Fear of the city 1882-1967: Edward Hopper and the discourse of anti-urbanism

This paper traces the extent to which some of the major cityscape representations of the American 'Realist' painter, Edward Hopper, have contributed to the production and articulation of the discourse of anti-urbanism in American culture. Following an introductory background to this discourse, the paper discusses the development of Realism in American art, and how the urban representations that emerged were a response to the rapidly changing, early twentieth-century American city. A brief biographical account of Edward Hopper is presented to explore the intertextual influences behind his anti-urban sentiments, and how these translated into the unique form of Realism for which Hopper is renowned. This sets the stage for a reading of four key Hopper works that are suggestive of the anti-urban discourse: Night Shadows, Nighthawks, Approaching a City and Sunday . The powers of representation and the artist's popularity have fed into the discourse of anti-urbanism - a discourse that has a material effect on urban life in America.     

Peace through the lens of human rights: Mapping spaces of peace in the advocacy of Colombian human rights defenders

What kinds of peace do human rights defenders advocate? This question has become controversial in light of heavy criticisms raised against the scholarly paradigm that peace and human rights are co-constitutive universals. In this article, I explore how Colombian human rights defenders navigate potential tensions, erasures, and vested politics in their peace advocacy during the current peace process with the FARC-EP. I follow the trend in the geographies of peace literature to study the articulation of peace with human rights as situated and constitutive practices. My analysis of published activist statements maps out the discursivity of peace advocacy, that is, how human rights defenders articulate different political demands as interconnected conditions for peace and maintain a common activist space that cuts across the uneven geographies of violence in Colombia. The visualization of my results as discursive networks shows how activist practices open social and discursive spaces that integrate multiple understandings of peace, instead of obliterating differences in a single and homogenized, ‘local’ representation of peace. I further submit that elucidating how human rights defenders address peace beyond the end of guerrilla insurgency, the ambiguous role of the state, societal discrimination, and structural transformations helps us nuancing conceptual debates. We can learn from Colombian activists to move beyond rigid conceptual juxtapositions of human rights as either panacea or liberal fuel for conflict and to pay attention to how concepts are animated in political struggles to end violence.     

Of floods and droughts: The uneven politics of stormwater in Los Angeles

Stormwater is a complex political and geographical problem. It is at once bound to land-use decisions, tied to geographical features such as lakes and rivers, and capable of flowing across different political boundaries and jurisdictions. In this paper, I empirically focus on how disparate understandings of stormwater are forged through different institutional arrangements and the ways multiple actors interact across scales of governance in Los Angeles. The results indicate four discourses influence decisions on urban stormwater management and are articulated through different forms of knowledge and power in environmental governance. The discourses diverge over contrasting perspectives on infrastructural interventions, the role of economic approaches, and the need for new institutions and rules. I suggest that disagreement may not deter integration and collaboration across different scales of governance, but without addressing conflict over key discursive claims about how stormwater governance should proceed, broadly accepted outcomes may remain elusive. With current trends in environmental governance moving towards hybrid forms that bring together groups that transcend traditional organizational structures, this paper reveals how more sustainable outcomes are being devised through current configurations of knowledge and power.     

Gender,sexuality and power in Arab society: Arab feminist criticism of discourse and social order

Adnan, Etel. Sitt Marie Rose. Sausalito, California: Post‐Apollo Press, 1982. 105 pp. $7.50 paper.

El Saadawi. Woman at Point Zero. London: Zed Press, 1983. iv + 106 pp. $6.25 paper.

Sabbah, Fatna A. Woman in the Muslim Unconscious. New York: Pergamon Press. 132 pp. including footnotes and index. $22.50 cloth, $9.95 paper.     

“Let Me Come to Tell You”: Loide Shikongo,the King,and Poetic License in Colonial Ovamboland

In this paper, I explore cultural discourse, gender and the subjectivities of local people on the frontier of empire in mid‐20th century southern Africa. Using the example of Nekwaya Loide Shikongo, a prominent woman from Ondonga in northern Namibia (the colonial “Ovamboland”), and an epic poem on the deposed King Iipumbu yaShilongo that she performed in 1953, I discuss how gender was constituted and mediated. The narrative of a remarkable woman’s life and her poetry is told to understand how gender in relation to other forms of identity was constructed in different cultural discourses. I argue that both the Christian mission’s cultural discourse and the South African colonial administration’s efforts to masculinise the “native” political authority gendered Owambo elite women whose identities had previously included “gender” only as a rather contingent component. The example of Loide Shikongo, however, also shows that many Owambo continued to pursue heterogeneous, and sometimes ambiguous, strategies in their claims to Christian models of modernity.     

