Lay-Religious Associations, Urban Identities, and Urban Space in Eighteenth-Century Milan

Religious life was integral to the social and political organization of eighteenth-century Milan. The composition and character of lay-religious activities reflect not only official hierarchies within the city but also unofficial bonds and identities, such as those of neighbourhood. They reveal the multiple identities of neighbourhood, parish, trade and family, but equally the tensions between collective forms of piety and the new religious values and aesthetic adopted by the Milanese elites during the late Enlightenment.     

Politics,Society and Financial Liberalization: Turkey in the 1990s

This article focuses on the political economy of Turkey in the 1990s to illustrate the importance of analysing economic variables that intersect with the quality of political democracy. In 1989, the debt‐ridden state moved to systematically and completely deregulate Turkey’s financial markets. Together with the ongoing processes of liberalizing commodity markets and integrating with global capital markets, financial liberalization was expected to achieve fiscal and monetary stability, stimulate business confidence to invest in productive sectors, produce stable growth, encourage privatization and control inflation. However, the new hegemony of the capital markets has gone hand‐in‐hand with deteriorating macroeconomic performance, a worsening income distribution, the discrediting of politics and its isolation from society. The authors examine several key dynamics which are helping to legitimate the neoliberal agenda of the 1990s. These include the distribution of state largesse to manipulate electoral capitalism; the rise of an informal sector in the ‘Anatolian Tigers’; promotion of the seductive attractions of the market; and an antipolitical reform populism adopted by political actors to exploit popular disillusionment with the political system.     

A British Strike in an African Port: The Mercantile Marine and Dominion Politics in Durban, 1925

The world-wide British merchant shipping industrial dispute of 1925 threatened to bring the commerce of the British Empire to a halt. Although it rapidly faded in Britain itself, the strike took off with remarkable effect in the ports of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, almost paralysing the southern hemisphere operations of the world's largest cargo and passenger fleet. Through exploring the course of the strike in Durban, South Africa, this article shows how this globalised British labour dispute brought out tensions within the politics of the empire, both between dominions and metropolis and between political factions within those dominions. The article analyses the strike from the perspective that the exercise of power within the empire was radically fragmented. It shows that the course of the struggle was shaped by intensely conflictual relationships between South Africa and imperial power-holders in London, by rivalries between political factions within the South African state and by regional divisions between the Pretoria government and Natal Province. Together, these tensions produced the state policies towards the strike that enabled it to last far longer in Durban than might initially have been predicted.     

Tropical forests in the global states system

The purpose of this article is to point to an inherent ambivalence within international society related to tropical forests. As peripheral and often relatively insulated terrestrial spaces, tropical forests have been subject to enduring attempts by state structures to consolidate political authority and their connection to nodes of economic power. However, as they have come to be increasingly degraded and cleared, policy reform agendas have been enacted to promote their conservation. Involving a range of state and non‐state actors at a national and international level, forest policy reform agendas have sought to create a structure of economic incentives aimed at their ‘sustainable management’ and thus their preservation as forests. Paradoxically, a key impact of these evolving agendas has been to further the extension of state power. Arguing that this points to a deep‐seated tension within international society related to the governance of peripheral spaces, it will be suggested that state‐making ambitions have tended to shape and ultimately negate international tropical forest conservation initiatives.     

‘Playing Cold War politics’: the cold war in Anglo-Kenyan relations in the 1960s

Kenya has rarely been considered a major Cold War battleground, becoming linked with Britain and the Western side, even whilst being publicly committed to non-alignment and African Socialism. Nonetheless, the Cold War offered opportunities for Kenya’s newly independent leaders. It was utilised in factional political debates between Tom Mboya and Oginga Odinga. In the late 1960s, leading Kenyans around President Jomo Kenyatta used Cold War rhetoric and rivalries to bargain to their advantage with the British over arms sales. British policy-makers offered concessions as they worked to build and then maintain their position as Kenya’s closest foreign partner.     

博物馆融入多元人群的理论建构与现实实践

西方博物馆学研究在关注博物馆与"人"的问题时存在着一类倾向,即愈发强调人群的多元性.这种倾向以强调曾经被忽视或边缘化的人群以及人群内在的差别性为主要特点,同时,学界也惯于以"官方"与"非官方"这样的二元关系解释此类现象.对于中国而言,中国博物馆已有诸多收藏、展览、教育等实践均呈现出关照多元人群的一面,但从其关照的人群范...     

