‘The Bashful and the Boastful’

The creation and maintenance of influential leaders and authorities is one of the key themes of archaeological and historical enquiry. However, the social dynamics of authorities and leaders in the Mesolithic remains a largely unexplored area of study. The role and influence of authorities can vary remarkably in different situations, yet they exist in all societies and in almost all social contexts from playgrounds to parliaments. Here we explore the literature on the dynamics of authority creation, maintenance and contestation in egalitarian societies, and discuss the implications for our interpretation and understanding of the formation of authorities and leaders and changing social relationships in the Mesolithic.     

‘‘The Acceptable Face of the Unintelligible’: Intermediality and the Science Play’

Abstract

The limitations of the ‘science-in-theatre’ genre is explored and the concept of the intermedial science play is introduced as an alternative to conventional science plays. How the science-in-theatre play dampens the mediality of the stage in order to establish a specific contract with its audience in order to realize what Carl Djerassi calls ‘didactic realism’ is considered. By virtue of the dramatic form and the didacticism it establishes, the science-in-theatre play limits the means by which audiences may encounter and enjoy responding to science. In particular, when staging concepts from the postclassical sciences, the intermedial science play offers artists and spectators new approaches to the sciences of infinities, complexity and emergence whilst also establishing a new, interactive contract with the audience based on forms of pedagogy associated with the thinking of Jacques Rancière. Using the media theory of Peter Boenisch and others, intermediality is identified as more than the mere presence of multimedia, but in terms of the effects it produce on the sensorium of the spectator.     

Reinforcing Diversity: From the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’

This paper focuses on Jan Monk's contribution to reinforcing diversity and collaboration in the field of human geography. It illustrates how gendered diversity and feminism is promoted in her academic work both inside the Anglo-American academic world and outside, by exposing the feminist voices from around the world and mainstreaming them in her collaborative work. Fostering and reinforcing diversity has become a body of knowledge in her extensive publications in which she assesses the varying extent and nature of feminist geography in the Anglophone world and across countries, attempting to interpret differences in terms of geographical and cultural contexts and disciplinary trends. The paper emphasizes how fostering diversity and collaboration in Jan's academic work is not only about writing articles, editing books and producing a film, but also engages the formulation of organizational structures such as the Routledge book series and the initiation and establishment of the Commission of Gender and Geography of the International Geographical Union which have contributed to the production of collaborative feminist geographical knowledge across spaces and places.     

The monumental and the miniature: imagining ‘modernity’ in Astana

This article examines the elite nation-building project in post-independence Kazakhstan through an analysis of monumental architecture and miniature models in Astana. It considers the role of the country's new capital as a modernist project, in which elite geopolitical imaginaries are multiply inscribed in the cityscape. Drawing on interdisciplinary literatures on modernity and authoritarian regime legitimation, the article considers modernity as a discursive trope employed in legitimating the Nazarbayev government, and one that has various material manifestations in the urban landscape of Astana. The research is based on fieldwork in Kazakhstan in Summer 2009, and examines architecture, monuments, and the 2009 Astana Day celebrations. Through a focus on the monumental and the miniature, it highlights their similar roles in transforming symbols of Kazakhstani independence and identity into objects of reverie outside the field of political contestation.     

Heritage and gastronomy: The pursuits of the ‘new tourist’

Abstract

The main thrust of this text is to acknowledge the relationship between gastronomy and heritage as a key motivator for travel. Gastronomy, as a central part of culture, and its influence on other aspects of culture has received scant recognition from the academic world generated by tourism. Gastronomy, heritage and tourism are old friends; the relationship between them is mutually parasitic. Gastronomy's role as a cultural force in developing and sustaining heritage tourism is addressed, as is its increasing role as a catalyst in enhancing the quality of the tourist experience. Today's consumers’ search for an individual lifestyle is changing tourism and the ‘new tourist’ is using the holiday for acquiring insight into other cultures. Recent research and current market trends are examined to reveal the increasing significance of gastronomy to holiday choice. It is argued that gastronomy brings culture and cultures together. Place and setting enhance the food experience and arguably vice‐versa. Heritage and gastronomy combined make for an excellent marriage of tourist resources. The text argues that this combination is both used and viewed by the tourist. As such the tourist becomes engaged in cultural heritage to a deeper level.     

Translation and World Literature: The Perspective of the ‘Ex-Centric’

Before his death in 2003, Brazilian poet, critic and translator Haroldo de Campos had produced a robust body of work on translation theory, which consistently addressed the problem of subordination of target literatures to their source. His audacious concept of ‘transcreation’ championed that translation should be a creative re-invention instead of a mere reproduction of texts. In this article I demonstrate that De Campos’s translation theory subverts the hierarchical categories and values that have structured the field of world literature. Positioning himself as an intellectual from an ‘ex-centric’ literary culture, situated outside of the centers of global circulation, De Campos critiqued the unequal weight usually assigned to translated and original texts, author and translator, established and ascending traditions. His theory effectively illustrates how power differentials between diverse literary contexts affect the ways in which world literature is conceived. I argue that De Campos’s response to the standing inequality that characterizes translational exchanges involved a literary solution. As a creative act in its own right, imbued with the values of originality and difference, transcreation offered an aesthetic answer to the problems of authenticity, influence and literary dependence.     

