Challenging the grammar of difference: Benoy Kumar Sarkar,global mobility and anti-imperialism around the First World War

The new imperial history has advanced our understanding of empires in many ways: it enhanced a networked interpretation of empires, brought space back into the discussion, and suggested a fresh reading of imperial careers to comprehend early forms of global inter-dependencies. This article discusses selected aspects of the life and work of Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1887–1949), a Bengali social scientist and political activist, to illustrate that anti-imperial biographies were simultaneously rooted in local as well as transnational spaces. They thus connected national struggles with globe-spanning processes. Biographies like this are underacknowledged in their meaning for how empires functioned and failed, and in their potential for understanding transnational actors. Sarkar’s efforts to challenge the legitimacy of the British Empire were the result of his life in a transnational social field, which was equally shaped by his extensive experience abroad and his continuous rootedness in local Bengali affairs. Sarkar’s anti-imperialism was enhanced by the mobility structures of the British Empire and resulted in new constellations of imperial, cosmopolitan, local and regional orientations and attachments. In this view, anti-imperialism was less the result of local struggles but of life practices reaching beyond the borders of the empire and a high awareness of acting in a global context that located its protagonists in numerous social and spatial contexts.     

Hospitality workers and the relational spaces of labor (im)mobility

ABSTRACT

Building on the recent interest among labor geographers for workers’ ability to strategize around their mobility, and tourism researchers’ longstanding examination of mobile tourism workers, this paper explores the mobility agency of differently positioned hospitality workers. The findings suggest that workers are not always ‘strategic’ in relation to labor mobility, and that labor mobility and career paths must be recognized as fragmented, happenstance and erratic. Furthermore, this article argues for an approach to the study of mobile tourism workers that takes the relational as well as temporal aspects into account. This endeavor is in particular guided by the notion of stories-so-far and the understanding of people as both being and becoming. The empirical basis of this paper consists of 22 interviews with hospitality workers in four hotel workplaces in Sweden; the luxury city hotel, the suburban chain hotel, the city chain hotel and the seasonal hotel. Ultimately, I suggest that the multifaceted complex of considerations which workers negotiate, could be conceptualized as the relational spaces of labor (im)mobility.     

Whitescapes: A posthumanist political ecology of Alpine migrant (im)mobility

This article explores the many more-than-human actors involved in crafting migrant (im)mobility across the Alps and the racialised (re)production of the borderscape as what I call a whitescape. Using cycling and hiking as embodied and mobile methodologies of encounter it examines the entanglement of landscapes, terrains, gradients, weather, water, and forests, alongside transport and tourist infrastructures: roads, railways, tunnels, bus routes, ski slopes, golf courses, hiking trails and cycling tracks in shaping how illegalised migrants encounter the Alpine Susa Valley/Hautes-Alpes border routes and how these ecologies are made political. Drawing on the work of Juanita Sundberg the article makes the case for posthumanism and political ecology in the study of borderscapes and illegalised migrant (im)mobility, while being sensitive to the racist dynamics of the nature/culture divide present in much posthumanist and political ecology scholarship. Therefore, while the article makes space for the role of more-than-human actors in borderscapes it also highlights the racialising work of these more-than-human entanglements in the following ways: through perpetuating dualist ontologies of nature/culture or nature/human from which illegalised migrants are linked to the natural, read pre-modern, world; and through producing illegalised migrants as ‘bodies-out-of-place’ in a political ecology that is concomitantly (re)produced as a whitescape.     

History after the end: post-socialist difference in a (post)modern world

This paper makes an intervention in the debates on postmodernism as dominant social and cultural order of the present from the perspective of post-socialist transformation. Grounded in an analysis of theoretical discourses and of qualitative interviews, it highlights the hierarchical time/space constructions and universalizing tendencies inherent in many proclamations of the postmodern epoch and contests the uncritical acceptance of the 'end of history' metanarrative. Post-socialist transformation is shown to be a complex process that fits uneasily into pre-given categories and disrupts an ordering logic that divides between a western, postmodern 'us' and 'the rest' of the world. My argument is formulated on the basis of research on the transformative processes in former east Germany.     

