Contesting the Divided City: Arts of Resistance in Skopje

This paper examines issues of power and resistance in “divided cities”. Basing my analysis on fieldwork I carried out in Skopje, Macedonia, I look at how urban space may be constructed and used by hegemonic groups as a means of asserting their power and how, in turn, the city may be a place of resistance where power is contested and public space reappropriated. Drawing on Lefebvre's perspective on the production of space, I compare the conceived city to the lived city and examine how urban inhabitants may resist the division of the city and challenge hegemonic representations. I also draw on Debord's psychogeography to define an artistic, active and participatory approach to urban space through which the inhabitants may re‐conquer their right to the œuvre and to the city. I argue that the city as a lived environment may offer narratives other than division and that there are alternatives to the divided city.     

Agamben,Postcoloniality, and Sovereignty in South Korea

This paper examines modern Korean politics through the framework of Giorgio Agamben's theories of sovereign power, bare life, and the state of exception. Though his political analysis draws from the European history, we contend that the nature of his method attests to the possibility of analogical examples in non‐Western places. Thus, we argue that a postcolonial encounter with Agamben may enrich our understanding of sovereignty and political geography. In the Korean context, such an analysis needs to consider that sovereign power has been shaped by the itineraries of colonialism and empire. Korea's political space is deeply marked by the legacy of Japanese colonialism, the imperial interventions by the U.S., and the division of the peninsula. Thus, Korea offers a valuable lens through which to read Agamben's critique of sovereignty. Our paper offers such a reading to argue that a state of exception functions as the underlying nomos for postcolonial Korea.     

The doubling of the self in the private diaries of Ion Dragoumis,George Seferis and George Theotokas

Abstract

The 'doubling of the self' is a phenomenon that appears in entries of private diaries and consists in the division of the diarist's self into two: the self that acts and the self that observes and writes. This phenomenon can be found in Dragoumis' ?υλλα ημ?ρολογιου, Seferis' M?ρ?ζ and Theotokas' T?τραδια ημ?ρολογιου. There are entries where the doubling of the self occurs in practice and entries where it is described, discussed or analysed. All these reveal the three Greek diarists' contradictory feelings about the doubling of the self, but also the latter's significance for the private diary.     

World cities and territorial states under conditions of contemporary globalization

This is largely an empirical paper which uses a unique set of office geography data to describe inter-city relations across the world. After identifying a set of 55 world cities, these patterns are related to states in a preliminary analyses of city–state connections. Particular emphasis is placed upon identifying trans-state processes and regional city hierarchies. This empirical reporting is sandwiched between a theoretical and practical introduction and conclusion. Using Braudel's conceptualization of capitalism as a world of monopolies, world city formation is introduced as a particular geographical knowledge nexus for creating new monopoly products. In the concluding section, the future of globalization is linked to the possibilities for world city network knowledge monopolies.     

Slingsby Bethel's Analysis of State Interests

Summary

Seventeenth-century thinking on the relationship between trade and state power was routinely conducted using the concept of state interests, which enabled users to conceive a Europe of competing states that managed the balance of power through trade and war. Poor interest management could arise from ignorance, error, or the divergence between the private interests of rulers and a state's true interests. The stakes of pursuing or neglecting true interest were high: the survival and prosperity of the state. The dominance of ‘mercantilism’ as a historiographical category has obscured the role of interest in early modern thought. This paper examines the work of one of England's most prolific interest writers, Slingsby Bethel, to demonstrate the importance of reading interest writings without recourse to mercantilism. The two focuses are, first, how the rhetoric of counsel was used to defend an ordinary subject's presumption to comment on state affairs and, second, the capacity for interest writers to construe the rise and fall of state power in terms of good laws and statesmanship.     

An Island Divided: Politicised Landscapes,Modern Borders,and Shifting Identities

Abstract

This paper looks critically at the division of Cyprus into North and South (the politically unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus and the Republic of Cyprus respectively) and will consider how this physical division emphasised and further developed a divided identity based on 'ethnic' differences (and the development of the 'other') between the two major populations—Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots. The Green Line is just one of several recent manifestations in the landscape of social contestations between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities. This paper outlines how the Green Line has structured the lives of people in relation to the ways that they conceptualise their environment, the past and, importantly, the 'other' side. Further, it addresses how this division, this physical line across the landscape, impacts upon the social landscape as it defines and reinforces identity through the processes of memory and forgetting.     

Urban Policies for the Creative Industries: A European Comparison

Abstract

Although the development of creative industries (CI) has formed into extensive and significant phenomenon in European cities, the conceptualization and generalization of these practices and policies is still rather weak. In addition to the attempts to explain the formation of these kinds of practices in the cities and discuss the path-dependent character of CI policies, the challenging task is to identify the main alternatives and inherent logic of CI policies, especially due to the existing rich and diverse experiences of European cities. This article aims to build a typology of the policy practices relating to CI. We make use of an “ideal types” approach, which focuses on determining a limited number of parameters to characterize alternative CI policies in different (European) cities; this is based on how one kind of CI policy practice can be distinguished from another. The article examines how the CI policies in four post-socialist cities (three of which are located in the Baltic region) contrast with the policies found in a range of other cities in Europe.     

