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.     

Herzl and the Palestinian Arabs: Myth and Counter-Myth

According to conventional Zionist historiography, Herzl thought little about Arabs, and what he did have to say about them reflected benign and progressive, albeit paternalistic, sentiment. Critics of Zionism, on the other hand, claim that underlying the paucity of Herzl's comments on Arabs was a conspiracy of silence, for already in 1895 he was allegedly planning the expulsion of the Palestinians, although he only confided this dark scheme to his diary. This essay throws new light upon Herzl's attitudes towards Palestine's Arabs. It explores a variety of historiographical questions raised by the gulf that separates the camps of scholars who have written on this subject, and it critiques the way that historians have read Herzl's diary and privileged it over his other writings.     

Anti-Semites on Zionism: From Indifference to Obsession

This article compares European and Middle Eastern anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1870s through the 1930s, in parallel fashion anti-Semitism became a mobilizing, all-embracing ideology in Europe, while the Arab world witnessed an eruption of anticolonial and nationalist sentiment, often directed against the Zionist project. Arab anti-Semitism featured the irrational and fantastic qualities of its European counterpart, but it took form against the reality of the Zionist project. The article draws a distinction between the realms of systemic intolerance, aggravated by socio-economic crisis, and political strife, driven by discrete events and policies. Its main sources are fin-de-siècle European anti-Semites' writings on Zionism, which are shown to be fundamentally different from the anti-Zionist rhetoric emanating from the Middle East at that time.     

Fellowship and Citizenship as Models of National Community: United Church Women's Fellowship in Ranongga,Solomon Islands

From humble beginnings in the 1960s, the United Church Women's Fellowship (UCWF) is now viewed as one of the most effective organizations on the island of Ranongga (Western Province, Solomon Islands). This essay considers reasons for the success of women's fellowship in Ranongga, focusing on the distinctive position of women in gendered local and translocal forms of social organization. Far from being isolated from the outside world, Ranonggan women have long been engaged in drawing outsiders into local communities. I explore this theme in narratives of Christian conversion and of the beginning of women's fellowship; I also consider the practices of local and national women's fellowship groups that work to constitute unified communities out of diverse groups of people. My discussion of Ranonggan women's fellowship illustrates local dynamics of community‐making that do not map easily on to dominant models of nation‐states and ethnic groups. I ask whether the UCWF provides an alternative model for thinking about larger‐scale political formations, particularly in the Solomons. This question is especially relevant considering the significant contribution that women's Christian organizations have made in efforts to reconstitute a national community in the context of the ongoing political crisis in Solomon Islands.