Have you heard the one about the disappearing ice? Recasting Arctic geopolitics

This article unpacks the discourse of Arctic geopolitics evident in the space-making practices of a wide variety of actors and institutions, offering an exploration of the ways in which the Arctic is emerging as a space of and for geopolitics. Tracing the well-aired story of Arctic geopolitics through neo-realist readings of climate change, the melting of polar ice, increasing competition for resources and so on, two kinds of spatial ordering are identified as being entwined in orthodox Arctic geopolitics. The first has to do with Arctic space as such, and its open, indeterminate nature in particular. The perceived openness of Arctic space enables it to become a space of masculinist fantasy and adventure, which is mirrored in contemporary accounts of Arctic geopolitics. It is suggested that this is entwined with and nourishes the second ordering of Arctic space in terms of state-building and international relations. The working out of these spatial orderings in recent interventions in Arctic geopolitics is explored via three examples (two Arctic exhibitions in London, the Russian Polar expedition of 2007 and ’sovereignty patrols’ by Canadian Rangers). In conclusion, the article presents avenues for further critical research on Arctic geopolitics that emphasizes embodiment, the resolutely (trans)local, and a commitment to the everyday.     

“The producers on the one side,and the capitalists on the other”: Labor Reform,Slavery, and the Career of a Transatlantic Radical

Abstract

Through exploring the neglected career of John Campbell, an Irish-born Chartist refugee who ascended to a leadership role in the antebellum American labor movement, this article seeks to shed light on how revolutionary upheaval in Europe, debates over immigration, and sectional conflict affected working-class politics. Focusing on the period 1848 to 1851, and tracing Campbell's rapid evolution from a radical opponent of slavery to an ardent supporter of black subjugation, I argue that labor historians need to pay closer attention to shifting local and national contexts to understand the racial politics of labor agitators. Yet even as Campbell's views changed, his commitment to a producerist vision remained constant; by 1851 he had simply added people of African descent to a list of “idle” nonproducers who lived off the labor of workingmen. His proslavery twist on producer ideology suggests historians of antebellum social relations may need to go beyond interrogating the racial dimensions of artisan republicanism to gain a fuller understanding of the variety of working-class attitudes to race.     

How much heterogeneity can the welfare state endure? The influence of heterogeneity on attitudes to the welfare state

Cultural and economic heterogeneity is often seen as a major threat to modern welfare states. This article contributes to the discussion of how much heterogeneity the welfare state can endure by theoretically and empirically focusing on the relationship between different levels of national identity and the support for welfare state policies. We analyse the effect of different types of national identity on attitudes towards taxation and redistribution. We show that it is the subjective aspect of national identity, or social cohesion, that in fact matters for predicting attitudes to the welfare state. In comparison, more objective measures of heterogeneity like the inequality of income distribution, language fractionalisation or the percentage of foreign‐born individuals do not have any effect on attitudes to the welfare state.     

Time‐bound theories about the origin of the Finns

It is a well‐known fact that the present transforms the past at least as much as the past guides the present. The origins of the Finns can be reviewed from two perspectives; firstly, in terms of how local communities explained this question at different periods, and secondly, how the nation's scholarly community explained the matter. This article discusses the latter. I must stress that it simplifies the process it describes and does not rely on a wide range of research materials. It is simply meant to provoke and encourage researchers and scholars to address the social context of previous answers to the question of origin.     

“If I were hungry,I would not tell you” (Ps 50, 12): Perspectives on the Care and Feeding of the Gods in the Hebrew Bible

Abstract

In the Hebrew Bible, sacrifices are described as food for Yahweh and thus the sacrificial system corresponds with the general Ancient Near Eastern system of the “care and feeding of the gods” At the same time, human-divine commensality is problematized in narrative texts such as Judges 6 and 13, where the burnt offering is stressed as the only and necessarily different way the deity may consume food. Finally, some passages, such as Psalm 50, quoted above, explicitly reject the notion that sacrifices and offerings should be required as sustenance for Yahweh since he is the creator and owner of the world and everything in it.

This article offers a survey of various views on sacrifice as food for the deity in the Hebrew Bible and discusses these views in their Ancient Near Eastern context. It is suggested that the main understanding of sacrifice as meal in the Hebrew Bible is one that emphasizes difference through commensality and stresses the incompatibility of the human and the divine sphere through the social locus of the meal.     

