Beyond ‘resistance’: rethinking nonhuman agency for a ‘more-than-human’ world

This article argues that rethinking historical agency to include nonhuman agents is one way to integrate better animals into historical narratives. Drawing on posthumanist theories from geography, anthropology and science and technology studies (STS), and forming part of a growing interest in nonhuman, particularly animal, agency, it aims to clear some theoretical and historiographical ground to provide a basis for claims that nature has agency. It then argues that environmental and animal historians have too readily equated nonhuman agency with ‘resistance’, a concept that does not easily map onto animal behaviour and one which also fails to capture the diversity of nonhuman agencies. Using case studies of Police rescue dogs in early twentieth-century France and animals on the Western Front, it argues that exploring the diverse types of nonhuman agencies and their deep and multiple entanglements with human agents will extend studies of nonhumans beyond the resistance model.     

Maltese ‘gallarija’: a gender and space perspective

In Malta, there are hundreds of balconies, especially in Valletta. However, the most fascinating ones are boxed-balconies known as ‘Gallarijia’ in Maltese. The Knights, an ultra religious Roman Catholic military Order who ruled Malta for over 260 years, adopted covered-balconies designed and used in Muslim countries; in the hope that it would ensure their segregated life style as well as; concealing their illicit sexual activities with Maltese women. The Grand Master de la Cassiere built the first covered-balcony in his palace in Valletta; soon it found affinity with the Maltese well-to-do families who called it their own. Although, cultural and technological transfers between Muslim and Christian worlds have always been a way of life in the Mediterranean region, successfully adopting an innovation from another culture requires suitable social, economic and cultural environment in the host country. The objective of this article is to explain how and why a Christian military order has successfully adopted a Muslim inspired design for their balconies. We suggest the key to understand this phenomenon and the paradox it poses is the status of women in Malta during the Knights' rule.     

Show solidarity,live solitarily: the Nazi ‘New Europe’ as a ‘family of peoples’

Abstract

This chapter first investigates how the German Nazis used the term ‘European solidarity’ and demonstrates that the term meant political loyalty between European ‘peoples’ (Völker) in National Socialist discourses. Second, assuming that the Nazis’ objective in showing solidarity with or demanding loyalty from other nations was to increase strength in what they believed to be a conflict with ‘international Jewry’, it examines the logic of the Nazis behind including other European countries into their own camp in that conflict. It will be argued that the Nazis developed a sense of belonging with non-German Europeans based on three ideas: (1) the racist myth that all Europeans belonged to the ‘Aryan race’; (2) a Europe-wide consensus of the extreme Right on anti-Communism, antisemitism, and anti-democratic and ultra-nationalist worldviews; and (3) the existence of cross-border relations within Europe which led to shared experiences. The article draws on primary sources as well as on secondary literature about National Socialist concepts of Europe and about transnational academic, cultural and social relations in the National Socialist sphere of influence.     

Re‐locating Moroccan Women’s identities in a transnational world: the ‘woman question’ in question

This article considers the situation of women in politics and the overall politicization of the ‘woman question’ in Morocco in its historical context in order to suggest why, despite enormous changes in women’s daily lives and roles in society, continued attempts to gain greater rights for Moroccan women and improve their status have been met with strong resistance by certain political groups. Working with interviews conducted with activists during fieldwork in Morocco, I focus on an analysis of two recent sets of events—debates around the Plan for Action to Integrate Women into Development and the Moroccan March 2000 for Women in Rabat and its counter‐march in Casablanca—to discuss how the various oppositional positions on the ‘woman question’ have developed and persisted in Morocco. I argue that unresolved and renewed national conflicts in Morocco, which in part are fueled by the success of transnational feminisms and fundamentalisms, perpetuate the manipulation of the ‘woman question’ for short‐term political gains in such a way that significant progress on this issue has been repeatedly thwarted. I address the tension in transnational feminism between ‘universalist’ and ‘cultural difference’ positions as they have been manifested in the Moroccan context and suggest that a way forward involves problematizing both poles of this dichotomy.     

Trust in world politics: converting ‘identity’ into a source of security through trust-learning

In the discipline of international relations, the concept of trust has been theorised in two ways: the ‘rationalist’ approach and the ‘normative’ approach. This article aims to show that these approaches do not adequately reflect how trust operates in world politics and that trust provides a new way of understanding the identity–security nexus in international relations. It is argued that as actors learn to trust each other, this trust-learning process has a transformative effect on their definition of self-interests and identities. The elaborated understanding of trust in the security dilemma is operationalised in terms of the immigration security dilemma.     

The convictions of a realist: concepts of ‘solidarity’ in Helmut Schmidt’s European thought, 1945–82

Abstract

This article reconstructs concepts of ‘European solidarity’ in Helmut Schmidt’s political thought. Tracing Schmidt’s beliefs from the late 1940s to the period of his chancellorship and beyond, it shows how his concepts of European solidarity were shaped by the lessons he drew from the political and economic catastrophes of the 1920s and 1930s. The article reveals how Schmidt developed a largely functionalist understanding of ‘European solidarity’ that was grounded in both his generational experience and the piecemeal logic of European integration he derived from Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet. Schmidt believed that ‘European solidarity’ was not a given, but that it had to be consciously constructed through mutually beneficial intra-European cooperation. He was guided by two central convictions: that the interdependence of European economies made their cooperation both necessary and desirable; and that Germany’s unique historical burden and geostrategic location meant that its foreign policy always had to be embedded in a wider European framework. As West German Chancellor from 1974 to 1982, Schmidt then sought to translate these convictions into practice, trying to avoid a relapse into 1930s protectionism whilst at the same time hoping to avoid perceptions of German dominance in economic matters. Yet, he remained highly sceptical of any attempts to transfigure West European integration into a greater ‘European identity’, believing that the Cold War context made any such attempts futile since true European solidarity could only be practised on a pan-European scale. Putting these views in a broader context, the article concludes that Schmidt’s thoughts offer valuable insights into the relationship between constructions of ‘European solidarity’ and notions of ‘crises’, and suggests that the analysis of his pragmatic approach adds to new, less teleological narratives of European integration that are now emerging in the historiography.     

Providing fun in the ‘world of tourism’: servicing backpackers in Indonesia

Service sector work is a special arena for the formation of gendered subjects because its workers are both service providers and part of the consumed product in the sense that they have to deliver a ‘quality’ product and have the ‘right attitude’ toward customers. Based on repeated qualitative fieldwork, including in-depth interviews with tourism workers in a backpacker tourism enclave in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, this article explores the ways in which tourism work and tourism workers are constructed as gendered subjects. Although women and men might have the same work tasks within tourism, they are positioned differently, and it is not unusual for women to be seen as having a hidden agenda that is assumed to involve sex work. Men are constructed as the norm to which women are compared and consequently perceived as deviating from. Between men and women working in tourism and the western backpackers on which tourism workers depend in order to sustain their livelihoods, relations of class, gender and colonial stereotypes come into play. Tourism workers consider themselves to be seen as providers of fun, which means that they are able to meet the needs of the tourists, whatever those needs might be.     

A Technical Note on the ‘Gloucester Candlestick’

Abstract

The Association is pleased to acknowledge the generous support of Manx National Heritage towards this publication.

The excavation of the only Cistercian abbey firmly established on the Isle of Man produced evidence for an east range of only three rooms, apparently dated to a single constructional period. After the Dissolution this range was gradually robbed and then the area was used as a farm-yard, receiving rubbish deposited from the neighbouring mansion. It was partly excavated in 1914 and turned into an aviary and later into a rose garden. The rere-dorter was not found nor was there any evidence of the main drain adjoining this range.