„Siege der Freiheit,welche die Menschen durch die Erforschung des Grundes der Dinge errangen”︁ Wandlungen im politischen Selbstverständnis deutscher Naturwissenschaftler des 19. Jahrhunderts

“Victories of Freedom which Humans Achieved by Research in the Foundation of Things”. - This article analyzes the political self-conception of leading representatives of the natural sciences in 19th century Germany. It is argued that the main feature of this self-conception which remained constant over the time consisted in a strong “rationalization-imperative”, i.e. the postulate that state and society have to be reshaped on the basis of natural science. On the other hand, this imperative was put forward in very different forms and with different political content: it shifted from revolutionary aspirations in the period of 1848 to moderate and sometimes even reactionary positions in the last decades of the century.     

Rescaled “Rebel Cities”, Nationalization,and the Bourgeois Utopia: Dialectics Between Urban Social Movements and Regulation for Japan's Homeless

Urban social movements (USMs) and regulation have co‐evolved in Japan to deal with homelessness, spatializaing their politics on the national and subnational scales. The author first theorizes these USM–regulation relationships as scale‐oriented dialectics between two opposing forces—“commoning and othering”—both of which in my view are always internalized in today's “rebel cities” (Harvey 2012, Rebel Cities, Verso). Then, he analyzes two trajectories of USMs that attempted commoning—ie radical opening up of public goods/spaces within “zones of weakness” (Lefebvre 2009a )—against policing and workfare disciplines. The author detects “rescaling” dialectics in the case of Yokohama and “nationalizing” dialectics in the case of Tokyo. Lastly, through exploring and refreshing Engels's notion of the (petit‐)bourgeois utopia, the author concludes that our commoning projects and imaginaries are constrained by capitalist urban form that spatially others the homeless; but truly revolutionary moments of commoning emerge whenever people—even temporarily—conquer the fetishism of the public/private binary embedded in this urban form.     

The “Science” of Policy Development During Administrative Rulemaking

The legitimacy of government agencies rests in part on the premise that public administrators use scientific evidence to make policy decisions. Yet, what happens when there is no consensus in the scientific evidence—i.e., when the science is in conflict? I theorize that scientific conflict yields greater policy change during administrative policymaking. I assess this claim using data from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I identify policy change—what I refer to as “policy development” in this article—between the FDA's draft and final rules with a novel text analysis measure of shifts in regulatory restrictions. I then go on to find that more policy development does occur with scientific conflict. Moreover, using corresponding survey data, I uncover suggestive evidence that one beneficiary of such conflict may be participating interest groups. Groups lobby harder—and attempt to change more of the rule—during conflict, while an in‐survey experiment provides evidence of increased interest group influence on rule content when scientific conflict is high.     

“Solidarity is our weapon”: Social Mobilisation in Scotland in the Contest of the Post‐Political Condition

The consensual climate of the post‐political order has been recently disrupted in Europe. The mass protests staged in different European countries and the resurgences of the extreme parties in response to the multiple European crises witness the “cracks” in consensual politics. While much of the scholarly attention has been drawn onto the socio‐political implications of large‐scale upraises, the contribution of bottom‐up sub‐national groups to the “return of the political” has been under‐researched. Therefore, this article focuses on sub‐national grassroots groups as instances of the “properly political” (Swyngedouw 2009, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33[3]:601–620). It is contended that these groups, by putting in place acts of solidarity, are “agonistic” political forms, containing in nuce the potential to counteract the post‐political order and to shape a new politics. To interrogate this argument, the article reports the findings of a case study analysis involving four grassroots groups based in Scotland.     

Organic Public Geographies: “Making the Connection”

Abstract: A new field of “public geographies” is taking shape ( Fuller 2008 ) in geography's mainstream journals. While much is “traditional”, with intellectuals disseminating academic research via non‐ academic outlets ( Castree 2006 ; Mitchell 2008 ; Oslender 2007 ), less visible is the “organic” work and its “more involved intellectualizing, pursued through working with area‐based or single‐interest groups, in which the process itself may be the outcome” ( Ward 2006 :499; see Fuller and Askins 2010 ). A number of well‐known projects exist where research has been “done not merely for the people we write about but with them” ( Gregory 2005 :188; see also Cahill 2004 ; Johnston and Pratt 2010 ). However, collaborative writing of academic publications which gives research participants authorial credit is unusual ( mrs kinpainsby 2008 ; although see Sangtin Writers and Nagar 2006 ). This paper is about an organic public geographies project called “Making the connection”. It is written by a diverse collection of (non‐)academic participants who contributed to the project before it had started, as it was undertaken, and/or after it had finished. This is a “messy”, process‐oriented text ( Cook et al. 2007 ) working through the threads (partially) connecting the activities of its main collaborators, including a referee who helped get the paper to publication.     

