Rethinking representation: The challenge of non-humans

This article argues that the standard model of political representation mischaracterises the structure of representation. After surveying the classical types of representation and their application to non-humans, the basic nature of representation is shown to have been unduly centred on interests, responsiveness and unidirectional protocols. It proposes a different structure by drawing inspiration from recent scholarship and developments in political philosophy, as well as the representation of non-human actors. It proposes an ontological grounding of representation in ‘irreducible multiplicity’, and a structural analysis based on the concepts of claim and relation. This abstract form of representation can take into account both human and non-human cases, and works to ground different typologies. The relational structure of representation creates interests and preferences, subjects and actors, power dynamics and seemingly immutable identities.

作者认为,标准的政治代表模式错误地勾画了代表的结构。作者首先考察了代表的经典类型并将其应用于非人类,指出关于代表的本质,以往过多强调利益、反应、单向协议等等。作者根据从近年学术研究、政治哲学以及非人类主体的代表性那里得到的灵感,提出了另一种结构。文章指出代表的本体论根据在于不可简化的多重性。作者还提出了一种基于诉求和关系概念的结构分析。这种抽象代表形式既考虑了人类也考虑非人类的情况,并为不同的类型提供了根据。代表的关系结构造就了利益和偏好、对象和主体、权力的动态以及看似不变的身份。     

Thirty years of modern Chinese history studies: past experiences and prospective trends

This paper presents an overview of and comments on a symposium concerning modern Chinese history held in Beijing, China in October 2009. It is composed of four parts: first, the paradigm issues of modern Chinese historical studies; second, indigenous reorientation and the study of regional social history; third, the relationship between social history and regional social history; fourth, the history of scholarship on the Chinese revolution. All the conference participants were prestigious scholars in the fields of modern Chinese history and Ming–Qing historical studies in Mainland China. The attending scholars provided in-depth and well considered views about the macro issues of this discipline. Furthermore, the discussion was very active and productive. This paper reflects the latest trends in the field of modern Chinese historical studies in Mainland China.     

Women in prison: Ethnographic reflections on gender and the carceral state

The criminal justice system is increasingly becoming the subject of national dialogue throughout the United States due to the sheer number of people it impacts: according to the Department of Justice, nearly 7 million, or 1 in 35, U.S. residents are under some form of correctional control. The four books reviewed in this essay derive their findings from ethnographic methods that offer deep insights into the carceral state’s everyday operations in individual women’s lives, while raising profound theoretical and practical questions about gender and governance. We engage with these texts from unique situated standpoints as insider-outsiders with intimate knowledge of the U.S. criminal justice system gleaned from our respective lived experiences, services provision work, and research with currently and formerly incarcerated Wyoming women.     

The legacy of communism: difficult histories,emotions and contested narratives

Abstract

This paper considers contested and traumatic narratives, using a case study of the planned National Museum of Romanian Communism and the site of Jilava Penitentiary, a former communist prison, near Bucharest in Romania. It discusses what happened when representatives from different groups of former victims and perpetrators met together with facilitators and worked towards a shared understanding of the past to reach some consensus about how to deal with different and apparently conflicting narratives within a new museum of communism. It draws on notions of emotional communities in order to understand the role heritage plays in contested situations. It also considers the nature of transitional justice (‘Transitional justice is an approach to systematic or massive violations of human rights that both provides redress to victims and creates or enhances opportunities for the transformation of the political systems, conflicts, and other conditions that may have been at the root of the abuses’.) in this context.     

Trans embodiment in carceral space: hypermasculinity and the US prison industrial complex

Queer geographers have recently begun to examine the lives of transgender persons, a heretofore gap in the literature. This article examines the experiences of incarcerated trans persons in the USA, thus extending this nascent trans geography work by considering a new population in a new space. As some scholarly and activist research has shown over the last decade or so, US trans persons are incarcerated at a disproportionately high rate and face harsh conditions while imprisoned. First-hand accounts of trans prisoners' experiences are, however, limited due to the difficulty of accessing this population for research purposes. Working in cooperation with a Montreal-based organization that facilitates pen-pal communications between queer persons inside and outside penitentiaries in the USA, we conducted qualitative research with 23 trans feminine individuals confined in facilities in several states. Our findings unfortunately corroborate the findings laid out in the small existing literature on trans prisoner issues, demonstrating that they endure harsh conditions of confinement. We detail these conditions here, while also pointing to informant responses that offer insight into the ways in which trans incarcerated persons cope with the hypermasculine and heteronormative environment of the US prison. These results are offered in the spirit of advancing a queer abolitionist politics that centers the knowledge and experiences of trans incarcerated persons.     

