The consequences of nationalism: A scholarly exchange

The main thrust of the scholarship on nationalism has so far been concerned with its origins. But nationalism also has effects. Whether it underpins the nation-building efforts of states, is mobilised by counter-state forces or is used in everyday life, nationalism might implicate a wide range of substantive outcomes, including political regimes, public goods provision, citizenship and immigration laws, and different patterns of conflict. Yet—with a few notable exceptions—the consequences of nationalism have received significantly less scholarly attention. In response, the aim of this Exchange is to create a new dialogue between different strands of scholarship around what we know and do not know about the consequences of nationalism. We organise this Exchange around the following questions: (1) What is nationalism? (2) How can we measure nationalism? (3) What are the consequences of nationalism? (4) What are new research frontiers?     

Geochemical evidence for the manufacture,logistics and supply‐chain management of Emperor Qin Shihuang's Terracotta Army,China

Non‐invasive materials characterisation of reconstructed statues of Emperor Qin Shihuang's Terracotta Army has revealed distinct micro‐geochemical patterning within the clay paste used in their manufacture. The significance of this is explored in terms of the production sequence, logistics and supply‐chain management involved in the construction of this enormous funerary assemblage. Of particular interest is a compositional distinction between figures marked with the names ‘Gong’ (宫) and ‘Xianyang’ (咸阳). These seem to represent the products of two workshops involved in the supply of ceramic objects for this ambitious, large‐scale building project undertaken by the Qin Empire during the third century bce .     

As Basket and Papu: Making Manus Social Fabric

Between 2012 and 2019, Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, hosted Australia's offshore detention centre for asylum seekers and refugees, known as the Regional Processing Centre (RPC). This paper analyses some of the social impacts of the RPC on Lorengau town, the urban centre of Manus, through the analytical lens of the Manus idiom, as basket (Tok Pisin). Materially this refers to the everyday Manus basket whilst metaphorically, it refers to an individual's or community's social, cultural, political and economic base. First, I examine asylum seekers and refugees as a social category that emerged during this period when they were referred to as papu by locals. Papu is an honorific kinship term for grandfather or elder man; for men who are symbols for family identity, social belonging, and rights to land. Second, I examine the changing materiality of Lorengau's markets as indicative of wider societal transformations and dissonance brought about by the RPC. My ethnographic data are based on long term involvement in Manus, including three recent visits to Lorengau in 2017, 2018, and 2019 where I studied the social impacts and the changing social practices of Manus people in response to the RPC.     

Evidence for local,regional and interregional exchange networks on Failaka: Some remarks on late Islamic pottery from Kharaib al-Dasht

The site of Kharaib al-Dasht, located on the northern coast of Failaka, is a late Islamic settlement with an extensive fishing infrastructure. It has been excavated since 2013 by the Kuwaiti-Polish Archaeological Mission. The ceramic assemblage collected so far exceeds 18,000 fragments. The sherds underwent technological and typological analyses, which demonstrated a wide diversity of local common kitchen wares, consistent with the needs of households specialised in fishing. A considerable percentage of imported vessels was brought to Failaka from the Arabian Gulf and Persia, though Far Eastern luxury tableware was also attested. This paper demonstrates the socioeconomic role of Kharaib al-Dasht in the context of trade exchange on the microregional (Kuwait) and macroregional (the Gulf, South and Eastern Asia) scales in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.     

Practicing decolonial political geography: Island perspectives on neocolonialism and the China threat discourse

Island peoples around the world remain entangled in colonial processes. Western and metropolitan powers are increasingly deploying discourse of a ‘China threat’ to justify neocolonial entrenchment in the form of greater Western militarisation and economic dominance. In this paper, we investigate how Western and metropolitan powers use the China threat and warnings of economic, environmental, demographic, and military disaster to maintain and deepen colonial influence in former colonies, with special focus on four island states and territories: Guåhan/Guam in Oceania, Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland in the Arctic, Okinawa in East Asia, and Jamaica in the Caribbean. We undertake this investigation as a means of practicing decolonial political geography, collaborating as a group of scholars from around the world and drawing upon diverse epistemologies and experiences to inform collaborative research and writing. Due to the complexities we have confronted in our efforts to think outside coloniality, this paper foregrounds our decolonial methodology and process, even as we respect our empirical findings.     

