Women's Work and Market Hierarchies Along the Border of Lao PDR

Contrary to claims by some neo‐liberalists that international borders are becoming irrelevant, market liberalisation can actually enhance the effect that borders have on the lives of the people living along them. This study examines how the opening of border trade between Laos and Thailand has influenced gender divisions of labour, and definition of women's work along the border zone. Studies were undertaken in two border areas in Lao PDR—Sayaboury province and Kammoune province. In the former, cotton‐weaving activities were studied and in the latter, sticky rice box production. The production and trading of these commodities brought crucial cash income to the women studied and their households. How the women benefited from these activities in terms of income and status depends on how other members of the family perceived these activities. However, the formalisation of the border trade has changed women's ‘sense of space’ and their relations with men and other women.     

In Search of ‘Affectionate Regard’: American Merchant Lobbies and the State during the Atlantic Imperial Crisis*

This article revisits the politics of British merchants trading to North America in the period between 1763 and 1783. Their political success and failure in this critical period have been examined primarily in terms of their impact on the escalation of imperial crisis, with the day‐to‐day operation of merchant politics rarely taken into full account. This article takes an alternative approach of studying the political influence of merchants trading to North America within the context of their interaction with the state. By looking into the organisation, the process of lobbying, and the arguments that the merchants adopted, the article highlights how, in response to many sources of tension and uncertainty inherent within their relationship with the state, they demarcated their own areas of contribution to the shaping of commercial and colonial policy. Through the case study of merchants trading to North America, this article sheds further light on the necessity to understand the evolution of such modern political institutions as commercial lobbies in their specific economic and political contexts.     

Borderwork in Indigenous South‐Eastern Australia1

ABSTRACT This article provides some reflections on borderwork derived from social anthropological research with Indigenous people in south‐eastern Australia (S.E. Australia). In post‐settler states, borderwork traverses a range of fields—employment, health, education and politics. It engages both Indigenous and the non‐Indigenous who grapple with the issues associated with socially and culturally liminal spaces. Borderwork provides a focus on the way boundaries are continually constructed as well as dismantled and reconstructed as a result of historical, political and social change. The article draws upon the work of Bourdieu (2000) to interrogate the ‘naturalisation’ of conditions that give rise to particular interpretive frameworks and the specific relations of power that legitimate one interpretive framework over others. ‘First Nations people are border workers by the nature of their aboriginal claims and their persisting marginalization…’ (Celia Haig‐Brown, 1992:230)     

Empowering Pyromaniacs in Madagascar: Ideology and Legitimacy in Community‐Based Natural Resource Management

Development practitioners frequently rely on community‐based natural resource management (CBNRM) as an approach to encourage equitable and sustainable environmental resource use. Based on an analysis of the case of grassland and woodland burning in highland Madagascar, this article argues that the success of CBNRM depends upon the real empowerment of local resource users and attention to legitimacy in local institutions. Two key factors — obstructive environmental ideologies (‘received wisdoms’) and the complex political and social arena of ‘community’ governance — challenge empowerment and legitimacy and can transform outcomes. In Madagascar, persistent hesitancy among leaders over the legitimate role of fire has sidetracked a new CBNRM policy called GELOSE away from one of its original purposes — community fire management — towards other applications, such as community management of forest exploitation. In addition, complications with local governance frustrate implementation efforts. As a result, a century‐long political stalemate over fire continues.     

Planned Resettlement,Unexpected Migrations and Cultural Trauma in Laos

Though not officially considered a ‘policy’ by the Lao government, resettlement of ethnic minorities has become a central feature of the rural development strategy in Laos. Over the past ten years, a majority of highland villages have been resettled downhill, and the local administrations are planning to move the remaining villages in the coming years. This article draws on a national survey about resettlement in Laos, commissioned by UNESCO and financed by UNDP, that was undertaken by the authors. It focuses on the consequences of these huge shifts of population and on the social and cultural dynamics that underlie them. It shows that the planned resettlements, which are intended to promote the ‘settling’ of the highland populations by enforcing the ban on slash‐and‐burn agriculture and opium growing, actually cause increased and diversified rural mobility. This in turn complicates the implementation of the rural development policy and the political management of interethnic relationships. In other words, the ‘settling’ process promoted by the State, because of its broad and often tragic social consequences, can paradoxically generate unplanned or unexpected further migrations, which could be called ‘resettlement‐induced forms of mobility’     

