Exclusion and Counter‐exclusion: The Struggle over Shrimp Farming in a Coastal Village in Bangladesh

This article explores the processes whereby control over land and water is exercised in the context of commercial shrimp cultivation in coastal Bangladesh. The authors draw on the insight that the exercise of control over resources implies both inclusion for some and exclusion for others, and that shifting the boundary between the two involves the deployment of four interacting ‘powers of exclusion’ — regulation, the market, force and legitimation — the effectiveness of which depends on specific historical conjunctures. The article uses a case study of a village in Khulna District to explore: (a) the processes by which poor farmers were excluded from their land by large shrimp farmers; (b) the ways in which villagers experienced the changes in land use and social relations associated with the shrimp boom; and (c) the conjunction of internal and external factors that enabled smallholders to collectively mobilize to reverse their exclusion from the land. Understanding these messy and contingent processes of exclusion and counter‐exclusion helps to inform strategies aimed at securing the property rights and livelihoods of the rural poor.     

Mapping Value in a ‘Green’ Commodity Frontier: Revisiting Commodity Chain Analysis

Analysis of commodity chains has provided important insights on how power, resource and market access mediate the distribution of benefits and risks. Given this analytical potential, Commodity Chain Analysis (CCA) is now being applied to the study of biofuels and carbon markets to gain systematic insight into the circumstances, relationships and transformations involved in their production and exchange. By building on and adapting this approach to three distinct case studies (biofuels in Madagascar and forest carbon in Cambodia and Laos), this article contributes new insights on the emergence of value within market environmentalism. The analysis highlights methodological challenges in applying CCA to commodified forms of nature, and the significance of knowledge and value negotiations. All three cases illustrate that it remains highly uncertain whether or not market exchange can ultimately be realized. As in the case of traditional commodities, pre‐existing conditions of power and access shape modes of production and network configuration. Parallel and intersecting commodity networks (e.g. for land and timber) also require us to think beyond the traditional single‐commodity focus. Thus, the authors call for an expanded analytical focus in applying CCA to non‐material ‘green’ commodities which places greater emphasis on value negotiations and connections within new ‘commodity frontiers’.     

The State,the Rebel and the Chief: Public Authority and Land Disputes in Assam,India

Based upon an ethnographic study of two land disputes in the rural Assamese district of Karbi Anglong (India), this article challenges the idea that the entry of new institutional players, with their multiple sets of rules, inevitably leads to open institutional conflict. Although a wide range of political actors are involved in the regulation of land tenure in Karbi Anglong, they cannot be regarded as institutional structures ready to undercut one another. As in other parts of Northeast India, none of the claimants of public power involved —‘the state’, ‘the rebel’ or ‘the chief’— attain full sovereignty, which forces them to exercise authority predominantly through practices of negotiation and accommodation, and only selective contestation. If open institutional conflict does occur, as in the Dhansiri forest and the Singhason plateau cases studied here, this is due to the fact that one of the institutional players has overstretched and attempted to exercise authority beyond its realm of power. This article thus argues for a more agency‐oriented method of analysis in the study of land relations. The focus on everyday interactions between ‘the state’, ‘the rebel’ and ‘the chief’ in Karbi Anglong is a first attempt in that regard.     

Transposition in Japanese state identities: overseas troop dispatches and the emergence of a humanitarian power?

This article aims to illustrate the trajectory of Japan's security identity transposition. As one of the catalysts in identity transposition, it focuses on the constitutive roles of norms regulating Japan's overseas dispatches of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF). Whilst keeping the identities of ‘a peace state’ and ‘a civilian power’, the authors argue that Japan has crafted a new security identity after the end of the cold war and the 9/11 terrorist attacks—namely, ‘an international humanitarian power’. As evidence of this transposition, the authors illustrate a dramatic increase in the number of overseas SDF dispatches on humanitarian missions, and the shift of domestic and foreign responses to it. The authors note that Japan has been on the road to remilitarisation and internationalisation during the past four decades through the enactments of laws for overseas SDF dispatches, the general public's shift of attitude on the SDF's roles, the evolution of the alliance in a more operational direction, and the creation of threats from North Korea and China. Lastly, the authors argue that there is still a long way to go before Japan emerges as a normal state because of the presence of many domestic and structural barriers, especially multiple identities defining the Japanese state.     

Distinctions,distinctions: ‘public’ and ‘private’ force?

