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.     

‘English Vinglish’ and Bollywood: what is ‘new’ about the ‘new woman’?

Bollywood’s transnational mechanisms offer a unique space to study gendered subjectivity. My article studies a specific Bollywood movie, English Vinglish (2012) to draw out the profile of the ‘new woman.’ Persistently, I question the ‘new-ness’ to the construction of women when the ‘new’ reiterates the values of tradition, nation, and family. The ‘new’ seems to exist as a particular and unique transaction between local traditions and the global spread of populations that make limiting conceptions of woman, nation, or family, anomalies in a world propelled by expanding market needs and demands. The ‘new’ while offering possibilities for women, concomitantly carries different exclusions based on class, religion, language, and other identities. Understanding the formation of gender under contemporary conditions of transnationalism requires attentiveness to an insidious partnership of possibilities and exclusions that makes it simplistic to think in terms of progress or regress.     

Afghanistan: ‘spoilers’ in the regional security context

The ongoing international military withdrawal from Afghanistan has set the stage for energising the activities of Afghanistan's external stakeholders to re-evaluate their activities. The possible return of the Taliban in some form could compel Afghanistan's current external partners—Iran, India and Russia—to turn into limited spoilers. The absence of an international guarantor in Afghanistan from December 2014 is likely to encourage Pakistan—a greedy spoiler—to intensify its meddling as a means to reposition the Taliban—a total spoiler—at the helm of Afghan affairs. The combination of limited, greedy and total spoilers threatens to undermine security and state-building processes.     

Feminism and its ‘other’: representing the ‘new woman’ of Bangladesh

This essay examines women's oppression and organizing against gender violence in contemporary Bangladesh through the lens of television. I argue that the telefilm Ayna (The Mirror, 2006), written and directed by popular film actor and women's rights activist Kabari Sarwar, offers a window into the changing social and economic landscape of contemporary Bangladesh and the complex negotiations of power and inequality across gender, class and community. Furthermore, it offers an opportunity to unpack the social messages underlying development and modernization initiatives, the new kinds of alliances as well as dependencies engendered by them, and their multiple and uneven consequences. An investigation of the representations of competing and contradictory notions of women's subjectivity and agency in this telefilm allows us to understand how these intersect with shifting notions of local/global patriarchies, feminist solidarity and women's empowerment in Bangladesh today. Further, this essay illuminates the disjunctures between representations of the ‘new woman’ circulated through development and certain feminist advocacy narratives with women's lived realities of oppression, and survival.     

The strange geographies of the ‘new’ state capitalism

The recent polymorphism of state intervention and attendant political geographies have been interpreted as a return of state capitalism. While commentators across the social sciences have offered competing characterizations of the new state capitalism, little attention has been dedicated to how narratives and geographical imaginaries of the new state capitalism operate as a form of geopolitical knowledge and practice. Drawing upon critical geopolitics, we make three main arguments. First, we examine the context of wider geopolitical and geo-economic shifts in which the social construction of the geo-category has happened. We contend that the emerging new spatiality of the global economy has prompted the need for new discursive frames and geopolitical lines of reasoning. Second, we argue that this need is fulfilled by the geo-category state capitalism, which acts as a powerful tool in categorizing and hierarchizing the spaces of world politics. It does so by reinstituting a simple narrative of competition between two easily identifiable protagonists – (Western) democratic free-market capitalism and its deviant ‘other’, (Eastern) authoritarian state capitalism – and by reactivating older geopolitical grand narratives. Third, the geo-category state capitalism discursively enables Western business and state actors to justify tougher policy stances in three areas: foreign policy; trade, technology, and investment regulation; and international development.     

Cultural retaliation: the cultural policies of the ‘new’ Front National

This study examines the conception of culture and the cultural policies of the French Front National. Tracing the developments of the party’s cultural agenda before and after Marine Le Pen took over the leadership of the party from her father, I show how the Front National has adapted its discourse on cultural policy to its wider programmatic profile. In the context of a strategy of de-radicalisation promoted by Marine Le Pen, recent years have witnessed focussed efforts by the party leadership to professionalise and modernise the party’s cultural policy programme. However, the analysis of the party’s current cultural policy agenda reveals a remarkable continuity in the way the party leadership conceives of national culture and of what cultural policy should promote. This programmatic continuity becomes apparent in the analysis of the local cultural policies of municipalities won by the Front National in 2014. Exploring the cultural agendas of ten local governments with a Front National majority, I argue that the cultural policies of the Front National remain deeply rooted in a nativist understanding of culture and a dirigiste approach that wilfully excludes postcolonial minorities.     

‘Save our NHS’: activism,information-based expertise and the ‘new times’ of the 1980s

This article examines activism in defence of the National Health Service (NHS), which emerges in the 1960s to defend local hospitals from closure. From the mid-1980s, a new form of campaigning developed, which sought to protect the Service nationally. Tracing this campaigning illuminates, first, that small groups played a significant role in negotiating political change, and in contributing to cultural change which, in turn, has become politically powerful. Second, this demonstrates that the 1980s were ‘new times’ in welfare politics, as Thatcher’s changes fostered voluntary interest in information-led expertise, and a new vision of the NHS as a significant, much valued, national institution.     

