The Second Coming of Rail: The Spanish High-Speed Rail-Finance Complex

This article offers a critical account of Spanish high-speed rail (HSR) through the lens of the spatial fix. I designate the integration of Spanish HSR into a European-wide process of circulation of finance capital as the HSR-finance complex. The analysis of the inner workings of the HSR-finance complex reveals the way in which European finance has laid the conditions of possibility for the development of the project and offers a forewarning about the dangers of leveraging finance capital toward green infrastructure. The analysis of the Spanish HSR-finance complex shows that the particular form of capital circulation that has made it possible has not brought about new productive combinations but has instead deepened traditional relations of economic dependency and magnified their socioenvironmental consequences.     

Dukarr lakarama: Listening to Guwak,talking back to space colonization

Guided by the Yolŋu songspiral of Guwak, in this collaboratively written paper we argue that the extension of earth-based colonization into space disrupts and colonises the plural lifeworlds of many Indigenous people who have ongoing connections with and beyond the sky. Listening to Guwak, we speak back to promoters of space colonization who frame their projects as harmless according to four core understandings. First, they assume that there are no people or other beings Indigenous to what they think of as ‘outer space’, and that none of the Indigenous people or beings who also live on earth have travelled to or inhabited this space. Second, they assume that space is dead or non-sentient in itself, and that it is incapable of fostering life. Third, they understand that space is cleanly separated from earth, meaning that what happens in space has no effect on earth, or vice versa. Fourth, because of these three assumptions, they do not identify any ethical objections to occupying and exploiting space.We follow Guwak as she undermines each of these assumptions, by moving through and as Sky Country. These learnings emphasize the presence and role of Law, order and negotiation in Sky Country; the active, animate, agential presence of beings in Sky Country; the connectivity and co-becoming-ness of earth and sky; and the ethical obligations to attend to and care for and as Sky Country. We contend that the argument applies to many worlds that intimately connect with, extend into (or beyond) what Western sciences call ‘outer space’. Indeed, we hope that in sharing Guwak we encourage broader conversations about Sky Country and its relations with other Indigenous worlds.     

世界社会的民俗协商:民俗学理论与方法的新生命

民俗学是随着现代性的全球扩张而发展起来的一门高度国际性的关于民族文化传统的学科,它在方法上采取集体主义,在理论上假设民族在民俗上的同质性。在现代性走向巅峰的时候,同质性人群和民俗传统的快速消逝带来民俗学的危机。面对危机,从日常生活来界定民俗的思潮兴起,却并不能解除危机。在人口流动、文化杂糅的世界社会,个人与小群体必须与他人协商安排日常生活的细节,这种世界社会的民俗协商正在成为广泛的事实。能够应对这种趋势的民俗学将会获得发展的生命力,这有赖于从业者带来理论与方法的创新。     

新冠肺炎疫情背景下关于博物馆使用消毒剂的思考

针对博物馆空间相对封闭、人流聚集、人与文物共存等特点,消毒剂的使用既要关注人(工作人员和观众)也要顾及物(文物或艺术品)。对人及其相关,《消毒剂使用指南》就适用范围、注意事项,已有充分说明。本研究只针对文物:立足文物科技保护角度的文物材质分类法;根据有效成分分类的消毒剂种类及其有损文物的显著化学特性;消毒剂对文物损害的机理及其后果三个方面与同行交流。在疫情防控的特殊阶段,为了保护文物安全,博物馆同行必须对各类消毒剂特性有全面了解,合理规范使用消毒剂,防止不当使用对文物造成损害,这也是文物预防性保护工作的重要方面。     

Iran's global reach: The Islamic Republic of Iran's policy,involvement, and activity in Africa

The aim of this study is to analyze the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI)'s policy toward and involvement in the African continent as a case study of the IRI's global policy and reach. The aspiration of the IRI's leadership for international standing and support coupled with a desire to export its revolutionary model and extend its influence beyond its borders have shaped its activity on many continents, including Africa. Africa's strategic location, past colonial experience, political position, rich resources, large Muslim population, and economic attractiveness have all contributed to shaping the IRI's activity within it. This study analyzes IRI's foreign policy in general and its implementation in Africa in particular, identifying the different historical phases of its activity in Africa, distinguishing between the various African regions, the main Iranian organizations involved therein, the means of and channels for Iranian involvement in Africa, and the reasons for IRI's gains and losses on that continent. The study shows how the Islamic regime has managed, during its 40 years of rule, through pragmatism and resilience, to gain influence and support, has endeavored to balance its losses, and has adapted to new circumstances in the African continent.     

