‘The Tent’s Big Enough for Everyone’: online slash fiction as a site for activism and change

This article draws on a piece of wide-scale mixed-methods research (n = 429) that examines how women who write and read male/male erotica feel their involvement with the genre has affected their views on gender and sexuality and their political engagement with gay rights issues. Previous work has looked at how online slashfic communities might provide a safe space for exploring gender performance and sexuality, while other researchers have observed a tension between those who identify as queer themselves and those who only ‘play at queerness’ exclusively within the online environment. However, much of this work has examined the theoretical positioning of such forums as transgressive and/or political. Far fewer pieces have attempted to engage with the women who frequent such sites to ask them about whether their involvement in these online spaces has affected their attitudes and behaviours. This study looks not only at the ways in which online m/m fandoms can act as a safe space for women to explore their sexualities and gender identities, but whether and how these insights connect to women’s real-world lives. Data presented here shows a strong consensus among participants that involvement with explicit slash communities has had a positive effect on their lives, as well as contributing to beneficial changes in their knowledge, attitudes, and practices with regards to LGBTQ+ issues. Overall, slash is seen as a medium which can create better allies, encourage cross-identification, and bring about positive personal changes. To this extent, I argue that explicit online slash sites can act as heterotopias.     

‘Eadem,sed aliter’: Arthur Schopenhauer as a Critic of ‘Progress’

Summary

Scholars have tended to overlook the political import of the ideas of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). This is perhaps unsurprising, since Schopenhauer himself was not a political philosopher and wrote relatively little about political matters. But Schopenhauer's near-silence on political topics should warrant our attention: why would a systematic philosopher, who made lasting contributions in metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics, devote so little attention to politics? Connecting his political thought with his philosophy of history, I argue that Schopenhauer can best be regarded as a critic of the idea of progress, especially ‘progress’ conceived of as national development or the growth of the state.     

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。     

Feminicide as ‘act’ and ‘process’: a geography of gendered violence in Oaxaca

Feminicide in Mexico is most notoriously associated with the serial deaths of women in and around Ciudad Juárez. A 2005 congressional investigation expanded, nonetheless, the geographical scope of feminicide, arguing that the phenomenon was present throughout the country. One location that was identified early on as also experiencing a high rate of feminicide was the state of Oaxaca, in the southern part of Mexico. Inscribed within this shifting geopolitical terrain, this article draws on an understanding of feminicide as both act and process in order to offer a critical portrayal of feminicide in Oaxaca. Beginning with a discussion of the profiles of feminicide in Oaxaca, the analysis moves out to explore the multifaceted processes that enable feminicide to occur. In so doing, we also explore how feminicide intertwines with other forms of social and political violence in Oaxaca. From an ethical-moral terrain, this article joins a broader movement in certain corners of feminist geography that is concerned with ‘making bodies count’ and the politics of witnessing acts of violence.     

‘That's not a good idea,mom': Negotiating children's subjectivity while constructing ‘home’ as a research site

Framing this methodological article are two main themes on which we elaborate: (1) constructing ‘home’ as a site for doing research with children, and (2) facilitating children's autonomy and subjectivity in the accessing and recruiting phases, thus providing them opportunities to buy into the research process. Drawing on joint experiences from two closely related research projects on a housing development in Norway, we bring to the fore and explore both the role of gatekeepers and sponsors and ongoing negotiations within the triangular parent–child–researcher relation.     

‘Ours is a war of survival’: Biafra,Nigeria and arguments about genocide, 1966–70

Arguments about genocide played a central role in how the government of Biafra and its supporters framed Biafran assertions of independence. Claims that genocide was occurring first cited violence directed against Igbos in northern Nigeria during 1966, before expanding to include both Nigerian military action against civilian targets in Biafra and the use of starvation as a weapon of war. Belief in Nigeria's genocidal intentions became a central tenet of emergent Biafran nationalism, and drew on both distorted representations of Nigeria and on historical analogies with the Nazi genocide against Jews. While the determination by a team of international observers that genocide was not occurring eroded the persuasiveness of Biafran genocide claims abroad, it did little to undercut Biafrans' belief that they were marked for extermination.     