Tzvetan Todorov,the ‘Responsible Intellectual’, and the new world disorder

This article assesses Tzvetan Todorov's intellectual evolution from structuralist literary critic to ‘responsible intellectual’. It contrasts his notion of the responsibility of the intellectual with traditional definitions of commitment, and analyses why for Todorov figures such as Camus, Aron, and Tillion are exemplary, whereas Communist intellectuals are not. The article examines Todorov's positions vis‐à‐vis current crises and controversies, including the bombing of Kosovo, the validity of the ICT, and America's war in Iraq. Finally, it discusses Todorov's ideas for a stronger and more independent Europe as articulated in his most recent book, Le Nouveau Désordre mondial.     

The ‘new historians’ and the origins of the Arab/Israeli conflict

This article traces the debate surrounding the ‘new historians’ which has continued in Israel since the release of Simha Flapan's work The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities in 1987. Since this time numerous Israeli scholars have entered the discussion around the birth of the State of Israel, representing a large array of viewpoints, factual findings and conclusions. The paper investigates the wider implications of this debate within Israel and how it has profoundly affected not only the way Israelis view their past but, just as importantly, how they look to their future.     

The south pacific ‘experiment’: Reflections on the origins of regional identity

Abstract

When colonial administrators decided to encourage a sense of unity among the members of the emergent élite of their Pacific Island territories in the late 1940s, they regarded their project as novel. Rather than a sense of tapping a pre‐existing affinity, it seemed that what was being attempted was social engineering on a grand scale. The first South Pacific Conference of Pacific Island representatives held at Nasinu, Fiji, in April‐May 1950, was seen by European officials and observers as an ‘experiment’.

The attempt to forge a sense of regional unity was seen as pushing against the perceived gulf between Melanesian and Polynesian cultures and as expecting too much in the way of conference skills from ‘undeveloped’ societies. But the ‘experiment’ was considered necessary for other important post‐war goals. Although the Nasinu conference is to be seen broadly as an experiment in the promotion of trusteeship, or ‘native welfare’, principles, there was by no means agreement on its ultimate purposes. For some it offered the best (if risky) chance of minimising United Nations interference in the continuation of colonial control, for others a way of ensuring the demise of empire by serving the needs of self‐determination. Finally, the promotion of a sense of region among Pacific Islanders was seen by some as part of an experiment in keeping the region from Communist influence.     

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.     

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.     

Henry ‘the Navigator’

Infante Dom Henrique of Portugal, better known as Henry the Navigator, has enjoyed much attention from historians and public alike. Past writers have elevated him to an icon of chivalry and Portuguese national spirit, or, because of his impact on the early overseas expansion, ascribed to him a Promethean role in the rise of modernity. The works of Sir Peter E. Russell, including his new biography Henry ‘the Navigator’: a life (New Haven, 2000), have made a great contribution to separating the historical Dom Henrique from his ‘culture hero’ counterpart, Henry the Navigator. They represent a key point of departure for new research, which will need to focus on placing Dom Henrique in the context of his times and his contemporaries. Thanks to the dramatic advances that have taken place over the last twenty years in the historiography of late medieval Portugal and of the early European overseas expansion, as well as in the prosopography of the Iberian nobility, it is now possible to aspire to an in-depth contextualization of Dom Henrique's life and career. It is likewise possible to exploit much more fully the existing primary sources, both published and unpublished. The foundation now exists for an histoire totale approach to Dom Henrique, an undertaking called for by Vitorino Magalhães Godinho in his comprehensive 1990 program of research on the Portuguese overseas expansion.     

‘These new rights’: social security in the postwar Italian debate

At the end of World War II the Italian welfare system, which had taken shape under Fascism, was in need of a radical overhaul. Nevertheless, the wait for organic, structural reform dragged on for over two decades without arriving, even in the Sixties, at an efficient framework for the welfare state capable of dismantling the corporatist, familist one inherited from Fascism. This article reconstructs the debates on social security and social rights after World War II. Beginning with the interest that was sparked, even in Italy, by the Beveridge Report, I will investigate the meaning given to the expressions “social security” and “social rights” by politicians and technocrats engaged in trying to reform the Italian Welfare State.     

‘Against the Tide’

This paper is an exploration of the attitudes and policies of key Australian ministers and officials towards decolonisation in the South Pacific through the 1960s and into the early 1970s. Until the late 1960s, Australian governments generally favoured a very slow pace of decolonisation for the region, feared that many territories would never make viable nation-states and actively considered the bringing together of some of the colonial territories into larger entities. Consequently, for much of the 1960s Australian governments were engaged in the ultimately fruitless task of holding back the tide of decolonisation as it swept into the South Pacific.