A Manifesto against Femicide

In Ciudad Juárez, a group of feminist activists has established the city's first sexual assault center, called Casa Amiga. They accomplished this feat after launching a social movement on several fronts against the notion that Juarense women are cheap, promiscuous, and not worth efforts to provide them a safe refuge from domestic violence, incest, and rape. The essay explores their efforts as a means for asserting the value of women in Ciudad Juárez, an assertion with reverberating effects in the maquiladora industry that has prospered based on this image of Juarense women. By combining a Marxist critique of value with post-structuralist analyses of the subject, the essay argues that projects such as Casa Amiga represent plausible sites for the organizing of alliances whose objective is to reverse the depreciation of laborers.     

The Gender,Place and Culture Jan Monk Distinguished Annual Lecture: Gentrification,assassination and forgetting in Mexico: a feminist Marxist tale

In this article, I employ feminist and Marxist tools to expose the struggles over the constant plunder and expansion of global capitalism along Mexico's northern border, specifically in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. In particular, I examine how an official politics – promoted by the Mexican and US governments – for forgetting the economic and social devastation of a transcontinental drug war contributes to the mechanisms for further exploiting the working poor. By combining a feminist focus on the daily struggle of social reproduction with a Marxist emphasis on accumulation by dispossession, I show how this official ‘forgetting’ segues with an international gentrification plan in downtown Ciudad Juárez that seeks to expand the rent gap by denying place, legitimacy and legal status to the working women and their families who have made this border city famous as a hub of global manufacturing. As such, I argue that the social struggles against the official forgetting are struggles against a violent political economy that generates value via a devaluation of the spaces of the working poor, even of the spaces of their literal existence.     

THE 2010 ANTIPODE RGS‐IBG LECTURE Wars of Interpretations

Abstract: Since 2006, when Mexico's President declared war against the drug trade, the people of the northern Mexican border city, Ciudad Juárez, have been living through a record‐breaking escalation of violence, the occupation of their city by federal troops and police forces, unprecedented human and civil rights violations, and a pervasive experience of fear in public space. These events have occurred simultaneous to a devastating economic crisis. This paper asks the question, how can a feminist and Marxist geographer contribute to an analysis of what is happening in Ciudad Juárez? To address this question, I create a dialogue among activists in northern Mexico and post‐structuralist feminist and Marxist positions regarding the meaning of public fear in this city for the city's residents, for Mexico's democracy and for the making of public knowledge about the Mexico–US border.     

Photo Essay: The Rio Grande Borderland

The Rio Grande border of the United States and Mexico is over 1,000 miles long. This presentation of that border is by means of a photo essay interpreting the physical, economic, political, and cultural complex that has evolved. These photos were all taken in 1990 on a reconnaissance that followed both sides of the border for the entire distance from Ciudad Juarez and El Paso on the west to the Gulf of Mexico on the east. Numerous crossings of the border were made at official and non-official points. Informal field interviews were conducted on both sides of the border with government officials, agricultural workers, tourists, farmers, industrial managers, factory laborers, retirees, undocumented migrants, beachcombers, shoe-shiners in the plaza, sportsmen, clergymen, children, and loafers. The photos with an accompanying text are presented in an order that is conducive to a comprehension of the salient aspects of the physical and human geography and the complex social issues found in the borderland. The final photos and text are on the maquiladoras and the international interplay of history, markets, labor, and technology resulting in striking structural change.     

THE NEW FEDERALISM PARADOX*

One of the aims of Nixon's “New Federalism” reforms was to promote political decentralization in the federal system. An examination of the impact of revenue-sharing and block grant programs in El Paso, Texas, reveals that the New Federalism seems to have had the opposite effect in that city. El Paso is now more dependent, politically and economically, on federal grants than it was prior to the New Federalism and local autonomy is significantly reduced. The reasons for this paradoxical impact in El Paso and the applicability of these findings to other cities are discussed.     

