Teaching terrorism,saving the state? Education and geopolitical imaginations of terrorism in 12 violently challenged states

The role of education in political socialisation and the importance of terrorism discourses in promoting (or silencing) certain interests have long been acknowledged. This study combines both themes by asking: How do school textbooks, sanctioned by states that are violently challenged by internal opposition, discuss the issue of terrorism? I draw on, and contribute to, four distinct, yet related streams of research: critical geopolitics, critical terrorism studies, geographies of education, and young people's geographies. Simultaneously, while most work on the topic focuses on individual cases (typically of Western countries), I conduct the first comparative analysis of twelve countries from different world regions: China, Egypt, India, Kenya, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Spain, Sri Lanka and Turkey. Contrary to recent claims, considerable heterogeneity persists regarding geopolitical imaginations of terrorism, while US-coined discourses are only infrequently adapted. However, there is still recognisable functionalist convergence as the states under analysis utilise their control of the education system in their internal struggles, mainly by portraying their opponents as evil, by ascribing a positive identity to themselves, and by calling for support by their citizens (including restrictions of human rights and democracy).     

Resources,regulation and the state: Struggles over gas extraction and passive revolution in Evo Morales's Bolivia

The indigenous-influenced policies of Evo Morales's Bolivia represent arguably the most important attempt to improve the socioenvironmental implications of resource extraction in recent years, reasserting the role of the state and social movements against ‘corporate-led governance’. In this paper, through combining the regulation approach with neo-Gramscian state theory, I carry out a conceptually informed analysis of struggles over hydrocarbon governance in Bolivia, in order to shed light on the reasons why such an ambitious political project has largely failed to realise its transformative potential. I make two interrelated arguments. First, initial, important advances in the governance of resources in Bolivia were later partially reversed, due to shifting power relations between social movements, the hydrocarbon industry, and the state. This points to the need of understanding resource governance and its changes as reflecting or ‘condensing’ shifting power relationships among social forces. Second, the coming to power of Evo Morales resulted in a ‘passive-revolutionary’ process whereby an initial radical break with the neoliberal order was followed by a gradual adaptation to pre-existing political economic relations and arrangements. Most notably, plans to reduce the country's dependency on gas exports as well as to challenge the transnational domination of the hydrocarbon sector were abandoned, generating an increasingly explicit incompatibility with indigenous demands. I conclude that neo-Gramscian theory offers important insights that enable us to advance our conceptualisation of the state in resource governance research and in political ecology more generally.     

Fording differences? Conditions mitigating water insecurity in the Niger River Basin

River basins are an extremely important source of freshwater for Africa and the impact of climate change on these communities constitutes an important question worth studying. Among these basins, the Niger River Basin is an ideal candidate for meso-level theory testing of climate change-induced political violence because of its importance as one of the largest sources of freshwater in Africa, its high vulnerability to climate change, and its location in a politically unstable region. This paper utilizes the benefits of GIS to test whether effects of water insecurity on the various incidences of political violence are conditional on economic, geographic, and social means of connectivity. Our analysis uses the density of secondary road networks, the geographic distance to the Niger River, and a shared co-ethnicity with one's head-of-state to evaluate the impact of hydrological stress and its subsequent risk for political violence across nine West African countries from 1997 to 2012. Using climatological data and an econometric de-trending method, we measure the separate, substantive impact that individualized changes in precipitation trend and precipitation variability have for the incidence of ACLED's political violence events, conditional on local economic, geographic, and social factors. Our results reveal a complicated web of circumstances under which certain forms of political violence are more/less likely to be observed. The implications of this analysis serve as a call for a closer inspection of the micro-channels by which climate stress impacts heterogeneous communities in the developing world.     

Lithic Production and Consumption Patterns from the Great Platform at Late Postclassic (A.D. 1350–1525) Tzintzuntzan,Mexico

Late Postclassic period (a.d. 1350–1525) Tarascan economic activities often included higher degrees of political involvement and territorial control compared with other ancient Mesoamerican societies. Here I examine Tarascan obsidian economies through an analysis of lithic production and consumption patterns from structures excavated on and near the Great Platform at the imperial capital of Tzintzuntzan. Four spatially distinct patterns are evident. Great Platform residents used high-quality obsidian blades as ceremonial items or burial offerings and scrapers for craft production. Lower elite residents of Structure F, outside the Great Platform, produced their own blade tools and consumed a higher percentage of green obsidian than residents of the Great Platform. Excavations at Yacata 3 recovered bifacial arrowheads and obsidian bloodletters associated with disturbed offerings. The spatial distributions of lapidary preforms and highly polished fragments combined with accounts from the Relación de Michoacán (a.d. 1541) suggest that lower elites produced obsidian jewelry near the Great Platform.     

