Mad cow militancy: Neoliberal hegemony and social resistance in South Korea

Massive protests shook South Korea through the summer of 2008. This political eruption which exhibited many novel and unexpected elements cannot be explained by pointing to basic political conditions in South Korea (strong labor unions, democratization, and so forth). Neither does the putative reason for them – to protest the new President’s decision to reopen South Korea’s beef market to the U.S. – adequately explain the social dynamics at play. In this paper, we examine the political geography of the ‘candlelight protests’ (as they came to be known), focusing in particular on their novel aspects: the subjectivities of the protesters, fierce ideological struggles, and differentiated geography. We argue that the deepening of neoliberal restructuring by the new conservative regime formed the underlying causes of these intense conflicts. In other words, the new protests should be seen as a response to the reinforced contradictions engendered by neoliberalization and a new alignment of social groups against the prevailing hegemonic conditions in South Korea. In this view, the huge demonstrations revealed vulnerabilities in conservative hegemony but failed to produce a different hegemony. To advance these claims, we examine three aspects of the protests: first, the neoliberal policies of the new conservative regime; second, the intense ideological conflicts around the media; and finally, the spatial materialization of the protests.     

Suppressing the Mad Elephant: Missionaries,Lamas, and the Mediation of Sacred Historiographies in the Tibetan Borderlands

The late-nineteenth century was a time of Protestant missionary enthusiasm for the “great closed land” of Tibet. Their prodigious, oftentimes proto-ethnographic, writings continue to provide scholars with archives that document missionary perspectives on Inner Asian society and religion, but few sources have yet emerged that allow for these to be read alongside Tibetan accounts of Christian-Buddhist encounters. This article undertakes such a parallel reading of four accounts of an unsuccessful attempt by the British missionary Cecil Polhill to convert an eastern Tibetan Buddhist abbot, Māyang Pa??ita, in late 1889. Understanding these texts as conflicting sacred historiographies, we note that these Christian and Buddhist writers shared a commitment to writing and to particular modes of emotional, material, and logical mediation as the “correct” path to religious certainty. Differences in genre, however, lead more to mockery and misunderstanding than to each side’s desired transformation of the other..     

Unearthing Women's Anti‐Mining Activism in the Andes: Pachamama and the “Mad Old Women”

Women play an important role in social activism challenging the expansion of extractive industries across Latin America. In arguing that this involvement has been largely unrecognised, this paper explores Andean Peruvian and Ecuadorian women's accounts of their activism and the particular gendered narratives that the women deploy in explaining and legitimising this activism. These discussions contribute to understanding the patterning of grassroots activism and making visible the gendered micro‐politics of resistance and struggle around natural resource use, as well as to understanding the gendered and strategic ways in which women contest dominant discourses of development.     

加拉帕戈斯 从火山到深海的世界尽头之旅

<正>锤头鲨,顾名思义,这种鲨鱼有着像锤子一样的脑袋,准确地说来,它们的脑袋长得如同一把榔头,而眼睛就长在头的左右两侧,距离非常远,看上去颇有几分怪异,不过也正是因为这样,锤头鲨才有了更为广阔的视野。锤头鲨的寿命通常有30～40岁。一般来说,锤头鲨的体长在4米左右,体重230公斤上下,生活在热带及温带海域。在今天,锤头鲨已经成为濒危动物,在加拉帕戈斯,你能够见到这些"水中巨头"的身影,其实还有赖于当地政府的保护,厄瓜多尔政府已经在加拉帕戈斯群岛的海洋保护区内为濒临灭绝的锤头鲨设立了禁猎区,让这些"水中巨头"可以有一片生存的净土。     

行摄西班牙 领略小而精致的别样风景

<正>西班牙,这个号称"出产阳光和海滩"的国家,是个享誉全球的旅游大国。截至2018年7月4日第42届世界遗产大会闭幕,西班牙共计拥有47项世界遗产,名列世界第3位。西班牙丰富的旅游资源,深厚的文化底蕴,以及热情的舞蹈,就像一个強大的磁场,吸引着世界游客频繁往来。建在云端的龙达小镇吃过早饭,我们从塞维利亚出发,前往西班牙安达卢西亚的龙达小镇参观。龙达小镇有3000多年的悠久历史。早在罗马帝国时代,一批旅人风尘仆仆地爬上这座750公尺的悬崖峭壁,发现这里地势险要,风景秀丽,河流丰沛,于是安营扎寨,建造出第一座房子。这白     

红树林里的小精灵 马来西亚沙巴Klias红树林湿地保护区

<正>在马来西亚沙巴州西南海岸的红树林保护区,居住着一种珍贵的灵长类野生动物——长鼻猴(proboscis monkey)。长鼻猴有着大得出奇的长鼻子,目前只有在马来西亚婆罗洲的沙巴、沙劳越等地的红树林中才能看到,属于世界濒危动物,也是马来西亚的国宝。     

折柳送别诗的民俗观照

“折柳”作为我国特有的送别习俗起源很早,因为“柳”在我国是“祝福”的象征,也是可以“驱鬼避邪”的“鬼怖木”;柳在中国古人心目中可以起到保护的作用,它既可以保护逝去的亲人的灵魂远行,同样保护活着的亲人路途平安。折柳送别的习俗植根于我国独特的传统文化,与我国古代人民的文化心理密切相关。