Material,Political, and Biopolitical Dimensions of “Waste” in California Water Law

California's state constitution prohibits the “wasteful” use of water; however, waste is subjective and context dependent. This paper considers political, biopolitical, and material dimensions of waste, focusing on the role of legal processes and institutions. The paper examines a case involving legal accusations of “waste and unreasonable use” of water by the Imperial Irrigation District in Imperial County, California. The determination that water was being “wasted” justified the transfer of water from agricultural to urban areas. However, defining these flows of water as a waste neglected water's complexity and relationality, and the enclosure of a “paracommons” threatens to bring about negative environmental and public health consequences. The paper shows that the project of discursively labeling certain material resource flows as waste and re‐allocating these resources to correct this moral and economic failure relies upon legal processes, and carries political and biopolitical implications.     

The "Trial" of Lee Benson: Communism, White Chauvinism, and The Foundations of the "New Political History" in the United States

Lee Benson was one of the first American political historians to suggest a “systematic” revision of traditional political history with its emphasis on narrow economic class analysis, narrative arguments, and over‐reliance on qualitative research methodologies. This essay presents Benson's contributions to the “new political history”—an attempt to apply social‐science methods, concepts, and theories to American political history—as a social, cultural, and political narrative of Cold War‐era American history. Benson belonged to a generation of ex‐Communist American historians and political scientists whose scholarship and intellectual projects flowed—in part—out of Marxist social and political debates, agendas, and paradigmatic frameworks, even as they rejected and revised them. The main focus of the essay is the genesis of Benson's pioneering study of nineteenth‐century New York state political culture, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, with its emphasis on intra‐class versus inter‐class conflict, sensitivity to ethnocultural determinants of political and social behavior, and reliance on explicit social‐science theory and methodology. In what follows, I argue that The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy has its roots in Benson's Popular Front Marxist beliefs, and his decade‐long engagement and subsequent disenchantment with American left‐wing politics. Benson's growing alienation from Progressive historical paradigms and traditional Marxist analysis, and his attempts to formulate a neo‐Marxism attentive to unique American class and political realities, are linked to his involvement with 1940s radical factional politics and his disturbing encounter with internal Communist party racial and ideological tensions in the late 1940s at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.     

Assemblages of State Power: Topological Shifts in the Organization of Government and Politics

Abstract: Multi‐scalar or multi‐site power relations offer two contrasting ways of understanding the shifting geography of state power. In this paper, we argue for a different starting point, one that favours a topological understanding of state spatiality over more conventional topographical accounts. In contrast to a vertical or horizontal imagery of the geography of state power, what states possess, we suggest, is reach, not height. In doing so, we draw from Sassen (2006 , Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, Princeton University Press) a vocabulary capable of portraying the renegotiation of powers that has taken place between central government in the UK and one of its key city regions, the South East of England; one that highlights an assemblage of political actors, some public, some private, where negotiations take place between elements of central and local actors “lodged” within the region, not acting “above”, “below” or “alongside” it. The articulation of political demands in such a context has less to do with “jumping scale” or formalizing extensive network connections and more to do with the ability to reach directly into a “centralized” politics where proximity and reach play across one another in particular ways.     

