Extranational spaces and the disruption of national boundaries: Turkish immigrant media and claims against the state in 1980s West Germany

After the 1980 coup that shook Turkey and almost twenty years after the bilateral ‘guest worker’ treaty shifted Germany's demographic make‐up, West German policy makers proposed increasingly restrictive regulations on the ‘guest workers’ who had heavily contributed to West Germany's economy. In this crucial historical moment, Turkish‐language newspapers, published in West Germany, created a politically motivated extranational public sphere in which they launched claims against both the West German and Turkish states. These claims shaped immigration and integration policy between the two countries, fostered diasporic activism and cross‐national religious and political organisations and gave rise to a variety of unexpected organisational outcomes that continue to impact both Germany and the Turkish Republic.     

Triangular Contests and Caucus Rhetoric at the 1885 General Election*

This article explores the role played by late‐Victorian political associations during parliamentary election campaigns. The central hypothesis is that party organisation, known popularly as the ‘caucus’, is best understood as a rhetorical device used by politicians and the press to gain legitimacy in the new context created by an expanded and quasi‐democratic electorate. The hypothesis is tested by examining the 1885 general election campaigns in Nottingham West and Sheffield Central. Both constituencies witnessed a triangular contest whereby an ‘additional’ candidate, standing on a radical platform, entered the campaign and pursued a distinctly ‘anti‐caucus’ agenda that was aimed primarily at the local Liberal Party Association. The manner in which the ‘caucus’ issue was articulated by all sides involved throws new light on the role played by party organisation during this period. While all sides described their association in a way that both defended and asserted its legitimacy, they equally used ‘anti‐caucus’ rhetoric to diminish the credibility of their opponent's organisation, even though they were emulating the deeds they were denouncing. Indeed, it was those within official Liberalism that indulged in the most virulent ‘anti‐caucus’ rhetoric. Thus, it is suggested that, with regard to the attitude of radicals towards official Liberalism, this ‘anti‐caucus’ rhetoric reflected not a real popular resistance against party organisation or ‘party’, but simply intense competition and imitation between rival ‘caucuses’.     

Beyond win–win: rethinking China's international relationships in an era of economic uncertainty

China is the least disadvantaged major economy in the current era of global economic uncertainty. Thus it is becoming the focus of attention of its neighbours and is achieving a prominence in the world political economy unparalleled in its modern history. To a great extent, China's success is the result of ‘good neighbour diplomacy’ such as ‘win–win’ and the policies of reform and openness of the past thirty years. However, despite continuity in policy, China's ‘peaceful leap forward’ since 2008 has changed the context of its external relationships. The increasing asymmetries between China and its neighbours, as well as decreasing asymmetry with the United States, require an adjustment of win–win values beyond mutual benefit to credible reassurance. As China's neighbours become more dependent, they also become more anxious concerning their interests. Meanwhile, China's relative gain on the US requires a different kind of confidence‐building diplomacy.     

The new resource politics: can Australia and South Africa accommodate China?

The material transformation of the Chinese economy is forcing a concomitant process of political adjustment—and not just in China. Other states are being forced to accommodate the ‘rise of China’. In this context, this article first presents a comparative analysis of China's impact on two countries, Australia and South Africa, which have little in common other than a wealth of natural resources and a possible status as middle powers; this is a particularly useful exercise because these states are geographically distant and have very different political structures and general developmental histories. Second, the authors consider how China's bilateral ties look from a Chinese perspective in these two very different relationships. Such an analysis serves as a reminder that resource dependency is a two‐way street. The article argues that underlying material realities are constraining and to some extent determining the domestic and foreign policies of three very different states that otherwise have little in common.     

Unravelling the Relationships between Used‐Clothing Imports and the Decline of African Clothing Industries

African clothing industries have declined since the implementation of economic liberalization policies in the early 1980s whilst used‐clothing imports to Africa have increased. The general effects of economic liberalization on African clothing industries are well documented, although little research has been conducted on the particular impact of increased imports of second‐hand clothes on the local manufacturing sectors. Whether these two processes are causally related is difficult to determine due to limitations in official data sets. In this article, the used‐clothing trade is explored in detail and a broad range of cultural and local economic processes are investigated. Trends such as declining local purchasing power and the opening of African markets to cheap new clothing imports, as well as imports of used‐clothing, are examined, along with the converse boost to African clothing export production resulting from preferential trade agreements in the 2000s. With respect to the differential legal and illegal imports of second‐hand clothing to selected African countries, it is demonstrated that official trade data sets often fail to capture the nuances of contemporary social and economic processes.     

