Evo's jumper: identity and the used clothes trade in ‘post-neoliberal’ and ‘pluri-cultural’ Bolivia

Since the election of Latin America's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, in 2005, Bolivia's ruling party, the ‘Movement Towards Socialism’, has nationalised resources and instituted a ‘post-neoliberal’ and ‘pluri-cultural’ constitution that emphasises the importance of recognising cultural, linguistic and economic plurality. This article explores gendered economic identities in this context via the case study of an informal trade that is explicitly excluded from this vision of development: the globally controversial used clothes trade (UCT). In Bolivia, political debate on the trade demonstrates gendered tensions inherent in the government's ‘post-neoliberal’ agenda of nationalisation, protection of cultural identity and the well-being of the poor in an increasingly liberalised and globalised market place. Working with women in the city of El Alto, this article examines how women's involvement in the UCT challenges understandings of identity and development in post-neoliberal Latin America and the dynamics involved in women's continued marginalisation from global economic and political processes.     

Gellner redux?

The work of Ernest Gellner continues to be an influential part of nationalism studies. A recent appraisal has raised questions about the argument that Gellner offered in his central text on nationalism, Nations and Nationalism. This article takes up other issues in Gellner's work on nationalism. The article examines Gellner's influential definition of nationalism and the interpretation that he placed on that definition, as well as his treatment of ‘political cohabitation’. It also pays more attention to Gellner's later work, namely, Gellner's discussion of ‘the time zones of nationalism’. The paper draws on secondary literature but its primary purpose is to assess the coherence of Gellner's arguments.     

Churchill's ‘Iron Curtain’ Speech in Context: The Attempt to Achieve a ‘Good Understanding on All Points’ with Stalin's Soviet Union

More than 70 years ago, on 5 March 1946, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill delivered his ‘iron curtain’ speech at Westminster College in Fulton. The speech immediately attracted worldwide attention and proved to be highly controversial. Most contemporaries in East and West and the vast majority of subsequent historians interpreted the speech as Churchill's call for western resistance to Stalin's expansionist policies and the continuation of the wartime ‘special relationship’ between Washington and London. This article argues, however, that Churchill's speech has been misunderstood. When set in the context of Churchill's other pronouncements on world affairs during his time as leader of the opposition between 1945 and 1951 and in view of his vigorously pursued ‘Big Three’ ‘summit diplomacy’ with Moscow and Washington after he returned as Prime Minister in 1951, the ‘iron curtain’ speech must be seen in a different light. It becomes clear that this famous speech was not Churchill's sabre-rattling call for commencing or energizing the East--West conflict with the Soviet Union. Quite to the contrary, his speech was meant to prevent the escalation of this conflict and avoid the dangerous clash between the world's greatest powers that soon became known as the Cold War.     

The (Jean) Nouvel Other: Primitivism and the Musée du Quai Branly

The Musée du Quai Branly, located beside the Eiffel Tower in Paris, opened in June 2006. Constructed to house France's important collection of non-western art, the museum has been promoted as ‘decidedly post-colonial’ and a place of ‘reconciliation and sharing’. Historians have situated the creation of the museum within political debates over the restructuring of several of France's museums and, more broadly, the country's position in a post-colonial world, while focusing little critical attention on the building itself. The author argues that Jean Nouvel's architectural program for the Musée du Quai Branly—a ‘primitive shelter’ surrounded by a ‘sacred wood’—gives physical form to a primitivist aesthetic. The unproblematised binaries of self versus other and culture versus nature evident in Nouvel's design reveal a surprisingly unsophisticated theoretical standpoint. As a frame in which to view and understand the objects on display, the Musée du Quai Branly invites a primitivist—and colonial—reading of its collection.     