The Urban Injustices of New Labour's “New Urban Renewal”: The Case of the Aylesbury Estate in London

This paper discusses the urban injustices of New Labour's “new urban renewal”, that is the state‐led gentrification of British council estates, undertaken through the guise of mixed communities policy, on the Aylesbury estate in Southwark, London, one of the largest council estates in Europe. In this particular case of post‐political planning I show how the tenant support for the regeneration programme was manipulated and misrepresented and how choices were closed down for them, leaving them ultimately with a “false choice” between a regeneration they did not want or the further decline of their estate. I look at what the estate residents thought/think about the whole process and how they have resisted, and are resisting, the gentrification of their estate. I show revanchist and post‐political practices, but ultimately I refuse to succumb to these dystopian narratives, very attractive as they are, for conflict/dissent has not been completely smothered and resistance to gentrification in and around the Aylesbury is alive and well. I argue that we urgently need to re‐establish the city as the driver of democratic politics with an emancipatory agenda, rather than one that ratifies the status quo or gets mired in a dystopic post‐justice city.     

The Latest Instalment in the Whig Interpretation of Australian Education History: Catherine Byrne's JORH Article “Free,Compulsory and (not) Secular”

The original meaning of the term “secular” in the “free compulsory and secular” nineteenth‐century Australian public education acts is often contested, and has recently become part of a contemporary debate about the presence of confessional religion in state schools. I outline four different interpretations expressed in Australian education history writing, then review the recent Journal of Religious History article “Free, Compulsory and (not) Secular” by Catherine Byrne, arguing that it belongs to the secular liberal or “Whig” interpretation of the meaning of “secular” in the acts. The article is critiqued for forcing sources to conform to an overly rhetorical narrative device: a polarised structure valorising Victorian legislator George Higinbotham, and demonising New South Wales legislator Sir Henry Parkes. The article is also criticised for sub‐optimal source‐work, lack of awareness of the corpus of Australian education history, and overt contemporary policy agendas. I also suggest that the larger “Whig” interpretation of “secular” as part of a liberal progress narrative, underemphasises a religious hermeneutic and a critical theory hermeneutic: that a Protestant consensus about state schooling and “secular” in the Public Education Acts was also a deeply sectarian device for excluding Catholics from a dominant social settlement, just one part of a systemically divided and prejudicial culture.     

The political ecology of water memory: Contending narratives of past hydraulic infrastructures in Barcelona (2015–2021)

In the context of ecological emergency and crisis of representation of the capitalist democracy, the battles over water management have become ever more politicised: who is to administer water resources, how, and with what legitimacy? This article examines a disregarded dimension of the recent water conflict in Barcelona by looking into the politics of memory as part of a struggle for legitimacy between the private water company Agbar, and Barcelona en Comú (BeC), the political platform governing the city since 2015, and defending the ‘remunicipalisation’ of water. By combining memory studies and critical discourse analysis we pay attention to the dynamic resignification of the hydraulic infrastructure as spaces or “sites of memory” (lieux de mémoire; Nora, 1998). Barcelona en Comú narrative retrieves a forgotten past of local sites and experiences in public management of water. In contrast, Agbar defends its legitimacy by advancing a narrative of linear progress and social inclusion that re-signifies its 150-year long history and co-opts key “empty signifiers” (Laclau, 2005) from the discourse of the Indignados and BeC. Theoretically, we advance that a temporal turn in political ecology and geography, complementing the concern with spatiality, could usefully draw on memory studies to analyse the growing memorialization of water discourses and sites, as well as their political significance. The article thus investigates a question that has not been systematically explored by political ecologists: how the entanglement of space and historical memory is mobilized in the conflict over the use and management of the environment.     

THE “THEORETICAL REVOLUTION” IN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY: FROM THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL IDEAS TO THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL LANGUAGES

This article intends to clarify what distinguishes the so‐called new “politico‐intellectual history” from the old “history of political ideas.” What differentiates the two has not been fully perceived even by some of the authors who initiated this transformation. One fundamental reason for this is that the transformation has not been a consistent process deriving from one single source, but is rather the result of converging developments emanating from three different sources (the Cambridge School, the German school of conceptual history or Begriffsgeschichte, and French politico‐conceptual history). This article proposes that the development of a new theoretical horizon that effectively leads us beyond the frameworks of the old history of political ideas demands that we overcome the insularity of these traditions and combine their respective contributions. The result of this combination is an approach to politico‐intellectual history that is not completely coincident with any of the three schools. What I will call a history of political languages entails a specific perspective on the temporality of discourses; this involves a view of why the meaning of concepts changes over time, and is the source of the contingency that stains political languages.     