Framing the High North: Public Discourses in Norway after 2000

Abstract

The article presents an overview of the main public debates in Norway that can be said to have framed and defined the High North since the turn of the Millennium. It is based on a qualitative study of over 3000 articles published in four Norwegian newspapers issued between 2000 and 2006. Our discussion is structured around three overarching, interconnected narratives that we think capture the essence of the Norwegian public discourses on the High North between 2000 and 2006. These are “Fragments from the 1990s”; “The great narrative of the High North”; and “Mixing cold water with hot blood”. The first half of the 2000s is characterised by an almost total absence of the High North as a discursive and politically coherent concept. From 2004, however, usage grew fivefold, alongside an extensive, dynamic discursive mobilisation. When the Russians decided in 2006 to shelve the Shtokman project and critical voices were heard condemning Norway's environmental performance in northwest Russia, public opinion swung back again. A feeling of cold reality replaced the sense of optimism towards the energy potential of the north, and an exercise in collective soul-searching commenced – similar to that of the early years of the decade. We believe the type of discursive change we document in this article constitutes policy trends in connection both with the High North and with other sectors where policy is subject to intense public debate and appraisal. We hope that discourse analysis has enabled us to investigate and share how Norwegian public discourses on the High North are socially produced, framed and maintained but at the same time are always in flux and open to “new” directions which should be possible – at least in theory – to trace by going back in time.     

The Russia of the Tsar and North Norway. "The Russian Danger" Revisited

The fear of Russia in Norway goes back far beyond the Russian Revolution. It played an important role in Norwegian Swedish foreign policies towards Russia from the 1830s and up to 1905 (and in Norwegian conceptions of threat between 1905 and 1917 as well, although the threat seems to have been more down-played in that period) (Nielsen 1994 95). In particular, there has been a fear of a possible attack on North-Norway. Roald Berg, in his recently published work entitled Norsk forsvarshistorie 1814-1905 (The History of the Norwegian Defence 1814 1905) presents evidence that the conception of a Russian danger was an issue in Norwegian military considerations as far back as in the 1820s and 1830s. According to Berg, it is evident that this idea was central in Norwegian military-strategic thought in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (Berg 2001: 112 115, 307-308). My purpose in this paper is to try to establish whether there was reason for this fear, that is, if there were any plans among the Russian authorities to conquer Norwegian territory in the period between the Eidsvoll Assembly and the storming of the Winter Palace (1814 1917).     

The Utility of Discourse Analysis to Heritage Studies: The Burra Charter and Social Inclusion

This paper reviews the methodological utility of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) in heritage studies. Using the Burra Charter as a case study we argue that the way we talk, write and otherwise represent heritage both constitutes and is constituted by the operation of a dominant discourse. In identifying the discursive construction of heritage, the paper argues we may reveal competing and conflicting discourses and the power relations that underpin the power/knowledge relations between expertise and community interests. This identification presents an opportunity for the resolution of conflicts and ambiguities in the pursuit of equitable dialogues and social inclusion.     

The Possibility of Shamanism: A Genealogy of Anthropological Appropriations

This piece adopts a genealogical approach to the emergence of “neo-Shamanism” as a “spiritual” practice. It argues that the work of Freud and Durkheim collapsed the dichotomy between “primitive” and “civilized” which characterized nineteenth-century evolutionist anthropology. Neither Freud nor Durkheim embraced the consequences of this collapse, and while Bataille attempted to do so, his application of “Shamanism” to modern self-governance was constrained by the terms of the Freudian/Durkheimian framework. Jung did embrace this collapse, positing a universal equivalence between religious forms and psychological processes, and this epistemic shift permitted his interlocutors, Levi-Strauss and Eliade, to inaugurate the discursive frameworks which made “neo-Shamanism” thinkable as an ethical practice for contemporary Westerners. Analyses which suggest that “neo-Shamanisms” are rediscoveries of a primal “spirituality” write from within this framework, neglecting the contingency of historical change, the creativity of anthropological appropriations and the politics of knowledge.     

贵族话语与雅典民主政治的关系——以“刺杀僭主”叙事为中心

传统观点认为,虽然古典时期的雅典人创造了民主制,但并未发展出相应的民主政治话语,贵族的传统价值观和意识形态始终在民主政治中居于主导地位。然而,对"刺杀僭主"叙事的分析表明,贵族发明的话语传统可以在公共空间内被大众转化为城邦的政治话语,进而在新的历史语境中被民主化,为民主政治话语提供符号、仪式和形象,成为民主制的有机组成部分。这说明,古典时期雅典民主政治对旧时代政治符号的继承,并不等于贵族话语对民主政治的胜利。能够在新的政治语境中对旧叙事进行创造性改编,反而说明民主政治有能力利用旧传统的养分,创造出属于自身的政治话语。