Labor Internationalism and the Contradictions of Globalization: Or, Why the Local is Sometimes Still Important in a Global Economy

In this paper I examine two case studies of workers fighting against transnationally organized corporations. In the first case, a 1990–1992 dispute between the United Steelworkers of America and the Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation, union workers developed an international campaign to pressure the corporation to rehire them after they had been locked out in a dispute over health and safety issues. In the second case, a 1998 dispute between the United Auto Workers and General Motors, strikes by workers at just two plants in Flint, Michigan over the corporation's plans to introduce new work rules resulted in the virtual shutdown of GM for several weeks. Drawing on these two cases, I suggest that, in challenging transnationally organized employers, workers may on some occasions best achieve their goals through engaging in practices of transnational solidarity aimed at matching the global organization of their employer ("organizing globally"), whereas on other occasions they may be able to do so through highly focused local actions ("organizing locally") against strategic parts of a corporation. Of course, which of these two strategies is most likely to succeed in particular cases will depend on a coterie of contingencies, such as how interconnected the corporation's component parts are. However, the fact that different geographical strategies may be open to workers challenging globally organized capital means at least two things. First, some workers may not have to organize at the same geographical scale (ie globally) as corporations in order to challenge them. Second, through their choices of which strategy to pursue, workers are clearly shaping the very process of globalization itself and the new global geographies which globalization is auguring.     

Teaching Across the Divide: Physical and Human Geographies of Hurricane Katrina

This article critically reflects on our effort to ‘teach across the divide’, by integrating physical and human geography in a new first-year course. We achieved this integration by structuring our course around a series of key events, in order to draw out the interaction of ‘natural’ and ‘social’ forces. After setting out the intellectual and institutional reasons for integration, we illustrate our approach with reference to one of the key events covered in our course: Hurricane Katrina. Finally, we draw on our own reflections and student evaluations to consider the positive outcomes of our approach, and the challenges it poses.     

The Whole Tooth and Nothing but the Tooth: Or why Temporal Resolution of Bone Collagen May Be Unreliable

The carbon (δ¹³C) and nitrogen (δ¹⁵N) isotope ratios of human bone collagen have been used extensively over the last 40 years to investigate the diet of past populations. It has become apparent that bone collagen can give an unreliable temporal dietary signature especially in juveniles. With higher temporal resolution sampling of collagen from tooth dentine, it is possible to identify short-term changes in diet previously invisible in bone. This paper discusses the inherent problems of using bone collagen for dietary studies and suggests better sample choices, which can make our interpretations more robust, using breastfeeding and weaning as an example.     

Reading with the Occultists: Arthur Machen,A. E. Waite,and the Ecstasies of Popular Fiction

My article recovers a forgotten moment in the history of popular fiction criticism – the late Victorian advent of what I term occultic literary criticism – to challenge the persistent anxiety thesis that continues to dominate fin-de-siècle studies. In the late 1890s, the close friends, writers, bibliophiles, and, for varying amounts of time, practising occultists Arthur Machen and A. E. Waite used their literary criticism to champion the ecstatic occult potential of mass-circulated popular fiction, insisting that the penny dreadful, the newspaper story, and the popular picaresque as exemplified in Charles Dickens’s The Pickwick Papers (1836–37) represented coded versions of ancient mystery tradition rituals. The cheap popular texts could offer to readers, writers, and collectors the kind of joyous direct encounter with the unseen world that sacred texts no longer could. The pair’s conviction that ecstatic occult initiation was just as, if not more, attainable through popular exoteric texts as through their restricted esoteric counterparts offers an important corrective to contemporary understandings of both the late-Victorian reception of popular fiction and of the reach and constituency of the occult revival.     

The myth of the first African-American electrical engineer: Arthur U. Craig and the importance of teaching in technological history

In recent years, historians of technology including Bruce Sinclair, Rayvon Fouché, and Amy Slaton have analyzed the intersection of technological and African-American history to redress the historical and enduring correlation between whiteness and technology. This paper contributes to this conversation by chronicling the story of Arthur U. Craig, a faculty member at the Tuskegee Institute who installed the university’s famous lighting system. During Craig’s tenure at the Institute, he was touted to be the ‘first black electrical engineer’ – but he resisted that title. This article examines why. In so doing, ‘The Myth of the First African-American Electrical Engineer’ builds upon three scholarly conversations. First, it discusses how the cultural meanings of electricity inflected how Tuskegee advertised Craig’s contributions to campus. Second, it re-situates the often-overlooked Craig within the history of Tuskegee Institute. Finally, it examines Craig’s contribution to debates about engineering education for African American students.     

