Unsettling Settler Belonging: (Re)naming and Territory Making in the Pacific Northwest

Names can act as daily reminders of a colonial presence. To unsettle Settler origin stories, we strive to reveal the legacy of (dis)possession rooted in naming. As case studies, we consider the attribution of the name Salish Sea, the naming of the Straits of Juan de Fuca and Georgia, and the delineation of national boundaries during the San Juan Water Boundary Dispute. We use these examples to demonstrate the unsettling potential of (re)naming practices. To conclude, we suggest further areas for praxis and research that are situated in a broader context of naming practices.     

The Ecology of Command: U.S. Pacific Command and the Environment of the Pacific Rim

Abstract

Environmental ethicists speak fervently about the impact of human activity on the sustainability and survivability of Earth's community. But often these discussions fail to acknowledge one human activity more powerful and with the potential for greater destruction than any other— the United States military and its "empire of bases" encircling the globe. Military operations, both peacetime missions and contingency operations, and military installations stamp a large footprint on the earth's environment. From the atmospheric nuclear tests in the Bikini Atoll to the removal of the coral reef at Diego Garcia, the environment of the Pacific Rim has been shaped by the demands of U.S. national security. This paper examines the environmental footprint of U.S. Pacific Command. Secondly, it suggests that the exigencies of U.S. military presence need to be included in discussions of environmental ethics.     

The move to preferential trade on the Western Pacific Rim: some initial conclusions

Since? ? Research for this project has been supported by the Australian Research Council through Discovery Project Grant No. DP0453077. View all notes the turn of the century the Asia-Pacific region has become the most active location for the negotiation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs)—a dramatic change from the period before the financial crises of 1997–98. Substantial variance in scope exists among the more than 80 PTAs currently being implemented, negotiated or which are under study in the region. Those involving the United States are by far the most comprehensive. At the other end of the spectrum are those involving ASEAN and China, which are largely ‘aspirational’ in their provisions. This variance points to the range of economic and political objectives that PTAs serve. Regardless of the comprehensiveness of their coverage, the overall economic effects of the new PTAs is likely to be small given the prevailing low level of tariffs, the intervention of other factors such as fluctuating exchange rates, the proliferation of agreements (which removes the advantages they accord individual partners), and the unwillingness of governments to liberalise ‘sensitive’ sectors. Few of the agreements move substantially beyond existing WTO provisions. The proliferation of PTAs not only has tended to shift attention and resources away from negotiations at the global level but also runs the risk of fragmenting the ‘pro-liberalisation’ coalition in countries that have signed multiple agreements.     

Denaturalizing Dispossession: Critical Ethnography in the Age of Resurgent Imperialism

Critical ethnographies and methods of relational comparison provide tools for reconfiguring area studies to challenge imperial visions of the world; for illuminating power‐laden processes of constitution, connection, and disconnection; and for identifying slippages, openings, contradictions, and possibilities for alliances. Crucial to this project are Lefebvrian conceptions of the production of space. In developing these arguments, this essay also intervenes in recent discussions of so‐called “primitive accumulation” as an ongoing process. It does so by drawing on research into connections between South Africa and East Asia, and using these relational comparisons to highlight the significance of specifically racialized forms of dispossession and their salience to struggles currently underway in South Africa. These examples underscore how critical ethnography and relational comparison provide a crucial means for “advancing to the concrete”—in the sense of concrete concepts that are adequate to the complexity with which they are seeking to grapple.     

Gendering Palestinian Dispossession: Evaluating Land Loss in the West Bank

Despite increasing attention to Palestinian territorial dispossession, there is inadequate attention paid to how this dispossession is gendered in its legitimising discourses and practices. Inattention to gender results in a failure to understand the power relations at play in the processes through which Palestinians are dispossessed of their land, the discourses that serve to support that dispossession and the impacts of that dispossession. This article examines the roles of Israeli hegemonic militarised masculinity as deployed in discourses and practices of “security” as well as idealised Zionist femininity and idealised Zionist masculinity as deployed in discourses and practices of “God‐given Righteousness”. It finds that both are effective means of dispossessing Palestinians of their land, and that in settlements in the West Bank, the hegemonic militarised masculinity is often subsumed under idealised Zionist femininity and masculinity when it comes to settlement expansion and the violent dispossession of Palestinian land.     

