‘The Laws of his Own Country’: Defamation,Banishment and the Problem of Legal Pluralism in the 1820s Cape Colony

In 1824 the Cape colony was rocked by three criminal libel trials brought by the colonial administration against settlers who had criticised its officials. To further silence their critics, a recently established colonial newspaper was suppressed and an order banishing its editor was issued by executive decree without judicial process. While these actions are well known to historians of South Africa, the important legal and constitutional issues they raised have not been properly recognised. In tracking the controversy that these trials unleashed in London, Cape Town and other colonial localities, this article argues that these events must be situated within a broader crisis of legal pluralism playing out within the British Empire. The confusion between English and Dutch law highlighted by these cases and their aftermath reveals constitutional debates that underscore the deep contingency of conquest law at a highly unstable legal and political moment. The political disputes inspired by these actions demonstrate that conflicts between variants of European law need to be more clearly recognised as instrumental to the strengthened implementation of British imperial legal hierarchies in colonial localities through the 1820s and 1830s.     

A second species of the possum Durudawiri (Marsupialia: Miralinidae) from the early Miocene of Riversleigh,northwestern Queensland

Durudawiri anfractus sp. nov. (Marsupialia: Miralinidae) is described from Riversleigh. This, the second described species of the genus, is very similar in morphology to, but much larger than, D. inusitatus. Durudawiri anfractus and D. inusitatus are found at similar sites, all early Miocene. The Miralinidae remains one of the most time-restricted families of marsupial, being found so far in only the late Oligocene and early Miocene.     

Construction of Meaningful Contexts On War,Lions, Dogs,Birds and a Vineyard

The present article argues that 1 Kgs 20-22 are not well-suited as historical sources for the Aramean wars, but are of considerable importance in the reconstruction of the world of ideas of that time. It is shown how animals and plants can be used as codes in the narrative. The use of lions, dogs and birds in 1 Kgs 20-22 illustrates one and the same theme: killing and devouring. Yahweh can appear as a lion or send a lion, but even though the lion kills, it does not “devour” the disobedient prophets of Yahweh. Yahweh is also behind the treatment of Ahab, Jezebel and the prophets of Baal, but Yahweh leaves it to dogs and birds to devour them. The king of animals is connected to Yahweh's prophets and the unclean animals to the apostate royal house. Through the codes we gain insight into certain basic modes of thought in Old Testament cosmo-ontology. For linguistic expressions acquire their meaning not only from the narrative sequence in which they are used, but also from the system in which they are included.     

Scaling from ‘below’: practices,strategies and urban spaces

Over the last 10 years, scholars in human geography have been paying increasing attention to the social construction of scale. Most of this literature takes its starting point in discourses of globalization and the way in which re-definition of scales operates through global political economics. This article is starting from an acknowledgement of the value of the scale debate for the analysis of urban everyday life and urban politics. Briefly, we reconsider the debate, in particular emphasizing the urban question as a scale question. However, we also identify some shortcomings in the debate so far. Even though many authors forward a conception of scales as relational, it is argued, they are often caught in a ‘hierarchical’ view of ‘scaling from above’. This is the background for an attempt to reverse the debate and consider the construction of urban spaces ‘from below’—from the practices and strategies of ‘ordinary’ people and organizations in the city. The interest in this article is how the diversity of everyday practices and politics interact with other scales in the construction of urban space.     

Understanding the historic legacies of empire from the timbers left behind: Towards critical dendroprovenancing in the British North Atlantic

The forests of British North America were integral to Britain's maritime empire. Many of these timbers exist today as wooden beams and flooring at historical dockyards and garrisons such as the Royal Naval Dockyard of Bermuda. In this paper, we investigate what timbers from this Dockyard can tell us about interconnections and empire-building throughout the North Atlantic region. To do this we drew from approaches of critical physical geography, historical geography, and dendroprovenancing by using timber as a way to interrogate collaboratively the changes in—and connections across—socio-ecological landscapes. We examined HM Customs records between 1825 and 1850 to determine the flow of timbers to Bermuda. We then sampled timbers from buildings constructed between 1825 and 1853 and analyzed them using isotopic and dendrochronological techniques to establish the probable location of origin of the timber samples. HM Customs records showed that prior to the 1840s, timbers primarily came from British North America, whereas post-1840 timbers primarily came from the southeastern United States, with some still coming from Europe and British North America. To establish whether timber use by the Royal Navy and Royal Engineers matched the pattern in the customs documents, we looked to the dendrochronological records. Dendrochronologic evidence showed that military construction followed the same pattern, with buildings constructed pre-1840 using material from British North America and buildings constructed post-1840 using timbers sourced from the southeastern United States. Finally, using this information we explore some of the connections between regions, in terms of resource use, and the implications of those uses—for example, that the British Admiralty continued to benefit from the practices of slavery through the use of products produced from enslaved labour in other parts of the North Atlantic well after emancipation.     

The promises of creative industry higher education: an analysis of university prospectuses in Malaysia

In the context of economic growth policies that stress the importance of a ‘creative economy’, and the expansion of private universities, there has been an enormous growth in the number of creative industry degrees offered by Malaysian HEIs. This paper provides a critical discourse analysis of the promotional materials used by two private institutions, Multimedia University and Limkokwing University, to persuade students that these degrees will offer them a desirable future as employable ‘industry savvy and tech savvy’ creative graduates. We explore the structures of feeling that promotional material seeks to engender in potential students as it promises them future success in a globalised, high-tech world.     

Bodies, Sensations, Space and Time: The Contribution from Henri Lefebvre

Abstract: In geography as well as other human/social sciences, issues on the body and embodiment have increasingly come to the fore over recent decades. In the same period, and in particular following the English translation of The Production of Space , Henri Lefebvre has been a central figure in the geographical discourse. However, even though a range of writers on Lefebvre do acknowledge his emphasis on embodiment, it seems that he has only partially found his way into the core of the body literature. The aim of this paper is to explore Lefebvre's contribution to a geographical theory of the body, in particular when it comes to the conception of a generative and creative social body as an intrinsic part of social practice. I start by exploring the way in which Lefebvre's conception of the body is developed in creative dialoque with other philosophers, such as Marx, Heideggger and Nietzsche, and continue by way of an explication of his own contribution. This is done under the headings of 'spatial bodies' and 'temporal bodies', in this way also emphasizing creative, moving bodies. Instead of a conclusion the paper argues that Lefebvre's contribution could gainfully interact with later (not least feminist) approaches, and through such interactions add to current discussions on 'body politics' and 'performativity'.