Connective action mechanisms in a time of political turmoil: virtual disability rights protest at Donald Trump’s inauguration

This paper explores the connective action mechanisms that underpin the rapid formation of online counter-publics in the wake of disruptive political events through a case study of crowd-sourced disability protest launched in response to Donald Trump’s election as U.S. President. Coverage of this protest in U.S. news media is reviewed also as a first step towards assessing the ability of this initiative to influence public discourse. Findings suggest that controversial election results can spur mobilisation, but by themselves do not appear to be sufficient for connective action to really flourish and succeed. Personal action frames that typically are central to connective action struggled to emerge in crowd-sourced contributions that focused on Trump and his politics. The reasons behind these outcomes and their implications for the potential effectiveness of crowd-sourced protest are discussed.     

Pushed to the margins of the city: The urban night as a timespace of protest at Nuit Debout,Paris

Geographers studying protest movements have brought attention to the social and spatial contexts in which political action is constituted. As the legal right to protest has become more and more restricted in many Western, activists have had to seek new times and spaces for protest, with protest camps having risen alongside the anti-austerity movement since 2011. The ongoing Nuit Debout protests in Paris have turned explicitly to night, drawing on experience of previous protests to colonise this timespace on a recurring basis, laying to claim to the night as a moment for protest. This paper therefore uses the case of Nuit Debout to consider more widely how night shapes (urban) protest movements. I argue that the move to the night might be seen as an attempt to find a timespace in which a more open and creative politics is possible, strategically responding to the reduction in the freedom to protest in the more heavily surveyed day. I explore how the specific characteristics of night have both facilitated innovation at Nuit Debout and other sites, but also the restrictions that night has brought. More broadly, this helps us understand the changing dynamics of urban spaces and rhythms as night-time activity intensifies.     

Lessons from Praxis: Autonomy and Spatiality in Contemporary Latin American Social Movements

In the course of the 20th century, left‐libertarian thought and praxis never ceased to be present in Latin America, even during the most difficult years of competition with Marxism‐Leninism and of military repression. But it was above all from the 1990s onwards that particularly original kinds of libertarian thought and praxis began to flourish there. Alongside more or less renewed versions of classical anarchism, new forms of praxis and analysis emerged at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century; from Mexican neo‐Zapatism to a part of Argentina's piqueteros to some expressions of Brazil's sem‐teto movement, many new movements and ideas have developed in the last two decades. These new movements are at the same time remarkably libertarian and by no means reducible to the very honourable but somewhat too restrictive label “anarchism”. In fact, many of them are clearly “hybrid”, in the sense that they are products of both left‐libertarian and Marxist influences. Typically, these Latin American movements share a commitment to principles such as horizontality, self‐management and decentralism (which have never been part of Marxism's typical repertoire of practices and principles); moreover, autonomy is a key notion for most of them. Furthermore, spatial practices, territorialisation among them, are proving decisive for many movements and protest actions. The concept of territory is one of those “geographical” concepts that have been intensely subjected, in recent decades, to strong attempts of redefinition and debugging. In this paper, the territory is fundamentally seen (as a first approximation) as a space defined and delimited by and through power relations, and it is important to see that power (both heteronomous and autonomous power) is exerted only with reference to a territory and, very often, by means of a territory. The kind of power exerted by emancipatory social movements does not constitute an exception to this rule.     

加拿大和美国对古巴政策的分歧

由于加拿大与美国的特殊关系 ,使得它在处理战后一些重大的国际事务时不得不与美国保持一致 ,但惟独在古巴问题上与美国相悖。美国一贯视拉美为后院 ,视古巴为共产主义在拉美的桥头堡。加拿大公开反对美国对古巴的封锁政策。古巴问题显示出加美对外政策的纠葛     

Memory and Non-Place: Visual Testimonies of Japanese American Internment During World War II

This article addresses the little-known history of Japanese Latin American internment during WWII. Classified as ‘illegal aliens’ and ‘enemy aliens’, 2,264 Japanese Latin Americans were stripped of citizenship from their home countries, denied rights in the United States, and ultimately deprived reconciliation due to their undocumented status. Using the traces of this history as a case study, I explore the strategic memories Japanese Latin Americans create about non-place – spaces of statelessness or states of exception – that allow them to make claims about state violence committed against them under these conditions, and, second, argue that demands for justice against political violence entail not only bringing light to erased histories but also developing engaged acts of reception that account for survivors’ claims to the memories of non-place. Visual testimonies, such as the Denshō Digital Archive and the short documentary Hidden Internment: The Art Shibayama Story (2004), affectively connect a viewer/listener to the memory of trauma, to an inexpressible haunting, and thus are critical platforms for creating a collective memory between survivors and the digital generation of postmemory.     

Visualising Traces of the Past in Latin America*

The articles included in this special issue address the shifting relationship between traces of the past and photography in Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present day. Looking at different forms of materiality and trace in Latin America, from pre-Columbian remains to body art and industrial ruins, this issue also understands photographs as material objects that ‘act’ within particular visual economies. In this introduction, we offer some brief reflections on ruins and ruination in Latin America, and on the relationship between photography and the past.     

