Processing together,celebrating apart: shared processions in the Latin East

ABSTRACT

Twelfth-century narrative accounts in Armenian, Syriac and Latin recount a number of processions in Syria and Palestine in which both Eastern Christians and Latins participated. Processions were one of the many ways by which the Franks expressed their political dominance over the urban (and likely also the rural) landscape, but it was also a way that all Christian communities used to express and even construct relationships among themselves. Scholars often assume that the procession performs (in a Durkheimian sense) the work of creating or displaying unity. Yet the scattered sources of the twelfth-century Frankish Levant suggest that this is only one of the functions an inter-confessional procession can play. As common were processions that delimited, separated and hierarchised communities.     

Long cycle theory and the hegemonic powers' basing networks

One recent focus of research in international relations theory is that of “long cycle theory,” associated primarily with George Modelski and William Thompson, which posits serial cycles of hegemonic dominance — Venice, Portugal, the Netherlands, Great Britain, the United States — lasting approximately for one century. These hegemonic cycles are highly correlated with, or underpinned by, maritime and commercial dominance. Some aspects of long cycle theory have been contested by the rival “world systems” theory, that has fewer cycles and a disinclination to separate the military and economic dimensions of hegemony. Heretofore, naval power, as reflected in capital ship construction and orders of battle, has been used to measure maritime dominance. This research suggests that data for rival and successive global basing access networks could be used to inform and query the basis of long cycle theory; i.e., to provide a measure of “global reach”. There are additionally, interesting conceptual questions about the basis for basing access, as it has evolved historically; specifically, from a basis in conquest to one dependent upon diplomacy and various quid pro quo. The article suggests the need for more historical data collection on bases.     

Re-analysing the Baining: The Mytho-Poetics of Race,Gender and Art

This article criticises primitivist caricatures of the Baining in Melanesia as a society that lacks exegesis, symbolic logics, religion, structures of power and control, and even an interest in play. The mytho-poetics of gender and procreation in Mali Baining society are documented by focusing on how art and sexuality are traced onto each other. The formative power of painting, barkcloth, dancing masks, netbags and music are merged with the formative power of women. Art and sexuality are made to inform each other's generative potential, and even each other's aesthetic charm. These fertile mytho-poetic practices also underpin Mali political practices. Mali indigenous identity is celebrated as local control over the original powers of creation, which continue to reside in the earth, in the local landscape and, above all, in that which underpins all creation, women's procreative bodies with their creative potential to bring forth something new. The Mali localise creative processes so as to empower and revalue themselves within a culture of resistance to the hegemony of colonialism, modernity, settlers and regional ethnic elites.     

The Classic-period pictographs at Juliq’ Cave,Alta Verapaz,Guatemala: an interdisciplinary approach to cave art as organizing principle

The Cave of Juliq’ in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala contains an impressive corpus of ancient Maya rock art. Unlike other examples of rock art in this area, the Juliq’ pictographs are simply rendered, generally consisting of lines, handprints, and other basic shapes. We thus focus on context rather than on iconographic content in order to access the meaning of these ancient pictographs. We argue that they were used to record human presence in and movement through the alien cave environment in specific ways, demarcating procession routes, points of transition, moments of physical prowess, and places charged with sacred power. These circuits within Juliq’ reflect attempts to order the Underworld landscape and link it to the surface world through ritual movement akin to aboveground ritual processions.     

Confraternal Devotions in Malta, 1670–1798

The aims of this article are twofold. It first discusses how confraternities tried to improve the spiritual worth of their members. The brothers conducted their devotions communally in their oratory, confessing and receiving the Eucharist, hearing mass and listening to sermons. They also participated in processions while the liturgy of the suffrages for the dead was recognised as the special task of confraternities. The brethren also practised their own private devotions, like examination of conscience and the adoration of the host. Second, the brethren were not concerned solely with themselves but they influenced the other parishioners, who followed their example.     

The supernatural protector of Constantinople: the Virgin and her icons in the tradition of the Avar siege

Abstract

Previous scholarship has maintained that icons of the Virgin were carried in procession during the Avar siege of Constantinople in A.D. 626. Based on a close reading of the primary sources from the seventh to the fourteenth centuries, this paper will argue in contrast that a tight linkage between Marian icons and protection of the Byzantine capital did not occur until after Iconoclasm. The larger implications of this conclusion concern the evolution of the cult of the Virgin in Constantinople from its initial focus on relics to a cult centered on icons and icon processions as it emerged in the second half of the tenth century.     