从环境的历史到环境史——关于环境史研究的一种认识

By and large, there are three kinds of research on environment: the history of environment as a field of natural history studies, the history of environment as within the scope of history of society studies, and environmental history as the study of the relationship between human and nature. The methodological perspective of the relationship between humanity and environmental distinguishes the third from the previous two. From this perspective, when we probe the mutual effects between human and nature, we will stress on their interactions. The new era and the realities of contemporary society foster the rise of environmental history, which has not only theoretical values but also practical significance. Translated from Xueshu Yanjiu 学术研究 (Academic Research), 2006, (9):12–22     

赵尔巽与清季狱制近代转型研究简

赵尔巽的罪犯习艺所主张,其实与其长期在地方开办自新所或称自新习艺所的治理实践密切相关的,而非无根之水,更非效法西制。赵尔巽在任职地方创设的自新所,兼有惩戒、教化与施善的职能,这在某种程度上与西方近代狱制理念有一定的暗合,但是却更多的是对清代中叶很多地方自新所的开办实践的借鉴与改进,不可不谓是传统资源的现代转型。     

Transformative landscapes: liminality and visitors’ emotional experiences at German memorial sites

Abstract

The atrocities of Nazi Germany included the radical transformation of natural landscapes. At Ravensbrück (Brandenburg), a lakeside setting became the site of the largest women’s concentration camp in Germany, processing approximately 159,000 inmates until 1945. Similarly, at Flossenbürg (Bavaria), a picturesque valley in the Oberpfälzer Wald housed a large concentration camp with approximately 100,000 inmates over seven years and a granite quarry to support Hitler’s extensive construction programme. After the war, part of Ravensbrück became a Soviet Army base, while large sections of Flossenbürg were removed to make way for a new housing and industrial development. Along with other former camps (particularly Auschwitz-Birkenau), parts of these landscapes were developed into memorial sites that aim to provide a liminal experience for visitors – a ‘rite of passage’. In attempting to regain a sense of place that evokes the trauma of the past, the landscapes of the memorial sites of Ravensbrück and Flossenbürg were recently altered to resemble their appearance in 1945. For visitors, however, the aesthetic experience of these landscapes lies in stark contrast to the narrative they encounter at both sites; they are surprised to see signs of life, objecting to modernisation at Ravensbrück or the existence of a supermarket next to the memorial site in Flossenbürg. This paper examines the transformative processes of these landscapes and explores how their liminality is constructed, experienced and challenged. Through empirical visitor research conducted at both sites, it provides a critical evaluation of the narrative given to visitors and suggests how these important sites can offer a more engaging ‘rite of passage’.     

The Low Countries' connection: landscape and the struggle over representation around 1600

In Anglophone geography, the concept of landscape is often defined in visual terms as the expression of a spatial rationality. Historically, the strongly visual qualities of landscape tend to be related to early capitalist developments in Italy and the Low Countries. Yet, recent scholarly interventions have asserted that landscape in early modern Europe also animated so-called ‘platial’ (or place-oriented) practices and ideologies of political representation, justice, and custom. This paper seeks to bring these diverging platial and spatial approaches together through an examination of political and visual representation of landscape in the northern Low Countries around 1600. It is argued that the tensions between platial notions of landscape and spatial rationality were unceasingly pertinent to the protracted struggles over political representation in the Low Countries during the revolt against Spain. Visual representations of landscape provided ways to take in, reflect upon, and codify those struggles. The Dutch landscape remained entangled in a double dialectic in which spatial and platial modes of political and visual representation mutually shaped each other.     

