Tobacco,Good and Bad: Prosaics of Marijuana in a Sepik Society

In the Murik Lakes at the mouth of the Sepik River, young men debated middle‐aged and senior men about the moral value of marijuana, and the moral status of their community as a whole, as they did. In part, their discourse had been absorbed into perduring, but shifting, genres that preceded the arrival of the drug. On the one hand, it had been assimilated into precapitalist views of trade and several dimensions of conflict discourse. On the other, it had given rise to a combined, partly market‐based, partly kinship‐based view of intertribal trade, as well as to a secular predilection for the drug's perceived effects. Marijuana talk, according to Lipset, comprised an important forum in which Murik men engaged one another, not conclusively, but open‐endedly, in uneasy, nervous dialogue about the increasingly limited efficacy of male agency in postcolonial PNG.     

Logging,Women and Submarines: Some Changes in Kamula Men's Access to Transformative Power

In this paper I describe how, for the Kamula, the productive elicitation of both familiar and modern things often requires access to the transformative capacities of ‘bush spirits’. The Kamula narratives I deal with outline how elements of modernity (such as money, logging, guns) are relocated into the domain of these spirits. By the mediation of these spirits, sometimes disturbing, even dangerous, aspects of modernity are transformed and then productively transferred to Kamula men such that they can apparently more effectively negotiate the new forces that now structure their lives. Through these narrative and magical definitions of agency, Kamula men become complicit in a modernity that is increasingly both the source and negation of their power.     

Landscapes of Desire: Parks, Colonialism, and Identity in Victorian and Edwardian Ireland

Ireland’s Victorian and Edwardian public parks were landscapes in which normative models of class, gender, and colonial identities were constructed. This paper will explore how the materiality of these landscapes—their drinking fountains, railings, bandstands, and benches—facilitated forms of social practice that underpinned an ideology of improvement, creating regulated spaces of display and consumption in which the natural world and the urban populace could be objectified, domesticated and their moral worth evaluated. Yet, parks have always been sites of transgression so that from their earliest years, vandalism and other forms of subversive behavior created alternative narratives of identity.     

Crossing the Line: Limits and Desire in Historical Interpretation

This essay focuses on the relationship within western humanism between attitudes toward textual interpretation and views of the human self in an attempt to unsettle the dichotomy between humanist and antihumanist approaches to the past. It has three main parts. First, it uses Umberto Eco's recent reflections on the limits of interpretation to explore current debates about the aims of interpretation. In particular, it asks what it means to frame the problem of interpretation specifically as a problem of establishing limits. Given the many possible vocabularies to compare and evaluate competing hermeneutic approaches, what are the implications of adopting one that speaks in terms of limits, of an “in bounds” and an “out of bounds?” Second, the essay draws on the work of Donna Haraway and Stephanie Jed to argue that a discourse about interpretation that seeks to establish the limits of interpretation excludes as out of bounds precisely those methodological strategies that most effectively analyze the mutually sustaining relationship between assumptions about texts and assumptions about selves. Third, the essay explores the relationship between interpretation and subjectivity at one key historical moment to show how to move beyond the strict dichotomy between humanist and antihumanist assumptions.     

Cultures of Economies: Gender and socio-spatial change in Nepal

This article contributes to ongoing debates animating geography today about the boundaries between 'economy' and 'culture' and their implication for policy planning. It explores the mutual embeddedness of culture and economy through an ethnographic analysis of the interrelationships between spatial practices, economic strategies and gendered symbols of status in Nepal. The fine-grained ethnographic analysis presented here is intended specifically to challenge 'best practice' approaches accompanying the recent 'discoveries' within economic geography about the significance of culture in determining and promoting regional competitiveness and in presenting alternatives to capitalism. The article draws particularly on the practice theory of Pierre Bourdieu to reveal how local 'economics of practice' in Nepal establish and maintain gendered ideologies that structure material opportunities differentially for men and women. Feminist geography, meanwhile, contributes a spatial dimension to practice theories, important for understanding the relationship between individual consciousness, action, and social change. Throughout, the article reflects on the implications of processes of cultural production considered here for the epistemological frames within which development takes place.     

Defiant Innovation: The Adoption of Medical Marijuana Laws in the American States

Diffusion research often characterizes the role of the federal government in innovation adoption as a supportive one, either increasing the likelihood of adoption or its speed. We examine the adoption of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) from 1996 to 2014 to shed light on what motivates states to adopt innovations that are in explicit defiance of federal law. Furthermore, we examine whether federal signals have any influence on the likelihood of adoption. In doing so, we utilize implementation theory to expand our understanding of how the federal government's position impacts state policy innovation adoption. We find mixed evidence for the influence of federal signals on the adoption of MMLs. The results suggest that medical marijuana policies are much more likely to be adopted in states when proponents have the political or institutional capital, rather than a medical or fiscal need. Moreover, this political capital is sufficient independent of the federal government's real or perceived position.     

Landscapes of Desire: Tourists, Touts and Sexual Encounters at the World Heritage Site of Thebes

Cultural tourism capitalises on archaeological sites with World Heritage status on a global scale. The encounters of visitors from all over the world with local residents and other stakeholder groups, like local and international entrepreneurs, set off complex processes of interaction in which the physical and social space of the heritage site is negotiated, shaped and consumed. In a case study from Luxor/Egypt, this paper investigates a particular facet of these interactions, namely sexual encounters between tourists and members of the local community. It delineates the economic and social conditions of this phenomenon and discusses the role it takes in the production, perception and use of the World Heritage site of Thebes.     

Between Memory and Desire: Gender and the remembrance of war in doi moi Vietnam

This article explores how memory and desire narrate the remembrance of war in doi moi Vietnam through gendered representations. Based on a reading of texts, including fiction and a film shown on television, I argue that memory in wartime texts evokes a landscape of gendered desire and longing. Using Judith Butler's theory of gender melancholy, the article looks at how these texts serve a political project cultivated by the state to displace its own ideal authority.

Entre la memoria y el deseo: género y la remembranza de la guerra en Doi Moi Vietnam

Este artículo explora cómo la memoria y el deseo relata la remembranza de la guerra en ‘doi moi’ Vietnam a través de representaciones de género. Haciendo uso de textos que incluyen literatura y una tele-película, argumento que la memoria en los textos de la época de la guerra evoca un paisaje de deseo y añoranza de género. Utilizando la teoría de Judith Butler de melancólico del género, el artículo examina cómo le sirvan los textos a un proyecto político que es cultivado por el estado para desplazar su propia idea de autoridad.