Disastrous hydropower,uneven regional development,and decolonization in India's Eastern Himalayan borderlands

Sikkim, a small Eastern Himalayan state in India has twenty-seven hydropower projects proposed under the Indian Power Ministry's hydropower initiative that envisions the Himalayan region as the country's "future powerhouse" (Dharamadhikary 2008; Kohli, 2011). In 2011, a 6.9 magnitude earthquake rocked Sikkim, the epicenter of which was located eerily close to two under construction dams and the Dzongu reserve, revered as sacred by Sikkim's Indigenous minority Lepchas. Drawing on interviews with Lepcha residents of Dzongu, and state geologists and disaster management officials, I center my analysis on their encounters with disasters and hydropower infrastructure. Building on decolonial theorizations and scholarship on Himalayan borderlands, I argue that disastrous hydropower forms on historical terrains shaped not only by geophysical conditions but also generations of uneven regional development, and the racialized colonial and postcolonial governance of the Eastern Himalayan frontier. In placing ‘disastrous’ as a prefix to hydropower, I follow my interlocutors who implicate state and private developers in producing disaster conditions in Sikkim even as they evade culpability by discursively shifting blame onto the region's “inhospitable terrain” (GoI 2008: 27). I demonstrate that despite key differences in their relation to state power both Dzongu Lepchas and Sikkimese technocrats, forward a materialist, place-based understanding of precarity, differential vulnerability, and uneven regional development. Centering Indigenous and regionalist critiques, I argue that the recent entry of hydropower development in the Eastern Himalayas, conceptualized by colonial authorities as India's “Mongolian Fringe” (Baruah, 2013), requires a closer attention to the entanglements of frontier-making and racialization in India. More broadly, I demonstrate how disastrous hydropower development in a racialized frontier region offers a productive entry into decolonial theorizing in the Indian context.     

Charles the Bald and Aethelwulf of Wessex: the alliance of 856 and strategies of royal succession

Scholars have usually supposed that the marriage of King Aethelwulf of Wessex to the daughter of Charles the Bald in 856 signified the creation of an anti-Danish alliance between the two rulers. That this union signified a royal accord is not in doubt but there is no evidence to associate it with any venture against Danes. Though the evidence is not conclusive it appears more probable that Aethelwulf's marriage to Princess Judith was part of a scheme to prevent or to undermine a rebellion in England then being fomented by Aethelwulf's son Aethelbald who desired his father's throne. For his part Charles the Bald aimed at gaining influence in England. At the time of her marriage Judith was crowned and anointed and this was a rare occurrence. When analyzed in the proper light it suggests the existence of a compact by the terms of which Aethelwulf would disinherit Aethelbald at some future date should Judith bear a son. The marriage, then, did not signify an alliance against Danes. Rather it denoted an alliance against Aethelwulf's son Aethelbald.     

The Swinging Gate: Katherine Mansfield's Missionary Vision

At the age of thirteen, Mansfield wrote “I want to be a Maori missionary” in her Book of Common Prayer. “The Swinging Gate: Katherine Mansfield's Missionary Vision” by Richard Cappuccio argues that Mansfield's initial diary entry is a lens through which one can read her interests in, rebellion against, and modifications of her Anglican background. The article discusses close readings of her poems “The Sea Child,” “The Butterfly,” and “To L.H. B.” as well as two of her stories — “Prelude,” and “How Pearl Button Was Kidnapped.” In addition it draws on journals and letters to focus on a relationship between Maori systems of belief, her affinities with Frank Harris's “A Holy Man (After Tolstoi),” and her final observations about G. I. Gurdjieff.     

Receiving Royals in Later Medieval York: Civic Ceremony and the Municipal Elite, 1478–1503

Abstract

This article examines the later medieval royal entry ceremony in York from the perspective of the social groups that designed and produced the spectacle. Deliberations of York's civic council comprise the main body of evidence for this study. It is argued that a mercantile oligarchy controlled the production of ceremony at every level. York's merchants dominated the design of civic receptions by excluding other secular and ecclesiastical groups native to the city from the decision-making process, and by resisting external interference by groups such as the nobility. The civic council made use of the topography of the city to reinforce the mercantile dimensions of the ceremony and to create a ceremonial space where they could communicate with the royal visitor. The merchant élite also adapted the form and content of the city's nuanced Corpus Christi celebrations to the royal entry. By these means they displayed and consolidated their position at the pinnacle of urban society at a time when their dominance over the city's economic, social and political structures was weakening.     

