Between Borinquen and the Barrio: Environmental Justice and New York City's Puerto Rican Community, 1969–1972

The last decade has seen an upsurge of both scholarly and popular interest in the US environmental justice movement. What is largely missing from this contemporary discussion is any sense of the historical roots of this new wave of environmental activism. This paper explores the emergence of a radical Puerto Rican organization called the Young Lords that was active in a number of US cities in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In New York City, the Young Lords successfully mobilized their community through a series of direct actions devoted to improving public services, the creation of new community spaces and the assertion of cultural identity. I examine the internal tensions within the organization as it sought to extend its role beyond community-based concerns such as sanitation and health care towards more abstract political goals, including demands for Puerto Rican independence. It is argued that the ultimate disarray of this radical phase of Latino political activism cannot be understood separately from a series of wider developments, including the gathering pace of urban decline, the marginalization of the US left and the dissolution of the New Deal era. Although the movement faded away in the 1970s, a legacy of diasporic environmentalism dedicated to the transformation of the urban environment has provided a powerful degree of political continuity with contemporary struggles for environmental and social justice.     

Commodification and Creative Destruction in the Australian Rural Landscape: The Case of Bridgetown,Western Australia

This paper examines the destructive tendencies associated with the commodification of rurality in some of Australia’s more scenic and accessible rural areas. While development based on the consumption of idealised rural landscapes and cultures can contribute to the accumulation of capital in rural areas, it can also result in the destruction of those aspects which consumers find attractive. These attributes include traditional farming landscapes, picturesque country towns, scenic rural environments, and perceptions of congenial and cohesive local communities. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the processes that lead to the degradation of these attributes. The discussion is set within the context of the ‘commodification of rurality’ and ‘creative destruction’ perspectives, and uses the case of Bridgetown in the south‐west of Western Australia to illustrate how an almost unfettered pattern of development is leading to the gradual destruction of the countryside ideal.     

'For a Genuine and Noble Nakedness'? German Naturism in the Third Reich

This essay, based on primary sources from the privately-runInternationale FKK-Bibliothek and a growing body of secondaryliterature, examines some of the myths and misconceptions regardingthe fate of naturism in the Third Reich. It shows that despiteGoering's decree of 3 March 1933, which described the ‘nakedculture movement’ as ‘one of the greatest dangersfor German culture and morality’, naturism did not cometo an abrupt halt after the Machtergreifung. While officialhistories of German naturism talk proudly of the movement's‘persecution’ and ‘non-violent resistance’,there was little concerted effort to close down naturist associationsor to arrest individual activists. In fact, without a definitiveorder from the Führer, Germany's naturists existed in asemi-legal limbo for much of the 1930s. Many National Socialistsregarded the clothes-free lifestyle with contempt, but therewere elements within the Nazi state—and particularly theSS—which could see significant benefits from celebrating‘the instinct for bodily nobility and its beauty in ourVolk’. A mutual desire to de-eroticize nudity helped cementthe bond between Heydrich, Himmler and naturist leaders. Asa result, German Freikörperkultur passed some of its mostimportant landmarks in the years of Nazi rule, including itsvery first book with photographs in full colour, a full-lengthfeature film, and a new, more permissive Bathing Law. Thus whileGeorge Mosse's Nationalism and Sexuality claims the Nazis ‘forbadenudism after their accession to power’, a closer examinationof the fate of naturism after 1933 reveals a more complex picture,which serves to highlight not only the limits of the régime'stotalitarian aspirations, but also the naturist movement's owndisparate and problematic heritage.     

Becoming to Belong: On the Relation between Infinite Consciousness and the Absolute

My essay focuses on the relation between consciousness and reality. I argue, following Georg Cantor, that consciousness is a potential infinite driven by care to invest itself in the world historically. As human beings develop an authentic sense of self they are driven by good faith to postulate an Absolute infinite, which, following Spinoza, we may call God. Thus God, as the Absolute infinite, constitutes our reality, which I characterize as implicate information explicating itself through time. To live authentically is to recognize the nature of God and commit to Him through faith. Faith means to understand one’s self as a potentially infinite consciousness attempting to authentically participate in, and understand, the Absolute of God.