Re‐mythologizing the State: Public Security, ‘the Jesus Strategy’ and the Fiji Police

ABSTRACT My primary concern is with tracing how the police force has been transformed from a secular institution into an overtly religious one. Drawing from scholarly work on charismatic leadership and its routinization in institutional forms, much of it inspired by Max Weber's early work on these themes, my overarching aim is to grapple with the significance of Commissioner Teleni's reforms not only for the Fiji police force but more broadly for the shape of the Fijian state. While recognizing the acute importance of international relations in establishing and supporting Fiji's various political regimes, my focus here is firmly on the domain of the nation‐state as I wish to assess how politicians, military leaders, and now the Commissioner of Police attempt to constitute mass public support through their use of Christian rhetoric.     

Obituaries

Remaking Micronesia: discourses over development in a Pacific Territory, 1944–1982. By David Hanlon. Honolulu, University of Hawai'i Press, 1998. xv, 240pp, photos, tables, notes, bibliog., index. ISBN 0824820118. $US34.95.

Representing the South Pacific: Colonial Discourse from Cook to Gauguin. By Rod Edmond. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997. xii, 307pp, illus., notes, maps, index. ISBN 052155054. $A75.00.

Papuan Borderlands: Huli, Duna, and Ipili Perspectives on the Papua New Guinea Highlands. Edited by Aletta Biersack. Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1995. xii, 440pp, tables, maps, figs, bibliog., index. ISBN 0472106015 (hb). $US59.50.

Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific. Edited by Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998. 305pp, index, maps, plates, bibliog., index. ISBN 0521586143. $A36.95.

Bwesou Eurijisi, le premier écrivain canaque. By Jean Guiart. Cahiers pour l'intelligence du temps présent 3. Nouméa, Le Rocher‐à‐la‐Voile, 1998. 154pp, map, illus., notes, bibliog.

Jules Calimbre, Chronique de trois générations, trois femmes et trois maisons. By Jean Guiart. Cahiers pour l'intelligence du temps présent 2. Nouméa, Le Rochcr‐à‐la‐Voile, 1998. 162pp, illus., notes, map, bibliog.

La Terre qui s'enfuit, Les pays canaques anciens, de La Foa à Moindou, Bourail el Kouaoua. By Jean Guiart. Cahiers pour servir à l'intelligence du temps présent 4. Nouméa, Le Rochcr‐à‐la‐Voile, 1998. 167pp, illus., map, bibliog.

Samoan Nursing: The Story of Women Developing a Profession. By Leslie Barclay, Jennifer Fenwick, Fa'amanatu Nielson, Barbara Postern‐Anderson, Pele Stowers and Jennifer Wilkinson. Sydney, Allen &; Unwin, 1998. xxvi, 146pp, map, chronology, glossary, index, list of contributers. ISBN 186448585X. $24.95.

Ono Ono Girl's Hula. By Carolyn Lei‐lanilau. Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Press, 1997. xvi, 180pp. ISBN 0299156346. $A17.95 (paper) $A34.95 (cloth library edition).

The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On: Yukiyukite Shingun. By Jeffrey Ruoff and Kenneth Ruoff. Trowbridge, Wiltshire, Flicks Books, 1998. Cinetek Series, vi, 58pp, cast list, notes, credits, index. ISBN 0948911050. £9.95.

The Last Colonies. By Robert Aldrich and John Connell. Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1998. 285pp, notes, maps, tables, index. ISBN 052141461X. $59.95.

Papua New Guinea Records 1883–1942: Microfilm Collections. Compiled by Peter Nagle. Guide 4, Australian Archives, Canberra, 1998. 136pp. $A10.00.     

Plastic arts and nation‐building in Israel

This article begins as an attempt to analyse an apparently paradoxical situation created by two events, which occurred simultaneously in 1948: the establishment of Israel as an independent state and the emergence of the Ofakim Hadashim (New Horizons) group of artists, acknowledged as the most renowned local artists at the time. The creation of the state of Israel may be considered the high point of Jewish nationalism, when the nation celebrated its distinctiveness. On the other hand, Ofakim Hadashim was a group of intellectuals who aspired to disengage their artistic work from the dominant political processes of the time. The basic claim of its members was l'art pour l'art, which ostensibly contradicted the significance of the general political process. This situation is highly interesting since it challenges the general sociological assumptions about the role of intellectuals in nation‐building processes, and also contradicts the usual explanation regarding the Israeli state‐building process. It concludes that an explanation of the social complexity existing in 1948 can be found in an understanding of modernity as a multifaceted phenomenon embracing a diversity of inherently contradictory practices.     

