5. “RELATED” HISTORIES: ON EPISTEMIC AND REPARATIVE DECOLONIZATION

What are we talking about when we talk about decolonization? In this article, we differentiate between epistemic and reparative decolonizing approaches and then consider the differences between postcolonial and decolonial modes in two fields: histories of science and, separately, museology. Touring these fields leads us to affirm the need for scholars to consider the consequences of their allegiances to different critical movements and moments. Whatever it will mean to decolonize history, we conclude, it is both a necessary and necessarily relational enterprise with material and conceptual excesses to address.     

Cultural policy through the prism of fiction (Michel Houellebecq)

Cultural policy studies tends to talk about fiction without actually using it. A typical move is to place it in an aesthetic realm to be protected, situated and/or critiqued. This is an eminently worthwhile activity. However, this paper explores some ways in which works of fiction may, following their own dynamic, yield significant perspectives upon the world of cultural policy itself. In what ways do fictional works offer us prisms through which to reappraise the worlds of cultural policy? What are the effects of the reconfigurative imaginative play to which they subject the institutions of that world? How are the discourses of cultural policy reframed when redeployed by novelists within free indirect style or internal monologue? The article begins by distinguishing four broad modes in which fictional works refract the world of cultural policy, and then analyses in more fine-grained detail two novels by the leading French writer Michel Houellebecq.     

Kitchen table reflexivity: negotiating positionality through everyday talk

In this article, we explore the role of self-reflexivity in the understanding of positionality in human geography to argue that self-reflexivity in and of itself does not offer researchers sufficient opportunities to question and critique their fluid, ever-changing positionalities. Drawing on the work of feminist scholars, critical race scholars, and experiences carrying out qualitative research, we argue that formal and informal conversations with colleagues and mentors affords the opportunity to deeply engage with positionalities. This article draws on concepts of ‘everyday talk’ to encourage researchers to explore their positionalities through kitchen table reflexivity – an exploration of an individual's positionality and its relationship to their research carried out through formal and informal conversations with others. We demonstrate how everyday talk with each other furthered our understandings of our fluid identities in relation to our research participants. Through these conversations, we were able to more critically interrogate our identity and not simply reduce identity to a laundry list of perceived similarities and differences between research participants and us. In conclusion, we encourage all researchers to use everyday talk as one way to complicate their positionalities and to reflect on how this process relates to the broader societal and academic environment within which they carry out their research.     

What Is the State? The Russian Concept of Gosudarstvo in the European Context

What allows us to talk about the state as an active agent when we understand that only individuals act? This article draws comparisons between Quentin Skinner's exposition of the history of the concept of the state in major European languages and the history of its equivalent Russian term gosudarstvo in order to provide some general hypotheses on the development of the phenomenon of the state, and on the origins of this baffling usage. First, summing up a vast number of historical and lexicographical works, it attempts a detailed reconstruction of the conceptual development of the term in the Russian language. Second, a peculiarity of the Russian case is discussed, in whichabsolutist thinkers (and not republicans, as in western Europe) stressed the difference between the person of the ruler and the state. Third, political interests in introducing such novel usage are discussed, together with the role of this usage in the formation of the state. This allows us to see better the origins of current faith in the existence of the state as a more or less clearly designated and independent actor, predicated on the mechanism of what Pierre Bourdieu described as “mysterious delegation.”     

Soft power in Turkish foreign policy

This article examines to what extent Turkey's foreign policy identity has transformed from being a ‘hard power’ to a ‘soft power’ over the last few years. In doing so, this article also contends that there is a close relationship between the degree of securitisation of issues and whether the power used to deal with them is hard or soft in nature. If issues of concern were securitised, the tendency to use hard power would increase. Another argument is that the main difference between these two types of power stems from the kind of ‘logic of action’ that governs the behaviour of agents. If an instrumental logic of action were in play, meaning if the goal were to force others to make a cost-benefit analysis through coercing or coaxing strategies, then one could talk about hard power. If the goal were to ensure that others would automatically follow the lead of the power-holder due to the power of attraction the latter has in the eyes of the former, then one could refer to the existence of soft power. The main conclusion of this article is that recent internal and external developments have contributed to Turkey's soft power potential.     

