Australian ‘left’ and ‘right’: (Social composition and ideological integrity)

Political self‐identification and interest in politics are used in this paper to define ‘left’, ‘centre’ and ‘right’ affiliation within the Australian public. Detailed political attitudes of these three groups are then analysed. The Australian ‘left’ is half the size of the ‘right’. It is, however, much better educated and much more ideological. Its political attitudes are twice as coherent as the attitudes of the ‘right’. The left's ideological congruence partly results from the better education of its affiliates. However, the difference in ideological congruence of the ‘left’ and the ‘right’ remains quite great even when the impact of education is statistically eliminated.     

‘Nuclear Sword of the Moslem World’?: the United States,Britain, Pakistan,and the ‘Islamic Bomb’, 1977–80

There exists today considerable fear of nuclear proliferation across the ‘Islamic world.’ Despite this, an issue that - in part - set the tone for contemporary debates has largely gone under-examined in the scholarly literature. The emergence of the ‘Islamic bomb’ idea in the late 1970s created a meme that remains with us today. Analysing the roots of this meme allows us to examine its creation and the attitudes of governments towards this alleged emergent nuclear-proliferation threat. This analysis demonstrates that while the media portrayed the ‘Islamic world’ as violent, undifferentiated, and determined to gain nuclear capability, the US and British governments assessed matters evidentially and came to the conclusion that the ‘Islamic bomb’ represented a propaganda problem rather than an imminent nuclear-proliferation concern. Attitudes towards the ‘Islamic bomb’ highlight media and governmental attitudes towards the changing power balances in the Middle East and South Asia during a turbulent and troubled period.     

Consumption and the ‘Social Self’ in Medieval Southern England

Over the last 30 years we have become increasingly aware of the commercialising nature of the medieval English economy. However, these insights have had little impact on narratives of consumption, which persist in seeing it as a characteristic of modernity. Here it is argued that we must move away from seeing an early modern consumer revolution and instead think about consumption in medieval society, particularly to examine the implications of commercialisation for identity and selfhood. A framework is developed, building upon David G. Shaw’s use of the ‘social self’ and the writing of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, to explore how the increasing variability, and wider range, of objects impacted upon the negotiation of selfhood in the 13th–15th centuries.     

‘The Social’ and Beyond: Introducing Actor-Network Theory

In recent years, it has been suggested (e.g. TAG 2002, 2006; IKUWA3 2008) that it is necessary for the discipline to move beyond the study of ships and boats towards the ‘wider social contexts’ of seafaring and maritime activity. This paper investigates the contours of ‘social’ as an object of study. Two questions are asked: (1) how is this object defined within sociology, classical and contemporary social theory, and archaeology; and (2) what is the status of nonhumans, physical-material things, artefacts, plants, animals, etc.? After taking a look at several different theories, it is argued that it is not necessary for us to move beyond ships and boats. Instead, an alternative approach is offered, one that allows us to move beyond the restrictive ontology of the social.     

Reinforcing Diversity: From the ‘inside’ and the ‘outside’

This paper focuses on Jan Monk's contribution to reinforcing diversity and collaboration in the field of human geography. It illustrates how gendered diversity and feminism is promoted in her academic work both inside the Anglo-American academic world and outside, by exposing the feminist voices from around the world and mainstreaming them in her collaborative work. Fostering and reinforcing diversity has become a body of knowledge in her extensive publications in which she assesses the varying extent and nature of feminist geography in the Anglophone world and across countries, attempting to interpret differences in terms of geographical and cultural contexts and disciplinary trends. The paper emphasizes how fostering diversity and collaboration in Jan's academic work is not only about writing articles, editing books and producing a film, but also engages the formulation of organizational structures such as the Routledge book series and the initiation and establishment of the Commission of Gender and Geography of the International Geographical Union which have contributed to the production of collaborative feminist geographical knowledge across spaces and places.     

The history of ‘Social Technology’, 1898–1930

Since the term was first coined, in the late nineteenth century, ‘social technology’ has had a mixed fate. Whereas ‘technology’ has become one of the keywords of the twentieth century, ‘social technology’ never quite seemed to settle in the vocabulary of social theory. In this article, we focus on the early history of ‘social technology’, tracing its spread from its origin in the sociology department at the University of Chicago, and describing the increasing competition from the term ‘social engineering’ starting in the 1920s. We argue that this shift in terminology is significant, because it is an index of changing ideas about the demarcation of sociology, about the application of science in the betterment of society and about the nature of technology.     

