Antillean Islander Space: On the Religious Beliefs and Representations of the Taíno People

This study aims to shed light on Taíno polytheism and its imprint in the Antillean geographic space and the unitary and differentiated development of its religious beliefs and representations, by means of mythic substitution and iconographic hybridisation, as a result of the multinatural perspectivism (animism) shared with its South American relatives and indigenous transculturation processes. It will also show the implications of a revised interpretation of the archaeological heritage based on a comparative approach using the available Caribbean ethnohistoric records (dated from the fifteenth century, mostly, like the mythological passages recorded by friar Ramón Pané) and contemporary lowland Amerindian ethnography along with the iconographic analysis of Taíno imagery in context, an area in which the pioneer linguist José Juan Arrom made the first advances, but his work now demands review.     

Interrogating Power: Engaged Energy Anthropology

Human-induced global threats are compelling many anthropologists to rethink roles, methods, and paradigms and engage in public debate and action on energy policies, extraction processes, commodity chains, and consumption. Laura Nader's Energy Reader embodies her decades-long engagement as a catalyst for public debate on U.S. energy issues. Tanja Winther's Impact of Electricity exemplifies ethnography informing development practice. Strauss and colleagues’ Cultures of Energy reflects diverse approaches seeking to build cultural understandings to inform energy choices. There remains a need for collaboration with anthropologists embedded in energy-related agencies—positioned where they can leverage anthropological knowledge to push policy envelopes.     

Interrogating Neoconservative Religion

Abstract

Richard John Neuhaus had a stronger basis than most neoconservatives for claiming a theological kinship with Reinhold Niebuhr, but Niebuhr was not a neoconservative or a culture warrior, and Niebuhr did not claim a moral consensus for his concept of “biblical religion.”     

Interrogating post-democratization: Reclaiming egalitarian political spaces

There is now an emerging body of thought on the dynamics of de-politicization, the ‘disappearance of the political’, the erosion of democracy and of the public sphere, and the contested emergence of a post-political or post-democratic socio-spatial configuration. I situate and explore this alleged ‘post-democratization’ in light of recent post-Althusserian political thought. I proceed in four steps. First, I discuss the contested configurations of this post-politicization and the processes of post-democratization. In a second part, I propose a series of theoretical and political arguments that help frame the evacuation of the properly political from the spaces of post-democratic policy negotiation. This diagnostic is related to a particular interpretation of the distinction between ‘the political’ and ‘polic(e)y/‘politics’. In a third part, I argue how emancipatory–democratic politics can be reclaimed around notions of equality, and freedom. In the concluding part, perspectives for re-vitalising the political possibilities of a spatialized emancipatory project are presented. The crux of the argument unfolds the tension between politics, which is always specific, particular, and ‘local’ on the one hand and the universal procedure of the democratic political that operates under the signifiers of equality and freedom on the other.     

Transnational Organising and Feminist Politics of Difference and Solidarity: The Mobilisation of Domestic Workers in Hong Kong

Domestic work represents a significant share of global wage employment, but domestic workers – the majority of whom are women – remain to a large extent excluded from the scope of labour laws and, consequently, from the legal protection enjoyed by other workers. Since they work behind the closed doors of private homes, domestic workers are also shielded from public attention and are often hard to mobilise. In Hong Kong, women’s activism involving local and migrant domestic workers illuminates points of connection and distance as they are simultaneously privileged and marginalised along the hierarchies of class, ethnicity and nationality. Building on feminist and social movement scholarship, I illustrate how global frames facilitate our understanding of feminist solidarity among local and migrant domestic workers. I argue that the meanings of solidarity that dominate at any particular moment are not stable and enduring, but rather formed out of negotiation and struggle within and across domestic workers’ unions. This framing process involves these women working deliberately to make connections between global processes and local contexts.     

Grafts: Feminist cultural criticism

This article provides information about Berne's financial situation at the time the Economic Society was founded. The canton was in an exceptionally fortunate position, having accumulated a sizeable cash reserve that was in part used for loans and investments on the London capital market. Throughout the century, the Bernese government followed a very cautious investment strategy. The main reason for purchasing overseas securities was that they helped the patricians to become independent from tax-paying subjects. Economic imperatives ruled out increases of the cash reserve or further involvement in the overcrowded domestic capital market. However, by investing abroad Berne became increasingly dependent on the goodwill of its debtors, for which it was criticised by the Economic Patriots amongst others.     

