Front and Back Covers,Volume 37, Number 4. August 2021

Front and back cover caption, volume 37 issue 4 Front cover TOXIC FLOWS: E-WASTE RECYCLING A worker starts a fire to burn off the insulation from electrical cables to extract copper at an informal e-waste recycling site in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Open fire is one of the methods used here to mine metals from defunct electronics devices and their components. Electronic waste is one of the fastest-growing types of waste worldwide. However, many countries lack the formalized infrastructures necessary to collect and handle e-waste safely. The informal sector has stepped up to fill the gap. E-waste attracts urban dwellers seeking to extract value from these discarded materials while releasing toxic compounds detrimental to health and the environment. In this special issue on toxic flows, Samwel Moses Ntapanta follows Dar es Salaam's informal e-waste recyclers to find out how they understand the toxic nature of their work and what measures they take to minimize exposure. The number of informal e-waste recycling workshops in Dar es Salaam has skyrocketed in recent years. High demand for metals, like copper, offers a stable livelihood for e-waste recycling workers. Scavenging spare parts from the electronic afterlives is primarily driven by a vibrant Tanzanian local market, giving an impetus to repurpose certain materials. During these activities (mining, repurposing, restoring and reusing), workers are exposed to many toxic chemical compounds. With little or no knowledge about these, workers in informal e-waste recycling face unknown risks of exposure as they make a dangerous living in urban environments. Back cover TOXIC FLOWS: GLYPHOSATE Launch of the #StopGlyphosate campaign supported by the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) and 37 European organizations in front of the European Parliament, 8 February 2017. Across the globe, grass-roots movements against glyphosate, the world's most used herbicide, have encouraged regulators to re-examine its safety assessments. In Europe, a drawn-out process is widely expected to conclude that glyphosate is harmful to health and should be banned across all 28 member states. If so, this would likely lead to similar decisions in other markets, representing a blow to the agrochemical industry. More than any other pesticide, efforts to ban glyphosate have become tied up with questions of national sovereignty. From Vietnam and Thailand to Colombia and Mexico, the US government has threatened ‘trade disruption’ should a ban go ahead. The message is clear: chemical regulation is an international, not a domestic, matter. Nevertheless, glyphosate has become a standard for emerging populism. In post-war Sri Lanka, banning glyphosate became a mission of Buddhist nationalist movements seeking to purify the national body. In the UK, Brexit supporters argued an independent UK would have the freedom to stop glyphosate (another ‘Vote Leave’ promise quickly broken). As politics the world over has re-engaged with questions of national identity and autonomy, halting the free flow of glyphosate has become a goal for those on the left and right of the political spectrum.     

Australia and the promise and the perils of humanitarian diplomacy

ABSTRACT

Humanitarian diplomacy has always been a crucial element of humanitarianism, however it is now becoming a more prominent element of states’ foreign policies. It holds many attractions and much promise. It provides states with a way of expressing important qualities of international empathy and solidarity and can also enhance a state’s international reputation and provide valuable means for building relationship of trust and cooperation. This can in turn can be conducive to a state’s broader foreign policy objectives. However, there are also perils to the incorporation of humanitarian diplomacy into a state’s foreign policy. It can generate ambiguity and even conflict within a state’s diplomatic endeavours due to tensions between humanitarian and broader national interests. In exploring these issues it is useful to distinguish between humanitarian diplomacy and humanitarianism as diplomacy. This article explores these issues in relations to Australia’s diplomacy. It argues that Australia has actively engaged in humanitarian diplomacy and humanitarianism as diplomacy. Whilst the two are often complementary, there are areas in which they have been in tension and even at odds. This has implications for Australia’s international reputation but also for its capacity to undertake genuine and effective humanitarian action.     

Visa Stupidity

This paper describe the author’s experiences when he has applied for visas in a range of countries, including Germany, the UK, Japan, China and the USA. In 22 years of international travel, he has never been refused a visa, though he has been unable to obtain a visa in time on several occasions, and this has cause him to be unable to attend meetings, even when he is fully funded, and has applied for a visa well in advance.     

