Building from Scratch: The aesthetics of post‐disaster reconstruction(Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This article looks at the visual character of post‐conflict and post‐disaster settings, and shows how states of physical ruin can help to produce an ‘aesthetics of post‐disaster reconstruction’. With examples primarily drawn from the author's field site in Timor‐Leste, the article shows how ruins, ashes and demolition may be perceived as enabling particular kinds of agency and opportunity. Thus, some of the most hopeful of international‐intervention dreams of recent decades have been produced out of sites of mass‐scale destruction.     

Liberalism and cultural claims in Central and Eastern Europe: toward a pluralist balance†

ABSTRACT. This article relies on cases from new EU member states in postcommunist Europe to integrate two overlapping debates about majority–minority relations. Since the Second World War, political theorists and international institutions have tended to discourage group‐rights approaches in favour of individual rights; meanwhile, policy‐makers who achieved interethnic peace in postcommunist Europe have often opted for group‐rights approaches. On the basis of political theory, international norms and the conduct of political elites in this region, we argue that both the individual‐rights and group‐rights approaches can be differentiated internally along the dimension of pluralism – that is, their willingness to accommodate multiple processes of cultural reproduction. Moreover, both group‐rights and individual‐rights approaches can offer justifications for restricting minority cultural opportunities; furthermore, restrictive group‐rights approaches sometimes cloak their efforts behind ‘Western‐sounding’ individual‐rights rhetoric. Likewise, both group‐rights and individual‐rights approaches can permit group accommodation that can lead to political integration. We find that de facto pluralist approaches to minority accommodation – often spearheaded by moderate parties of the majority in coalition with minority‐group parties – encourage ethnic peace, regardless of their foundation in individual or group rights.     

Of Sodomy and Cannibalism: Dehumanisation,Embodiment and the Rhetorics of Same‐Sex and Cross‐Species Contagion

This article explores ideas of the ‘human’ in discourses surrounding the AIDS epidemic, from the 1980s to the present. It compares two sequential lines of thought: first, the notion of AIDS as the result of ‘unnatural’ gender behaviours and queer sexualities; and second, the notion of AIDS and other zoonotics (cross‐species diseases) as the result of non‐western dietary practices and social mores. In the first case, the early years of the AIDS crisis are traced through the languages of sexual perversity utilised by the popular press and the Christian right. In the second case, the later years of the epidemic are traced, once the ‘roots’ of the virus became tied to Africa, and carriers became bestialised in narratives that located HIV as a consequence of unnatural, or inhuman, interactions with the animal world. The article argues that we have witnessed a paradigm shift in the didactics of the epidemic, from a narrative of sexual impropriety to one that also includes a narrative of dietary impropriety, each of which consistently relies upon a clear dichotomy between the human and the inhuman.     

A permeability‐change model for water‐level changes triggered by teleseismic waves

Although many hydrologic changes induced by teleseismic waves have been reported, the mechanism(s) responsible for the changes are usually not known. Permeability changes induced by seismic strains are often invoked to explain changes in water level. Using water‐level data in Taiwan after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, we show here that the observations cannot be properly explained by previously proposed models of postseismic permeability changes. A new model is required in which the postseismic permeability decreases exponentially as a function of time, with a time constant of <3 min, which is appreciably shorter than inferred from earlier studies. The result may have important implications for pore‐sealing mechanism(s).     

Theology,Idolatry and Science: John Williams’ Missionary Ethnography and Natural History of the South Pacific

This article contributes to the recent scholarly efforts toward a more sophisticated understanding of the relationship between Protestant missionaries and the practice of natural history and ethnography in the early nineteenth century. Exploring John Williams’ work in the South Pacific, I argue that not only was Williams practicing science in the form of ethnography and natural history, but that his theology was, in fact, central to his scientific work. Through a careful exploration of Williams’ account of his missionary activities in the South Pacific, I contend that Williams’ conception of idolatry served as an explanatory tool that shaped the practice of his ethnography. In the minds of missionaries like Williams, whereas Christianity’s truth was universal, idolatry was the worship of a false god: false because it was just a deification of a particular desire rather than worship of the universal God. This conception of idolatry shaped Williams’ contention, central to his ethnography, that the islanders’ religion was a product of their particular cultural needs. In this way, I argue, Williams used a theological concept to perform explanatory scientific work, contributing to the idea that religion is a product of culture, a notion that became central to nineteenth century studies of religion.