Jacob Vernet and ‘The Religious Enlightenment’: ‘Rational Calvinism’, the Pastors of Geneva and the French philosophes

Summary

In this article I react to dismissive remarks made about my Jacob Vernet, Geneva and the philosophes (1994) in a recent book by David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment (2008). Vernet, a distinguished Genevan pastor and theologian, who fell foul of d'Alembert, Voltaire and Rousseau, is one of six figures studied by Sorkin, who claims that the religious dimension of the Enlightenment has been much underestimated and that the philosophes were considerably less significant than has usually been thought. Reacting to the accusation that my treatment of Vernet's theology was superficial and unreliable, I reconsider the latter's major theological works (including his Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne, Instruction chrétienne, and Pièces fugitives sur l'eucharistie) in an attempt to validate my previous interpretation, and illustrate that Vernet refused to acknowledge ideas that he had actually published. The second part of the article draws more general conclusions, pointing out spectacular errors in Sorkin's depiction of eighteenth-century Geneva and arguing that he has a clear agenda, which, in my opinion, is wrong-headed, easy to refute and—above all—often based on gratuitous accusations and statements lacking any evidence.     

From ‘la petite Europe vaticane’ to the Club Med: the French Socialist Party and the challenges of European integration

Abstract

Studies of the relationship of political parties to the European Community/Union (EC/EU) increasingly use the perspective of ‘Europeanisation’ to measure such relationships. There is also a case, however, for looking at Europe from the perhaps narrower but no less necessary point of view of intra-party dynamics: in particular, what kinds of challenge does ‘Europe’ represent to party managers and how do they deal with it? By analysing the relationship of the Socialist Party to the EC/EU at three key moments in the history of European integration, the author identifies some common tropisms which continue to operate even as the effects of ‘Europeanisation’ increase.     

‘Therefore They Shouldn’t Exist’: The Carter Administration,the ‘Israel Lobby’ and the Sinai Settlements

Abstract

The Israeli settlements in Sinai could have been a fatal obstacle to Egyptian–Israeli peace, but the Jimmy Carter administration overcame it. The established narrative of how Israel ceded the Sinai settlements focuses on the Camp David summit. However, the real battle over the fate of the settlements was fought previously. In February–April 1978, the Carter administration attempted to turn pro-Israeli supporters in the United States against the Israeli position, according to which the Sinai settlements should remain in place. The Menachem Begin government mobilized to counter that push but lost the battle. Contrary to his image as an awkward political operator, Carter won over supporters of Israel effectively. The case raises questions regarding the oft-mentioned role of the ‘Israel lobby’ in preventing peace.     

The Ruini system and ‘Berlusconismo’: synergy and transformation between the Catholic Church and Italian politics in the ‘Second Republic’

This article aims to correlate the political rather than the pastoral action of Cardinal Camillo Ruini with the rise and consolidation of the politician Silvio Berlusconi from 1994 to 2007, set in the context of the major changes that occurred in the Catholic Church and in Italian republican politics during the 1980s and 1990s. The main theme is an ‘instrumental interaction’ between the two systems, Ruinismo and Berlusconismo, which only coincided at the level of political opportunity and gave rise to important synergies between two men who otherwise had nothing in common.     

The ‘cult of the insurgent’: its tactical and strategic implications

More important than the potential geographical spread of a specific weapon, tactic or expertise is the emulation or inspiration of the ‘culture’ surrounding a terrorist or insurgent movement. This article argues that a ‘cult of the insurgent’ has arisen as a result of the aura of success surrounding both the Iraqi insurgents in their ongoing confrontation with the United States military and Hezbollah in its confrontation in the northern summer of 2006 with Israel. Further, this ‘cult of the insurgent’ will prove the most critical factor in inspiring, motivating and animating the spread of lethal and destructive expertise among other terrorist and insurgent groups worldwide. In the future, therefore, our adversaries will likely conclude that the best and most cost-effective means to confront either a superpower or the superior, conventional military forces of an established nation-state is through a campaign reliant on terrorist and insurgent tactics involving stand-off attacks utilising IEDS (improvised explosive devices) and portable missiles and mortars1 1. I am indebted to my close friend and valued colleague, Professor Ami Pedahzur of the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin for the discussions and exchanges of e-mails that helped to crystallise the arguments presented in this article. I am also indebted to our mutual friend and researcher par excellence, Dr. Arie Perliger, of the National Security Studies Center at Haifa University, Israel, for the very helpful assistance he provided with respect to cataloguing for me the vast array of off-the-shelf and improvised weapons used by both the Iraqi insurgents and Hezbollah in their respective confrontations with the US and coalition military forces in Iraq and the Israel Defence Forces in south Lebanon. View all notes.     

