community without trace until people become visibly ill. Warrior women seek to make both AIDS and those who, through their behaviour, encourage or enable its spread more visible. In the process, however, a small number of them are overcome by the Holy Spirit, so much so that they become daeledaelenapa — mad ‐ their behaviour increasingly characterised by childishness and uncontrolled sexuality.     

Kitchenspace: Gendered territory in central Mexico

Drawing on extensive ethnographic field research with multiple women and kitchens in two central Mexico communities, this article argues for kitchenspace—indoor and outdoor spaces where food preparation takes place—as gendered territory. Using a feminist political ecology approach, it explores private and semi-public space in the everyday, household kitchen and the fiesta or ‘smoke’ kitchen at the center of community celebrations. Marked as gendered territory by distinct social boundaries and gendered, discursive strategies, kitchenspace is vital to the maintenance of traditional forms of organization and generational transmission of cultural and embodied knowledge. This article questions assumptions about ‘the kitchen’ as a site of social isolation and women's oppression that often characterize feminist approaches. It considers embeddedness in local social and spatial contexts and the importance of everyday life in private and public spaces.     

The Cripps mission of 1942: A reinterpretation

In 1926, the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) was established to foster empire trade without the use of tariffs. It was to simulate imperial preference by redirecting consumer choice away from ‘foreign’ goods and towards the produce of ‘home and empire’. Using newspapers, pamphlets, film, exhibitions and poster displays, the EMB aimed to ‘bring the empire alive’ to British consumers. This paper analyses the presentation of three settler dominions—Australia, New Zealand and Canada—in the EMB's advertising campaigns. The EMB's large visual archive has been the subject of only limited study, most of which has focused on a homogeneous reading of empire. This article argues that the work of the EMB reveals the presence of a separate discourse of empire—a ‘dominion discourse’—that has not been recognised in cultural histories of empire, which, with the recent exception of ‘British world’ studies, have been more interested in mapping and conceptualising the formation of identities in other colonial settings. The ‘dominion discourse’ emphasised the familiar, white and ‘British’ nature of the former colonies of settlement, attributes that are clearly displayed in the campaigns of the EMB, but can also be found in settler culture much more widely. In doing so, the white dominions stressed not only their difference from the dependent colonies, but their similarity to Britain. Though the inter-war period is often associated with the rise of distinctive national identities and the loosening of imperial bonds, the production of these attributes in an imperial and metropolitan context draws attention to both the transnational nature of identity formation and the continuing importance of Britain and empire in the construction of settler culture in this period.     

Philanthronationalism: Junctures at the Business–Charity Nexus in Post‐war Sri Lanka

Over the past few years, the role of private sector organizations as actors and investors in development processes has received increased attention. This article explores the rise of ‘philanthronationalism’ in Sri Lanka: the co‐development of business and philanthropy methods as a response to patronage, nationalization and militarization in the post‐war environment. Drawing on ethnographic research into indigenous forms of corporate social responsibility (CSR), the article identifies four kinds of philanthronationalist practice — passive, assimilative, reactive and collaborative — that provide a logic, mechanism and ethic for private sector development initiatives in the island whilst promoting a vision of the ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ nation state. Noting the emergence of similar philanthronationalist practices in Myanmar, the article concludes by arguing that the Sri Lankan case is unlikely to be unique and calls for further research into the partnerships that emerge between private philanthropy and nationalist movements in conflict/post‐conflict processes around the world.     

Researching ‘gay Cape Town’ finding value-added queerness

An initiative to market Cape Town as a premier gay and lesbian tourist destination has steadily gathered steam over the last decade. I set out to study this phenomenon thereby adding to conversations about the normalization and globalization of queerness. Rather than straightforwardly presenting my findings, however, this paper considers queer theorizing as an inductive process by detailing the answers I did not find in the field and the questions I did. Based on my close readings of queer theory, I went looking for resistance and therefore queerness in the normalized space of ‘gay Cape Town’. I was disappointed. But I did not instead find outright capitulation. Rather, in this process of queer's commodification, I found anxieties, cracks and fissures beneath a veneer of assured mainstreaming. I found an undetermined process that did not represent either ‘un-African-ness’ or ‘global queer homogeneity’ or ‘African-ness’ and ‘local queer heterogeneity’. I found not an un-queering through commodification, but a queer commodity struggling to gain a foothold in a nation in which the terrain for gay and lesbian politics has drastically changed in such a way that the market cannot be ignored. To grapple with these findings, I argue for a more ambivalent approach to queer theorizing.