Why Indians Vote: Reflections on Rights,Citizenship, and Democracy from a Tamil Nadu Village

This paper contributes to an empirical and theoretical understanding of democracy and political participation in India through an ethnographic study of the meanings attached to voting in rural Tamil Nadu. Based on a study of voting in a rural constituency during the 2009 national elections, the paper explores the variety of motivations that compel people to vote. It explores how voting is informed by popular understandings of rights and duties as citizens, programmatic policies and their local implementation, commitment to caste and party loyalties, and authority of charismatic leaders. The paper explores the roots of the political consciousness and rights awareness that underpin high levels of electoral participation. It suggests that elections form unique moments that allow ordinary people to experience an individual sense of citizenship and of democracy itself while at the same time allowing them to pursue projects of recognition, respect and assertion as members of communities. It is precisely this dual feature that makes voting so enduringly attractive to India's contemporary electorate.     

Living the Theologico-Political Problem: Leo Strauss on the Common Ground of Philosophy and Theology

Leo Strauss argues that the “theologico-political” problem arose from the competing claims of rationalist philosophy and theology. Although he urges others to take sides in this debate, most theorists see it as insoluble, since it is rooted in competing traditions and different, non-demonstrable, epistemic principles. Strauss, however, argues that there is a common ground capable of sustaining a contest between the two: their appeal to the pre-philosophic understanding of justice as moral virtue. The contest between the Bible and Socratic-Platonic philosophy centers on which of the two better understands what justice is, what completes it, and in what respect it is good. Strauss enables us to see why Plato’s Socratic dialogues became indispensable models for classical and medieval philosophers who sought to meet the challenge of theology on the vital common ground of philosophy and theology.     

Between books and politics: Cairo International Book Fair as a field configuring event

This article analyses the Cairo International Book Fair as a “field configuring event” (FCE), namely, as a recurrent mass event that both reflects the social fields surrounding it and contributes to the shaping of these fields. More specifically, it is argued that the Cairo International Book Fair constitutes a major FCE in Egyptian society, which plays a significant role, not only in the publishing field and in the cultural and economic fields at large, but also in the political field. Focusing on the political field, the article traces how the Cairo International Book Fair in recent decades both reflected key struggles and developments in the Egyptian political field and affected these struggles. In the 1980s, the fair served as a platform for voicing and negotiating various positions toward Egypt’s relations with Israel; in the 1990s, it served as a platform for negotiating the relations between Islamists and Liberals; and in the 2000s, it served as a platform for negotiating the “permitted” level of criticism toward Mubarak’s regime. The article thus shows that the Cairo International Book Fair constitutes a useful prism for examining developments in the Egyptian political field over the years.     

I hear dead people: science,technology and a resonant universe

In recent years the simplistic categorization of Victorian practices and beliefs as either ‘occult’ or ‘scientific’ has been undercut by a series of revisionist analyses that point to an over-arching concern with influence and effect, a concern that was manifest across the sciences and humanities and beyond into popular culture. This paper sets out to further problematize such a distinction via an exploration of twentieth-century research into electronic voice phenomena (EVP), celebrated by its adherents as proof of a spiritual plane of existence beyond the readily observable or audible. In doing so, I focus on the work of one of the most active EVP researchers, Konstantin Raudive, as well as the web pages of the World Instrumental Transcommunication organization, drawing out the pivotal role of technology in the construction of this form of knowledge and some of its associated imaginative geographies. In and of itself, EVP research tells us much about the authoritative status of cause and effect explanatory frameworks, as well as the innocence accorded technological apparatus. An examination of how EVP has been received within academia, however, also reveals how, in our ‘post’-positivist academic environment, efforts are still being made to locate explanation within the human subject, as the charge is made that EVP researchers suffer from a logocentrism or are witness to Freud's doppelgänger. In response to these critiques, I pose the question: can the willingness of EVP researchers to abandon such human-centered certainties resonate with emergent ‘post-human’ ideas on the nature of explanation itself?     

I never shall be a white man again: race and junior officers in the Mexican War

Throughout the Mexican War, the impact of professionalization was felt on the battlefields of Mexico. This professionalism did not, and could not insulate these officers from social issues such as race. When American junior officers viewed the filthy conditions in Mexico, they argued that these conditions could only be explained by the racial inferiority of the Mexican people as a race. Volunteers and regulars reacted to these issues in exactly the same manner. This fact challenged the traditional fears that a professional standing army would become disconnected with the society they protected, and would thus become despotic. Similarly, the excesses of the volunteers demonstrated that they were not the paragon of virtue which many in the US hoped.     

