Bodies as urban infrastructure: Gender,intimate infrastructures and slow infrastructural violence

Drawing from deep longitudinal and ethnographic work, this article interrogates a set of key relationships between bodies, gender and infrastructure in the context of understanding cities such as Bharatpur and Dhangadhi in Nepal as well as Delhi, India. This article seeks to make two contributions. First, utilizing feminist political geography approaches, we examine bodies as infrastructure, referring to how the social and material work of the body helps to build, develop and maintain cities through gendered infrastructures in the everyday. We show conceptualizing bodies as infrastructure reveals important and intimate dimensions of the everyday politics and social and material forms that enable critical resources to flow and integral networks be built in cities. Second, we demonstrate from our comparative case studies the ways that gendered “slow infrastructural violence” accrues through patterns of infrastructural invisibility. Particular bodies act as urban infrastructure in everyday and unremarkable ways, shaping the uneven social and political consequences of embodied infrastructural configurations. We specifically examine slow violence and informal financial infrastructure in Bharatpur and the provisioning of health in Dhangadhi followed by the exploration of slow violence and fragmented water in Delhi. This article thus raises a simultaneous call for theoretical engagement with the socio-materiality of infrastructure and the body, an increased regard for the multiplicity of urban infrastructures, and an interrogation of gender and infrastructural politics in cities where more people will be living in the future and where politics and infrastructure are being actively created.     

Comments on M. Kuhle and S. Kuhle (2012): ‘Hannibal Gone Astray? A Critical Comment on W. C. Mahaney et al., “The Traversette (Italia) Rockfall: Geomorphological Indicator of the Hannibalic Invasion Route” (Archaeometry, 52, 1 [2010] 156–72)’

The title of Kuhle and Kuhle's (2012) (hereafter K&K 2012) paper in Archaeometry appears to be mostly a tirade against the Traversette Route of Hannibal's Army, as originally favoured by Sir Gavin de Beer—a man possessed of singular scientific experience and near‐singular interest in Carthaginian history—in the mid‐part of the last century. The mere fact that Mahaney et al. (2010a,c) added to de Beer's corpus of evidence that Hannibal followed the southern route appears to have brought K&K (2012) to lodge not only a protest, but one of accusatory tone, stating that Mahaney et al. (2010c) had erroneously misinterpreted historical texts to prove the Col de la Traversette as the Punic Army col of passage into Italia. Aside from the fact that the tone of these allegations rises to a curious level, it is the intention of this discussion to put facts where they belong, rooted in what is known of the Hannibalic Invasion and what is inferred by the prevailing scientific evidence. It is important to note that there is not one preferred route as stated by K&K (2012), but three in fact (see Fig. 1 (a) in Mahaney et al. 2010c), and all have been discussed by a legion of historians (see, e.g., Freshfield 1886, 1899; de Beer 1969; Proctor 1971; Prevas 1998; Mahaney 2008).     

Mountbatten and India, 1948–64

This article brings to light Lord Mountbatten's continuing links with India after 1948 - a neglected aspect of his life and career. It probes his involvement and influence in Indian affairs through his personal relationships and professional experience. In doing so, it presents Mountbatten as the personification of the change in Indo-British ties from those of empire to dominion and beyond. On the three key issues of Hyderabad, arms sales, and Kashmir, this article evaluates his role as a ‘friend of India’ in the West as well as a conduit for the British government(s) of the day to reach out to Nehru. Considering the scope and limits of ‘influence of friendship, it shows that Mountbatten remained characteristically involved in India after his departure and this was appreciated by both Nehru and his British counterparts. Mountbatten epitomised the old ties, which continued to bind India to Britain, after the empire and through the Commonwealth. His views were offered and sought; how much they influenced remains a matter of emphasis, but that he was involved cannot be denied. The weakening of Mountbatten's involvement and influence after Jawaharlal Nehru's death in 1964 represented the wider, generational weakening of Indo-British association.     

Essay and Reflection: On the Nature of International History

This essay focuses on a previously under-explored facet of Churchill's life by analysing the autobiographical novel he created while reading literary classics as a young soldier suffering bouts of depression in a remote corner of the British Empire. It employs a combination of research strategies that include Churchill's correspondence, extracts from Savrola and related works, the social-scientific insights of Anthony Storr and Daniel Levinson, and an unpublished document in the Churchill Archives that links Churchill's capacity for heroism to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. The author concludes that Savrola provided a means of self-diagnosis and treatment for Winston Churchill to extract some meaning in life and ultimately achieve political success.     