The emigration state and the modern geopolitical imagination

This article systematically reviews how a large number of states relate to their diasporas. It shows how states constitute various extra-territorial groups as members of a loyal diaspora, through a diverse range of institutions and practices. The article distinguishes two types of diaspora mechanism: one which cultivates and recognizes diaspora communities, and another which draws them into reciprocal ties with their homeland. The article demonstrates that, contrary to the common wisdom, it is normal for states to have a variety of such mechanisms protruding beyond their borders and impacting on a variety of extra-territorial groups. It is useful to view these institutions and practices collectively as “the emigration state”. The article argues that the emigration state has been overlooked by what John Agnew calls “the modern geopolitical imagination”, in which territorial nation-state units, locked into competition at a fixed international scale, are thought of as the highest form of political organization.     

Is there a need for a new cultural policy strategy in the Nordic welfare state?

Cultural policies have existed as a structural element of the Nordic welfare states from the very beginning. Today these policies are being re‐evaluated, and there are some indications that they may be gradually dismantled. Local cultural politicians in municipalities (cultural boards) and professionals (e.g. cultural secretaries) have become uncertain and anxious about their future role and legitimacy.

This new situation is addressed and analysed by using the ideas of Goffman's on‐and off‐stage representations, and Foucault's governmentality. Important background factors in the development of cultural policies both in the past, present and future are identified and used to explain the present unclear situation as a reflection of an existing cultural hierarchy or hegemony (see Gramsci). This paper also discusses the role of cultural professionals and local cultural politicians in the implementation of the Nordic cultural policies with references to examples from Finland and Sweden.     

The Red Guards of Paris: French Student Maoism of the 1960s

This article examines how Maoist theory and practice were imported to France during the 1960s. A syncretic phenomenon, as notions developed in the Chinese cultural context were adapted to the very different Gallic situation, French Maoism proved to be especially influential among students at the École normale supérieure at the rue d’Ulm in Paris, where the Marxist theoretician, Louis Althusser, was teaching. Maoist philosophy facilitated critiques of the Moscow-aligned French Communist Party and its student union; it enabled Althusser's rethinking of the Marxist tradition, and it ultimately provided ammunition for his students’ eventual break with his “theoreticism.” Maoism's fecund contribution to French intellectual culture in the 1960s, helping to lay the groundwork for the events of May 1968, derived principally from its dual theoretical and practical nature. This article highlights two specific Maoist tenants—the inevitably violent nature of revolution and the ersatz-empiricist method of the “investigation”—and suggests how, after 1968, French Maoism ultimately surrendered the former as the latter proved more useful to direct democratic politics.     

Stubborn identities and the construction of socio-spatial boundaries: ultra-orthodox Jews living in contemporary Britain

Despite ultra-Orthodoxy being the fastest growing component of the British Jewish community (and Jewry worldwide), it has received little academic coverage by geographers. This paper provides an in-depth examination of a community of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Broughton Park, Manchester. It maps out the residential concentration of these Jews and, using in-depth qualitative interviews, discusses the construction of socio-spatial boundaries that are used to define and mark out 'them' from 'us'. Through this the paper contributes to wider geographic discussions about identity, segregation and religion. It shows how the power of religion to define people's beliefs and everyday practices remains, for certain groups, extremely strong.     

Droughts as random events in the Maya lowlands

Because the values of most of the parameters controlling the occurrence and severity of a drought in a given location are unknown, and no periodicity has been observed, droughts can be considered random events. Running a random number generator within the limits of the annual rainfall variability relevant to the Maya lowlands, and defining a “Lean Year”, it is observed that strings of lean years occur quite frequently. Defining “Severe Drought”, “Disaster”, and “Catastrophe” based on the length of these strings, it is observed that a severe drought occurs on average every 32 years, a disaster occurs on average every 130 years, and a catastrophe on average every 500 years. These values fit the measured variability of the Yucatan climate, as observed in lake core sediments and in the post conquest written records. It also fits the average occurrence of “megadroughts” in the US Great Plains.The fit between the random occurrence model and the actual, “measured” occurrence of droughts supports the notion that for all practical purposes, droughts had been random events in the Maya region and could not be predicted. The lack of evident periodicity could be one of the reasons why means for long-term storage of food products were not developed there. It may also have affected the relationship between the priesthood and the general populace in that region.Since the method described here can be applied to any climatic region once the rainfall variability and the sensitivity of the local agriculture are known or can be estimated, if similar results are found they may probably have affected other regions with other ancient cultures in a similar way.     