“… but in its proper place. …”Religion,Enlightenment, and Australia's Secular Heritage: The Case of Robert Lowe in Colonial NSW 1842–1850

Over the last few decades historians have been rediscovering Australia's religious heritage, often in response to entrenched narratives depicting Australia's social, intellectual, and political history as a triumph of secular enlightenment over vestiges of Old World partnerships of religion, state, and society. That Australia has a rich secular heritage is indisputable, but to draw a sharp distinction between the “secular” and the “religious” is anachronistic and misguided, and any attempt to tell the story of Australia's secular heritage must acknowledge that the “secular” often found its justification flowing from more general religious premises grounded in enlightenment ideals such as rational religion, rational piety, and general Christianity. Indeed, when liberal democracy was emerging in the colonies the “secular” had to be justified in terms acceptable to the public square and these terms were broadly religious. Robert Lowe is an apt case study for divining the nature of the secular in colonial Australia, for his thought and political activity show the subtle and complex way that ideals such as “enlightenment,” “religion,” and “secular” entered into dialogue rather than warfare with one another and contributed to social institutions judged suitable for a fledgling pluralist nation.     

“Every Iraqi's Nightmare”: Blogging Peace in Occupied Baghdad

Abstract: The importance of war blogs is increasingly acknowledged, but their political dimensions remain largely unexplored. This paper provides a series of critical readings of Riverbend's Baghdad Burning and addresses two main issues. First, there is a systematic tension between the ways in which Riverbend is “subalternized” (by her readers and herself) and her attempts to reclaim the ground upon which post‐invasion Iraq is represented. Second, the invasion has fundamentally reworked the ways in which the figure of the “Iraqi” is constructed. These epistemological and ontological processes are always complex and partial: they occur at a variety of geographical scales and they are mobilized by a diversity of actors, making it very difficult to pin them down in time and space. Nevertheless, they highlight the difficulties of reducing Riverbend's project of resistance to a simple act of speaking out: of telling the reader what life is “really like” in occupied Baghdad.     

“A World Class City of Your Own!”: Civic Governmentality in Chennai,India

Abstract: This paper utilizes a critical governmentality approach to theorize the processes through which urban elites become stakeholders in the “world‐class city”. Through a case study of public consultations for urban development plans in Chennai, India, the paper explores the technologies that produce urban actors who “participate” in urban governance. Key to these technologies is a discourse of participation that privileges and normalizes citizens as urban stakeholders. The paper contributes to current explorations into the technologies of inclusion that are central to an emerging civic governmentality in South Asia. In Chennai this civic governmentality engages various segments of civil society in processes of urban governance through the mechanism of public consultation. It is through these public consultations that elites come to exert influence over urban plans and consolidate a vision and desire for the world‐class city.     

Sites of Social Centrality and Segregation: Lefebvre in Belfast,a “Divided City”

Abstract: This paper applies Henri Lefebvre's ideas on participatory democracy and spatial politics to the context of “divided cities”, a milieu often overlooked by scholars of Lefebvre. It considers, via Lefebvre, how the heterogeneous and contradictory statist methods to deal with ethno‐national violence in Belfast have in effect increased segregated space. State‐led approaches to public space as part of conflict transformation strategies appear contradictory, including attempts to “normalize” the city through inward capital investment and cultural regeneration, encouraging cosmopolitan notions of inclusive “civic identity”, and reinforcing segregation to contain violence. These processes have done little to challenge sectarianism. However, as Lefebvre suggests that dominant representations of space cannot be imposed without resistance, this paper considers the alternative strategies of a disparate range of groups in Belfast. These groups have formed cross‐cleavage networks to develop ritualized street performances which challenge the programming of public space for segregation.     

Gentrification Interrupted in Salford,UK: From New Deal to “Limbo‐Land” in a Contemporary Urban Periphery

This paper examines two potential lacunae in understanding low‐income residents’ experiences of contemporary state‐led gentrification via a study of neighbourhood restructuring in Salford, UK, 2004–2014. The first is the localised politics preparing the ground for neighbourhood “redevelopment” and housing demolition. The second is the blighted social landscape which emerges with the subsequent stalling of this project. A focus on “before” and “after” is adopted in order to disrupt the linear policy and “effects” temporalities that much qualitative gentrification research tends to inhabit. We see how state‐led neighbourhood restructuring does not simply displace, but carries residents from “empowerment” to abandonment and transfers them from active struggle into devitalised limbo. As such, the paper demarcates challenges and opportunities for resident mobilisation inherent in a vacillating urban renewal programme, powerful in its inception but which has since “hit the buffers” (Lees 2014, Antipode 46(4):921–947) in light of global and municipal fiscal crises.     