Colonising geology: Volcanic politics and geopower

This paper discusses the experiences of Christian Montserratian residents through the 1995-present eruptions of the Soufrière Hills Volcano, highlighting that while the earthly powers of the volcano are fundamentally nonhuman, they are known and understood in a diversity of ways by different actors – and they interfere in politics and the production of knowledge. Montserrat, as a UK Overseas Territory, is a non-sovereign territory with a strong Christian identity that has been enhanced by its geological experience. At the same time, the UK has used the eruption to hold greater legislative control over the island. A final group of stakeholders in the eruption is the volcanologists, mainly from the UK until 2010, whose terminology and knowledge-world has had significant impact on the island, but has also been significantly extended by it. The paper ultimately uses this example to suggest that while there are useful and important insights from the “ontological turn” (incorporating vitalism, materialism, speculative realism) in thinking about the “lively earth”, the enactment of volcanic risk management at the governmental level also constitutes a knowledge-practice that must be approached critically to avoid the pitfalls of modernist science and ensure meaningful political change.     

Cattle Slaughter Industry in Qing China: State Ban,Muslim Dominance,and the Western Diet

Cattle slaughter and beef consumption are barely mentioned in the literature on Chinese economic, food, or animal history. This is possibly due to the widely held popular and scholarly assumption that beef was avoided and even considered taboo in the daily diet of Chinese people in premodern times. This article investigates the tangible regulation and practice of cattle slaughter in Qing China—the period when the beef taboo was argued to be formally subsumed into Chinese morality. I ask the following questions: To what extent did the Qing state ban cattle slaughter? How was the ban enforced in the localities? Did Chinese people slaughter cattle for consumption? Were there lawful beef markets in Qing China proper? How did increasing beef-eating Western sojourners since the mid-19th century impact this sector? Accordingly, I demonstrate that with the leeway provided by the state, the cattle slaughter industry developed in many regions of China proper, especially large cities. In this sector, Chinese Muslim merchants played a dominant role, even though the Han merchants could outnumber them. Their efforts have prepared the state and Chinese merchants to better cope with new circumstances since the mid-19th century. Broadly, this paper sheds light on how different religious, ethnic, and national groups affected the economy and the practice of law in the Qing dynasty.     

HISTORY MAKING AND ETHICS—AN INTEGRAL RELATIONSHIP?

In this review essay, I examine the arguments made by Marnie Hughes-Warrington, with Anne Martin, in Big and Little Histories: Sizing Up Ethics in Historiography. While I find much to praise in this history, I also ask critical questions about the impact of non-Western ethics on historical writing, the role of ethics in historical writing generally, the need to further investigate the everyday lifeworlds of history makers in order to fully understand their ethical dispositions, and the relationship between the ethics of history making and engaged forms of historical writing. I conclude this review essay by offering some reflections on the interrelationship between history and memory and the ethics involved in both.     

Inter- and intraregional inequality in a spatial economy

In this paper, we develop a three-region economic geography model with workers of heterogeneous skills and mobility rates to consider how first-nature, regional differences impact both inter- and intraregional inequality. In our model, the skill premium within a region summarizes both the degree of intraregional inequality between mobile, skilled workers and immobile, unskilled workers and the interregional inequality through differences in the welfare of unskilled workers across regions. Regions with the highest skill premium have the greatest degree of intraregional inequality and provide the lowest level of welfare to unskilled workers, relative to other regions. We find that the skill premium will be higher in regions with a greater supply of unskilled labor, lower supply of housing, or are more remote. An increase in a region's housing supply or centrality will lower intraregional inequality and raise the welfare of the local, unskilled workforce. However, the magnitude of these changes are declining in the initial number of skilled workers in the region. The model is extended to consider imperfectly elastic housing supply. The larger the price elasticity of housing, the larger the range of values, such that more populated regions will host a disproportionate share of skilled workers, have lower levels of intraregional inequality, and provide higher levels of welfare for unskilled workers.     

What's the grand story? A macro-narrative analytical model and the case of Swiss child and adult protection policy

This paper expands on the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) by adding a theoretical and empirical exploration into macrolevel narratives. Existing NPF research largely neglects macrolevel narratives, which prevents the NPF from developing its full power. The main contributions of this paper are threefold: (1) It provides a definition of macrolevel narratives by conceptualizing them as the “story form” of a policy paradigm. (2) It proposes a model and an empirical approach, which may lay the foundation for a standard macrolevel NPF approach. (3) It contributes to the NPF's aim of connecting the macro and meso level. The paper tests the model in a comparative multi-method design applied to the Swiss child and adult protection policy. The findings show that macrolevel NPF analysis helps understand where mesolevel policy debates come from, namely from an underlying paradigm and its effects on institutions and culture that enable and constrain macrolevel narratives.