Exile at home: A matter of being out of place

This article employs Hannah Arendt's theorizing about assimilation to consider how sovereign citizens of a nation state might nevertheless experience a sense of exile. It builds on Aziza Khazzoom's notion of a ‘chain of Orientalism’ to suggest that the assimilation of Europe's Jews to Enlightenment ideals has had ongoing repercussions among Jews in the modern state of Israel. The article focuses on what it means to be Jewish in terms of religious observance, and who feels at home in the Jewish state. Employing vignettes from recent ethnographic fieldwork, it raises questions about the modern nation state's capacity to create conditions in which its own ‘people’ can flourish. In this case, Israel has claimed to make it possible for the Jews to flourish, in Arendt's terms, ‘as Jews’, but it is far from clear what ‘as Jews’ would, could or should mean. This leads the author to suggest that Israel has a Jewish problem.     

Kuwait,Political Violence and the Syrian War

Kuwait’s support of civilians in war-torn Syria has been commended by the international community. In addition, the Gulf state has joined US-led coalitions against the ‘Islamic State’ and affirmed many international agreements designed to choke off international assistance to militias operating in Syria. In 2015, Kuwait paid a heavy price for its involvement, becoming a victim of IS-affiliated terrorism. Whilst this suggests that Kuwait’s position on radical Islamist movements involved in the Syrian conflict is clear cut, this article will argue that Kuwait’s government has had to balance this official position against domestic support for elements of the radical Islamist opposition in Syria. These cross-cutting tensions were underscored by the US designation of the state as the ‘epicentre’ of private fund raising for militias in Syria. To explore these contradictions, this article will analyse Kuwait’s engagement with the Syrian war, its new anti-terror legislation and the tensions between the official and unofficial views on support for foreign militias. This analysis will highlight the challenges the Kuwait government has faced in addressing unofficial Kuwaiti engagement with the radical Islamist opposition in Syria.     

Aid for trade and ecologically sustainable development in Australia’s international aid program

In September 2015, Australia, along with 193 member states of the United Nations, signed the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The facilitation of international trade and increasing foreign aid for developing countries were emphasised as crucial means for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. An important role was assigned to the international Aid for Trade initiative, which is about stimulating economic growth in developing countries through removing constraints to trade. Australia has been a strong supporter of the Aid for Trade initiative since it was launched at the World Trade Organization’s Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong in 2005. Aid for trade has become a central plank of the ‘new development paradigm’ of Australia’s international aid program. This article analyses the conceptualisation and practice of aid for trade in Australia’s aid, with a focus on how it links to ecologically sustainable development. It argues that Australia’s aid for trade is reinforcing the neo-liberal development paradigm in which environmental dimensions are overall neglected and private sector development and free trade are prioritised. In order to achieve international and national development goals of poverty reduction and sustainable development, environmental sustainability needs to be fully integrated into the growing aid for trade portfolio of Australia’s international aid.     

Geotheorizing mountain–child relations within anthropogenic inheritances*

This paper focuses on children’s relations with what is now known as Burnaby Mountain in British Columbia, Canada. In particular, it grapples with encounters with the mountain, atop which several childcare centres are located. The mountain, on unceded Indigenous Coast Salish territories, has become a contested site of colonial capitalist extraction due to a proposal to build a tar sands oil pipeline that would tunnel through the mountain. Sustained protest action emerged at the site amidst initiation of test borehole drilling activity by the pipeline company. In this paper, I engage with the potential of geotheorizing children’s relations as a critical response that interrupts dominant understandings of what is seen as appropriate for young children’s curriculum. I consider the effects of refiguring children’s subjectivities through geologic and geontological relations for the normalization and resistance of settler colonialism’s human-centric and extractive structurings.     

