Walking to the Tsosisumkyi“Tribe”

Why do I refer to Tsosisumkyi village as a"tribe"?The simple reason is that this rural community did not go through any democratic reform while Tibet experienced its transition from a feudal serfdom to socialism.How is Tsosisumkyi today?Is there any kind of chieftain in control of this"tribe"?     

Connecting lectures to current affairs: the “letters to newspapers” assignment

This paper presents the experiences of teaching political geography, in a level 2 BA course, with the use of an innovative assignment – the letters to newspapers assignment. We provide here the aims, rationale and a detailed outline of the assignment. We also discuss student feedback from 67 questionnaires and 2 focus groups. Our findings suggest that the assignment was instrumental in (a) enabling the students to see concepts in action, that is to link abstract ideas with real-world issues and (b) initiating a move away from passive learning towards supporting students to actively and critically reflect upon their relationship with the world.     

“Neptune to the Common-wealth of England” (1652): the “Republican Britannia” and the continuity of interests

ABSTRACT

In the seventeenth century, John Kerrigan reminds us, “models of empire did not always turn on monarchy”. In this essay, I trace a vision of “Neptune’s empire” shared by royalists and republicans, binding English national interest to British overseas expansion. I take as my text a poem entitled “Neptune to the Common-wealth of England”, prefixed to Marchamont Nedham’s 1652 English translation of Mare Clausum (1635), John Selden’s response to Mare Liberum (1609) by Hugo Grotius. This minor work is read alongside some equally obscure and more familiar texts in order to point up the ways in which it speaks to persistent cultural and political interests. I trace the afterlife of this verse, its critical reception and its unique status as a fragment that exemplifies the crossover between colonial republic and imperial monarchy at a crucial moment in British history, a moment that, with Brexit, remains resonant.     

Levantine Perspectives on the Middle to Upper Paleolithic “Transition”

This article presents a synthesis of the presently available data concerning the processes and meaning of the technical changes in lithic productions across the Middle Paleolithic/Upper Paleolithic boundary in the Levant. As a “corridor” between Africa and Eurasia, this area is of first importance in the discussion of Modern Human origins. The results of several new field projects (especially concerning the Initial Upper Paleolithic), the recent lithic technological studies (based on the chaîne opératoire concept) as well as radiometric dating were used here to discuss the rhythms and processes of technical changes at the onset of the Upper Paleolithic, examining carefully the lithic repertoire from the Late Middle Paleolithic through the Initial Upper Paleolithic from Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and Israel. This paper puts forward the idea that the emergence of Upper Paleolithic technical characteristics did not occur following a single process, even in the same region (here the Levant), but most probably followed a “mosaic” pattern. However taking into account the data presently available, the main basic scenario for the onset of the Upper Paleolithic in this region would have been the generalization of new technical traits that would have emerged within certain local Late Middle Paleolithic and the following Initial Upper Paleolithic groups. If a diffusion phenomenon should be considered, as claimed by many scholars, the available information suggests that it has functioned more as a stimulus rather than the simplistic scenario of a catastrophic wave of population and the resulting acculturation.     

Inventing the “Pygmy”: Representing the “Other”, Presenting the “Self”

In this article, I investigate historical representations of Central African Forest People that have been constructed by explorers, scientists, colonial officers, journalists and the European public in order to provide a historical analysis of the concept of the “Pygmy”. Following Said’s argument regarding Orientalism, that “without examining Orientalism as a discourse one cannot possibly understand the enormous systematic discipline by which European culture was able to manage—and even produce—the Orient politically, sociologically, militarily, ideologically, scientifically, and imaginatively” (1995 Said, E. W. 1995. Orientalism, Harmondsworth, , UK: Penguin.  [Google Scholar]: 3), I will draw on representations of Forest People from written accounts of the last 200 years. None of these accounts should be regarded as representative of Forest Peoples’ own representations of themselves, so what I hope to provide is a clear picture of how Forest People have been represented by others through the discourses of race, evolution and colonialism.     

