Negotiating Statehood in a Hybrid Political Order: The Case of Somaliland

This article investigates the negotiation of statehood in Somaliland, a non‐recognized de facto state which emerged from Somalia's conflict and state collapse. The negotiation process centres on the continuing transformation of a hybrid political order, involving ‘formal’ as well as ‘informal’ spheres, both in existing institutions (as ‘rules of the game’) and in the bodies or agents enforcing these rules. The negotiation processes considered take place at the national and local level respectively, as well as between the two. These negotiations are heterogeneous, non‐linear and ongoing. The article demonstrates how the polity's tolerance for heterogeneous negotiations and different forms of statehood allowed local political actors to establish peace in their own local settings first. Although it did not produce uniform statehood, it provided the basis for communities to explore the scope for common statehood. On the national level, hybrid elements initially allowed for a healthy adaptation of statehood to local needs, and for legitimate, productive instruments of negotiation. This responsiveness was not maintained, and current hybrid elements threaten to undermine the polity's stability.     

Researching African Statehood Dynamics: Negotiability and its Limits

A focus on ‘negotiating statehood’ offers an alternative set of lenses on evolving transitions and transformations in African state–society relations to other more teleological perspectives. Notions of ‘negotiation’ and the ‘negotiability’ of authority structures allow recognition of the pliability of emerging state forms and may help in focusing on the dynamic processes through which statehood may be refounded and rationalized. This article presents a preliminary assessment of the analytical and empirical scope for employing the notion of ‘negotiating statehood’. The main argument is that although one can conceive of many processes as being negotiated, in (empirical) reality these particular lenses will be more appropriate for some situations than for others. The article therefore seeks to explore the limits of the conceptual framework associated with the idea of ‘negotiated’ statehood. It will do so through a review of selected historical and empirical contexts within which one might expect such particular dimensions to be highlighted, in contrast to situations where for one reason or another no such interactions (can) take place. In this connection the article also highlights the limitations the broader context places on the scope for realizing various state‐building designs.     

Self‐determination and a shattered star: Statehood and national identity in the Somali Horn of Africa

This article explores the articulation—in different forms, at different periods, and by different actors—of ‘national self‐determination’ in Somalia and across the Somali‐speaking regions of the Horn of Africa. It explores how this concept can be understood in the context of protracted political fragmentation in Somalia—considering unresolved debates over the ideological foundations of state reconstruction, disagreements about the suitability of federalism, aspirations for the recognition of an independent Republic of Somaliland, and the distinctive trajectory of the Somali Regional State in Ethiopia. Taking a comparative, cross‐border and wide‐angled historical approach, the article argues that ideas of an ethno‐linguistically, culturally and religiously defined Somali ‘nation’ continue to coexist (and be reproduced, updated and used) within an environment of extreme political fragmentation and across multiple ‘state’ boundaries. This argument is made through comparative analysis of contemporary examples of the performance of Somali state and nationalist identities within and beyond the region and the distinctive transnational Somali‐language media environment within which these ideas circulate and compete.     

Creating Memory and Negotiating Power in the Olmec Heartland

The creation of political landscapes requires the production of places made significant through acts of social remembering. The Gulf lowlands of Mexico exhibit some of the best known acts of social remembering in Mesoamerican prehistory. In this article, we engage political and practice-based frameworks for understanding the process of collective remembering in an examination of how the Olmecs and their successors inscribed their landscape with buildings, monuments, and rock art in ways that invoked the past while reframing it within the needs of their present. In particular, we explore the Olmecs’ memorialization of individuals and events in sculptures and offerings and their creation of narratives through the juxtaposition of sculptures and architecture. We then examine the creation and erasure of collective memory at the regional center of Tres Zapotes as expressed in the biographies of six monuments. We end with a comparison of “metropolitan” and hinterland carvings recorded in regional survey around Tres Zapotes. These examples situate social memory as an evolving entity molded and stretched by competing interests in an ongoing process of conflict and negotiation.     

