Narratives of nationalism in Eritrea: research and revisionism*

Abstract. Eritrean politics is increasingly captured in competing narratives of nationalism. ‘Official’ narratives emphasize Eritrea's purported stability, orderliness, and uniqueness. This discourse defends and supports the current government's policies. In contrast, recent research challenges those policies, and contributes to a nationalist counter‐narrative. This article seeks to investigate the discursive power of conventional narratives and the implications of new research for accounts of state and nation‐building in Eritrea. The Eritrean case – one of the newest states in the world – intersects with and informs a number of broader debates on nationalism and nation‐building: the impact of globalization, secessionism, and war as well as the relationship between ethnicity and nationalism. The penetration of state and nation‐building projects into every sector of Eritrean life means that all social research is deeply politicised. Journalists and researchers have long been key players in the contested process of conceptualising Eritrean nation‐hood, and this continues in the post‐liberation period. Research thus both buttresses and challenges official discourses, even where it is not explicitly framed in terms of nationalism.     

Closed Condominiums as Urban Fragments of the Contemporary City

Contemporary cities have witnessed the emergence of new real-estate products in which gated communities and closed condominiums (CCs) can be included. The proliferation of these urban products is worldwide, with similar patterns that are analysed in this paper according to five perspectives of analysis: physical, economic, social, political and cultural. These perspectives cross-cut some of the main issues of discussion of the contemporary urban debate associated with private residential developments. These developments seem to appeal to an increasing number of social groups and have been able to adapt to different planning systems. With a smaller scale, these developments emerged in Portugal in the form of CCs, and are analysed in a case study in Greater Oporto. The purpose of this paper is to present the Portuguese singularities of this phenomenon in comparison with the worldwide dimension. In our case study we find some important particularities strongly associated with the Portuguese planning system. Some of these particularities have negative impacts on the surrounding urban landscape. As a result, CCs demand specific planning policies to counteract the negative consequences they are likely to generate in local social and urban fabrics. In the absence of these policies, CCs, as well as other private residential developments, are likely to contribute further to an increasingly fragmented and divided urban landscape.     

Using Multibeam Echo‐Sounder Data to Identify Shipwreck Sites: archaeological assessment of the Joint Irish Bathymetric Survey data

This paper describes Phase 1 of the project ‘Archaeological Applications of the Joint Irish Bathymetric Survey (JIBS) Data’, analysing bathymetric and backscatter data derived from multibeam surveys off the north coast of Ireland. In particular, the usability of the data for shipwreck detection, identification and site characterization is explored. In Phase 1, the data was screened for anomalous sea‐bed features, which were subsequently described, catalogued and categorized according to their archaeological potential and cross‐referenced against existing records. A planned second phase of this project will examine each anomaly in greater detail together with the local and regional hydrodynamic conditions. © 2010 The Authors     

Unpacking the ‘Emergent Farmer’ Concept in Agrarian Reform: Evidence from Livestock Farmers in South Africa

South Africa has historically perpetuated a dual system of freehold commercial and communal subsistence farming. To bridge these extremes, agrarian reform policies have encouraged the creation of a class of ‘emergent’, commercially oriented farmers. However, these policies consider ‘emergent’ farmers as a homogeneous group of land reform beneficiaries, with limited appreciation of the class differences between them, and do little to support the rise of a ‘middle’ group of producers able to bridge that gap. This article uses a case study of livestock farmers in Eastern Cape Province to critique the ‘emergent farmer’ concept. The authors identify three broad categories of farmers within the emergent livestock sector: a large group who, despite having accessed private farms, remain effectively subsistence farmers; a smaller group of small/medium‐scale commercial producers who have communal farming origins and most closely approximate to ‘emergent’ farmers; and an elite group of large‐scale, fully commercialized farmers, whose emergence has been facilitated primarily by access to capital and a desire to invest in alternative business ventures. On this basis the authors suggest that current agrarian reform policies need considerable refocusing if they are to effectively facilitate the emergence of a ‘middle’ group of smallholder commercial farmers from communal systems.     

Studying Public Policy through Immigration Policy: Advances in Theory and Measurement

This essay provides a critical review of the field of immigration policy studies from the perspective of measurement and modeling. It serves to contextualize and broaden the views presented in the special issue. As such, we combine insights from American and comparative politics, pinpoint key limitations and challenges in the field, and identify areas of strength within each subfield which could inform theory and measurement development for the other. Ultimately, the concerns about conceptualization, definition, and measurement that we identify and discuss herein, do not apply only to immigration policy studies but to policy studies writ large.     

The Micro-foundations of Regional Branching—the Case of Digitization of Publishing

Abstract

Theorizing within evolutionary economic geography on regional branching of industries has so far been depicted as evolving through routine replication among different economic actors that hold various degrees of relatedness. Methodologically, related variety and unrelated variety have been studied quantitatively, treating relatedness between economic agents as pre-defined industrial classifications. This represents a need for a complementary qualitative and in-depth understanding of how knowledge is re-combined in various settings. Based on a qualitative case study in the publishing industry, whose technological platforms and business models are currently facing severe challenges associated with digitization, this paper seeks to improve our understanding of how knowledge is re-combined and re-applied in various ways. The paper explores and discusses how this industry branches out into new activities, and reflects upon the channels through which these processes unfold. How is the old and the new in the economy bridged? How is the relationship between specialization and diversification played out? In this sense, the paper seeks to contribute to improving our understanding of the epistemic micro-foundations for regional branching and economic development.     

Beyond The Limits to Growth: Ecology and the Neoliberal Counterrevolution

This paper brings autonomist Marxist analyses of post‐Fordist transition together with the geographical literature on ecosystem services to argue that the rise of the ecosystem service economy was central to what Paolo Virno has called the neoliberal counterrevolution. By analyzing the discourse of environmental crisis in the 1960s and 1970s, I demonstrate that early efforts to account for the value of environmental functions were a response to the instabilities faced by globalized capital in the postwar era. The rise of the ecosystem service economy is central to what autonomist Marxists describe as a post‐Fordist mode of production in which the activities of social (and, I argue, ecological) reproduction become direct sources of value. The paper suggests the need to revise the autonomist analysis to account for both the ecological dimensions of Fordist crisis, and the importance of the ecosystem service economy as a means whereby the counterrevolution was accomplished.