Totem and Transaction: the Objectification of ‘Tradition’ Among North Mekeo

Most recent treatments of Melanesian post‐contact change have presumed that objectifications of ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ have intensified and proliferated in response to the forces of colonialism and the penetration of the nation‐state. Harrison (2000) has recently argued, however, that in pre‐colonial times too Melanesians characteristically objectified their cultural practices and identities as ‘possessions’ that could be readily exchanged or transacted. Supposedly, the key difference between the two eras has accorded with different formulations of ‘property’: ‘private property’ and the logic of ‘possessive individualism’ in the post‐contact era; and ‘trading and gift‐exchange systems’ or ‘prestige economies’ in pre‐contact times. In this article I examine Harrison's portrayal of Melanesian cultural practices as ‘possessions’ and the notions of ‘property’ that he sees as key to the cultural objectification in both pre‐ and post‐colonial settings with reference to ethnographic and historical information regarding the North Mekeo peoples of Papua New Guinea. I argue from the perspective of the New Melanesian Ethnography that Harrison's view of pre‐contact prestige economies and trade and gift exchange systems retains several misleading a priori assumptions about ‘commodity exchange’ and, illustrating the potential of the New Melanesian Ethnography for historical applications, that he overemphasizes the extent to which post‐contact changes in cultural objectification have involved individualised and commodified forms of property. Consequently, in the case of North Mekeo, both the continuities and the changes between pre‐ and post‐contact cultural objectifications may have proceeded differently from the ways Harrison has outlined for Melanesia generally.     

Superheroes in Shanghai: constructing transnational Western men's identities

This article examines the ‘superhero’ phenomenon, in which Western masculinity is constructed differently in East Asia than in Western countries. This produces an imagined, Occidentalist ‘authenticity’ that frames expectations about the performances and identities of Western men in the context. As a result, sojourning Western men in Asia may feel, and be treated, like ‘superheroes’, because their gendered national identities are attributed (super)powers that are often unfamiliar from prior experiences in their home countries. These object (attributed) identities may be different from individuals' subject (appropriated) identities, with resulting identity tensions for the men themselves. This article reports on empirical, qualitative research from China, and examines the lived realities and identity/masculinity constructions of seven young, heterosexual men, from the UK, the US and Canada, working in Shanghai as English language teachers. The study participants experienced perceptions of increased personal and sexual confidence but also identity tensions, concerns that relationships may be transactional and ethical struggles over peer-sanctioned and locally expected behaviours. The study is framed by literature from tourism studies on the commoditization of identities through the staging of out-group notions of ‘authenticity’. A critical approach is taken to the neo-imperialistic power differentials underpinning relationships in the context.     

The Linguistic and Rhetorical Legacy of the Prague Spring: Reading the Czechoslovak Communist Party Daily,Rudé právo,from the Late 1980s

This study uses a corpus-informed lexicological approach to analyse texts published in the Czechoslovak Communist Party daily Rudé právo during the final years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia. The analysis aims to uncover how far such texts represented a departure from or a reaffirmation of the norms of the pre-Gorbachev era and, in particular, the role that they played in the Party’s attempt to control interpretations of the 1968 Prague Spring. The investigation also considers ways in which the texts sought to construct a ‘new’ reality in the light of the changes in the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact countries. The article maintains that the ‘authoritative discourse’ model represents an especially useful analytical framework for evaluating the impact of ideological language in the context of the Communist system. The model both helps to explain the relative acquiescence of most of the population, and also to track the extent to which the ‘coded’ message of the approved discourse was successful in slowing the demise of the regime.     

The rise and fall of ‘critical’ historiography? Some reflections on the historiographical agenda of the left in Britain,France and Germany at the end of the twentieth century

This article compares the rise and fall of ‘critical’, that is to say oppositional and emancipatory, historiography in Britain, France and Germany since 1945. It argues that the prolonged crisis of the old ‘critical’ paradigm from the late 1970s onwards had much to do with political disillusionment and methodological weaknesses. It concludes by suggesting that any new ‘critical’ historiography will have to explore the opportunities inherent in the multitude of radical histories which developed in the 1980s and 1990s (most notably history‐from‐below, cultural, feminist and post‐modernist histories), without attempting to homogenise and synthesise these diverse and separate forms of historical writing into some new super‐paradigm, which would only produce new closures and erasures.     

Mercosur: A Failing Development Project?

