Bühnemann,Gudrun, The Iconography of Hindu Tantric Deities

Indo-Iranian Journal -     

Global production networks and the extractive sector: governing resource-based development

This article explores the opportunities a GPN approach providesfor understanding the network configurations and regional developmentimpacts associated with extractive industries. The article elaboratestwo core claims: (i) that the application of the GPN analyticalframework provides a way to make progress in a stalled policydebate regarding the linkages between resource extraction andsocio-economic development (popularly known as the ‘resourcecurse thesis’); and (ii) that the encounter between GPNand a natural resource-based sector introduces distinctive issues—associatedwith the materiality and territoriality of extractive commodities—that,to date, GPN has not considered fully. The article examinesthe global production network for oil as an empirical case ofhow extractive industries can provide (limited) opportunitiesfor socio-economic development.     

The folding of sport space into carceral space: On the making of prisoners’ experiences and lives

Sport and exercise are prominent activities in the daily routines of prisoners around the world, yet the spatial significance of these activities in carceral environments has not been deeply investigated. With a focus on the experiences of former federal prisoners in Canada, this paper addresses this scholarly gap by bringing together emerging trends in the literatures on sociology of sport, sports geography, and carceral geography to investigate the complex social meanings of prison sport and exercise. Specifically, we explore the folding of sports space into carceral space, often with the effect of reinforcing violent and exclusionary situations, but which also helps construct alternative spatial and temporal realities. Indeed, our overarching theoretical analysis considers how prisoners use sport to produce space in ways that assert a limited degree of agency over their daily lives and temporarily transcend their unpleasant conditions of confinement. By drawing from diverse theoretical frameworks and literatures, we advance novel arguments about the socio‐spatial significance of sport in prisons and raise some important questions for further research.     

The understated turn: Emerging interests and themes in Canadian posthumanist geography

Posthumanist geography is a broad tradition incorporating a range of intersecting theoretical approaches including assemblage theory, actor-network theory, new materialisms, affect theory, neo-vitalism, political ecology, post-phenomenology, and non-representational theory—as well as contributions from a number of theoretically progressive subject fields such as new mobilities, relational thinking, sensory and performance studies, biosocial and biopolitics studies, and science and technology studies. The specificities of and differences between these traditions and fields aside, common to posthumanism is a scepticism of human exceptionalism. Here, the sovereign human subject is decentred, and in doing so, posthumanist work acknowledges the agencies of a full array of human and non-human actors and forces. Recognizing that there are important “geographies to (the discipline of) geography,” this paper identifies and reviews some of the key posthumanist interests and themes that have emerged over recent years quietly and organically in Canadian geography, namely posthumanist (i) Indigenous geographies; (ii) animal and natures geographies; (iii) health, wellbeing, and disability geographies; (iv) affective and atmospheric geographies; and (v) non-representational and creative methodologies. The paper concludes with some thoughts on the nature and strengths of Canadian posthumanist geography, and on some possibilities for future advancement.     

Structural Adjustment and Subsistence Industry: Artisanal Gold Mining in Ghana

Since the implementation of Ghana's national Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), policies associated with the programme have been criticized for perpetuating poverty within the country's subsistence economy. This article brings new evidence to bear on the contention that the SAP has both fuelled the uncontrolled growth of informal, poverty‐driven artisanal gold mining and further marginalized its impoverished participants. Throughout the adjustment period, it has been a central goal of the government to promote the expansion of large‐scale gold mining through foreign investment. Confronted with the challenge of resuscitating a deteriorating gold mining industry, the government introduced a number of tax breaks and policies in an effort to create an attractive investment climate for foreign multinational mining companies. The rapid rise in exploration and excavation activities that has since taken place has displaced thousands of previously‐undisturbed subsistence artisanal gold miners. This, along with a laissez faire land concession allocation procedure, has exacerbated conflicts between mining parties. Despite legalizing small‐scale mining in 1989, the Ghanaian government continues to implement procedurally complex and bureaucratically unwieldy regulations and policies for artisanal operators which have the effect of favouring the interests of established large‐scale miners.     

The Archaeology of Capitalism in Iceland: The View from Vieey

This paper examines the particular nature of Icelandic capitalism as it emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing on a recent project investigating the material processes surrounding the rise and fall of an early capitalist venture in the fishing industry, the role of commodities and their intersection with issues of colonialism and nationalism is explored. The study centers on a village community established in 1907 on an island in the bay of Reykjavík, which saw two periods of boom and bust in its short life before the village was abandoned in 1943.