Con-artists or entrepreneurs? Fripperers and market space in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Paris

Medieval prohibitions abound against artisans selling stolen or bloodied goods, and refabricating used clothing to deceive customers. Such prohibitions have led scholars to suggest the secondhand trade in the Middle Ages was one of poverty or marginality. Yet, if we read trade regulations carefully and alongside other types of sources as well as consider the context of a late medieval economy undergirded by credit, a complex image of fripperers materialises. This was a trade populated by both men and women of various means vying with each other and other merchants and artisans for control of retail space. This paper works to uncover the economic and cultural standing of fripperers in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Paris and the commercial space of Les Halles.     

‘Life in Happy Land’: using virtual space and doing motherhood in Hong Kong

This paper examines how a group of Hong Kong working mothers use the internet in performing and realizing their paid work and domestic role identities. The internet is a technology-enabled space and also what Michel de Certeau calls a ‘practiced place’, where its nature and functions are necessarily determined by the actions and practices of agents. Through participant observation and the analysis of a sample of chatroom and forum messages from a user-driven Hong Kong-based parenting website called Happy Land, I examine the relationship between this virtual space and its users. I find that the website has developed beyond its technology-mediated nature into a community of face-to-face friendships and social and emotional support. In effect, this virtual space plays a role in the social reproduction of the contemporary dual-earner family by enabling working mothers who use the website to perform roles in production and reproduction respectively.     

(Re)Producing and challenging gender in and through urban space: women bicyclists’ experiences in Chicago

This research, which uses an intersectional feminist methodological approach, explores the relationships and intersections among women, public urban space, and bicycling, and the gendered processes through which the use of space is claimed, negotiated, and constrained. It builds on the existing scholarship on the gendered nature of public space, and uniquely uses bicycling as the site of inquiry. Drawing primarily from interviews with women cyclists in Chicago, this article explores how gender and other social identities are constructed, challenged, and constituted through an interaction with public space, urban processes and structures, and societal expectations and attitudes. It brings to the forefront and centers these narratives and empirically contextualizes them by linking the scholarship on the gendered (and raced, classed, and sexualized) nature of public space with the scholarship on women’s participation rates and barriers to bicycling. This research examines, through the everyday lived experiences of bicyclists and their multiple subject positions and privileges, how the gendered nature of public space affects the participation and experiences of women cyclists; how public space is negotiated and constrained; and how gender can be both (re)produced and challenged in and through urban space via women bicyclists’ actions. In particular, the research findings explore how women bicyclists must demand and negotiate public space; how their movement and activities are constrained in public space; how gender roles and social reproduction issues intersect with bicycling; and how social, quasi-advocacy group bicycle rides are used as a strategy, with mixed results, to address barriers to women bicyclists’ mobility.     

The Bourbon monarchy and prison legislation in Sicily: two competing plans for reform (1826–1830)

The nineteenth century was a critical phase in the construction of European penitentiary systems. The eighteenth century had seen the evolution of the concept of punishment and the corresponding development of the practice of imprisonment as central to new ideas about penal sanctions. As a result, between 1830 and 1848 grand plans to reform prison systems were put forward in almost all the larger European countries. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies played its part in this process: an innovative reform plan was developed here, ahead of the rest of the Italian peninsula, which was fully implemented between 1832 and 1845 but had its origins in an earlier period, being given its initial impetus by modernisation on the legislative front. Sicily was particularly rich in terms of legal experimentation in this area. Here, informed by the most recent developments in contemporary science, plans to reform prison legislation were produced as early as the 1820s; these attest to the interest with which lawyers, philanthropists and government officials approached the issue. The analysis of two plans discovered in the Archivio di Stato in Palermo is especially helpful in demonstrating the existence of a ‘workshop for prison legislation’ that addressed concrete problems while also being the manifestation of a sophisticated legal culture.     

