Race,religion and British multiculturalism: The political responses of Black and Minority Ethnic voluntary organisations to multicultural cohesion

This paper explores the contradictory politics of race, religion and multiculturalism in contemporary Britain. It is argued that a pan-European political consensus has emerged concerning the ‘end of multiculturalism’ where a liberal ethos is being supplanted by an authoritarian stance focused on securitization, risk and terror. Based on a qualitative investigation of thirty Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and faith-based voluntary organisations in the Tyne and Wear conurbation of North East England, the paper divulges their grounded opinions on race, religion and multiculturalism. Groups disclose a high level of civic responsibility and commitment to community participation with an emphasis on integration rather than segregation. Discussions of race, religion and multiculturalism reveal many BME organisations are removed from the politics of decision-making and transfixed by the structures of whiteness that bind them, and to which they must respond. The paper concludes by considering the workings of whiteness in an attempt to displace the burden of cohesion that has come to settle upon BME and faith-based organisations in political debates on race, religion and multiculturalism in the present.     

Archaeology and Politics in the Holy Land: The Life and Career of P. L. O. Guy

Abstract

Philip Langstaffe Ord Guy's (1885–1952) career in archaeology began as Woolley's assistant at Carchemish and as Chief Inspector for the Department of Antiquities of Palestine during the 1920s. He is best known as director of the Megiddo Expedition (1927–1934), where he employed innovative techniques in balloon photography, and provided a highly influential identification of the pillared buildings found there as stables. He dated these buildings to the Solomonic era, sowing the seeds of a long-running debate over the role of the Bible in archaeological interpretation. Guy was later appointed director of the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem (1935–1939), initiating the short-lived Archaeological Survey of Palestine. After World War II and Israel's War of Independence, Guy became a senior figure within the fledgling Israel Department of Antiquities and Museums as Director of Excavations and Surveys. Active involvement in Zionist politics through his marriage into the Ben-Yehuda family was a controversial factor that impacted on his career within 1920s and 1930s Palestine. Recent archival research allows an assessment of Guy's double life as archaeologist and political activist and the degree to which these areas intersected. His name can be added to the diverse spectrum of archaeologists working in the Holy Land during this formative but turbulent colonial and post-colonial era.     

The United States and counterinsurgency: 'political first, political last, political always'

According to the status of forces agreement signed by Iraq and the United States in November 2008, US troops are to be withdrawn entirely from Iraq by the end of 2011. A few days later it was also revealed that the British force in Iraq, numbering about 4,100 troops, will be reduced to a contingent of just a few hundred military advisors by summer 2009. The counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, on the other hand, is to be intensified in the form of a ‘surge’ in military and political effort. Counterinsurgency operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq have long been at the centre of the security policy debate in the United States and elsewhere; a debate which seems unlikely to be resolved in the near future. But what exactly is counterinsurgency? This article offers some reflections on the practice and the politics of an especially complex form of military engagement. All military activity should be understood through the prism of politics, and counterinsurgency particularly so.