评《战国秦汉漆器研究》

一洪石女士在其博士论文基础上修改完成的《战国秦汉漆器研究》一书,是近年来战国秦汉考古学研究的一项新成果,应当引起学术界的重视。战国秦汉漆器的研究是一个极有学术价值的课题。在这一时期各种材质的器物中,漆器占据着特殊的地位。以之与商周青     

Words of Wisdom,Words of Prophecy: Why and How Biblical Law Speaks in the Public Square

The study of biblical law enables us to pursue justice. Its application involves selecting from a body of discourse and emerges not only from “rules” but from narrative and worldview. It also means internalising a fixed text and improvising a faithful response. It is shaped and constrained at every point by practical wisdom. Religious beliefs should not be excluded in principle and cannot be excluded in practice from a liberal democracy. As has always been the case, communicating biblical law means recognising and surmounting difference through argument, appeal and persuasion. A key part of this communicatory strategy, whether ancient or (post)modern, is fleshing out biblical law in compelling, real-life situations. Questions of application and communication are thus closely linked. Although its application may be counter-cultural, biblical law is comprehensible when instantiated in practical action.     

Engendering Gramsci: Gender,the Philosophy of Praxis,and Spaces of Encounter in the Climate Caravan,Bangladesh

This paper examines the gendered politics of national and international networking amongst peasant farmers' movements in South Asia. In particular the paper provides an ethnographic account, based upon the author's critical engagement with the Bangladesh Krishok (farmer) Federation and the Bangladesh Kishani Sabha (Women Farmers' Association), of the Climate Change, Gender and Food Sovereignty Caravan that was organised in Bangladesh in 2011. The paper draws upon Antonio Gramsci's theory of the philosophy of praxis and feminist research on social reproduction, dispossession and materiality to interrogate the spaces of encounter and solidarity‐building practices of the Caravan between different communities in the country and between different social movement actors. The paper examines how processes of political organisation and consciousness‐raising within and between social movements are problematised by gendered power relations. The paper concludes with suggestions concerning how the philosophy of praxis in Bangladesh might be “engendered” to incorporate a politics of social reproduction.     

一部评述十一届三中全会的信史——简评朱佳木新作《我所知道的十一届三中全会》

在纪念中共十一届三中全会召开30周年的日子里,读到朱佳木的专著《我所知道的十一届三中全会》,获益良多。笔者以为,这是一部叙述和评价中共十一届三中全会的信史,是林林总总同一题材著作中的上乘之作。这本书最显著的特点是回忆与研究的结合,这是作者独具而别人难以企及的优长之处。中     

中西文化的一次对话:清初传教士与《易经》研究

By the early 18^th Century, the “Rites Controversy” among the missionaries themselves has evolved into a culture conflict between the Qing Empire and Europe. To make the European missionaries in China follow the rites of Matteo Ricci, Emperor Kangxi had French Jesuit missionaries Joachim Bouvet and Jean Francoise Foucquet study the Book of Changes in his royal palace and had further conversions with the European missionaries based on their researches. Not only did this cultural conversation reveal the Figurist’s tendencies, as represented by Bouvet, and the interior conflict among the missionaries themselves after the “Rites controversy,” but also showed Kangxi’s policies towards the missionaries, as well as his attitude towards Western culture and religion. __________ Translated from Lishi Yanjiu 历史研究 (Historical Research), 2006, (3): 74–85     

Death by a Thousand Cuts: an archaeological assessment of souveniring and salvage on the Australian cruiser HMAS Perth (I)

In 2014, the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) received reports from recreational divers that the shipwreck site of HMAS Perth (I) was being systematically salvaged by commercial divers. After extensive discussions with Indonesian Government departments and agencies the ANMM led the first Australian/Indonesian remote sensing survey of Perth in December 2016. This was followed by an in‐water survey in May 2017. These investigations revealed Perth has been devastated by systematic, large‐scale unauthorized salvage. Following the survey, ANMM and its Indonesian research partner Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional (ARKENAS), working in conjunction with the Royal Australian Navy and Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, successfully lobbied the Indonesian Government to have the site declared Indonesia's first Marine Protected Area.     

Introduction and Historical Context for the Archaeology of Institutions of Reform. Part I: Asylums

This introduction discusses the western cultural context that connects the following three articles of site-specific research on the Adelaide Destitute Asylum in South Australia, the Ross Female Factory (prison) in Tasmania and the Magdalen Asylum in Philadelphia. These institutions are a few of the many types of nineteenth century asylums and prisons. Although some research issues are raised the purpose of this introduction is to provide a general historical context for the different research designs which are presented in the articles. While this introduction provides a largely ungendered historical background from ungendered sources, the companion feminist commentary following the articles addresses the gendered historical context and the feminist issues in the articles.