Sports, ‘race’ and the Finnish national identity in Helsingin Sanomat in the early twentieth century

The main goals of this article are first to examine through Olympic sports journalism what hierarchies and categorisations of the global space and the people populating it were considered important to the national imagery in Finland at the beginning of the twentieth century and, secondly, to assess how the notion of race was intertwined with these categorisations. Sports journalism played an important role in Finland by constructing and legitimising a national imagery and by providing accounts of other races, cultures and nationalities that were considered ‘different’ from ‘us’. The article concludes that sports journalism at that time employed three major discursive practices that were aimed at constructing an image of a white, Western and Finnish nation living in the north. The ‘others’ were placed in a hierarchy, in which their position was determined by their racial background and assumed similarities/differences in appearance and behaviour as compared with Finnish males.     

Recategorizing ‘Public’ and ‘Private’ Property in Ghana

In the course of political struggle in northern Ghana, the classification of land and resources has shifted between the two ‘master categories’ of public and private. Despite the fact that master categories may be wholly inadequate in accounting for the actual complexity of property objects, social units and rights, they are not divorced from the agency of people who have something at stake. Laws, rules and by‐laws are referred to as important markers and fashion the local political struggles over the rights to and control over resources. This article offers a general account of conflicts and the recategorization of resources in the property system of small‐scale irrigation. It examines the logics and positioning of the different stakeholders, and discusses how different levels of public policy have provided opportunities for such changes. A case study presents the opportunity to examine the details of a particular controversy demonstrating the social and political powers involved in the recategorization of property.     

When Governance Gets Going: Certifying ‘Better Cotton’ and ‘Better Sugarcane’

As many new certification systems for commodities have been established over the past decade, scholars have devoted sustained attention to the ways that these multi‐stakeholder governance initiatives have transformed the industries in which they were launched. With a few notable exceptions, studies in this area have continued to focus on the development and impacts of new governance mechanisms, and on the sectoral or industrial changes that have ensued. In contrast to these ‘inside‐out’ perspectives on governance innovation and change, this article considers how two prominent yet relatively under‐studied commodity governance initiatives have been shaped by the broader political economic order in which they operate. To offer an ‘outside‐in’ account of the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) and Bonsucro (formerly the Better Sugarcane Initiative), the article details recent changes in what the author terms the ‘world commodity order’, and situates the BCI and Bonsucro within this order. From this vantage point, the author ultimately makes two analytical claims: (i) that the world commodity order has not precluded the differential institutionalization of these initiatives; and (ii) that aspects of the order have circumscribed the potential of the BCI and Bonsucro to deliver pro‐poor business practices.     

‘Scientific’ nationalism

This paper investigates how the discursive battle for the Flemish nation is waged in the Flemish mass media by politicians of the Flemish nationalist party, the New Flemish Alliance (N‐VA). I focus on the ‘new nationalism’ that N‐VA politicians advocate as a means to ‘banalise’ a hot Flemish nationalism. I establish that N‐VA spokespeople and especially their chairman Bart De Wever invoke discursive alliances with established scholars such as Anderson, Hroch, Calhoun and Billig. On the one hand, these alliances are used to sell their nationalism as a non‐ideological or non‐discursive project. On the other hand, the analyses of these intellectuals are used as manuals to ‘banalise’ a hot nationalism. The concept of ‘scientific’ nationalism refers to the entextualisation of scientific discourses in order to legitimate and banalise the nationalist project of the party as ‘in line with science’.     

‘The Costly Luxury of Protesting’: The Deselection of J.M. Maclean,MP

With the increase in the electorate as the result of the Second and Third Reform Acts in the latter half of the 19th century came a corresponding increase in the importance of political parties. With this increase in the importance of party came the fear that the Burkean definition of the MP as a representative, owing his electorate his judgment as well as his industry would be replaced by a narrower conception of the MP as a delegate, returned to vote according to the dictates of party or ‘caucus’, subject to rejection by his party prior to an election, rather than the electorate as a whole at an election. This article examines the case of J.M. Maclean, Conservative MP for Cardiff 1895–1900, deselected by his constituency executive for his opposition to the Boer War, using it to shed light on the reaction of constituency parties in instances where MPs were felt to have overstepped the proper bounds of party discipline. The article concentrates on the relations between Maclean and his constituency party, crucial in Maclean's deselection. The limits of political dissent in time of war are examined, and the limitations placed by party on the freedom of action of individual MPs. In addition, the article gives glimpses of the tensions present in the Conservative‐Liberal Unionist coalition which governed Britain between 1895 and 1906, particularly on perceptions of the controversial figure of Joseph Chamberlain among Conservative back benchers.     