‘Unclaimed territory’: childhood and disordered space(s)

This paper explores adult discourses in literary references which revolve around the relationship between childhood and disordered space. This association is often constructed as a positive expression of the romantic innocence of childhood and nature, but it can also be construed as negative in cases where ‘little devils’ are let loose in hazardous urban settings. The complex dynamics of disorder relating to childhood are discussed in terms of the disorders both of nature and of injustice. The paper argues that childhood needs to be conceptualized less in terms of innocence and more in terms of otherness. Disordered spaces in these terms represent territories of becoming-other, where rhizomatic scrambling of adult-ordered striated space makes room for upwellings of the immanent othernesses of children.     

Community Forestry and Tree Theft in Mexico: Resistance or Complicity in Conservation?

Community forestry is thought to diffuse the kind of tensions over access to resources that frequently make centralized forest management systems based on the principles of scientific forestry ineffective and conflictive. Centralized systems often create resistance, as communities whose vegetation management practices have been declared illegal by forest bureaucracies anonymously contest the restrictions imposed on them by ‘stealing’ trees and committing ‘arson’. These restrictions are intimately related to the requirements of scientific forestry, however, so co‐management strategies relying on scientific forestry might also engender various forms of internal resistance, such as tree theft. Local interpretations of justice in access to resources, together with community social structures and the distribution of resources can result in internalized resistance, rendering community‐based resource management ineffective. In a Mexican community case‐study, scientific forestry and tree theft co‐evolved during a period of concessions and continue under co‐management. This system creates an arena where anonymous individual resistance like tree theft can give way to forms of protest more likely to result in legitimate and effective forest management systems.     

Dead or alive? The holy man as healer in East and West in the late sixth century

A rigid distinction cannot be drawn between the living holy man as healer in Eastern Christendom and the dead man healing from his tomb in the West, since examples of both kinds of healing are found throughout the Mediterranean area. As examples of dead holy men working miracles from their tombs, a comparison is made between Martin, as described in the writings of Gregory of Tours, and Demetrius of Thessalonica. Nevertheless the dead holy man as cult-figure is more common in the West than in the East, because of certain differences between the pre-Christian religious in East and West. Roman law attached great importance of the sacrosanctity of a corpse, whereas in the East there was not always the same distaste for the dismemberment of bodies, though there are many exceptions to this general principle. The cult of the living holy man in the East may be a Christianization of the Greek notion of the hero. At any rate the cultural and spiritual unity of the Mediterranean area was such that the idea of the living holy man as healer could penetrate to Western Christendom.     

Life and Art in the Countryside: Happiness and/or Roman Virtue?

While the poets of the Augustan age described herdsmen and farmers indulging in fluteplaying, singing and lovemaking, paintings from the same period give a different picture. When the inhabitants of the so-called sacred landscapes are not working, they are worshipping in rustic sanctuaries. This is characterstic of many Roman representations of country life down to late Antiquity. Though they may occasionally play a tune to their animals, the inhabitants of the countryside are mostly seen engaged in serious work. Theirs is not the joy of a careless existence, but rather the quiet happiness of those who have fulfilled their duties and respected the mos maiorum.     

Aretusa: continuity,rupture and space for intervention (1944–46)

This article focuses on the cultural activity of Aretusa (1944–46), a journal that was deeply connected to the inner circle of philosopher and politician Benedetto Croce (1866–1952). The article analyses the role played by periodical editors Francesco Flora (1891–1962) and Carlo Muscetta (1912–2004) in shaping the mission and direction of this journal. By drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, and the notion of hysteresis in particular, this study details the factors influencing the aesthetic dispositions, political positioning and the wider impact of historical circumstances on the cultural practice of each editor while at the helm of the review.     

On Ambivalence and (Anti-)Normativity (or,Theology as a Way of Life?)

ABSTRACT

This essay argues that queer theory’s ongoing reflection about its own disciplinary identity yields insights that could benefit contemporary political theology. Exploring how internal discussions and debates on the queerness of queer theory can serve as an instructive analogy for similar conversations about the “theologicalness” of political theology, this essay proposes two potential insights that can be gleaned. First, political theology should continue to draw on and do theology, but it should not worry about venturing outside the bounds of what is presumed to be the theological. Theological reflection develops from, and also engenders, communicative and critical expressions, which are deeply important theological modes of political theology, central to its identity even as they appear at times to broaden or stray from it. Second, political theology should look more to politics, broadly understood as the various ways of ordering human life and the utilization and manifestation of power in that structuring, for the theology it offers. In these ways and more, this essay concludes, political theology, like queer theory, is both theory and praxis, a body of knowledge and way of life.     

