Defending Empire at the United Nations: The Politics of International Colonial Oversight in the Era of Decolonisation

This article argues that, although anti-colonial delegations to the 1945 San Francisco Conference did not succeed in bringing all colonial territories under the umbrella of international trusteeship, the threat of expanding international oversight shaped the relationship between colonial governments and international organisations in powerful ways. By focusing on how the UN Special Committee on Non-Self-Governing Territories evolved as a de facto supervisory system for dependent territories, this article considers the ways that representatives at the United Nations defined dependency and self-government and explores the crusade that colonial governments led to justify imperialism in the post-war world. Through a consideration of the diplomatic actions of France, Great Britain and Belgium, this article explores the ways that colonial empires jointly mobilised to defend colonialism at the level of the United Nations. In the face of evolving supervisory mechanisms at the United Nations, the French, British and Belgian delegations joined forces in an attempt to expose some of the inherent contradictions in UN policy towards dependent populations, and to make the case that subject populations living in independent territories often endured worse conditions than those living in formal overseas empires.     

Irony made manifest: cultural contention and Córdoba’s Mosque-Cathedral

ABSTRACT

Córdoba’s Mezquita (“mosque”) has been the focus of much recent attention, following decisions that are both significant for the building’s future and indicative of larger issues in Spain. In March of 2016 a report concluded that the mosque-cathedral does not “belong” to anyone; that same month the Catholic Church, which administers the site, announced it will revert to “Mosque-Cathedral” in official literature after attempts to refer to the site as the “Córdoba Cathedral.” Efforts to change the name align with policy that forbids Muslim worship in the monument; the Church denied formal proposals requesting permission for such worship in 2004 and 2006, and tensions escalated in 2010 when Muslim visitors were arrested upon attempting to pray. A World Heritage Site for the express use of all peoples, the Mezquita and the contentions surrounding it are thus fraught with ironic meaning. This article examines the ironies of the space and the related debates that are both symbolic and symptomatic of more extensive tensions in Spain. Amid a broader context of terrorism, Islamophobia and the European Migrant Crisis, the medieval Mezquita engages with the present moment as Spain struggles with its heritage and its contemporary relationship with the Muslim world.     

Rock Art and Ritual: An Archaeological Analysis of Rock Art in Arid Central Australia

Rock art researchers throughout the world have explicitly or implicitly invoked ritual as an activity associated with the production of rock art but the articulation between the structure and composition of rock art assemblages and ritual behaviour remains poorly understood. Anthropologist, Roy Rappaport (1999) argued that all ritual, whatever the content or focus, has a universal structure. We review this proposition in the context of ritual studies and propose a method aimed at assessing the potential for identifying ritual structure in rock art assemblages. We discuss an archaeological analysis undertaken on the rock art assemblages in arid Central Australia, which aimed at distinguishing such a ritual structure among engraved assemblages, likely to have a Pleistocene origin, as well as more recent painted, stencilled and drawn assemblages. This analysis, despite its limitations, provides the foundation for developing a model, which will enhance the understanding of the relationship between the production of rock art and ritual.     

Outsourcing the Business of Development: The Rise of For-profit Consultancies in the UK Aid Sector

While much attention has been paid to the ways in which the private sector is now embedded within the field of development, one group of actors — for-profit development consultancies and contractors, or service providers — has received relatively little attention. This article analyses the growing role of for-profit consultancies and contractors in British aid delivery, which has been driven by two key trends: first, the outsourcing of managerial, audit and knowledge-management functions as part of efforts to bring private sector approaches and skills into public spending on aid; and second, the reconfiguration of aid spending towards markets and the private sector, and away from locally embedded, state-focused aid programming. The authors argue that both trends were launched under New Labour in the early 2000s, and super-charged under successive Conservative governments. The resulting entanglement means that the policies and practices of the UK government's aid agencies, and the interests and forms of for-profit service providers, are increasingly mutually constitutive. Amongst other implications, this shift acts to displace traditional forms of contestation and accountability of aid delivery.     

Pregnant Pauses: Agoraphobic embodiment and the limits of (im)pregnability

Drawing upon Robyn Longhurst's recent research on the embodied experiences of pregnant women in public places and her own empirical research on agoraphobia (fear and avoidance of social space), the author investigates the commonalities and possible synergies between the phenomenology of these two apparently disparate conditions. She argues that both pregnancy and agoraphobia might usefully be understood in terms of an experiential intensification of the problems associated with maintaining a stable self-identity by women in contemporary Western society. In both cases, subjects experience a heightened awareness of socially problematic aspects of womanhood and raised sensitivity to the feeling of being 'out of place' in the social sphere.