‘They'd only call you a scally if you are poor’: the impact of socio-economic status on children's identities

This article highlights the importance of socio-economic status to children's understandings of their own identity and belonging. It draws on a participatory research project with two groups of children, aged 8–13 years, from different socio-economic backgrounds, in two different geographic locations. It explores how children perceive and understand their own social and economic situations in relation to others. Whilst the children, from both backgrounds, did not regard themselves as rich or poor, they acknowledged social difference through their discussions of ‘chavs’ and ‘posh’ children. The article highlights the importance of place to those children with fewer socio-economic resources. The article confirms the nature and extent of the stigma associated with being relatively poorer, and increases our understanding of a socially divided society through children's eyes. It demonstrates how even young children perceive and experience social divisions, and contributes to a fuller picture of inequality from a child's perspective.     

Writing on Domesticity,Thinking about Politics: Women Organising during Decolonisation in Cambodia, 1948–52

By examining the intellectual renderings of previously marginalised voices in mid-twentieth-century Cambodian history, this article reconstructs notions of who is a political agent and what constitutes the ‘political’ in tumultuous moments of decolonisation. In 1948, Cambodian women founded the Samāgam Khmaer Sahajīvinī (SKS), or Association of Khmer Female Comrades/Companions, and produced the first Khmer-language magazine for women, Dassanāvaṭti Nārī (Women's Magazine). The organisation was structured around four committees representing interests in clothing, food, good manners and publishing, and organisers engaged in issues related to visions of governance, ethnic difference and modernisation. These gendered organising efforts occurred alongside political in-fighting among male politicians in the turbulent years prior to gaining independence from the French Union in 1953. Due to their lack of electoral rights prior to 1955, women were excluded from political institutions. Yet, when the organising women founded the SKS and committed to producing a magazine from 1949 to 1952, they asserted women as political agents with important perspectives on Cambodian politics and society. Centring the efforts and writings of the SKS provides new insights into how decolonisation was not just a male-dominated and top-down movement but rather a multitude of organising and intellectual contributions.     

Unfolding dialogues about gender,care and ‘the north’: an introduction

This paper introduces a special themed section which arose out of a successful symposium, Caring for the North: Gender, Care and Northern Places, held in 2006 at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. Considering feminist and geographical research on care, we argue (1) that feminist perspectives have provided key developments for thinking about care, and (2) that care research must take place seriously to allow for both specificity and complexity of approaches to the relationships of gender, care and ‘northern’ places. We then briefly introduce the special issue contributions which address these eponymous concerns, suggesting this collection is an opportunity for unfolding dialogues about the intersections of gender, care and ‘the north’. We hope the diversity of the work that follows demonstrates the range of possibilities for feminist approaches to care and place and furthers the necessary cross-disciplinary conversations.     

Were the Wars of Religion about Religion?

Abstract

William Cavanaugh's The Myth of Religious Violence raises important questions about the role of religion in society. It challenges all-too-common misunderstandings about the relationship between religion and politics and, most valuably, warns against any assumption that religion is peculiarly prone to violence. This essay nevertheless takes issue with his attempt to disprove what he calls “the myth of religious violence” with evidence from the Wars of Religion in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Europe and his claim that “the story of these wars serves as a kind of creation myth for the modern state” (10). The essay emphasizes the importance of understanding the religious dimensions of early modern Europe's wars but also of recognizing that, in both historical and contemporary situations, religious motivations are best understood not as independent variables but rather as catalysts that could exacerbate-or relieve-tensions rooted in other sorts of divisions or quarrels.     

Righting the course? Humanitarian intervention,the war on terror and the future of Afghanistan

The US‐led post 9/11 ‘intervention’ in Afghanistan was, by definition, not a humanitarian intervention. The intervention in Afghanistan was defined as an act of self‐defence by the US and it was one of the first steps in the ‘war on terror’ by the US and its allies: it had no intention or clear strategies for long‐term stabilization, state‐building or development. The US‐led international coalition failed to ‘find’ Al‐Qaeda in the short term and new arguments had to be made to justify continued international presence. The initial agenda was quickly blurred by a mismatch of intentions including those of long‐term stabilization and state‐building. The ideas developed through the Bonn Agreement (2001–5) and continued through the Afghanistan Compact (2006–10) have focused on building a centrally governed state (sometimes defined as democratic) that has a monopoly on the use of force. Their shortcomings are already well‐documented: the urgency of the Bonn Conference and of the adoption of the Bonn Agreement ostensibly meant trading expediency and stability for accountability and a clean slate, which is not to say that there were no good intentions at Bonn from stakeholders, but that Afghans and the international community put power‐sharing before progress. The choices made at Bonn may have contributed to the culture of impunity and the entrenched poverty that is gripping Afghanistan today. This article responds to the claims that state‐building and all that goes with it are not the responsibility of the ‘international community’ by addressing the accountability and humanitarian paradoxes. The question remains, however, about who should be responsible for reform and politically accountable in the aftermath of non‐humanitarian (and indeed even humanitarian) interventions?     