The Bang Beggars of Derry city: borough policing in Londonderry,c.1832–70

Was Derry's independent city police force wholly inadequate, was it just inefficient for the suppression of riots; or was it the demonstration of politico-religious partisanship that ensured the force's abolition in 1870? This paper will attempt to explore and answer these three questions. It will also look at the borough force in some detail, examining issues with regard to the force's pay, discipline, its duties and conditions of service. It will not attempt to analyse Derry's nineteenth-century riots or the political and sectarian issues surrounding these riots, except where aspects of these directly affected the borough police.     

Screening Singapore: The Cinematic Landscape of Eric Khoo's Be With Me

This paper investigates the mutually constitutive relationship between the context of film production and the composition and content of images produced. Singapore film director Eric Khoo is central to our investigation, and his 2005 film Be With Me is a key example of how Singapore's ongoing urban redevelopment to become a world city reflexively shapes the style and appearance of the city‐state projected in the film. Singapore's history as a developmental state, its pervasive influence on the public and private spaces of its citizens, and recent state‐led initiatives to nurture the arts and media sectors all make it an ideal site to examine the relations between the cinema and space. Be With Me also lends itself to spatial analysis as its mise‐en‐scène is a geography of the life course: particular parts of the city are ‘cast’ as spaces of youth, middle, and old age. We elaborate how the landscapes deployed in the film are simultaneously constituted through state policies, mise‐en‐scène, and gender/age/class considerations. In so doing we show how Khoo's vision of the city‐state has altered since his emergence as a film director in the 1990s: from an oppressed site of hyper‐modernity to a more ambivalent ‘globalised’ built environment in which marginalised or liminal urban spaces for sensuous life and hope for human connection can be experienced.     

Economic despondency and social division: A political review of the year, 1996

Verschave, F. X., La Françafrique. Le plus long scandale de la république (Stock 1998). 379 pp. 130F ISBN 2 234 04948 2

Gourévitch, J.‐P., L'Afrique, le fric la France. L'aide, la dette, l'immigration, l'avenir: vérités et mensonges (Le pré aux Clercs, 1997) 372 pp., 110F. ISBN 2 84228 022 9     

The Passenger Cases Reconsidered in Transatlantic Commerce Clause History

The Supreme Court's 5–4 decision in the Passenger Cases (1849) overturned two Northern states' taxes on poor foreign immigrants. The Court's eight opinions disputed whether destitute transatlantic immigrants arriving in U.S. ports were legally and constitutionally “persons” like fugitive slaves fleeing the South, free African Americans residing in the U.S.‐Canadian borderlands, and black seamen working on ships entering Southern ports. The eight opinions issued in the case, as Charles Warren noted, raised fundamental constitutional questions concerning whether U.S. congressional or state authority was exclusive or concurrent over persons moving in interstate and international business, reflecting wider sectional struggles fostering the Civil War. ¹ More recently, Mary Bilder and others examined connections among indentured contract labor, race‐based American slavery, and the Court's antebellum Commerce Clause decisions to establish that foreign immigrants were commercial objects subject to regulation through the Constitution's Commerce Clause. ² Southerners and Northern pro‐slavery supporters argued, however, that fugitive slaves and free blacks crossing interstate and international borders were “persons” who could be regulated or altogether excluded under state police powers. ³     

'Homo Sacer' out of left field: communist "slime" as bare life in 1930s and Second World War Sweden

This article maps ways in which radical left‐wing politics in 1930s and Second World War Sweden were conceived in medico‐biological and eugenic terms that expressed strong dehumanizing sentiments. The article engages Agamben's and Foucault's thinking on ‘biopolitics’ and ‘biopower’, and extensively exemplifies dehumanizing discourse as deployed by leading Social Democratic politicians, leading figures of government within the police and military, as well as by editors of both right‐wing and Social Democratic press. Ways in which individuals labelled ‘Communists’ were spatially managed in terms of extensive surveillance, registration, detainment planning and forms of incarceration are addressed. I further discuss state measures that may be seen as elements of a state of exception, some measures implemented against ‘Communists’, and others against individuals deemed to have undesirable characteristics seen to be hereditary. In employing Agamben's notion of ‘inoperosity’ in a discussion of a state paradigm of social productivity, eugenic measures in the building of the Swedish welfare state are then related to the dehumanizing framing of ‘Communists’. In conclusion, conditions for regaining a place in the body politic are briefly addressed. The article's focus on ways in which the ethnic and racial same was dehumanized within a democracy on political grounds results from a conscious effort to complement studies of dehumanization as related to colonialism, dictatorial regimes as well as identity politics.     

