The ‘Injunction of Jeremiah’: papal politicking and power in the Middle Ages

Throughout the Middle Ages, the ‘Injunction of Jeremiah’ (Jer. 1:10) was employed by countless ecclesiastical writers. Building on an established tradition, medieval contemporaries began applying the allegory of ‘uprooting and destroying, building and planting’ with an intentionally moral and political message. This article examines the Old Testament call narrative with a view to understanding how and why it served medieval popes and other high-ranked ecclesiastics as a political and rhetorical mechanism for legitimising ecclesiastical authority. It argues for a noticeable and deliberate shift in textual interpretation in the ninth century, after which period medieval popes and influential church figures alike marshalled the Injunction to help strengthen the centralising ideology of Rome and her bishop. The effect, it is concluded, contributed ultimately to reinforcing the papacy's claims to govern spiritual and temporal matters throughout Christian society.     

Is the evaluation of millennial changes in stature reliable? A study in southern Europe from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages

Analyses of stature variation in prehistoric and historical populations encounter considerable problems of reliability of the comparisons. To properly compare the results of different studies, it is necessary to conduct a systematic review of the chronological and cultural context of the skeletal series used and identify the most appropriate method to calculate stature values, since stature reconstruction formulae are specific for certain times and places. Stature variations in the population of Sardinia (a Mediterranean island now part of the Italian Republic but considered separately given its unique genetic structure) from the Neolithic to the Modern Period were studied to evaluate the intensity of millennial changes. The results were then compared with the values of coeval skeletal series reported in the literature for other Southern European countries (Italy, Spain, Portugal). We used Sardinian skeletal series with radiocarbon dates or from culturally well-defined archeological contexts. The osteometric measurements were taken on femora of adults who had completed growth and who did not present evident pathological conditions. The data we collected and analyzed indicate that the conditions are lacking to reliably identify a common trend in millennial changes among the considered populations of southern Europe.     

‘Chilling’ and ‘hopping’ in the ‘teenage space network’: explorations in teenagers’ geographies in the city of Mechelen

Within the field of children's geographies several calls have been made to develop ‘teenagers’ geographies’ as a complementary field of research and practice. It has been stated that teenagers remain ‘invisible’ or ‘marginalised’ in public debates as well as in research and practice, even within childhood studies and children's geographies. Further explorations in teenagers’ geographies could contribute to the research on ‘diverse childhoods’. This article explores the spatial worlds of teenagers (approximately 12–16 years) in Flanders (Belgium), a region characterised by a dense network of smaller cities and ‘urban sprawl’. Based on street interviews and observations in a small city several mental maps and patterns of teenagers’ use of public space were identified. Starting from a case study in the city of Mechelen, this article suggests how these perspectives can be integrated into urban planning by identifying and tying together relevant planning layers, thus creating a more closely knit ‘teenage space network’. Wouter Vanderstede is an urban planner, anthropologist and historian. He is a researcher and staff member at Childhood & Society Research Centre–Onderzoekscentrum Kind & Samenleving vzw. Child friendly and teenager friendly planning and design of public space is one of the main research themes of the institute. View all notes     

A Comparative Analysis of the Late Woodland–early Mississippian Settlement Landscape in Northern Georgia

To understand the development of complex socio-political phenomena, we need to study not just the origins of central places, but also their emergence. This can be accomplished by taking an historical perspective where we position ourselves before the occurrence we wish to study. Data from the Georgia Archaeological Site File are presented to explore the Late Woodland and Early Mississippian (ca. A.D. 600–1,100) settlement landscape which contextualized the emergence of two prominent Mississippian mound centers: Macon Plateau (also known as Ocmulgee) and Etowah. Our results suggest that the Etowah River valley supported a denser population who had formed attachments to particular points in the landscape compared to the region surrounding Macon Plateau during the Late Woodland to Early Mississippian transition. These social landscapes provided different contexts for the origins of each Mississippian center and influenced later trajectories of cultural development and settlement in each region.     