Colonial exhibitions,hybrid architecture,and the interpretation of modernity in the Dutch East Indies

To gain more economic profit and strengthen its colonial power, the Dutch brought Western technologies and products to their colonies and organized colonial exhibitions, modeled on the successful international exhibitions in Europe. This article analyzes colonial exhibitions in the Dutch East Indies and the ways that Dutch architects used various local architectural forms for those ephemeral events to attract visitors and to modernize the colony. The empirical case study discusses hybrid architecture in the Dutch East Indies at three events: Pasar Gambir of Batavia, Jaarmarkt of Surabaya, and the 1914 Semarang Colonial Exhibition. Through analysis of archival and historical documents, I argue that the use of local architectural forms in colonial exhibitions helped the colonies to adapt to modernity and created places where local people could practice a Dutch lifestyle and create their own idea of modernity.     

Subjectivity and representation in descartes: The origins of modernity

Although ‘Burke and Irish history’ is a theme which has long been known to modern commentators, it has not necessarily been addressed sufficiently. This essay seeks to put forward a more comprehensive account of Burke's views on Irish history than has previously been offered by scholars. According to Burke, the protection of Christianity had brought flourishing science to seventh- and eighth-century Ireland. Nevertheless, the nation was plunged into a barbarous state after the invasions of the Danes and other northern tribes. Burke's sympathy with the Brehon law was possibly unique, although he was not uncritical of it. Unlike the Irish patriots, his chief concern with historical Ireland was not the origins of the Irish legislature. He was rather most interested in the religious affairs which had continued to plague the nation during history. Throughout his career, Burke considered the Irish Rebellion of 1641 to have been ‘provoked’, and continuously endeavoured to remove the penal laws imposed on the Roman Catholics after the Williamite Conquest of 1689–1691. In his view, despite the substantial increase in prosperity after 1688/9, the series of religious persecutions, as well as other oppressive policies, had still obstructed the further progress of Irish society.     

The folding of sport space into carceral space: On the making of prisoners’ experiences and lives

Sport and exercise are prominent activities in the daily routines of prisoners around the world, yet the spatial significance of these activities in carceral environments has not been deeply investigated. With a focus on the experiences of former federal prisoners in Canada, this paper addresses this scholarly gap by bringing together emerging trends in the literatures on sociology of sport, sports geography, and carceral geography to investigate the complex social meanings of prison sport and exercise. Specifically, we explore the folding of sports space into carceral space, often with the effect of reinforcing violent and exclusionary situations, but which also helps construct alternative spatial and temporal realities. Indeed, our overarching theoretical analysis considers how prisoners use sport to produce space in ways that assert a limited degree of agency over their daily lives and temporarily transcend their unpleasant conditions of confinement. By drawing from diverse theoretical frameworks and literatures, we advance novel arguments about the socio‐spatial significance of sport in prisons and raise some important questions for further research.     

Textual context in the history of political thought and intellectual history

ABSTRACT

We can easily misread historical texts if we take ideas and passages out of their textual contexts. The resulting errors are widespread, possibly even more so than errors through reading ideas and passages out of their historical contexts. Yet the methodological literature stresses the latter and says little about the former. This paper thus theorises the idea of textual context, distinguishes three types of textual context, and asks how we uncover the right textual contexts. I distinguish four kinds of textual-context error, and offer practical tips for avoiding these errors. However, the beating heart of this paper is the history–philosophy debate: in contrast to the prevailing assumption that historical and philosophical analysis are fundamentally different, I show that a commitment to textual context, which should be entirely uncontroversial, also commits one to think philosophically.     

The coming of age of the history of archaeology

Publications and organizational developments relating to the history of archaeology from 1989 until June 1993 are critically examined. Attention is paid to the changing motivations for producing such publications, their shifting intellectual orientation, controversies, especially as they relate to internal vs external approaches and the epistemological status of explanations, problems of verification, and the status of these studies as a subfield within archaeology.     

Time travel,labour history,and the null curriculum: new design knowledge for mobile augmented reality history games

This paper presents a case study drawn from design-based research (DBR) on a mobile, place-based augmented reality history game. Using DBR methods, the game was developed by the author as a history learning intervention for fifth to seventh graders. The game is built upon historical narratives of disenfranchised populations that are seldom taught, those typically relegated to the ‘null curriculum’. These narratives include the stories of women immigrant labour leaders in the early twentieth century, more than a decade before suffrage. The project understands the purpose of history education as the preparation of informed citizens. In paying particular attention to historical themes that endure over time, the game aims to draw connections between historical and contemporary narratives of diverse and disenfranchised populations. The study discusses new design knowledge for addressing such narratives. Self-reflexivity, the technique of revealing the means of production of the game technology itself can be used to spotlight contemporary issues of disenfranchisement. Supra-reveals, historical thematic foreshadowing, can help establish key links between themes of disenfranchisement of diverse groups in the past and those in the present. These techniques used together, and the subsequent curriculum, brought focus to teaching issues of diversity and disenfranchisement typically written out of curriculum.     