20世纪50年代中国在引进基础上的技术创新

20世纪50年代中国的技术引进和技术创新活动集中在“一五”时期和“大跃进”时期,虽然这两个时期在引进基础上的创新活动都是在重工业优先发展战略下的体制框架内进行的,但在引进技术的行业构成、规模、项目建设的实施和技术的消化乃至技术创新机制、成效等方面都有所不同。“一五”时期采用了全面、系统、灵活多样的方式和重点攻关,在消化、吸收引进技术方面取得了明显的成效,某些领域实现了技术再造,技术创新能力得到了迅速积累,但从总体上看仍处于对引进技术的翻版、修改阶段。“大跃进”时期的技术创新机制被严重干扰,群众运动代替了深入细致的科学研究,在群众性技术革新运动中引进基础上的创新活动格外活跃,通过技术革新运动学会了自行制造一些成套设备、生产工艺,但并没有从产业部门或行业整体上真正实现引进基础上的再次创新,其整体水平依然停留在对引进技术的“初级模仿”阶段。     

Multiregional Perspectives on the Archaeology of the Andes During the Late Intermediate Period (c. A.D. 1000–1400)

During the Late Intermediate period (LIP, c. A.D. 1000–1400), the central Andes experienced the decline of the Wari and Tiwanaku states, as well as processes of state formation, regional population growth, and competition culminating in the imperial expansion of the Chimú and Inka polities. The LIP holds the potential to link the archaeological features of early Andean states with the material signatures of the later ones, providing a critical means of contextualizing the intergenerational continuities and breaks in state structures and imperial strategies. The recent proliferation of LIP research and the completion of a number of regional studies permit the overview of six LIP regions and the comparison of highland and lowland patterns of political and economic organization, social complexity, and group identity.     

Orthodox violence: “Critique of Violence” and Walter Benjamin's Jewish political theology

This paper deals with the role of Judaism in Walter Benjamin's famous 1921 essay on violence and law, Zur Kritik der Gewalt. Despite the intense attention devoted to this essay, the role of Jewish myth in it has not yet been thoroughly explained. This study contends that the association between what Benjamin termed revolutionary violence and the Jewish messianic tradition, which plays a central role in the evaluation of Benjamin's text, is far more problematic than has hitherto been assumed, and poses a serious challenge, which has not been fully examined in its historical context. Second, this essay claims that the subversive elements that many have supposedly found in Benjamin's text and the attempts to link these elements to messianic traditions are also unconvincing. Third, the paper contextualizes Benjamin's thought within the framework of the Jewish political–theological debate of the period. It contends that Benjamin's theory of law and justice should be understood not as a revolutionary, anti-republican text, as has been generally accepted, but as a secularized conservative orthodox one. In doing so, it seeks to shed light not only on Benjamin's early thinking and its influences, but also on the neglected element of Jewish orthodoxy within the broader topic of political theology.     

Archaeological excavations at Bosutswe,Botswana: cultural chronology,paleo-ecology and economy

Excavations at the site of Bosutswe on the eastern edge of the Kalahari Desert in Botswana have uncovered over 4 m of deposit ranging in age from CE 700 to 1700. Our research has produced quantitative and qualitative measures of the material and ecological dimensions that structured the everyday actions and behaviors through which social identities were constituted, maintained, and transformed during the period when the polities of Toutswe, Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe and Khami rose to power. By examining the material dimensions that underlay shifting relations of production, exchange, and social stratification we are able to contextualize the social judgments that ascribed value to material goods and food ways, while specifying the ways these were used to create and naturalize social relationships and power differentials. Stable isotope analyses, combined with evidence of vitrified dung, further enable us to suggest changes in herd management strategies used by the inhabitants of the site to compensate for ecological changes brought about by long-term occupation, while at the same time enabling them to economically tie subordinates to them as social divisions became more rigidly defined after CE 1300. The cultural and economic changes that took place at Bosutswe thus directly impact our understanding of the social transformations that immediately preceded contemporary configurations of ethnicity in Botswana.     

从政治现代化角度看党的执政能力建设

政治现代化是整个社会现代化的重要组成部分。中国共产党始终坚持鲜明的政治现代化导向．为实现中国社会的政治现代化进行了不懈的理论追求与实践探索。与时俱进,实现党的政治现代化是顺应时代发展的必然要求,也是执政党加强自身执政能力建设的根本问题。作为中国政治现代化的领导者,中国共产党只有不断加强执政能力建设,才能顺应时代要求不断推进中国的政治现代化进程。