Accompaniment Through Carceral Geographies: Abolitionist Research Partnerships with Indigenous Communities

This article approaches “ea”—a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) concept meaning life, breath, and sovereignty—as a vital mode of abolition ecologies, and proposes accompaniment as a methodology for mutual collaboration toward this endeavour. Research draws from ethnographic fieldwork on the Wai‘anae Coast of O‘ahu in Hawai‘i, a predominantly Native Hawaiian community, and reflects upon the author’s positionality on Wai‘anae’s insider–outsider borderlands. The argument is multifold: Carceral geographies inscribe racism by cleaving humans from the environment and each other, depriving life‐giving resources from populations deemed a threat to a dominant socioenvironmental order. At the same time, abolition ecologies entail worldmaking predicated on the interdependence of all life forces, employing syncretic practices that join disparate struggles, people, and places to generate possibilities greater than the sum of its parts. Accompaniment works against racism’s practices of criminalisation and containment while contributing to radical, syncretic placemaking as part of an expansive liberatory practice.     

Más o Menos Muerto: Bare Life in Roberto Bolaño's 2666

This article explores Chilean Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666 (2004) with a focus on the significance of what Giorgio Agamben describes as ‘bare life.’ In the novel, Bolaño employs Pedro Páramo as a metaphor to talk about feminicide and violence against women in Santa Teresa, the fictional Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. The victims of violence in Santa Teresa in 2666 are described as ‘más o menos muerto,’ a condition that points to the way in which disappeared and misidentified bodies are forced into eternal anonymity and denied even the right of death. Whereas the dead in Pedro Páramo are denied the rights of citizenship in life, those in 2666 face a denial of rights that extends from life into death, leaving them with nothing, not even their names. In 2666, the physical violence is preceded by what Juárez photojournalist Julián Cardona describes as ‘economic violence.’     

Women in Neuroscience (WIN): The First Twenty Years

Women in Neuroscience (WIN) is an international organization whose major goal is to promote the professional advancement of women neuroscientists. To this end, WIN facilitates contacts and communication among women working in neuroscience, and organizes appropriate activities at the annual Society for Neuroscience (SfN) meeting. WIN was created in 1980, when despite major changes and advances in “equal opportunities“, women were still not achieving a proportionate level of success in the subdiscipline of neurosciences. In 1980, women made up 40 to 50% of entering classes in medical schools or graduate programs, but often comprised only 5 to 15% of leadership in respective organizations. Although there had been women elected to serve as SfN presidents, council, and committee members, women were underrepresented in other positions of the Society, such as symposium and session chairs. There was an even lesser degree of representation in leadership positions at universities and medical schools in terms of full professorships, chairs, and program directors, as well as on editorial boards, advisory boards, and councils. Over the years, WIN has worked with success toward increasing the participation of women in neuroscience.     

Orphans’ Land Rights in Post‐War Rwanda: The Problem of Guardianship

In 1994, the Rwandan civil war and genocide produced thousands of orphans. Alongside the war, the growing HIV/AIDS crisis in Rwanda has produced a current population of about 300,000 orphans — many of whom are compelled to head households. These orphans urgently require land use rights, but many find that their rights to their deceased parents’ customary land holdings are denied or restricted by their guardians and others. Despite the legal protections for children that are guaranteed within Rwanda's laws, the reality is that many guardians do not respect orphans’ land rights and few orphans have sufficient access to administrative and legal forums to assert and defend these rights. In contrast to most accounts in the literature that discuss more generally the issue of African orphans’ land rights in the context of adults’ land rights, this article focuses on specific cases in which Rwandan orphans independently pursued their land rights. Ultimately, the article concludes that in Rwanda — and elsewhere in Africa — government officials should re‐examine their ideas about guardianship and grant orphans urgent attention as individuals and as a special interest group.     

Reviews: Australian

Richard Lucy, The Australian Form of Government, Melbourne, Macmillan, 1985, pp.460. $19.95 (paper)

Greg Whitwell, The Treasury Line, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1986, pp.308. $17.95 (paper)

Dean Jaensch, Getting Our Houses in Order: Australia's Parliament, Ringwood, Penguin, 1986, pp.192. $9.95 (paper)

Lionel Murphy, The Rule of Law, edited by Jean and Richard Ely, Amcliffe NSW, Akron Press, 1986, pp.xx,309. $17.95 (paper)

The Whitlam Phenomenon: Fabian Papers, Melbourne, McPhee Gribble/Penguin, 1986, pp.202. $8.95 (paper)

Malcolm Saunders & Ralph Summy, The Australian Peace Movement: A Short History, Canberra, Peace Research Centre (distributor Social Alternatives), 1986, pp.78, $3.75 (paper)

David McKnight (ed.), Moving Left: The Future of Socialism in Australia. Sydney, Pluto Press, 1986, pp.221. $11.95 (paper)