Más o Menos Muerto: Bare Life in Roberto Bolaño's 2666

This article explores Chilean Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 (2004) with a focus on the significance of what Giorgio Agamben describes as ‘bare life.’ In the novel, Bolaño employs Pedro Páramo as a metaphor to talk about feminicide and violence against women in Santa Teresa, the fictional Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The victims of violence in Santa Teresa in 2666 are described as ‘más o menos muerto,’ a condition that points to the way in which disappeared and misidentified bodies are forced into eternal anonymity and denied even the right of death. Whereas the dead in Pedro Páramo are denied the rights of citizenship in life, those in 2666 face a denial of rights that extends from life into death, leaving them with nothing, not even their names. In 2666, the physical violence is preceded by what Juárez photojournalist Julián Cardona describes as ‘economic violence.’     

An Archaeological Survey of El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro,Las Cruces—El Paso

Archaeologists from New Mexico State University surveyed El Camino Real, the earliest long-distance trail established by European colonists in North America, from Las Cruces, New Mexico, to El Paso, Texas. Our goal was to determine the location and condition of this historic trail within a strip of land that has witnessed significant agricultural, suburban, and urban development in recent years. Due to this development, many scholars have assumed that all physical traces of the Camino Real have been destroyed. Results of our research, however, suggest that not all remnants of the trail and related campsites have been lost.     

South–South? Culture Talk and Labour Relations at a Chinese‐owned Factory in Hungary

In 2011, a large Hungarian chemical factory was acquired by a Chinese competitor. The resulting encounter between Chinese managers and Hungarian staff — which took place in the context of a harsh retrenchment that has curtailed the powers of organized labour in Hungary — highlights the inadequacy of dichotomies such as North/South, East/West and socialist/capitalist. As with other corporate acquisitions in Europe, Chinese managers expected to ‘learn’ from ‘advanced Western management practices’; instead, they found what they interpreted as a backward, ‘socialist’ work culture in need of modernization. For their part, Hungarian staff feared the imposition of a culturally inappropriate ‘Asian labour discipline’, but have come to see at least some of the changes as part of a necessary modernization. ‘Asian’, ‘European’, ‘Western’ and ‘socialist’ are floating signifiers used by both Chinese and Hungarian staff at the factory in various, often contradictory ways to justify management choices, staff resistance or individual preferences. As a result of their analysis, the authors suggest that discussions about the impact of Chinese investment on labour practices should recognize a wider range of contexts, including the presence of precarious socioeconomic environments within the so‐called ‘advanced economies’.     

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.     

‘But we are the most backward’: Hierarchical categorization of modernity in contemporary Chinese national identity

This article examines how the classification of specific territories in China as backward constructs contemporary Chinese national identity. Recent scholarship has examined the role that regions within nations play as repositories of undesirable traits of national identity. This article examines how spaces at scales other than the region within a national territory are classified on a continuum of backwardness and modernity through an examination of four forms of classification of political spaces within China: minzu (ethnicity), westness, poverty, rural/urban. Drawing on ethnographic field work in Western China, alongside the writings of noted anthropologist Fei Xiaotong and others Chinese intellectuals, this article shows that spaces were discursively categorized as backward. This classification of backwardness is not a case of binary othering, but rather exists as a graduated teleological hierarchy in which all spaces classified as backward have the theoretical ability to move out of their backwardness through state-led development. With the goal of helping backward spaces advance towards modernity, the state has enacted de jure forms of territorial classification target specific spaces for development and modernization.     

Creative destruction: Efficiency,equity or collapse? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

Around the globe, unemployment and sub employment have risen, salaries are frozen, homes are being repossessed, economic inequality continues, and many are experiencing heightened emotional distress. We have heard many explanations for this economic and social mess. But the current crisis should make us question the standard narratives, which failed to predict it and now offer ambiguous solutions. I argue that the crisis represents a tectonic shift in material life that calls for rethinking our image of economy. Because the normal discourse of economics does not explain this world of contradictions, ironies, and unpredictability, perhaps anthropology's moment has arrived. I offer a sketch of the contemporary situation based on a vision of economy as a combination of value domains and the impact of growing specialization, beginning in the workplace and reaching to new financial instruments. If the idea of the growing division of tasks in markets has been a central thread in economics since Adam Smith, its counterpart in anthropology has been the assumption of value diversity within and between cultures.     

