Reconceptualizing Resistance: Residuals of the State and Democratic Radical Pluralism

Abstract: Arguing that resistance to the state is too narrow a conceptualization of a political project that challenges neoliberalism, we posit that there are latent, residual apparatuses of the state which can be activated as part of a systematic progressive politics. We examine Massachusetts’“Dover amendment”, a legal framework which governs group home siting throughout the state. Dover offers a powerful tool with which to resist a neoliberal socio‐spatial agenda, though it has been underutilized toward enabling an alternative landscape. We analyze how and why Dover has often remained latent as a tool for socio‐spatial resistance, and consider a provocative case in Framingham, Massachusetts that suggests how residual state apparatuses may be leveraged in support of an explicitly resistive, progressive agenda.     

"关东州"的殖民统治机构

日本帝国主义通过日俄战争,在中国东北旅大地区建立了“关东州”殖民地。为实现其侵略需要,日本在“关东州”逐步建立起一整套完整而严密的殖民统治体系,其机构设置先后多次变化,大体可分为三个时期。本文主要从三个时期六个阶段对“关东州”殖民统治机构进行介绍和评价。     

Indigenous Youth and Decolonial Futures: Energy and Environmentalism among the Diné in the Navajo Nation and the Lepchas of Sikkim,India

In India and the United States, Lepcha and Diné youth are articulating decolonial futures that diverge from past aspirations. Rather than demanding big infrastructure such as dams or power plants, Indigenous youth forward decolonial visions that reimagine the landscape and energy technologies. In this article, we suggest that Lepcha and Diné activists are articulating a youthful decolonial futurity—a vision for the future where their generation and the ones to follow can flourish in their own territories and on their own terms. We propose youthful decolonial futurity as a prefigurative politics specific to Indigenous youth, who view their activism as integral to creating a future where their communities have more control over decision-making processes and their ancestral territories. What emerges is a consideration of the role of Indigenous youth in building a language and politics of decolonisation against the roles of power brokers, elites, and naysayers.     

唐代崖州治所考

关于唐代崖州治所,《通典》等全国性史志皆明确记载在舍城县,正德《琼台志》等海南旧志则认为在颜城县。孰是孰非?因从来无人进行考证和评断,以至两说长期并存。现经深入考证,所得结论是“舍城说”所言为是,“颜城说”完全错误。至于唐崖州治故址,在今海口市琼山区府城东南三十里龙塘镇的珠崖岭上。     

Muslim Contestations over Religion and the State in the Middle East

Abstract

With the future of the Middle East uncertain and unstable, claims to holding the authentic Islamic understanding of the role of religion in politics remain competed over in a political struggle for support, with sides believing that whoever can articulate the authenticity of their vision of government would become more able to influence public opinion. While one train of thought posits Islamic governance as an authentic and correct form of polity for the region which would bring about accountable, elected government, the other claims that Islam is fundamentally silent on the issue of the "state," and that notions of an "Islamic state" or caliphate are in fact dictatorial and antithetical to orthodox Islam, though Islamic values can inform the individual in their role as a citizen within a democratic state. This article will briefly examine the genealogy of these two competing claims from a Sunni Muslim perspective after examining the dominant approaches to analysing political Islamic groups, while also questioning whether it is fundamentally necessary to insert democratic ideals into such a discussion.     

Feminist Perspectives on the Internationalization of The State

Abstract: The state is often described in transition: public spaces are rearranged by private companies, national social welfare is being privatized to some extent, and supranational institutions have more influence on national policies. “A view from the kitchen” (Diane Elson) is helpful for understanding the changing dynamics of states and societies because different women are affected by these policies in different and often ambiguous ways: women of the globalized South migrate to the North, creating global care chains, while women in Western industrialized countries are confronted with changing welfare regimes, leaving mainly highly educated women to profit from this situation. This article contributes to feminist debates on economic globalization and state internationalization. Our feminist materialist perspective allows a critical view on dominance and power in “governance”. Thus, the article adds to feminist debates on globalization from the perspective of state transformation and to debates on governance from the perspective of state transformation grounded in gendered social relations.     

