Neoliberalising Nature? Elephant‐Back Tourism in Thailand and Botswana

Abstract: This paper examines the case of elephant‐back safaris in Thailand and Botswana; it argues that tourism has extended and deepened neoliberalism by targeting and opening up new frontiers in nature. In essence tourism redesigns and repackages nature for global consumption. Through a cross comparison of the same product (the use of captive/trained elephants) in two very different contexts (Thailand and Botswana) this paper analyses the variations in “actually existing neoliberalisms” ( Brenner and Theodore 2002 ) and demonstrates that the effects are not unremittingly negative ( Castree 2008b ). It also draws out the ways that neoliberalism is challenged and reshaped by context specific processes and so it does not completely displace existing ways of approaching nature. Instead, existing approaches mix with neoliberalism to create new ways of valuing and conserving elephants.     

Ungendering Europe: critical engagements with key objects in feminism

Abstract

This introduction presents the points of departure for the themed section ‘Ungendering Europe: Critical Engagements with Key Objects in Feminism’ and introduces the eight articles included in the collection.     

Visual and aural intellectual histories: an introduction

ABSTRACT

If the subject matter of intellectual history is the study of past thoughts, the intellectual history of the visual arts and music may be characterised as the study of past thoughts as they were expressed visually and aurally. Yet this is not always how an intellectual history of art and music has been practiced. More attention is often paid to verbal texts about art or music, rather than to the visual or the aural per se. If we accept that ideas can have visual and aural, as much as verbal form, then the histories of art and music are significant repositories of thoughts of individuals and networks of individuals (creative artists, patrons, institutions) within a given culture and period. But the ways in which those thoughts are articulated as aural or visual “texts”, and the ways in which they can be accessed by those who seek to understand them, will be specific to each art form, and represent a distinctive kind of intellectual activity in each field.     

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF CARD PLAYING AMONG THE DAULO

While most Daulo people in Eastern Highlands Province, Papua New Guinea gamble at cards, there is disagreement about the acceptability of this activity. Organized opposition to card-playing comes from two sources that, in other contexts, are at odds with each other: the wok meri (‘women's work‘) movement and the Village Court. Both criticize card-playing as individualistic, economically unproductive, and unpredictable. Gambling at cards contributes to differences in individual wealth and the Daulo are ambivalent about inequality. While they strongly approve of competition, they believe that it should be harnessed for the good of the group, not just the individual. The tension between these sometimes conflicting values is expressed by the polarity of Daulo people's strong attraction to card games and the organized opposition that gambling elicits from wok meri and the Village Court.