Identity and socio-economic mobility in Venetian Crete: the evolution of a citizen family (sixteenth century)

This study focuses on the socio-economic dynamics in Crete under Venetian rule, particularly in the sixteenth century, a critical period for the power of the Republic of Venice in the eastern Mediterranean. There is an attempt to approach these processes by examining the evolution of a Cretan family named Episcopopulo, which originated from the middle social stratum, the so-called cittadini (citizens). The essay tries, after outlining the socio-political characteristics of the intermediate social group, to illuminate aspects of the history of this family, who strove to find its way in an environment marked by fermentations and changes in the political, financial, ideological and social field. The study, among other things, examines the various professional activities of the family members and the practices they utilized to achieve a decisive improvement in their financial status. It also highlights the strategies they employed to their rise in the social hierarchy, as well as their persistent efforts, after acquiring a title of nobility, to retain and increase their wealth and to enhance their role in the public sphere.     

Saints’ mobility and confinement: deconstructing Byzantine stories of (fe)male ascetics and monastics

This article investigates stories of holiness which have ascetics or monastics as their hero(in)es and which develop based on a careful interlocking of two concepts: wanderings in urban or desert environments and self-confinement in enclosed or secluded spaces. Through a close reading of two saints’ Lives (i.e., the Life of Mary of Egypt and the Life of Matrona of Perge) dating to the early and middle Byzantine periods, the present analysis uncovers the tripartite relationship between movement, confinement, and spiritual advancement from a literary-narrative point of view, thus deepening our understanding of asceticism and monasticism in Byzantine contexts.     

1881至1914年的东欧犹太移民潮与英国社会

东欧犹太人大规模移居英国的行动,是在19世纪欧洲人口大流动和东欧犹太人大规模外移的背号下,随着俄国大俄罗斯政策的推行而发生的。东欧犹太人的大规模涌入,在英国引起了一场相当罕见、自下而上的反移民运动。特别值得注意的是,英国本土犹太人不仅在总体上反对东欧犹太人大规模移居英国,而且从一开始就采取切实行动,在反移民运动方面做出了比非犹太人乃至英国官方更大的努力和实绩。     

东突厥汗国属部的突厥化——以粟特人为中心的考察

公元6—8世纪,随着突厥的兴起和突厥汗国的建立,漠北地区开启新一轮族群变动浪潮,即突厥化的进程。活动于漠北的粟特人,在融入突厥游牧族群的过程中,既凸显出突厥化的表征及趋向,同时又保留了若干本民族的传统文化因子。游牧帝国的盛衰起伏和游牧生活的迁徙流动,使粟特人的突厥化过程并未彻底完成。中古漠北地区粟特与突厥之间的族群互动、交融景象,显示出北方游牧社会内部的族群认同,相对于定居农耕的汉地文化圈而言,似乎更为脆弱易变。     

Bodies,Shrines, and Roads: violence, (im)mobility and displacement in Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, gender and national identities intersect to shape people's mobility and security in the context of conflict. This article aims to illustrate the gendered processes of identity construction in the context of competing militarised nationalisms. We contend that a feminist approach is crucial, and that gender analysis alone is insufficient. Gender cannot be considered analytically independent from nationalism or ethno‐national identities because competing Tamil and Sinhala nationalist discourses produce particular gender identities and relations. Fraught and cross‐cutting relations of gender, nation, class and location shape people's movement, safety and potential for displacement. In the conflict‐ridden areas of Sri Lanka's North and East during 1999–2000, we set out to examine relations of gender and nation within the context of conflict. Our specific aim in this article is to analyse the ways in which certain identities are performed, on one hand, and subverted through premeditated performances of national identity on the other hand. We examine these processes at three sites—shrines, roads and people's bodies. Each is a strategic site of security/insecurity, depending on one's gender and ethno‐national identity, as well as geographical location.     

从华府到洞天——东晋南朝墓葬形制解读

东晋南朝流行的券顶式长方形墓葬,其建筑形式来源于中原地区的洞石墓,其文化含义可能与侨居以及道教的修炼有关,那就是迁居江南的北方人士虽然死在了江南,但却始终想回到自己的故土,想乘坐上带有卷棚的"安车",躺在安车式的墓葬之中,实现回归的梦想。当故乡已经完全不可回归的时候,侨民们又无可奈何地选择了佛教和道教的方式,将墓室视作洞天福地,就地修炼超升。     

Environment and collapse: Eastern Anatolian obsidians at Urkesh (Tell Mozan,Syria) and the third-millennium Mesopotamian urban crisis