Winning while losing: The Apprentice Boys of Derry walk their beat

Ethno-territorial conflict is a common feature of human affairs, and efforts to understand and mitigate its impacts require an examination of how peoples, communities, and nations “lose;” specifically, what happens as and after they lose in terms of their relationship with place and space, and the associated effects on self and community identity. This article examines recent Apprentice Boys of Derry parades in Northern Ireland as a mechanism by which a community that has lost control of symbolically significant space seeks to demonstrate an ongoing attachment to critical places. Twice-yearly parades allow Protestants to narrate their experience in the town of Derry/Londonderry as a victory, despite circumstantial evidence which suggests otherwise. The ability to claim victory through parading provides members of the Apprentice Boys organization with a raison d'etre, and serves in place of an aggressive agenda to regain control of territorial icons. The article draws upon extensive fieldwork, including interviews with key figures on both sides of the sectarian divide, and explores the nature of the community and the evolution of its parades as Protestants have lost influence in the town since the onset of Northern Ireland's Troubles. It suggests that, in the study of ethno-territorial conflicts, attention should be paid to the tactics of those who lose hegemony, as their actions affect the potential for conflict management and the likelihood of ongoing strife.     

Reconceptualising local labour markets in the context of cross-border and transnational labour flows: The Irish example

The increased prevalence of border-crossing labour of various types makes an uneasy juxtaposition of the ‘local’ and the ‘transnational’ or the ‘global’ and raises two classes of questions. These concern, firstly, the definition of the local in local labour markets and, secondly, the role of state borders in regulating and shaping flows of border-crossing workers. The paper begins to explore these issues. It questions the conceptualisation and definition of local labour markets and outlines a case for transnational labour and state borders to be included in their theorisation. Following this, drawing on studies of recruitment and interviews with labour market actors on both sides of the Irish border it discusses how state borders impact on different types of labour in different circumstances and outlines the paradoxical and sometimes contradictory nature of state borders in labour regulation and employers' strategies. It concludes by arguing that state borders might be moved from the edge of local labour market studies to a place much nearer their centre.     

The Power of Infrastructures: a Counternarrative and a Speculation

“Infrastructural power” refers to how states “penetrate” their societies and also how local organizations resist such attempts. This essay explores the latter sense of infrastructural power. First, it notes aspects of local power in ancient Mesopotamia, tracing the existence of councils and assemblies over about 3000 years and establishing the concept of a “heterarchy of power” in Mesopotamia, which is a counternarrative to assertions of totalitarian power by kings and central governments. There follows a cross-cultural review of selected other ancient cities and states in order to assess comparable and contrasting local organizations and degrees of infrastructural power. Finally, resistance to state power is explored, and a speculation about the qualities of stability and fragility of political power in early cities and states is advanced.     

The ‘R’ in BRICs: is Russia an emerging power?

The concept of emerging powers presupposes several features shared by the states in question including regional preponderance, aspiration to a global role and the contesting of US unipolarity. This article assesses the role of Russia as an emerging power. It asks how Russians interpret the international system, what kind of system they would prefer, what they are trying to do in the current system and why, and how these considerations affect their relations with the US hegemony, other centres of power such as the EU, and other emerging powers. The author discusses the structural, liberal and regional interpretations of state behaviour and how they relate to the Russian model, arguing that Russia's policy is strongly affected by its domestic economic and political context. Russia is highly responsive to trends in the former Soviet Union and regions it perceives to be in its own space (e.g. EU and NATO Europe and north-east Asia). In the larger international system, Russia's approach is a mix of partnership or acquiescence on matters of vital interest to the hegemonic power, and more competitive behaviour on issues deemed central to Russian but peripheral to US interests. The article concludes that Russia is not an emerging power in the conventional sense. Its foreign policy is dominated by efforts to reverse the decline of the 1980s and 1990s. This entails fostering international conditions conducive to allowing reconsolidation without external hindrance. Its second major priority is regional: to restore Russian influence over the former Soviet states. In essence, Russian policy aims to limit further losses and promote conditions that will allow it to re-emerge as a great power.     