Development and Differentiation in the Post-Independence Era: Continuity or Change in ARDA-Sanyati Irrigation in Zimbabwe (1980–1990)

Abstract

The Agricultural and Rural Development Authority (ARDA), formerly known as the Tribal Trust Land Development Corporation (TILCOR), is a state agency which manages all the settler or outgrower schemes adjacent to its estates. In Sanyati, the colonial government endeavoured to secure the plotholders on the Gowe Irrigation Scheme but after independence emphasis was on making Gowe a ‘self-provisioning’ asset. With reference to Gowe-Sanyati, this paper explores development and differentiation processes in an attempt to discern elements of continuity or change in ARDA-Sanyati irrigation. The reactions of the Gowe irrigators to state policies that proscribed accumulation are a manifestation of the tension which was informed by Rhodesian-era evictions and resettlements. In pursuance of accumulation the plotholding households in Gowe were reluctant to perpetually serve as a labour repository of the main irrigation estate.

Government interventionist policies in the Sanyati schemes are examined. The paper argues that the availability of technical, financial and other resources after independence contributed to the cotton boom and an intensified commercialisation drive which gave rise to greater forms of differentiation compared with the colonial period. In addition, the paper analyses the tenuous or fragile relationships between the plotholders and the estate. The major bone of contention was the inadequacy of the plots allocated to the farmers and the highly detested lease agreement which hindered accumulation. Inconsistencies with people's aspirations after independence led to a ‘crisis of expectations’ among those who believed independence would bring more land and no charge (land rent) for utilising the land. Although various charges impoverished the growers, the paper argues that poverty did not preclude differentiation as distinct categories of resource-rich and resource-poor plotholders emerged in the post-independence era.     

A golden calf in sacred space?: The future of St Katherine's monastery,Mount Sinai (Egypt)

Abstract

The spectacular fortified monastery of St Katherine, continuously inhabited since the 4th century and with a library second only in historical significance to that of the Vatican, forms the epicentre of a sacred landscape surrounding Mount Sinai, in the southern Sinai desert (Egypt). This site, with religious significance for Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, is currently threatened by very rapid growth in visitation Jrom Egypt's new tourist resorts on the Red Sea coast, less than three hours drive away. Currently, 97,000 visitors per year arrive at St Katherine, 80% of whom are day‐trip visitors and many of whom stay less than half an hour. This represents a 300% increase in the last decade, projected to increase by a further 500% by 2017. Tourism pressure is having a serious effect on the sustainability of monastic life, despite efforts to limit visiting hours and access. This fieldwork‐based case study summarises the current impact of tourism in the Mount Sinai area suggesting that although high visitation levels have imperilled its spirit of place they have also, conversely, provided some measure of protection for both site and landscape in the current political climate.     

Aborigines,mining companies and the state in contemporary Australia: A new political economy or ‘business as usual’?

Since the early 1990s major changes have occurred in the legal, policy and institutional context within which mineral development occurs on Aboriginal land in Australia. This article assesses whether these changes have substantially enhanced the capacity of Aboriginal people to control mining and share in its benefits. It examines, in turn, the major actors involved in mineral development in Australia, the policy positions they are adopting and the way in which they are behaving in relation to mining on Aboriginal land. It concludes that while some Aboriginal groups are gaining greater control over resource development, many have failed to do so, reflecting the fact that the legal, policy and institutional environment remains largely hostile to Aboriginal interests. Only adoption by Aboriginal people of effective political strategies operating on a number of scales can change this situation.     

Health geography in New Zealand and Australia: global integration or Antipodean exceptionalism?

