What Does the Somali Experience Teach Us about the Social Contract and the State?

Since 1991 the international system has struggled and failed to recreate a state on the territory of the former Somalia. Proto‐state systems have been formed by Somalis themselves in Somaliland and Puntland and alternative forms of governance and order exist in other parts of Somalia, but none enjoys international recognition. The polities of Somalia offer important lessons concerning our general theories about social contract, the role that states play in creating wealth, indigenous systems of governance, and the failure of existing international approaches to state reconstruction. Contemporary Somali politics is re‐explored here to extract these lessons. The article explores the assumptions embedded in the works of the classic Western social contract theorists in the light of Somali experience in order to show that the underlying conceptual structure of international state reconstruction work needs to be rethought. We conclude that it frequently is better to allow for bottom‐up, organic, disjointed negotiation of indigenous governance solutions (even though they probably will not conform to Western ideas of liberal democracy) than for the international system to impose top‐down answers. The former more closely tracks the history of state formation in Europe and the latter is troubled by the inconsistent and not necessarily benign interests of the international actors involved. Indigenous, local political systems are changed by the stresses of violent conflict, so prompt action to employ them in a post‐conflict situation is indicated.     

The role of canids in ritual and domestic contexts: new ancient DNA insights from complex hunter–gatherer sites in prehistoric Central California

This study explores the interrelationship between the genus Canis and hunter–gatherers through a case study of prehistoric Native Americans in the San Francisco Bay-Sacramento Delta area. A distinctive aspect of the region's prehistoric record is the interment of canids, variously classified as coyotes, dogs, and wolves. Since these species are difficult to distinguish based solely on morphology, ancient DNA analysis was employed to distinguish species. The DNA study results, the first on canids from archaeological sites in California, are entirely represented by domesticated dogs (including both interments and disarticulated samples from midden deposits). These results, buttressed by stable isotope analyses, provide new insight into the complex interrelationship between humans and canids in both ritual and prosaic contexts, and reveal a more prominent role for dogs than previously envisioned.     

Migrating identities: gender,whiteness and Britishness in post-colonial Hong Kong

This paper explores the ways in which notions of nationality, whiteness and gender are drawn upon by British expatriate women in the construction and performance of their identities in post-colonial Hong Kong. A British colony since the mid-nineteenth century, Hong Kong was returned to China in the 1997 handover to become a ‘Special Administrative Region’. Now, as the administrative workings of empire are receding, so too are the expectations about race and nationality which went with them. For the white British, the opportunities to reconfigure discourses and subjectivities of whiteness are there, although the findings of this research reveals the unevenness of take-up. The paper draws on a broad feminist post-structuralist approach to reveal the ways in which four different British women migrants position themselves in the changing landscape. The approach shows important patterns of difference and diversity between the women in the performances of gendered Britishness and whiteness, and in the extent to which these are used to redefine or challenge the memory of relations established through imperialism.     

Road-kill on the information highway: repetitive strain injury in the academy

Most critical scholars who study disabilities question how specific environments effectively enable or disable persons with mental or physical impairments, and avoid locating disabilities as objective realities for affected individuals. Applying such insights to intensive use of desktop computers within office environments such as universities, affords a critique of the disabling aspects of computer keyboarding and video display terminal viewing. Computer-related repetitive strain injury is a physical impairment whose seriousness, treatment, solutions and accommodation within the workplace are currently in dispute; in part due to lobby efforts by the IT industry and computer‐intensive employers.