The Village in Contemporary Persian Poetry

This paper explores the ever-shifting symbiosis between the village motif, social justice and populist politics in Iran over the past three decades. The village has remained a recurring motif in Persian literature, employed by a variety of writers and state institutions for a range of means. As a symbol, it has been a conduit into which any ideology can be poured; the village allegory can be manipulated to both condemn and support the official policies of the state. A comparison of Iran’s pre- and post-revolutionary literature sheds light on the ways the state literati perpetuated an idealized picture of the village as an authentic, sacred space, increasingly associated with religious nationalism during the 1980s. The paper examines the key socio-political influences on the evolution of the pastoral motif, the work of state-sponsored official poets, and the impact of the village on the cultural doctrine of the Islamic Republic.     

Competing entanglements in the struggle to save the Amazon: The shifting terrain of transnational civil society

Transnational civil society has often been conceptualized as a third sector, buffered from the power politics of nation-states and global capital. The relative autonomy of this sector has been seen as key in empowering the voices of marginalized peoples and in advocating new counter-hegemonic agendas on the world stage. Recent research, however, has begun to explore power imbalances within the transnational civic sphere, and how different transnational NGOs' modes of articulation with political institutions and market actors inform those power dynamics. We suggest here that the concept of “entanglements,” recently introduced within political geography, can offer a useful spatial imagery in assessing the effects of these varied lines of influence. The article first traces the evolution of the Amazon Alliance, a transnational network of environmental and human rights NGOs and Amazonian indigenous federations. It then examines a countervailing nexus of governmental and corporate entanglements that have been drawing conservation NGOs away from indigenous eco-political engagement in recent years. To understand the waning salience of the eco-indigenous conservation agenda, we argue, requires analysis of the shifting terrain of civil society, and of the articulation of different NGOs with institutions beyond the frontiers of the third sector.     

党权之争与奉系军阀国民党化:1929—1931年

东北易帜后,国民党东北党权的归属,成为奉系能否独控东北政权的关键。国民党在东北存在着"官党"与"秘党"的双重面相。一方面,为保东北政权,奉系致力于争夺国民党东北党务领导权,使国民党成为奉系的"官党"。另一方面,对于国民党在东北的"秘党",奉系实行打击和排斥政策,企图把东北的国民党完全纳入其领导的轨道。在与国民党不断争夺东北党权的同时,奉系一步步走上了国民党化的道路。但由于利益的非一致性,使得奉系并没有真正地融入国民党。     

For Science,Salvage, and State: Papua New Guinea’s Earliest Colonial Museums

In recent years, growing attention has been paid to the complex relationship between museums, collecting and colonialism in the Southwest Pacific. This paper contributes to this wider body of research by presenting a baseline study of Papua New Guinea’s two earliest museums: an Economic Museum built in 1907 and an Anthropology Museum initiated in 1907, but not built until 1914. Both museums were financed and run by government departments within the newly established Australian Territory of Papua. Both were imbricated in contemporary colonial agendas aimed at mapping, classifying and, ultimately, exploiting the natural and human resources of the colony. However, their histories also reveal significant differences in the personal and political agendas of their respective founders, Miles ‘Staniforth’ Smith and Hubert Murray, who in 1907 were in direct competition for the position of inaugural lieutenant-governor of the Territory. In the internecine rivalries of the day their respective museums provided each of them with a platform to publically demonstrate his aptitude and vision for governing the new colony.     

Avoiding the “F” word: feminist geography in Iran

Abstract

Little attention has been given to how feminist geography is defined, applied, and taught in non-Anglophone countries, especially in Muslim majority societies where Women’s Rights are quite different from the western world. The case of Iran among other Middle Eastern countries becomes even more isolated due to the several political, linguistic, and cultural limitations opposed on Iranian academics and international collaborations after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Women make half of Iran’s 80 million population, 63% of university graduates, almost half of informal workers, 30% of Iranian professors, 13% of high level management position holders, and under 5% of the Islamic Majlis (Iran’s Parliament). However, feminist geography, the sub-discipline that has been traditionally dedicated to the inclusion of gender as an analytical lens within Geography, is not a recognized field at any departments in Iran. This essay aims to present the current status of feminist geographic research and teaching at selected Iranian Universities. My goal is to offer a better understanding of how the local social and political context affect what constitute feminist geographic work and how geographers navigate the political and hierarchal university systems to engage in gender studies. Through informal interviews via emails and Skype with several Iranian geographers, I illustrate why Iranian geographers often avoid using “feminist” terminology in recognizing their work, even though their work is feminist.     

