Hope Movements: Naming Mobilization in a Post‐development World

Social mobilizations that are devoted to contesting development and creating alternative economic arrangements conducive to the pursuit of a dignified life have recently sprung up. Not only do they criticize the current state of affairs but they actively seek and experience new ways of living, inspired by what Bloch calls the anticipatory consciousness of the ‘not‐yet‐become’, that is, another reality not yet materialized but which can be already experienced. This article argues that these mobilizations are not adequately captured by the term ‘social movements’. The uniqueness of these mobilizations requires a conceptual and epistemological turn that is able to accommodate the post‐development critique of development as well as their emancipatory dimension. We propose to name them ‘hope movements’ to account for the collective action directed to anticipate, imperfectly, alternative realities that arise from the openness of the present one. We conclude by discussing the political relevance of hope movements for the pursuit of the good life as an alternative to development.     

South–South Cooperation and Neoliberal Hegemony in a Post‐aid World

The current iteration of South–South Cooperation (SSC) differs fundamentally from the first manifestation in the early 1970s, largely because of differences in assumptions about who is cooperating with whom and to what end, in the context of SSC. These differences are significant for the material practice of SSC and the ideological function of SSC rhetoric. In this article, the authors argue that contemporary ideas about SSC do not retrieve the radical potential of the original formulation, but rather expand the hegemonic neoliberal world order into a new phase through a reframed idea of the relationships between North and South and between states and markets. This promotes a new common‐sense understanding of the contemporary international political economy while further depoliticizing the idea of development. It hijacks the critical force of dependency theory, harnessing the terminology of the 1970s and a nostalgia for state‐led development to an ideological fix that in fact shores up the neoliberal world order in the context of a potentially destabilizing shift in the functioning of global capital.     

Post‐Colonialism,Orientalism, and Understanding: Religious Studies and the Christian Missionary Imperative

This article explores issues related to the worldviews of Friedrich Max Müller and Monier Monier‐Williams, and contemporary critique of their work. Their indebtedness to their own age is explored, especially fulfilment theology and the missionary imperative, noting similarities and differences in their agendas. The conclusion considers how post‐colonial critique can be applied. While accepting the validity of such critique, it is suggested that it makes vast and sweeping judgments, engaging in a totalising narrative. It is argued that, applied too harshly, such critiques can ignore the positive contributions to understanding other faiths and cultures made by such figures. It ends with some reflections upon both their and our place within the evolving tradition of the study of religion, and the need for both understanding and critical judgment.     

Suffering,Vice, And Justice: Religious Imaginaries and Welfare Agencies in Post‐War Melbourne

Faith‐based welfare agencies vary considerably, dependent on the nature of their leadership, the inheritance of their services, and the niche that they are assigned by state policy in the mixed economy of welfare. Another dimension of their diversity can derive from the discursive structures of their faith. This article examines the theological inheritances that shaped how three key welfare agencies in post‐war Melbourne imagined what they were doing, as they drew on the diversity of teachings about the poor derived from the Catholic, Anglican, and Methodist traditions.     

Labor's Geography: Capital,Violence, Guest Workers and the Post‐World War II Landscape

Abstract: The impetus to labor geography—putting workers and their practices and interests right at the heart of our analyses and making these ontologically prior in our theorizing—is the right one. Because this is the right impulse, work in labor geography has tended to over‐valorize both the ability of workers to shape the landscapes of capitalism and the long‐term efficacy of any such “shaping”. Arguing from a specific case—the struggles over agribusiness in California in the immediate post‐World War II California—this paper seeks to understand those moments when workers are all but powerless. It argues that those of us interested in politically charged and politically efficacious labor geographies need to retrain our focus as much on the structures within which workers live and work as well as on the actions undertaken by powerful forces within capital and the state whose interests are served by various forms of worker powerlessness.     

Religious Reforming Currents in Sixteenth‐Century Italy: The Spirituali and the Tridentine Debates over Church Reform

The history of religious reform in sixteenth century Italy has been the subject of much scholarly debate in recent decades, as well as uncertainty about how best to conceptualise the period, so indelibly marked by epoch‐changing events, such as the Protestant Reformation (from 1517) and the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Reforming currents in Italy were swept along by these events, and indeed appear to have been overwhelmed by them. Commonly, these currents are explored for their theological nature and especially their heterodox, even Protestant, character. Less well studied is their role in the debates over organisational church reform. It is here that we can discern the tenacity of these currents well into the Tridentine period. This article explores key protagonists of reform, known as the spirituali, with particular reference to the humanist bishop, Ludovico Beccadelli, and his role in the debate over episcopal residence. Through an analysis of his contribution to this divisive debate at the Council of Trent, the article seeks to shed light on a strand of the spirituali that was both resilient and prominent in the battle for the future direction of the Catholic Church.     

United States–Mexico: The Convergence of Public Policy Views in the Post‐9/11 World

This article explores the state of public policy preferences between the United States and Mexico in the realm of foreign policy in the context of the post‐9/11 world, democratic change within Mexico, and the immigration protests within the United States. Specifically, we will analyze the differences and possible convergence of public policy views on the issues of terrorism, immigration, free trade agreements, drug trafficking, and foreign policy. We find that although there are differences of opinion, particularly in the application of force in Iraq and on the benefits of free trade, there still remains a significant degree of positive convergence within the policy issues of terrorism, immigration, and drug trafficking. Although there are institutional impediments to progressive policy change, future relations between the United States and Mexico do not need to be contentious as long as the focus is on the similarities, rather than the differences, in public preferences between the populations of the two states.     

The Boundaries of Women's Power: Gender and the Discourse of Political Friendship in Twelfth‐Century England

The discourse of friendship was an integral part of political language and interaction in twelfth‐century England. Because the qualities that made a good political friendship – loyalty, wise counsel and generosity, among others – corresponded so closely to the criteria for successful lordship, historians often used the quality of a king's friendship as a signifier for the quality of his rule. Yet their treatment of women's political friendship was markedly different. The discourse of friendship therefore provides a window into the larger struggle over the representation of gender and rulership in twelfth‐century historical writing in England, reflecting chroniclers’ anxiety about female sovereignty. Twelfth‐century historians depicted women's participation in political friendship as acceptable only within certain circumscribed boundaries that corresponded to the sanctioned political roles for women in general. Otherwise, chroniclers attempted to efface the existence of women's political friendship, sometimes describing the same situations in different language depending on whether the main participant was male or female. Chroniclers also represented women as arbiters of friendship, showing men how better to conduct their relationships either through direct instruction or counter‐example. In both cases women reinforced male friendship, either by being excluded from it, or by demonstrating the correct way to carry it out.     

Gender,Sexuality and the Formation of Racial Identities in the Eighteenth‐Century Anglo‐Caribbean World

In recent years, scholars have directed considerable attention to the influence of gender relations and sexual practices on developing racial formations in early British America, the colonial Caribbean and the wider British empire. Understanding that unauthorised intimacies in the imperial world threatened notions of Britishness at home has greatly enhanced our knowledge of the complexity and instability of the process of collective identity formation. Building on pioneering research in early American and British imperial history, this article charts the connection between gendered concepts of ‘whiteness’ in Anglo‐Caribbean contexts and in metropolitan discourses surrounding British national identity, as articulated in eighteenth‐century colonial legislation and official correspondence, popular texts and personal narratives of everyday life. It explores the extent to which the socio‐sexual practices of British West Indian whites imperilled the emerging conflation between whiteness and Britishness.