Team Arab: al‐Jazeera and the flagging of everyday Arabism during the 2008 Beijing Olympics

The linking of living rooms across state borders by al‐Jazeera and other pan‐Arab satellite television channels has prompted claims that a ‘new Arabism’ that undermines state nationalism is emerging. Until now, analysts have mostly focused on the ‘hot’ Arabism in the news coverage of politicised events such as the Israel–Palestine conflict. This article offers a new dimension by suggesting that as important to satellite television's construction and reproduction of Arab identity is the everyday discourse found in less overtly political programmes such as sport. To demonstrate this, it offers an analysis of al‐Jazeera's coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics showing how the broadcasts address viewers as a common Arab audience who are simultaneously encouraged to be nationalistic towards their separate nation‐states within a given ‘Arab arena’ of states with whom they should primarily compete. This suggests that new Arabism should in fact be considered a ‘supranationalism’, not a revived Arab nationalism as it simultaneously promotes Arab and state identities in tandem. Finally, it aims to expand our understanding of ‘everyday nationalism’ by adapting Michael Billig's theory and methodology of ‘banal nationalism’ in British newspapers to facilitate the study of sport on supranational Arab identity on satellite television.     

The Holly Bluff style

We recognize a new style of Mississippian-period art in the North American Southeast, calling it Holly Bluff. It is a two-dimensional style of representational art that appears solely on containers: marine shell cups and ceramic vessels. Iconographically, the style focuses on the depiction of zoomorphic supernatural powers of the Beneath World. Seriating the known corpus of images allows us to characterize three successive style phases, Holly Bluff I, II, and III. Using limited data, we source the style to the northern portion of the lower Mississippi Valley.     

Sulfur and iron analyses of marine archaeological wood in shipwrecks from the Baltic Sea and Scandinavian waters

Analyses of marine archaeological wood from shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea area, Kronan, Riksnyckeln, Tattran, the Puck Bay Boat and the Ghost wreck, and at the Scandinavian West coast, the Göta wreck, Stora Sofia and the Viking shipwrecks of Skuldelev, show accumulation of sulfur compounds. The penetration profiles of sulfur and iron into the wood and the speciation of characteristic sulfur groups were evaluated by combining X-ray spectroscopic analyses, in particular S K-edge XANES (X-ray absorption near edge structure) and X-ray fluorescence, with ESCA and elemental analyses. The combined analyses support the hypothesis that hydrogen sulfide produced by sulfate-reducing bacteria reacts and accumulates at low iron concentration mainly as organically bound sulfur, which as in previous studies was found by X-ray spectro-microscopy to accumulate in lignin-rich parts of the wood cell walls. The presence of iron(II) ions from corroding iron promotes formation of pyrite and other iron(II) sulfides, which easily oxidise in aerobic conditions with high humidity. No significant differences in sulfur and iron accumulation were found in wood from shipwrecks in the east coast brackish water and the west coast seawater. Sediments from three wreck sites, the Göta wreck, Stora Sofia and Kronan, were analyzed to a depth of a few decimeters and showed especially at the Stora Sofia high sulfur concentrations, exceeding 3 mass%. S K-edge XANES analyses of the sediments showed mainly reduced forms of sulfur, in particular pyrite and iron(II) sulfides together with elemental sulfur.     

The camera goes down the streets. Dans les rues (Victor Trivas, 1933) and the Paris of the German émigrés

Marcel Carné's important clarion call to 1930s French cinema 'to take the camera down the streets' was uniquely troubled by the arrival of waves of German émigré filmmakers in the French capital. This article uses one émigré film set in Paris, Dans les rues (Victor Trivas, 1933), as a case study to discuss both the place of the city and the place of the outsider in cinematic cultural representation during this decade. It argues that despite right-wing critical discourse linking Jewish culture with the ill effects of city life, a film like Dans les rues can be seen as an important turning point in the on-screen depiction of Paris. Trivas's film may have looked backwards to 19th-century convention, but, at the same time, it responded uniquely to Carné's concerns to produce an important, though largely neglected, early example of poetic realism.     

Book reviews

C. D. Grijns and S. O. Robson (ed.). Cultural contact and textual interpretation: papers from the fourth European Colloquium on Malay and Indonesian Studies, held in Leiden in 1983. vi, 337 pp. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1986. (Verhandelingen van net Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkenkunde, 115.) Guilders 35.

Phillip L. Thomas, Like tigers around a piece of meat: the Baba style of dondang sayang. xviii, 83 pp. (Local History and Memoirs.) Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1986.     

Book Reviews

Guilain P. Denoeux, The United States and the Challenge of Democratization in the Arab World. Washington, DC: Occasional Paper, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, 1996. 38 pp. npg.

Walid Khalidi, Islam, the West and Jerusalem. Washington, DC: Occasional Paper, Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Center for Muslim‐Christian Understanding, Georgetown University, 1996. 24 pp. npg.

Rick Fawn and Jeremy Larkins (eds), International Society after the Cold War: Anarchy and Order Reconsidered. London: Macmillan, 1996. 302 pp. $39.95 (paper).

Mark Turner and David Hume, Governance, Administration and Development: Making the State Work. London: Macmillan, 1997. xv + 272 pp. $34.95 (cloth).

Michael Pugh (ed.), The UN, Peace and Force. London: Frank Cass, 1997. 209 pp. £29.50 (cloth), £15.00 (paper).

Kent E. Calder, Asia's Deadly Triangle: How Arms, Energy and Growth Threaten to Destabilize Asia Pacific. London: Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 1996. xi + 253 pp. npg.

Joseph M. Siracusa and Yeong‐Han Cheong, America's Australia, Australia's America: A Guide to Issues and References. Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 1997. 160 pp. US21.95 (cloth), US$12.95 (paper).

Phillip Darby (ed.), At the Edge of International Relations: Postcolonialism, Gender and Dependency. London: Pinter, 1997. £45.00 (cloth).

Peter Stirk, A History of European Integration Since 1914. London: Pinter, 1996. vii + 308 pp. £42.50 (cloth), £16.99 (paper).

Philip J. Eldridge, Non‐Government Organizations and Democratic Participation in Indonesia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. $55.00 (cloth).

Dewi Fortuna Anwar, Indonesia's Strategic Culture: Ketahanan Nasional. Wawasan Nusantara and Hankamrata. Griffith University: Centre for the Study of Australia‐Asia Relations, Australia‐Asia Papers No. 75, May 1996. x + 49 pp. $10.00 (paper).

Garry Rodan, Kevin Hewison and Richard Robison (eds), The Political Economy of South‐East Asia: An Introduction. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1997. xiv + 299 pp. $29.95 (paper).

Curtis Andressen and Keichi Kumagai, Escape from Affluence: Japanese Students in Australia. Griffith University: Centre for the Study of Australia‐Asia Relations, Australia‐Asia Papers no. 79, December 1996. vi + 116 pp. $16.00 (paper).

Kim Richard Nossal and Carolynn Vivian, A Brief Madness: Australia and the Resumption of French Nuclear Testing. Canberra: Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No. 121, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, The Australian National University, 1997. $15.00 (paper).

William H. Lewis and Stuart E. Johnson, Weapons of Mass Destruction: New Perspectives on Counter Proliferation. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1995. npg.

Hendro Subroto, Eyewitness to Integration of East Timor. Jakarta: Pustaka Sinar Harapan, 1997. 279 pp. 29,000 Rupiah.