This paper examines the hallmarks of an emergent and distinctive Australian and New Zealand health geography over the last 30 years. Building on an assessment of the early development of the sub‐discipline in the two countries, a review of published work reveals the co‐presence of local themes alongside connections to more global perspectives associated notably with health behaviour. Further common themes are the influence of year‐round exposure to outdoor spaces and the proximity of “blue spaces” to urban centres. However, there are divergences in the evolution of the sub‐discipline. A comparison of attendance at the biennial International Medical Geography Symposia (held since 1985) with publications in the journal Health & Place reveals differentially globalised characters. A steady flow of international visitors and appointments to New Zealand universities as well as more apparent connections to the wider discipline of geography contrast with more applied geospatial and public health connections in Australian health geography.     

Spaces of Uneven Development and Class Struggle in Bolivia: Transformation or Trasformismo?

This article engages with the politics of class struggle and state formation in modern Bolivia. It examines how current forms of political contestation are shaped by the legacy of the Revolution of 1952 and the subsequent path of development. In so doing, we therefore explore spaces of uneven and combined development in relation to ongoing transformations in Bolivia linked to emergent class strategies of passive revolution, meaning processes of historical development marked by the overall exclusion of subaltern classes. With this in mind we argue that state formation in Bolivia can be read as part of the history of passive revolution in Latin America within the spatial conditions of uneven and combined development shaping the geopolitics of the region. However, the expansion of passive revolution as a mode of historical development has been and continues to be rigorously contested by subaltern forces creating further spaces of class struggle.     

Biotechnology and Food Safety in China: Consumers’ Acceptance or Resistance?

Although China is one of the world's largest producers and consumers of genetically modified (GM) crops and derived food products, little is known about the level of Chinese consumer awareness, understanding and acceptance of GM food. Initially, China pursued relatively aggressive policies for biotechnology development, but in recent years, the central government has become more sensitive to the potential environmental risks of transgenic food crops. To protect domestic biotech industries, the state plays a critical role in the politics of biotechnology, and does not allow GM food to become a prominent public issue. This contribution reports on a survey of 1,000 urban respondents. It demonstrates that most consumers lack the most basic understanding of biotechnology and its potential risks. The majority of the respondents (60 per cent) were either unwilling to consume GM food or were neutral about the idea, but when given neutrally‐worded information about potential GM food allergenicity, the willingness to buy dropped sharply. This might point to future scenarios of consumer resistance against GM food as has happened in European Union member states. This effect demonstrates the malleability of the Chinese consumer in a context of limited understanding and inadequate access to information.     

China and the United States in Africa: Coming conflict or commercial coexistence?

China and the US are two key players in the recent round of ‘scrambling’ for Africa. They compete for control over oil and other strategic resources, for markets, and for political influence. Their competition has alarmed many. This study tests the alarmist interpretations by identifying what the US and China are actually doing and to how they perceive each other's activities. Their ambitions are often considered in isolation. When laid out side by side, the extent to which their activities in Africa may overlap or clash can be seen more clearly. China and the US are seeking different things at different places in the continent and are careful not to upset one another. Their activities do not support the dire prediction. The ‘scramble for Africa’ may irritate; it is unlikely to cause direct confrontations because competition remains by and large economic and economic competition in an integrated global economy creates networks of constraints that ameliorate potential confrontation.     

Stray cats: Pets or pests? Cats and kittens everywhere in the medieval harbour site of Qalhāt (Oman)

The discovery of numerous cat remains, including many kittens, in various buildings (i.e., domestic house, cistern, mosque) of the ancient harbour of Qalhāt in Oman is unique among faunal assemblages in the medieval Arabian Peninsula. In this study, a zooarchaeological and taphonomic analysis (ageing, skeletal element distribution, pathologies) is conducted to understand the origin of the cats and to deepen our understanding of human–cat relations. Thus, concerning the cats found in Qalhāt, two hypotheses may explain their presence: they took refuge in one of the buildings and died in situ before the complete destruction of the structures, or the corpses may have been dumped in the structures during a phase of their abandonment, very likely for health reasons.