The road from serfdom: economic storytelling and narratives of India in the rise of neoliberalism

Abstract

Studies of neoliberalism’s rise in the second half of the twentieth century have focused on influential US and European thinkers and global economic institutions. They rarely mention India. This article argues that, in the 1950s and early 1960s, Nehru’s India served as both a central laboratory and a discursive field for international economists debating the proper role of the state in economic development. US economists like John Kenneth Galbraith held up India planning as a proxy for the ‘American way’ of capitalism in Asia; neoliberal economists like Milton Friedman and B.R. Shenoy excoriated Nehru’s ‘road to socialism.’ As India’s economy stumbled in the late 1960s, neoliberal economists used Indian foundations to build an empirical and rhetorical case against scientific planning. Their cautionary tales about India’s ‘Permit-License-Raj’ helped to construct and sustain the project of delegitimizing state action and celebrating markets.     

Rethinking detention and deportability: Removal centres as spaces of religious revival

This article investigates the effects of confinement on the religious subjectivities of migrants who have been held in British removal centres, elaborating connections to broader debates and mobilizations over the boundaries of citizenship and belonging. It draws on geographic scholarship on affect and the emotions to shed new light on the embodied experiences of detention, its wider socio-political effects and the complex links between intensified religious identities and politics. I argue that removal centres are acting as spaces of religious revival. African ex-detainees' narratives of their confinement dwelt repeatedly on their experiences of religious renewal, and the article explores how Christianity and the Bible provided bodily, narrative and performative ways of coping with, and countering the fraught ‘affective atmosphere’ within detention centres. Faith was a source of energy, hope and strength, created ‘communities of practice’ within and beyond the removal centres, while religious narratives affirmed detainees' humanity. Some expressions of faith underpinned directly political messages, intersecting with ideas about the self as a rights-bearing subject. By including religious responses in debates over the effects of the restrictive border controls, the discussion not only highlights dimensions of non-citizens’ socio-political agency but also demands a rethinking of the broader socio-political consequences of detention and deportability. The article is based on interviews with ex-detainees, chaplains and members of detainee visitors' groups as well as official inspection reports.     

Talk to the hand: strategic spatial planning as persuasive storytelling of the Loop City*

The paper analyses how the spatial vision of the Loop City for the Øresund Region has played an important persuasive role in legitimizing and mobilizing local and national political support for a light rail link along the outer ring road in the Greater Copenhagen Area. The paper discusses the persuasive power of spatial concepts and supportive storylines in bringing transport infrastructure projects onto the national policy agenda. In conclusion, the paper calls for critical attention to the rationalities underpinning practices of persuasive storytelling in contemporary strategic spatial planning.     

Ritual and interpretation: the early medieval case

In dealing with early medieval ‘rituals’ (whatever this category may mean), historians have to take into account that they were written about, staged, and participated in by members of a culture that was steeped in interpretation, and especially by the exegetical dialectic between letter and spirit. The consequences for narrative techniques, and therefore for our approach to the sources depicting ‘rituals’ are plural. The narratives can heighten or de‐emphasize the ‘ritualness’ of an event, as well as heighten or hide conflict (or consensus) within the ritual event, regardless of what actually happened. Rituals in texts, therefore, should seldom be taken at face value. Such techniques suggest that often enough the textual rendition (or even imagination) of a solemnity had more political impact than its performance.     

Dipterous remains and archaeological interpretation

Fossil flies from archaeological settlements can give information on details of everyday life, hygiene, disease and death. Previous work is reviewed and recent research on material from a Greenlandic farm shows the range of the technique and highlights its potential to reconstruct important aspects of human activities that otherwise go unnoticed.     

Going unscripted: A call to critically engage storytelling methods and methodologies in geography and the medical‐health sciences

Geography and the medical‐health sciences have long histories of engaging the humanities. The last decade has seen for both disciplines a significant growth in theoretical frameworks, pedagogic strategies, and research methods that draw upon visual and literary arts, critical self‐reflection, creative tools and expressions, and even direct engagement or partnership with artists, curators, authors, theatre‐practitioners, and other professionals in the arts. Both geographers and medical‐health professionals, then, are increasingly (re)making and understanding various worlds through the humanities. In this paper we explore the histories of humanities in both geography and the medical‐health sciences, especially medicine: we argue the two disciplines have much to learn from each other's engagement and work with the humanities. Focusing on the increasing use of narrative and storytelling in both disciplines, we argue that deployment of humanities‐based frameworks and impulses must not be taken up without careful and critical analytical reflection. Finally, we ground our theoretical explorations with empirical examples from recent community‐based work about the risks and benefits of storytelling and visual arts when looking at the health geographies of Indigenous and settler peoples in Northern British Columbia.

De manière impromptue : vers une démarche critique sur les méthodes de mise en récit et les méthodologies en géographie et en sciences médicales et de la santé

L'intérêt pour les sciences humaines par la géographie et les sciences médicales et de la santé s'inscrit dans une longue tradition. Au cours de la dernière décennie, les deux disciplines ont connu une importante croissance de cadres théoriques, de stratégies pédagogiques et de méthodes de recherche qui font appel aux arts visuels et à la littérature, à l'autoréflexion critique, à des outils et modes d'expression novateurs, voire même à une participation directe ou à des partenariats avec des artistes, conservateurs, auteurs, praticiens de l'art dramatique et d'autres professionnels du domaine des arts. Autant les géographes que les professionnels de la médecine et de la santé contribuent de plus en plus à (re)constituer et comprendre divers mondes à travers les sciences humaines. Cet article brosse un tableau historique des sciences humaines tant en géographie qu'en sciences médicales et de la santé, en particulier la médecine : nous soutenons que les deux disciplines ont beaucoup à apprendre l'une de l'autre sur l'intérêt que chacune porte aux sciences humaines. En mettant l'accent sur le recours grandissant par les deux disciplines à la narration et à la mise en récit, nous faisons valoir l'idée que le déploiement des cadres et des impulsions fondés sur les sciences humaines ne peut pas être envisagé sans mener au préalable une réflexion analytique minutieuse et critique. Enfin, nous fondons cette étude du champ théorique sur des exemples empiriques tirés de travaux réalisés à l'échelle communautaire sur les risques et les avantages de la mise en récit et des arts visuels quand on se penche sur les aspects géographiques de la santé des peuples autochtones et colonisateurs dans le nord de la Colombie‐Britannique.     

An interpretation of geertz

Clifford Geertz. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973. ix + 470 pp. Acknowledgements and index. $15.00.