Adam Smith's analytic-synthetic method and the ‘system of natural liberty’

In the present paper I shall deal with Adam Smith's application of the analytic-synthetic method, which he considered to be the scientific method par excellence. I shall concentrate on some shortcomings in Smith's arguments and endeavour to explain them as resulting from a particular interpretation of the aforesaid method. The peculiarity of Smith's interpretation was that he omitted the analysis and that he thought the synthesis reflects the composition of an object out of pre-existing elements which are endowed with ‘essential qualities’. I shall then try to show that this methodological concept presupposed the view that society is a compound of independent individuals, i.e. an aggregate of Robinson Crusoes. Finally I shall discuss possible political reasons for this view. On the systematic level, I shall argue that political and scientific partisanship do not necessarily stand in contradiction to objective knowledge, and on the historical level, I shall plead for a ‘Social History of Ideas’.¹     

Asylum-seekers in Australia's international relations

The paper is divided into five sections. In the first, I offer some observations on the nature of 'sovereignty', and on the place of 'border controls' within sovereignty discourse. In the second, I discuss what it means to be a 'middle power', and what 'soft power' resources a middle power may need to use. In the third, I argue that crude populism has shaped recent responses to asylum-seekers, with scant regard to some of the wider consequences for Australia's reputation, but suggest that part of the blame lies with past failures of the foreign policy establishment to recognise genuine concerns entertained at mass level about the morality of Australian alignments and affiliations. In the fourth, I outline the key elements of Australia's recent policies towards asylum-seekers, and argue that they entail costs in terms both of Australia's reputation, and the nature of the Australian polity. In the fifth, I suggest some new directions to pursue.     

Why ethnic parties? A new theory of ethnic minority political strategy in Europe

Why do some ethnic minority groups in Europe form ethnic minority parties (EMPs), while others work within established, mainstream parties? I argue that an ethnic minority group's historical background influences its political engagement strategies. I propose that native groups (those that inhabited the territory of the modern‐day state in which they reside prior to that state's establishment), groups with territorial attachment (historical concentration in particular regions of the state) and groups with historical experiences of autonomy are more likely to form successful parties. Groups perceiving themselves as native to their state and that have enjoyed autonomy are more likely to feel entitled to the unique form of representation provided by an EMP. I test my theoretical expectations on an original data set of elections in European states in the period 1990 to 2012, finding that the three historical variables working in conjunction exert a strong positive influence on EMP entry and success.     

Foreword

This second issue of Colonial Latin American Review for 2003 offers four articles that focus primarily on colonial Mexico, if from different disciplinary perspectives. In “El misterio de los cap?´tulos perdidos de la Cro´nica mexicana de Hernando de Alvarado Tezozomoc”, Roc?´o Corte´s does some detailed scholarly sleuthing to propose a reconstruction of the original text of Tezozomoc's late sixteenth-century chronicle. Professor Corte´s suggests a solution to the supposed lacunae in this chronicle, and in so doing helps to establish a more accurate sense of the range of the chronicler's historical concerns. The article by art historian Ilona Katzew, “The Virgin of the Macana: Emblem of a Franciscan Predicament in New Spain”, surveys the iconographical history of the cult of this Virgin, a cult born of a seventeenth-century event in the Mexican missionary borderlands, but actively and broadly promulgated by the Franciscan order throughout the following century for reasons apparently as pragmatic as devotional. In “ ‘El plato ma´s sabroso’: Eucarist?´a, plagio diabo´lico y la traduccio´n criolla del can?´bal”, Carlos Ja´uregui studies the trope of cannibalism as it emerged in the writings of a series of colonial writers, from early historians of the Encounter through the Mexican Creole Baroque as represented by Sor Juana Ine´s de la Cruz. Professor Ja´uregui is particularly interested in the evolution of this trope over time as a means to articulate notions of similarity and difference with regard to indigenous peoples and Europeans. In our fourth article, “A Reinterpreation of Nahuatl Poetics: Rejecting the Image of Nezahualcoyotl as a Peaceful Poet”, Professor Jongsoo Lee offers a persuasive revisionist argument regarding the work traditionally attributed to the Texcocan “poet king”.     

"Oh Mary,Don't You Weep": Progressive Religion in the Living Wage Movement

Abstract

Despite religion's absence in much of secular labor and social movement theories' analyses, progressive religious coalitions are a fundamental partner in the rise of new labor activism in the United States. At a time when media and academia focus on the strength of the "religious right" at the federal level, the success of the municipal living wage movement demonstrates the under-recognized power of the "religious left" in cities around the nation. Through examples from case studies, I document the importance of progressive religion's material and cultural contributions to the movement. In the end, I also contend that paying attention to the successful dynamics of religion-labor alliances at the municipal level can provide important lessons for revitalizing progressive religion's role at the federal level.     

