Challenging the Australian Government Approach Towards Expatriate Voting: The Case of Italy

In 1999 the Australian government dropped its objections to the Italian legislation that contemplated postal voting and parliamentary representation for its Italian citizens resident abroad. This was a significant turning point for the Australian government approach on the question of voting rights for expatriate communities in Australia voting in their homeland elections. Based on undisclosed government sources and interviews with former Australian diplomatic and government officials, this paper will recall and examine the Australian government's reaction to the Italian political debates leading up to, and eventual passage of, the Italian expatriate vote legislation.     

Violent Belongings: Partition,Gender, and National Culture in Postcolonial India

This article examines the interrelationship of friendship and violence in European juristic traditions and in British scientific voyaging in Oceania. Drawing upon Roman texts and natural law treatises, it shows how friendship, meaning hospitality and trade, appeared as a right asserted by imperial nations, often with the backing of force. Moving from jurisprudence to imperial practice, this article examines the coercive elements of cross-cultural friendship in eighteenth-century British expansion into Oceania. It suggests that it was in the breach more than the observance that discourses of friendship came to the fore, specifically in resistance to first contact and in accusations of theft. Seen to be motivated by either violent or avaricious passions, theft and native resistance tore the bonds of human sociability asunder. I argue that the significance of friendship was twofold. First, in a context of inter-imperial rivalry, friendship signified native consent in claims of possession over land and thus ensured conformity to legal norms. Second, it promised a system of order governed by norms of affective restraint that could sublimate the passions of natives, voyagers and nations.     

Postcolonial border crossing

Through a postcolonial lens and based on in-depth interviews with British expatriates who moved to Hong Kong in the first decade after its handover, this paper highlights the contested role of borders in the everyday making and remaking of skilled migration. It draws on Paasi's (2003 Paasi, A. (2003). Boundaries in a globalizing world. In K. Anderson, M. Domosh, S. Pile, & N. Thrift (Eds.), Handbook of cultural geography. London: Sage. doi:10.4135/9781848608252.n33[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) definition of boundaries to denote that borders are not merely geographical lines but zones of mixing, blending and reconfiguring historically formed material connections, identities and power relations through which contemporary skilled mobility is constituted. The border crossing of skills in Hong Kong and elsewhere is a historically contingent phenomenon whose meaning derives not only from economic forces and social networking but also the accumulated history of the borders they cross. The notion of ‘postcolonial border crossing’ highlights the dis/continuity in skilled migration and integrates social, cultural and economic spheres into the same framework in interpreting skilled mobility.     

“庶民研究”与后殖民史学

“庶民研究”是印度近二十余年来以后殖民主义为研究视角的一种历史编纂实践。它主张摒弃传统史学撰述中的精英主义话语,从“庶民”的角度重写印度殖民与后殖民时期的历史。“庶民研究”在理论与方法上代表了当今后殖民史学的一个重要特征,它既批判了西方现代史学观念中的历史主义弊端,又对近现代以来非西方史学在西方普遍主义话语之下继续“受殖”的状况进行了深刻反思。“庶民研究”努力建构的书写非西方历史的新模式,以及由此导致的后殖民史学对非西方历史学的重新定向具有一种普遍意义,值得第三世界的历史学者借鉴与思考。