Braham Dabscheck, Arbitrator at Work: Sir William Raymond Kelly and the Regulation of Australian Industrial Relations, Sydney, Allen & Un‐win, 1983, pp.169. $14.95 (paper)

C. D. Rowley, Recovery: the Politics of Aboriginal Reform, Ringwood, Penguin, 1986, pp. 169. $8.95 (paper)

James Walter, The Ministers’ Minders: Personal Advisers in National Government, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1986, pp.237. $25.00 (cloth), $12.00 (paper)

Warren Osmond, Frederic Eggleston: An Intellectual in Australian Politics, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp.357. $29.95 (cloth)

Barry Gustafson, From the Cradle to the Grave: A Biography of Michael Joseph Savage, Auckland, Reed Methuen, 1986, pp.369. $35.00 (cloth)

J. M. Mitchell, International Cultural Relations, London, Allen & Unwin, 1986, pp. xvi, 253.

Leslie Holmes, Politics in the Communist World, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1986, pp.401. $32.00 (paper)

Bronislaw Misztal (ed.), Poland After Solidarity: Social Movements versus the State, New Brunswick, Transaction Books, 1985, pp.167. US$20.00 (cloth)

David S. Mason, Public Opinion and Political Change in Poland. 1980–1982, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 275. $74.00 (cloth)

Robert F. Miller and T.H. Rigby (eds), Religion and Politics in Communist States, Canberra, Occasional Paper No. 19, Department of Political Science, Research School of Social Sciences, The Australian National University, 1986, pp.141.

John Rayenhill, Collective Clientelism: The Lome Conventions and North‐South Relations, New York, Columbia University Press, 1985, pp.389. $49.00 (cloth)

E.J. Clay and B.B. Schaffer (eds) Room for Manoeuvre — An Exploration of Public Policy in Agriculture and Rural Development, London, Heinemann, 1984, pp.209. $ 13.50 (paper)

Kenneth Fox, Metropolitan America: Urban Life and Urban Policy in the United States, 1940–1980, London, Macmillan, 1985, pp.274. $19.95 (paper)

K.J. Holsti, The Dividing Discipline: Hegemony and Diversity in International Theory, London, Allen and Unwin, 1985, pp.165. $39.95 (cloth)

Richard Clutterbuck (ed.), The Future of Political Violence, London, Macmillan, 1986, pp. 206. $19.95 (paper)

Christopher Lee, War in Space, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1986, pp.242, £10.95 (cloth); and E.P. Thompson (ed.), Star Wars, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1985, pp.165, $6.95 (paper)

Kevin Boyle and Tom Hadden, Ireland: A Positive Proposal, Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1985, pp.127. $7.95 (paper)

Malcolm Slater, Contemporary French Politics, London, Macmillan, 1985, pp.xv + 259. $13.95 (paper)

Olajide Aluko and Timothy M. Shaw (eds), Southern Africa in the 1980s, London, George Allen and Unwin, 1985, pp.327. $45.00 (cloth)

Commonwealth Group of Eminent Persons, Mission to South Africa: The Commonwealth Report, London, Penguin Books for the Commonwealth Secretariat, 1986, pp.176. $6.95 (paper)

N.P. Hepworth, The Finance of Local Government, rev. 6th edition, London, Allen & Unwin, 1985, pp.344. $22.95 (paper)

Government, 2nd edition, London, Allen & Unwin, 1986, pp.164. $14.95 (paper)

Anthony Giddens, The Nation‐State and Violence, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1985, pp.399. $58.50 (cloth)

Donald Home, The Public Culture: The Triumph of Industrialism, Sydney, Pluto Press, 1986, pp.264. $12.95 (paper)

Mark Cousins and Athar Hussain, Michel Foucault, London, Macmillan, 1984, pp.278. $18.95 (paper)

J.A. Downie, Jonathan Swift, Political Writer, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985, pp.391. $35.95 (paper)

Robert Young, Personal Autonomy: Beyond Negative and Positive Liberty, London & Sydney, Croom Helm, 1986, pp.123. $44.95 (cloth)

David Muschamp (ed.), Political Thinkers, Melbourne, Macmillan, 1986, pp.259. $29.95 (cloth), $14.95 (paper)

Alistair Mant, Leaders We Deserve, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1985, pp.250. $16.95 (paper)

Richard J. Badham, Theories of Industrial Society, London, Croom Helm, 1986, pp.188. $49.95 (cloth)

Derek Phillips, Toward a Just Social Order, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986, pp.490. US$50.00 (cloth)

John Burnheim, Is Democracy Possible? The Alternative to Electoral Politics, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1985, pp.205. $39.95 (cloth).

Philip Green, Retrieving Democracy: In Search of Civic Equality, London, Methuen, 1985, pp.278. $53.95 (cloth)