The Rush–Bagot Agreement: Canada–US Relations in Transition

In 1817, Great Britain and the United States concluded the Rush–Bagot Agreement to prevent a naval arms race on the Great Lakes. Despite frequent transgressions to the agreement, by the 1920s, the agreement was heralded internationally as a model to emulate. The predominant scholarly focus on the agreement in the nineteenth century fails to explain why a broken agreement in one century was praiseworthy in the next. This article argues that the twentieth-century narrative of the agreement is of critical important to explaining the agreement’s impact on Canada–US relations. Through the lens of three stages of Canadian political leadership, this article demonstrates that the Rush-Bagot Agreement shifted from a rigid compact to a symbolic agreement that not only reflected but aided the transition toward one of the most unique security relationships. The article concludes that this extant agreement reinforces the prevalent notion of the “undefended border” in Canada–US relations.     

The moral ecology of colonial infrastructure and the vicissitudes of land rights in rural Pakistan

For the last 10 years, the Pakistan army has not been able to collect rent from tenant farmers on its military farms in central Punjab. In this article, I analyse the historical and cultural significance of this contested land by using insights from recent literature on the politics of infrastructure to examine the contingency of rule in Pakistan, a postcolonial state, which is dominated by its army. I illustrate these dynamics by exploring the challenge brought up by a peasant movement to tacit cultural understandings about land and political subjectivity in central Punjab, the folkloric heartland of Pakistani nationalism. I argue that place-based movements, like the Punjab Tenants Association, can radically challenge our sense of place by giving a relational account of land as both a material substance and a crucial link in the set of relations that define moral, economic and political life. This approach broadens the emerging study of infrastructures by engaging insights from science/technology studies and subaltern studies to examine how cultural legacies of colonial infrastructure projects shape state–society relations in Pakistan.     

The role of the AALD in preserving the Australia–US alliance

This article critically evaluates the agenda and strategy of the Australian American Leadership Dialogue (AALD) for protecting and strengthening the Australia–US alliance. Nominally an exercise in informal diplomacy dedicated to fostering mutual understanding, the AALD functions more like a pro-American lobby group as it seeks to preserve orthodox thinking and eschew dissenting perspectives. The AALD performs this function in three main ways: by carefully framing discussion and debate, by socialising Australian elites into the alliance orthodoxy and by serving as a ‘gatekeeper’ of the status quo.

本文对保卫、加强澳美联盟的澳美领袖对话提出批评。该对话虽然名义上只是加强共同理解的非正式外交实践, 但其作用更像是亲美游说集团,因为它要保持正统的思路,回避不同的观点。该对话用三种方式实现这一功能：小心地设置讨论和辩论;向澳大利亚精英灌输联盟的正统观;充当现状的守门人。     

Reconstructed nationalism in Taiwan: a politicised and economically driven identity

Since the late 1980s, Taiwan has been engulfed in waves of both democratisation and integration with mainland China. These two waves have pulled identity reconstruction in Taiwan in two different directions. In the process of democratisation, a shift to a majoritarian system encouraged a Taiwanese renaissance on the political platform and consequently led to the deconstruction of Chinese identity. On the other hand, in the 1990s, with the high mobility of capital and people across the Taiwan Strait, close economic ties could have put the brakes on Taiwan independence movements. Hence, this paper uses random coefficient models to explore how the democratic transition and increasing cross‐strait relations brought about psychological and structural mechanisms that motivated people to opt for identity change in Taiwan. It also attempts to investigate how people dealt with the dissonance between rising Taiwanese nationalism and the economic interests that deterred a radical Taiwanese identity.     

Vegetal politics: belonging,practices and places

Cultural geography has a long and proud tradition of research into human–plant relations. However, until recently, that tradition has been somewhat disconnected from conceptual advances in the social sciences, even those to which cultural geographers have made significant contributions. With a number of important exceptions, plant studies have been less explicitly part of more-than-human geographies than have animal studies. This special issue aims to redress this gap, recognising plants and their multiple engagements with and beyond humans. Plants are not only fundamental to human survival, they play a key role in many of the most important environmental political issues of the century, including biofuels, carbon economies and food security. In this introduction, we explore themes of belonging, practices and places, as discussed in the contributing papers. Together, the papers suggest new kinds of ‘vegetal politics’, documenting both collaborative and conflictual relations between humans, plants and others. They open up new spaces of political action and subjectivity, challenging political frames that are confined to humans. The papers also raise methodological questions and challenges for future research. This special issue grew out of sessions we organised at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in New York in 2012.     

Newlyweds,Young Families,and Spinsters: A Consideration of Developmental Cycle in Historical Archaeologies of Gender

The social relations of class, gender, and ethnicity affected individuals and families in the nineteenth century and shaped (as well as were shaped by) uses of the material world. Changes in demographic composition of the household, successions in land ownership, and other events that altered the developmental course of the family unit, however, were also significant. Variations in the material and spatial expressions of gender ideologies, for example, were more than simply deviations from middle-class cultural norms. They represented the active negotiation of dominant ideologies and the construction of alternate meaningful gender relations and forms of domesticity.     

Executives, Legislatures, and Decentralization

This article considers the role of executives and legislatures in authoring decentralizing legislation to study the type of decentralization each sought to achieve. I find that differences across branches are more significant than differences across political parties. The executive played a significant role in the process of decentralization emphasizing administrative forms of decentralization. Congressional efforts to write laws, on the contrary, focused on the political aspects. Thus, the involvement of both branches in policymaking contributed to the multidimensional form and high degree of decentralization in Colombia.     

论英美在承认新中国问题上的分歧与协调

英美在是否承认新中国问题上的立场明显不同:英国主张尽早承认,尽管其决策取向经历了一个从事实承认到法律承认的递进过程;美国则始终坚持反对过早承认和主张有条件承认,具有不承认的实质性内容,并注定了不承认的结局。1949年1～5月,英美分歧凸显;1949年7月至1950年初,英美就承认问题不断磋商,但整个协商过程表明双方各执己见,最终各行其是,英国于1950年1月6日正式承认新中国,而早在1950年初美国在近期内承认新中国的可能性已不存在。     

试论马桥文化与中原夏商文化的关系

夏商时期位于东南太湖地区的马桥文化,同中原夏商文化在文化内涵上存在着许多相关性,但在更深层次的思想、制度乃至政治关系上,马桥文化则还未纳入中原夏商王朝的势力范围内。尽管如此,夏商时期的马桥文化正处于太湖地区从良渚时期较为封闭的对外关系、到吴越文化时期全方位同外界进行交流的中间结点上,因此在太湖地区早期古文化对外关系的发展过程中,马桥文化处于一个承上启下的位置。     

Emerging Chinese Role in Shaping St. Petersburg's Urban Landscape: Interscalar Investment Strategies in the Development of a Residential Megaproject

The paper, by an American geographer, discusses the origin and development of a Chinese-financed residential megaproject (Baltic Pearl) located southwest of St. Petersburg's historical district. Viewing Baltic Pearl as reportedly the largest investment project undertaken outside China by a government-sponsored Chinese consortium, the author places it in the context of state-level Sino-Russian relations and Russian unease over the influx of Chinese migrants and culture. Reflecting the author's extensive field work in St. Petersburg and Shanghai, the focus of the paper is on the way the consortium was forced to adopt interscalar (i.e., both state and municipal/urban) strategies responsive to local conditions, providing a potentially useful precedent and model for Chinese and other investors seeking to penetrate Russia's urban markets.