Why They Think Like Gringoes: The Discourse of U.S.–Latin American Relations

Eldon Kenworthy. America/Américas: Myth in the Making of U.S. Policy towards Latin America
Martha L. Cottam. Images and Intervention: U.S. Policies in Latin America
James William Park. Latin American Underdevelopment: A History of Perspectives in the United States, 1870–1965
John A. Britton. Revolution and Ideology: Images of the Mexican Revolution in the United States
Frederick B. Pike. FDR's Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Gently chaotic Chaos     

The transatlantic Muslim diaspora to Latin America in the nineteenth century

Since the 16th century, African Muslims figured prominently among the slave population of the Americas. While the number of Muslims pulled into the trade has always been a matter of speculation, lists of Africans rescued from slave ships provide us with some clues about the size and direction of the Muslim diaspora to Latin America in the 19th century. Based on an analysis of tens of thousands of names recorded in these lists, this essay argues that the majority of Muslim captives leaving Africa departed from Upper Guinea and suggests that Cuba was the center of the forced Muslim diaspora in the Americas. It traces the transatlantic links that connected particular regions of embarkation in Africa to their counterparts in Latin America and considers the implications of those connections for religious and cultural change within 19th-century slave populations. The essay challenges in important ways the colonial/postcolonial divide in Latin American history and uses Islam to pose important questions about the dynamics of social change across slave societies.     

冯夏威的自杀殉国与民族主义的社会动员

论文简述了冯夏威自杀殉国与1905年抵制美货运动的联系及其民族英雄形象塑造的过程和重要意义。1905年华侨冯夏威为抗议美国排华政策,在上海美国领事馆门口服毒自尽,奏响了抵制美货运动的序曲,并以民族英雄的形象贯穿运动始终。冯夏威的民族英雄形象是个体自塑与社会他塑的复合体。自杀殉国与遗书自述,完成了个体自塑的描摹;各方悼念与报道宣传,实现了社会他塑的目标。其自杀动机与反美抵制行为,契合了中国近代民族主义的发展潮流与认同需求,个人意志表达呈现出社会化、国家化、民族化的趋向。中国近代民族主义的急进发展,不仅为社会他塑提供了空间与动源,而且也认可了个体自塑的存在与价值。     

The World Bank–United States–Latin American Triangle: The Negotiations with Socialist Chile, 1970–1973

This paper sheds light on the largely unknown negotiations between Chile and the World Bank (WB) during the presidency of Salvador Allende (1970–1973). The prevalent understanding of the WB's involvement in Latin America portrays the Bank as a loyal ally of the U.S. government and as an institution with the power to impose its views on its borrowers. Yet, an in-depth analysis of previously unexamined primary sources demonstrates that rather than reflecting a dynamic in which the relationship was between Washington and the WB on the one hand, and Chile on the other hand, these relations constituted a WB–U.S.–Chile asymmetric triangle. Despite profound ideological discrepancies, multiple pressures, and constraints, Allende's government and the WB conducted high-ranking negotiations that challenged the U.S.-promoted economic embargo against Chile. The examination of this counterintuitive relationship sheds new light on Allende's positioning in the international arena and on the functioning of the World Bank, thereby providing a unique prism through which to reconsider dichotomist perceptions of the Cold War in Latin America.     

学区化外部性对城市空间的影响

本文分析了学区房和学区的不同意义,进而对学区的正负外部性进行了解析,认为学区、学校、个人、政府间复杂的博弈关系最终导致了城市中的社会空间分异和居住空间分异的加强。在梳理发达国家主要城市经验、对比北京市与剑桥市的学区发展基础上,指出当前的划区政策增强了学区的稀缺性,却没有增加公平性,从而助推房价的高涨。为了更好地促进教育均等化实现,政府应努力提高优质教育学校的数量;形成资本性收入在学校和市场间的合理流动与分配;废弃以学区为主实施优质学区管理的办法,实施学校分层化管理,从而促进教育公平性和对人力资源开发这一综合目标的实现。     

拉丁美洲与加勒比地区的国际移民——兼论中国移民的生存发展空间

通过对拉美历史上四次国际移民历史和趋向的发展变化、非法移民及其原因、移民侨汇对国民经济的重大影响、移民跨国中小企业的形成与发展等方面的分析,探讨了拉丁美洲与加勒比地区国际移民的历史、现状以及中国移民在这一地区的生存与发展空间。     

Art as a diagnostic: assessing social and political transformation through public art in Cairo,Egypt

Since January 2011, Egypt has undergone several waves of political upheaval in order to craft a new form of governance. Central to this process has been the role of art. This article argues that artistic interventions that engage with the idea of public space and that take place in the public space of the city engender interactions that illuminate the complexities and difficulties currently facing Egyptian society. More so than serving as documentation of what has taken place or as acts of protest, public art can serve as a diagnostic of issues that simmer underneath the surface of national politics. Based on interviews, focus groups, and observations conducted between 2011 and 2013 with Cairo-based artists and arts advocates, the paper explores the way in which public art has signaled tensions regarding class, gender and increasing political polarization. By exploring the relationship between art, artists and urban space, this paper extends analyses on political transitions to take account of the effects produced by forms of artistic expression within the public sphere.     

