“Special Forces”: A Stereotype of Benjaminite Soldiers in the Deuteronomistic History and Chronicles

This article explores one point of contrast between the characterizations of Benjamin-Judah relations in the DtrH and Chronicles. The argument is that the Deuteronomist offers a stereotype of Benjaminite “special forces,” which the Chronicler then co-opts in service of his own agenda. The remarkable aspect of this cooption is that the Chronicler does not retain or adapt any of the Deuteronomistic material that contributes to this Benjaminite stereotype, only the stereotype itself—i.e., the stereotype only manifests itself in the Sondergut material. The article suggests that the Chronicler repurposes the stereotype in service of a conciliatory agenda: the reincorporation of wealthy Benjaminites into the Jerusalem temple’s sphere of influence.

The irony of “Benjaminite” left-handedness is not a new observation; this essay suggests that they should be linked to the motif of “skill with long-distance weapons.” The two motifs are linked in three ways: 1) in practice, they represent a deviation from “regular” hand-to-hand warfare; 2) they overlap within the narratives; and 3) both are specifically linked to Benjaminites—left-handedness by the irony of the name, and long-distance weaponry by the fact that Benjaminites are characterized uniquely among the tribes by that skill (i.e., whenever Benjaminites are noted in a tribal list as having skill with the sling or bow, they are the only tribe that possesses that skill).     

‘The Men Have Come’: Gender and Militarisation in Kampala, 1966–86

This article explores the gender implications of the militarisation of the Mengo neighbourhood of Kampala. It analyses how the hyper‐militarisation under post‐colonial regimes, particularly those of Milton Obote and Idi Amin, marked a significant gender reversal. The military presence in Mengo emasculated civilian men, who were attacked and abused by soldiers, and led women to assume the roles of ‘protectors’ who safeguarded men, children and their homes. Women volunteered for the most dangerous tasks at the household and community levels and faced constant dangers, including rape, violence and other forms of abuse. Using oral histories collected from the residents in Mengo in 2014, I examine this reconfiguration of gender roles and its reverberations in contemporary Mengo. Interviews with the women and men from Kampala describe the various ways women protected people and spaces and at the same time stress men's vulnerability. This article therefore challenges popular conceptions of women as weak and vulnerable and in need of men's protection in militarised situations.     

Mapping Value in a ‘Green’ Commodity Frontier: Revisiting Commodity Chain Analysis

Analysis of commodity chains has provided important insights on how power, resource and market access mediate the distribution of benefits and risks. Given this analytical potential, Commodity Chain Analysis (CCA) is now being applied to the study of biofuels and carbon markets to gain systematic insight into the circumstances, relationships and transformations involved in their production and exchange. By building on and adapting this approach to three distinct case studies (biofuels in Madagascar and forest carbon in Cambodia and Laos), this article contributes new insights on the emergence of value within market environmentalism. The analysis highlights methodological challenges in applying CCA to commodified forms of nature, and the significance of knowledge and value negotiations. All three cases illustrate that it remains highly uncertain whether or not market exchange can ultimately be realized. As in the case of traditional commodities, pre‐existing conditions of power and access shape modes of production and network configuration. Parallel and intersecting commodity networks (e.g. for land and timber) also require us to think beyond the traditional single‐commodity focus. Thus, the authors call for an expanded analytical focus in applying CCA to non‐material ‘green’ commodities which places greater emphasis on value negotiations and connections within new ‘commodity frontiers’.     

Cultural Niche Construction and Remote Sensing of Ancient Anthropogenic Environmental Change in the North Coast of Peru