Performing race and gender: the exoticization of Josephine Baker and Anna May Wong

Josephine Baker and Anna May Wong are two exceptions to white hegemony in early show business. They became the first Afro-American and Chinese-American stars in the 1920s and reached international stardom in spite of their ethnicity but also because of it. Their careers and success were based on their exoticization. Baker and Wong's exoticism has much to do with ethnicity, but also with sex and gender. Their exotic dances on stage or on screen can be considered to be forms of erotic shows. This article shows how sex, gender, and race are entangled in their movies and burlesque shows. It also discusses the ways in which the agency and the audience of the performer should be taken into account, and analyzes how these performances were both rooted in Western imaginative geographies and connected to symbolic and material spaces.     

On De-Pathologizing Resistance

This introductory essay draws attention to two processes, the pathologization and exoticization of resistance. Working independently or in parallel, these two processes silence resistance by depoliticizing it as illogical or idealizing it in out-worldly terms. In both cases, resistance is caricatured as abnormal or exotic and distanced from current political priorities. I argue that analytical de-pathologization and de-exoticization of resistance can (a) provide valuable insights on the silencing of resistance and (b) help us understand the relationship between hegemony and resistance in terms that stretch beyond the moderately pathologizing view of political inaction as apathy or “false consciousness”. In my analysis, I also engage with James Scott's seminal view of resistance, which, despite its de-pathologizing orientation, fails to capture the dialectical relationship of resistance and hegemony. I suggest that attention to the pathologizing and exoticizing workings of power may reveal the complexity and compromising ambivalence of resistance and contribute to the broader field of resistance studies, conceived as renewed interest in insurrectionary movements, rebellion, and protest.     

THOMAS WATSON,PEASANT-POET: THE READING,WRITING AND RELIGION OF A CUMBRIAN DRY-STONE WALLER

Abstract

This article describes and elucidates the making of Manchester Chartism, with special reference to the Reform Crisis of 1830–32 and its role in highlighting and confirming divisions within and between groups of radicals. For all the importance of personalities, ideas, organisations and national as well as local reform issues, the history of Chartism in Manchester was shaped above all by the town's political configuration. Political and class identities became stronger in 1830–32. This, and subsequent differences of opinion on key questions, ensured that no inclusive reform alliance was possible in Manchester. After examining the Reform Crisis of 1830–32, tracing the separation of middle-class from working-class activists and exploring the internal schisms within plebeian and respectable middle-class campaigns, this article shows how the polarisation of the early 1830s continued into the Chartist period. Problems of contact, communication and sympathy between the different groups were never overcome, and Manchester Chartism would itself experience fragmentation and resistance, just as earlier popular mobilisations in the town had been divided and opposed.     

Geographies of Hardy's Wessex

The novels of Thomas Hardy represent a number of different “geographies”—the means by which their various characters and narrators explore places and come to know them. The “geographies” of the characters and narrators in Tess of the d'Urbervilles and The return of the native are examined in this essay. It shows that the “primal” geography of the youthful Tess, and of those who live on Egdon Heath, is represented as circular, and is constructed by more senses than the visual, while that of the reader is linear and wholly visual in its preoccupations with geology, cartography and the picturesque; and it examines the destruction of the “primal” geography in Tess, as she becomes an itinerant labourer. The task of the narrators, in their attempt to mediate between the two geographies, is considered, and it is suggested that this attempt is bound to fail, because the division between them is founded in an idea of history, as of a moment of primal unity and its subsequent differentiation, which is not perceived as open to question.     

Who Has the Biggest Bulls? Royal Power and the Persepolis Apadāna

Relationships between power and architecture are a feature of all great civilizations and the Achaemenid world was no exception to this. The architecture of Achaemenid buildings and their relief sculpture was designed to reflect and reinforce the power and status of the Great King. At the heart of this visual program lay the audience hall (apadāna) at Persepolis. In seeking to explain and understand the messages written into this building, we tend to approach the structure as a completed work and view it from the last point in its lifecycle. As a result, we focus on its tribute procession relief and allow ideas of empire to dominate our gaze. This limits our ability to understand how and why the building’s intended audience and message of power might have diverged at different stages in its construction. This article re-examines the art and architecture of the audience hall at Persepolis and redirects the viewer’s gaze to the images of bulls rather than the tribute procession. In focusing on the role of bulls in the scheme of decoration, the article presents a more nuanced reading of the building in its historical, social and architectural context. It shows how Darius I used the Persepolis apadāna to display his authority to rule and to assert the primacy of his status amongst his fellow elites.