Sliding Scale of Spaces and Dilemmas of Internationalism

Internationalism of the subaltern classes has a long and tortuous history and different patterns of space and scale management. To think of contemporary social movements, internationalism involves analyzing how different spatial‐geographical levels of resistance are interrelated. Globalization has led to a mutation in the spatial and temporal conditions of political activity and collective protest and thus for internationalist activity. The concept used by Bensaïd of “sliding scale of spaces” seems particularly adequate to deal with the changing and complex geographies of capitalist globalization. Though all scales are not equivalent, internationalism requires the capacity to act in all of them and taking into account this plurality of spaces and their mutual influence. Managing the sliding scale of spaces is then a key strategic element of contemporary internationalism.     

‘Sistem te laže!’: the anti‐ruling class mobilisation of high school students in Bosnia and Herzegovina

This article presents the case of a high school student‐led protest movement in the Bosnian towns of Jajce and Travnik. Over the course of 2016 and 2017, the students developed opposition to a plan for an ethnically segregated high school in Jajce. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, ethnicity is strongly politicised and limits the political activities of citizens to what is prescribed by the elites of their respective ethnic groups. In particular, Bosnian youth is often named as part of an apathetic ‘lost generation’ whose voices are smothered by this ethno‐political framework. I argue that the political agency of ordinary young Bosnians should not be neglected, since the formulations of their relationship with the state form meaningful political activities. The student protests in Jajce and Travnik are telling examples of their political agency. In an analysis of the protest movement's actions, I show that the students adopt a narrative that opposes the ruling political class and their prevalence of personal interests over the future of younger generations.     

Peasants Revolt? Re-evaluating the 17 June Uprising in East Germany

This study re-evaluates the 17 June Uprising, the first in theCommunist bloc, in light of protest in the countryside. Theexperience of state violence in the years before 1953 compelledmany in the countryside to avoid public expressions of oppositionbut did not eliminate peasant protest. Villagers directed theircomplaints against communist leaders and policies, especiallyagricultural collectivization, and thereby played a significantrole in the events leading up to the uprising as well as therebellion itself. In analysing this opposition, this essay concludesthat rural modes of resistance varied by region but were generallyless overt than strikes and demonstrations employed by workers.Instead, peasants, especially in purely agrarian regions, employedtraditional village forms of opposition, which emphasized reclaimingpublic space by cowing local representatives of power. In theend, this protest lasted throughout the summer—much longerthan those in the cities—and compelled communist leadersto postpone the collectivization of agriculture until 1959–60.     

Looking Forward by Looking Back: May Day Protests in London and the Strategic Significance of the Urban

This paper deals with the question of how oppositional movements can adapt their protest strategies to meet recent socio-spatial transformations. The work of Lefebvre provides several clues as to how an alternative discourse and appropriation of space could be incorporated in such protest strategies. One of the central themes in Lefebvre's work is that the appearances, forms and functions of urban space are constitutive elements of contemporary capitalism and thus that an alternative narrative of urban space can challenge or undermine dominant modes of thinking. What exactly constitutes the "right" kind of alternative discourse or narrative is a matter of both theoretical and practical consideration. The paper analyses one case: the May Day protests in London in 2001, in which a protest group, the Wombles, managed to integrate theoretical insights into their discourse and practice in a highly innovative manner. Since cities, and global cities in particular, play an ever more important role in maintaining the consumption as well as production practices of global capitalism; they potentially constitute local sites where global processes can be identified and criticised. It is shown that the Wombles effectively made use of these possibilities and appropriated the symbolic resources concentrated in London to exercise a "lived critique" of global capitalism. Since the Wombles capitalised on trends that have not yet ended, their strategies show a way forward for future anti-capitalist protests.     

Agamben,Postcoloniality, and Sovereignty in South Korea

This paper examines modern Korean politics through the framework of Giorgio Agamben's theories of sovereign power, bare life, and the state of exception. Though his political analysis draws from the European history, we contend that the nature of his method attests to the possibility of analogical examples in non‐Western places. Thus, we argue that a postcolonial encounter with Agamben may enrich our understanding of sovereignty and political geography. In the Korean context, such an analysis needs to consider that sovereign power has been shaped by the itineraries of colonialism and empire. Korea's political space is deeply marked by the legacy of Japanese colonialism, the imperial interventions by the U.S., and the division of the peninsula. Thus, Korea offers a valuable lens through which to read Agamben's critique of sovereignty. Our paper offers such a reading to argue that a state of exception functions as the underlying nomos for postcolonial Korea.