Colonialism in the periphery: Spanish linguistic policy in New Granada,c. 1574–1625

This article examines how the Spanish Crown's attempt to implement a systematic linguistic policy across the New World from the last quarter of the sixteenth century failed in the New Kingdom of Granada. Based on the ambiguous and problematic idea of ‘general languages’ that had arisen in Mexico and Peru, this one-size-fits-all policy was wholly unsuited to even the Muisca heartlands of the archdiocese of Santa Fe. Instead, local authorities settled on the use of bespoke translations of catechetical and pastoral texts into individual local languages, even at parish level, thereby reinforcing linguistic particularism—but availing themselves of the disciplinary and procedural framework of the legislation to support their strategy. In doing so, the article seeks to challenge established assumptions about the treatment of indigenous languages in New Granada in this period, and to throw new light on unanswered questions about the Spanish response to the region's linguistic heterogeneity.     

Rent,Real Estate,and Flood Mitigation in New Orleans East

This paper presents results from a study of environmental harm created in the collision of real estate speculation and the political process that governed extension of the urban frontier of New Orleans into its eastern wetlands. Near term concerns of rent‐seeking real estate capital and the contested politics of urban infrastructure expansion challenged a fragmented state charged with regulatory oversight and protection of investments in land and citizens. The paper engages theoretically the relative inattention of urban political ecology theory to rent as a way to theorize how capital flows through land, and argues for increased attention to the problem of land rent and the multiple scales of political engagement that manage ecological crisis immanent in the metabolism of nature and society under capitalism.     

The Mediation and Remediation of Disaster: Hurricanes Katrina and Felix in/and the New Media Environment

Hurricanes Katrina and Felix made landfall in 2005 and 2007 on the Gulf Coast of the US and the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua respectively. Despite many economic, political and cultural differences between these two sites, they share a number of interesting similarities. Their inhabitants are subject to similar modes of racialized Othering and internal colonialism, and both places have vital links with the transnational cultural consciousness that Gilroy referred to as the Black Atlantic. Katrina and Felix also occurred at a time when centralized forms of media are increasingly perceived to be in crisis. This crisis is creating new spaces for the development of alternative ways of knowing, watching and making media. This paper draws on recent literature on decolonization by Mignolo, Escobar, Quijano and others to explore the prospects for decolonizing energies within the new media environment and a context of devastation wrought by neoliberalism and disaster. This research examines disasters in/and the new media environment, and suggests that activists should understand the distinctions between mainstream (or corporate) and alternative media, between top‐down and grassroots media, and between “old” and “new” media, in relational and non‐categorical rather than absolute terms. These media realms should be engaged from an awareness of how they interact with and impact upon one another. This research also suggests that disasters must be understood as ongoing and open‐ended events embedded within historical, social, cultural, economic and political processes and systems. Media, policymaking and emergency management practices that are informed by an awareness of this complex embedding, and which are therefore able to take a long‐term view of the unfolding of disasters, will be best equipped to engage effectively, and in democratically responsive ways, with disasters and in particular with the needs of those populations most vulnerable to their impacts.     

“Empirical Anthropologists Advocating Cultural Adjustments”: The Anthropological Governance of Āpirana Ngata and the Native Affairs Department

In 1929, āpirana Ngata published an article titled “Anthropology and the government of native races in the Pacific”. This would appear to confirm the link between anthropology and the rule of indigenous populations in New Zealand and its Pacific empire, but the evidence presented in this article suggests a more complex situation. This paper examines the “empirical anthropology” of Ngata and Peter Buck and the ways in which their activities reshaped the policy and practice of the Department of Native Affairs between 1920 and 1935, particularly through the notion of cultural “adjustments” or “adaptation”. Archival research reveals that behind the activities of the Dominion Museum, the Polynesian Society and its Journal was a Māori-led body, the Board of Māori Ethnological Research, which redirected government collecting, research and publication from salvage to the maintenance and revival of Māori cultural heritage in the service of tribal social and economic development. Seen through the theoretical framework of assemblage theory, we can see how a malleable idea of culture was employed in social governance in quite different ways to the colonial governmentality at work in other settler colonies at this time. The paper argues that this form of “anthropological governance” effectively de-territorialized state institutions, thereby creating a distinctive space for the native exterior to the nation.     

‘It is where blokes can be blokes’: making places in a New Zealand rugby club

Using the case study of a New Zealand rugby club, in this article, we highlight the role of gender and performance in place attachment. We discuss various performances that contribute to achieving a sense of attachment of club members to the (imagined) community of the rugby club and the different physical spaces of its home ground. Even though performances are played out and read against the backdrop of a popular discourse of New Zealand rugby masculinity, we did not observe characteristics of stereotypical ‘rugby masculinity’ in all rugby places, nor were performances the same throughout one day. Instead, variations were found depending on whether performance was ‘front stage’ or ‘backstage’.     

New World States and Empires: Economic and Social Organization

We take a critical perspective in discussing recent publications on the archaeological study of the ancient state-level societies of Latin America. For some topics, such as intensive agriculture and exchange, data are far ahead of theory, whereas for others (e.g., gender and ethnicity), theory has outstripped data. Craft production, a topic that has achieved a good balance of data and theory, is one of the success stories of recent Latin American archaeology. After a discussion of sources of data, we review these and other topics (e.g., consumption patterns, household studies, social organization) in terms of both data and theory. In a second review article, we cover the topics of politics, religion, urbanism, and the processes of change.     

新中国"镇压反革命"运动研究

在中华人民共和国建国之初,战争尚未完全结束,土地改革正在渐次开展起来,经济恢复工作一切百废待兴,尽管各地反抗事件频发,毛泽东却反对“四面出击”,没有响应党内实施大规模镇压的要求。不过数月之后,因朝鲜战败,中国被迫出兵抗美之际,毛泽东又抓住对外战争的机会,毫不犹豫地大举发动了“镇压反革命”运动,力图乘举国对外之际,一举清除社会上的反革命分子。这场以巩固城市政权为中心任务的镇压反革命运动,轰轰烈烈,极大地震慑了社会各种敌对势力,提高了新政权的威望。     

对青海省回族聚居区新农村建设问题的探讨

青海省是多民族聚居的省份。重视各个民族的新农村建设,因地制宜,因势利导,是加快全省新农村建设步伐的题中应有之义。该文从六个方面就青海省回族聚居区如何建设社会主义新农村进行了探索。     

新四军争取帮会抗日的方针与实践

帮会工作一直是新民主主义革命时期中共面临的实际问题和政策策略问题.在敌强我弱的态势下,为了最大限度地孤立和分化敌人,必须团结一切可以团结的力量.抗战时期华中地区帮会林立,它们既是新四军可以争取和团结的力量,同时又存在被日军收买充当汉奸,或为国民党顽固派利用充当反共急先锋的现实危险.因此,争取帮会大部分成员积极参加抗日,便成为华中新四军领导抗日民族统一战线的重要任务之一.在中共领导下,华中新四军不仅提出和制定了正确的争取、利用和改造帮会的政策和策略,而且还有效地实施了这一政策,使帮会中的大多数成员成为抗日民族统一战线的一员,从而为抗日的胜利作出了可贵的贡献.