Anthropology, ‘Native Schooling’ and Maori: the Politics of ‘Cultural Adaptation’ Policies

This paper examines three policies of ‘cultural adaptation’ formulated in colonial contexts in the 1920s and 1930s — that of the British Colonial Office for education in Africa, that of the New Zealand Native Schools and that of Maori leaders. While clearly inter-related, these policies were developed and promoted by their respective proponents to serve widely different political goals. Particularly significant is the role played by anthropology in that context. Proponents of all three policies looked to anthropologists for insights and scientific validation of their political agendas. Anthropologists, in turn, not only accepted this role but, particularly in the case of the British Colonial education policy, actively claimed it, involving themselves in the processes of colonial control.     

Neither ‘America’ nor ‘Québec’: constructing the Canadian multicultural nation

ABSTRACT. Although researchers have deconstructed the myth of stark social differences between the various North American sub‐societies, an assimilating American melting pot and an ethnically oppressive monocultural Québec are still popular representations within Canadian majority discourses, such as the English‐language mainstream media and parts of academia. In this paper, I argue that images of ‘America’ and ‘Québec’ play important roles for the multicultural reconstruction of Canadian nationhood. Examining selected op‐ed articles from two Toronto‐based mainstream newspapers during the 1990s, I develop and exemplify a theoretical understanding of how national identities are constituted and transformed within inter‐ and intra‐national relations of power and alterity. I pay special attention to the particularisation of Canada through the confrontation with American nationhood, the ambiguities of recognising the distinctiveness of Québec inside Canada, and the consequences of projecting Québec's supposedly ‘ethnic’ nationalism outside the boundaries of Canadianness.     

‘Ugly but . . . important’: the Albanian Hoard and the making of the archaeological treasure in the early twentieth century

This paper deploys the Metropolitan Museum's Albanian (or Avar) Treasure as a case study to explore the role and value assigned to the named treasure during the early twentieth century, a moment when Americans – most notably J.P. Morgan – were among the wealthiest and most avid collectors of Byzantine and medieval art. Outlining the market conditions for such treasures, the archaeological practices that authenticated them, and the art historical categories that gave them meaning, the paper demonstrates the extent to which the archaeological treasure was a social creation built by various players: finders, dealers, scholars, museums and collectors.     

The ‘Global’ versus the ‘Local’: Cognitive Processes of Kin Determination in Aboriginal Australia

ABSTRACT Morgan and his informants' interpretation of Australian social categories as ‘marriage classes’ has survived in Dumont's (and Viveiros de Castro's) distinction of a ‘local’ (Dravidian systems) and a ‘global’ (Australian systems) formula. This paper explains that the ‘global formula’ is neither a necessary nor an applied device in Australian kin category determination, even when genealogical memory is short and when there is a non‐limitation of range in the extension of categories. Instead, a heuristic model, which is called the relational triangle, is proposed. This model depicts the procedure through which Australian people pragmatically determine and extend kin categories. Moreover, it also offers a visualisation of the cognitive schema and processes framing discourse and behaviour in relation to kinship and draws some parallels with Greenberg's hypotheses on markedness in kinship classes.     

Being ‘there’: At the front line of the ‘European refugee crisis’ ‐ part 1

In the course of 2015, Skala Sykamnias, a fishing village and tourist idyll on the northern coast of Lesbos, by accident of its geographical location, has turned into the informal gate into Europe for more than 200.000 refugees. In this article the author analyses the massive flows of people and things that transverse his fieldwork site from different directions: the great diversity of actors enacting what are often dissonant ideals and strategies, the several theatres of operation and reception ‘structures’, both frontline and back stage, and the debates that revolve around humanitarian action in the region. The local community is falling apart whilst to the incoming it represents the gateway to freedom. It is becoming a mini theatre of conflicts that echoes wider debates on the political future of Europe.