Patagonian Cinnamon and Pepper: Blending Geography in Alonso de Ovalle’s Tabula Geographica Regni Chile (1646)

ABSTRACT

The context and conditions under which early modern Europeans created images and maps that blended Asian and American geographies have recently received the attention of scholars. In this article I explore an example of this practice in the Chilean Jesuit Alonso de Ovalle’s mapping of Asian spices as it affected the southern region of his Tabula geographica regni Chile (Rome, 1646). I examine Ovalle’s inclusion of cinnamon and pepper in the Patagonian landscape as a persuasive allusion to the crucial role of the Strait of Magellan in his proposed revision of the trade route of the Spanish galleons.     

Sacred,but not surveyed: Nineteenth‐century surveys of Palestine

Abstract

Nineteenth‐century Palestine mapping projects based on systematic land surveying reached a peak with the Ordnance Survey of Western Palestine between 1871 and 1877, conducted on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund by officers of the British Royal Engineering Corps. Various other nineteenth‐century proposals for an organized survey of the country—some of which bore partial results while others were never implemented—are also presented. The surveying of one region, Mesopotamia, during the 1830s and 1840s, forms the basis for the discussion of the reasons for the relative lateness of the topographical survey. The sacredness of the region seems not to have been a sufficiently convincing motive for entrepreneurs to organize and finance such a survey. The main reason for the delay in mapping the country as a whole was that it was not especially important, either strategically or geo‐politically, for the European nations engaged in the international struggles in the Middle East until the last quarter of the nineteenth century.     

Marcusodictyon Bassler from the Lower Ordovician of Estonia: not the earliest bryozoan but a phosphatic problematicum

Marcusodictyon priscum (Bassler 1911) from the Tremadocian Ungulite Sandstone (A2) of Jegelecht Falls, Estonia, is redescribed following SEM study of type and other specimens. The fossil consists of a polygonal network of low ridges known to exist only on the exterior surfaces of valves of the inarticulate brachiopod Obolus. Electron microprobe analysis demonstrates that, like its host substratum, Marcusodictyon is composed of calcium phosphate. This, together with the detailed morphology and dimensions of the ridge system, is used to negate Bassler's assignment of the genus to the ctenostome Bryozoa. Instead Marcusodictyon resembles the Silurian problematicum Gochtia Eisenack. The inferred growth pattern of Marcusodictyon suggests that it may have been a symbiont of a living brachiopod.     

A delicate balance: Australia's ‘tilt’ to Pakistan and its impact on Australia–India relations

The Australia–India relationship has pivoted on more than the sale of uranium, and is not purely a narrative of neglect. While there have been some periods where bilateral relations received inadequate attention, the years 1947 to 1980 tell of a more complex story. During this time, many Australian diplomats and leaders worked hard to include India in Australia's foreign policy calculations. However, it proved difficult, arguably impossible, to negotiate a path for the Australia–India connection through the complexities of the India–Pakistan relationship and the strategic uncertainties of this most fragile of regions. Indian leaders, not without cause, constantly accused Australia of a ‘tilt’ to Pakistan. An examination of the Australian archives for this period reveals the inhibiting effects of the India–Pakistan conflict, particularly over Kashmir, on the development of a more fruitful Australia–India collaboration.     

The Ambivalent Moderation of Hindu Nationalism in India

Despite regular participation in national and regional elections and occupation of office both at the centre and in the regional governments, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not acquired the aura of moderation. It has not achieved acceptance into the party system of India in a manner that would make it comparable to Christian Democratic parties in Europe. This appears puzzling in the light of Downs’ moderation thesis, which suggests that regular participation in free, fair and competitive elections transforms extremist parties to moderates as they converge towards the median voter. The article approaches this puzzling counterfactual in intra-system comparison by drawing on the case of Sikh nationalism. With a focus on BJP, the article presents an analysis of party competition, party programs, policies and public opinion data on issue positions and the social base of the party. In conclusion, three general enabling conditions are identified that help explain the deviant case of the ambivalent moderation of the BJP.

印度人民党虽然参加全国和地方选举,虽然在中央和地方政府中任职,但并没有因此就有稳健克制的样子。它没有能够像欧洲的基督教民主党那样被纳入印度的政党体系。这就成为汤恩的克制理论解释不了的谜团,按汤氏的理论,正常参加自由、公正而竞争性的选举,会使极端主义政党变得稳健克制,向一般投票者趋近。本文通过系统内比较,以民族主义的锡克教为例,破解了这个谜团。作者聚焦印度人民党,分析了政党竞争,政党计划、政策以及关于某些话题立场的舆论资料、还有政党的社会基础。作者发现三种情形能够一般性地解释印度人民党的偏激不稳健。