Introduction Locating an Australia‐wide Anthropology

ABSTRACT Ethnographic research concerning Aboriginal social life in the earlier settled areas of the continent has formed a minor strand within the body of Australian anthropological research. Yet these studies speak directly to the current national discourse concerning distressing conditions in many Aboriginal communities in the north. The kind of anthropology generated in South East Australia has always sought to do more than simply depict particular collective worlds—it also addresses how they are made, particularly in conditions of upheaval, relocation and engagement with state institutions and the nation's ideologies. By drawing attention to one kind of border, that between cultural/social worlds we hope to overcome another boundary, that between ethnographies of the north and the south. To this end, we draw attention to the process of boundary making that has been a crucial dynamic within the changing historical and social configurations that have shaped Aboriginal experiences of the social world. Thus, instead of reporting on the significance of cultural characteristics, this collection shifts attention to relationships with others, with the state and the encompassing society.     

Border food and food on the border: meaning and practice in Mexican haute cuisine

Restaurants and their attendant practices are high-profile sites at which regional and national cuisines are experienced, experimented with, and negotiated. In particular, they are important settings for the consumption and production of national identity—a crucial space through which to understand the coalescing of the material and representational. This article focuses specifically on the production side of the pairing through an examination of restaurants that are part of a prominent culinary movement (alta cocina mexicana) in the Mexican border town of Tijuana. The central argument of the paper is that Tijuana's culinary scene is indicative of the reassertion of boundaries between Mexico and the USA through the intentional rejection of northern stereotypes of Mexican food. The emphasis on traditional Mexican cuisine, rather than an internationally hybrid cosmopolitan approach, suggests that chefs are adhering to a set of rules that reflect Mexicanness. Restaurants propagating alta cocina mexicana work to differentiate the border and act as social devices which both complicate conventional understandings of Mexican food and disrupt hegemonic discourses of the border as productive of hybridity.     

International treaties and art

International treaties shape the legal context for the arts, provide policy tools for political ends, and reveal roles of the arts in state identity. Culture‐specific instruments, general agreements with cultural provisions, general agreements without culture‐specific provisions, and general statements of principle are all pertinent. Since 1990, treaties have intervened in the global division of labor and the entry of works into the art market, forced transformations of domestic law, and illuminated ways in which differences in legal cultures are valuable for those who would break the law. Treaties highlight complexities of national identity, exacerbate national/regional tensions, support restitution, and draw attention to human rights issues. Conflicts over art have also become an explicit part of the world of foreign policy.     

Open borders as an act of solidarity among peoples,between states or with migrants: changing applications of solidarity within the Schengen process

Abstract

The article analyses the historical understanding of the term ‘solidarity’ in the context of the Schengen process, which started in the 1980s and remains relevant until today. During this time, the Schengen Area grew from encompassing five Western European countries to 26 member-states across the whole continent. In this context, the term ‘solidarity’ was referred to frequently in official documents, in speeches or in the media – despite the fact that the term was not at all central at the time of foundation. It is important to note, however, that during the process of enlargement, the meaning of the term ‘solidarity’ changed repeatedly. First meant to denote solidarity between all the European peoples, in the Western European Union it also referred to the reconciliation of European peoples after the Second World War. In the 1990s, the official understanding of solidarity concerning Schengen shifted to describe an effective inter-state cooperation among the EU member-states. In the last years, the term solidarity was most evoked in the call for an even burden-sharing within the European Union. All these different understandings have one aspect in common: they focus on the internal dimension of European solidarity. However, during the entire Schengen process, the term ‘solidarity’ was also applied in another, an external, global dimension, to call for humanitarian support towards refugees reaching the Schengen Area from anywhere in the world. The article argues that the term ‘solidarity’ must hence be looked at as a political concept and not a neutral, analytic term. Critical regard for the current political interests as well as the concrete historical framework are crucial for any academic discussion of European solidarity. The categories of inclusion and exclusion especially must be core aspects when analysing the term ‘solidarity’ historically.     

One River,Two Ukraines? Yurii Andrukhovych’s Imagined Geography of East-Central Europe

This article discusses the role that the Dnipro River (formerly Dnieper River) plays in the discursive construction of Yurii Andrukhovych’s idea of East-Central Europe. In his essays ‘Like Fishes in Water’ (Yak ryby u vodi. 29 richkovykh pisen’, 2004) and ‘Atlas. Meditations’ (Atlas. Medytatsiyi, 2005), the author chooses to emphasize the Dnipro’s function as a border between two distinct regions of Ukraine. In his portrayal, the right bank (the western part of Ukraine) seems culturally traditional, whereas the left bank (the eastern part of Ukraine) appears to be uncultivated, proletarian, nomadic and generally an area of wilderness. The author concludes: ‘At least in the context involving this specific map the two Ukraines are divided’. Is this a hidden ideologization or a new mythologization of the Dnipro? Certainly, the conceptualization of the river transcends its mere physical dimensions and provides the landscape with a symbolic function. Andrukhovych’s essay volumes Disorientation on Location (Dezoriyentatsiya na mistsevosti, 1999), The Devil’s Hiding in the Cheese (Dyyavol khovayet’sya v syri, 2006) and The Lexicon of Intimate Cities (Leksykon intymnykh mist, 2016) provide additional insights into this imagined geography. The research presented in this article discusses Andrukhovych’s ideas with reference to the concept of ‘Two Ukraines’ by Mykola Riabchuk and ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ by Samuel Huntington. Central European discourse, post-colonial studies and geopoetical theory complement the discussion and enable its integration into a larger context.     