Interrogating Notions of the Powerless Oustee

This article investigates the year leading up to the relocation of Botezari village from Tadoba‐Andhari Tiger Reserve, India, and suggests that it does not accord with the conventional scholarly theory of the powerless oustee. The village's pre‐relocation phase was characterized by a genuine local openness to displacement; a socially‐aware displacement authority; lively NGO and press presence; and a relatively assertive and astute village community. This facilitated constructive dialogue, culminating in meaningful concessions and a perceptible power structure shift, which, I argue, indicates that the received wisdom of inevitable oustee powerlessness may in some instances require qualification, at least in the Indian context. There, the last decade has witnessed some broad changes in regimes of governance and civil society, and a growth of cultures of opposition and struggle from ‘below’. Where such wider structural changes come together with other more locally‐specific favourable factors, cases such as the one described here may materialize, in which the acute powerlessness of the displaced should not be assumed.     

Introduction: Feminist Theories and Archaeology

This journal issue developed out of a desire to increase the use of feminist theory in archaeology, leading me to ask Laurajane Smith of York University to co-organize a symposium on the topic for the World Archaeological Congress in Dublin in July 2008. The impacts of major feminist theories on constructions of the past and archaeological thinking are discussed, emphasizing how they implicitly or explicitly influenced other articles in this journal issue.     

Interrogating borders: a transnational approach to refugee research in Vancouver

Immigration is predicated on the centrality of the nation‐state. The authors argue that analyzing settlement patterns and successful integration within a strictly national context is insufficient to understand the political, social, and economic relations which shape the lives of refugee immigrants in Canada. To support this claim, a less state‐centric theoretical framework of transnational migration is outlined. The paper examines methods emerging from transnational migration, focussing in particular on research with Burmese refugees who have settled in the Greater Vancouver Area. Based on 50 personal interviews conducted with refugee newcomers from Burma who are now settled in the Lower Mainland, the authors use the case study as a basis to raise methodological and theoretical questions about immigration research. We argue that the very politics of doing research with this group of refugees and other immigrant groups are shaped by the relations of power experienced before arriving in Canada. Les auteures soutiennent que l'analyse des schémas d'établissement et d'intégration réussie dans un contexte strictement national s'avère insuffisante pour comprendre les relations politiques, sociales et économiques qui définissent l'existence des réfugiés immigrants au moment de l'arrivée. Dans le but d'appuyer cette proposition, nous définissons un schéma théorique moins axé sur l'état, c'est‐à‐dire le transnationalisme. La recherche examine ces facteurs en relation avec les expériences des ‘immigrants non‐traditionnels’ au Canada, en particulier les réfugiés Burmans installés dans la région de Vancouver. Basés sur 50 entrevues personnelles menées avec des réfugiés nouvellement arrivés du Burma et qui sont maintenant installés dans le ‘Lower Mainland’, les auteures utilisent l'étude de cas comme une base permettant de soulever des questions de méthodologie pour la recherche en immigration. Nous avançons que les implications politiques de la recherche avec ce groupe de réfugiés et d'autres groupes d'immigrants dépendent des relations de pouvoir vécues avant l'arrivée au Canada.     

Feminist historical geographies: doing and being

Abstract

As part of GPC’s 25-year anniversary celebrations, this article explores possibilities and prospects for feminist historical geographies and geographers. Here I define feminist historical geography as scholarship which asks geographical questions of historical material and is informed by feminist theories, approaches and methodologies. Its empirical subject matter is necessarily expansive and diverse, but often has a particular focus on the lives of women and other marginalized groups, and on the ways gender and space were co-constituted. This essay interrogates recent developments within this broad terrain, specifically articles and books published in the period from around 2000 onwards and either appearing in geography journals or written by those self-identifying as geographers. The main exception is work by historians and archaeologists interested in gender, space and place, which is cited here in an attempt to open up new research directions for feminist historical geographers. In what follows, we shuttle across spaces and between scales, roaming from the sites of empire to the intimate geographies of the home, from landscapes and buildings to personal possessions like clothes and letters. Doing so is a deliberate act intended both to demonstrate the liveliness of feminist historical geographies broadly conceived and to counter hierarchical readings of space, society and history with their inherent danger of privileging the public over the private, and the exceptional over the everyday and mundane.     

Doing Archaeology as a Feminist: Introduction

Gender research archaeology has made significant contributions, but its dissociation from the resources of feminist scholarship and feminist activism is a significantly limiting factor in its development. The essays that make up this special issue illustrate what is to be gained by making systematic use of these resources. Their distinctively feminist contributions are characterized in terms of the recommendations for “doing science as a feminist” that have taken shape in the context of the long running “feminist method debate” in the social sciences.