Pre-deployment ‘gender’ training and the lack thereof for Australian peacekeepers

In the area of peacekeeping training, Australia has a reputation of promoting ‘best practice’ internationally. Training for Australian police peacekeepers has been described by the United Nations as ‘one-of-a-kind’ and ‘a world-class model of best practice’. This article provides a case study of how gender training is conducted, and how ‘gender’ is understood from a critical feminist perspective. This article focuses only on the pre-deployment training stage and is informed by confidential interviews with staff from the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Defence Force, as well as observing training in 2013–14. The findings suggest that the training is inadequate because it is not carried out for all peacekeeping personnel, despite international and national requirements to do so. In addition, the findings suggest that ‘gender’ is understood in a very limited way that does not problematise power relations between the sexes and is only covered as a way of understanding the peacekeeping context, and not in relation to the attitudes and behaviours of peacekeepers themselves. This raises the question of whether and how other troop-contributing countries conduct the training and to what standard, given the documented problems of Australia's supposedly ‘best-practice’ training.     

Seamus Heaney and the “place of writing”: technique as evidence of redress as a construct

This article re-examines the significance of redress for Seamus Heaney’s poetry and prose by illustrating that redress is a deeply considered intellectual construct which incites, facilitates and renews creativity throughout Heaney’s career. Redress neither constitutes a project of self-fashioning nor indicates uncertainty in terms of equivocation. Rather, it suggests Heaney’s characteristic uncertainty of how to create a space for himself from and within which to write. In his early work in particular, his contemplation of redress is indicated by his ritual recourse to spatial metaphor. Having arrived at the “place of writing”, the process of unwriting is immediately initiated and the space deconstructed. It is this deconstruction of the created place and the unwriting of what has been written which, in Heaney’s words, “makes the renewal of artistic effort contemplatable”. And it is that contemplation which functions as an impetus for poetry. This article therefore explores Heaney’s diction, rhetorical strategies and ritual performance of redress.     

The Re-emergence of a Media Industry Cluster in Leipzig

This paper begins with the proposition that an analysis of the potentialities of industrial networks has to consider the wider context of the social organization of production. Recent work on industrial clustering has shown that successful clusters are embedded in tight networks of social relations between suppliers, producers, customers and institutions. Localized capabilities, such as specialized resources and skills, conventions and other local institutional structures, provide the basis for inter-firm cooperation. Based on Malmberg and Maskell's (2001) conceptualization of localized industrial clusters, I discuss the horizontal, vertical and institutional cluster dimensions as a basis for empirical analysis. In addition, attention will be drawn to the external dimension and power relations of a cluster which have a strong impact on its growth trajectory. This conceptualization is used as a basis for studying the new Leipzig media industry cluster. Leipzig, which is located in the Neue Länder (States of the former German Democratic Republic), has traditionally been a major centre of industrial production in Germany. After the German unification, a significant proportion of Leipzig's manufacturing activities were terminated or downsized. Interestingly, a new media cluster has developed during the 1990s, driven by the activities of the MDR (Middle German Television and Broadcasting Service). This has stimulated substantial start-up activities in branches of the media industry, such as film/TV production, new electronic services/interactive media, graphics/design, PR/marketing and media-related hardware/software. Being virtually the only sector which has grown in recent years, the media sector has stabilized the local economy. In this paper, I investigate those forces which have supported start-up and location decisions of media firms and the role of local institutions and policy programmes in the clustering process.     

China’s services sector: the new engine of economic growth

This paper presents a review of services sector development in China. It is found that China’s services have recently emerged as the dominant contributor to economic growth and job creation. Trade in services has also increased dramatically, although China maintains a huge deficit. In comparison with economies at a similar stage of development, however, China’s services sector is lagging behind. Both GDP and employment shares of the services sector are relatively small. Services trade also accounts for a relatively small share of China’s total trade. In particular, China’s new services are underdeveloped. As per capita income rises and resultant urbanization accelerates, the country’s services sector is expected to expand further and hence play a key role in rebalancing China’s economy away from its over-reliance on manufacturing and exporting. To reach this goal, further reforms and prudent government policies are needed.     

Semi‐Authoritarian Incorporation and Autocratic Militarism in Turkey

This article argues that, since the early 1980s, there have been two regimes in Turkey. The first, which is broadly akin to Michael Mann's characterization of Semi‐Authoritarian Incorporation, has predominated in areas of the country not administered through emergency legislation. In keeping with his model, it has been most fully asserted in areas of key economic value — particularly the Marmara region and the environs of the capital, Ankara. In the thirteen predominantly Kurdish provinces of the south‐east of the country, on the other hand, a second of Mann's regime types, Autocratic Militarism, is discernible. This was institutionalized under a new constitutional structure introduced following the 1980 coup as a means of dealing with a rise in pro‐Kurdish insurgency.     