Guilt by Association? The Hazards of Linking the Concept of the State with Violence

The last 30 years have seen an increasing acceptance of an apparently ubiquitous link between the state and the use of force, with violence now seen as a defining attribute of the state. Few have questioned this approach, but it constitutes a significant shift that contrasts with that of previous eras, where violence was a symptom of failure. This unquestioned link would appear to be deepening our problems in considering the difficulties facing liberal democracies at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Résumé:?Les trente dernières années ont vu le renforcement du lien entre l'état et l'usage de la force et la violence comme un attribut essentiel de l'état. On a peu contesté cette approche bien qu'elle soit en contradiction avec des interprétations précédentes qui considérait la violence comme l'admission d'un échec. Remettre en question ce lien entre état et violence permet de reconsidérer les difficultés des démocraties libérales au début du vingt et unième siècle.     

COLLECTIF N° 376–377Cent ans d'histoire des outre-mers. SFHOM, 1912–2012

Association Georges Pompidou, Georges Pompidou et l'Europe (Brussels, Complexe, 1995), 692pp., 235R, ISBN 2 87027 525 0

Bard, C., Les filles de Marianne: Histoire des féminismes 1914–1940 (Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1995), 528pp., 168F., ISBN 2 213 59390 6

Béhar J.‐M., Guide des grandes entreprises: les groupes qui font la France (Seuil, 1995), 318pp., 190F., ISBN 2 02 022725 8

Breunig, L.C., ed., The Cubist Poets in Paris (University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 326pp, ISBN 0 8032 1224 0

Colombani, J.‐L., La gauche survivra‐t‐elle aux socialistes? (Flammarion, 1994), 212pp., 105F., ISBN 2 08 066953 2

Cornick, M., The Nouvelle Revue Française under Jean Paulhan, 1925–1940 (Rodopi, 1994), 224pp., Hfl. 65/USS 40.50, ISBN 90 5183 797 6

Daphins, F., Le Peuple à la une (SA EPJS, 1995), 139pp., 150F.

Daubié, J.‐V., La Femme pauvre au dixneuvième siècle, t.2: Condition morale (Côté‐femmes, 1993), 203pp., 120F., ISBN 2 907883 69 0 (t.2: Conditions économiques et travail, 294pp., 120F., ISBN 2 907883 46 1. t.3: Réponses à des objections, 125pp., 96F., ISBN 2 907883 70 4)

Derrida, J., Points ... Interviews, 1974–1994 (Stanford University Press, 1995), 494pp., £11.95, ISBN 0 8047 2488 1

Estier, C., De Mitterrand à Jospin (Stock, 1995), 347pp., 130F., ISBN 2 234 04537 1

Georgi, F., L'Invention de la CFDT, 1957–1970 (Editions de l'Atelier/CNRS, 1995), 200pp., 651E, ISBN 2 271 05310 2

Jacquet‐Francillon, F., Naissances de l'école du peuple, 1815–1870 (Editions de l'Atelier/Editions Ouvrières, 1995), 319pp., 170F., ISBN 2 7082 3162 6

Kaplan, R.E., Forgotten crisis. The Fin‐de‐Siècle Crisis of Democracy in France (Oxford/Herndon VA, 1995), 211pp. ISBN 185973 032 9

Knight, D., and Still, J., eds., Women and Representation (Women Teaching French Occasional Papers 3, 1995), 143pp., £5.00, ISBN 085 358 0421

Landau, P.E., L'Opinion juive et l'affaire Dreyfus (Albin Michel, 1995), 152pp., 40F., ISBN 2226 07553 4

Leak, A., Barthes: Mythologies (Grant &; Cutler, 1995), 82pp., £4.95, ISBN 0 7293 0370 5