Women’s Movements and Challenges to Neopatrimonial Rule: Preliminary Observations from Africa

Women’s movements in Africa represent one of the key societal forces challenging state clientelistic practices, the politicization of communal differences, and personalized rule. In the 1980s and 1990s we have witnessed not only the demise of patronage‐based women’s wings that were tied to ruling parties, but also the concurrent growth of independent women’s organizations with more far‐reaching agendas. The emergence of such autonomous organizations has been a consequence of the loss of state legitimacy, the opening‐up of political space, economic crisis, and the shrinking of state resources. Drawing on examples from Africa, this article shows why independent women’s organizations and movements have often been well situated to challenge clientelistic practices tied to the state. Gendered divisions of labour, gendered organizational modes and the general exclusion of women from both formal and informal political arenas have defined women’s relationship to the state, to power, and to patronage. These characteristics have, on occasion, put women’s movements in a position to challenge various state‐linked patronage practices. The article explores some of the implications of these challenges.     

From ethnic outbidding to ethnic conflict: the institutional bases for Sri Lanka's separatist war1

Abstract. Beginning in the mid‐1950s Sri Lanka's politicians from the majority Sinhalese community resorted to ethnic outbidding as a means to attain power and in doing so systematically marginalised the country's minority Tamils. This article consequently argues that institutional decay, which was produced by the dialectic between majority rule and ethnic outbidding, was what led to Tamil mobilisation and an ethnic conflict that has killed nearly 70,000 people over the past twenty years. It also analyses the influence informal societal pressures exerted on formal state institutions and how this contributed to institutional decay. Evaluating the relations that ensued between social organisations and the Sri Lankan state shows how institutions can prescribe actions and fashion motives even as it will make clear how the island's varied institutions generated a deadly political dynamic that eventually unleashed the ongoing civil war.     

Beyond Hybridity to the Politics of Scale: International Intervention and ‘Local’ Politics

The evident failures of international peacebuilding and statebuilding interventions (PSBIs) have recently prompted a focus on the interaction between interventions and target societies and states. Especially popular has been the ‘hybridity’ approach, which understands forms of peace and governance emerging through the mixing of local and international agendas and institutions. This article argues that hybridity is a highly problematic optic. Despite contrary claims, hybridity scholarship falsely dichotomizes ‘local’ and ‘international’ ideal‐typical assemblages, and incorrectly presents outcomes as stemming from conflict and accommodation between them. Scholarship in political geography and state theory provides better tools for explaining PSBIs’ outcomes as reflecting socio‐political contestation over power and resources. We theorize PSBIs as involving a politics of scale, where different social forces promote and resist alternative scales and modes of governance, depending on their interests and agendas. Contestation between these forces, which may be located at different scales and involved in complex, tactical, multi‐scalar alliances, explains the uneven outcomes of international intervention. We demonstrate this using a case study of East Timor, focusing on decentralization and land policy.     

Unravelling the Relationships between Used‐Clothing Imports and the Decline of African Clothing Industries

African clothing industries have declined since the implementation of economic liberalization policies in the early 1980s whilst used‐clothing imports to Africa have increased. The general effects of economic liberalization on African clothing industries are well documented, although little research has been conducted on the particular impact of increased imports of second‐hand clothes on the local manufacturing sectors. Whether these two processes are causally related is difficult to determine due to limitations in official data sets. In this article, the used‐clothing trade is explored in detail and a broad range of cultural and local economic processes are investigated. Trends such as declining local purchasing power and the opening of African markets to cheap new clothing imports, as well as imports of used‐clothing, are examined, along with the converse boost to African clothing export production resulting from preferential trade agreements in the 2000s. With respect to the differential legal and illegal imports of second‐hand clothing to selected African countries, it is demonstrated that official trade data sets often fail to capture the nuances of contemporary social and economic processes.     