This article evaluates recent literatures within International Relations on so‐called ‘private force’. It suggests that the conceptual weaknesses of much of this literature can be accounted for, in part, by a misunderstanding of the historical and sociological importance of the way power is organized and legitimated through shifts in the public—private distinction. This distinction is one of the primary mechanisms, if not the primary mechanism, for organizing political, economic and, therefore, military power. For the sake of historical accuracy and conceptual integrity scholars should abandon the terminology of ‘public’ and ‘private’ force. Tracing how public‐private distinctions shift and change as an effect of political power is a joint task for historical sociology and international political theory     

America after Iraq

America won an asymmetric war in Iraq and lost an asymmetric peace. Translating material power advantage into favourable political outcomes has been a challenge for great powers down the ages—what makes this bridge even more difficult to cross today is the raised expectations on the part of liberal publics about the moral purpose of US‐led interventions. In this sense, Iraq is part of the explanation for why influential liberals believe there is a ‘crisis’ in America's world leadership. ‘America after Iraq’ subjects this claim to analytical scrutiny—in particular it addresses whether Iraq was simply a chapter in a longer book detailing American power and purpose in the post‐9/11 world? In answering this question the article is drawn to consider conceptual debates about a shift in the international system from anarchy to hierarchy with the US as the hegemonic power. While it rejects strong versions of the hierarchy thesis that imply the Washington is the new Rome, it is nevertheless drawn to an understanding of a hierarchical form of ordering where the US oscillates between a hegemonic role and an imperial outlaw. Seen through this lens, the Iraq War was an intervention that happened because it could, and not because it was just or necessary. Public opinion and the weakness of domestic institutions are also critical factors in explaining how it was possible for a previously status‐quo oriented hegemonic power to act recklessly and put the rules and institutions of international society under strain.     

Connected feminists: foregrounding the interpersonal in connective action

New social movement theories have been developed to address the organisational structures of activism in the age of digital platforms, but have tended to focus on structural questions rather than interpersonal dynamics. This paper engages with Bennett and Segerberg’s theory of connective action but uses a feminist lens to foreground the interpersonal dynamics between digitally equipped activists to develop a uniquely feminist account of connective action. It draws on Jo Freeman’s ‘tyranny of structurelessness’ to illustrate how informal organisation pervades new forms of connective action and continues to hamper the feminist movement. However, it also introduces and identifies the ‘feminist manager’ as an attempt to address the problematic practices of structurelessness and informality, and paves the way for consciously recognising the organisational structures required to advance the movement beyond consciousness-raising initiatives.     

Mare Nullius: Indigenous Rights in Saltwater Environments

This article uses two case studies to illustrate the subjection of indigenous peoples’ marine territories to a ‘double jeopardy’ of exclusion — jurisdictional and proprietary — through the legal and administrative practices of European ‘settler’ states in Australia and Canada. While the fiction of terra nullius as a legal rationale for refuting indigenous rights of property and governance has steadily eroded in recent decades, its counterpart mare nullius has proven, so far, more resistant. The authors examine how state conceptions of jurisdiction, property and boundary‐making in coastal areas accomplish the distortion and fragmentation of the coastal and marine spaces of Torres Strait Islanders in northern Queensland, Australia, and of the Cree and Inuit peoples of James and Hudson Bays in northern Que´bec, Canada. Assumptions of land–sea continuity underlie these peoples’ cultural constructions of coastal and marine environments. In examining the progress that each has made in reasserting ownership and control of coast and sea, it seems that recognition and reinforcement of their institutions for managing marine spaces and resources offer the best prospect for reconnecting fractured jurisdictional domains, and for bringing about social equity, environmental protection, and self‐determined regional development.     

Cronies,economic crime and capitalism in Putin's sistema

The books included in this review article are essential for the understanding of what I call Putin's sistema—the governance model that originated in the Soviet system but has transformed and adapted to global change. Each book tackles, from a different angle, the issues of Russia's transition and suggests ways to describe its political consequences. The books all attempt to identify some underlying logic or organizing force in a Russian society that has emerged through weak institutions. Although I join the authors in their criticisms of the ‘transition paradigm’ and its ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of democracy’ formula, transformations of the Soviet sistema seem to resonate with the ‘opening‐breakthrough‐consolidation of capitalism’. Perestroika can be seen as an ‘opening’ in shaking the foundations of sistema; Yeltsin's era as a ‘breakthrough’; and Putin's regime as the ‘consolidation’ of capitalism but with its distinct characteristics.     

State–Society Relations in Land Reform Implementation in the Philippines

Contrary to earlier pessimistic predictions, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Programme (CARP) in the Philippines has achieved significant success in land redistribution, although not quite matching the original claims of the state. The dominant public policy and land reform literature, broadly divided between state‐centred and society‐centred approaches, has difficulty in fully explaining the unexpected outcomes of the CARP process. Going beyond these dichotomous views, and using Fox’s interactive framework for analysing state–society relations, this article argues that redistributive land reform can be implemented in a politically hostile situation when initiatives by state reformists ‘from above’ positively interact with social mobilizations ‘from below’.     

