The Cutting Edge of Accumulation: Neoliberal Risk Mitigation,the Baku‐Tbilisi‐Ceyhan Pipeline and its Impact

Abstract: Adopting a historical materialist position, this article looks at new methods deployed to expand processes of accumulation and the impact that this has at different scales. Focusing upon the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline (traversing Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey), the article pays particular attention to the technocratic tools of “social neoliberalism” and corporate social responsibility, which variously incorporate environmental and social impact assessments, community investment programmes and voluntary codes of conduct. While such approaches seek to relegitimise the efforts of capital and its assistants and mitigate their risks, the assessment below details how these approaches actually assist in facilitating an increase in risk for many people. The article begins by looking at the accumulation drive pushing BTC and then provides an account of how new approaches to pipeline governance have both emerged and been incorporated into the project. The article then details what it is that these approaches have actually facilitated at four scales—the local, the national, the regional and the supra‐regional.     

The Efficacies of Heritage: Syndromes,Magics, and Possessional Acts

In this paper I present critical insights into the efficacies of heritage. I take the phenomenon of the Jerusalem Syndrome (JS) as my point of departure and recast it as Heritage Syndrome (HS). I do this to better understand how such efficacies are experienced and materialized in ritual possessional acts. As a framework, the JS reveals the power and potency that reside in experiences of collapse. Such disembedding events activate subsequent ritual dramas (whether malign/benign or successful/failed) of world-making, redemption, repair, and renewal. Heritage quests as ritual ‘sacred dramas’ and ‘practical magics’ are I argue, similarly experienced in the collapse of known categories: imagined/real, extraordinary/mundane, possessing/being possessed, and crucially what heritage is versus what heritage does. Writ large, heritage efficacies are bound-up in the breakdown and blurring of boundaries — and thus the non-distinction — between heritage in the conventional sense and other dynamics such as magic, prophecy, and well-being/ill-being. These reveal alternative pathways, potentialities, and patterns of behaviour that demonstrate that dominant, elite, rationalized approaches to heritage banalize heritage efficacies and can thus be termed a failed project. I argue that conceiving of heritage as a syndrome — and critically as a movement away from medical pathologization and towards a recasting of heritages as diverse constellations of cultural-spiritual-magical-emotional experiences and engagements — better reflects the deeply felt complex and transformative practices at play. These heritage rites distinguished at points by those who wish their lives were more dramatic and those who wish their lives were less traumatic better describe how the vast majority of global actors engage with heritage, notably at popular, grass-roots level and in contexts of extremis, yet its significance goes largely unrecognized and unvalued.     

WEST EDMONTON MALL AS A TOURIST ATTRACTION

Recent years have seen the mega-phenomenon assume increasing significance in tourism; it is not surprising, therefore, that West Edmonton Mall, the world's first mega-mall, should be viewed as a tourist attraction. This
article discusses the role of shopping as a tourist activity and the opportunity to shop as a facet of the appeal of a location to tourists. It examines the relative attractiveness of West Edmonton Mall as a tourist destination in this context and concludes that it has few outstanding characteristics beyond its unique size and range of leisure facilities. The permanence of its appeal beyond the regional scale is therefore unikely. The long-term appeal of shopping and related facilities is discussed in the context of a model of tourism development.     

Book reviews

SHOWCASE STATE: THE ILLUSION OF INDONESIA'S ‘ACCELERATED MODERNISATION’. Rex Mortimer (ed.). Angus and Robertson, 1973. 164 pp; 0–207–12826. $3.95 softbound, $5.95 hardbound.

FOREIGN POLICY AND NATIONAL INTEGRATION: THE CASE OF INDONESIA. Jon M. Reinhardt. Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, Monograph Series No. 17, 1971. Distributed by The Cellar Book Shop, 18090 Wyoming, Detroit, Michigan 48221. $US6.50.

ISLAMIC COURTS IN INDONESIA: A STUDY IN THE POLITICAL BASES OF LEGAL INSTITUTIONS. Daniel S. Lev. University of California Press, Berkeley, London, 1972. 281 pp.

AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN POLICY: TOWARDS A REASSESSMENT. Claire Clark (ed.). Cassell Australia, Melbourne, 1973. 274 pp. $3.75.

FREEDOM IN AUSTRALIA. Enid Campbell and Harry Whitmore. Second edition, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1973. 488 pp. $15 cloth, $10 paper.

CONTEMPORARY NEW ZEALAND. K. W. Thomson and A. D. Trlin (eds.). Hicks Smith, Wellington, 1973. 456 01430 6. 218 pp.

CANADA'S SEARCH FOR NEW ROLES: FOREIGN POLICY IN THE TRUDEAU ERA. Peter C. Dobell. Oxford University Press, London, 1972. 0–19–285057–1. 161 pp. $5.10.

SOUTH AFRICA'S FOREIGN POLICY 1945–19701 James Barber. Oxford University Press, 1973. 0–19–21561–9. 325 pp. $13.15.

POWER AND EQUILIBRIUM IN THE 1970s. Alastair Buchan. Chatto & Windus, London, 1973. 0–7011–1998–5. 120 pp. $6.80.

THE SOVIET UNION IN WORLD AFFAIRS: A DOCUMENTED ANALYSIS, 1964–72. W. W. Kulski. Syracuse University Press, Box 8, University Sta, Syracuse, N.Y. 13210, USA, 1973. 526 pp. $US5.95 paper, $US17.50 hard cover.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE NEW ROMAN EMPIRE: ITALY'S BID FOR WORLD POWER, 1890–1943. G. St. J. Barclay. Sidgwick and Jackson, London, 1973. 210 pp. 0283 97862. £3.95stg.

THE FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY VERSUS THE STUDENTS. Richard Johnson. Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1972. 215 pp. 0–300–01525–9. $8.00 cloth, $1.95 paper.

STUDIES IN DEMOGRAPHY. Ashish Bose, P. B. Desai, and S. P. Jain (eds.). The University of North Carolina Press, 1972. 579 pp. $12.95.

A DIPLOMATIC HISTORY OF MODERN INDIA. Charles H. Heimsath and Surjit Mansingh. Allied Publishers, Calcutta, 1971. .559 pp. Rs. 30.

CHINA: THE REVOLUTION CONTINUED. Jan Myrdal and Gun Kessle. Penguin Books, U.S.A., 1973. 155 pp. $2.20.

MAO TSE‐TUNG AND GANDHI: PERSPECTIVES ON SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION. J. Bandyopadhyaya. Allied Publishers, Calcutta, 1973. 156 pp.

STUDIES IN POLITICS: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL. M. S. Rajan (ed.). Vikas Publications, Delhi, 1971. 512 pp. Rs. 60.