Entangled temporalities: Ghana's national biometric identity registration project

Biometric identity registration technologies are spreading throughout the world. Developing countries in particular, have recently been seen to construct biometric population registers in partnership with international donor organizations. This article traces the temporal entanglements produced by transnational policy mobilities in the inception and implementation of Ghana's national biometric identity registration project. In 2008, Ghana famously introduced the first biometric banking system in Africa. Yet, the e‐zwich payment system marked only the first step towards the current ‘craze’ for biometric identity registration in the West African country. Among the numerous biometric identity documents circulating in Ghana's national and subnational institutions, the national Ghanacard is the most interesting identity registration project in the country, both in terms of its population‐wide reach and the complex constellation of institutions, actors and ideas competing within the project. With a focus on the temporalities of policymaking, the article examines the project's fundamental future orientation, the temporal context of its production with its specific possibilities of imagining and acting upon certain matters, and the rhythms and schedules of project implementation. By doing so, it draws attention to some of the ways in which competing sets of ideas shape large‐scale investments in technology and infrastructure in Africa.     

Heritage and resistance: irregularities,temporalities and cumulative impact

Urban social change and large-scale demolitions in the name of urban renewal often give rise to social conflicts. In this study, we investigate how resistances to this change emerge, coalesce and revolve, and how they use heritage to generate cumulative impact. The analyses of urban change and resistance in Gårda, a working-class neighbourhood of Gothenburg, Sweden, showed social conflicts to be instigated by their stigmatisation. Since the 1970s, Gårda has been called ‘out of place’ and marked for demolition. These demolitions were given legitimacy by the ‘housing quality standards’ that emerged in the 1930s as a means to reduce social inequalities. Over time these standards became an ‘intangible heritage’ employed in neoliberal urban policies. In response, five ‘Re-Gårda’ resistance strategies emerged to contest Gårda’s future. Resistance groups uncovered new values for Gårda, curating the vision with the slogan ‘have a coffee in Gårda’, and structuring the narrative ‘upgrade Gårda’. This challenged the dominant discourse ‘demolish’ or ‘conserve’ Gårda, and resulted in a government decision to protect Gårda as a ‘heritage site’. Investigating heritage and resistance in Gårda helped us reveal the potential of resistance in challenging the limits of authorised urban and heritage discourses, and in realising socially equal and just cities.     

Making a home in Mostar: heritage and the temporalities of belonging

This paper addresses the feeling of being at home in time and in place through fieldwork carried out in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2015–2016. Such feelings are needed after a war resulting in geographical displacement as occurred during the breakup of Yugoslavia. This paper argues for the need to see beyond only spatial factors for the ‘making of home’, and therefore considers temporal factors through the role of the heritage in forming narratives, which combine temporal and spatial relations. Alternative narratives to those of ethnic separation are taken into consideration, and it is argued that a sole focus on division may further enforce it rather than lead to its reduction. A sense of disassociation to the current city of Mostar and its narratives has led to the construction of narratives of home within a different time-period (pre-war Mostar). In turn, this may cause nostalgia, passivity, and an ‘othering’ of the newcomers to Mostar. However, there are also cases of employing such a narrative actively in order to envision an alternative future beyond ethnic separation. So far, the institutions working with the heritage of Mostar have not addressed these issues, thus possible ways forward are suggested.     

Culture as a variable in comparative politics: A review of some recent literature

Bringing culture into the analysis remains a problem for comparative political science. The notion is too vague and elusive — we are reluctant to evoke that amorphous mass of beliefs, institutions and actions which comprise the political culture of any nation when trying to compare policy processes. Only when the interplay of familiar political variables fails to correlate is culture introduced as an explanation of last resort

Recent work seeks more rigour for a cultural variable. Drawing on the anthropology of Mary Douglas and the public policy of Aaron Wildav‐sky, ‘cultural theory’ argues that groups fashion their world in limited and predictable ways. Regime, belief and economy are subsumed by more fundamental choices about the organisation of collective life. Culture is people sharing values which justify social relations.

This paper sketches the premises and findings of cultural theory. It suggests some possibilities for comparative research — and the problems of testing this ambitious reformulation of political culture.     

