From ‘Landsman’ to ‘Seaman’? Colonial discipline,organisation and resistance in the Royal Indian Navy, 1946

In February 1946, 20,000 sailors of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) mutinied over a number of grievances, from the poor quality of their food to demands for an independent India. Drawing on archival research in the UK and India, this paper uses this event, together with an examination of life in the RIN more generally, to explore how colonial discipline was organised and resisted in specifically maritime ways. By examining the practices and organisational structures of the RIN which attempted to discipline sailors, and in turn how these were resisted and negotiated, it is argued that the spatial politics of life in the Navy created distinctly maritime social and cultural relations. These maritime, naval understandings of space and place add to our understandings of the ways in which colonialism worked in practice. The paper therefore not only adds to work about colonialism's attempts to discipline and order its subjects but also contributes to debates on the geographies of the sea.     

Resistance,Symbolism and the Language of Stateness in Timor‐Leste

On gaining independence in 2002 after a protracted struggle against Indonesian occupation, the sovereign Timor‐Leste state began to assert its sovereignty in a range of discursive and expressive media. These assertions developed a distinct ‘language of stateness’ that is the focus of this article. This East Timorese expression of state sovereignty draws heavily on the legacy of the Timorese resistance struggle and on a variety of other sources of symbolic power such as flags, buildings, logos, and uniforms. Yet these efforts have been contested by a range of non‐state actors in Timor‐Leste and the shape that this language of stateness has taken now evokes complaints from martial arts groups (MAGs), ritual arts groups (RAGs), and veterans' organisations that seek to ‘become like the state’ themselves, and who also employ a ‘national language of stateness’ in the form of flags, graffiti, and official buildings. While not challenging the idea of an independent East Timorese state per se, these groups question the prerogative of the state to use and define the language of stateness. In this article I explore the way the state and its challengers use ‘languages of stateness’ and how this shapes their ambivalent stance vis‐à‐vis each other, with both sides often drawing upon a discourse of the fulfilment of the millenarian promises that have for a long time been tied to the achievement of independence.     

Reconceptualizing Resistance: Residuals of the State and Democratic Radical Pluralism

Abstract: Arguing that resistance to the state is too narrow a conceptualization of a political project that challenges neoliberalism, we posit that there are latent, residual apparatuses of the state which can be activated as part of a systematic progressive politics. We examine Massachusetts’“Dover amendment”, a legal framework which governs group home siting throughout the state. Dover offers a powerful tool with which to resist a neoliberal socio‐spatial agenda, though it has been underutilized toward enabling an alternative landscape. We analyze how and why Dover has often remained latent as a tool for socio‐spatial resistance, and consider a provocative case in Framingham, Massachusetts that suggests how residual state apparatuses may be leveraged in support of an explicitly resistive, progressive agenda.     

Defending the Individual: the Personal Rights Association and the Ligue des droits de l'homme, 1871–1916

This article investigates the conceptual and organisational connections between late nineteenth-century civil-liberties activism and the emerging human-rights paradigm of the twentieth century. The comparison of the two largest and most influential civil-liberties organisations to emerge in Britain and France before the First World War (the British Personal Rights Association and the French Ligue des droits de l'homme) has three objectives: to place the two groups in a wider context of civil-liberty organisations of the pre-First World War era and to identify personal connections and inspirations. Secondly, by analysing functional definitions of ‘rights’ and who these rights should apply to, the article argues that although one group conceptualised their activism on the basis of ‘civil liberties’ and the other on ‘human rights’ there were significant similarities between the approaches of the two groups. Moreover, differences stemmed from internal politics within each group rather than the dissimilar conceptual framework. Finally the article seeks to understand why the Ligue des droits de l'homme was much more successful than the British Personal Rights Association both in its ability to mobilise supporters, and in inspiring sister organisations in other European countries.     

The cultural construction of Italy in Albania and vice versa: Migration dynamics,strategies of resistance and politics of mutual self-definition across colonialism and post-colonialism

This article analyses the shifting ways in which Italy has been strategically represented in Albania during the different key passages of the latter's relatively recent history as a sovereign independent state. As a parallel narrative, the article also examines the way Albania has been equally strategically represented in Italy before and during the two periods in which Italy has been militarily involved in Albania, and the way this has been consistent with an attempt to elaborate and sustain a politically strategic definition of Italian identity and culture. The history of the asymmetrical relationship between Albania and Italy is deeply embedded in the social, cultural and political environments that are on the two shores of the Adriatic Sea. The cultural construction of Albania in Italy and vice versa of Italy in Albania should be linked to seemingly independent instances of domestic reforms. The dynamics of projective identification or dis-identification stemming from these instances should be seen as intertwined within two parallel processes of mutual definition encompassing both the colonial and the postcolonial relations between and within the two countries.     