On De-Pathologizing Resistance

This introductory essay draws attention to two processes, the pathologization and exoticization of resistance. Working independently or in parallel, these two processes silence resistance by depoliticizing it as illogical or idealizing it in out-worldly terms. In both cases, resistance is caricatured as abnormal or exotic and distanced from current political priorities. I argue that analytical de-pathologization and de-exoticization of resistance can (a) provide valuable insights on the silencing of resistance and (b) help us understand the relationship between hegemony and resistance in terms that stretch beyond the moderately pathologizing view of political inaction as apathy or “false consciousness”. In my analysis, I also engage with James Scott's seminal view of resistance, which, despite its de-pathologizing orientation, fails to capture the dialectical relationship of resistance and hegemony. I suggest that attention to the pathologizing and exoticizing workings of power may reveal the complexity and compromising ambivalence of resistance and contribute to the broader field of resistance studies, conceived as renewed interest in insurrectionary movements, rebellion, and protest.     

Opportunity,willingness and geographic information systems (GIS): reconceptualizing borders in international relations

This article reports on a continuing project which has developed a major reconceptualization and revision of how borders may be seen and measured through the use of GIS. Using the data layers of the ARC/INFO GIS system, a new dataset has been developed which allows analysts to talk about the specific qualities of borders in terms of opportunity and willingness, that is, the ease of interaction and salience, respectively. The theory and method behind this reconceptualization is described. The results are represented both in visual terms—maps—and through the use of a quantitative dataset which lets us go beyond simply observing the number of borders a state possesses, whether or not a border existed between two states, or the length of that border. The dataset is presented and discussed, as well as preliminary analyses of the borders of conflict dyads from three separate conflict datasets. The basic ‘interaction opportunity’ model that underlies the opportunity and willingness framework is supported.     

'Walking the walk and talking the talk': Bodies,conversation, gender and power in higher education in England

Combinations of speaking, listening and bodily behaviour have been neglected in accounts of the operation of power. Although often described as fluid and interactionally produced, power has been the subject of few empirically based analyses at micro-interactional scales. Drawing on interviews with undergraduates and extracts from teaching interactions at higher education institutions in England, this article focuses on talk as a situated practice. It describes how verbal and bodily behaviours together are fundamentally involved in the enactment of instructor and student roles and power relations, and the collective interactional (re)production of teaching spaces. It discusses two broad types of teaching interaction in terms of gendered differences in the structure of talk, drawing attention to how these are shaped by differences in how instructors enact power. I suggest that men may routinely engage in conversations with 'feminine' structures in teaching spaces without this compromising heterosexual masculinity, and present reasons why it may be more likely that women be problematized for using 'masculine' verbal styles. I also argue that rather than simply being inscribed on to instructors' bodies in ways that accord with the hegemonic discourses of gender, authority and respect have to continually be earned from students, and verbal behaviour is deeply involved in this process. It is not enough to 'walk the walk', instructors must also 'talk the talk', in ways that students deem legitimate.     

Beyond the metaphor of the pendulum: electroconvulsive therapy, psychoanalysis, and the styles of American psychiatry

It is common to represent the history of American psychiatry by comparing it to a pendulum. In this metaphorical rendering, psychiatry has swung back and forth between extremes of emphasis on psyche (life events and inner conflict ruling etiological thinking, talk therapy dominating treatment) and soma (biochemical sources dominating etiological thinking, somatic treatments dominating treatment). This article argues that, while this metaphor is suited to capturing certain aspects of American psychiatric history, it distorts others by, for example, exaggerating the extent of dogmatism on either side and obscuring continuities in psychiatry's history. The article looks specifically at the reception by psychoanalysts to the introduction of electroconvulsive therapy. It shows that psychoanalytic views of ECT were diverse and more receptive to ECT than the pendulum metaphor might lead us to believe.     