Transport corridors and their wider economic benefits: A quantitative review of the literature

Transport corridors can generate both wider economic benefits (WEBs) and costs through their effects on diverse development outcomes. To advance understanding of how corridors could generate WEBs, this paper undertakes a quantitative review and meta-analysis of the literature that estimates the impacts of large transport infrastructure projects. The analysis finds that characteristics of individual studies and the design of the transport infrastructure influence estimated benefits. It also shows that, on average, while corridor interventions tend to benefit economic welfare and equity, they often detrimentally impact the environment. To mitigate trade-offs, policymakers can consider using complementary interventions.     

Related variety and economic development: a literature review

Since the introduction of the related variety concept in 2007, a number of studies have been undertaken to analyse its effect on economic development. Our review of 21 studies makes clear that most studies find support for the initial hypothesis that related variety supports employment growth, though some studies suggest that the growth effects of related variety may be specific to knowledge-intensive sectors only. From the review, we list a number of further research questions regarding methodology, the role of unrelated variety, different forms of relatedness and the effect of related variety on knowledge production and entrepreneurship.     

Repetition and uncanny temporalities: Armenians and the recurrence of genocide in the Levant

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a meditation on how memory and repetition are played out when experienced as both a historical event and an ongoing and returning possibility. Amongst the Armenian community in Lebanon repetition takes on a particular salience in the form of a haunting from the foundational genocide of 1915, a genocide that in recent years has been brought back with the events in Syria where family and kin have faced severe hardships, random killings, and destruction of entire villages. In this paper I over various fieldworks in Lebanon return to the incident of the cleansing of Kessab, an important Armenian village in Syria, and how such an event in today’s Syria points to past, present, and future forms of haunting but also the reconfiguration of affect. The same event draws different landscapes of the imagination, landscapes of fear, haunting, return, but also of resilience and responsibility in the meeting with the time to come.     

Attending to grape vines: perceptual practices,planty agencies and multiple temporalities in Australian viticulture

This article considers the agency of crop plants within sociocultural processes by examining how grape vines influence seasonal labour patterns in Australian viticulture and wine production. Drawing on ethnographic research within a large Australian wine company, I examine how vineyard managers and winemakers coordinate the timing of the grape harvest with the ripening of grapes. I argue that by making the harvest's approach perceptible to humans, chemical and sensory tests of grape ripeness precipitate seasonal changes in viticultural work—rendering grape vines active participants in patterning social time. Practices of attention to ripening grapes thus render the social agency of grape vines perceptible. I analyse these time-reckoning practices as a ‘learning to be affected’, in which human viticulturists actively strive through multiple sensory practices to become attuned to plants' activities. However, attending to the multiple practices used to reckon the ‘right’ time to harvest grapes also emphasises that these ways of enacting the times and agencies of crop plants may interfere or conflict with one another. Highlighting the emotional stresses and tensions between viticultural workers that this may generate, I suggest that agricultural time is both more conflicted and more suffused with power relations than theoretical accounts have typically indicated.     

On evolutionary economic geography: a literature review using bibliometric analysis

During the past few decades, there has been growing attention paid towards evolutionary economic geography (EEG) perspectives, methodologies, and concepts in various disciplines such as geography, urban studies, and regional science. In order to better understand the development of EEG studies, this paper employs multiple bibliometric analyses. Specifically, it examines the temporal evolution of keyword co-occurrence network and the reference co-citation network of EEG publications during the last few decades to reveal the temporal evolution and spatial distribution of EEG publications, scholarly communication, research fronts, and intellectual structure of the scientific field.     