A Picturesque Modernity in 1920s Peru and Argentina: Ruins,Cuzco and Americanism in the Photographic Reportages of Variedades and Plus Ultra

This essay focuses on a series of pictorial reportages on the city of Cuzco and the surrounding region published in the Peruvian illustrated magazine Variedades in 1924 and 1925. Looking at the interplay of the aesthetic and documentary value of photographs, I analyse how the reportages on Cuzco’s architecture and ruins contributed to the indigenista proposal of regional and national identity and how, in so doing, they articulated an idea of modernity which opposed the main narrative of Western modernization produced by the magazine. I argue that Variedades became the discursive place of an interplay between opposite ideas of modernity since it afforded its readers-viewers a dual, almost conflictive, experience. Moreover, I posit that the magazine ‘mediated’ the regional discourse for the Limeño readers through the discourses of tourism and the picturesque familiarizing them with those ‘unknown’ regions. By comparing the reportages with similar documents published in the same decade by the Argentine magazine Plus Ultra, I also show that this was not something exclusive to Peru, but rather part of a broader Americanist trend that was shaping the relationship between native tradition and modernization as well as giving form to a proposal for a ‘pan-American’ identity in the 1920s.     

Heritage and ethnic identity: preserving Chinese cemeteries in the United States

This paper critically examines the role of ethnic community in the process of heritage management and preservation. Drawing on two heritage projects dedicated to historic Chinese American cemeteries – the nineteenth-century Chinese Memorial Shrine in Los Angeles, California and Concordia Chinese Cemetery located in El Paso, Texas – this study examines how heritage serves as a central referent in constructing a collective identity that gives continuity and political unity to an ethnic community. Heritage preservation, as a practice connecting the past and present, provides us with insight not only into the historic meanings attached to heritage, but also the contemporary values and ideologies of communities with regard to their efforts in interpreting the past. This paper highlights the relationship between identity politics and heritage, suggesting that heritage becomes a vital means of identity formation which helps articulate cultural traditions in the face of a dominant national culture that essentialises ethnic pasts.     

Visions/versions of the war: Ramón Pérez de Ayala and Juan Pujol on the Italian front

In 1915, the Spanish journalist Juan Pujol visited the Italian front. His reports appeared in ABC, and were later incorporated in his book In Galitzia and the Isonzo (1916). A few months later, the Spanish writer Ramón Pérez de Ayala visited the same territories. His reports appeared in El Imparcial (Madrid) and La Prensa (Buenos Aires), and were later published in his book Herman in Chains (1917). The poetics evident in the reports of both writers were clearly different, not only for ideological reasons (Juan Pujol supported the Central Empires; Pérez de Ayala favored the Allies), but also for discursive reasons: the reflexive and digressive culturalism of Pérez de Ayala, for example, contrasted vividly with the direct narrative of Juan Pujol. However, since both writers shared some stereotypes about war and used a common repertoire of rhetorical and stylistic strategies, there are significant similarities between their texts.     

Transformative Topographies: The Natural World in Historia de los Triumphos de la Santa Fee by Andrés Pérez de Ribas,S.J. (1645)

This essay analyzes the representation and cross-fertilization of natural and spiritual landscapes in Andrés Pérez de Ribas's Historia de los Triumphos de Nuestra Santa Fee (1645), a massive history of Jesuit evangelization in northwestern New Spain. Pérez de Ribas confers a major role to the natural world by deploying its wonders as well as its utilitarian riches in the service of imperial expansion and conversion, resignifying native landscapes in the process. The essay argues that Pérez de Ribas uses a ‘double optics’ of empirical observation and religion in order to make the northern periphery visible to readers at the centers of imperial power, and to participate in the Jesuit enterprise of knowledge making that was so much a part of their global enterprise.     

中国现代经济发展的初始条件

中华民族历史悠久、文化统一,其文化凝聚力和生存延续力的深度是民族复兴、实现现代化的根基。统一的独立自主的社会主义国家的建立,为在一个经济落后、长期分裂的国家进行现代化建设创造了基本的政治前提条件。丰富的劳动力资源、较高的社会整合能力以及社会一体化水平是中国推进现代化的独特的组织资源优势。中国领导人具有强烈的工业化和现代化意识,而且中国作为一个后起的现代化国家,具有诸多的后发优势。但是,中国工业化启动时间晚,经济发展起点低下,工业基础薄弱,物质和资本资源短缺;人口数量多、增长快,城乡差异巨大,各地区发展极不平衡,教育事业落后,医疗卫生条件差,科学技术水平低,缺乏启动工业化的技术创新力量和吸收新技术的能力。由于中国工业化和现代化的初始条件与发达国家差异很大,决定了中国的现代化将是一个由不断量变的积累进而部分质变的长期过程,中国至少要花100年的时间甚至更长的时间才能逐步缩小与发达国家的绝对差距。     