The Utility of Discourse Analysis to Heritage Studies: The Burra Charter and Social Inclusion

This paper reviews the methodological utility of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in heritage studies. Using the Burra Charter as a case study we argue that the way we talk, write and otherwise represent heritage both constitutes and is constituted by the operation of a dominant discourse. In identifying the discursive construction of heritage, the paper argues we may reveal competing and conflicting discourses and the power relations that underpin the power/knowledge relations between expertise and community interests. This identification presents an opportunity for the resolution of conflicts and ambiguities in the pursuit of equitable dialogues and social inclusion.     

Political economy and mimetic desire: A postmodernist reading of ‘Babette's feast’

Spinoza's use of the phrase “sui iuris” in the Tractatus Politicus gives rise to the following paradox. On the one hand, one is said to be sui iuris to the extent that one is rational; and to the extent that one is rational, one will steadfastly obey the laws of the state. However, Spinoza also states that to the extent that one adheres to the laws of the state, one is not sui iuris, but rather stands under the power [sub potestate] of the state (TP 3/5). It seems, then, that to the extent that one is sui iuris, one will not, in fact, be sui iuris. In this paper, I offer an interpretation of Spinoza's notion of being sui iuris that enables us to overcome this paradox and sheds light on Spinoza's relationship to the republican tradition. I work towards this goal by distinguishing between two ways in which Spinoza uses the locution, which correspond to two different conceptions of power: potentia and potestas. This distinction not only allows us to save Spinoza from internal inconsistency, it also enables us to see one important way in which Spinoza stands outside of the republican tradition, since he conceives of liberty not as constituted by independence, or citizenship in a res publica, but as being sui iuris in the first sense described above: being powerful.     

3. THE EXPRESSION OF HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE

The theory and philosophy of history (just like philosophy in general) has established a dogmatic dilemma regarding the issue of language and experience: either you have an immediate experience separated from language, or you have language without any experiential basis. In other words, either you have an immediate experience that is and must remain mute and ineffable, or you have language and linguistic conceptualization that precedes experience, provides the condition of possibility of it, and thus, in a certain sense, produces it. Either you join forces with the few and opt for such mute experiences, or you go with the flow of narrative philosophy of history and the impossibility of immediacy. Either way, you end up postulating a mutual hostility between the nonlinguistic and language, and, more important, you remain unable to account for new insights and change. Contrary to this and in relation to history, I am going to talk about something nonlinguistic—historical experience—and about how such historical experience could productively interact with language in giving birth to novel historical representations. I am going to suggest that, under a theory of expression, a more friendly relationship can be established between experience and language: a relationship in which they are not hostile to but rather desperately need each other. To explain the occurrence of new insights and historiographical change, I will talk about a process of expression as sense‐formation and meaning‐constitution in history, and condense the theory into a struck‐through “of ,” as the expression of historical experience.     

Convergence Is Not Equality

Despite the fall in global income inequality in the last two decades, levels of living among individuals in the world are still very different and are likely to remain so for a very long time. The uneven rate of decline in inequality and growth volatility in commodity‐dependent countries suggest that there is no reason to believe that global inequality will continue to fall until it reaches acceptably low levels. Global disparities in incomes and welfare, especially in social protection, are at the heart of the problem of migration and populism in Western democracies in recent years. They bring out in bold relief the lack of fit between claims of global convergence and people's perceptions on incomes and well‐being between the global North and South. In this regard, it is more realistic to talk about ‘multiple geographies of 21^st century development’ than a ‘one world’ or single geography of global development. Issues of power, and the way global and national relationships and rules allocate advantages and disadvantages, or promote convergence and divergence, between and within countries, need to be front and centre in the discussion on global convergence.     

The parable of the footbridge: Creativity and change in the between

In this article, the author suggests that anthropologists use the creative power of ‘the between’, an imaginative space of invention, as one way to heal the wounds of contemporary social life. His model for such practice is the sohanci, the sorcerer among the Songhay people of Niger in West Africa. The sohanci is a liminal figure who is always between the village and the bush, between health and illness, between life and death, a vantage that makes him or her a spiritual guardian, a person who dares to use the power of the between to transform social turbulence into social harmony. Like the sohanci, anthropologists have long experience of being between things, and as such, the author argues, they can use the insights derived from their experiences between things to chart paths that lead us to innovation, invention and a future of greater social harmony and social justice. What could be more important for the future of anthropology? What could be more important for the future of us all?     