明代官刻农书与农学知识的传播

明代官刻农书,指的是在明代官员主导或参与下刊刻的农书。初步统计,这一时期官刻农书的数目在51种左右,刊刻次数则约为68次。这些农书在官刻过程中,构筑了从获取到校订再到刊刻与流传的关系网络。通过这一网络,农书得以传播,书中所载的农学知识亦得以散布。一方面,旧有的农学知识与私人的农学经验通过农书的官刻而重现与"公共化";另一方面,官刻农书更加强调有关教化与治理方面农学知识的传播。     

Rude Accountability: Informal Pressures on Frontline Bureaucrats in Bangladesh

This article is about ‘rude’ forms of accountability — the informal pressures used by citizens to claim public services and to sanction service failures. Rude accountability is characterized by a lack of official rules or formal basis and a reliance on the power of social norms and rules to influence and sanction official performance. The article draws on evidence from Bangladesh, a state which has not reformed its social sector governance, to explore when and why poor citizens resort to ‘rude’ accountability, whether they have a comparative advantage in the use of informal mechanisms, and whether these work, in terms of gaining better service. It asks what informal accountability mechanisms imply for governance reform in social services, and discusses lessons for other ‘unreformed’ states like Bangladesh.     

The silent encroachment of the frontier: A politics of transborder trade in the Semliki Valley (Congo–Uganda)

This article is about the frontier as a political place. Through a discussion of unofficial cross-border trade in the Semliki Valley (on the Congo–Ugandan border), it describes how people, despite the ruining effects of delocalization and state privatization, continue to reproduce their life worlds as places, which eventually makes them the matrix of new political constellations. This silent encroachment of the Congo–Ugandan frontier is marked in turn by a prolonged silent, and at occasions loud, advancement on existing power configurations that profoundly questions ruling modes of classification and standards of evaluation. In the article, this encroachment is illustrated mainly with regard to the imposition of tax and the control over people's mobility—both a quintessence of (post)modern state building. At the end of the day, the analysis of meanings and processes attached to this everyday life on the Congolese–Ugandan border illustrate quite clearly how people, notwithstanding the structural and technological forms that direct and mould their world, can also progressively challenge conventional notions of political and economic power, and simultaneously introduce new notions of where politics is to be found and what it is. It is probably this ambiguous role, of hidden smugglers with open official ties, of “rebel” entrepreneurs seeking high political protection, that sustains the transformation of politics at the Semliki border crossing. Contrary to previous wisdom however, such emerging regulatory authorities do not operate against the state, but are rather involved in different scales of political decision-making—particularly in the domain of cross-border taxation. Without demolishing the question of its power, such processes can eventually introduce a reconfiguration of post-colonial statehood that combines different and apparently contradictory legal orders and cultures, but which simultaneously give rise to new forms of meaning and action.     

Kuwait,Political Violence and the Syrian War

Kuwait’s support of civilians in war-torn Syria has been commended by the international community. In addition, the Gulf state has joined US-led coalitions against the ‘Islamic State’ and affirmed many international agreements designed to choke off international assistance to militias operating in Syria. In 2015, Kuwait paid a heavy price for its involvement, becoming a victim of IS-affiliated terrorism. Whilst this suggests that Kuwait’s position on radical Islamist movements involved in the Syrian conflict is clear cut, this article will argue that Kuwait’s government has had to balance this official position against domestic support for elements of the radical Islamist opposition in Syria. These cross-cutting tensions were underscored by the US designation of the state as the ‘epicentre’ of private fund raising for militias in Syria. To explore these contradictions, this article will analyse Kuwait’s engagement with the Syrian war, its new anti-terror legislation and the tensions between the official and unofficial views on support for foreign militias. This analysis will highlight the challenges the Kuwait government has faced in addressing unofficial Kuwaiti engagement with the radical Islamist opposition in Syria.     

Averting ‘Irresponsible Nationalism’

ABSTRACT

Historians of politics in colonial Fiji highlight the contrast between Indian leaders' challenge to European dominance and Fijian chiefs' alignment with European political leaders in defence of colonial rule and against a perceived ‘Indian threat’. While this was the major political divide, its emphasis has neglected a moment of disaffection on the part of the leading chiefs that perhaps had the potential to provoke a challenge to the colonial order. The upset of the established pattern of political relations between Fijian leaders and the colonial government on the eve of the Pacific War, involving some unity with Indian leaders in the Legislative Council, influenced a Fijian policy change that shaped the development of Indigenous Fijian leadership and its quest for state power as British rule drew to an end. This paper suggests that Ratu Sukuna's Fijian Administration, established at the end of the war, be understood not simply as the last, and paradoxically the strongest, stage of colonial indirect rule, but more significantly as both an institutionalised expression and containment of a Fijian nationalist potential, initially energised by a tension in government – Fijian relations that, in part, reflected a white racialism in both official and unofficial attitudes and practices.