Dealing with the contested past in Serbia: decontextualisation of the war veterans memories

This article addresses the protracted process that took place following the wars of the 1990s through which the war veteran populations in Serbia were fragmented, alienated and marginalised. The main assumption in this paper is that gaining control over the veteran populations was a crucial step in silencing any public reckoning with the nation's criminal past. Drawing on the case study of the top‐down reframing of the war veterans' memories, I show that the most effective strategy was found to be first to fragment the veteran population and then to encourage them to de‐contextualise and reframe their memories replacing concrete historical suffering with abstract remembrance. This resulted in the reinstitution of Serbia's former national narrative of Serbian victimisation. It is suggested that the Serbian case of collective memory reconstruction after the wars of the 1990s is a prime example of how post‐conflict states may mediate their contested past in order to bridge the gap between domestic demands and those of the international community.     

Chinese Engagement with Africa: The Case of Madagascar

Using field work in Madagascar as the foundation for a case study, two U.S.-based geographers examine the complex relations developing between many African nations and the Chinese government as well as ethnic Chinese citizens and guest-workers who live and work in Africa. The study investigates changes in the perceptions of Malagasy citizens of the Chinese presence and long-term effects of Chinese investments in Madagascar's economy. Although the Chinese living in Madagascar tend to be viewed as "cut from the same cloth," the study demonstrates that there is considerable differentiation depending on the length of residence, rates of intermarriage with Malagasy citizens, and feelings toward the recent "economic" immigrants and guest workers. The paper integrates archival data with interviews involving recent Chinese guest-workers living in Antananarivo in 2011 as well as results of a systematic survey of most active French-language "blogs" dedicated to Sino-Malagasy relations, with the goal of presenting a comprehensive account of past and present Chinese influences and behavior in Madagascar.     

Strategic spatial planning and contested ruralities: Insights from the republic of Ireland

Since the publication of the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP), a growing body of literature has emerged related to European spatial planning. Much of this literature is focused on the influence of the ESDP on city regions and urban policy in individual member states. Much less attention has been paid thus far to the influence of the ESDP on the formulation of spatial strategies and plans for rural areas. Within this context, this paper aims to explore the formulation of a national framework for spatial development in the Republic of Ireland, and in particular to examine the expression given to rural development and planning issues. This paper reviews the extent that the Irish National Spatial Strategy can provide a basis for a spatially defined (rather than sectoral based) rural policy by examining the policy construction of rurality and how this will impact on three aspects of rural planning policy: the conceptualization of the urban–rural relationship; managing rural settlements; and rural development. The paper concludes by developing wider lessons from the Irish example in the application of the European Union discourse of spatial planning to rural regions, and the difficulties associated with developing and implementing spatial policies in a deeply contested rural arena.     

The contested rescaling of economic governance in East Asia: a special issue

The special issue this article opens engages with an apparent conundrum that has often puzzled observers of East Asian politics—why, despite the region's considerable economic integration, multilateral economic governance institutions remain largely underdeveloped. The authors argue that this ‘regionalism problématique’ has led to the neglect of prior and more important questions pertaining to how patterns of economic governance, beyond the national scale, are emerging in East Asia and why. In this special issue, the contributors shift analytic focus onto social and political struggles over the scale and instruments of economic governance in East Asia. The contributions identify and explain the emergence of a wide variety of regional modes of economic governance often neglected by the scholarship or erroneously viewed as stepping stones towards ‘deeper’ multilateralism.     

论中国与印度尼西亚建交

中国与印度尼西亚建交是冷战时期中国与东南亚外交关系发展的重大事件。尽管印度尼西亚建国初期曾有其总工会代表团赴华与中共高层接触,但正式向中国政府提出两国建交问题的却是印度尼西亚前宗主国荷兰。荷兰利用荷—印(尼)联盟主导者的身份,企图在保留与台湾当局外交关系以及不支持中国加入联合国的情况下,以印度尼西亚与中国建交作为荷中建交的交换条件,并以此保持在华各类利益,但此举为中方所拒。荷兰不得已放弃对台湾当局的外交承认,由此台湾当局撤销驻印度尼西亚外交机构。在印度尼西亚方面,尽管美国施加了外交压力,但苏加诺总统仍采取了平衡外交政策,而中方也获得苏联对中国与印度尼西亚建交的支持。在两国的努力下,中国与印度尼西亚于1950年4月13日建交。     

Degrees of Engagement: Using Cultural Worldviews to Explain Variations in Public Preferences for Engagement in the Policy Process

Scholars have been studying the concept of public engagement and its role in the policy process for some time. Scholars have argued that understanding the interests and motivations of the public and engaging them in the decision‐making process can lead to better policy designs and, ultimately, better policy outcomes. However, studies of public engagement often assume that people have a desire to get involved in the policy process. This paper tests this key assumption using the case of nuclear facility siting in the United States to ask: what factors influence an individual's stated willingness to want to engage in the policy process? Using data from a national web survey fielded in 2013, we ask the public if and to what extent they would likely engage in the siting process if given the opportunity. Findings indicate that the likelihood of engagement varies rather substantially across individuals. We find that an individual's cultural belief system and existing level of political activity account for some of this variation. These findings suggest that public engagement programs may vary across groups and communities. In other words, the prospects of engagement are likely to appeal to some members of the population and not others.     