Days of those made like me: retrospective pleasure,sexual knowledge,and C. P. Cavafy's homobiographics

Abstract

This article begins with a comparison between the anonymous Roman d'un inverti (1894/5) and Cavafy's poem ‘Να με?νει’, and then proceeds to read Cavafy's private notes and key erotic poems in the context of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourses about non-normative sexuality. During that period, and in a discursive domain dominated by sexological case studies, the deviant sexual life story was published in order to titillate, check, control and medicalize. In Cavafy's texts we see, instead, a network of homosexual life stories proposed as a platform for the conceptualization of novel sexual, aesthetic and social technologies, as well as a new ethics of contact.     

The impact of the school space on research methodology,child participation and safety: views from children in Zanzibar

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses the impact of school environments as research spaces on participatory research methods, children’s agency and safety. The article draws on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork on children’s perceptions of protection programmes in state and Qur’anic schools in Zanzibar Town. Working with ‘draw & write’ and photovoice approaches disclosed issues with children’s safety in schools and highlighted limitations of participatory research in educational spaces. Drawing on Zanzibari children’s perspectives, I suggest that to improve fragile theoretical ideals about children’s participation in participatory approaches in educational settings, research processes need cultural sensitization and conceptualization in relation to the intersecting notions of place and personhood. This, as the paper shows, needs to guide and can help develop a respectful understanding of children’s lives. This paper contributes to discussions on childhood research ethics and constructions of ‘safe research spaces’.     

A New Approach to Analyzing Historical Urban Growth of Ottoman Cities: Manisa Case Study

Abstract

The physical growth of cities is usually used to define the main direction of a city's development. This definition is key to understanding the city's current state and to plan for the future. Many urban planners agree that master plans should include historical urban growth and aim to specify the effective factors driving urban growth. However, defining urban boundaries and historical urban areas is a difficult task. The lack of satellite images, air photos, and real maps to use as base maps for historical urban studies is a problem that a researcher may face when determining patterns of urban development or conducting other analyses. In this article, the authors examine historical changes of the urban boundaries of the Ottoman city of Manisa. They analyze the physical growth of this large city by using the historical buildings (mosques, masjids, madrasas, baths, caravansary, and others) as markers.     

Gay Games: Performing 'community' out from the closet of the locker room

Matters of community, performativity, bodies, space, belonging, oppression, resistance and their relationship to culture are explored in this paper within the context of Sydney's 2002 Gay Games. I begin the paper considering how the everyday meaning and practices of sports produce spaces that are oppressive to many gay men. I then introduce the Gay Games as a site of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, and intersex resistance, established to rupture stereotypes of heteronormativity in sports. Drawing upon my own research of Sydney's Gay Games I next explore how willingness to participate amongst self-identifying gay men depends upon how they understood their performance within the context of the event. I conclude the paper by arguing that willingness to participate in Sydney's Gay Games illustrates fundamental issues about the connectedness of bodies and space through the discursive body as space and the material body in space.     

Civic Sacrament and Social Imaginaries in Transition: The Case of the South African Churches and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Abstract

This article reflects on a seminal moment within South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC): the appearance of the African Initiated Churches (AICs) before the Commission in 1997. It demonstrates how this moment brought into relief divergent contestations of the public within South African Christianity in three ways: first, by situating the TRC within the liturgical performance of a reimagined South African nationality, making it a "civic sacrament" of reconciliation; second, by highlighting the formative role churches themselves played within this liturgy, deploying theological language to create a healed, secular body politic; third, by displaying the different social imaginary of the AICs—a social imaginary which interrupted the TRC's liturgical recreation of time and space, as well as challenging the historical relations between church and state in South Africa. The paper concludes with the question posed in this "interruption," a question that challenges the broader church with regard to fulfillment of the liturgy not in the secular nation-state, but in that City which is to come.     

Why the Homeless Rebel: Housing Struggles in post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Post-apartheid housing struggles urgently need to be addressed in order to consolidate the inclusivist democracy in South Africa. Former white minority governments restricted housing in order to control the movement of Africans and their labour. This paper analyses aspects of post-apartheid housing protest. The argument is that such protests are rooted in a problematic rights discourse of the anti-apartheid struggle, and in the new constitution's recognition of the right of access to adequate housing, which is nonetheless, subjected to fiscal constraints. The article's second focus is on a legacy of land dispossession, which also hinders housing delivery. Failure to realise the right to housing fuels some of the most important conflict that will shape future organisation of state institutions and relations between the state and society.     