‘The Epitheatrical Cartoonist’: Matthew Somerville Morgan and the World of Theatre,Art and Journalism in Victorian London

This article examines the vibrant cultural milieu inhabited by one of Victorian Britain's most famous cartoonists, Matthew Somerville Morgan. Morgan is well-known as the cartoonist who attacked Queen Victoria's withdrawal from public life (and her associations with John Brown), and the lifestyle of Albert, Prince of Wales, in the short-lived rival to Punch: the Tomahawk. Likewise, his post-1870 career in New York as cartoonist of the ‘Caricature War’ over the 1872 Presidential elections, and involvement with ‘Buffalo’ Bill Cody have been well-studied. However, his involvement with the world of the 1860s Victorian stage – and the social circles in which he moved – have not been given close attention. This broader social, cultural, and economic context is essential to understanding Morgan's role as a cartoonist-critic of politics, class, gender and art in Victorian Britain. Special attention is given to the ways in which Morgan's work as a theatrical scene-painter informed his other pursuits, including his political cartoons for Fun, the Comic News and the Tomahawk. So central was the theatre to Morgan's life story that he may be appropriately described as an ‘epitheatrical’ figure. Indeed he is one of the most spectacular exemplars of the interconnected worlds of journalism, high art and theatre in Victorian London. The theatre provided him with the artistic and journalistic connections needed to raise himself above his lower-class origins; to move in ‘clubland’ and fashionable bohemian society; and to win an influential place in the key political and cultural debates of his age.     

E. H. Carr,Norman Angell,and Reassessing the Realist–Utopian Debate

While the realist argument presented by E. H. Carr in The Twenty Years’ Crisis has received much attention from scholars, recent scholarship has suggested that traditional interpretations of the work and the debate in which it figured have not accurately reflected the inter-war discourse. In this article, the author provides detail to support these claims through an examination of Carr's landmark work in comparison with prominent ‘utopian’ counterparts, primarily Norman Angell but also others such as Leonard Woolf and Arnold Toynbee. The conclusion of this article calls for increased emphasis on the works of internationalist writers of the inter-war period. It also echoes other scholars in calling for renewed focus on early twentieth-century internationalist thought and a critical reappraisal of Carr's landmark work through the prism of his policy recommendations and the critique he received during the original ‘great debate’.     

Below the Belt? Territory and Development in China's International Rise

China's internationalization has been heralded by some as a new era of South–South cooperation. Yet such framings of development are pitched at an abstract space of the ‘global South’ which conceals more than it reveals. With some theory moving towards ontologies of ‘global development’, we need to capture both the connectedness and the local specificity of increasingly diffuse processes. This article sets out a more fine‐grained understanding of how political territories and processes are imagined and produced by and through China's internationalization, focusing on infrastructure as a ‘technology’ of territorialization. Much of the focus on China's internationalization has been on state‐to‐state relations, but this obscures the ‘omni‐channel politics’ that China practises. Using a critical literature review and illustrative case study, this article develops the idea of omni‐channel politics to posit a view of ‘twisted’ territories in which political processes and development outcomes are more complex and contingent.     

When Greek meets Greek: Alexius Comnenus and Bohemond in 1097–98

Abstract

To his father, Robert Guiscard, Bohemond appeared larger than life even in boyhood. Partly from real feats of war and conquest and partly from adroit self-advertisement, he became a legend in his own lifetime, and even in death he continues to draw the attention of art historians to his mausoleum, which is juxtaposed to the south transept of the cathedral at Canosa, Apulia. The mausoleum's ‘Oriental’ or ‘Byzantine’ features mark it out from other buildings in the region, while the date and design of the cathedral itself evoke controversy. My aim here is neither to attempt a general assessment of Bohemond's career nor to offer a survey of Alexius I Comnenus’ handling of the First Crusade. I shall merely focus on Alexius’ dealings with Bohemond during the earlier stages of the Crusade, and argue that Anna Comnena offers a rather misleading picture of their relationship. Far from Alexius being wise to Bohemond's every trick, with Bohemond ‘playing the Cretan with the Cretan‘, Alexius was in my opinion led to suppose that he had bought Bohemond, at least for the duration of the Franks’ expedition to the East, a supposition that was ill-founded.     

Mauna Kea: Two Cultures and the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center

When Snow wrote delivered his lecture on ‘The Two Cultures’ in 1959, he considered this to be a phenomenon that had British, Western and global significance. This article looks at how Snow's ideas play out in the setting of Hawai'i from the early contact with Western navigators through to current disputes over the building of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea. ‘Mutual incomprehension’, identified by Snow as the chief characteristics of his two cultures are clearly seen to be at play in Western-Hawai'ian encounters.

This article places the TMT disputes in the setting of the Hawai'ian Renaissance, a movement that has gathered pace since the 1960s. It looks Gieryn's notions of ‘boundary work’ and that of Star and Griesemer on ‘boundary objects’ as ways of framing the discussion. The final focus of the article is the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo as a ‘place of safe disagreement’.     