The periphery revisited: Polish post-war historiography on the working class and the new global labour history

This paper explores the characteristics of post-war Polish historiography on the working class and relates it to current trends in global labour history. Although, in Poland, labour history never existed as a separate field, many historians focused their studies on either working-class history or the history of the workers’ movement. After 1945, Polish historiography was circumscribed by political and ideological considerations; however – except during the brief Stalinist period (1951–56) – Marxist methodology was not imposed or applied uncritically. In fact, discussions about the role of the working class in history that began after 1956 generated research interest in new groups of workers and labour relations. Much of this research concerns recently highlighted aspects of labour history, such as marginal groups of workers or free versus unfree labour. Polish historians’ reinterpretation of Marxist orthodoxy proceeded from their empirical studies of nineteenth-century Polish lands – at the periphery of Western capitalist development – as well as from their theoretical influences. This article argues that some aspects of the Polish historiography on the working class qualify it as part of labour history’s heritage, despite the historiography’s significant limitations.     

The representation of Mongolia in contemporary travel writing: imaginative geographies of a travellers' frontier

This article analyses the representation of Mongolia in five works of travel writing published since the fall of the country's communist regime in 1990. It argues that this travel writing is characterized by a discourse that generates and circulates an ‘imaginative geography’ of Mongolia as a ‘travellers' frontier’. Support for this argument is derived from highlighting sets of collective, cohesive representations, performances and speaking positions that crosscut the works studied. It is maintained that these have the effect of naturalizing a very particular conceptualization of Mongolia as a frontier destination in the age of globalization and mass tourism. This research adds to an established body of geographical scholarship on travel writing, but departs from it by considering contemporary works rather than ones from the colonial period. In doing so it attempts to illustrate the relevance of contemporary travel writing as an object of study for geographers seeking to explore the anatomy of today's imaginative geographies, which have clear links to, but are not entirely mediated by, the discourses that characterize colonial travel writing.     

Racialising global relations: the Rwandan genocide and the ethics of representation

At a time when the historical experience of the Rwandan genocide continues to be invoked to imagine and affirm international responsibility for the suffering of others, this article examines one way in which this event has been made to mean. Through a critical reading of Hotel Rwanda (a feature film) and Shake Hands with the Devil (a memoir), the article examines how the Rwandan genocide has been framed as an event of ‘white’ Western racism towards ‘black’ African injury. Without disputing the veracity of this explanatory framework, this article interrogates its representational politics and ethics. I problematise its continued use of inherently discriminatory racial categories, demonstrate its Eurocentric nature and call for a mode of understanding the ethical significance of the Rwandan genocide that is not limited to an already existing global relation between suffering ‘black’ bodies and potential ‘white’ saviours. In critiquing these texts and this discursive framework, my aim is to enable ways of coming to terms with the genocide that can accommodate the complex connections that do and may exist between non-Rwandans and the 1994 Rwandan genocide.     

New approaches to the study of tourist experiences in time and space

Nowadays, a growing number of researchers are investigating subjective attitudes of people toward their environment with ever-increasing spatial and temporal resolutions. It seems that researchers' interest in daily experiences is not merely a passing research fad, but rather that individuals in current societies find more interest in their own momentary experiences. They talk about their affective states, they spend considerable portions of their income on intangible experiences, and they instantly share personal ‘moments’ through various online social media platforms. These trends are even more apparent in the tourism and leisure industries which aim to generate positive experiences among individuals. This research note points out new directions in the exploration of experiences during tourism and leisure activities. It discusses a new relevant concept, subjective momentary experiences on one hand and presents novel methodological opportunities on the other. In order to portray these new trends, a case study that describes the episodic experiences of festival attendants in a high tempo-spatial resolution is presented.