‘The dearest sacrifice’: Catharine Maria Sedgwick and the Celibate Life

Catharine Maria Sedgwick, America’s most respected and popular female novelist of the early nineteenth century, never married. Yet while she chose a life of celibacy, most scholars have argued that her life represented ‘a deviation’ from the more conventional women’s roles she prescribed in her fiction. This article places Sedgwick’s marital decision within the context of several converging influences – her family history, her Federalist upbringing, and most important, her conversion to Unitarianism. Read through the lens of the complementary religious and social principles of Unitarianism and Federalism, Sedgwick’s novels reveal a persistent exploration of several themes – the ability to realize and advance truth, the centrality of character and moral cultivation, and the obligation to serve one’s community. Sedgwick’s exploration of these themes illuminates her choice of celibacy, and her conclusions contain a radical commentary on the appropriateness of marriage for women.     

The Neolithic and ‘Pastoralism’ Along the Nile: A Dissenting View

A largely accepted paradigm in African recent prehistory considers pastoralism to be the main subsistence source of food-producing communities along the Sudanese Nile valley from the 6th millennium cal BC onwards. This paradigm is constraining the development of a wider theoretical perspective that assumes, instead, a regionally differentiated picture of the economic and social organisation of local communities in northeastern Africa. This paradigm is thus the strongest impediment to achieving reliable and convincing syntheses of the transition from food collection to food production in this area. New data from Upper Nubia and central Sudan open the way for different and more complex scenarios and a new understanding of the local transition from agro-pastoral to agricultural practices. A more systematic data-based approach helps to change radically our perception of different Neolithic trajectories. Moreover, it helps to place in a different perspective—based on various levels of identity formation processes—change and continuity along the chrono-cultural sequence, as well as the different meanings that each local group confers on apparently similar acts in the context of the funerary ideology.

     

Two visions of Indigenous economic development and cultural survival: The ‘real economy’ and the ‘hybrid economy’

Noel Pearson and Jon Altman are two of the central intellectual figures in the contemporary debate on how to address the poverty and disadvantage of Indigenous Australians living in remote regions. This article compares their visions for Indigenous economic development. Pearson advocates greater integration of Indigenous people into what he calls the ‘real economy’, but Altman has produced an alternative approach to Indigenous development – the ‘hybrid economy’ approach – which he suggests is more in keeping with the aspirations of many Aboriginal people to maintain a degree of autonomy from non-Indigenous Australians and to continue living close to ancestral lands. This article argues that both men should be understood as advocates for Indigenous self-determination, but different ways of conceptualising Indigenous autonomy and cultural survival has led them to contrasting policy positions.

在如何解决边远地区澳大利亚原住民的贫困及弱势问题的当代辩论中,诺埃尔·皮尔森和章·沃特曼是两位核心思想者。本文比较了这两个人对于原住民经济发展的愿景。皮尔森主张原住民更多地融入他所谓的实际经济,而沃特曼的思路却不一样,他是一种杂糅思路,认为应该依从许多原住民的愿望,在一定程度上独立于澳大利亚非原住民,继续生活在祖先的土地上。本文认为,两人都是原住民自觉的提倡者,只是他们思考原住民的自治及文化生存的思路有所不同,从而导致了矛盾的政策立场。     

New regionalism in Turkey: questioning the ‘new’ and the ‘regional’

Turkey’s regional policies are inspired by the new regionalism theory. During past two decades, key concepts of new regionalism, including knowledge economies, specialization, networked cities and innovation, have been incorporated in policy documents. At the same time, Turkey comes from a strong central state tradition that controls local and regional development. At first insight, new regionalism and strong central state control do not fit in the same frame. This research analyses the trajectory of regional policies in Turkey with the aim of explaining how these seemingly incompatible policies can coexist. It argues that regional policies developed at the central state level utilized new regionalism as a part of the strategy to maintain power in the course of transformation of the nation state.     

The Saga of the ‘Second industrial divide’ and the history of the ‘third Italy’: Evidence from export data

The idea of the Third Italy has achieved an iconic status in geography. It has come to represent one of the main geographical manifestations of the so‐called second industrial divide between Fordist mass production and flexible specialisation. Yet the idea has received limited critical attention since acquiring its elevated status. It deserves to do so, because it involves confusing a localised model of economic development with the economic character of a larger geographic region. Examining province level export data for the years 1985, 1991, 1995 and 1999 for both total exports and two key sectors using exploratory spatial data analysis, provincial rankings and LISAs (local indicators of spatial association) suggests that the export‐based homogeneity and dynamism of the Third Italy can be exaggerated. Italy's urban hierarchy, particularly the centrality of Milan, continues to play a significant role in the Italian economy. Common use of the term ‘Third Italy’ confuses an economic process with a specific geographical configuration.