Kant on Hobbes,peace, and obedience

Kant's essay ‘On the common saying: “This may be true in theory, but it does not apply in practice”’ contains a chapter ‘On the relationship of theory to practice in political right’ to which he added, in brackets, ‘(Against Hobbes)’. The problem is that Kant leaves his Hobbes-criticism implicit. The main point seems to be the Hobbes's citizens are without any rights. We explore the differences and similarities between Kant's and Hobbes's political views and evaluate the effectiveness of Kant's criticism. We pay attention to Nominalism and Platonism, the idea of happiness in social life, the use and role of the Golden Rule (Categorical Imperative) in political thought, the quest for freedom, and the principle of political non-resistance. Especially freedom of speech is important for Kant as an Enlightenment thinker. This is the only right Kant's citizens may have, independently of the sovereign's will. Our conclusion is that both Kant and Hobbes emphasize peace and order under sovereign power although they do not agree on how such an ideal can be achieved.     

‘Looking alright,feeling alright’: emotions,sizing and the geographies of women's experiences of clothing consumption

Recent work within geographies of consumption has focused on the practices of consumption as a means to find out ‘what people do when they go shopping’. This paper argues that few of these accounts of consumption have considered the significance of emotions in understanding the intricacies of consumer experience. Drawing on material from research about women's experiences of clothes shopping this paper, therefore, utilizes recent work in the social sciences which understands emotions not as inherent or as induced by practices or commodities and instead emphasizes the intersubjective nature of emotions whereby emotions ‘are self‐reflective, involving active perception, identification and management on the part of individuals’ (Lupton : 16). In short, this view posits that the consumer has the capacity to ‘manage’ or to experience and re‐experience emotions in particular consumption moments. Such an understanding offers a conceptualization which does not conceive of women's engagements with consumer culture within a victim/resistance dichotomy, instead uncovering geographies of consumption in which women may feel uncomfortable or depressed in a particular moment but then engage in practices through which they experience that moment differently. These emotional experiences are explored through considering the significance of the spatialities of the changing room, shop floor and the corporeal space of the ‘sized’ body, and the consumption practices of cheating, coping and connecting.     

Wolfgang Streeck's conception of the crisis-phase of democratic politics: a post-Keynesian critique

Depictions of the politics of crisis in advanced societies (what crisis is and what can be done) continue to pit different strands of political science and heterodox political economy against each other. Economic sociologist Wolfgang Streeck's contributions to these controversies have emphasised ‘embeddedness’, or the need for economies to incorporate non-functional or deliberated elements which allow functional and market-focused processes to play themselves out. Streeck's recent writings on debt-induced crisis nonetheless accept too much orthodox liberal disquiet: most fatefully, a contempt for politics based on what seems to be an untenable assertion – that rich societies have hit the limits of their capacity to increase taxation. Capitalism has entered an ‘end point’, he claims. This article presents, again, contrary evidence and offers suggestions for a revised heterodox understanding of capitalism's current malaise.     

Beyond Holocaust Studies: rethinking the Holocaust in Hungary

This article argues that the ideological and emotional meanings of the terms ‘Holocaust’ and ‘antisemitism’ have obstructed their use as analytical concepts in Holocaust scholarship. It claims, specifically, that they frame the persecution and annihilation of Jews during World War II as unique, placing these events and processes apart from essential historical and political contexts. The destruction of Jews in wartime Hungary underscores how histories of state and nation building—in this case the drive to realize ‘Greater Hungary’ with a marked Magyar majority—generated multi-layered mass violence against non-Jews as well as Jews. Focusing on the multi-ethnic borderland of Subcarpathian Rus’ before the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944 illuminates the links in the state's multi-layered attack against the region's society and sheds new light on the particular victimization of Jews, also after March 1944. Almost all the scholarship on the Holocaust in Hungary has addressed the period after the German invasion, dealing with ghettoization and deportation to Auschwitz. This perspective has provided important insight, but it has also overshadowed significant dimensions in the history of wartime Hungary. The histories of the state's borderlands, which have received limited attention, challenge this account of ‘the Holocaust’ in Hungary. This article uncovers how anxieties about disloyalty and foreignness played crucial roles in the exclusionary campaign against Jews, Roma and Carpatho-Ruthenians in Subcarpathian Rus’. The Hungarian authorities planned and carried out discriminatory and violent measures against them and, whenever national and international opportunities permitted, mass deportations. The examination of these related processes of mass violence lays bare the meaning of ‘antisemitism’ in a specific political context, highlighting connections between anti-Jewish policies and the persecution of other groups. Viewing this violence as it unfolded, rather than backward from the ‘final solution’ and Auschwitz, opens new paths to rethink ‘the Holocaust’ in Hungary.     

