The Calibanisation of the South in the German public ‘Euro crisis’ discourse

This article highlights the renaissance of the essentialist topos of the ‘lazy and irrational’ ‘Südländer’ (Southerner, Southern countries, South) in the German political and media discourses during the ‘Euro crisis’. It argues that it served to legitimate the political and economic measures taken in Southern European countries that pushed them into still more peripheral positions within the European Union (EU) and deepened the cleavage between North and South. Culture, or better culturalism and racism as its political ideological version, thus were used as a trap, as an intellectual battleground for justifying extremely complex economic and political decisions in a simplistic fashion throughout a crucial period of European history. The article furthermore demonstrates how a postcolonial reading may productively decode the processes of Othering taking place within Europe itself, especially between the so-called core and peripheral countries.     

Book reviews

Converging Cultures: Art and Identity in Spanish America. Edited by DIANA FANE. Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum, 1996. Pp. 320.

New World Orders: Casta Painting and Colonial Latin America. By ILONA KATZEW, Curator. New York: Americas Society Art Gallery, 1996. Pp. 144.

Iglesia, Estado y economía. Sighs XVI al XIX. Edited by MARIA DEL PILAR MARTINEZ LOPEZ‐CANO. Mexico: UNAM/Instituto José María Luis Mora, 1995 Pp. 314.

El crédito a largo plazo en el siglo XVI. Ciudad de México (1550–1620). By MARIA DEL PILAR MARTINEZ LOPEZ‐CANO. Mexico: UNAM, 1995. Pp. 208.

The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. By WALTER D. MIGNOLO. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1995. Pp. xxii, 426.

Entre la retórica y la insurgencia: las ideas y los movimientos sociales en los Andes, Siglo XVIII. Compilado por CHARLES WALKER. Cuzco: Centra “Bartolomé de Las Casas”, 1996. Pp. 362.

Saberes andinos. Ciencia y tecnología en Bolivia, Ecuador y Perú. Editado por MARCOS CUETO. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1995. Pp. 215.     

Archeometric characterization of prehistoric grindstones from Milazzo Bronze Age settlement (Sicily,Italy)

The results of a petrographic and geochemical study carried out on archeological grindstones allow to provide new constraints on protohistoric commercial exchanges over the Mediterranean area. Eleven grindstones, discovered in an archeological site located in Milazzo (Messina, Sicily) and dated from the Early Bronze Age, have been investigated by geochemical and petrographic techniques. The raw materials are mainly volcanic rocks characterized by calc-alkaline and K-alkaline affinities with volcanic arc geochemical signature. Only one sample, made of basalt belonging to the Na-alkaline series, shows an intraplate signature. The comparison with the available literature data for similar rocks allowed constraining the volcanic origin of the exploited lavas. While the intraplate-type raw material came from Mt. Etna Volcano (Sicily), the arc-type volcanic rocks are mostly trachyandesites, basaltic andesites, and one rhyolite. Although most of them come from the Aeolian Arc, a provenance of some samples from the Aegean Arc cannot be excluded. This last region could represent the most probable provenance area for the rhyolite sample.     

Intersectionality and planning at the margins: LGBTQ youth of color in New York

Through an intersectional lens, this article reflects on the dialog between planning and gender, feminist, and queer studies to analyze the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth of color (YOC) community in New York City (NYC). The community is subject to multiple disenfranchisements, given their ethno-racial status, class, age, gender, and sexual orientation. This community's limited access to safe public spaces and amenities, housing, health services, job training, and other opportunities is an urban planning challenge insufficiently understood or addressed. Our methodology includes participant observation and analysis of an LGBTQ YOC tour of West Village in NYC, interviews with LGBTQ individuals and NGO staff, life stories, observations in LGBTQ-friendly meetings and facilities, and content analysis of LGBTQ reports and media coverage. The research shows the agency of an LGBTQ youth group as a resilient community organization effectively participating in planning processes and exerting rights to public space and services. Finally, it offers recommendations to planners and policy-makers to facilitate the recognition and expansion of rights to the city for LGBTQ, particularly YOC, by committing to understanding their unique conditions and needs and expanding their access to safe housing and public spaces, poverty reduction programs and job opportunities, and health and social support services.     

Vichy's Mass Firing of Women Teachers of Colour in the French Caribbean and its Consequences1

This article examines the application to Martinique and Guadeloupe of Vichy's sexist law of 11 October 1940, relating to the employment of women and its impact on female teachers. We argue that Vichy showed greater zeal in applying the new regime's patriarchal law on women's work in the Caribbean than in mainland France. We examine in detail the 11 October 1940 law and the modalities of its application in the metropole and in the Caribbean, its manipulation by various actors and the arguments mobilized over the course of its promulgation in a West Indian context. Next, we consider to what degree female Caribbean teachers were impacted by these measures and analyse some of the underlying causes for their dismissal. We highlight the broader social and administrative transformations into which this particular purge fitted. Finally, we underscore the agency of fired schoolteachers as well as their resilience.