Gendering Border Studies

Scholars working in (post)colonial settings have called for more-than-human (MTH) and post-human geographies to shift their gaze beyond Anglo-European ways of knowing the world. In this paper I explore the opportunities for an MTH political project that works in solidarity with and learns from Indigenous communities. I begin by examining the considerable synergies between MTH theorists’ understandings of nonhuman agency and kinship, and the worldviews of Ngāi Tahu (a Māori tribe). I then examine how Ngāi Tahu have worked within a new water management regime in the Canterbury region of Aotearoa New Zealand to articulate a relational ethics with the Hurunui River. In navigating multiple tensions and advocating for the lively river, the political space of the new catchment committee was expanded to (begin to) include the river. However, non-Māori who attempted to describe an understanding of a river-kin were less successful. This unevenness, I argue, highlights the complementary contributions to be made by expanded theoretical engagements. In particular there are generative possibilities for MTH theorists to work alongside Indigenous communities, and carve political space for more people to advocate for a relational ethics.     

Honduran boys confronting adversity: urban multi-locality and kin mobilization

This article describes ethnographic research involving street children and child labor in urban Honduras. It is set in a context of deteriorating social, political, and economic conditions that has created an increase in child labor. However, the research findings have delineated that a growing number of children are choosing to work and live on the street to escape extreme poverty and hunger in their familial households. Despite the multi-local spaces they inhabit, they have been able to create unique non-kin relations while often maintaining family based linkages. This study, undertaken in two centers for boys in Tegucigalpa and Comayagua, Honduras analyzes the contextual dynamics and decision-making processes of Honduran youth regarding work and living arrangements in urban spaces.     

French: a language for everyone in Québec?*

Abstract. With the realisation that the future of French in Québec depends on its adoption by a growing number of immigrants, efforts have intensified in recent years to promote a less ethnic and more civic conception of Québécois identity. As attested by the title of the final report of the Commission des États généraux sur la situation et l'avenir de la langue française au Québec (French, a Language for Everyone), a key component of this new conception is the idea that French should be a langue publique commune (common public language) for all those residing in Québec, irrespective of ethnic origin. This article examines the notion of langue publique commune in more detail. While the concept assumes that language can somehow be ‘de‐ethnicised’ to become the property of all ethnic groups, observations made in other contexts only confirm the inextricable link between language and the ethnic, as opposed to the civic, dimension of national identity. The article also investigates the issue of language motivation, in particular the related challenge faced by the Québécois authorities of how to encourage so‐called new Quebecers to adopt French as their language of public communications.     

Factions and Fractions: A Case Study of Power Politics in the Australian Labor Party

Over the past three decades, factions have cemented their hold over the Australian Labor Party. This has largely been due to the entrenchment of the proportional representation of factions. One of the effects of the institutionalisation of factions has been the development of factional sub-groupings ('fractions'). This article analyses the phenomenon by looking at a case study of a single ALP faction ‐ the Left in New South Wales. Since 1971, two major fractions have developed in the NSW Left, based on ideological disagreements, personality conflicts, generational differences and arguments over the role of the union movement in the ALP. This development parallels the intra-factional splits that have occurred in many other sections of the Labor Party. Yet the factional system in the 1980s and 1990s operated relatively effectively as a means of managing power. The question now is whether it can survive the challenge of new issues that cross-cut traditional ideological lines.