Armed and unarmed: struggles without weapons in Europe and in Italy

Abstract

The starting point for this article is the concept of civil resistance formulated by the French historian Jacques Semelin to describe the forms of unarmed and often non-violent resistance adopted during the Nazi occupations. These included strikes, protests against high food prices, refusal to join Nazi professional associations, the moral isolation of the enemy, actions to rescue Jews, the organisation of clandestine schools (in Poland) as well as support for armed struggle. While historians have looked on these struggles merely as secondary to or supportive of armed restsitance, the concept of civil resistance shows instead how they were autonomous social responses to Nazi dominion. After showing how since the 1990s there has been much closer dialogue between these two apparoaches, the article examines the ways in which the forms of civil resistance in Italy differed from countries such as Denmark, with greater emphasis on private actions and indivdual intiatives and informal networks in which women were always especiallly active and influential. In Italy, civil resistance seems to have been less ‘political’ and more ‘female’ than in northern Europe. The article concludes by examining the realtionship between the struggles in which women were involved and the concept of civil resistance, which although extremely important is only one step towards a fuller evaluation of the role of women in civil resistance.     

The Italian resistance between history and memory

Abstract

Since the 1960s the Resistance has held pride of place in public ceremonial, political debate and to a point also in historcial writing in Italy. The emphasis on its popular and national character transformed the Resistance into the struggle of the whole country to rid Italy of the German invaders and the small number of Italian fascists who remained their allies, but in ways that took no account of the complexity of people's reactions and the different ways in which Italians experienced the years immediately after the fall of fascism. In the last decade, however, numerous accounts have been published that contradict the images of the Resistance that for 30 years have constituted the ‘official’ memory of the Italian Republic. As a result, the Resistance offers a classic example of the ‘public use of history’, in which historical interpretation has served primarily to justify party political, instutitional and idelogical ends. It is now clear, however, that the supposed unity against fascism was more the result of agreement that there were limits beyond which political differences could not be pressed rather than of a deeper political unity that might have provided the basis for the political and institutional reform of the Italian Republic. The contrasting memories and interpretations of that period that have recently re-emerged for the same reason make it more difficult to project a new Italian democracy for the future.     

‘Fare di ogni famiglia italiana un fortilizio’: The League of Nations' economic sanctions and everyday life in Venice 1

Abstract

The imposition of punitive sanctions against Italy by the League of Nations in November 1935 in response to the invasion of Ethiopia, a fellow league member, provided the fascist regime with an opportunity to mobilize the civilian population into ‘resistance’ against the ‘economic siege’ and to promote its ideals of nationalism, imperialist expansion and autarchy. This article examines the way in which the fascist authorities in Venice, aided by a supportive local press, sought to use the sanctions and ‘sanctions resistance’ to engage Venetians – especially women – in the fascist project and explores the effect of the anti-sanctions resistance measures on Venetians' daily lives. Placing importance both upon the regime's intentions as well as Venetians' reception of the anti-sanctions rhetoric, and drawing upon Michel de Certeau's observations on The Practice of Everyday Life, the article argues that Venetians' reception of such propaganda was characterized above all by confusion and by a multiplicity of personal choices and reactions, spanning a range of possible responses from unequivocal support through passive acceptance or indifference to outright rejection or subversion of the sanctions resistance measures that sought to elicit consent for the fascist project.     

清代403宗民刑案例中的私通行为考察

男女私通在清代司法审理中占有相当的比重 ,表明它已构成当时不可忽视的一个社会问题。本文就当事者的年龄、婚姻、家庭状况以及他们之间的关系进行了数量统计和对比说明。根据案例的内容 ,把私通原因归纳为出于感情、家境困难或缺乏劳力、带有某种挟制性通奸和其他四大类 ,其中以前两类案例量最大、情况最复杂。并对私通产生的后果 ,传统道德、政府法律、婚姻家庭制度与私通的关系等等做了探讨。