Landscapes of Power: Middle Class and Lower Class Power Dynamics in a New York Charitable Institution

Archaeological and historical research at Sailors’ Snug Harbor uncovered material on this landscape of power. Sailors’ Snug Harbor, located in New York City, was established in 1831 as a private institution for retired and injured seamen who were economically impoverished. In the nineteenth century, between 400 and 800 seamen lived at Snug Harbor, supported by a director (called the governor), an assistant director (the steward), a doctor, a chaplain, and a large support staff. There were rivalries between the middle class administrators of institution especially during the reign of Thomas Melville (1867–84). Because over twenty percent of the retired seamen were former ship captains, in addition to numerous officers such as first mates, there were intense power dynamics between Melville (a former clipper ship captain) and the retired seamen (inmates). The design of the buildings and grounds, the archaeological material, and the primary source documents reveal middle class and lower class power dynamics that existed in this closed community.     

Reforming Peasant Production in Africa: Power and Technological Change in Two Nigerian Villages

Differential access to state-allocated incentives, based on socio-economic inequalities in rural society, is commonly assumed to be a key determinant of change in rural Africa. This article argues that, given the spatial diversity of Africa's rural political economies, analysis of the politics of rural change needs to be premised on an appreciation of the multiplicity of social relations through which rural power structures are configured. Data from a field study of a World Bank assisted agricultural development project in Lafia, Nigeria, are used to illustrate the manner in which spatial and inter-community variations in responses to commercialization, cultural divisions and the reorganization of political relations during the colonial era combine to sustain regional power structures which are defined by such differences. A comparative analysis of two village communities at opposite ends of the regional spectrum of commercialization is employed to demonstrate how such power structures provide a framework within which the political conditions of access operate to the advantage of both dominant socio-economic strata and members of particular cultural communities.     

Lasting Monuments and Durable Institutions: Labor, Urbanism, and Statehood in Northern Vietnam and Beyond

Archaeological research on monumentality, early urbanism, and emergent statehood in Southeast Asia and Vietnam has grown dramatically in recent years, and our understanding of social evolution in Southeast Asia has moved beyond traditional models of Sinicization and Indianization. Although many researchers recognize the significance of the historic and classical states of the first and second millennia AD, the seeds of statehood and urbanism can be seen in a moated settlement pattern during the first millennium BC. The largest in this category of Iron Age settlements, the heavily fortified Co Loa site in Vietnam’s Red River Valley, is emblematic of a tradition of settlements marked by earthworks and moat systems. The scale and extent of Co Loa’s massive earthen rampart system, involving a complex construction enterprise, reflect planning and implementation by a highly centralized, multigenerational, and institutionalized authority. Dating to the last centuries BC, Co Loa represents one of the earlier ancient state-level societies in Vietnam and the wider Southeast Asian region. Ultimately, the durability of Co Loa’s institutions of power and governance is suggested by the nature of its rampart system and construction process, and a package of variables contributed to emergent complexity. In particular, the presence of a monumental system of defensive works, combined with other archaeological markers for intraregional competition and violence, underscores the potential role of warfare and physical coercion in the course of political centralization.     

致君尧舜与皇权独尊——解缙悲剧人生的历史解读

解缙是明初历仕三朝的谏诤名臣,其才高不达的人生悲剧具有深刻的社会原因。在明初专制皇权高度膨胀的历史条件下,解缙是君尊臣卑、嫉贤妒能的封建官僚的政治牺牲品,是＂位卑言高则为罪＂言谏戒条的牺牲品。     

Negotiating Colonial Violence: Spaces of Precarisation in Palestine

This paper examines the ways in which colonial violence is transformed and spatialised into negotiated precarities at the occupied Palestine. The notion of “negotiated precarity” is developed herein, to refer to two aspects in particular. First, to spatial compartmentalisation, which shows how the settler colonial power operates by creating precarious administrative zones, where the life of the colonised becomes prone to several flexible, negotiated uses of power. Second, negotiated precarity is used to refer to the conduct of the colonised that counters, transforms, redirects, cancels or hampers the colonial spatialisations of power. By focusing on the “negotiated precarities” in a singular West Bank village, I exemplify how the colonial governing is entwined with spatial compartments that enable several informal, indirect and ad hoc techniques of colonial violence, but also how the colonial governing is constantly mobilised, negotiated, countered and redirected in/through the everyday Palestinian spaces.