The Gilded Age Wasn’t So Gilded in the Anthracite Region of Pennsylvania

The Lattimer Massacre occurred in September of 1897 in the anthracite coalfields of Northeast Pennsylvania. This tragic event saw the death of 19 miners, fired upon by local law enforcement and a posse gathered from local businessmen. This paper will situate this event amidst the deeply turbulent themes underlying the Gilded Age: race, American exceptionalism and Empire and labor struggle. A project undertaken by archaeologists from the University of Maryland seeks to restore the memory of the massacre, highlighting the implications of this history within the current anti-immigrant politics extant in its contemporary setting.     

‘The Tent’s Big Enough for Everyone’: online slash fiction as a site for activism and change

This article draws on a piece of wide-scale mixed-methods research (n = 429) that examines how women who write and read male/male erotica feel their involvement with the genre has affected their views on gender and sexuality and their political engagement with gay rights issues. Previous work has looked at how online slashfic communities might provide a safe space for exploring gender performance and sexuality, while other researchers have observed a tension between those who identify as queer themselves and those who only ‘play at queerness’ exclusively within the online environment. However, much of this work has examined the theoretical positioning of such forums as transgressive and/or political. Far fewer pieces have attempted to engage with the women who frequent such sites to ask them about whether their involvement in these online spaces has affected their attitudes and behaviours. This study looks not only at the ways in which online m/m fandoms can act as a safe space for women to explore their sexualities and gender identities, but whether and how these insights connect to women’s real-world lives. Data presented here shows a strong consensus among participants that involvement with explicit slash communities has had a positive effect on their lives, as well as contributing to beneficial changes in their knowledge, attitudes, and practices with regards to LGBTQ+ issues. Overall, slash is seen as a medium which can create better allies, encourage cross-identification, and bring about positive personal changes. To this extent, I argue that explicit online slash sites can act as heterotopias.     

‘Why can’t they meet in bars and clubs like normal people?’: the protective state and bioregulating gay public sex spaces

State regulation of gay public sex spaces (PSS) has prompted geographers to assess the influence that localised legalities exert in specific micro-spaces of interaction, and to expand this research into cities not considered to be archetypically ‘gay friendly’. Through the lens of Foucault’s governmentality, it is important to consider state-directed bioregulatory influences upon toilets and parks as PSS. Such bioregulation, with its aim of producing a ‘healthy’ sexual population, seeks to expose public sex as ‘dangerous’, encouraging a policing of PSS and the men who use them. Part of this bioregulation also enlists men using PSS as responsible for peer surveillance to ensure anonymity and privacy in PSS. This auto-surveillance develops a ‘common code of conduct’ leading these men to develop their own modes of ‘normativity’ within these hetero-challenging spaces. By consulting with men who use PSS, I unearth oral histories of how changing laws, policy and ‘mainstream’ attitudes towards PSS in Glasgow, Scotland, have impacted upon cruising and cottaging. This paper will provide a place-specific reading of gay urban sexscapes, exploring how state bioregulation encourages the creation of new gay practices, identities and geographies.     

‘Why Disgrace the Commonwealth?’ Ceylonese Communalism,the Search for Global Influence and the Politics of a Transnational Organisation, 1948–65

This article examines the progress of the commonwealth as a forum for political action by Ceylonese in the first two decades after the nation’s independence by focusing on the debate over Tamil political rights. Significantly, this domestic conflict intensified during a crucial phase in the commonwealth’s transition, from being essentially a members’ club consisting of Britain and the settler dominions to a multilateral organisation led by newly independent African and Asian states. In this ambivalent geopolitical landscape, an emerging small state such as Ceylon sought to use the commonwealth in such a way as to project itself on the world stage, while at the same time some of its citizens adopted the organisation as a focus for liberal causes against the state. In this way, it is argued, the ‘new commonwealth’ was being shaped by postcolonial British legacies of global influence and liberal politics.     

Why the World Matters: Hannah Arendt’s Philosophy of New Beginnings

Hannah Arendt’s philosophical project is an untiring attempt to argue that the world with all its failures and weaknesses does and should matter. Refusing to succumb to the destructive tendency within modernity, she cultivates creativity, action and responsibility. One way to appreciate the originality of Arendt’s philosophy of action and new beginnings is via her reading of two thinkers who were part of what she terms, “the great tradition.” If most commentary deals either with Heidegger’s influence on Arendt‘s thought or with her Augustinian origins, my aim is to trace Arendt’s lifelong conversation with both thinkers. It is in her doctoral dissertation on St. Augustine that she begins to distinguish herself from Heidegger’s understanding of the world, Dasein, and care. Without arguing that her work on Augustine is a hidden key to understanding her philosophy of new beginnings, an appreciation of Arendt‘s lifelong debate not only with Heidegger but also with Augustine enriches our understanding of why philosophy should pay more attention to the world, rather than try to escape from it .     