The ‘drive and talk’ as ethnographic method

Anthropologists have long embraced the value of the ‘walk and talk’ ethnographic method, which is an interactive means of generating research insights in situ – on site. In this article, we propose that there is room for an expanded appreciation of the ‘drive and talk’ method. While driving and talking with their interlocutors, researchers can elicit information prompted by features in the landscape and the environment that might be otherwise forgotten or overlooked if the interview context was set in a fixed location. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, this article explains the empirical and phenomenological (sensorial and experiential) insights yielded by driving and talking with interlocutors in a South Australian wine-growing region. Automobility has the advantage over ambulation when it comes to accessing landscapes at the scale of the farm, which is where environmental management decisions are on heightened display.     

The ‘Migrated Archives’ and a Forgotten Corner of Empire: The British Borneo Territories

The ‘migrated archives’, previously concealed files related to former colonies of the British Empire, were released over the period 2012–13. The first flurry of academic and journalistic interest, focused on possible revelations of the misuse of colonial power, soon subsided. Nevertheless, the archives have been valuable in enlarging knowledge of colonial policy-making. They have also aided exploration of the interstices between the official records of colonial administration and the often unrecorded life of peoples and communities. In this sense the ‘migrated archives’ are a rich resource in prompting a new look at established historical narratives of the British Borneo territories of Brunei, North Borneo and Sarawak. These territories have received scant attention in the historiography of British colonialism. This has been to the detriment of wider scholarship in studying issues such as the expansion of the wartime colonial state; the ‘second colonial occupation’ and the evolution of post-war British colonial governance; the development of anti-colonialism; the formation of Malaysia; counter-terrorism conflicts; and the nature of the colonial legacy. The colonial period may seem a fleeting phase in the age-old cultural and economic formation of the Borneo states, yet it continues to have contemporary relevance in a strategically sensitive part of the world. This article seeks to show that the Borneo territories merit greater attention from historians of British colonialism and that the ‘migrated archives’, used in conjunction with other sources, can make a significant contribution towards the history of colonialism in a previously neglected area.     

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.     

The ‘Social Construction’ of David Schneider as ‘A Giant of Anthropology’

David Schneider is widely regarded as one of the great anthropologists of our times. This article questions this opinion. First it shows that his fieldwork on the Micronesian island of Yap evidences ethnographic insensitivity, particularly on the matter of an alleged ignorance of physiological paternity, thus calling into question his supposed concern with getting at native understandings. The alleged ignorance forms the ethnographic basis for his later critique of established kinship studies. This, plus his ignorance of lexical marking, invalidates the critique. Even worse is his study of American kinship and its related theory of culture, both consisting mostly of top-of-the-head impressions unrelated to specific operations.     

‘Against God-Inspired Conscience’: The Perception of Gas Warfare as a Weapon of Mass Destruction, 1915–1939

Abstract

This article explores the distinctive character of the British Legion (Scotland) during the inter-war years, a subject which has generally received little attention. The creation after the Great War of a mass movement for exservicemen and women formed a new departure in British life and had a profound influence in reshaping British attitudes towards veterans and their needs. These developments played themselves out differently in the national communities that constitute the United Kingdom, and the branches of the British Legion rarely spoke with a single voice.     

The Capture and Curation of the Cannibal ‘Vendovi’: Reality and Representation of a Pacific Frontier

ABSTRACT

The United States Exploring Expedition into the Pacific launched in 1838 was marked, like the continental expansion westward, by violent encounters with Native peoples. By examining the record of the expedition's kidnapping of the Fijian Ro Veidovi, the fate of his body after death, and the ways his story came to be invoked in the official narrative of the expedition, the popular press, the ‘National Gallery’ and, more recently, the Fijian press, this paper demonstrates how violent contacts on the Pacific frontier were remembered, effaced, and reconceived. The changing story of Ro Veidovi permanently bridged distant locales in an emerging ‘Pacific World’, setting in motion transcultural negotiations that continue to this day.     

‘Impressions of Weird Fate’: Revision and Crisis in ‘The Lady of Shalott’

Alfred Tennyson disliked the engraving of ‘The Lady of Shalott’ produced by William Holman Hunt for the 1857 Moxon edition of Tennyson’s Poems, accusing the artist of taking too many liberties in depicting the Lady’s hair and the threads of her weaving as ‘wildly tossing’ around her. This essay traces the histories of both Hunt’s image and Tennyson’s text, arguing that the poet’s objection is grounded in the fact the engraving reproduces the fierce agency that characterizes the Lady in Tennyson’s 1832 original but not his 1842 revision. That pattern of revision, I suggest, reflects the poet’s distress over the 1833 death of his beloved friend Arthur Hallam and is motivated by his new ways of thinking, in the wake of that catastrophe, about the crisis of desire and the perpetual trauma of communication between the living and the dead.