Subverting Regulatory Protection of ‘Natural Commodities’: The Prunus Africana in Madagascar

This article explores the contradictions that have emerged along the commodity chain of the endangered medicinal tree Prunus africana in Madagascar. The study provides a unique opportunity to build on theories of access, highlighting in particular the themes of social relations, culture and power in mediating access to natural resources and benefits that derive from commercialization. Commodity chain analysis is employed to illustrate that property rights, based solely on formal rights, legal claims or customary rights to ‘natural commodities’ are insufficient to measure who is able to gain and maintain access to the species. The results show that power, regulation and exclusion have a much greater impact on who is able to tap into the benefits of P. africana commercialization. This article illustrates how extraction firms in Madagascar have over the years finessed their way, through ‘green conditionalities’ or conservation concessions, into continued extraction of P. africana — all in the face of widespread regulation.     

At Once Human and Not Human: Law,Gender and Historical Becoming in Colonial Egypt

This article explores two approaches to the gendered human that occupied the historical stage of colonial Egypt. The first was juridical, the second was Islamic and mystical. Elaborating on the first, ‘juridical humanity’, this article probes the constitutive force of modern law in cementing the human as its teleology as well as the colonial operations of this force. Fashioning itself as an answer to the question ‘who is the human?’, juridical humanity took on particular salience in relation to women while engendering disciplinary operations: the humanising powers of colonial law instituted a system of bondage between the law and the woman‐human. The mystical articulation, on the other hand, offered a competing vision for the human, one that constituted an answer to the question ‘where is the human?’, thereby making impossible the unleashing of colonial humanising powers.     

Tackling Social Exclusion

Abstract

The opening words of the 1999 report of the government's Social Exclusion Unit, Bringing Britain Together announced that it met its remit to report to the Prime Minister on how to: ‘develop integrated and sustainable approaches to the problems of the worst housing estates, including crime, drugs, unemployment, community breakdown, and bad schools etc.’ In other words the Social Exclusion Unit was instructed to take a problem-solving approach to the issue. This approach meant that the development of an inclusive society would be understood implicitly in terms of dealing with those areas that are perceived as problems. This seems to suggest that social exclusion ‘just happens’ to people who ‘suffer from’ a collection of problems. The agent or agents of this exclusion are rendered invisible by the very linguistic structure of the definition. This paper argues that it is vital to envisage the agents and victims of exclusion and to describe it in terms of the relationship of face to face. A critique drawing upon the insights of Emmanuel Levinas would refuse to allow us to reduce the otherness of the socially excluded to a project defined in the terms of those who exercise power in social relations. Nor would it allow a definition of social exclusion in terms of it being either ‘their’ problem or the consequence of some impersonal force. A theological critique might lead us to argue that the whole project of problem solving when applied to persons is in and of itself highly suspect. Thus the paper concludes by considering what shape might develop from the bringing of insights from philosophical and theological discourses to this perception of social exclusion. It seeks to argue for a radical passivity before the face of the Other (that is in this case those who live in urban housing estates) arguing that those who engage with social exclusion, the ‘name’ that has been given to this face, are first summoned by the Other to a relationship of total responsibility which rejects the reductionist project of the controlling ‘I’.     

Ruling by Record: The Meaning of Rights,Rules and Registration in an Andean Comunidad

This contribution looks at land property relations in a peasant community in the central highlands of Peru. Rather than using a rights‐based approach, the authors propose a ‘practice force field approach’ for their analysis of property relations under communal land tenure regimes. Their study combines qualitative ethnographic case studies with quantitative analysis of data on land distribution. In contrast to rights‐based approaches, this perspective understands the legal discourses that people draw upon to explain property relations as ‘justifying rule talk’ rather than the reflection of a system of property rights. It is shown how property relations are shaped in mediated interactive processes, where official rules, moral principles, shared histories and strategic games come together. The authors use this practice force field approach to study Usibamba, an Andean community that has developed a true disciplinary regime of communal governance based on control over land. The role of ‘rule talk’ and the function of elaborate local systems of land registration are examined in the context of the annual reallocation of communal land. Particular attention is paid to the performance of the president of the comunidad during this delicate process and his reflections on the course of events.     