‘‘This Secret Town’: British Intelligence,the Special Relationship,and the Vietnam War’

This article seeks to revise our understanding of Cold War intelligence as a practice. The conventional view is that Britain's MI6 waged a battle in the shadows consisting of espionage and covert action. However, a number of MI6 officers operated as observers, conducting what we might call ‘intelligence without espionage’. The dual identity of these officers raises important questions about how intelligence operated in the blurred space between traditional diplomacy and human espionage using agents. Using the case of MI6 officers in the British Consulate-General in Hanoi between 1965 and 1972, this article explores how a dual identity provided alternative means of acquiring intelligence within a highly secure state that exhibited remarkable paranoia about foreign spies. Furthermore, the United States lacked diplomatic representation in Hanoi and so the British Consulate provided a remarkable window for Western intelligence on the effect of ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’, Lyndon Johnson's escalating air campaign against North Vietnam. Both Johnson and Harold Wilson were avid readers of this material. Accordingly, in the context of the Cold War intelligence partnership between the UK and US, the consulate in Hanoi was an example of the ‘inverse’ special relationship, in which Britain enjoyed unique value.     

‘Footnote Policy’ and the Social Democratic Party’s Role in Shaping Danish EEC Positions, 1982–1986

The so-called footnote period in the 1980s is a controversial era in the history of Danish foreign policy. This article shows how footnote policy was not restricted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) area; rather, it reflected a wider parliamentary practice whereby footnotes and parliamentary resolutions were also used as strategies to impose Social Democratic preferences on the official European Economic Community (EEC) positions of the otherwise right-of-centre government. The article provides a nuanced analysis of the policy making in that period, arguing that the relative importance of different explanatory factors in the literature changed in the period 1982–1986. For instance, support is found for the transnational thesis that the Scandilux security-policy forum had some importance in determining the Social Democratic position, especially during negotiations on the Single European Act (SEA) in 1985. In other periods, short-term electoral concerns played a role, for instance in December 1985 and January 1986. However, the Social Democratic positions on the institutional questions in the 1982–1985 period were remarkably stable and could be interpreted as an attempt to maintain internal party cohesion.     

‘Dirty old ladies,’ mothers,and others: Age and gender in cultural and biological perspectives

Brown, Judith K., and Virginia Kerns, eds. In Her Prime: A New View of Middle‐Aged Women. South Hadley, Massachusetts: Bergin and Garvey, 1985. xii + 217 pp. including individual chapter bibliographies and combined index. $25.95 cloth; $14.95 paper.

Davis, Dona Lee. Blood and Nerves: An Ethnographic Focus on Menopause. St. Johns, Newfoundland: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1983. x + 234 pp. including maps, appendices, and bibliography. $9.00 paper.

Rossi, Alice S., ed. Gender and the Life Course. New York: Aldine, 1985. xxi + 368 pp. including chapter references and author and subject indices. $34.94 cloth; $15.95 paper.     

Extending the ‘White Way’: municipal streetlighting and race, 1900–1930

While the illumination of streets by electric streetlights in Western cities is a given today, in the early part of the twentieth century it was a technology whose conspicuous consumption was a status symbol for both individuals and towns. Not long after its introduction, however, electric lighting in cities also became noticeable in its absence. This paper draws on municipal records to consider how ideologies of white supremacy and progress came together to produce the uneven deployment of streetlighting in the small town of Rocky Mount, North Carolina, thus contributing to the city's segregation in the early part of the twentieth century. By tracing the development of hierarchical streetlighting systems, such as General Electric's White Way, I also show how the racialized deployment of streetlighting was aided by large electrical equipment manufacturers. In conclusion, I argue that these insights are crucial to understanding how technologies racialize space, but also how technologies such as streetlighting are central to the production of the spaces in which race is produced and racism takes place.     

Sight and Sound on the Western Front: Surveyors,Scientists, and the ‘Battlefield Laboratory’, 1915–1918

Abstract

The Japanese were a race who considered themselves to possess a mission in the world, and were a military race from beginning to end. In a comparatively short space of time Japan had brought three wars to a successful conclusion.