Multi‐Scalar Practices of the Korean State in Global Climate Politics: The Case of the Global Green Growth Institute

The paper examines the significance of state territoriality and the related multi‐scalar practices of the state in the light of the symptoms of post‐politics exemplified in global environmental governance. The focus rests on the South Korean government's Green Growth (GG) strategy and the efforts to export this strategy as a role model to emerging economies worldwide through the establishment of the Global Green Growth Institute. We begin with the question why the Korean government is going global with a political program that is heavily disputed at home. We then study the practices by which the state manages to maintain its territoriality under the conditions of global climate change. Lastly, we discuss how multi‐scalar practices of environmental governance in the GG strategy are applied by state and non‐state actors both in Korea and abroad.     

Theorizing the Submerged State: The Politics of Private Schools in the United States

In this paper, I apply Mettler's concept of the “submerged state” to aid for children at private schools in the United States, including education vouchers, in‐kind aid, and property tax exemptions. All aid policies are “submerged” in that they help private organizations take on state functions but some are more submerged than others. Theoretically, this paper distinguishes between subcategories of submergence. Using policy data from 50 states and an original database of court challenges between 1912 and 2015, I employ probit regression with sample selection to evaluate the effect of submergence on successful court challenge. I find that more submerged policies are less likely to be successfully challenged than less submerged policies. Submerged policy design enables supporters to avoid legal as well as political challenge.     

清代刑案律例与地方性法规关系探析

在法律多元的视角下,清代刑事性地方性法规具有不同于现代法理的内涵及特点.在创制、引用等实践环节中,此类法规极大程度脱离了地域特点的影响而成为审断经验的载体,其特点的变换亦足以体现清代中央与地方政府间立法、司法的权限纠葛及相关的法律施用精神.     

Touching Like a State

This paper offers a theorization of how the state touches. Through an analysis of the extensive 2011 protests over Wisconsin Senate Bill 11, we interrogate the relatively non‐violent interactions between police and protesters during the 17‐day occupation of the Wisconsin State Capitol building. On display there were diverse police deployments of “soft” force and haptic touching, technologies that enabled officers to subtly affect the movements and relations of protester crowds without resorting to familiar coercion‐ and consent‐based politics. We offer a pair of concepts, cathexis and l'esprit de l'escalier, to diagram how statist touches were mobilized to catch individuals unawares and momentarily co‐opt their bodily affects. These modes of control suggest much greater savvy regarding touch, force, and affect than is often granted in representations of the state apparatus. In light of this, we close with a reflection on the changing tactical grounds for struggle.     

A Historical and Jurisprudential Analysis of Suzerain-Vassal State Relationships in the Qing Dynasty

Studies of suzerain-vassal state relationships in the Qing dynasty have been a focus of domestic and overseas academic circles. This paper examines the origins, semiotics, and legal principles of suzerain-vassal state relationships in the Qing dynasty with some innovative viewpoints. Translated from Studies in Qing History, No. 1, 2004     

The trials and travails of the Islamic State in Pakistan

While Pakistan is in many ways an ideal location for transnational terrorist groups due to state weakness, Islamic State has had difficulty making headway in the country. In this article, the authors argue that Islamic State’s failures in Pakistan are due to competition from other groups. Drawing on the terrorist competition literature and interviews with Pakistani counterterrorism officials, the authors find that the presence of other groups in Pakistan meant there was little demand for what Islamic State offered. Islamic State relied on splinter groups and defectors for recruitment, which alienated mainstream groups and harmed the group’s capacity. Islamic State’s competition problems were exacerbated by its internationalist ideology, which was at odds with that of many groups in Pakistan, and allowed opposing groups to present themselves as reasonable alternatives to other actors. Despite Islamic State’s lack of success, it and its allies have still engaged in extreme violence in Pakistan as a result of attempts to outbid other groups. This article has implications for fighting terrorism in Pakistan and more generally.     

Cultural retaliation: the cultural policies of the ‘new’ Front National

This study examines the conception of culture and the cultural policies of the French Front National. Tracing the developments of the party’s cultural agenda before and after Marine Le Pen took over the leadership of the party from her father, I show how the Front National has adapted its discourse on cultural policy to its wider programmatic profile. In the context of a strategy of de-radicalisation promoted by Marine Le Pen, recent years have witnessed focussed efforts by the party leadership to professionalise and modernise the party’s cultural policy programme. However, the analysis of the party’s current cultural policy agenda reveals a remarkable continuity in the way the party leadership conceives of national culture and of what cultural policy should promote. This programmatic continuity becomes apparent in the analysis of the local cultural policies of municipalities won by the Front National in 2014. Exploring the cultural agendas of ten local governments with a Front National majority, I argue that the cultural policies of the Front National remain deeply rooted in a nativist understanding of culture and a dirigiste approach that wilfully excludes postcolonial minorities.     

