After the Nicaraguan Non‐Payment Crisis: Alternatives to Microfinance Narcissism

This article argues against ‘microfinance narcissism’ and calls for a re‐politicization of the microfinance paradigm. The dominant verdict on microcredit has undergone a damning transformation, from ‘magic bullet for poverty reduction’ to ‘cause of suicide’. Nowadays, both radical critics and mainstream voices deplore microcredit's negative impact on micro‐entrepreneurs. They argue for a reorientation where credit is targeted at established small and medium‐sized enterprises, particularly in rural areas. The crisis in microfinance worldwide, including burgeoning protests, are viewed as proof of the commercial derailment and/or misplaced faith in microfinance's positive social and economic impact on the poor. This article engages with this debate through a study of the Nicaraguan micro‐finance crisis. It challenges existing analyses that pin the crisis on agricultural over‐indebtedness, lack of due diligence, or Sandinista populist politics. Illustrating the dangers of neglecting the diverse nature of microfinance, it reveals the paradoxical outcomes of the crisis: a refocus on the urban at the expense of agricultural credit for small and medium enterprises and a consolidation of the power of national processing elites. Nicaragua's Non‐Payment Movement is also shown to be both a product of elite manipulation and an expression of legitimate resistance to an industry that turns a blind eye to the manner in which markets and politics constrain clients’ potential.     

Power and rural landscapes in early medieval Galicia (400–900 ad): towards a re‐incorporation of the archaeology into the historical narrative

This paper aims to bring together hitherto neglected archaeological data about the early medieval landscapes of Galicia (north‐west Spain), in order to understand the social transformations this ‘peripheral’ region underwent between the fifth and the ninth centuries and to frame them in the context of wider European debates. Despite its many limitations, the archaeology reveals that until the middle of the seventh century, the late antique society of Gallaecia experienced a previously unsuspected vitality. At this point a socio‐political fragmentation occurred, which was characterized by the strengthening of local power, until a further change took place with the progressive incorporation of Galicia into the Asturian kingdom in the ninth century.     

Death in the sun: the bioarchaeology of an early post-medieval hospital in Gibraltar

SUMMARY: In 2014, during construction work at the ex-Civil Hospital in Gibraltar, excavations led by the Gibraltar Museum revealed a major, previously unknown burial ground containing more than 200 skeletons. We present the historical, archaeological and radiometric dating evidence from the site alongside the results of initial osteological analyses. The data indicate that the burials pertain to an earlier 16th-century Spanish hospice, and therefore stand to offer new insights into the functioning of this early modern hospital and the health and movements of people at a time of incipient globalization.     

Unhelpful Fixer? Canada,the Euromissile Crisis,and Pierre Trudeau's Peace Initiative, 1983–1984*

ABSTRACT

This article provides the most rigorous international history to date of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's 1983 peace initiative, one of Canada's major foreign policy ventures of the Cold War, examining both Trudeau's motives and the reception of his initiative among Canada's allies. Drawing on newly declassified sources in Canada, it uncovers the two-track strategy behind this initiative, aiming to mobilise Western European leaders to exert pressure on the Reagan Administration on the one hand, while quietly urging European allies to call for a review of NATO strategy on the other. Based on previously unavailable archival materials from seven different countries, this article also reveals how the Canadian initiative was received by the world leaders Trudeau sought to win over. It reassesses the Canadian initiative, revealing that it borrowed heavily from existing proposals from other countries, and that NATO leaders viewed the initiative as a mere electoral ploy to help Trudeau win re-election rather than a serious project to ease East–West tensions. This article concludes that with this initiative Canada was not in fact playing the role of a ‘helpful fixer’ and that the initiative constituted part of a wider and understudied trend in government responses to the ‘Second Cold War’.     

A case of local rejection of a heritage tourism policy: tourism and dynamics of change in Abondance,French Alps

Despite the opportunities offered by developing and enhancing cultural heritage in the tourism sector, this article, based on a case study of a little town in the French Alps, shows that public policy of this type may also be subject to criticism and dispute. In the town of Abondance, a small ski resort being converted to cultural tourism site built around heritage, the demonstration observed involved both a desire to keep the skiing and a questioning of the political process, but also a rejection of the alternative solution involving the development of the cultural heritage of the Gothic Court of Savoy. During the qualitative survey of the social reactions, three types of arguments have been raised. (1) As summarised by one of the local leaders ‘the people do not believe in it’. Indeed, local shopkeepers are sceptical that cultural tourism will draw numerous visitors, and fear that is not economically viable. (2) In contrast to the ski resort, heritage tourism is only attached to the imagination of old age, immobility and even death, as if seniority of places necessarily corresponds to seniority of public and images. (3) For residents of the town, setting up a localised visit site has disadvantages because of the turnover of touristic traffic to which this type of tourism is exposed.