奕訢在甲午战争期间外交活动的考察

中日甲午战争爆发后,中国陆海军多次受挫.为挽危局,清廷重新启用已被罢黜九年之久的恭亲王奕.甲午战争期间,奕忻在处理中日交战、三国干涉还辽及护台的外交活动中,主要是乞求列强干涉之策,其对外的依赖表现出奕在外交活动中的软弱与怯懦.软弱的根本原因是当时清政府政治体制的腐败,经济的落后,军事的废弛.     

Participation and Power: Poor People's Engagement with India's Employment Assurance Scheme

‘Participation’ has become an essential part of good developmental practice for Southern governments, NGOs and international agencies alike. In this article we reflect critically on this shift by investigating how a ‘participatory’ development programme — India's Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) — intersects with poor people's existing social networks. By placing the formalized process of participation in the EAS within the context of these varied and uneven village–level relationships, we raise a number of important issues for participatory development practice. We note the importance of local power brokers and the heterogeneity of ‘grassroots’ (dis)empowerment, and question ideas of power reversals used within the participatory development literature.     

Engagement Within: An Anthropological Exploration of First Nations Engagement and Consulting Archaeology Within a Transnational Corporation

This article details our research within a large, publicly traded company to understand the ‘corporate culture’ within Cultural Resource Management as it is practiced today. We outline the trials, twists, and roadblocks in our attempt to first change, and then to merely understand, the nature of corporate culture in a large-scale environmental assessment company situated within development capitalism. In the end, we share how corporate archaeologists think about engagement with Indigenous communities in British Columbia in an attempt to look within the corporate sector to understand its worldview and perspectives. We then offer ‘solutions’ to drive internal, structural change in hopes of engendering a community-first approach as first step towards decolonizing commercial archaeology.     

Politics of Engagement: Gender Expertise and International Governance

This article studies the experiences of gender experts in international institutions of governance and examines their interactions with multiple actors in the governance system as they negotiate their authority to act as experts. Moving beyond binaries, such as those on the inside of hegemonic institutions versus those on the outside, or co-optation versus activism, the analysis uses processes of instrumentalization as a vantage point to lay out the multiple paths emerging in these politics of engagement. The article frames politics of engagement in terms of micropolitical tensions, ambivalences and contradictions that unfold in these interactions. It first argues that the boundaries that exist between inside and outside institutions are not clear cut because actors circulate between them. The study shows how gender experts instrumentalize their own life and career trajectories, navigating between advocacy and governance, to enhance their power in current institutional settings. It then focuses on instrumentalist discourses and traces their emergence in unequal negotiations. It demonstrates how gender experts can become part of the processes that they also critique. Finally, the study analyses strategies in which experts instrumentalize institutional inequalities to their advantage to produce diverse political possibilities with open-ended outcomes.     

洋务时期整体外交思想研究 --兼论中法交涉中义利结合外交思想

本文立足于洋务运动史、近代外交思想史既有研究,利用近年来出版的有关档案,考察中法越南交涉这一洋务时期具有代表性的重大外交个案,探讨洋务时期整体外交思想,认为义利结合的整体外交思想为洋务时期清朝政府的基本外交指导思想,从而反思中国近代外交思想史研究中若干误区.     

Citizenship, accountability and community: the limits of the CSR agenda

While the issue of the role of the private sector in development is very much on the agenda of donors and governments, mainstream Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) debates continue to neglect questions with regard to the accountability of companies to the communities in which they invest. Liberal notions of CSR place great emphasis on voluntary, partnership and market based approaches to tackling social and environmental problems and managing conflict. While the rise of voluntary standards and codes of conduct in the North and the growing popularity of various forms of 'civil regulation' has improved the responsiveness of corporations to social and environmental issues, there are doubts about their transferability or relevance in many southern settings. This is particularly so when viewed from the perspective of communities pursuing corporate accountability in the absence of donor, NGO or government pressure for company reform. It is in these 'majority world' settings that we encounter the limits of the liberal CSR agenda.
This article therefore explores the different tools that poorer communities have developed in order to construct mechanisms of corporate accountability. Recent work in India is drawn upon to ground the analysis, but reference is made to many other cases in different regions of the world and across a variety of sectors. It is suggested that many state-based, community-based and company-based factors determine the likely success of such initiatives. Power disparities and how to contest them emerge as key, however, and their neglect within mainstream CSR approaches undermines their ability to address issues of corporate accountability in situations characterized by sharp inequities in power. The emphasis here is on the process of promoting corporate accountability, and the relations of power that underpin these, rather than the achievement of more narrowly defined indicators of corporate performance.