Jihadism au rebours: Orientalism and Occidentalism for a Counter‐Hegemonic Liberation Theology

Following its colonial project, Western Europe imposed a political and cultural understanding of state nationalism and religious homogeneity on the entire world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In parallel with this twofold process, “Religious Nationalism” emerged during the Cold War, affecting the Middle East and framing an updated Abrahamic version of religious supremacism: Wahhabi Islam, the Iranian Revolution, and Israeli Orthodox Judaism were politically backed, becoming the frontrunners of a new Global‐Religious narrative of conflict. This article aims to critically analyse the Western‐Islamic manipulation of “Jihadism” as an artificial and fabricated product, starting from the “deconstruction” of Jihad–Jihadism as an anti‐hegemonic narrative. The anti‐colonial “Islamic” framework of resistance to the Empire (United States) has effectively adopted the same colonial methodology: using violence and sectarianism in trying to reach its goals. Is the Islamic Supremacist “narrative” more influenced by Western thought than by a real understanding of Islam? At the same time, this article aims to stress the historical reasons why the Arab world has been artificially affected by a peculiar form of “Religious Revanchism” which can be understood only if O. Roy's Holy Ignorance dialogues with Steve Biko's Consciousness in emphasising the need for an updated Islamic Liberation Theology.     

“UNABLE TO RESIST”: ON THE “POSSIBILITY” OF “IMPOSSIBILITY” AND CHRISTOPHE BOUTON'S TIME AND FREEDOM

This essay reflects critically on Martin Heidegger's remarks about authenticity and death with the aid of Christophe Bouton's Temps et liberté (2002), translated by Christopher Macann as Time and Freedom (2014). It first raises general questions concerning the possible thematic relationship between human endeavoring (action) and the experiences of finitude and freedom. Heidegger's Being and Time is particularly useful for exploring this relationship, but certain problems emerge when using this text for accessing the essay's themes. To wit: there are good reasons for mistrusting readings of Being and Time as a “practical” guide for grounding action. Against the practical reading, the essay wishes to reclaim the ontological‐existential significance of Heidegger's text. Although Bouton's treatment of Being and Time excludes its ontological dimensions and is entirely practical, even to the point of disregarding certain theoretical risks inherent in this approach, Bouton's study is indispensable for situating Being and Time in a historical‐intellectual context, whereby the experiences of freedom and time are understood within certain metaphysical presuppositions rendering them difficult to establish together on reliable grounds. Following Bouton's lead, the essay shows that the hermeneutic differences between practical and ontological readings of Being and Time can be explored through reflections on what Heidegger might have meant by the term “Möglichkeit” (“possibility”), from which Bouton infers “freedom.” It is alleged that Bouton does not fully consider all of Heidegger's assertions regarding Möglichkeit, most problematically the claim that the human being's most essential “possibility” is its “impossibility,” that is to say, its death.     

Neoliberal Capitalism and Conservation in the Post‐crisis Era: The Dialectics of “Green” and “Un‐green” Grabbing in Greece and the UK

“Green‐grabbing”, in which environmental arguments support expropriation of land and resources, is a recognized element in neoliberal conservation. However, capitalism's strategic interest in promoting the neoliberalization of conservation is accompanied by attempts to exploit hitherto protected natures without any pretence at “greenness”. In this paper we explore the dialectics between “green” and “un‐green” grabbing as neoliberal strategies in the reconstruction of nature conservation policies after the 2008 financial “crash” in Greece and the UK. In both countries, accelerated neoliberalization is manifested in diverse ways, including initiatives to roll back conservation regulation, market‐based approaches to “saving” nature and the privatization of public nature assets. The intensification of “green” and “un‐green” grabbing reflects capitalism's strategic interest in both promoting and obstructing nature conservation, ultimately leaving for “protected natures” two choices: either to be further degraded to boost growth or to be “saved” through their deeper inclusion as commodities visible to the market.