Illiberal geographies: popular geopolitics and Russian biopolitical regionalism

In this article, we focus on how a variety of illiberal discourses construct a scene for new geopolitical and geocultural imageries of the post-Soviet space, Europe, and Eurasia. Academically, our approach falls into disciplinary niches known as popular geopolitics (when it comes to territories) and biopolitics (when it comes to people). More specifically, we try to see how Russian artistic personalities and public intellectuals contribute to the re-imagination of the post-Soviet space along the lines of Russian illiberal – and largely anti-Western – thinking. Among our protagonists are Valery Gergiev, Iosif Kobzon, Yulia Chicherina, Gleb Kornilov, Ivan Okhlobystin, and Zakhar Prilepin. All of them are important cultural figures who produce cultural justifications for imperial foreign policy in general, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea and de facto occupation of Donbas in particular. Our main argument is that the illiberal imagery of the post-Soviet world drastically reduces the validity of the major pillars of international society, such as state territorial borders, national jurisdictions, citizenship, and legal obligations and commitments. Instead of the rule of law Russian performative illiberalism puts a premium on a series of loosely defined yet foundational for this type of imagery concepts such as patriotism, national spirit and pride, and “natural,” “organic” bonds defining the sense of belonging to Russia as a trans-border political community.     

Indigenous student labour and settler colonialism at Brandon Residential School

This paper contends that unfree Indigenous student labour at residential schools was a key—and underappreciated—component of settler colonialism in Canada. Colonial administration and the churches attempted to “civilize” and assimilate Indigenous people—and prepare the frontier for white settlers—through residential schooling. Labour, in accordance with Euro-Canadian gender norms, was expected to usher Brandon Industrial Institute (later Brandon Residential School) students from the “backwardness” of traditional lifeways to the industriousness and assimilation necessary for their roles in the serving classes of modern society. I use archival sources—newspapers, unpublished reports, Department of Indian Affairs documents, and United Church correspondence and photographs—and employ a version of Norman et al.'s “settler-colonial grid of recognizability” to examine student labour. This paper argues that the Department of Indian Affairs and church officials at Brandon Residential School sought to make Indigenous youth “legible” under the settler-colonial grid of recognizability through agricultural and manual work for boys and domestic labour for girls, both of which ensured the school's financial viability. I propose that this under-explored aspect of settler colonialism could be understood through three main themes—imperial settler-humanitarianism, the logic of containment, and productive bodies—that are traced across the lifetime of the school.     

A survey of the Nabataean/Roman Site,Umm at-Tawabin,Ghor as-Safi,Jordan

Umm at-Tawabin is an extensive Nabataean/Roman site overlooking Wadi al-‘Arabah in southern Jordan. The site, as a whole, consists of a number of buildings, circular stone structures, a roadway and other features that are fortified, for the most part, by a lengthy wall and with a predominance of Nabataean and Roman surface pottery on the ground. Up until now, the site has only been documented in brief in a handful of survey reports since its discovery in the late nineteenth century and its chronology has since been the subject of some conjecture among scholars. With a grant from the Palestine Exploration Fund, the author has sought to better understand the occupational history of this undoubted historically important site through survey and by extension, a study of its surface pottery and architectural remains.     

Interstate Migration: A Test of Competing Interpretations

This study presents a model of net interstate migration in the United States during the 1970s. Of 5 composite dimensions derived from an exploratory factor analysis of 20 candidate predictors of interstate migration, the greatest predictive power in an ordinary least squares regression analysis is attained by a set of quality-of-life correlates of migration. Composites of fiscal policy and labor relations variables, more controllable by public decisionmakers, are also significant.