The Option for the Poor as a Decolonial Option: Latin American Liberation Theology in Conversation with Teología India and Womanist Theology

Decolonial theorists pose a new challenge to liberation theology: Does its formulation of the option for the poor address the coloniality that distinguishes the modern context? This article argues that an option for the poor within theology, as a decolonial option, has to retrieve and deepen two central concerns of liberation theologians’ early articulation of the option for the poor: (1) the commitment to the poor and the way the divine is manifested historically, and (2) the affirmation of the need for social analysis and the need for this analysis to impact the commitment to God. The article draws on Teología India and womanist theology to indicate how these two interrelated commitments within the option for the poor can strengthen the option for the poor as a decolonial option.     

Negotiations of Irish identity in the wake of terrorism: the case of the Irish in Birmingham 1973–74

This article explores the Irish migrant experience in Birmingham during and in the wake of terrorist campaigns carried out in Britain between 1969 and 1975 and attributed to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Beginning with a discussion of the competencies with which Irishness was associated at the close of the 1960s in England, many of which were hinged on a notion of the Irish predisposition towards violence, the article continues on to take the political, cultural and religious “temperature” of the Irish community in Birmingham between 1969 and 1975, and follows on with a discussion of the specific strategies sought out by Irish immigrants to come to terms with the effect of events such as the “Birmingham Bombings” on their daily lives. Principle findings that emerge from the study indicate that IRA terrorism forced the Irish in Birmingham to engage with and adopt a number of distinct linguistic and cultural strategies in the post-1974 period, the cultivation of which indefinitely altered their relationship with Ireland as “home”, their visibility in the public British sphere and their associational patterns and practices within the migrant enclave.     

Access to culture in Croatian cultural policy: moving towards explicit policies

In this paper through the analysis of the access to culture issue in the Croatian cultural policy agenda, we illustrate the current cultural policy developments in Croatia in the broader European context. Taking the differentiation between explicit and implicit policies at both macro and micro level we analyse discourses on access to culture in the Croatian cultural policy at the constitutional level, parliamentary political parties’ level, the governmental level and the level of cultural organisations. On the one hand the policies regarding access to culture remain mostly implicit and revolve around traditional models connected to instruments dating back to socialism; while on the other selected cultural organisations develop instruments for fostering it where European projects have an influence. The orientation more towards cultural production issues and less to access to culture and cultural participation issues draws similarities of cultural policy developments in Croatia with the general European cultural policy framework.     

An Informational Right to the City? Code,Content, Control,and the Urbanization of Information

Henri Lefebvre talked of the “right to the city” alongside a right to information. As the urban environment becomes increasingly layered by abstract digital representation, Lefebvre's broader theory warrants application to the digital age. Through considering what is entailed by the urbanization of information, this paper examines the problems and implications of any “informational right to the city”. In directing Tony Benn's five questions of power towards Google, arguably the world's most powerful mediator of information, this paper exposes processes that occur when geographic information is mediated by powerful digital monopolies. We argue that Google currently occupies a dominant share of any informational right to the city. In the spirit of Benn's final question—“How do we get rid of you?”—the paper seeks to apply post‐political theory in exploring a path to the possibility of more just information geographies.     

Long-Term Regional Landscape Change in the Northern Tequila Region of Jalisco,Mexico

The Tequila Valleys, in Jalisco, Mexico, are well-known in archaeology for an early complex society known as the Teuchitlán tradition (350 b.c.–a.d. 450/500), but later developments have received little attention. Here I report on the first systematic, full-coverage survey of the Tequila region north of the Tequila volcano. I explore the ways in which the societies that occupied this territory experienced sociopolitical change diachronically by investigating settlement scale, integration, complexity, and boundedness. Through the use of these core features, I analyze how each changed in varying ways, resulting in patterns that do not conform to static societal categories. Interestingly, there is no evidence that a large polity controlled the entire region at any point in the sequence. Results indicate a dynamic sociopolitical landscape that did not develop along any predetermined pathway.