The ‘rhinofication’ of South African security

The rhino‐poaching crisis in South Africa raises questions about whether it should be tackled through judicial processes or by the application of hard‐power methods. The poaching of wildlife has traditionally been met with a harsh response to send a clear message of punitive deterrence. While the reaction of the South African authorities has been no different, the contemporary threat posed by poaching intersects with, and is complicated by, wider concerns such as border security and immigration. In many respects, this has led to what can be termed the ‘rhinofication’ of South African security. South Africa has a long political tradition that relies on force rather than dialogue, negotiation and reform. Yet, the hard‐power response to protect the rhino and other large fauna, though necessary at one level, often runs up against the economic frustrations and temptations of a large, predominantly black, under‐class, which for generations has been excluded from wildlife management and conservation by white ‘exceptionalism’. Poachers are thus transformed through their counter‐cultural actions into what Eric Hobsbawm termed ‘social bandits’. While this social chasm lies at the heart of the ‘rhino wars’, it is clear that in practical terms the lack of a political/poaching settlement in the form of a racially inclusive conservation strategy almost certainly guarantees their continuation.     

Bringing Back the (B)order: Post‐9/11 Politics of Immigration,Borders, and Belonging in the Contemporary US South

Abstract: Post 9/11, debates about borders, immigration, and belonging have reached a new intensity in the US South. The temporal overlap of growing immigration to the South since the late 1990s and growing nativist sentiment across the US since 9/11 has led southern communities to fuse new regional racial demographics to new national border anxieties. This convergence enables southern political elites to address the changing contours of local communities through recourse to national imperatives of border security, all the while avoiding an explicit language of race in a thoroughly racialized debate. In an analysis of recent political maneuvers in the South, this article examines what happens when debates about nation, community, and borders are relocated to southern spaces heretofore absent in discussions of immigration. It argues that legislative actions against immigrant populations in southern states are virulent and multi‐scalar border policings in which concerns about the social and cultural boundaries of southern communities, new racial projects across the South, and post‐9/11 immigrant anxieties across the US become inseparable. To conclude, it discusses the theoretical insight that this critical assessment of the South's new border projects offers vis‐à‐vis understandings of, and struggles against, exclusion, racism, and social injustice.     

Border Anxiety in Palestine–Israel

In this paper, I deal with representations of Palestinian women and their experiences with Israeli national security. In particular I explore how the political philosophy of Agamben and feminist psychoanalytic ideas of “abjection” could assist in understanding the nature and flexibility of the power relationships between Palestinian women and the Israeli state. I pay specific attention to moments when women carry out suicide attacks or when pregnant women in labour are forced to give birth at the checkpoint. I argue that, from a Western perspective, pregnant and exploding women's leaky bodily boundary embodies Israeli fears about the leakiness of the border between Israel and Palestine, fears which necessitated the construction of a so‐called “security fence” in order to create a hermetic border. As such, I emphasize women's capacity to produce, heighten and dissolve boundaries, bodily and political, thereby advancing a radically different kind of political geography.     

Origin Narratives and the Making of Dynastic History in al‐Dīnawarī's Akhbār

This article takes the reader on a journey into the historical writing of the ninth century Muslim historian al‐Dīnawarī (d. 895) and examines the motives behind composing his al‐Akhbār al‐?iwāl. The themes and narrative arrangements of this work give insight into al‐Dīnawarī's historical agenda that demonstrates his interest in royal histories that exemplify the rise and fall of nations, dynasties, and powerful rulers. Al‐Dīnawarī's emphasis on specific episodes and events demonstrates that only certain ethnic groups whose political legitimacy derives from a respectable and prominent origin can bring about political and social stability. By dealing with these sociopolitical concerns, this article also sheds new light on the intellectual discourses and political crises that dominated Islamic society during the eighth and ninth centuries and the way al‐Dīnawarī reacted to these challenges.     

Power and rural landscapes in early medieval Galicia (400–900 ad): towards a re‐incorporation of the archaeology into the historical narrative

This paper aims to bring together hitherto neglected archaeological data about the early medieval landscapes of Galicia (north‐west Spain), in order to understand the social transformations this ‘peripheral’ region underwent between the fifth and the ninth centuries and to frame them in the context of wider European debates. Despite its many limitations, the archaeology reveals that until the middle of the seventh century, the late antique society of Gallaecia experienced a previously unsuspected vitality. At this point a socio‐political fragmentation occurred, which was characterized by the strengthening of local power, until a further change took place with the progressive incorporation of Galicia into the Asturian kingdom in the ninth century.     