Dispossession and the Depletion of Social Reproduction

Gender is largely under‐theorized in the now well‐developed literature on dispossession; this paper contributes to the analysis of the gender dimensions of dispossession by bringing the literature on dispossession into conversation with the feminist literature on social reproduction, specifically, depletion of social reproduction. Drawing on qualitative field research, the paper provides a gendered analysis of the multiple vectors of dispossession affecting the Miyana, a Muslim community living in the Little Rann of Kutch, an estuarine zone in central Gujarat within which prawn harvesting and salt production are their symbiotic seasonal livelihood activities. Using the concept of depletion as a diagnostic tool, I argue that the assessment of depletion due to dispossession requires investigation of the levels of mitigation, replenishment or transformation available to individuals, households and communities within the circuits of production and social reproduction.     

The Spatial Extent of Criminogenic Places: A Changepoint Regression of Violence around Bars

Crime scientists have long known that crime clusters near certain places such as drinking establishments, although the spatial parameters of that clustering are less established. This article proposes a methodology to estimate a distance beyond which there is significantly less evidence of a correlation between locations and concentrations of crime. The technique uses changepoints derived from a segmented regression applied to spatial buffers emanating from around particular crime‐generating land uses. Geographic information system techniques are used to create a series of buffers to determine the density of crime around sites. A changepoint Poisson regression of the buffer midpoints is used to estimate the distance beyond which crime densities do not appear to decline significantly with increasing distance. A case study of violent crime around 1,282 bars in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for 2008 reveals that violence is highly clustered within 25.9 m (85 feet) then dissipates rapidly, a pattern that is not replicated using control sites (fire stations). This is an estimate of the spatial extent of violence around bars, and the technique could be used to estimate the extent of other crimes around a variety of crime‐generating locations. Expertos en el estudio del crimen saben desde hace tiempo que los delitos violentos se concentran cerca de algunos lugares tales como establecimientos de bebidas, aunque los parámetros espaciales de dichas aglomeraciones son menos conocidos. Este artículo propone una metodología para estimar la distancia máxima a partir de la cual hay significativamente menos evidencia de una correlación entre puntos de interés y las aglomeraciones de crimen. La técnica empleada utiliza puntos de cambio (changepoints) derivados de una regresión segmentada (segmented regression) aplicada a las zonas de amortiguamiento (buffers) generadas en torno a usos del suelo particulares asociados a delincuencia. Técnicas SIG (Sistema de Información Geográfica) son utilizadas para crear una serie de buffers y determinar la densidad de delitos en torno a la ubicación de cada establecimiento (bar). Una regresión Poisson de tipo changepoint de los puntos medios de los buffers es empleada para estimar la distancia a partir de la cual las densidades del crimen no disminuyen significativamente con la distancia. Un estudio de caso de los delitos violentos en torno a 1.282 bares en Filadelfia, Pennsylvania en 2008 revela que la violencia está muy concentrada dentro de un radio de 25.9 m (85 pies) y luego se disipa rápidamente, un patrón que no se replica cuando el análisis es aplicado a sitios de control (estaciones de bomberos). El resultado es una estimación de la extensión espacial de la violencia alrededor de bares y la conclusión que la técnica podría ser utilizada para estimar la extensión de otros delitos en torno a una gran variedad de lugares asociados con la generación de la delincuencia. 犯罪学家早已明晰犯罪集聚于某些特定区域（如酒吧）的周围,尽管较少地构建这类聚集的空间参数。本文提出了一种方法可估算在一定距离之外,区位与犯罪集聚程度间相关性呈显著减少的证据。将从分段回归中获得的变异点应用于犯罪发生地的空间缓冲区。地理信息系统（GIS）技术用于产生一系列缓冲区以确定地点周围的犯罪密度。缓冲区中点的变异点泊松回归用于估算超出犯罪密度区不呈现随距离增加而显著衰退的距离。本文以宾夕法尼亚州费城1282个酒吧周围暴力犯罪为案例进行研究,揭示出2008年暴力犯罪集聚于25.9m的范围内,并在该距离之外的迅速消失,而当控制点选为消防站时该格局不再出现。实验表明,这是一种估算酒吧暴力犯罪空间范围的方法,并且该技术可用于估算不同类型犯罪产生地的距离范围。     

The Unstable Coastline: Navigating Dispossession and Belonging in Colombo

This article explores how residents of a small coastal fishing enclave in Colombo live with cumulative waves of dispossession brought on by exclusionary projects of urban development. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, I introduce the analytic of navigation to describe how people move, plan and live with both present and future threats of dispossession. Navigation offers a unique perspective on questions of agency and resistance in oppressive conditions. Rather than framing subjects as “resisting” projects of world-class city-making, this analysis shows that urban residents instead engage in complex and occasionally contradictory modes of living with uncertainty. I complicate existing understandings of the term “navigation” by describing how questions of nation and belonging are crucial to comprehending how people navigate. Ultimately, I suggest that expressions of belonging and obligation to an imagined community might not only be strategic, but instead reflect some of the broader social forces which structure possibilities for action.