J.G.A. Pocock and the idea of the ‘Cambridge School’ in the history of political thought

This article offers a reinterpretation of the origins and character of the so-called ‘Cambridge School’ in the history of political thought by reconstructing the intellectual background to J.G.A. Pocock's 1962 essay ‘The History of Political Thought: A Methodological Enquiry’, typically regarded as the first statement of a ‘Cambridge’ approach. I argue that neither linguistic philosophy nor the celebrated work of Peter Laslett exerted a major influence on Pocock's work between 1948 and 1962. Instead, I emphasise the importance of Pocock's interest in the history of historiography and of his doctoral supervisor, Herbert Butterfield. By placing Pocock's intellectual development in these contexts, I suggest, the autonomy of diverse versions of the ‘Cambridge’ approach can more readily be perceived.     

A forward strategy of freedom in the Middle East: US democracy promotion and the ‘war on terror’

Following the 11 September terrorist attacks, a belief has emerged that one of the root causes of Islamic extremism lies in the repressive nature of the regimes that populate the Middle East. Thus the spread of democracy has become a major component of the Bush administration's ‘war on terror’ Previously dismissed as Wilsonian idealism, the promotion of democracy is now considered a strategic necessity to address the threat posed by terrorism. Despite the significant role democracy promotion has played in the present foreign policy of the United States, the focus has tended to be on the more controversial policies of preventive warfare and coalitions of the willing. The purpose of this article is to help rectify this imbalance by examining the role the promotion of democracy plays within the current administration's foreign policy in the Middle East. It considers the logic behind America's ‘forward strategy of freedom’ in the Middle East as well as the likelihood of this strategy succeeding.     

Representative democracy and the ‘spirit of resistance’ from Constant to Tocqueville

ABSTRACT

The role of resistance in the politics of modern representative democracies is historically contested, and remains far from clear. This article seeks to explore historical thinking on this subject through a discussion of what Benjamin Constant and Alexis de Tocqueville had to say about resistance and its relationship to ‘representative government’ and democracy. Neither thinker is usually seen as a significant contributor to ‘resistance theory’ as this category is conventionally understood. But, in addition to their more familiar preoccupations with securing limitations on the exercise of political authority and averting majority tyranny, both thinkers wrote extensively on the nature and meanings of resistance in ‘representative governments’ or democratic societies. Both thinkers are examined in the context of revolutionary and Napoleonic discussions about the legitimacy of resistance or ‘right to resist’ oppression, and against eighteenth-century discussions of the ‘spirit of resistance’ since Montesquieu. The article notes conceptual distinctions between resistance, revolution and insurrection in the period, and addresses the broader question of the extent to which early nineteenth-century French liberals sought to ‘institutionalise’ principles of resistance within modern constitutional frameworks.     

Mixed-use ‘regeneration’ of employment land in the post-industrial city: challenges and realities in London

This article explores the relationships between land-use planning, property and economic development, with a focus on the changing attitudes towards employment land in post-industrial cities. Drawing on case study data from two London local authorities, it finds that planning authorities are moving away from protecting employment land to actively promoting the mixed-use redevelopment of employment sites, even when there are thriving businesses on these sites and a shortage of supply of employment premises and land, relative to demand. We examine the drivers for changing policy including the national and regional policy contexts, housing targets, the influence of austerity measures, rise of Neighbourhood Planning and changing conceptions of regeneration and the role of housing therein. The article highlights the complex task faced by local planners and the tensions involved in simultaneously finding sites for housing, fostering economic development and promoting mixed-use redevelopment in planning policy and decisions. We find that changes in policy are fuelling speculation for housing development on sites occupied by viable businesses, supporting rather than responding to deindustrialization. This is leading to a gap between aspirations for delivering mixed-use environments on hitherto employment sites and realities on the ground.     

