Historical Contingency and the Peace Progressives

Robert David Johnson. The Peace Progressives and American Foreign Relations . Cambridge: Harvard University Press.     

落日“皇后”尽在马尼拉湾

如果某一天的黄昏,你在这条10公里长的大道上走一走。美景会让你终生难忘。一边是一排排棕榈和椰树在晚风中轻拂,另一边则是烟波浩淼的海面。落日时,晚霞为所有人、所有的景物都镀上一层淡红色,情侣们在落日中甜蜜地相依相偎,这应该是一天中最温馨的景致。     

Twilight Institutions: Public Authority and Local Politics in Africa

Public authority does not always fall within the exclusive realm of government institutions; in some contexts, institutional competition is intense and a range of ostensibly a‐political situations become actively politicized. Africa has no shortage of institutions which attempt to exercise public authority: not only are multiple layers and branches of government institutions present and active to various degrees, but so‐called traditional institutions bolstered by government recognition also vie for public authority, and new emerging institutions and organizations also enter the field. The practices of these institutions make concepts such as public authority, legitimacy, belonging, citizenship and territory highly relevant. This article proposes an analytical strategy for the understanding of public authority in such contexts. It draws on research from anthropologists, geographers, political scientists and social scientists working on Africa, in an attempt to explore a set of questions related to a variety of political practices and their institutional ramifications.     

英国与朝鲜停战谈判中的战俘遣返问题

作为美国的主要盟友,英国和美国一样主张战俘的"非强制遣返"。但是英国出于促成尽快停战,应对议会下院反对派的压力和确保英国及英联邦国家的战俘尽快安全获释的考虑,英国保守党政府不仅反对强制遣返,也反对强制扣留战俘。而且与丘吉尔首相过分强调战俘遣返问题的"人道"立场、政治价值及英美特殊关系不同,艾登主导的外交部主张抑制美国在战俘遣返问题上的僵硬立场,意欲灵活处理战俘问题,打开停战谈判僵局。英国既非强制遣返、也非强制扣留战俘的立场,以及其在东西方之间的斡旋,在一定程度上有助于战俘遣返问题的解决。     

毛泽东、周恩来领导朝鲜停战谈判的决策轨迹

作者根据自己的亲身经历回忆了毛泽东、周恩来领导朝鲜停战谈判的决策过程。从第一次会谈的停战三原则到毛泽东、周恩来提出解决各项议程的整体设想到后来的“一动不如一静” ,反映了在毛泽东和周恩来等老一辈无产阶级革命家领导下的中国人民同妄图称霸世界的美帝国主义之间进行的长期的军事和外交交织着的斗争过程     

Languages of Stateness in South Lebanon's Palestinian Gatherings: The PLO's Popular Committees as Twilight Institutions

Public authority beyond the state has often been seen as isolated from the state and/or constituting a threat to the state. Recent scholarship, however, has started to conceptualize ‘state’ and ‘non‐state’ forms of public authority as closely connected and interdependent. This article contributes to this theoretical shift by means of a qualitative case study of public authority in Palestinian refugee camps in South Lebanon. Lebanon's Palestinian camps are routinely characterized as ‘states‐within‐the‐state’, undermining the sovereignty of the Lebanese state. Yet, as this article demonstrates, both a generic state idea and the specific Lebanese state system constitute crucial benchmarks for the Popular Committees that govern informal Palestinian settlements. The article therefore conceptualizes the Popular Committees as ‘twilight institutions’ and explores the ‘languages of stateness’ that they adopt both communicatively, vis‐à‐vis Palestinian competitors, and coordinatively, vis‐à‐vis Lebanese counterparts. This reveals that the Popular Committees emulate the Lebanese state institutions they come into contact with, to bolster their own authority. They do this partly to be viable interlocutors for Lebanese state institutions; this suggests that the Popular Committees’ non‐state authority might validate rather than challenge state authority in Lebanon, and that state and non‐state authority can be mutually constitutive.     

Decolonisation and mysticism in William Butler Yeats's The Celtic Twilight and The Secret Rose

Yeats's responsibilities as one of Ireland's most prominent artists commenced with his aspiration to make Ireland a nation. His writings incorporate the three phases of development that Frantz Fanon posited for all new nations. Although Fanon described his three phases of decolonisation well after The Celtic Twilight and The Secret Rose were compiled, Fanon's framework elucidates Yeats's writings. Yeats's use of mystical elements embodies Fanon's idea of the colonial binary, the negritude binary, and transnational consciousness. Yeats discovered the answers to decolonisation in mysticism. His insights about folklore when coupled with imagination brought about many mystical revelations that linked Ireland to mysticism of global dimensions. Yeats's insights moved Ireland beyond binaries and solely nationalistic thinking to encourage Ireland to develop a transnational consciousness, transcending postcolonial binaries to achieve nationhood.     

After the Ban: The Moral Economy of Property

This essay can be read as both a tragedy of neoliberal governance and a paean to the resilience and creativity of humanity. Reporting an ethnographic assessment of the impacts of Denver's recent camping ban on homeless communities, I build on John Searle's constructivist social theory to argue not only that undomiciled people construct homes, but also that they exercise rights to property. Part of a social order, people living on the streets find creative ways to sheathe themselves in home spaces. By depriving them not only of the stability of their homes but also of the social power afforded by property, this ban dismantles heterodox orders, which then decay from anarchy. Nevertheless, accounts provided by homeless individuals themselves demonstrate that primitive property, though always fragile, can withstand emphatic disruption: this continued resilience is seen in the webs of mutual reciprocity previously and subsequently woven beneath, between, and behind state apparatuses.     

After the relevance debate: The teaching of social geography

Abstract

An examination of the recent relevance debate in geography shows that this debate has led to an explicit realisation of the significance of values, the addition of a rigorous political, social and economic dimension to social geography and a recognition of the importance of problem and policy perspectives. Three trends in modern social geography are identified — problem orientations, humanistic perspectives, and structural perspectives — and their impacts on taught courses and individual projects are assessed. Curriculum developments and problems are also discussed. Full incorporation of such schemes into the subject depends not only on published research findings, but also on the values and interests of individual teachers.