HISTORICAL AND LITERARY APPROACHES TO THE “FINAL SOLUTION”: SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER AND JONATHAN LITTELL

This article discusses together two recent prize‐winning works of epic proportions that have received much attention: Saul Friedländer's two‐volume historical study Nazi Germany and the Jews and Jonathan Littell's novel Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones), the former of which focuses on victims and the latter on perpetrators of the “Final Solution.” I provide a critical analysis of Littell's novel, especially with respect to its seemingly fatalistic mingling of erotic and genocidal motifs and its disavowal or underestimation of the difficulty and necessity of understanding victims of the Nazi genocide. My analysis raises the question of the extent to which the notoriety of the novel may be due to the way it instantiates influential approaches to both literature and the Holocaust in terms of an aesthetic of the sublime, excess, radical ambiguity (resolvable at best into irony and paradox), and fatalistic entry into an incomprehensible “heart of darkness.” Crucial here is the notion that an object (paradigmatically, the Holocaust) both demands representation or explanation and ultimately is beyond comprehension, narrative, or even words. I also reevaluate the bases for the justified praise accorded Friedländer's masterwork and question certain claims made on its behalf by commentators, especially with respect to literary and historiographical innovation. In so doing, I explore and defend the role of critical theory in relation to historical narrative.     

Map Resolution and Spatial Autocorrelation

Moran's I, a measure of spatial autocorrelation, is affected by map resolution and map scale. This study uses a geographic information system (GIS) to examine the resolution effects. Empirical distribution of wildland fires in Idyllwild, California, and hypothetical distributions of ordered patterns are analyzed. The results indicate that Moran's I increases systematically with the resolution level. The resolution effects can be summarized by a log-linear function relating the I coefficients to resolution levels. Empirical tests that compare the distribution of fire activity in a vegetation map and in a topographic map confirm the resolution effects observed.     

‘Peasantist nationalism’ in inter-war Greece (1927–41)

Abstract

‘Peasantist nationalism’ was a new radical nationalist discourse in the twentieth century. The crisis in agriculture in the 1920s, urbanism and the perceived overpopulation of the cities were important social factors that instigated the intellectual construction of the ‘peasantist nation’. Peasantist nationalism was by and large constructed by agronomists, a new stratum of technocrats who used nationalism as a vehicle for social mobility and their entry into the strata of the organic intellectuals of the bourgeoisie. Peasantist nationalist ideas, set forth earlier by the agronomists, were adopted by Metaxas' quasi-fascist regime and upgraded to the level of the state's hegemonic ideology.     

Postfeminist possibilities: unpacking the paradoxical performances of heterosexualized femininity in club spaces

One of the ways in which the heterosexualization of women's bodies is made apparent is through the blatant promotion of Ladies' Night at night clubs. These are typically weekly events, of which women are granted complimentary entry by club operators. Ladies' Night is thus popularly construed as a time and space in which men can gain access to many ‘heterosexy’ female bodies. The deliberate deployment of specific kinds of (post)feminine bodies and subjectivities—slim, savvy, and sassy—in club promotional material is often couched in discourses that highlight female expression, consumption, and autonomy. Such a celebratory rhetoric of women as empowered actors seems to suggest that traditional gendered expectations of women as self-reserved, timid and vulnerable to sexual aggression are archaic and are no longer valid. In light of this, I investigate how women negotiate a postfeminist terrain within the context of Singapore's night clubbing scene. By employing qualitative methods such as in-depth interviews, ethnographic work, and discourse analysis, I argue that clubs are paradoxical spaces for performing gendered and (hetero)sexualized selves that vacillate between affirming and subverting heteropatriarchal regimes. In so doing, this paper hopes to contribute to the scholarship on feminist geography by bringing recent debates on postfeminism into a productive conversation with the literature on (hetero)sexuality and space.     

The Receiving End of Reform: Everyday Responses to Neoliberalisation in Southeastern Mexico

Abstract: This article builds upon the literature on neoliberalism and environment as well as studies on community forestry by examining the creative accommodations that rural producers have made in navigating Mexico's neoliberal turn. In contrast to previous work that emphasizes macro‐level processes (eg privatization of public natural resources) and local resistance, I employ Bourdieu's theory of practice to examine the symbolic and material dimensions of local responses to neoliberal policy reform. Drawing on research from nine communities in the state of Quintana Roo, I argue that local producers have accommodated neoliberal policies and programs by adopting hybrid logics, property regimes, forms of organization, and modes of exchange. Moreover, I contend that these creative responses constitute elements of a longstanding “culture of accommodation” to institutional change that predates Mexico's neoliberal reforms.     

