Spinoza’s translation of Margaret Fell and his portrayal of Judaism in the Theological-Political Treatise

The English Quaker Margaret Fell worked hard to have her conversionist pamphlets to Dutch Jews translated into Hebrew, and Richard Popkin has suggested that Spinoza was Fell’s translator. This article offers further evidence for Popkin’s claim by suggesting that Fell’s influence can be seen in chapters 4 and 5 of Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise. Fell’s and Spinoza’s remarks about Judaism and Jewish ceremonies bear significant similarities, as do the biblical passages they use to support their statements. Spinoza also challenges Fell’s arguments, though, by resisting her Pauline method of reading the Hebrew Bible and reading with a historicist method instead. Spinoza’s apparent use and revision of Fell’s arguments are significant because they speak to the role of the Quakers – and, notably, of a Quaker woman – in early modern intellectual history and because they sharpen our view of Spinoza’s opinions of Judaism.     

Local labour markets and socio-economic change: evidence from Danish towns, 2008–2013

The recent financial and economic crisis had substantial but spatially differentiated impacts on growth. However, there is still a lot left to be understood about the local aspects of the crisis. One of these aspects is its socio-economic consequences. This paper investigates local socio-economic change to Danish towns from 2008 to 2013, with a focus on the impact of local labour market (LLM) structures on change. Socio-economic change in towns is measured both directly as mean income and employment growth, and indirectly as population and human capital growth. The paper relies on micro-data and uses robust regression to generate results. Several findings are presented, but the two main conclusions are: first, the LLM structures of towns still influence local socio-economic development; and, second, towns experience better socio-economic development if they are in close proximity to a larger labour market and/or have a large ratio of commuters in the working population.     

International accompaniment,reflexivity and the intelligibility of power in post-conflict Guatemala

ABSTRACT

‘International accompaniers’ use their physical presence as a form of peaceful intervention to deter political violence against local human rights defenders. Threatened members of Guatemala’s civil society have relied on accompaniment as part of their security strategy since the early 1980s. Approximately one thousand volunteers from a dozen countries have accompanied in Guatemala. International accompaniment has been a key component of the effort to prosecute former military general and president Efraín Ríos Montt and other perpetrators of mass human rights violations in Guatemala. Victim witnesses and their legal counsel have included accompaniment as part of their protection strategy since 2000. Important questions have nonetheless been raised with respect to accompaniment’s effectiveness as a tool for witness protection and the possibility that it reinforces power inequalities. This article builds on Gada Mahrouse’s critique of accompaniment and draws on Michel Foucault’s understanding of reflexivity and power. The authors use insights from two case studies to support the argument that accompaniment’s usefulness as a tool for witness protection depends on its ability to accommodate the witnesses’ position within webs of interconnected power dynamics and the multiple ways in which they conceive of security. It also depends on how intelligible these different power dynamics are to accompaniers. This argument is used to highlight how accompaniment in Guatemala is relevant for other situations where the prosecution of human rights atrocities is long term and depends on witness testimony.     

Theorizing a child–dog encounter in the slums of La Paz using post-humanistic approaches in order to disrupt universalisms in current ‘child in nature’ debates

This paper theorizes children's interspecies relation with dogs in La Paz Bolivia utilizing post-humanism and new materialism as its approach. This approach allows for the deconstructing of human–nature binaries found in discourses central to the children in nature movement. Questioning the universalizing of children's experience in nature the paper considers three propositions. Firstly, what if children were viewed as nature rather than outside of it. Secondly, can the objects or ‘things’ of nature be viewed as animated. And finally, how sensitive is the contemporary imperative to reconnect children to a romanticized more natured life, to children's diverse worldly experiences. I explore these propositions drawing on a study where I have adopted a materialist ontology and theorized using the work of [Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press] and her concept of intra-action as adopted by Rautio [2013a. “Children Who Carry Stones in Their Pockets: On Autotelic Material Practices in Everyday Life.” Children's Geographies 11 (4): 394–408]. Based on my child–dog interspecies exploration, I will conclude by re-addressing the three propositions.