The Natures of War

“Nature” is more than a resource bank whose riches can trigger armed conflict and finance its depredations; it is also a medium through which military and paramilitary violence is conducted. The militarisation of nature is part of a dialectic in which earthy, vibrant matter shapes the contours of conflict and leaves its marks on the bodies of soldiers who are both vectors and victims of military violence. Three case studies identify some of the central bio‐physical formations that became entangled with armed conflict in the twentieth century: the mud of the Western Front in the First World War, the deserts of North Africa in the Second World War, and the rainforests of Vietnam. Taken together, these reveal vital connections between the materiality and corporeality of modern war and their continued relevance to its contemporary transformations.     

Does digital video enhance student learning in field-based experiments and develop graduate attributes beyond the classroom?

The connection between fieldwork and development of graduate attributes is explored in this paper. Digital technologies present opportunities to potentially enhance the learning experience of students undertaking fieldwork, and develop core digital attributes and competencies required by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and employers. This paper reports the success of adopting digital video capture in technology-rich field experiments that form part of final year undergraduate courses in Physical Geography at an HEI in New Zealand. Student perceptions were obtained via a range of approaches. Results suggest that deployment of digital video reinforces student learning and connects with core graduate attributes.     

Rethinking Primitive Accumulation: Theoretical Tensions and Rural Southeast Asian Complexities

Abstract: This paper poses theoretical and empirical questions to the resurgent litera‐ture on primitive accumulation in critical political economy. The first section outlines the different understandings of capitalism, and of its relationship to primitive accumulation, in the literature, and argues that they complicate efforts to identify instances of primitive accumulation. The second section examines the history of frontier agricultural expansion in Southeast Asia to critique the literature's assumptions about who carries out, and who resists, primitive accumulation. The third section draws on work on Southeast Asian political economy to show that the literature pays insufficient attention to the institutions that govern capitalist social relations. The paper argues that these questions of agency, governance, and the nature of capitalism need to be answered in order to make effective use of the concept of primitive accumulation and to distinguish it from cognate concepts like enclosure and commodification.     

From biodefence to biosecurity: the Obama administration's strategy for countering biological threats

The Seventh Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), the first international treaty to outlaw an entire class of weapons, was held in Geneva in December 2011. On 7 December, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the highest-ranking US government official to address a BWC meeting. Secretary Clinton told the assembled delegation that ‘we view the risk of bioweapons attack as both a serious national security challenge and a foreign policy priority’. At the same time, she warned that a large-scale disease outbreak ‘could cripple an already fragile global economy’. Secretary Clinton's speech reflected a new understanding that the range of biological threats to international security has expanded from state-sponsored biological warfare programmes to include biological terrorism, dual-use research and naturally occurring infectious diseases such as pandemics. Recognizing these changes, President Barack Obama released a new national strategy for countering biological threats in 2009. This strategy represents a shift in thinking away from the George W. Bush administration's focus on biodefence, which emphasized preparing for and responding to biological weapon attacks, to the concept of biosecurity, which includes measures to prevent, prepare for and respond to naturally occurring and man-made biological threats. The Obama administration's biosecurity strategy seeks to reduce the global risk of naturally occurring and deliberate disease outbreaks through prevention, international cooperation, and maximizing synergies between health and security. The biosecurity strategy is closely aligned with the Obama administration's broader approach to foreign policy, which emphasizes the pragmatic use of smart power, multilateralism and engagement to further the national interest. This article describes the Obama administration's biosecurity strategy; highlights elements of continuity and change from the policies of the Bush administration; discusses how it fits into Obama's broader foreign policy agenda; and analyses critical issues that will have to be addressed in order to implement the strategy successfully.     

‘Many Nice People’: the nation‐state,post‐Fordism,and the policy norm of flexible ethnic relations in Estonia

This article uses historical research and ethnographic fieldwork to ask how policymakers interpret historical, political, and economic factors to construct inter‐ethnic communities that would bring security and economic growth to an enlarged European Union (EU). Focusing on post‐Soviet Estonia's ethnic integration policy, the article argues that ‘flexibility’ applies not only to post‐Fordist, individualized subjects, but also to relations between subjects of different nationalities that policymakers want to form organically in service sector employment. The article explains how this policy construction emerged in light of Estonia's historical trajectory from 1991 to 2001 and demonstrates how it conceptually resolved the fundamental tension between the territorialized nation‐state and deterritorialized global capitalism. A visual media campaign entitled ‘Many Nice People: Integrating Estonia’ captured the essence of this construction, which obscured how the Estonian nation‐state marginalized minorities while integrating into the EU.