Admiral Earl Beatty, First Sea Lord (1919–1927), 3 July 1925

it is on record that one young samurai… was so convinced at first that bravery by itself was sufficient to overcome the power of the western ‘barbarians’, that he swam out to Perry's flag-ship with his sword in his teeth, intending to fight the whole ship's company single-handed. This man was Yamagata, who died but recently.

Captain M.D. Kennedy, Military Language Officer in Japan (1917–1920), 1928     

Dealing with ‘genocide’: the ICRC and the UN during the Nigeria–Biafra war, 1967–70

This article examines how international and humanitarian organizations participated and positioned themselves in relation to discourses on genocide during the Nigeria–Biafra war (1967–70). During the first half of the conflict, the powerful Biafran propaganda regularly accused the Nigerian government of genocide against the Biafran population. The article looks at the way in which the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), one of the main humanitarian organizations present on the ground, reacted to Biafran accusations. In doing so, it analyses how information received from delegates in the field were apprehended and used—or not—by the headquarters. It shows that the ICRC attitude towards public denunciation was more nuanced than is often presented. Furthermore, the article sheds light on the involvement of the UN in the promotion of the counter-discourse developed by the Nigerian government to deny the genocide accusations. With a focus on the outcomes in the field, it fathoms the leeway the organization had in this situation—a civil war—and how it used it. The limits of the counter-discourse, illustrated by the persistence of the accusation of genocide by groups like the French doctors, reveal the complexities involved in the usage of this term by relief workers. Finally, in studying the way in which these international and humanitarian organizations dealt with genocide claims, this article contributes to the history of the violence that took place during the war.     

‘Local Repercussions’: the Impact of Staff ‘Bias’ and Market ‘Sensitivity’ on Reuters Coverage of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967–73

The importance of international communication and media to the study of international relations has long been recognised. This paper focuses on coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the Reuters news agency, one of the most important international providers of news. The voluminous academic discussion of international media coverage of that conflict has related primarily to exploration of news content. This article breaks new ground by evaluating through archival documentation some organisational, commercial, and editorial aspects involved in the actual process of news production. It studies the efforts by Reuters to overcome staff ‘bias’ and market ‘sensitivity’ and to provide publicly perceived ‘objective’ coverage. This it does in respect of a conflict separating the political and emotional loyalties of media and institutional subscribers in the Middle East region and around the world. It examines in particular the problems created by the national affinities of local staff employed in the region and the effect of political considerations and market pressure on regional dissemination of media information.     

‘We are of the connections’: migration,methodological nationalism,and ‘militant research’

Abstract

If there were no borders, there would be no migrants – only mobility. The persistent reification of migrants and migration – even in critical migration studies –(re-)fetishizes and (re-)naturalizes the epistemological stability attributed to the (‘national’) state as a modular fixture of geopolitical space. In this regard, migration scholarship (however critical) is implicated in a continuous (re-)reification of ‘migrants’ as a distinct category of human mobility. Thus, the methodological nationalism that rationalizes the whole conjuncture of borders-making-migrants supplies a kind of defining horizon for migration studies as such. The dilemma of methodological nationalism has never been merely a problem of thought, however. It is indeed a manifestation of the veritable participation of researchers and scholars – whether consciously or unwittingly – in the very same sociopolitical processes and struggles through which the ‘national’ configuration of ‘society’ (or, the social field) is reified and actualized as the territorial expression of state power. Therefore, the questions of methodological nationalism and what might be called ‘militant research’ are deeply interconnected, indeed, mutually constitutive. As scholars of ‘migration’ – and above all, as practitioners of ‘militant research’ – we must attend to a self-reflexive critique of our own complicities with the ongoing nationalization of ‘society’. Hence, as researchers or scholars of migration, we are indeed ‘of the connections’ between migrants’ transnational mobilities and the political, legal, and border-policing regimes that seek to orchestrate, regiment, and manage their energies. We are ‘of’ these connections because there is no ‘outside’ or analytical position beyond them. The larger juridical regimes of citizenship, denizenship, and alienage configure us to be always-already located within the nexus of inequalities that are at stake in these conflicts.