Archaeological land use results in the modification of natural environments according to cultural templates and strategies. Deeply entrenched environmental legacies can result from such “niche construction,” influencing subsequent cultures and continuing to resonate in modern ecological function. These changes can be better understood through archaeological remote sensing.Here, I describe spectral responses of densely vegetated sugarcane fields in the Chicama Valley (north coast of Peru) to archaeological features and associated anthropogenic soils (anthrosols). Ongoing satellite remote sensing documents approximately 440 previously unrecorded major archaeological monuments and smaller features within a 310 km² sample of the Chicama Valley The majority of these date to the Moche–Chimu periods (ca. AD 300–1400), with others dating to the Cupisnique–Colonial periods. The newly recorded features are significant for accurately reconstructing the socio-ecological history of anthropogenic environmental change in the region.In addition to advancing analyses of archaeological settlement, these results reveal how prehispanic land use legacies result in persistent anthropogenic niches that can affect modern agricultural potentials. The relationships between anthropogenic features and sugarcane development can be directly evaluated through vegetation indices and physically based image transforms. Phenological response is linked to long-term alterations in soil texture, organic-matter content, and moisture capacity. Past land use thus has a significant impact upon contemporary ecological function, resulting in anthropogenic microenvironments. As sugarcane increasingly is an important industrial crop, these results have the potential to be widely applied to archaeological and agronomic problems, including reconstructions of archaeological landscapes, understanding persistent anthropogenic environments, and mitigating heritage loss while potentially improving precision agriculture.     

Digitally Mediated Iconoclasm: the Islamic State and the war on cultural heritage

This paper puts forward the new analytical framework of ‘Digitally Mediated Iconoclasm’ (DMI) to analyse and interpret iconoclastic acts that are experienced through the propaganda (videos, social media, photographs, and other media) that the actor perpetrating the destruction makes available in global information networks for its consumption, duplication, and distribution. DMI captures three stages of the destruction (before, during and after the event) as both evidence of that destruction and as a perdurable digital archive. To demonstrate the relevance of DMI, we focus on an analysis of the videos and photographs depicting heritage destruction at pre-monotheistic sites targeted by the Islamic State (IS), such as Palmyra in Syria, the Mosul Cultural Museum, Nineveh and Nimrud in Iraq. The analysis focuses on the three stages that DMI comprises, showing the different photographic and audio-visual production techniques that the IS uses to enhance the tension that is built up leading to the destruction of cultural heritage while allocating material and human resources to produce digital propaganda. This analysis demonstrates how the analytical framework of DMI can be used to advance important work in heritage and media studies.     

The Colonial (Dis)order and the (Im)possibility of Redemption: Jeong,Abolition, and Living from the “End of the World”

This article develops the oppositional edge of postcolonial theologies by way of Frantz Fanon’s anti-colonial desire for the “end of the world.” It connects W. Anne Joh’s elaboration of jeong – the living in excess of (neo)colonial violence – to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s anti-fascist critique of the godlike desires of European humanism (the sicut deus). The overall aim of the article is to clarify and assess what is at stake in a project of eschatological decolonialism. What might it mean to think theologically about salvation as abolition? And what might it look like to live from the “end of the world?”     

DEREGULATING THE DISTRIBUTION OF ELECTRICITY: PRICE AND WELFARE CONSEQUENCES OF SPATIAL OLIGOPOLY WITH UNIFORM DELIVERED PRICES*

ABSTRACT. Theoretical, spatial oligopoly models are developed and calibrated to simulate the price and welfare consequences of deregulating the retail price of electricity (the distribution function), assuming competing sources of generation supply are available. Two types of distribution competition are considered, retaining the currently used uniform delivered pricing structure: competition for customers at neighboring utilities’ borders and franchise competition. Because duplicate facilities are required for borderline competition, short-run price increases ranging between 14 and 37 percent over existing regulated prices are estimated for upstate New York, largely because deregulated prices reflect replacement, not historic, costs of facilities.     

Mining Boom,Labour Market Segmentation and Social Inequality in the Congolese Copperbelt

The study of the impacts of new mining projects in Africa is generally set in a normative debate about their possible contribution to development, which leads to a representation of African societies as divided between beneficiaries and victims of foreign investments. Based on research in the Congolese copperbelt, this article aims to examine in more detail the inequalities generated by the recent mining boom by taking the processes of labour market segmentation as a starting point. It shows that the labour market in the mining sector has progressively been organized along three intersecting lines that divide it: the first is between employment in industrial and artisanal mining companies, the second is between jobs for mining or subcontracting companies and the third is between jobs for expatriates, Congolese skilled workers and local unskilled workers. Far from simply reflecting existing social inequalities, the labour market has been actively involved in their creation, and its control has caused growing tensions in the Congolese copperbelt region. Although largely neglected in the literature on extractive industries, processes of labour market segmentation are key to making sense of the impacts of mining investments on the shape of societies in the global South.