Negotiating In/visibility: The Political Economy of Lesbian Activism and Rights Advocacy

Efforts to address HIV/AIDS have brought new opportunities and resources to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) activism in many parts of the developing world. However, increased attention in terms of both political opportunities and economic resources is uneven across the diverse population of LGBT peoples and activists. Lesbian activists have reaped far fewer benefits than their gay men counterparts. Building on existing approaches to movement visibility and invisibility, we posit a ‘political economy of in/visibility’ to analyse lesbian activism in China and Myanmar, where activists face particularly restrictive political and economic conditions. Rather than focus on visibility as a movement pre‐condition, objective or strategy, we examine the sources of in/visibility and their interactions with activists’ agency; in/visibility emerges from political and economic conditions, but is continuously reshaped by activists who negotiate them. We demonstrate that, despite challenges, lesbian activists respond in ways that help advance LGBT rights advocacy broadly, sometimes even with tactics that their more visible gay counterparts avoid. These interactions subsequently influence the conditions that shape in/visibility. Investigating the political economy of in/visibility, therefore, has significant implications for understanding not only lesbian activism, but also LGBT advocacy and collective mobilization, especially under politically and economically restrictive conditions.     

The Countersovereignty of Critical Infrastructure Security: Settler-State Anxiety versus the Pipeline Blockade

Scholars argue that blockades of infrastructure pose an economic threat to capital circulation. This explains how activists can gain power through strategic spatial occupations and why states seek to protect “critical infrastructure” from disruption. However, Indigenous-led blockades of pipelines gain power not (only) by disrupting economic flows alone, but by eliciting state anxieties about the racialised political, psychic and economic project of settler colonialism. Analysing public discourse surrounding the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, including legislative measures introduced to criminalise protest since the blockade at Standing Rock, we reframe critical infrastructure security as a component operation of settler countersovereignty. The criminalisation of Indigenous dissent through the state’s escalation of protest legislation is an investment in maintaining settler political authority, leading us to conclude that blockades must be understood not only as a form of anti-capitalist resistance, but also as a locus of anti-colonial struggle.     

Ecophilanthropy,Neoliberal Conservation,and the Transformation of Chilean Patagonia's Chacabuco Valley

Successful North Americans, Douglas and Kristine Tompkins, have used their personal wealth and business know‐how to become among the most powerful expatriate land owners in Chile and Argentina. In Chilean Patagonia's Aysén region, Kristine Tompkins' conservation foundation purchased the historical Chacabuco Valley Station, seeking to reverse the impacts of pastoralism and create a national park. Whilst in the United States and Europe the Tompkins' efforts have been applauded, many residents of the Chacabuco Valley area are concerned by the idea of outsiders holding decision making power on land use. The situation in Aysén speaks to a complex of broader anthropological debate regarding the neoliberalisation of conservation and, in particular, the role of ecophilanthropy in promoting capitalism. By examining the ways in which the Chacabuco Valley is undergoing transformation, this paper explores the relationship between ecophilanthropy, capitalism, and conservation. Of particular interest is how images are produced and then transformed into commodities as the strategies of business are incorporated into conservation policy and practice.     

America's Role in the Five Power Defence Arrangements: Anglo-American Power Transition in South-East Asia, 1967–1971

Prior to 1971, Britain played a key role in the security of Malaysia and Singapore, especially during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960) and Konfrontasi (1963–1966). Britain's military withdrawal from the east of Suez beginning from 1968 not only became a catalyst for post-colonial development of Malaysia and Singapore, but also pushed them towards America's security umbrella. Negotiations to replace the Anglo-Malaysian Defence Agreement with a new defence arrangement were fraught with pussyfooting on the part of British, Australian and New Zealand leaders. The Malaysian and Singapore defence ministers were divided and contributed to further foot dragging. By the time the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) were signed by the five nations in November 1971, collective defence among the signatories had devolved to mere consultation. By analysing the obstacles encountered during the negotiations and American influence on the shape of the FPDA, this paper demonstrates that a power transition that had been set in motion after Second World War was completed by 1971 when British strategic influence in South-East Asia gave way to American dominance.     

Change without Transformation: Social Policy Reforms in the Philippines under Duterte

This article explores social policy reforms championed by the Philippines’ strongman president Rodrigo Duterte during his first three years in office (2016–19), as a case for examining the transformative potential of social policy expansion under rising new right-wing and authoritarian leaders. By showing how political economy and historico-institutional conditions foreclose the transformative possibilities of the social policy changes effected by Duterte, the author offers a critique of current tendencies in global development discourses to treat all forms of social policy expansion as progressive. In the Philippines case, there is no progressive ideology guiding the reforms, nor are there political movements overseeing the expansion of social rights now inscribed in law. Rather, the reforms institutionally entrench a minimalist approach to universalism and strengthen the foothold of poverty targeting as an organizing principle of social provisioning. Social policy expansion under Duterte manifests aspects of the ‘dark side’ of social policy reforms during the current global political moment, including the use of such policy reforms to legitimize a conservative and authoritarian political order, and the functionality, across the political spectrum, of ‘narrow universalism’ — the type championed by international development agencies — which serves to deepen segmentation in social provisioning.     

Stone Age Prehistory of the Songwe River Valley, Lake Rukwa Basin, Southwestern Tanzania

This paper reports on results from survey and preliminary test excavations at MSA and LSA sites along the Songwe River in the Lake Rukwa Rift Valley of southwestern Tanzania. At IdIu22, a continuous, extensive archaeological deposit was revealed which may have both Pleistocene and Holocene components. The lithic material here shows a gradual transformation from a flake based LSA assemblage to one employing microburin techniques.Cet article discute la recherche préhistorique aux environs de la rivière Songwe, dans le vallée rift de Lac Rukwa en la sud-ouest de Tanzanie. Au gisement IdIu22, un sequence de l'âge de la pierre finale (LSA) a été découverte avec possible niveaux du Pleistocene et Holocène. Les assemblages lithiques changent graduellement dès un LSA avec outils sur les éclats, vers un LSA employant la téchnique microburin.     

Beyond the Chokepoint: Blockades as Social Struggles

Blockades are a long-standing tool used by political groups of various kinds to interrupt or redirect flows of materials, capital, and people. In this introduction to the Symposium, “On the Blockade: Geographies of Circulation and Struggle”, we review recent debates concerning the politics of spatial disruption, chokepoints, and circulation struggles. In doing so, we question some tendencies to fetishise the seizure of capital circulation as a de facto progressive form of disruption to the contemporary order. We argue that blockades ought to be considered not merely as tactics or pure negations of capital, but instead are articulations of collective life and open-ended attempts to build power. Thinking with blockades thus requires accounting for not only their spatial disruption but also their distinct historical contexts and social forms. We introduce the articles in this Symposium through an analysis of five modalities through which blockades can be interpreted: as moments of refusal, redistribution, provocation, subject-formation, and concrete utopia. Finally, we describe five future directions for scholars and movements: insurgent mapping, feminist interpretation, expansion of blockade networks, analysis of reactionary blockades, and broadening the geographical and historical scope of study.