Unpacking “Accumulation By Dispossession”, “Fictitious Commodification”, and “Fictitious Capital Formation”: Tracing the Dynamics of Bahrain's Land Reclamation

We explore the interrelationships between the concepts of fictitious commodities, fictitious capital and accumulation by dispossession. We do so through a detailed examination of the dynamics of land reclamation in the Kingdom of Bahrain during the years 2001–2014. Particularly, we dissect in‐depth the ensemble of social relations and chain of events involved in two specific real estate projects, Norana and Bahrain Financial Harbour, that have come to symbolize Bahrain's neoliberal era. Reclamation was a unique process in which land was explicitly produced as a commodity for market purposes. Primary material of land deeds, company registration documents, and news articles were used to map out the social relations across the state–finance–real estate nexus. We emphasize that our understanding of accumulation by dispossession involving land is greatly enhanced if we view it as a process of reconfiguring the ensemble of social relations using fictitious commodification and fictitious capital formation.     

Financialization and Global Commodity Chains: Distributional Implications for Cotton in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Restructuring of global and local markets has led to an increased influence of commodity derivatives markets on commodity price setting. This has critical implications for price risks experienced by actors along commodity chains. Commodity derivatives markets have undergone significant changes that have been referred to as the ‘financialization of commodities’, which we define as an increase in trading activity by financial investors and the reorientation of business strategies by commodity trading houses towards risk management and financial activities. This article assesses how these global financialization processes affect commodity producers in low‐income countries via the operational dynamics of global commodity chains and national market structures. It investigates how prices are set and transmitted and how risks are distributed and managed in the cotton sectors in Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Tanzania. It concludes that uneven exposure to price instability and access to price risk management have important distributional implications. Whilst international traders have the capacity to deal with price risks through hedging, in addition to expanding their profit possibilities through financial activities on derivatives markets, local actors in producing countries face the challenge of increased short‐termism — albeit to different extents depending on national market structures — with limited access to risk management.     

PERILOUS WATERS: EARLY MARITIME TRADE ALONG THE WESTERN COAST OF THE BLACK SEA (FIFTH MILLENNIUM BC)

A heavy accumulation of exotica and valuables, such as gold, copper, carnelian and Mediterranean shells, distinguishes the Black Sea littoral from other parts of the east Balkans in the fifth millennium BC. 1 Recent discoveries shed new light on the trading connections of the coastal communities and indicate that maritime activity was germane to the origin of their extraordinary wealth. This article investigates the involvement of the coastal inhabitants with the sea. It addresses the ecological conditions and the technical parameters of prehistoric seafaring on the west coast of the Black Sea, considers the remains of marine species in the faunal record as an indication of maritime experience, and examines the artefactual record for signs of movement of goods and people between the coastal communities. The combination of these separate lines of evidence points to a maritime trading route joining the resource‐poor north with the resource‐rich south of the littoral in the Chalcolithic period. Moreover, it implies that sea‐borne trade not only enabled the accumulation of material wealth, but also was pivotal for social change.     

Sub‐state nationalism and the welfare state: Québec and Canadian federalism

ABSTRACT. This article examines the relationship between sub‐state nationalism and the welfare state through the case of Québec in Canada. It argues that social policy presents mobilisation and identity‐building potential for sub‐state nationalism, and that nationalist movements affect the structure of welfare states. Nationalism and the welfare state revolve around the notion of solidarity. Because they often involve transfers of money between citizens, social programmes raise the issue of the specific community whose members should exhibit social and economic solidarity. From this perspective, nationalist movements are likely to seek the congruence between the ‘national community’ (as conceptualised by their leaders) and the ‘social community’ (the community where redistributive mechanisms should operate). Moreover, the political discourse of social policy lends itself well to national identity‐building because it is typically underpinned by collective values and principles. Finally, pressures stemming from sub‐state nationalism tend to reshape the policy agenda at both the state and the sub‐state level while favouring the asymmetrical decentralisation of the welfare state.     

THE ATLANTIC ROMAN TRADE DURING THE PRINCIPATE: NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE WESTERN FAÇADE

In this paper new evidence is presented for long‐distance trade in the western Atlantic in the Roman period, chiefly from Augustus to the second century AD, on the basis of documented shipwrecks and numerous amphora types. Well‐dated contexts from northern Portugal and Spain, as well as similar sites in northern France and Germany, suggest a thriving trade of amphora‐borne commodities during the Principate. The Atlantic route was initially developed during Augustus' campaigns against the Cantabri and Astures, and later consolidated with the exploitation of the mines in the north‐west of the Iberian Peninsula. Supplying the Roman armies in the German Limes gave a new impetus to this commercial route, complemented by the conquest of Britain.     

