The Asaba massacre and the Nigerian civil war: reclaiming hidden history

This article explores the consequences of a massacre of civilians in Asaba, a town on the west bank of the river Niger, during the early stages of the Nigerian civil war. While ethnically Igbo, Asaba was not part of the Igbo-dominated Biafra, remaining part of the ethnically diverse midwest region. In the international memory of the war, the midwest action, which claimed several thousand lives, has been eclipsed by the catastrophic events east of the Niger, after the federal blockade of Biafra. This article sheds new light on the human cost of the war on civilian populations outside Biafra. Drawing on interviews with survivors and their descendants, we describe the killings, pillaging and rapes that followed the arrival of the federal troops, and trace the long-term impact and memory of the physical and human devastation in Asaba on family structure, gender roles, educational opportunities and social structure. We show how the official suppression of the massacres, coupled with Biafran awareness of the events, contributed to the subsequent course of the war, and we suggest that this suppression has left a legacy that perpetuates resentment and has kept ethnic tensions alive to this day.     

Sorcery at court and manor: Margery Jourdemayne, the witch of Eye next Westminster

Margery Jourdemayne, the ‘witch of Eye next Westminster’, Eleanor, duchess of Gloucester, and three scholars of the ducal household were foremost amongst those accused of treasonable witchcraft in 1441. The paper explores Margery's part in this episode, and then examines her background: her husband William came from a prosperous Middlesex yeoman family living at Acton, and he himself was a manorial official on Westminster Abbey's Ebury (Eye) estate.     

The politics of intimacy: Nazi and Hutu propaganda as case studies

This study examines the particular (but not exclusive) relationship between violent intimacy and Nazi and Hutu genocidal propaganda in relation to national desires. It focuses on the fears of the ‘double’ (the close stranger) as projected in language in order to point to the ‘anxiety of intimacy’ as a dangerous social space that under specific historical and political conditions can turn into genocide. As paradoxical as it may seem, intimacy is not only a concept of love but also a concept of hate and violence. This article aims to show how genocidal language can simultaneously reflect the desire of the other and its disavowal in violent language. Nazi and Hutu propaganda are analysed as case studies using psychoanalytic interpretations and social criticism theory to discuss how violent intimacy works in language and how mimetic desire of the other (of its freedom, power, intellect, pleasures, etc.), constitutes negative identification and a fear of the ‘double other’, giving rise to a ‘rapture of death’. Violent intimacy is not the only explanation of genocide, but it is a hidden force that should not be overlooked.     

The Possible Advantage of Living in Turf Houses on Settlement Mounds

Abstract

Before timber and stone houses were introduced to northern regions, varieties of turf houses were the most commonly used architecture. These houses had a wooden structure encapsulated in a shell constructed of grass turf. The different ethnic groups of the north built their houses in different styles and constructions, but the general principle was the same. The Norse of North Norway and also on the North Atlantic islands had a tendency to build their houses on top of the ruins of previous houses. After a few centuries this arrangement produced a settlement mound of highly organic soil. In the research literature, both the turf architecture and the settlement mounds have been described as adaptations to and a function of marginality and lack of timber. This paper reports an effort to test the idea that turf houses on top of settlement mounds may have been a finely tuned ecological system that made use of the capacity of organic soil to produce heat.     

Scientific strategists in the period of mamlakhtiyut: Interaction between the academic community and political power centers

In the first decades of the State of Israel an elitist group of scientists and scholars from academic institutions organized itself into a powerful status group. Its members participated in the establishment and development of programs and processes that had a significant impact on Israeli society. The power of this group (which we term “scientific strategists”) derived from personal and institutional cooperation between its members and leading political figures who had a strong influence on its agenda. This interaction was based on mutual trust and loyalty and contributed to establishing the infrastructure for the main political tradition at that time – mamlakhtiyut (the centrality of state interests). The article examines the activities of the scientific strategists, their ability to participate in government institutions without forfeiting their academic bases, and the ways in which political leaders promoted their symbolic status, financially supported their scientific activity, and endowed them with rewards and public recognition.     