Latin America is a developing region. Although it is different from other such regions it shares with them ‘the challenge of change’, particularly as a result of globalization. Its response has been to embrace democracy, neoliberal restructuring and ‘new (open) regionalism’. The ‘Common Market of the South’—Mercosur—was an important regional initiative involving Argentina and Brazil, and included in its various aims was the acceleration of ‘economic development with social justice’. This article explores to what extent development aims have been achieved and whether Mercosur is little more than a loose confederation of states unable to build institutional structures that could help development. To what extent is this the result of traditions that have entrenched elites and prevented a more egalitarian approach? Has the law generally failed its citizens? Or does it have a place in development? The article begins by briefly considering the concept of ‘development’ and seeks to place Latin America within the ‘developmental framework’ and questions whether there is a distinct Latin American development tradition. Within that tradition, and in the context of the ‘inter‐American system’ and globalization, the development of Mercosur is assessed both in terms of institution building and legal traditions. Finally, some preliminary conclusions are drawn about Mercosur's future and the extent to which institutional and other constraints have contributed to Mercosur falling short of its devleopmental potential.     

How clothing design and cultural industries refashioned frontier masculinities: a historical geography of Western wear

Gendered subjectivities emerge historically and geographically, not only in situ, within an ‘authentic’ origin period or site, but through later retrospective commodifications and fantastical popular culture depictions. This article traces the masculine identity of the cowboy as commodified and performed through clothing. The cowboy emerged from colonial origins as a model and myth of frontier masculinity: the ‘rugged outdoor type’. But it was then formularized and stylized when subject to popular culture diffusion, and as accompanying clothing design evolved. Through clothing – advertised by metropolitan manufacturers and consumed across America and beyond – an archetypal, sexualized cowboy ‘look’ thus emerged. The author traces a historical geography of cowboy masculinities in clothing design, from early ‘frontier garments for the outdoor man’ to later Western-wear ‘for that long, lean look’. Related constructions of femininity are also considered, after women's Western-wear clothing lines were produced in the 1950s. To illustrate, I draw on archival brochures, catalogs, and advertising materials from the 1920s to 1970s, as well as discuss the material design of the clothes themselves. I focus especially on the Western snap shirt – an apparel item never actually worn on the nineteenth-century colonial frontier, but that became an ‘essential’ element of the cowboy look, and a vehicle for masculine appearance. Western-wear epitomizes how gendered subject positions are visually constituted in relational fashion via bodies, materials, media, and imagined geographies.     

The real-and-imagined spaces of philhellenic travel

This article focuses on philhellenic travellers' perceptions and experiences of Greece in the early nineteenth century, especially during the War of Independence in the 1820s. The central argument is that philhellenes – that is to say, supporters of Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire – understand Greece as a ‘real-and-imagined’ space. Greece is an ‘imagined’ location in the sense that philhellenic conception of it is shaped by certain rhetorical assumptions and priorities. But, evidently, it is also a ‘real’ space, not simply in the obvious sense that the landscape has a tangible existence, but also in that those rhetorical constructions have concrete consequences and expressions. These expressions are especially significant because philhellenic travellers conceive the region as both a literal and conceptual borderland on the edges of Europe. They consider Greece fundamental to European history, culture and self-definition, but because it is ruled by the Ottoman Empire, it is also an unfamiliar space at the margins of Europe. In other words, Greece is both within and outside European space, and its liminal position represents wider uncertainties about the conception of Europe in the early nineteenth century.     

From automation to Silicon Valley: the automation movement of the 1950s,Arnold Beckman,and William Shockley

Most studies mark the start of silicon electronics in Silicon Valley with William Shockley and Arnold Beckman’s creation of the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. This study details how the automation movement of the 1950s shaped the careers of both Shockley and Beckman, and formed an indispensible context for their creation of Shockley Semiconductor. Shockley was engaged in automation from the early 1950s, promoting his vision of an ‘automatic trainable robot’ to revolutionize manufacturing. Beckman was deeply involved in automation in the mid-1950s, orienting his company to key technologies for the ‘automatic factory:’ instrumentation and computers. Beckman and Shockley’s entrepreneurial involvements with electronics and automation led them to create Shockley Semiconductor to pursue silicon transistors in 1955.     

Environment and Modernity in Transitional China: Frontiers of Ecological Modernization

The process of institutionalizing environmental interests and considerations in Western (especially, but not only, European) industrialized societies has been reflected and theorized upon by social scientists, many of whom have adopted the ‘ecological modernization’ framework. One of the key questions on the research agenda of ecological modernization is its appropriateness for developing or industrializing countries in other parts of the world. This contribution analyses to what extent environmental reforms in contemporary China can be interpreted as ecological modernization. It focuses on the similarities and differences between Chinese and European modes or styles of ecological modernization with respect to the role of state institutions, market dynamics, civil society pressure and international integration.     