‘Why can't I get married?’—Denmark and the ‘Twenty-four year law’

Jackson (2000) proposes a 'rematerialization' of social and cultural geography. He argues for the grounding of geographical analysis in the concrete world of actual physical objects. Examining the work of Jackson (2000) and Miller (1987, 1998) this paper interrogates this return to the physical. In particular, this paper argues that current articulations of physicality rely on a universal metaphysics of matter--positing matter as a universally undifferentiated conditionality. This reliance is problematic in that it signifies an essentialist dichotomy between the objective (the material) and the subjective (the textual). Also this dichotomy necessitates a linear dialectics of matter subjugating the material to the determinative action of form. In subjecting Jackson's notion of rematerialization to a critical philosophical reading, the aim is to disturb the unquestioned metaphysical implications of this return. Indeed it is to suggest that a rematerialization of social and cultural geography must account for the wayward expressiveness of matter--its representative and active capacities outside its relation with the subject.     

How Would Jesus Vote? The Churches and the Election of the Rudd Government

The Coalition's clear victory over Labor at the 2004 federal election after prominent campaigning by conservative church-based groups – along with the election to the Senate of a member of the Family First party – seemed to many commentators to confirm the growing power of a ‘Religious Right’ in Australia. This paper argues that two features of the 2007 federal election campaign are impossible to square with the rise of the Religious Right thesis. First, Labor won in 2007 without shifting its leadership, policies or electoral strategy to suit the Christian Right. Second, the contributions of church groups to the 2007 election campaign were not dominated by a single perspective but covered a wide range of issues and expressed competing views on key policy issues. This pluralism allowed Kevin Rudd, the Labor Party and even the Greens room to present themselves favourably to significant groups of Christian voters. The 2007 election suggests that, rather than being dominated by a hegemonic Christian Right, church involvement in Australian electoral politics is pluralistic in character.     

‘Therefore They Shouldn’t Exist’: The Carter Administration,the ‘Israel Lobby’ and the Sinai Settlements

Abstract

The Israeli settlements in Sinai could have been a fatal obstacle to Egyptian–Israeli peace, but the Jimmy Carter administration overcame it. The established narrative of how Israel ceded the Sinai settlements focuses on the Camp David summit. However, the real battle over the fate of the settlements was fought previously. In February–April 1978, the Carter administration attempted to turn pro-Israeli supporters in the United States against the Israeli position, according to which the Sinai settlements should remain in place. The Menachem Begin government mobilized to counter that push but lost the battle. Contrary to his image as an awkward political operator, Carter won over supporters of Israel effectively. The case raises questions regarding the oft-mentioned role of the ‘Israel lobby’ in preventing peace.     

Relax,Don’t Do It: A Future for Archaeological Monitoring

Preservation in situ and the monitoring of archaeological sites have become important themes since the acceptance and implementation of the Valletta Treaty. In the last few decades, our knowledge of degradation processes has increased manyfold, and a range of techniques have been tested and applied for use in both assessment and monitoring. Despite these successes, all is not well. First, we have little notion of the speed of the decay processes involved. This makes it difficult to distinguish between acute and protracted degradation. Apart from that, many assessments and subsequent monitoring projects rely (too?) heavily on complex and costly specialist technology. For any future preservation — in situ — projects low-tech observations together with best estimates of decay rates and archaeological site information should be combined to make an accurate assessment of the effects of decay on the archaeological record. Monitoring for preservation purposes is only appropriate if (1) decay processes occur within a relevant and measurable time scale, and (2) if mitigating actions can be taken or preservation ex situ can be performed (i.e. a rescue excavation) if significant degradation takes place.     

Why Aren’t Jewish Women Circumcised?

From Hellenistic to modern times, in the eyes of Jews and non-Jews alike, circumcision is a sign that marks the boundary between Jews and non-Jews. Jews are circumcised, gentiles are not. What, then, of Jewish women? Why are they not marked with a bodily sign attesting to their place within the covenant? Cohen argues that the Jews of antiquity seem not to have been bothered by this question probably because the fundamental Otherness of women was clear to them. Jewish women were Jewish by birth, but their Jewishness was assumed to be inferior to that of Jewish men. Jews and Christians, however, who opposed circumcision, used the non-circumcision of women as one of their supporting arguments.     

Why get involved? Finding reasons for municipal interventions in the Canadian music industry

This article investigates the role of Canadian municipal governments in relation to the development of music industry policy. It examines two attempts by Canadian cities (Calgary and Toronto) to develop municipally based music policies. Both cases are examined in context of the policies of other levels of government in Canada, where municipalities have not generally played a significant role in addressing the music industry. Historically, music industry policy has been a concern of federal government policies. The article addresses how this creates a particular conception of the industry and the extent to which municipal policies need to challenge this in order to be effective. Further, the article examines some of the other factors that constrain and shape the ability of Canadian municipalities to intervene in this field.