The political economy of economic reform in North Korea

For over 10 years, North Korea has undergone a severe economic crisis, including food shortages, which has inflicted great suffering upon the North Korean people. Given such dire realities, it is beyond all doubt that the North Korean government should actively carry out comprehensive economic reforms as quickly as possible which aim to transform North Korea's present inefficient socialist planned economic system into a market economic system. Many argue that such reforms would give rise to successful economic growth in North Korea, which could enhance the legitimacy of the North Korean regime. Yet, the North Korean regime has consistently avoided implementing economic reforms, even though it has had a number of opportunities to do so. The July 1st reforms, which were introduced in 2002, have been half-hearted and inconsistently applied. This then raises an important question: Why has the North Korean government avoided adopting comprehensive economic reforms? In other words, what is the crucial barrier that has hindered North Korea's implementation of economic reforms? This article pinpoints North Korea's unique political system—i.e. its monolithic system of political control and policy making which exhibits the highest level of power concentration in one individual among all political systems—as the biggest barrier to economic reforms. No doubt North Korea desperately needs comprehensive economic reforms, in light of its economic crisis and food shortages. Nonetheless, the current North Korean regime has avoided adopting such reforms since they will undermine North Korea's monolithic system. In conclusion, North Korea's monolithic system has been the biggest obstacle to North Korea's economic reforms.     

Competitive Advantage in the Irish Indigenous Software Industry and the Role of Inward Foreign Direct Investment

Since the mid-1980s, the software industry has been one of the fastest growing sectors of the Irish economy. This article examines the causes of the degree of success which the Irish indigenous software industry has attained in terms of growth and international competitiveness. In exploring the development of its competitive advantage we examine, in turn, the role of Irish factor conditions, domestic demand conditions, related and supporting industries, and firm strategy, structure and rivalry, in accordance with Porter's (1990) 'diamond' model. In doing this, we pay close attention to the role of foreign-owned transnational corporations (TNCs) in Ireland in influencing the development and competitive advantage of the indigenous software industry. This is a relevant issue in view of the simultaneous rapid development of the indigenous and foreign-owned branches of the industry, and also the strong growth among other, possibly related, TNC-dominated sectors such as computers and telecommunications equipment. This paper shows that the Irish indigenous software industry has had a strong competitive performance. There is no single outstanding reason for this; rather, causes can be found in all four of Porter's suggested determinants of competitive advantage, so that it is the combination of a range of favourable influences that has proved effective. However, the case of the Irish indigenous software industry shows how foreign TNCs can indeed have a significant positive influence on indigenous competitive advantage.     

Asphalt Dreams: Road Construction and Environmental Citizenship in Peru

Peru today is one of the main staging grounds for a continent‐wide integration effort. Launched in 2000, the Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America (IIRSA) calls for an enormous expansion of the continent's transport and energy networks and an effort to increase the region's economic competitiveness. Among its most controversial projects is the Interoceanic Highway linking western Brazil with the Pacific coast of Peru. The highway has attracted fierce criticism from NGOs who point to major environmental impacts, an inadequate mitigation process, and a lack of transparency in funding flows and decision making. In an effort to voice their concerns, these groups engage the idea of ‘environmental governance’ to increase public participation in the development process and promote ecological sustainability. This alternative framework in turn opens up space for ‘environmental citizenship’. This article takes a closer look at how Peruvian NGOs employ this idea and suggests that while the group's advocacy of governance has had success, the building of environmental citizenship will require a move beyond urban Peruvian NGOs as technical experts.     