Enclavic tourism spaces: territorialization and bordering in tourism destination development and planning

ABSTRACT

Enclave tourism is a growing field of research. In general, tourism enclaves are seen as products of global capitalism and a non-locally-driven neoliberal market economy. Enclaves also manifest certain kinds of tourism planning and development modes in destination societies. The enclaves are exclusively planned spaces that usually contain the vast majority of facilities and services needed for tourists who have limited possibilities or desire to leave the enclave. At the same time, the locals' access to these spaces can be limited or otherwise controlled. Therefore, there are always power issues and processes of inequalities and uneven development involved, which calls for a further understanding of enclaves and their evolution and governance in tourism planning and development. This paper aims to discuss and synthesize the conceptual idea of enclaves in tourism and get an overview of some of the key theoretical perspectives on how enclavic spaces are produced, bordered, and governed in contemporary tourism planning and development. It is concluded that in critical situations the enclave tourism spaces with all-inclusive products can turn out to be all-exclusive for local communities in development. To understand the nature and development of enclave tourism and to guide their transformation in more sustainable directions, further research on policy and governance aspects of enclave tourism is needed.     

Acts of Disengagement in Border Struggles: Fugitive Practices of Refusal

This paper explores people's acts of disengagement from activist campaign and group spaces in the context of border struggle activism in Germany and the UK as fugitive practices of refusal. These acts of disengagement took the form of remaining silent or intentionally distracted, sleeping during activist meetings, distancing oneself from activist groups during conversations, or completely withdrawing from these spaces. The paper approaches these acts, first, as practices of refusal that expose notions of the political rooted in liberal struggles over power and freedom as not only risky but also inherently self-defeating and, second, as radically optimistic and vitalising practices of recovery and care that insist on alternative modes of thinking, practising, and experiencing sociality and the political that can inspire us to consider political agency in relation to wider abolitionist projects.     

Vulnerable geographies: human trafficking,immigration and border control in the UK and beyond

Human trafficking inspires strong responses from feminists and other interested parties. This article takes the UK anti-trafficking measures as a case study to explore the interaction between discourses of trafficked women's vulnerability to sexual harm, and national vulnerability to external threats such as organized crime. Drawing on feminist engagements with human trafficking and commercial sex, my aim is to contribute to these debates. I explore how the government's moralistic response to trafficking reflects a particular form of regulation that animates new systems of governmentality and biopower. Against this backdrop I attempt to advance feminist perspectives on trafficking by demonstrating the relationality between UK anti-trafficking measures, and its plans to reorganize its regulatory capacity overseas. I suggest an interpretation of UK overseas anti-trafficking measures that foregrounds respatialized border and immigration controls. I show how this kind of regulation works on and through the bodies and behaviours of government actors. I conclude that while aspects of these overseas interventions do go some way to protect trafficked women, they do not operate in isolation of other geopolitical agendas.     

Territorial (In) Coherence: Labour and Special Economic Zones in Laos's Border Manufacturing

This article engages literature on special economic zones and territory in global development. I suggest a focus on labour's spatial class composition as constitutive of territorial coherence provides insights into how the Savan‐Seno Special Economic Zone in Lao PDR operates as an economic border territory bridging Laos to the regional and global economies. The distanciated global connections which special economic zones aim to create are predicated on zones gaining internal coherence for capital accumulation. I suggest zones’ internal coherence depends on zone firms reworking the local class composition of labour, itself constituted by workers’ spatial practices. In the Savan‐Seno zone this occurred through immobilising a mobile labour force and taking advantage of its continuing embeddedness within a subsistence rice‐producing village economy. The argument aims to illustrate how zones producing for global markets act as territories of complex spatiality which span and connect multiple spaces of production and workers’ social reproduction.     

Gender,migration and intimate geopolitics: shifting senses of home among women on the Myanmar-Thailand border

This article examines changing experiences of home among migrant women from Myanmar in the context of the Myanmar-Thailand border. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with migrant women and participant observation within a women-led organisation, the article demonstrates the ways in which women’s journeys from Myanmar into Thailand are also journeys of personal transition in which ideas of home are questioned and reconfigured. Developing perspectives on the geopolitics of home and bringing them into dialogue with feminist theorisations of borders, the article conceptualises home on the border as a site of vulnerability and potential in which participants can challenge gendered norms that associate women with reproduction, domesticity and the preservation of national culture. The article reveals a complex reality in which women negotiate multiple insecurities, developing alternative ideas of home while contributing to social change across borders.