Seamen on Land? A Preliminary Analysis of Medieval Ship Graffiti on Cyprus

This article reports on the results of a research project entitled ‘KARAVOI. The Ship Graffiti on the Medieval Monuments of Cyprus: Mapping, Documentation and Digitisation’, during which 233 ship graffiti were recorded in 44 different monuments on the island, dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Innovative recording techniques have been used to mitigate the effects of the subjective or partial recording of graffiti lines on tracing paper. Apart from the study of ship graffiti as iconographic sources, particular emphasis has been given to their geographical and social context through a comprehensive analysis of the graffiti types and their spatial distribution in the monuments as well as the monuments location on the island.     

Utopian Promise or Burdensome Responsibility? A Critical Analysis of the UK Government's Building Schools for the Future Policy

Abstract: This paper critically analyses a nationwide school‐building programme in England: Building Schools for the Future (BSF). It is argued that, between 2003 and 2010, the UK Government's policy guidance for BSF represented a (re)turn to utopian discourse in governmental policy‐making, mobilised in order to justify a massive programme of new school building in the UK. In doing so, BSF connected with the promise of three further discourses: school(‐children), community and architectural practice. It anticipated that new school buildings would instil transformative change—modernising English schooling, combating social exclusion and leaving an architectural “legacy”. However, it is argued that BSF constituted an allegorical utopia: whilst suggesting a “radical” vision for schooling and society, its ultimate effect was to preserve a conventional (neo‐liberal) model of schooling. The paper highlights the critical role that notions of utopia might have in negotiating—and challenging—promise‐laden mega‐building policies like BSF. In doing so, it develops recent geographical research on utopia, education and architecture.     

Gender: A Useful Category in the Analysis of Ego-Documents?

The article discusses the significance of the concept of gender for historical analysis, particularly on the basis of the importance of different types of ego-documents for the self-expression of the sexes. Attention is focused mainly on the status of autobiographies as a historical source, with some consideration of other types of life writing. It is shown how the form of this genre affects the sexes’ access to self-expression and how their differing ‘cultural space’ opens up opportunities for people's self-creation. The development is viewed in an international light, with reference to both ego-documents and history in general, and it is shown how sources of this kind and women's perspectives are necessary preconditions for the humanities to be able to achieve an important reinterpretation of older historical arguments. Each can provide scholars with opportunities to investigate material that has previously defied their analysis.     

Pursuing the Peripheral Path? A Path-Dependent Analysis of the Frankfurt and Munich Fairs

As a result of increasing competition and internationalization, many Western European cities have invested in exhibition facilities. Surprisingly, many new exhibition centres emerge in the urban periphery. An assessment of the 34 largest exhibition centres in Western Europe shows that only 16 are still centrally located while 18 now have a peripheral location. This is a drastic break from the traditional location of these centres in inner city cores. Behind this observation of spatial change is a complex set of dilemmas about investments in current or new locations. A fresh analytical model (based on assumptions of path dependency) is constructed and employed to analyse time and place specific determinants and opportunities. Two contrasting cases are selected in comparable German cities. Frankfurt decided to renew its facilities in the centre of the city, whereas Munich opened a relocated exhibition centre in 1998. Based on these case studies, the paper concludes that there is no autonomous force pulling exhibition centres towards the periphery, but it is rather a misfit between the central location and new physical, functional, spatial, and institutional demands that causes a facility to move.     

Women Beneficiaries or Women Bearing the Cost? A Gendered Analysis of the Red de Protección Social in Nicaragua

Conditional Cash Transfer programmes aim to alleviate short‐term poverty through cash transfers to poor households, and to reduce longer‐term poverty through making these transfers conditional on household investment in the health and education of children. These programmes have become increasingly popular with institutions such as the World Bank. However, the need for conditionalities has been questioned on a number of levels, including its necessity: it has been suggested that the cash transfer in itself may be sufficient to secure most of the programme's wider aims. The example of Nicaragua supports this contention, demonstrating that only a small incentive is needed to bring the desired changes in the uptake of education, since this is something prized by the poor themselves. In health, the Nicaraguan case suggests that demand‐side initiatives might not be as important as supply‐side changes that improve the affordability and accessibility of services. The Nicaragua case also highlights the long‐term limitations of applying such programmes in countries with high levels of poverty and low economic growth. A gendered analysis of the programme highlights the fact that women ‘beneficiaries’ bear the economic and social cost of the programme without apparent benefit to themselves or even necessarily to the household in the short or longer term.     

Working Groups or Wage Labour? Cash-crops,Reciprocity and Money among the Maka of Southeastern Cameroon

The spread of cocoa cultivation among the Maka in the 1950s created new labour demands. These were not met by wage labour, as in most cocoa producing areas, but rather by a novel system of working groups. Specific economic factors can help to explain why wage labour did not develop within the villages, but it is also clear that the preference of the Maka for more cooperative labour arrangements was related to broader socio-cultural characteristics of this society—notably the somewhat paradoxical tension between strong levelling mechanisms and an equally strong emphasis on personal ambition. The new working groups were based on reciprocal exchange of labour, but money came to play an increasing role in their functioning. They allowed for a certain degree of commodification of labour to the advantage of richer farmers, but ultimately they restricted the rise of more structural inequalities. The recent crisis in cash-cropping makes it clear that a system of working groups can offer farmers more flexibility than wage labour in the face of the vagaries of world-market prices.     