‘An Old Carriage with New Horses’: Nietzsche’s Critique of Democracy

Debates about Nietzsche's political thought today revolve around his role in contemporary democratic theory: is he a thinker to be mined for stimulating resources in view of refounding democratic legitimacy on a radicalised, postmodern and agonistic footing, or is he the modern arch-critic of democracy budding democrats must hone their arguments against? Moving away from this dichotomy, this article asks first and foremost what democracy meant for Nietzsche in late nineteenth-century Germany, and on that basis what we might learn from him now. To do so, it will pay particular attention to the political, intellectual and cultural contexts within which Nietzsche's thought evolved, namely Bismarck's relationship to the new German Reichstag, the philological discovery of an original Aryan race, and Nietzsche's encounter with Gobineau's racist thought through his frequentation of the Wagner circle. It argues that Nietzsche's most lasting contribution to democratic thinking is not to be found in the different ways he may or may not be used to buttress certain contemporary ideological positions, but rather how his notions of ‘herd morality’, ‘misarchism’ and the genealogical method still provides us with the conceptual tools to better understand the political world we inhabit.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 36, Number 2. April 2020

Front and back cover caption, volume 36 issue 2 Front cover CRISIS IN VENEZUELA Shop owner Alejandro Malek shows hundreds of banknotes that he has accepted from customers who buy their daily groceries in his small supermarket near the border between Venezuela and Brazil. He also accepts Brazilian reals, US dollars and gold. Malek is a migrant himself and arrived almost 30 years ago in the country. He poses for the picture with packs of bolivares soberanos to express his love for Venezuela. Big packs of banknotes to purchase basic goods have become normal for many Venezuelans since hyperinflation reached mind-boggling levels. Basic goods, such as toilet paper and cornflour, are unavailable or simply unaffordable for more than 90 per cent of the population. Since 2015, the economy has been in free fall and Venezuelans look for countless means to survive. In times of crisis, people seek to make ends meet by joining the informal economy outside the official structures. The thriving local emergency economy of banknotes, gold, food, petrol and medicine in Venezuela ties into illegal transnational networks which commercialize natural resources, people, drugs and weapons that stretch far beyond the Latin American region. In this issue, Eva van Roekel and Marjo de Theije suggest an anthropology of abundance to study the illicit manifestations and everyday ideals of wealth that accompany social and environmental crises in resource-rich countries like Venezuela. Back cover THE SHAMAN VS PUTIN In spring 2019, Aleksandr Gabyshev, a Sakha (Yakut) shaman, embarked on an 8,000 km trek from Yakutsk to Moscow. His stated goal was to ‘expel demon-Putin’ (izgnat' Putina-demona) from the Kremlin and thus liberate the people of Russia. Drawing a cart with supplies and necessities, he slowly progressed along Siberian highways, camping on roadsides along the way. While initially his journey attracted little attention beyond local cybernauts, by the end of the summer, word of Gabyshev's campaign had spread far and wide. Around a dozen people (his ‘squad’) joined his trek, while many more stopped him along the way to chat, take a picture, express support and offer supplies. On 19 September, Gabyshev's trek came to a halt almost 3,000 km in. He was arrested by the authorities in the Republic of Buryatia, as he and his ‘squad’ were approaching Irkutskaya Oblast. The shaman was flown back to Yakutsk where he underwent a psychiatric examination. He is facing charges on account of ‘calls to extremism’ and was put under travel restrictions for several months. He attempted another short-lived, unsuccessful trek in December 2019, again stopped by the authorities. Recently, Gabyshev announced that he would continue the trek in spring 2020 and reach Moscow in 2021, expressing confidence in the impending success of his undertaking. In this issue, Kristina Jonutyte shows how this shaman's campaign has attracted a lot of attention within Russia, especially on the Internet and social media. Many have expressed their interest in and support for the campaign, while at the same time ‘distancing’ the shaman in time and space, as well as along the lines of ‘rationality’.     