Leser, E., Crazy Lyonnais: les infortunés d'une banque publique (Calmann‐Lévy, 1995), 268pp., 110F., ISBN 2 7021 2373 2

Molette, C., Prêtres, religieux, et religieuses dans la résistance au nazisme, 1940–1945 (Fayard, 1995), 225pp., 120F., ISBN 2 213 59446 5

Montbrial, T. de, et al., eds, Agir pour l'Europe. Les relations franco‐allemandes dans l'après‐guerre froide (Masson, 1995), 372pp., 249F., ISBN 2 225 84918 8

Pitte, J.‐R., ed., Géographie historique et culturelle de l'Europe (Presses de l'Université de Paris‐Sorbonne, 1995), 424pp., 195F., ISBN 2 84050 042 6

Portrait social. Les femmes (INSEE, 1995), 217pp., 80F., ISBN 2 11 066 240 9

Roudinesco, E., Jacques Lacan: esquisse d'une vie, histoire d'un système de pensée (Fayard, 1993), 723pp., 180F., ISBN 2 213 03146 0

Tallett, F., and Atkin, N., eds., Catholicism in Britain and France since 1789 (Hambledon Press, 1996), 256pp., £36.00

Weitz, M. (Collins), Sisters in the Resistance — How Women Fought to Free France 1940–1945 (John Wiley and Sons, 1995), 350pp., £19.99 hbk, ISBN 471 12676 4

Wokler, R., ed., Rousseau and Liberty (Manchester University Press, 1995), xviii + 299pp., £45.00 hbk ISBN 0 7190 3510 4, £15.99 pbk ISBN 0 7190 4721 8     

‘Operation Restore Public Hope’: Youth and the Magic of Modernity in Vanuatu

ABSTRACT This paper explores the measures known as ‘Operation Restore Public Hope,’ which were authorized during the State of Emergency in January 1998 in Port Vila, Vanuatu, after rioting and looting erupted over the alleged government mismanagement of the mandatory workers' savings fund. The excessive police violence associated with these ‘clean‐up measures’, I argue, undermined the state's claim ‘to restore public hope’ and illuminated the changing relationship between kastomary leaders and the state as well as their competing strategies to define and maintain social order. The extraordinary events of the State of Emergency point to the confluence of sorcery practices and police violence; underline the contested nature of everyday life, and draw attention to the disciplining of young bodies in new urban spaces. Exploring the deployment of a sorcery technique to counter police violence highlights the landscapes of modern power in Vanuatu where magical and state practices coexist with regimes of violence.     

African-Americans and the French Imagination

Frappé par certains grands succès de librairies récents (notamment Les Bienveillantes, JanKarski et HHhH), on a beaucoup réfléchi, notamment dans le numéro spécial du Débat consacré à « L'Histoire saisie par la fiction », sur la place, la portée et la fonction de l'histoire dans la production de textes littéraires. Nous nous emploierons dans le présent article à apprécier certains aspects littéraires de l'écriture historienne dans « l'enquête » de l'historien Ivan Jablonka, Histoire des grands-parents que je n'ai pas eus. Retraçant l'itinéraire de ses grands-parents, juifs communistes militants qui, fuyant la répression politique, quittent enfin leur shtetl polonais dans l'espoir de trouver refuge en France avant d'être emportés par la guerre et le génocide comme tant d'autres, Jablonka s'y implique pleinement, nous livrant aussi le récit de ses recherches et de sa façon personnelle de vivre ce passé dramatique. En analysant la fonction de cette implication subjective de l'historien dans la poursuite de ses recherches et l'écriture de son récit, nous verrons que Jablonka nous fait voir l'itinéraire tragique de ses grands-parents, mais aussi les grands courants de l'histoire dans lequel il s'inscrit, « comme Elstir peignait la mer », c'est-à-dire à partir de la manière particulière dont ils ont pu vivre ce passé.     

John Green. Notes on a neglected eighteenth century geographer and cartographer

Résumé

Le globe est composé de 12 fuseaux, actuellement collés cote à cote. La diamètre est de 73,5 cm.

Les planches originales, gravées sur cuivre, au nombre de 12, devaient mesurer 40 × 60 cm environ.