The Early to Middle Bronze Age transition in Northern Mesopotamia has received great attention for the apparent concurrence of aridification, deurbanisation, and the end of the Akkadian empire around 2200 BCE. Our understanding of the “crisis” has been almost exclusively shaped by ceramics, demography, and subsistence. Exchange and the associated social networks have been largely neglected. Here we report our sourcing results for 97 obsidian artefacts from Urkesh, a large urban settlement inhabited throughout the crisis. Before the crisis, six obsidian sources located in Eastern Anatolia are represented among the artefacts. Such a diversity of Eastern Anatolian obsidians at one site is hitherto unknown in Mesopotamia. It implies Urkesh was a cosmopolitan city with diverse visitors or visitors with diverse itineraries. During this crisis, however, obsidians came from only two of the closest sources. Two to three centuries passed before varied obsidians reappeared. Even when an obsidian source reappears, the raw material seems to have come from a different collection spot. We discuss the likely exchange mechanisms and related social networks responsible for the arrival of obsidians at Urkesh and how they might have changed in response to climatic perturbations and regional government collapse.     

The last 200,000 years (or thereabouts) in Eastern Africa: Recent archaeological research

Research in Eastern Africa is hampered by a variety of logistical constraints common in underdeveloped and politically fragmented regions. The later Middle and early Upper Pleistocene are attracting attention in the debate over the origins of anatomically modern humans. There has also been considerable field research and discussion of the development of specialized pastoralism. Archaeology, history and several other disciplines have combined to study the development of social complexity in the Great Lakes region and along the Swahili coast, the Aksumite civilization and African agricultural systems. Finally, the rise of a cadre of indigenous archaeologists is fostering debate over what constitutes explanation and over the relevance of the discipline within Africa.     

X-ray fluorescence analysis and intra-island exchange in the Society Island archipelago (Central Eastern Polynesia)

We apply X-ray fluorescence (XRF) geochemical analysis to a collection of 'Opunohu Valley lithic artifacts from Mo'orea island to investigate the local scale of raw material procurement, adze production, use, and exchange within the Society Island archipelago. We use these data to document the distribution of non-local versus local volcanic artifacts in 'Opunohu Valley house sites, ritual sites, and specialized sites, as a means for establishing intra-site production and consumption patterns, and access to exotic, possibly superior, stone resources, and how these two themes correlate with site function or household wealth and status. Overall, 30% of the artifacts analyzed via WDXRF derive from non-local sources, notably two other islands in the archipelago outside of the political boundaries of Moorean chiefdoms. Our case study thus provides the first direct material evidence of intra-archipelago trade and exchange in the Society Islands. Intra-archipelago trade in adzes was certainly in place by as early as A.D. 1350, if not earlier, and continued up until the time of European contact. In addition, our analyses have identified a local adze production locale in the Afareaitu district of Mo'orea island. The patterns of local versus non-local adze production and exchange strongly suggest that dual interaction spheres were involved. The correlation between adzes and adze-related debris produced from off-island sources and sites with specialized use, which were often reserved for the social, ritual, and political elites in Ma'ohi society suggests that some of the exotic adzes derived from gift exchange between Mo'orea and ruling elites in Tahiti and the Leeward Islands. These adzes from afar would have solidified socio-political and ideological alliances between elites in the Windward and Leeward sectors of the archipelago.     

Last Glacial Human Settlement in Eastern Cantabria (Northern Spain)

While the excavation of individual sites remains fundamental to the creation of the Palaeolithic archeological record, increasingly the focus of prehistoric research is on human adaptations to and within natural regions. Such a reorientation implies viewing sites and occupations as samples of different suites of activities in various habitats across space and time; it is dependent on the use of radiocarbon to date and relate occupation residues among sites; and it necessitates the application of methods to uncover patterns of human mobility as an integral aspect of subsistence economy, demographic arrangements and social relations. This paper contributes to the regional study of Last Glacial foragers by presenting preliminary aspects of a case study from the Asón River basin in eastern Cantabria. Assembled here are data from several recent and a few older excavations in sites distributed between the present shore of the Bay of Biscay and the uplands of the Cantabrian Cordillera. The main sites are El Otero, La Chora, La Fragua and El Perro near or at the present mouth of the river, the classic cave of El Valle in the mid-valley, and El Mirón and El Horno near the cave art loci of Covalanas, La Haza and Cullalvera in the upper valley. While the highest density of known sites in the whole drainage area occurs during the Magdalenian and Azilian periods (17–10 kya), there is evidence for substantial abandonment of the montane interior during the Mesolithic, when human settlement was concentrated around the estuary of the Asón, after which time the whole valley was repopulated in the Neolithic.     