Above and Beyond: Zomia and the Ethnographic Challenge of/for Regional History

James Scott’s notion of Zomia proposes a new look at historical and social dynamics in a vast area of the Asian hinterlands, in terms of deliberate state‐avoidance that came to an end through the nation state’s superior techniques of control. Zomia is a concept metaphor that defines the social reality it purportedly only describes. My examination points to a pervasive problem with the historicization of highland regions in Europe as much as in Asia. Juxtaposing Scott’s case with two other definitions of Zomia, I call attention to the way concept metaphors define social landscapes and historical dynamics. Drawing on the work of several Europeanists, I suggest a model of rural–urban relations that does not privilege either a community or the state as the principle of society and history, which may overcome the separate disciplinary biases of anthropology, history and political science.     

Brazil's Amazon Fund: A “Green Fix” between Offset Pressures and Deforestation Crisis

Emissions trading and nature-based solutions, particularly REDD+, have lent themselves to the critical literature on the “socioecological fix” in neoliberal capital accumulation and state regulation. Prone to reversals, land conflict, and leakage, these mechanisms displace the burden of carbon emissions reductions to global South countries, promote new green commodities, and thus increase rather than curb the chance of capital accumulations by big polluters. Studies of existing REDD+ projects register the privatisation of forest management on the one hand and “aidification” on the other, suggesting impediments to fully commodifying forest carbon ranging from social movement resistance to technical issues. This case study of Brazil's national Amazon Fund points to global South protagonism in constructing and negotiating REDD+, challenging Northern and market hegemonies. Progressive Southern actors use the political space of the fix to defend rural communities' territorial rights and demand resources in line with historic responsibilities and climate justice.     

Late Pleistocene Lithic Procurement and Geochemical Characterization of the Cerro Kaskio Obsidian Source in South‐western Bolivia

Primary questions regarding the foraging behaviour of the first hunter–gatherers who colonized the New World are how they found, procured and utilized high‐quality raw materials for manufacturing stone tools. In this paper, we present evidence from the late Pleistocene site of Cueva Bautista in the highlands of south‐western Bolivia, which demonstrates that a substantial portion of the recovered stone tool assemblage originated in Cerro Kaskio, a recently discovered obsidian source located 15 km south‐west of the site. In addition to describing the geological and geochronological setting, we provide the first geochemical characterization of the Cerro Kaskio source by means of instrumental neutron activation analysis and energy‐dispersive X‐ray fluorescence. Supported on the technological analysis and archaeometric sourcing of the obsidian lithics found in Cueva Bautista, we discuss the nature of the procurement strategies practised by the earliest mobile hunter–gatherers who explored and colonized the Andean highlands. We conclude that opportunistic lithic resource procurement was probably an important component of the first foraging societies that explored the highland Andes.     

‘Working for’ and ‘Working’ among Western Arrernte in Central Australia1

This article discusses some conflicts between kin‐ and market‐based society as they are reflected in the lives of Western Arrernte in and around Ntaria (Hermannsburg). Both political economy and cultural analysis provide accounts of concomitant ‘problems about work’ and training initiatives in remote communities. Neither brings together, however, the issues of economic marginalisation and a history of cultural difference with its own transformations. This discussion takes its departure from the Arrernte's attempts to reconcile kinship service (‘working for’) and paid employment (‘working’) in everyday practice. It demonstrates that this attempt is part of broader change concerning the ways in which hunter‐gatherer people in Australia have been compelled to adapt to a world of cash and commodities, and waged employment. In this discussion, the focus is on remote indigenous Australians today.     

Photo Essay: The Rio Grande Borderland

The Rio Grande border of the United States and Mexico is over 1,000 miles long. This presentation of that border is by means of a photo essay interpreting the physical, economic, political, and cultural complex that has evolved. These photos were all taken in 1990 on a reconnaissance that followed both sides of the border for the entire distance from Ciudad Juarez and El Paso on the west to the Gulf of Mexico on the east. Numerous crossings of the border were made at official and non-official points. Informal field interviews were conducted on both sides of the border with government officials, agricultural workers, tourists, farmers, industrial managers, factory laborers, retirees, undocumented migrants, beachcombers, shoe-shiners in the plaza, sportsmen, clergymen, children, and loafers. The photos with an accompanying text are presented in an order that is conducive to a comprehension of the salient aspects of the physical and human geography and the complex social issues found in the borderland. The final photos and text are on the maquiladoras and the international interplay of history, markets, labor, and technology resulting in striking structural change.