From universal homogeneity to essential heterogeneity: On the visual construction of “the Lappish race”

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a radical change took place in the representation of the Saami. Whereas physical variation earlier was insignificant to cultural representation, from then on it became the very essence of their otherness. In this paper I relate the change in the representation of the Saami to the emergence of a modern discourse in which the concept of ‘race’ became central to the organization of knowledge and social practices as well as to the understanding of cultural difference. Moreover, I try to demonstrate how the “success” of the racial discourse was conditioned by new visual technologies.     

“A beacon-light to the oppressed of every land”: James Connolly and the work of the working-class intellectual

Abstract

This article seeks to defend James Connolly from attacks on both the Left and Right, particularly the charge that his legacy is nationalist delusion and fanaticism. The article argues that Connolly’s politics and his engagement with Irish cultural politics demonstrate his commitment to human equality as both a right, but also a principle of human intelligence. The article addresses Connolly’s status as a working-class intellectual with reference to how he challenges conventional hierarchies between the philosophers of Marxism and the proletarians who are the object of those deliberations. The article argues that from Connolly’s thought and activism an anti-colonial Marxism emerges which might help explain the neo-imperialist world we find ourselves in today and provide a critique lacking in the collapsed teleological versions of orthodox Marxism. The relations between his Marxism and nationalism are explored, as are his play Under Which Flag? his poetry and songs.     

“British Tribute to Virginia Valor”: Unveiling the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Statue

This article outlines the political agendas surrounding the dedication of the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Statue, an early Confederate monument commissioned in Britain in 1863 and unveiled with much fanfare in Richmond, Virginia in 1875. It argues that the statue’s British provenance made it an ideal means of expressing the distinctive claims of the Conservative Party of Virginia. By commemorating both General Jackson and Britain’s Confederate sympathizers, modernizers in the Conservative Party presented themselves as representatives of an Anglo‐Saxon Christian value system, guardians of the “Old Dominion’s” immemorial character, and defenders of political views that held national and international significance. Thus the Conservatives dedicated an international monument to a transatlantic and implicitly racist cultural tradition as part of their larger effort to facilitate Virginia’s integration into the reconstructed national union on terms favorable to the former Confederates.     

The Mediation of the Distinction of “Religion” and “Politics” by the UK Press on the Occasion of Pope Benedict XVI’s State Visit to the UK

Abstract

One feature of modern political liberalism is its acceptance of the superiority of secular political reasoning over faith-based reasoning where matters of practical politics are concerned. The distinction religion/politics has become a defining feature of modern political liberalism. We examined how this distinction was mediated by the UK national press through a case study of its reporting of Pope Benedict XVI’s state visit to the UK in 2010. The case study evaluates the following four propositions: (1) “religion” is benign and relevant to “politics”; (2) “religion” is malign and relevant to “politics”; (3) “religion” is assumed to be irrelevant to “politics” but is dismissed positively; and (4) “religion” is regarded as irrelevant to “politics” but is dismissed negatively. We conclude there is a dominant shared assumption in the UK press supporting propositions two and three: that religion is a good thing when it conforms to a pre-existing narrative of political liberalism and a bad thing when it does not and that religion was judged in terms of its “political” values rather than in terms of its “religious” values.     

“The Central Kingdom” and “the realm under heaven” coming to mean the same: The process of the formation of territory in ancient China

“The Central Kingdom” is pregnant of political implications as well as of geographical and cultural significance. It was believed that whoever controlled Zhongguo (the Central Kingdom or China) would be the legitimate ruler over Tianxia (the realm under heaven or all under heaven). It was the contention for “the Central Kingdom” among the varieties of dynasties, notably those established by the Han-Chinese and the various ethnic groups in the northern borderland, that lead to the alternation of disintegration and unification of the territory. It was not until the Qing Dynasty that the unified “Central Kingdom” composed of a variety of ethnic groups turned into the ideal “realm under heaven” with “the Central Kingdom” at its core, which naturally put an end to the formation of territory in ancient China.