楚国设置巴郡考

战国中期,巴国除保有嘉陵江上游阆中一带外,其大部分国土被楚国陆续占领,包括涪江下游、渠江流域、泸州以东的长江流域、乌江流域。楚国对占领地区,采取了多种管理方式,如封巴人的首领为王侯,派"监"监管;封楚王宗族到一些地方,取代原方国部族首领;设置郡,作为地方最高军政单位。就行政区划而言,除将占领地区的东、南部分划归黔中、巫郡管理外,楚国还设立巴郡管理其余广大占领地区。楚国设置巴郡,早于秦国设置巴郡。     

Regulating Regional Uneven Development and the Politics of Reconfiguring Belgian State Space

Abstract: This article mobilises a strategic‐relational approach to state spatial restructuring to overcome the weaknesses of the conventional “New Regionalist” account in economic geography of the resurgence of the region as a strategic site for economic governance. Focusing on hegemonic projects and the shifting nexus of spatial dependencies and engagements through which these are reproduced, undermined and transformed, the role and geography of political agency in state spatial restructuring is highlighted. To illustrate this point, I analyse the construction of new regional state spaces in Belgium, paying particular attention to the hegemonic projects that create a social basis for particular state spaces, the construction of collective agency on different scales (Belgian‐national and Flemish‐regional) and the various ways in which these processes are informed by pre‐existing state spatial and scalar selectivities.     

中国国家起源研究的思考

中国国家起源研究应当深刻了解当代科学理论的最新进展和国际同类研究的丰硕成果,从史籍和编年学导向的学术定位转向科学的探索与阐释,揭示中国早期国家起源的动因和演变过程,充分重视和发挥理论研究对文献探索和考古学研究的指导和科学阐释作用,将中国的国家起源研究融入社会科学的世界体系。     

Exploring the Political Potential of the Local State: Building a Dialogue with Sheffield in the 1980s

This article explores the political potential of the local state through an engagement with the case of Sheffield City Council in the 1980s. The new municipalism movement has generated renewed interest in the “local” and “urban” as transformative projects. The local state holds a pivotal if problematic role in these debates, often seen as the decisive force facilitating or impeding transformation. In building a dialogue with 1980s Sheffield, we provide a less certain account of the local state's potential. Sheffield occupies an ambiguous position within and beyond traditional municipal labourism and therefore provides a potent example to explore tensions within municipalism between state and autonomist visions of politics. In Sheffield, radical intent turned into a more cautious governmental programme in the city, notwithstanding glimpses of political alternatives. The experience of those years provides insights on the contingencies of bringing movements and state politics together in what was then called “local socialism”.     

Religion,toleration, and religious liberty in republican empire

ABSTRACT

The essay considers the nature and extent of toleration extended by Roman authorities to the religious pluralism of the empire. Roman legal instruments and works of law and political theory identify religion not as a concern of individuals but communities, and above all of juridically-constituted communities. As a related matter, classical and Christian Latin employs the language of political belonging, most notably that of republican citizenship, as its dominant apparatus for discussing religious affiliation. These related conceptual apparatus placed considerable limits on Romans’ ability to afford liberty in matters of religion to individuals.     

Rescaling Migration Studies: Migration Policy-Making and Implementation at the Local Government Level

How ‘the state’ perceives and responds to migration is gaining increasing attention. This analysis seeks to encourage debate on scales of governance in migration studies through a focus on policy-making and implementation on the part of local government officials in Scotland. Contributions include the elucidation of how immigrants are differentiated by individual local state actors and how this relates to the wider practices of local government towards them, and a typology conceptualising the heterogeneity of local state responses to immigration. This analytic emphasis on local state perceptions of, and responses to, migration and migrants hopes to inspire more nuanced and policy relevant understandings of ‘the state’ in migration research.