Les contours et la nomenclature sont postérieurs à 1581 et antérieurs à 1587. Six cartouches sont restés vides. 80 légendes sont inscrites sur diverses parties du monde.

L'auteur, anonyme, s'est servi d'une carte d'Ortelius ‐ dont on ne connait qu'un tirage unique ‐ publiée par Gérard de Jode en 1564, et d'une carte de Postel faite en 1581, dont il n'existe aussi qu'un tirage unique de 1621, ainsi que des cartes du Theatrum d'Ortelius de 1570. Certaines parties du monde, prises à Postel, furent utilisées par Cornelius de Jode dans son Speculum en 1593.

Le globe est antérieur à la grande mappemonde de Plancius de 1592, il est probablement anversois et aurait été établi dans l'entourage de Gérard de Jode. C'est aussi un unicum.

Le cartouche décoratif du 12e fuseau représente un personnage, peut‐être l'auteur, le graveur ou l'éditeur.     

Présidente: le grand défi. Femmes,politique et médias

Mathieu, J.‐L., La Défense de l'environnement en France (Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), 128pp., 45F., ISBN 2 1304 5939 0

Prendiville, B., Environmental Politics in France (Westview, 1994), xiii‐190pp., $27.00, ISBN 0 8133 8822 8. Translated from L'Ecologie, la politique autrement? Culture, sociologie et histoire des écologistes (L'Harmattan, 1993), 200pp., 110F., ISBN 2 7384 1864 3     

Police unions and use-of-force reforms in American cities

Following the murder of George Floyd, there was widespread debate about the policies that govern the use of force by police, but municipal leaders suggested that police unions kept many of the proposed changes from being adopted. Although there is anecdotal and scholarly evidence that unions frequently oppose policing reform, the limited literature in this area actually offers somewhat mixed conclusions about the relationship between union strength and the success of previous reform efforts. In this study, we draw on Halpin's theory of interest groups as politically adaptive organizations to develop expectations about the behavior of police unions in police governance subsystems. We hypothesize that union attempts to influence policy will correlate positively with reform adoption when the political environment is conducive to victory on that front or makes the cost of opposition too high and negatively when the opposite conditions hold. Analyses of the impact of union campaign contributions on the adoption of use-of-force policies in the 100 largest U.S. cities demonstrate that the nature and direction of union influence are moderated by the political climate of the jurisdiction in which they operate.     

Socialists: The end of the line?

Melchior, E., Le PS, du projet au pouvoir (Editions de l'Atelier/Editions Ouvrières, 1993), 358pp., 135F., ISBN 2 7082 30522

Chevènement, J.‐P., Le Temps des citoyens (Editions du Rocher, 1993), 447pp., 39F., ISBN 2 268 01557 2     

Sartre: The media and the ends

Boulé, J.‐P., Sartre médiatique: la place de l'interview dans son ?uvre (Minard, 1992), 262pp., 270F., ISBN 2 85210 045 2

Scriven, M., Sartre and the Media (St. Martin's Press, 1993), 152pp., £35, ISBN 0 333 55813 8     

Mobility and diet in the Iron Age Pontic forest‐steppe: A multi‐isotopic study of urban populations at Bel'sk

High mobility among Scythian populations is often cited as the driving force behind pan‐regional interactions and the spread of new material culture c.700–200 bce , when burgeoning socioeconomic interactions between the Greeks, Scythian steppe pastoralists and the agro‐pastoral tribes of the forest‐steppe played out across the region. While interregional mobility central to warrior lifestyles is assumed to have been a defining feature of Scythian populations, strikingly few studies have investigated human mobility among communities located along the steppe and forest‐steppe boundary zone. Here, we document movement and dietary intake of individuals interred at Bel'sk, a large urban settlement in Ukraine, through strontium, oxygen and carbon isotope analyses of human tooth enamel. The results provide direct evidence for limited mobility among populations from Bel'sk, demonstrating the movement into, and out of, urban complexes. Strontium and oxygen isotope analyses reveal that groups at Bel'sk remained local to the urban complex. Dietary intake, reflected in carbon isotopes, was based on domesticated crops and livestock herding. The combination of low mobility alongside dietary evidence suggests local groups engaged in sedentary agro‐pastoral subsistence strategies that contrast sharply with the picture of highly mobile Scythian herders dependent on livestock portrayed in historical sources.