‘Your work is of no use to us…’: Administrative interests in ethnographic research (West New Guinea, 1950–1962)

Abstract

The extent of customary land in Samoa and the laws pertaining to its protection create a presumption of state dependence on the regulation of custom in effecting state policies within local contexts. The principal means of regulating custom in Samoa has been and continues to be through state court adjudication of conflicts over customary land and chiefly titles. The transitive nature of ‘custom’ and conceptions of ‘custom’ in Samoa created an opening for court influence in the construction of custom, if not custom's partial reinvention through the agency of the courts. This occurred principally through the courts’ privileging principles of English common law in confirming asserted land rights generally considered unenforceable at the time of Samoa's political partition. The courts re‐interpreted as customary, conceptions of land rights the colonial state's influence attempted to effect within Samoan society. But the source of the changes, and the courts’ role in promoting them, tended not to be equally reflected upon. To the extent such influence is ignored in analyses of Samoan land tenure and customary law, and reproduced within state policies and court adjudication of conflict, custom's social construction is left unexamined, assumed to be more general than it is, and likely to exacerbate tensions and conflict within Samoan society rather than reduce them.     

The elusive ‘je’: Language and female subjectivity in Simone de Beauvoir's Les Belles Images

The most striking feature of the narrative of Simone de Beauvoir's novel Les Belles Images (1966) is the constant shift between the third‐person pronoun ‘elle’ (or ‘Laurence') and the first‐person pronoun ‘je’. The pattern produced by this shift in narrative voice within the text has important implications for the construction of female subjectivity in the narrative, primarily in relation to its central character, Laurence. This article examines the nature of Laurence's relationship with language using arguments offered by the feminist psychoanalyst Luce Irigaray pertaining to the relationship of exclusion binding women to language in patriarchal culture. My reading of the novel examines how far Laurence's problematic relationship with language might be read in terms of a quest to articulate her ‘je’ and make her ‘marginal’ voice heard. Further, it engages with, but ultimately problematises, Toril Moi's notion of an ‘authorial’ reading at work in Beauvoir's fictional texts.     

国外城市非正规性研究进展及启示

21世纪以来,西方城市研究界认为大部分城市发展将发生在发展中国家,新的城市理论也将产生在这些新的地理空间,而城市非正规性是其主要特征。本文首先对城市非正规性的演变进行了梳理,认为城市非正规性的研究具有对"二元主义"的超越,"传统"非正规研究的超越和认识论上的转变3个特征,并明晰了城市非正规性的理论内涵是一种管治模式;其次,认为制度变迁和城市非正规性研究之间的焦距在于国家、地方政府、企业和个体等行动者之间的相互作用,在此基础上总结出了城市非正规性互补式、补充式和让步式3种主要类型;最后,从政治、社会和文化三个维度总结了非正规性在中国形成的根源,并提出非正规性可以理解成为中国城市发展的一种模式,非正规实践及非正规制度蕴含制度创新的启示。     

Rethinking security: a critical analysis of the Strategic Defence and Security Review

In 2010 the coalition government conducted a major review of defence and security policy. This article explores the review process from a critical perspective by examining and challenging the state‐centrism of prevailing conceptions of current policy reflected in the quest to define and perform a particular ‘national role’ in contrast to a human‐centric framework focused on the UK citizen. It argues that shifting the focus of policy to the individual makes a qualitative difference to how we think about requirements for the UK's armed forces and challenges ingrained assumptions about defence and security in relation to military operations of choice and attendant expensive, expeditionary war‐fighting capabilities. In particular, it confronts the prevailing narrative that UK national security‐as‐global risk management must be met by securing the state against pervasive multidimensional risk through military force, that military power projection capabilities are a vital source of international influence and national prestige and that the exercise of UK military power constitutes a ‘force for good’ for the long‐term human security needs of citizens in both the intervened and intervening state.     

Territorial (In) Coherence: Labour and Special Economic Zones in Laos's Border Manufacturing

This article engages literature on special economic zones and territory in global development. I suggest a focus on labour's spatial class composition as constitutive of territorial coherence provides insights into how the Savan‐Seno Special Economic Zone in Lao PDR operates as an economic border territory bridging Laos to the regional and global economies. The distanciated global connections which special economic zones aim to create are predicated on zones gaining internal coherence for capital accumulation. I suggest zones’ internal coherence depends on zone firms reworking the local class composition of labour, itself constituted by workers’ spatial practices. In the Savan‐Seno zone this occurred through immobilising a mobile labour force and taking advantage of its continuing embeddedness within a subsistence rice‐producing village economy. The argument aims to illustrate how zones producing for global markets act as territories of complex spatiality which span and connect multiple spaces of production and workers’ social reproduction.