A Lone Islet or A Center of Communications? Shanghai in the Indian National Army Movement

Students of modem Chinese history,and modern Shanghai history in particular,tend to view Shanghai as having been a lone islet during the Pacific War,when it was cut off from other parts of the world.This article,however,argues that Shanghai was still well connected to areas under the control of the Japanese throughout the war.Using the Sikh community in Shanghai as a case,it demonstrates how the Indian National Army used both a Japanese-initiated military highway and the long-existing Indian diasporic network in Southeast and East Asia to facilitate a certain kind of mobilization.It further sheds light on how the Sikhs in Shanghai were influenced by and responded to the Indian National Army's endeavors.     

Commemoration of the Great War: A Global Phenomenon or a National Agenda?

During the First World War, people from all over the world were present in Flanders Fields. On the eve of the centenary of the Great War, it is striking that the war is not commemorated as strongly in every country that was involved. This article explores the specific national sensitivities related to the commemoration of the First World War and the reasons why some states commemorate it more strongly than others. The data for this article were obtained through desk research and expert interviews. In addition to focusing on the main conclusions, this article briefly explores some theoretical insights on memory and commemoration. The particular history of a nation’s involvement in the war, the extent to which the war contributed to the nation-building process of the state in question, the extent to which a military tradition existed and the extent to which civil society was involved in the commemorative events are all factors that influence the intensity and the way that the war is commemorated. Another remarkable difference is that the emphasis of commemorative events is on a contemporary peace message in some states while other nations focus on the memory as such. Remembrance of Flanders Fields in particular is only important to some nations. The commemoration of the First World War is, as well as much other expressions of heritage, a historic and social construct.     

Mesopotamian or Iranian? A New Investigation on the Origin of the Goddess Anāhitā

Ar?dvī Sūrā Anāhitā, a popular Zoroastrian yazatā, is celebrated in Ya?t 5 (ābān Ya?t). Anāhitā is mostly believed to be an Indo-Iranian or Iranian deity who has absorbed influences from the creed and iconography of Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess, in the course of history. The type and the degree of such influences are still under debate. The paper places this goddess into the context of ancient Western Asia. Findings are presented in two sections: in the first section, the Indo-Iranian, Iranian and western Iranian origins of Anāhitā are questioned, and in the following section two points are clarified: first, the Mesopotamian origin for Anāhitā is more consistent with historical and archaeological evidence, and second, Anāhitā is the same as Annunit/Annunitum, Sippar—Amnamum’s goddess of war and victory and the avatar of Antu, who was added to the list of his royal patron deities as a result of political and military developments early in the reign of Artaxerxes II.     

Austronesian aboriginality or the ritual organization of the state? A controversy on the political dimension of temple networks in early bali

Since early colonial times, Dutch government officials as well as anthropologists have made a distinction between what have been called “Bali Aga”, the allegedly aboriginal inhabitants of Bali (Indonesia), and those inhabitants associated with title‐bearing groups oriented towards royal courts and brahmana ritual specialists. While the former have been described as constituting a society characterized by equality and democracy, the latter have been portrayed as being almost the opposite. This article questions the basic assumptions about the “Bali Aga”, especially the role of their ritual networks focusing on regional temples. These have been interpreted as a demonstration of equality and of a bounded “Bali Aga” ethnicity. This article suggests a different interpretation, one in which the ritual networks are understood as basic segments, not restricted to the Bali Aga, in the ritual organization of the pre‐colonial Balinese state.     

Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century: Economic Analysis or Tract for the Times?

I argue that the French economist Thomas Piketty's 2014 (American) bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century is not the treatise of economic analysis that its author purports it to be, but is rather a work of political partisanship making claims about the supposedly inevitable increase in the share of national income deriving from capital as opposed to labor—to the point where Chinese bankers or Middle Eastern oil sheiks might own “everything,” even people's bicycles, barring either world catastrophe or broad government intervention—that lack any empirical support or logical plausibility. As a professed heir to (what he understands to be) the spirit of the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, as distinguished from the American Declaration of Independence, Piketty displays none of the respect for the rights of the individual—including the right not to have lawfully acquired property arbitrarily confiscated by government—that the original American political tradition entails. Nor, indeed, despite his profession of staking everything on “democracy,” does Piketty display any regard for the principle of self-government. Rather, his ultimate, admittedly “utopian” goal, outlined in Part IV of his book, is of a European “budgetary parliament,” selected in vague fashion by the existing parliaments of Eurozone members (not by the people themselves), that would hold sweeping powers to confiscate any privately owned wealth that its members regarded as “excessive” and redistribute it to others they deem more needy or deserving. This body would exacerbate all the difficulties resulting from the European Union's widely publicized “democracy deficit.” Yet Piketty implies it should ultimately be a model for world governance. Ultimately, his cause is the opposite of democracy: the unfettered continental or even worldwide rule of unaccountable bureaucrats, advised by “intellectuals” like Piketty himself, convinced that they know far better than their fellows how the latter should live their lives, and claiming the authority to regulate it accordingly.     

Champions of the Movement or Fair‐weather Heroes? Individualization and the (A)politics of Local Food

We ask to what degree consumers who act out movement practices (eg local food consumption) may do so without regard for larger environmental and social justice implications, and how focus on individual concerns reflects the partial (but increasing) neoliberalization and depoliticization of the alternative food movement. Coupling narratives from five citizen‐consumers with analysis of organizational discourse from a major food movement organization in Massachusetts’ Pioneer Valley, we examine the interplay of individual and collective identity to point to places where modified discourse and movement tactics may produce more fruitful outcomes (eg greater community food security). Ultimately, we argue that individualistic interpretations of alternative food are reinforced by organizational campaigns that shape collective identity, casting “buying local” as a heroic act, thereby re‐casting others as anti‐heroes. Counteracting individualization with a new politics of possibility should be prioritized, as citizen‐consumers will inevitably determine future landscapes of food, environmental sustainability and social justice.