The Experiences of a Polish Family from the Eastern Borderlands (1914–1921): The Protassewiczes of Borki

ABSTRACT

This article examines how two generations of a large Polish landed family from the Grodno governorate in the Russian Empire were affected by the political and social upheavals brought about by World War One, the Russian Revolution, the threat of Bolshevism, and the rebirth of a Polish state. The Protassewiczes, like other landed noble families in the region, despite their Polish- Lithuanian identity, enjoyed a privileged social status in tsarist Russia. Marriage and work took many of the family’s members to Wilno (Vilnius) and Siberia, while a younger member studied in Austrian Galicia where he joined Pi?sudski’s organisation. The article describes the evacuation to Taganrog in 1915 of the senior Protassewicz and his subsequent return to Borki in 1918 to face the ensuing Polish-Soviet War. Two members of the family who were engaged in railway building in Siberia met a tragic end. The younger generation participated in Polish military efforts in the east in 1919–21 and adapted successfully to life in restored Poland. Attention is paid to issues of national identity raised by rival Polish and Lithuanian claims to Wilno in the context of the fall of empires and the emergence of new national states.     

Raw material economy in Salento (Apulia, Italy): new perspectives on Neanderthal mobility patterns

This paper presents a case study that questions the behavioral model of a “non-modern” provisioning of raw materials by Neanderthals. The Salento is a peninsula in south eastern Italy rich in Mousterian sites and Neanderthal remains. This region is particularly suitable for raw material economy studies, for its peninsular status and the scarceness of good raw materials. Surveys made in 2006 showed the pattern of utilization of different local raw materials (limestone, siliceous limestone) and the absence of good quality raw materials, that are present in archaeological record. A very long distance provisioning is supposed to be at the origin of their presence in Mousterian Salento sites.     

Playing with fear: parkour and the mobility of emotion

This article engages debates on emotional geography and non-representational theory by considering fear as a distinctly mobile engagement with our environment. Parkour, or freerunning, has exploded into public consciousness through commercial media representations and films. It is depicted as a spectacular urban sport that either can or cannot be done. Through ethnographic research with groups of parkour practitioners I consider what has been excluded from these representations: the emotions involved in trying, experimenting, and gradually learning to be in places differently. In parkour places are ‘done’ or mobilised in tentative, unsure, ungainly and unfinished ways which can be characterised by a kind of play with architecture. I argue that this play is contingent upon an array of fears, which, rather than being entirely negative, are an important way in which practitioners engage with place. Here fears can manifest differently, not only restricting mobility, but in some cases encouraging imaginative and playful forms of movement.     

Human occupation of South Eastern Altai highlands (Russia) in the context of environmental changes

Multidisciplinary investigations including geomorphological and geoarchaeological approaches, litho-stratigraphic and pedogenetic analysis accompanied by radiocarbon dating show the contrasting human environmental changes within the highlands of the Russian Altai since the late Paleolithic. Radiocarbon ages of fossil soils formed at 1,475–1,730 m a.s.l. indicate draining of the ice-dammed lake in the Kurai basin before the beginning of the Holocene and disintegration of the Chuya lake into several shallow but quite spacious reservoirs by 8,223?±?181 cal. BP. Using archaeological sites as spatio-temporal markers allows reconstructions to be specified based on geological data. Archaeological site distribution in the Chuya valley between the Chuya and Kurai basins indicates that all cataclysmic flood events related to the Holocene hydrological changes occurred before the Scythian epoch. Due to the redeposition of most Paleolithic finds in the region, they should be carefully examined before they are utilized for any reconstructions. Using fossil and contemporary soils as an independent informative climatic proxy archive supports the conception of generally more humid and warmer climate conditions in the first half of the Holocene within the SE Altai and a more arid and cold climate in the second one. The repeated climate deteriorations that caused glacier expansion and the progressive aridity intensification in the region along with the sociopolitical reasons are the major factors that controlled the habitat of nomadic communities and cultures shifting within the SE Altai in the second half of the Holocene. Anthropogenic impact together with the progressive aridization led to the deforestation of the eastern part of the Chuya depression.