‘Aristocracies of thought’: social class in the early folklore of Yeats and Hyde

The years 1888–89 saw the production of two influential collections of Irish folklore: Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry by William Butler Yeats and Leabhar Sgeulaigheachta by Douglas Hyde. These works broke strongly with the unscientific and patronising tone of the Buchmärchen tradition in Ireland and established a new theory of folklore. In this theory, Yeats and Hyde distanced peasant narrators in an attempt to secure literary and, ultimately, aristocratic origins for their tales. As a result, Hyde and Yeats, despite their Ascendancy upbringings, could view themselves (and not the peasant narrators) as the legitimate inheritors of folklore narratives. The very stories collected, however, challenge this power dynamic. Stories such as ‘Monachar agus Manachar’ directly critique the perceived unjust division of labour and profit in rural Ireland in a way that parallels the act of folklore collection. The tales themselves resist the rhetorical frameworks of their Ascendancy collectors.     

From the ‘new localism’ to the ‘new regionalism’? The implications of regional development agencies for city–regional relations

Throughout the last three decades efforts to regenerate British cities have been based around the construction of new institutional alliances and policy networks supported by a series of urban-based initiatives. Successive Conservative governments premised their intervention on the assumption that cities (and particular parts therein) were the most appropriate geographical level around which to organise policy intervention. In pursuing this city-based agenda, the policies were themselves instrumental in constituting the city as an object of policy: a problem in need of a solution. The aim of this paper, however, is not to explore how certain spaces or scales become constructed through, for example, government policy, political practices or state restructuring. Rather the paper augments work conducted on the socially constructed nature of ‘cities’ and ‘regions’. It explores for regeneration policy and politics the implications of the tendential shift away from a model of ‘new localism’ towards an alternative model of ‘new regionalism’. The origins of the central element of New Labour's emergent regional project — the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) — are established before the paper moves on to examine the likely political relationships between the local state, drawing upon the example of Manchester, and the regional state, drawing upon North West England, under the new institutional arrangements.     

‘Stepbrothers from the Middle East’: negotiations of racial identity among Jewish-Israeli immigrants in Toronto

This paper explores the complex negotiations of racial identity experienced on migration. Working from a series of 48 interviews with racially diverse Israeli immigrants to Toronto, and drawing on literature on the assimilated Canadian-born Jewish population, I contrast the racial histories of Canadian and Israeli Jews – groups whose identities have historically crossed intersections of race, ethnicity and religion. By exploring the participants’ accounts of being differently whitened and blackened in Israel and Toronto, and their own interpretations of and responses to these processes, I expose the spatial contingencies of racial hierarchies, meanings and identifications. I also introduce the under-studied Mizrahi/Sephardi Jewish community – who are demographically prevalent in Israel yet largely unknown in North America, and are subject to complex racial and ethno-cultural tensions in both spaces – into discussions of Canadian Jewishness.     

‘Lived bodies’ and the neoliberal city – a case study of vulnerability in London

This article explores the ‘more-than-work’ aspects of the lives of vulnerable women who street-sex work. Particularly, we are interested in the differences between the women’s experiences, within the broader context of power structures as manifested in neoliberal cities. Few studies have explored this aspect of street-sex workers’ lives and theorisations of the co-creation of environments tend to elide the experiences of the most vulnerable people. Specifically, we explore the relationships that these women have with two environments: the quotidian (where they undertake routine everyday activities), and the gentrified (relating to changes in the spaces in which they live and work). We find that their experiences are extremely local, and heavily contingent on the services made available to them (or not) by the statutory and third sectors, and the emotional contacts they make, particularly in third sector support services. This challenges some of the literature which suggests a separation of ‘home’ and ‘work’, and which finds close associations between women who street-sex work. While places designed by the third sector are more responsive to these women, they are also more vulnerable to closure through lack of funding. This contributes to a significant degree of ontological non-linearity and ontological insecurity in these women’s lives.