Aboriginal people and Canadian geography: a review of the recent literature

A review of recent literature by Canadian geographers on Aboriginal people in this country suggests an increased focus on this important topic. This paper is organized by two main sections: the dispossession of Aboriginal peoples from their land and rights, and current attempts to contest and to redefine Aboriginal people's places in contemporary Canadian society. In both sections, I address representational strategies which transformed Aboriginal peoples and their lands conceptually, and the material transformations which accompanied them. I highlight evidence of Aboriginal people's responses wherever this material is available. Some remaining challenges to Canadian geographers are: integrating the research of people working as researchers for Aboriginal organizations, and institutions working with Aboriginal people into the academic milieu; including the voices of Aboriginal peoples in our research; and addressing under‐represented topics including urban Aboriginal peoples, reserve geographies, Métis peoples and Aboriginal women. Une revue des travaux des géographes canadiens au sujet des Aborigènes de ce pays révèle que ce sujet d'étude important reçoit de plus en plus d'attention. Cet article est composé de deux sections principales: la thématique de la dépossession des terres et de la privation des droits des Aborigènes, et les tentatives actuelles de contestation et redéfinition de leur place dans la société canadienne contemporaine. Dans les deux sections, j'aborde les stratégies de représentation qui ont transformé les Aborigènes et leurs terres du point de vue conceptuel, ainsi que les transformations matérielles qui les ont accompagnées. j'attire l'attention sur la réaction des Aborigènes à chaque fois que cette information peut être vérifiée. Certains défis sont encore à relever par les géographes canadiens: intégrer, d'une part la recherche effectuée pour le compte d'organisations aborigènes et d'autre part les institutions oeuvrant de concert avec ces peuples, dans le milieu universitaire; inclure le point de vue des Aborigènes dans notre recherche; et s'attaquer à des sujets encore trop négligés, notamment les Aborigènes en milieu urbain, la géographie des réserves, les Métis et les femmes aborigènes.     

Blue planet,Black lives: Matter,memory, and the temporalities of political geography

This article considers how the ontological challenges posed by the ocean's materiality and the porous boundaries of marine ecologies and economies aligns with scholarship emanating from Black and Caribbean thought to rethink the linear histories and unitary identities that underpin modernist narratives. Focusing on the debate in Bristol, England in 2020 and 2021 concerning the disposition of the toppled statue of slave trader Edward Colston, the article engages postcolonial Caribbean theory and art to problematise the linear temporalities associated with solid land and the singular histories that are narrated through fixed memorialisations. As an alternative, the temporality of the ocean is called upon, because of its specific role in the histories of Colston, Bristol, and British imperialism, but also because of the ways in which oceanic ontologies complicate accepted divisions between past, present, and future, between scales of experience and explanation, between rootedness and connection, and between life and death.     

近80年关于中国本位文化问题论战研究状况综述

20世纪30年代,由10位教授发表的<中国本位的文化建设宣言>一文引发的关于中国文化走向问题的论战,直到今天,仍引起学界不断关注.本文拟对上世纪30年代至今对该问题的研究状况作一考察.20世纪30至70年代,对于该问题基本还谈不上系统研究,只是学者借机发表自己对中西文化问题的见解.上世纪80年代,我国学术界,尤其是大陆学界,对于这场论战,在一致认同其"政治"、"党化"背景的同时,已经有研究者开始关注这场论战发生的时代、社会背景,从"政治"以外的其他角度去考察这场论战.90年代至今,学者们的研究开始超越意识形态框架,而现代化视角的引入,使得这场论战的文化及现代化意义开始渐渐凸显.     

A review of the literature on elderly migration in the Federal Republic of Germany

This paper is concerned with the migration of the elderly in the Federal Republic of Germany. "It has a threefold purpose: to review the literature concerning elderly migration; to discuss the present status of this research; and to discuss why research on the topic has lagged behind that in other countries."     

Communicating temporalities: The Orientalist unconscious,the European migrant crisis,and the time of the Other

The paper analyses communication about the European migrant crisis in East-Central Europe, particularly in the Czech Republic, as it was happening on the Facebook platform. In discussions amongst Czechs, the collective Orientalist unconscious shapes what imaginative geographies are communicated, and how. The paper argues for a coupling of the critique of Orientalist imaginative geographies and Deleuzean critique of the pointillistic chronological time. Both, imaginative geographies and the chronological time, acknowledge difference only as the difference from the Same. In the analysed communication, imaginative geographies draw on several notions of temporality that depend on the chronological time. These are the single timeline of progress, tunnels of time, movement towards apocalypse, and repetition of the past. They transform African and Middle-Eastern imaginative geographies and understandings of people migrating from these spaces. They also compose an imaginative geography of Western Europe which collapses under the surge of migrants. It provokes an irreconcilableness between the anti-immigration and pro-migration attitudes of discussants as it leads to emplacing the other attitudinal side in the past time. Therefore, the paper calls for an ethics of the event and the need to acknowledge the heterogeneity of diverse temporalities and accidentality of a present event.