The Burial of the Dead: the British Army on the Western Front, 1914–18

Abstract

This article examines the ‘war culture’ that developed within the British Army with regard to death and burial on the Western Front. Soldiers on the battle?elds responded to the presence of death and the bodies of the dead through a speci?c framework that was used to understand this perverse and violent landscape. This drew upon pre-war practices and emphasized the physicality of the corpse in the desire to ensure a ‘decent’ burial for a ‘pal’.     

What Does the Somali Experience Teach Us about the Social Contract and the State?

Since 1991 the international system has struggled and failed to recreate a state on the territory of the former Somalia. Proto‐state systems have been formed by Somalis themselves in Somaliland and Puntland and alternative forms of governance and order exist in other parts of Somalia, but none enjoys international recognition. The polities of Somalia offer important lessons concerning our general theories about social contract, the role that states play in creating wealth, indigenous systems of governance, and the failure of existing international approaches to state reconstruction. Contemporary Somali politics is re‐explored here to extract these lessons. The article explores the assumptions embedded in the works of the classic Western social contract theorists in the light of Somali experience in order to show that the underlying conceptual structure of international state reconstruction work needs to be rethought. We conclude that it frequently is better to allow for bottom‐up, organic, disjointed negotiation of indigenous governance solutions (even though they probably will not conform to Western ideas of liberal democracy) than for the international system to impose top‐down answers. The former more closely tracks the history of state formation in Europe and the latter is troubled by the inconsistent and not necessarily benign interests of the international actors involved. Indigenous, local political systems are changed by the stresses of violent conflict, so prompt action to employ them in a post‐conflict situation is indicated.     

Gene technology in humans: can the responsibilities be borne by scientists,physicians, and patients?

Abstract

The possible and likely application of gene technology in medical treatment raises a multitude of ethical and philosophical questions, as well as inducing conjecture about the nature of scientific research. Is a strictly causalistic way of thinking and the positivistic expectation of a clear cut outcome applicable in the life sciences? Is the concept of the gene as the inseparable and indivisible unit of heredity still valid? Certainly the one gene–one protein hypothesis is no longer tenable. Competition in genomic research has largely become economic competition, much of this research being in the hands of small firms, and thus the traditional rules of scientific honesty in research are no being longer observed. All this has led to a dissolution of responsibility and to mystification in the media and the public mind. This article is an appeal for the adoption of a sober, modest, and rational attitude towards these important and at the same time complex issues.     

Shattered Minds: Madmen on the Railways, 1860–80

Scholars have long pointed to stories of death and disaster on the railways as proof of profound Victorian anxieties about technology. And yet the traumatic crash was not the only anxiety revealed by sensational railway stories. In the 1860s, a surprising number of newspaper accounts emerged telling tales of ordinary men losing their minds on the railways. These stories were told and retold across the periodical press, exaggerating both the extent of the problem and the severity of the danger for the everyday traveller. Analysing a broad range of press accounts and government policy, this article traces a moral panic in the making. These stories reveal a great concern about the seeming fragility of the male mind when exposed to the modern, industrial world. As this article demonstrates, fears of madness were not limited to Lunacy Commissioners and alienists; they were in fact a staple of popular culture. If a railway journey was all it took to drive a seemingly sane man to madness, what did that say about the health of British manhood?     

Gouguo,the “Land of Dogs,” on Ricci's World Map*

When Matteo Ricci designed his famous world map, he made use of European and traditional Chinese sources, which also concerns the distribution of certain toponyms on the map. The present study looks at one particular item: the name Gouguo 狗國, or “Land of Dogs,” which appears near the Bering Strait (then called “Strait of Anián”). Several questions arise in this context: Where does the name Gouguo come from? What can we say in regard to the well-known topos of “dog-headed” people? Which were the works consulted by Ricci? Why did he assign Gouguo to such a remote area and how should we interpret the “layout” of the entire region? The discussion will also look at some adjacent regions and names. The final part offers an hypothesis in regard to the possible political background of this arrangement in ca. 1600.