‘Homes’ and being ‘at home’ in New Zealand: women's place-making in internationalised higher education

Research on students' experiences in internationalised higher education largely assumes students' autonomy and privileges their public selves. New Zealand research is no exception. Little attention has been paid to students' lives beyond classroom contexts; how national policy and institutional practices shape students' everyday experiences and ‘home’ lives similarly and differently. In addition, gender is afforded scant attention or considered only as a secondary concern, and people whose partners or family members are international students are invisible. This article endeavours to address the relative inattention to gender in international education research and the invisibility of women whose partners are international students. It draws on data from interviews with 17 women involved in a broader doctoral research project during 2005 and 2006. The women were either migrant or international students or had partners enrolled as international students. The article uses ‘home’ as a lens for examining women's situated and transnational place-making and factors that promoted or precluded a sense of belonging in New Zealand. It draws connections between women's accounts of ‘home’ and feeling ‘at home’, and broader politics, policies and institutional practices in New Zealand higher education.     

‘Aerial Silk Roads’: Airport Infrastructures in China's Belt and Road Initiative

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is widely touted as China's answer to development through international connectivity. The scheme has often been linked to China's objectives of crafting a new world order centred on itself and/or stabilizing its economy through externalizing surplus capacity. While important in broadly framing China's relationship with the world, this article posits that such a fixation on state-centric visions of development leaves the door open for misinterpretation, mistaking the BRI for a coherent set of projects imposed ‘from above’. Delving into the execution of infrastructure planning on the ground, this article argues that taking a practice-oriented approach to large-scale developmental schemes can more accurately shed light on their internally fractured processes. Two airport projects in central China branded as part of the country's ‘aerial Silk Roads’ are examined to illustrate these dynamics, with particular attention paid to the airports’ shifting conceptualizations, the competitive motivations behind their (re)construction, and the social relations sustaining them. The authors argue that closely tracking the unfolding of a range of infrastructure planning practices within specific projects can demystify modern-day developmental programmes like the BRI, by revealing how their ‘grand’ visions are often reinterpreted, altered and frustrated at local levels, even before they have a chance to influence the world.     

Le statue di marte e venere nel tempio di marte ultore sul foro di augusto 1

This paper explores the question of whether any circumstances, events or activities can be identified that may have made Cicero feel that he and / or other people were experiencing a moment or period of happiness in their private or public lives. By reviewing meaningful excerpts from a variety of Ciceronian works, this contribution presents examples of possible conditions and instances of happiness in Cicero's life (as far as it is possible to discover the feelings of an individual exclusively on the basis of their writings to other people). While Cicero hardly ever mentions preconditions for his own ‘happiness’ or states explicitly that he is ‘happy’, it can be inferred that he took pleasure in a range of situations that are generally regarded as blessings for human beings, such as having a family or a comfortable home. His special intellectual capability and his political career presented Cicero with further possibilities of winning success and satisfaction. Yet Cicero's feelings of happiness in all respects seem to have a basic component oriented towards community. Because Cicero's personal life is so intertwined with his public life and he has also considered the issue philosophically, his emotional disposition in ‘normal’ and ‘extraordinary’ moments is of a particular quality: he was able to derive joy from beliefs such as that he had saved the Republic, beyond the ordinary pleasures of all human beings such as conversations with good friends.     

The temptations of William Pascoe Crook: An experience of cultural difference in the Marquesas, 1797—1798

Abstract

The missionary William Pascoe Crook was the first European to make an extended residence in the Marquesas. He failed to make a single convert in the two years he was there but instead risked a ‘conversion’ of sorts in everyday compromises between fitting in with, and preserving his independence from, a way of life he found to be abhorrent. This paper reconstructs the quality of Crook's experience during his sojourn in the Marquesas and reflects on the ethnographic ‘Account of the Marquesas Islands’ compiled on his return to London in 1799. It emphasises the processes by which Crook came to a partial understanding of tapu and the role of mimicry in his adaptation to lapu as a force that will make sense of him, but that he himself does not comprehend. The paper relates Crook's experience of cultural difference to problems in the anthropological concept of culture.