MARGINS AND MONSTERS: HOW SOME MICRO CASES LEAD TO MACRO CLAIMS1

How do micro cases lead us to surprising macro claims? Historians often say that the micro level casts light on the macro level. This metaphor of “casting light” suggests that the micro does not illuminate the macro straightforwardly; such light needs to be interpreted. In this essay, I propose and clarify six interpretive norms to guide micro‐to‐macro inferences. I focus on marginal groups and monsters. These are popular cases in social and cultural histories, and yet seem to be unpromising candidates for generalization. Marginal groups are dismissed by the majority as inferior or ill‐fitting; their lives seem intelligible but negligible. Monsters, on the other hand, are somehow incomprehensible to society and treated as such. First, I show that, by looking at how a society identifies a marginal group and interacts with it, we can draw surprising inferences about that society's self‐image and situation. By making sense of a monster's life, we can draw inferences about its society's mentality and intelligibility. These will contest our conception of a macro claim. Second, I identify four risks in making such inferences — and clarify how norms of coherence, challenge, restraint, connection, provocation, and contextualization can manage those risks. My strategy is to analyze two case studies, by Richard Cobb, about a band of violent bandits and a semi‐literate provincial terrorist in revolutionary France. Published in 1972, these studies show Cobb to be an inventive and idiosyncratic historian, who created new angles for studying the micro level and complicated them with his autobiography. They illustrate how a historian's autobiographical, literary, and historiographical interests can mix into a risky, and often rewarding, style.     

Business dynamism,educational attainment,and residential location choice

Using individual-level, geocode data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth's 1997 cohort, I ask whether business dynamism in local labor markets, defined as the rates of job creation and establishment entry, affects the location decisions of labor force participants, and I examine how effects differ for highly and less educated labor force participants. I find that a one standard deviation increase in business dynamism is associated with a 2%–4% increase in the probability a college graduate chooses a metropolitan statistical area and an 8%–15% decrease for high school graduates with no college experience. These results support recent findings documenting a decrease in responsiveness to local labor market conditions and suggest that incentivizing job creation in local labor markets may not be enough to offset the trend of declining internal migration in the United States.     

The circulatory panopticon: Real names,rail infrastructure and Foucault's realist turn

This article examines the contemporary Chinese rail system as a circulatory panopticon: an apparatus that uses the “natural” movements of the population to render them legible and safe. The panoptic effect of rail space has emerged only recently. The Chinese state's introduction of the “real-name system” has made a state-legible identity an inextricable part of everyday life, and recent transformations in ticketing and station entry have placed it at the center of mobility practices as well. Synthesizing Foucault's apparatus of security with Karen Barad's realist conception of the apparatus, this article examines how the more-than-human elements of the rail system realize a panoptic assemblage out of the movements of passengers. Based on participant observation and interview data, this article examines three key elements of the rail system: the national identity card, the ticket, and the station entrance. Drawing on Barad's account of diffraction, I analyze how the particular material characteristics of these things both function to realize the circulatory panopticon and also to introduce novel discontinuities and fractures. This paper makes two contributions. First, it argues for a greater attention to the question of reality in Foucault's thinking: just as the art of government increasingly recognizes and calibrates itself against ‘reality,’ Foucault's analysis of governmentality becomes increasingly realist. Second, it shows how infrastructure is simultaneously a font of state power and a source of problems for the state—a contradiction deeply relevant in China today.     

On Being ‘Hen's Teeth’: Interdisciplinary practices for women of color in Geography

This paper examines the position of women of color in the discipline of geography in terms of our relatively small numbers, or what one geography professor described as being ‘as rare as hen's teeth’. Using pedagogical examples, the paper analyzes institutionalized racism and sexism at the level of the educational institution, both in geography and also in interdisciplinary locations such as gender studies. Drawing from collective analysis and interdisciplinary research, I propose interdisciplinary strategies of mentorship and support, intellectual exchange, and political engagement outside the academic context as ways to address disciplinary isolation for women of color in the field. I argue that these strategies can offer crucial alternative entry points into intellectual and political projects and can open up the discipline itself by destabilizing its structural and intellectual hierarchies and expanding the scope and relevance of geographic research.

‘Asian American women in human geography are as rare as hen's teeth.’ (Professor in Geography)     

‘Turning Sex into a Game’: Gogodala Men's Response to the AIDS Epidemic and Condom Promotion in Rural Papua New Guinea

ABSTRACT Rugby league is the national sport of Papua New Guinea and the game's huge popularity and international profile has been used in recent condom promotion campaigns in the nation's fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic. In this paper, I argue that the promotion of condom use through rugby league requires a national campaign strategy that includes understandings of condom use and masculinity at the rural level. I demonstrate this through a study of Gogodala men's understandings of the epidemic and condom use in Western Province. The Gogodala are a Christian‐based society and many blame the national condom promotion strategy for an increase in promiscuity and for ‘turning sex into a game’. Condom availability in this rural area continues to be restricted to a family planning program that promotes Christian values and excludes unmarried men. I explore the male condom dilemma where young men are more concerned with avoiding accusations that their sexual behaviour puts them at risk of contracting HIV despite acknowledging the preventative value of using condoms. In this context young men disassociate themselves from the disease and condom use through a process of calculated risk or risk minimisation.