Community, Identity and Gender in Migrant Societies of Southern Africa: Emerging Epistemological Challenges

Immigration policy in South Africa is undergoing serious revision in response to unprecedented cross-border migration into the post-apartheid state. This article looks at the relevance of orthodox international relations theory to migration policy in South Africa, and argues that fundamental shifts in approach are essential if IR theorists of the region are to contribute effectively to understanding and managing migration in southern Africa. It builds on the results of interviews with migrants and considers the significance of the themes of identity, community and gender as areas of particular relevance to international relations theory.     

THE EFFECT OF THE FREE TRADE AGREEMENT ON CANADA'S ENERGY RESOURCES

The inclusion of energy in the Free Trade Agreement (fta) illustrates perhaps better than any other provision in the agreement that the basic objective of this treaty was not the elimination of tariffs between Canada and the U.S.A. but the creation of a new economic order for Canada, which would limit the power of the nation-state to intervene in the economy. By the time the FTA came into effect at the beginning of 1989, Canada and the U.S.A. had already established virtually a free-trade relationship in energy commodities. The previously existing National Energy Program had been dismantled by the federal Conservative government by June of 1985 and this was followed by a process of thoroughgoing deregulation in all spheres of energy under federal jurisdiction. With the coming into force of the FTA, the newly deregulated Canadian energy economy became an irrevocable and permanent feature of Canada's energy relations with the United States.     

Beyond Cultural Imperialism: Cultural Theory, Christian Missions, and Global Modernity

"Cultural imperialism" has been an influential concept in the representation of the modern Christian missionary movement. This essay calls its usefulness into question and draws on recent work on the cultural dynamics of globalization to propose alternative ways of looking at the role of missions in modern history. The first section of the essay surveys the ways in which the term "cultural imperialism" has been employed in different disciplines, and some of the criticisms made of the term within those disciplines. The second section discusses the application of the cultural imperialism framework to the missionary enterprise, and the related term "colonization of consciousness" used by Jean and John Comaroff in their influential work on British missionaries and the Tswana of southern Africa. The third section looks at the historiography of missions in modern China, showing how deeply the teleological narratives of nationalism and development have marked that historiography. The concluding section argues that the missionary movement must be seen as one element in a globalizing modernity that has altered Western societies as well as non–Western ones in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that a comparative global approach to the missionary movement can help to illuminate the process of modern cultural globalization.     

“This is an Indigenous city; why don't we see it?” Indigenous urbanism and spatial production in Winnipeg

This paper examines indigeneity and spatial production in the city of Winnipeg, home to the largest urban Indigenous population in Canada. Using data from semi‐structured interviews with Indigenous inhabitants, municipal officials, and Indigenous leaders, this paper argues that the right to the city and to difference are deradicalized for urban Indigenous communities. Indigenous engagement in processes of everyday urbanism occurs through broadly participatory public consultation and through mechanisms designed by City Hall to communicate with Indigenous communities about municipal initiatives. To arrive at a more robust and meaningful Indigenous urban visibility in Canadian cities, spatial production and programming mechanisms will need to be reconstituted. Guided by the perspectives of Indigenous participants, this paper considers some of what Indigenous urbanism might yet entail. Fulfilling coexistence and reconciliation is dependent on enabling Indigenous urbanism to guide the course taken in urban governance, spatial planning, and the built environment of Canadian cities.     

New Frontiers of Philanthro‐capitalism: Digital Technologies and Humanitarianism

Digital technologies that allow large numbers of laypeople to contribute to humanitarian action facilitate the deepening adoption and adaptation of private‐sector logics and rationalities in humanitarianism. This is increasingly taking place through philanthro‐capitalism, a process in which philanthropy and humanitarianism are made central to business models. Key to this transformation is the way private businesses find supporting “digital humanitarian” organisations such as Standby Task Force to be amenable to their capital accumulation imperatives. Private‐sector institutions channel feelings of closeness to aid recipients that digital humanitarian technologies enable, in order to legitimise their claims to “help” the recipients. This has ultimately led to humanitarian and state institutions re‐articulating capitalist logics in ways that reflect the new digital humanitarian avenues of entry. In this article, I characterise this process by drawing out three capitalist logics that humanitarian and state institutions re‐articulate in the context of digital humanitarianism, in an emergent form of philanthro‐capitalism. Specifically, I argue that branding, efficiency, and bottom lines take altered forms in this context, in part being de‐politicised as a necessary condition for their adoption. This de‐politicisation involves normalising these logics by framing social and political problems as technical in nature and thus both beyond critique and amenable to digital humanitarian “solutions”. I take this line of argumentation to then re‐politicise each of these logics and the capitalist relations that they entail.