China's date with big data: will it strengthen or threaten authoritarian rule?

The rise of big data has brought with it enormous possibilities, for better or worse. In China, the government has been enthusiastically preparing for the coming of the era of big data. This article examines how the authoritarian regime in China has been employing big data to improve its governance and to move towards a ‘Big Brother 2.0’ model. The regime has combined cooptation with coercive control to exploit digital technology, in order to maximize its utility and thus maintain authoritarian rule. Moreover, existing debates on digital technology largely focus on the changing power structures between state and society, but neglect power structures within regimes and their implications for authoritarianism. This article argues that the use of massive digital data may backfire against the authoritarian regime as it may change the power structure within the state. That is to say, efforts to embrace big data may also undermine the authoritarian rule. A more accurate understanding of the Chinese authoritarian regime's resilience and vulnerability in the information age will help us grasp the essence of China's rise as a fragile global power.     

An overview of Caribbean and Latin-American cultural heritage studies

Abstract

This review analyzes, through three recently published books that talk about cultural heritage in Latin America, how the Cultural Heritage Studies have allowed us to understand the current situation in the region characterized by the growing tendency to promote declarations of heritage as part of a plan for the use of culture as a resource for sustainable development. Likewise, those books analyze how responses from local communities are generated to hegemonic definitions of heritage, which indicates that cultural heritage in Latin America is not something given but something in constant construction and dispute.     

CLASS OR COMMUNITY? MARX,THE RUSSIAN COMMUNE,AND CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL THEORY

This article explores the relationship between class and community through a discussion of peasant struggles and the commune during the Russian Revolution. Doing so, we show how Marx's class‐oriented reflections on community can help us to understand the role that the peasantry plays (or should play) in processes of social transformation. This enables us, first, to understand the relevance of communal forms for Marx, who believed that communitarian ways of life were crucial for overcoming a value‐based society. It is, in fact, a mistake to divide Marx's intellectual trajectory into two periods: a categorical Marx, who authored Capital and critically analyzed the classical theory of value, and a phenomenological, empirical Marx, who in the last years of his life abandoned writing Capital and focused instead on studying the Russian peasantry. Second, it enables us to discuss new externalist visions, such as postcolonial and decolonial theories, which postulate that the subordination of contemporary peasant communities is rooted in epistemology, culture, and local power relations. These theories are related to the old social‐democratic canon, which conceives of social classes as preconstituted entities and of capital as a parasitic externality that is incommensurable with social dynamics. The experience of the Russian peasantry calls into question all externalist and ontological perspectives.     

The dual-processual model in ancient Greece: Applying a post-neoevolutionary model to a data-rich environment

Dissatisfaction with neoevolutionary concepts in social evolution has prompted archeologists to offer new post-neoevolutionary models to investigate social change. One concept, the dual-processual model, is salient among several because it focuses attention onto the central dynamics of exclusionary/networking or corporate strategies for obtaining power. Yet this model remains somewhat uncontextualized, with knowledge of how each strategy would work in a culture hinted at only in large concepts. This lack of contextualization hinders us from achieving the stated goals of the dual-processual model: the introduction of new cultural axes of analysis and the promotion of cross-cultural comparison. I argue here that we need to apply this model to a data-rich environment to elucidate to a greater degree how each of these power strategies operates. Classical cultures, within which post-neoevolutionary models are rarely applied, can supply this needed fine-grained context. In applying the model to the ancient city of Priene, which supplies several well-understood interactional contexts, I discern how we might define exclusionary/networking or corporate within different social contexts, how people use these strategies to gain power, and how these strategies change over time. Information from this application helps us to further the stated goals of its dual-processual proponents.     

Towards a molecular agenda for the Left

In his talk, communications scholar and cultural critic Alejandro Kaufman analyses some of the contradictions in which the Latin American progressive projects became entangled in a context dominated by the ‘happy totalitarianism’ of consumption and the spectacle as a seemingly irreducible contemporary order of being on a global scale. The great challenge for the Left, he suggests, is to move away from a representationalist paradigm of the struggle for power and towards a politics of molecular interventions on the level of lived experience.     

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.