R.I.P. Paul the Octopus http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

During the 2010 football World Cup, Paul the Octopus became a global celebrity. From his aquarium tank in Oberhausen, Germany, he predicted with 100% accuracy the outcome of eight World Cup matches in a row. In acknowledgement of his striking achievement, German aquarium authorities built Paul the first‐ever octopus memorial after his death. Curiously, Paul's popularity crossed over into countries that are not known footballing nations. One possible explanation for this is that his uncanny knowledge of the outcome of future events resonated with an audience sensitive to the uncertainties and risks of high modernity. Another explanation draws on Michael Jackson's work among diviners in Sierra Leone. I argue that Paul's prophecies created ‘fields of relationship’ that transcended national as well as ethnic divides, both within Germany and globally.     

Bringing Development Back into Development Studies

This article challenges Horner and Hulme's call to move from ‘international development’ to ‘global development’ with a reaffirmation of the classical traditions of development studies. With some adaptation to fit the changing contemporary context, these traditions not only remain relevant but also recover vital insights that have been obscured in the various fashionable re‐imaginings of development. In particular, development thinking and agendas in the past were much more radical and ambitious in addressing the imperatives of redistribution and progressive forms of transformation in the context of stark asymmetries of wealth and power. Such ambition is still needed to address the nature and scale of challenges that continue to face the bulk of countries in the world, particularly given the persistence if not deepening of asymmetries. This reaffirmation is elaborated by addressing three major weaknesses in Horner and Hulme's arguments. First, they do not actually define development, but instead treat it as simply poverty and inequality dynamics, which are better understood as outcomes rather than causes. Second, despite their assertion that the study of (international) development was primarily concerned with between‐country inequalities, this is not true. Domestic inequality was in fact central to both development theory and policy since the origins of the field. Third, the authors ignore the rise of neoliberalism from the late 1970s onwards and the profound crisis that this caused to development outside of East Asia and perhaps India, which the jargon of ‘global’ implicitly obfuscates and even condones. Rather, the experiences of East Asia and in particular China arguably vindicate classical approaches in development studies.     

Industrial Heritage: Valorising the Spatial–Temporal Dynamics of Another Hong Kong Story

This paper challenges current perspectives on Hong Kong heritage that are based predominantly on a dichotomous juxtaposition of traditional Chineseness vis‐à‐vis post‐colonial romanticism, and argues for a deeper appreciation of its industrial history and identity. Textured narratives are proposed that highlight the socio‐economic relationships that were/are essential components of the industrial (hi)story. Specifically, the paper identifies the time/space dimension as unique, and hence it should be valorised using context‐sensitive, carefully thought‐through and executed approaches. The paper presents an ‘other Hong Kong heritage story’ that foregrounds the compressed time–space nature of the city’s industrial history, the spatial organisation of manufacturing, and the dynamic spatial stretch that has been taken by the industrialisation process. Furthermore, a stretching of governance space for the identification, (re)presentation and conservation of heritage using a participatory approach is proposed. In the face of rapid deindustrialisation and pressure for urban renewal, prompt, well‐conceptualised and time/space‐sensitive efforts to valorise, preserve and manage this fast‐disappearing heritage in Hong Kong are vital.     

Reinventing Paradise: the Greek Crisis and contemporary British travel narratives

Abstract

In the second half of the twentieth century Greece became a subject for travel writers in search of a European ‘Paradise’. But ‘Hell’ was also to be found in Greece, often in the form of frustrations over allegedly ‘non-European’ standards of living, facilities, and attitudes. A sample of travel narratives published between 2006 and 2014 suggests the extent to which, in the light of the ‘Greek Crisis’, twenty-first-century writers are abandoning these formerly conventional themes. There is now the potential for the realignment of narratives, with Greece becoming the Hell, rather than the Heaven, of Europe.     

A shop is not a home: Nineteenth‐century American sweatshop discourse

The sweated labor, or sweating, system of clothing manufacturers, contractors, and subcontractors who exploited ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ workers was a lamentable fixture of antebellum America. A wide range of reformers called for abolition of the system. Yet it was not until the ‘discovery of poverty’ in the 1890s with its attendant campaigns for public hygiene and tenement house reform that the term ‘sweatshop’ arose to christen the oppressive labor site. This essay traces the ideological reasons for the shift in naming. It correlates the term's adoption with the East European and Italian ethnics who replaced earlier native‐born workers and in so doing analyzes the ideologies embedded in antebellum, Gilded Age, and Progressive‐era discursive practices.