Lexical Information of Persian Transitive Verbs during Sentence Comprehension

This article investigates the nature of lexical information in the lexical entries of Persian transitive verbs. In the first experiment transitive verbs were categorized into five groups. What differentiates them is the number of argumental structural and subcategorization frame options of each verb. The question is: which one is more fundamental in sentence processing? In the second test the question is whether the number of argument(s) and complement(s) in each option determines processing time. Twenty normal native speakers of Farsi participated in these tests, divided into two groups. Cross-modal lexical decision method was used here. Using the DMDX software program the tests were performed and using t-tests the data were analyzed. The results of the first test show that both the argumental structure and subcategorization frame possibilities of the verb can affect sentence processing time. Also the important role of the number of the complement(s) needed for a specific verb has been indicated by the second test results. Overall results show that the verb type of a sentence and sentence syntactic complexity determine the processing time. This has some implications for teaching Farsi to foreign language learners for whom knowing more verbs leads to making more grammatical sentences.     

Lake Pedder's Loss and Failed Restoration: Ecological Politics Meets Liberal Democracy in Tasmania

The flooding of Lake Pedder in South West Tasmania for hydro-electricity in the early 1970s is recognised as one of the world's great ecological tragedies. The hope for its restoration, long held by some, has been given impetus by the activities of Pedder 2000, a nation-wide restoration lobby group founded in 1994. The legitimacy, feasibility and desirability of Pedder's restoration has been acknowledged, if not endorsed, by a recent federal inquiry. Restoration proponents see Pedder's recovery not only as a means of making amends for past follies, but as a new millennium project that offers hope to future generations. This paper reviews Pedder's inundation and the efforts towards its recovery, and finds little support for restoration in the absence of compelling economic and political benefit. This is cause to reflect, it is argued, upon the difficulties that ecological politics has encountered within Tasmania that saw Lake Pedder dammed in the first place.     

France's Charter for the Environment: Of Presidents,Principles and Environmental Protection

France amended its constitution in 2005 to include a Charter for the Environment. The Charter lays out France's commitment to supporting the right to a ‘balanced environment’. This article first traces the Charter's origins to a legacy-building presidential initiative. Jacques Chirac decided to invest in a neglected policy domain in which his own majority had shown little interest. He was obliged to intervene repeatedly in order to bring this project to a successful conclusion. In doing so, he staked out environmental affairs as an area of potential presidential supremacy. Next, the content of the Charter is examined. In this document, French traditions of universalism come together with an international movement for anticipatory environmental protection. This is reflected in the constitutionalisation of the precautionary principle, which emerged as the most controversial part of the Charter. The debates this provoked tended to caricature a risk-management principle whose meaning has been carefully refined to forestall objections. Finally, the Charter's potential efficacy is analysed. The post-Charter record of legislative and judicial activity concerning the environment is meagre, but not wholly inauspicious.     

Resettlement,Opium and Labour Dependence: Akha–Tai Relations in Northern Laos

Forestry is a major source of revenue for the Lao People’s Democratic Republic. The Government’s view is that shifting cultivation in the highlands is the primary cause of deforestation and erosion; this has led it to establish a policy of eliminating shifting cultivation by the resettlement of highland people in or near the lowlands. Here, it is assumed, the highlanders will be able to lead a more sedentary existence, cultivate wet rice, and benefit from various forms of development assistance. In the district of Muang Sing in northern Laos this policy has been partly responsible for the movement of large numbers of Akha people downhill to settle on the lower slopes of the highlands, at the periphery of the lowlands. This movement has been further encouraged by the low productivity of the Akha swidden economy. This article argues that Akha expectations of a more secure livelihood have not been fulfilled due to the ravages of disease, high rates of opium addiction, and the lack of government assistance. Instead, the Akha of the lower slopes have become an impoverished labour force, exploited for the benefit of the politically and economically dominant Tai lowlanders.     

Global Poverty and Inequality: Change and Continuity in Late Development

This contribution assesses the ‘converging divergence’ thesis that global inequality is falling and national inequality is rising. The article argues that falling global inequality is primarily due to China's development and that national inequality has risen in some developing countries and fallen in others. In light of the dominance of China's development in the global picture, questions arise as to what has changed and what has not changed outside of China. A set of changes and continuities is presented. It is then argued that these changes and continuities provide for the contemporary relevance an older conceptual lens — that of ‘late development’.