Emotional masking and spill-outs in the neoliberalized university: a feminist geographic perspective on mentorship

This paper addresses the emotional dimensions of academic mentorship from a student mentee perspective and contributes to an emerging literature on geographies of emotion in higher education. It presents a pedagogical practice of self-reflexive co-mentorship – self-peer-ceptive feminist mentoring – and deploys it methodologically to analyze three biographical narratives. From different student mentee vantage points, these narratives reveal how the scales of the body, the family, and the nation are interwoven within the geopolitical and manifest within mentoring relationships. We argue that self-peer-ceptive feminist mentorship allows people at different academic career stages to share personal experiences of navigating the academy as a means to challenge institutional systems of power. Our argument answers three questions: How and why do we express and manage our emotions in mentoring relationships? What spatial scales are invoked through our emotional experiences and with what implications? How are different power structures embedded in the requirements, practices, successes, and failures of emotional management? Our discussion highlights how emotional masking and spill-outs are tools to navigate the emotional terrain of the neoliberalized academy. We conclude that self-peer-ceptive feminist mentoring can unsettle the structural hierarchies that require a “masking” of feelings for the sake of professional distance.     

Reviews

THE ECOLOGY OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION. F. W. Riggs. Under the auspices of the Indian Institute of Public Administration. Bombay, Asia Publishing House, 1961. Pp. viii + 162. Price 20/‐ sterling.

THE NATURE OF INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY. C. A. W. Manning. London, G. Bell & Sons Ltd., 1962. Pp. xi + 220. English price 30/‐.

STRUCTURE OF AMERICAN FEDERALISM. M. J. C. Vile. London, Oxford University Press, 1962. Pp. x + 206. Australian Price 46/6.

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY IN A NEW ERA. Stephen D. Kertesz (ed.). University of Notre Dame Press, 1961. Pp. 601. U.S. $10.00.

ENCYCLOPAEDIA OP RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET UNION. Michael T. Florinsky (ed.). New York, McGraw Hill Book Company Inc., 1961. Pp. xiv + 624. U.S. $23.

THE TAPROOT OP SOVIET SOCIETY. Nicholas P. Vakar. New York, Harper & Bros., 1961. Pp. xiii + 204. U.S. $4.75.

INDONESIAN ECONOMICS: THE CONCEPT OF DUALISM IN THEORY AND POLICY. Selected Studies on Indonesia by Dutch Scholars, Vol. VI. The Hague, W. van Hoeve, 1961. Pp. xii + 443. U.S. $7.50.

KAUTILYA: A REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS.

THE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNIST CHINA 1949–1960. T. J. Hughes and D. E. T. Luard. Under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. London. O.U.P., 1961. Pp. viii + 215. Second Edition. Australian price 41/6d.

TOJO AND THE COMING OF THE WAR. R. J. C. Butow. Princeton University Press, 1961. Pp. 540.

PARTIES AND PEOPLE: A SURVEY BASED ON THE LA TROBE ELECTORATE. Creighton Burns. Melbourne University Press, 1961. Pp. x + 173. Australian price 28/6d.     

Changing ideologies of Medieval state formation: the growing exploitation of land in Gwynedd c. 1100–c. 1400

This paper focuses on one of the major ideological shifts associated with the territorialization of power experienced within Medieval European society, namely the growing exploitation of land. Using empirical evidence from the kingdom of Gwynedd in Wales, it explores the difficulties faced by Medieval societal rulers in translating their new ideologies of state rule into administrative practice. Their inability to create a consistent administrative structure to match their ideological ambitions meant that there was often a geography inherent in the territorialization of power in the Middle Ages, ranging from a close relationship between ideology and practice near the political core of the state to one of increasing discontinuity between the two near its periphery. The author suggests that the English conquest of Gwynedd in the late thirteenth century—one which was characterized by a far greater infrastructural co-ordination—led, to a large extent, to the dissolution of the spatial variations in the administrative realities of the Gwynedd state.