Carboniferous postglacial faunas in the late Serpukhovian–Bashkirian interval of central-western Argentina

Cisterna, G.A., Sterren, A.F., López Gamundí, O. & Vergel, M.M., March 2017. Carboniferous postglacial faunas in the late Serpukhovian–Bashkirian interval of central-western Argentina. Alcheringa, ISSN 0311-5518.

Typical glacial–postglacial sequences associated with the Late Palaeozoic Ice Age (LPIA) are recognized in the Calingasta-Uspallata Basin, central-western Argentina, particularly in the Hoyada Verde and El Paso formations (late Serpukhovian–Bashkirian) at Barreal Hill (San Juan province). Brachiopods and bivalves accompanied by gastropods, conulariids, nautiloids, corals and ostracods constitute the marine assemblages of the El Paso Formation. They are assigned to the Aseptella–Tuberculatella/Rhipidomella–Micraphelia (AT/RM) fauna, characterized by two fossil assemblages: Aseptella–Tuberculatella, identified in the lower fossiliferous interval, and Rhipidomella–Micraphelia in the upper. The development of the different invertebrate assemblages within the El Paso Formation, and their relationship with coeval suite in the Hoyada Verde Formation, can be explained by a complex array of abiotic factors (substrate stability, turbidity, nutrient availability, variation in oxygen levels, poor circulation and salinity variations in the water column) that were directly related to glacial retreat dynamics and coastal configuration. A restricted palaeofjord setting is proposed for the depositional environment of the El Paso Formation in contrast to an exposed open marine coast with a gently sloping shelf for the Hoyada Verde Formation. The study of the postglacial fauna of the El Paso Formation and its relationship with the Levipustula fauna in the Calingasta-Uspallata Basin, help determine the main controls on the distribution of the postglacial faunas in other late Palaeozoic South American basins, such as the Tepuel Genoa Basin in Patagonia and the Tarija Basin in Bolivia.

Gabriela A. Cisterna [gabrielacisterna@conicet.gov.ar], CONICET-UNLAR, Av. Dr. Luis M. de la Fuente s/n, La Rioja, 5300, Argentina; Andrea F. Sterren [asterren@unc.edu.ar], CICTERRA (CONICET – Universidad Nacional de Córdoba), Av. Vélez Sarsfield 1611, X5016GCA, Córdoba, Argentina; Oscar López Gamundí [orlg2003@yahoo.com], P1C Consultants 1121 Banks Street, Houston, TX 77006, USA; María del Milagro Vergel [vergelmar@tucbbs.com.ar], CONICET – INSUGEO – Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituo Miguel Lillo (UNT), Miguel Lillo 205, 4000, San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina.     

塞缪尔·亨廷顿“文明冲突论”的文化保守主义倾向

如果从现代化的角度解读亨廷顿的"文明冲突论",就不难发现这一理论本身所隐含的社会发展观及其文化保守主义倾向。"文明冲突论"在相对主义文化决定论的框架下,提出多元现代性和多元现代化的观点。这种观点否认存在具有普遍意义的现代性和现代化,宣称每一种文明都有其独特的现代性内涵和现代化模式。这种社会发展观看似开放,其本质却是文化保守主义的,其矛盾折射出西方文明在当前世界格局下文化策略的调整。它旨在将人类共同享有的先进文明成果特殊化、西方化,以非西方中心论的名义将现代性相对化,最终取消非西方社会实现现代化的可能性。非西方社会对此应保持理性的判断。     

论城市现代化进程中的人文关怀

从世界现代化进程看,城市现代化作为现代化的一个载体,本质上是一种历史文化现象。从这一视角考察城市现代化问题,文化生态是城市现代化的一个重要内涵。南京作为历史文化名城,其文化生态主要包括六朝文化、明文化和民国文化三个方面。在城市现代化的进程中,应当充分发挥文化生态的功能,展示出人文关怀的独特魅力。