Aquatic spaces and women's places: a comparative reading of George Eliot's The Millon the Floss and Alexandros Papadiamantis's H ϕóνıσσα

Abstract

This article will attempt a comparative reading of George Eliot' The Mill on the Floss (1860) and Alexandros Papadiamantis's H ?óν?σσα (1903), aiming to illustrate how both texts are preoccupied with the problem of inventing spaces for their deviant and superfluous female characters. Although enmeshed in the dominant ideologies of their time, such as the evolutionary pattern of life as a sign of progress, and women's marginalisation and domestication within this model, these novels simultaneously reject these ideologies. Interestingly, both Eliot's and Papadiamantis's problematic heroines are associated with water and experience a cathartic death by water. As a deus ex machina, the overflowing waters of the river in the first case, and the rising waves of the sea in the latter, provide a sanctuary, an intermediate space, where the two exiled heroines escape from traditional definitions of women as homeless containers or empty receptacles. George Eliot's Maggie and Papadiamantis's Frangoyannou discover an alternative geography in water, as the Darwinian aquatic space, a site of contestation, is reappropriated and transformed into a nursing space. This return to an intrauterine bliss, however, apart from its revolutionary potential, signifies also a return to essentialism and suggests the impossibility of ascribing any space to women except for that of endless metaphoricity. In the open-endedness of these two texts, women are floating signifiers, both promoting and transcending female archetypes.     

From the Preface to the French edition of Une exigence infinie

Abstract

In 2008, Rowan Williams sparked a huge controversy in Britain by pleading for more recognition of shari'a law. The present paper aims to explore Mike Higton's suggestion that this plea actually results from Williams's defence of the Enlightenment. The paper will first show that Williams's plea for increased recognition of shari'a is in line with the Enlightenment ideal of sociability. It will subsequently show that this does not mean that Williams gives up on the importance of the secular law. Special attention will be given to the two fundamental principles behind Williams's views on shari'a and these principles will be developed with the help of Edward Schillebeeckx's view of ‘the humanum’. Finally, the paper will also indicate that Williams's two fundamental principles offer a way to better understand the biblical commandment to love one's neighbour—a view that will be developed with reference to the work of Slavoj Zizek.     

Unpacking administrative rank: Intercity competition and the remaking of local state space in China

The literature on interurban competition emphasizes that market rules as an external coercive power dominate local state space conductive to economic growth. Is there another external coercive power, other than the market as a hidden hand, to promote and mitigate interurban competition? Addressing this question, this paper specifies that the Chinese state's political efforts to downplay the role of the market in, and remake the rule of, interurban competition could have far reaching implications for urban political economy. The two cases are Ruili and Wanding, two border cities located on the edge of China's southwestern borderland adjacent to Myanmar. While reranking is supposed to balance out the inefficiencies of market principles in interurban competition, multiple rounds of reranking in Ruili and Wanding in the past seven decades indicate that this political orchestration can accelerate interurban competition into a cutthroat game for economic growth and thus create problems for macro economic management. Nevertheless, it can become a political tool to revamp the game by strategically selecting some cities as nodes of development at the sacrifice of urban fortunes of other cities. In this process, market rules operate in parallel with, and sometimes succumb to, the principle of political order from above. This finding expands the geographies of the state: the co-constitution of the local and the national becomes necessary and pragmatic since interurban competition is not a territorially-conditioned endeavor, but remains open to extralocal stakeholders—upper-level governments in this case—who can remake local state space.     

Serious chemistry on set: the molecular structure of film investment in China

ABSTRACT

Using the case of the Mainland Chinese film industry, this paper argues that the competing features that attract commercial capital investment and drive state centralization create a molecular structure of national film investment, or the division of investment in the film industry into several interdependent centers. A combination of regulations, institutions, the built environment and access to capital leads to a distributed investment of strategic assets linked by bonds of complementarity. Beijing dominates in the area of state-supported production. Shanghai outperforms other cities in terms of foreign direct investment. Qingdao has attracted domestic Chinese private investment and entrepreneurship. Unlike the capital agglomeration seen in countries like the United States where film investment is driven centrally by financial considerations, the Chinese national film industry is strategically divided into several centers that rely more dominantly on political or financial resources. While this paper focuses on China, understanding the molecular structure of the Chinese film industry helps us understand both developed and developing countries that are characterized by robust state oversight and strong commercial media sectors.     

Science War II: the shift from physics to biology as the field of struggle

Abstract

It is generally agreed that, in some sense, there have been 'science wars' for at least the past ten, perhaps even twenty, years. In fact, as I argue here, there have been two such wars, the second of which is ongoing. The first part of this paper is concerned with distinguishing the two science wars and marking the transition between them. The second part deals with the substantive issues arising from a key theatre in Science War II, namely evolution versus intelligent design. The third part concludes the paper with a brief proposal for regular monitoring of the state of science in society, perhaps anticipating the terms of engagement of any subsequent 'Science War III'.     

No Angst and All Play: Postmodernism and the Humanities

Abstract

There is widespread disagreement about Tocqueville's conception of human nature, some going so far as to say that Tocqueville possessed no unified conception of human nature at all. In this paper, I aim to provide the essential principles of Tocqueville's conception of human nature through an examination of the way in which he describes the power of human circumstances, such as physical environment, social state, and religion, to shape human character by extracting the principles underlying these transformations. There is no “natural man” or man “in the state of nature” but instead a set of psychic operations that reveal a picture of human nature in which human freedom, or the ability to initiate action in pursuit of important objects, lies at the heart of human life.