Imperial Remains and Imperial Invitations: Centering Race within the Contemporary Large-Scale Infrastructures of East Africa

In this paper we combine infrastructure studies and black radical traditions to foreground how imperial remains deeply inform the logics that bring forth contemporary large-scale infrastructures in Africa. The objective, prompted by the ongoing avid promotion of such architectures on the continent, is to contribute to an analysis that centres race in these projects. Our argument is that these initiatives have to be understood in relation to inherited material and discursive scaffoldings that remain from the colonial period, through what we refer to as imperial remains and imperial invitations. These remains and invitations demonstrate how recent mega infrastructures inhere, in their planning, financing and implementation, a colonial racialism, despite rhetorical claims to the opposite. Empirically, we draw, principally, on China built and financed infrastructure projects from Kenya, and theoretically upon black radical traditions in order to foreground a longer genealogy of black pathologising and resistance to it on the continent.     

论20世纪资本主义发展的历史定位

根据社会生产力和实践第一的检验标准来考察资本主义在20世纪的发展类型,可以发现,在20世纪,出现了美、日、德、英法、欧洲联盟、北美自由贸易区、东亚经济区、其他发展中国家、苏联东欧转轨国家等不同类型的资本主义发展模式。在发展和停滞的两重趋势中,20世纪资本主义的主要趋势仍然是发展。     

关于康熙版蒙古文《甘珠尔》经的刊刻

本文利用清代满、蒙文档案文献,对办理康熙版蒙古文《甘珠尔》经的缘起、主事者、蓝本来源、校勘经过、誊写及镌刻人员、刊刻场所、经版存放地点、经费预算及其来源、经费之收掌等问题作了较为系统的考述。     

约曼与英国资本主义启动

农业是英国资本主义的基础,约曼又是农业资本主义的发动者、农村社会的“脊梁”。在英国农业资本主义发生的时候,约曼是先行者。“约曼”经历了由一个带有荣誉感的职业名词向具有经济与社会含义的名词的转变;约曼阶层经历了由采邑制度下的农民向资本主义农场主的演进。约曼是社会转型时期英国农村的精英群体,对经济、政治、教育文化、日常生活等方面都产生了重大而深远的影响,为英国率先成为第一个工业化国家提供了最初的、最基本的经济力量和政治力量,是英国资本主义的启动者。     

A Spectacular Eco‐Tour around the Historic Bloc: Theorising the Convergence of Biodiversity Conservation and Capitalist Expansion

Abstract: The simultaneous proliferation of protected areas for biodiversity conservation and neoliberal market expansion has sparked a growing body of work, which suggests that these are mutually reinforcing processes that reflect alliances between conservationist and capitalist agendas. Because this alliance is so counter intuitive to the ways in which biodiversity conservation is popularly understood, theoretical perspectives concerning these relationships have been slow in emerging. Drawing from Gramsci's ideas of hegemony and historic bloc, we propose a theoretical framework systematically to inform understandings and investigations of these transformations. We suggest that they are driven by the convergence of networks of interests, which work to resolve the apparent contradictions between demands for continued economic growth and growing concerns about what it portends for the future of our planet. These in turn rely on spectacular presentations of conservation interventions, conservation success stories, and their putative linkages to ecosystems and the global economy.     

The Shape of Capitalism to Come

Abstract: The starting point for this paper is the observation that a reshaping of global capitalism is underway, centred on the rise of dynamic centres of accumulation in Asia. It is argued that a critical understanding of this process (supported without reservation by such organizations as the IMF, the OECD and the World Bank) requires a questioning of the imagined link between “capitalism” and the “West”, and a recognition that the international organizations are committed to a universal project aimed at empowering capital and promoting competitiveness on a global scale. A case study is provided of the recently adopted plan for the creation of an ASEAN Economic Community as a “single market and productive space” by 2015. The regional context in which it is placed is contrasted with that of the European Union, and the need for further study of varieties of capitalism in emerging economies is noted.     

The Shipping Conference System,Empire and Local Protest in Singapore, 1910–1911

This article analyses local opposition in Singapore in 1910–11 to the shipping conference system and the responses of a powerful group of British shipowners and the Colonial Office. The conference, a cartel agreed among shipowners, divided monopoly profits among its members and a small group of London-based merchant houses. We suggest that the concerns of Singapore anti-conference protestors, backed by the governor of the Straits Settlements, counted for little in official London circles when weighed against the vital role of shipping in the British Empire. Even in 1967 the strength of the empire and British shipping was still apparent when the Singapore government refused to support local mercantile opposition to the Far Eastern Freight Conference.     

Factory ‘nuns’: the ethnicization of migrant labor in the making of Tibetan carpets

Many debates over migrant labor politics in contemporary China rely upon essentialist notions of ethnic identity. In contrast, I identify migrant labor politics as transnational processes through which women migrants from rural Tibet become ethnic workers. Drawing on post-colonial theories of ethnicity and on feminist literature on global capitalism, this article analyzes the uses of migrant laborers in a globalizing Tibetan carpet industry. First, I investigate the making of Tibetan carpets and the essentialist construction of ‘carpet weavers’ employed by Tibetan–Nepalese carpet factory owners, carpet dealers in New York City, and various participants in Lhasa, including party cadres, international non-government organizations (NGOs), and overseas investors. I argue that the functioning of the international carpet business relies upon the ethnicization of migrant labor, in which labor subjugation involves creating ethnic subjects and ethnicized boundaries. This form of labor commodification is driven by both an economic logic and a moral imperative for preserving or regenerating ‘ethnic culture.’ Second, through the lens of gender, I look closely at the ethnicization of migrant labor in post-socialist Lhasa, analyzing its significance for the labor force in the carpet industry. The women carpet weavers, who mostly come from Tibet's rural areas, I found, strive to reconcile their desires for female autonomy with labor positions that reduce them to strangers in the city. Some women attempt to overcome their experiences of alienation while actively engaging in the reproduction of the patriarchal family as well as in labor hierarchies at work.     

Following the caterpillar fungus: nature,commodity chains,and the place of Tibet in China's uneven geographies

Following caterpillar fungus as it travels from the Tibetan Plateau to wealthy Chinese consumers, this article makes several interventions into geographical studies of commodity chains. First, it argues for an expansion beyond the usual call to connect the political economy of production with cultures of consumption; the cultural politics of production and political economies of consumption must also be considered. Second, it argues for bringing together political economy and more-than-human analytical approaches to commodity chains, showing how nature and the nonhuman play a key role in an assemblage that has allowed Tibetans to navigate livelihoods in a rapidly changing economy. This challenges a tendency to assume a universal figure of ‘the human’ in more-than-human geographies. Third, by connecting the erasure of Tibetans from representations of various natures used to sell caterpillar fungus with the broader politics of Tibetans within the People's Republic of China, we show that commodity fetishism can conceal not just labor relations, but also political struggles not reducible to class. Finally, we show that following a small fungus can shed light on the unevenness of China's capitalist development obscured in monolithic narratives of China's rise, demonstrating the value of expanding commodity chain studies beyond those that end with Western consumers.