The political geography of war's end: Territorialisation,circulation, and moral anxiety in Trincomalee,Sri Lanka

This article argues that territorialisation and circulation are centrally important to the transition that takes place at the end of a war. It does so with a case study of Trincomalee, a multiethnic region on Sri Lanka's east coast, after the end of the ethno-separatist war in 2009. Post-war territorialisation comprises the consolidation of the government's military victory through the establishment of military zones and sacred sites, the construction of strategic roads and shifts in the ethnic settlement patterns. There are, however, a number of contingent counter-forces that unsettle the common interpretation that this is orchestrated 'Sinhala colonisation'. The angle of circulation directs us to flows and influences that become manifest when the curtailment of war (checkpoints, frontlines, collapsed infrastructure, surveillance) comes to an end. This propels a peace dividend - access, security, mobility - but also incites concerns among all ethnic communities about exposure to the moral decay of a globalised world. While territorialisation and circulation may appear to be opposites, they are in fact a conceptual pair. The two terms expose a field of tension that has much to contribute to the geographical literature on war endings, which has neglected the significance of postwar shifts in circulation thus far.     

Materiality and metaphor: Sound in circulation

Four recently published books examine sound in social contexts, including brass bands on the streets of New Orleans, Hawaiian steel guitar, the genre of Noise and its social circulation, and Aboriginal radio production in northern Australia. The authors present the material and metaphoric power of sound in social contexts through thoughtful and thorough historical research and long-term ethnographic study. The influential thinking of John Blacking, Steven Feld, and others is expanded and critiqued in new contexts. Three of the authors are editors or contributors to a recent publication on keywords related to sound in anthropology and ethnomusicology.     

Jean-François Foucquet's Contribution to the Establishment of Chinese Book Collections in European Libraries: Circulation of Chinese Books

This article focuses on the circulation of Chinese books by looking at the books which François Foucquet carried from China to Europe. By examining different “booklists,” it investigates how books circulated not only from one concrete place to another, but also through different “lists”: bookseller lists, transportation lists, cataloguing lists, lists of forgotten books, or quotation lists. In addition, by linking the various catalogues and book lists to the holdings of European libraries and, in turn, Foucquet's library to the other systematic transfers of books from China to Europe, this study reconstructs the “communication circuit” of a library. This reconstruction is an “intercultural” communication circuit, which runs from the Chinese bookseller over the shipper to the European reader. On the basis of this analysis, this article shows the important role Foucquet and other Europeans played in a new epoch of interest in Chinese culture: the constitution of Chinese libraries in Europe.     

玄应《众经音义》的成书和版本流传考探

《玄应音义》实际上尚是一部未及完成的初稿,其成书年代涉及玄应的卒年。本文在逐字比勘《玄应音义》现存各本的基础上,考证了《玄应音义》的成书年代和传抄刊刻及早期版本。     

Political geographies, ‘unfaithful’ translations and anticolonialism: Ireland in Élisée Reclus's geography and biography

This paper addresses the role of Ireland and Irish republicanism in the geography, biography and political thinking of the French anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus (1830–1905). This paper sheds new light on the construction of a scientific and political discourse, one which was radically opposed to external and internal colonialisms in the Age of Empire, analysing primary sources such as Reclus' texts and correspondence, along with his transnational networks. It draws on present-day debates on ‘geography and anarchism’, postcolonial Ireland and international circulation and localisation of knowledge. Finally, it is a contribution to evaluating the importance of the ‘British Isles’ as a place for production and reception of the geographical and political works by both Reclus and the other anarchist geographer Pëtr Kropotkin (1842–1921), scholars and militants who lived there in different periods of their respective careers.     

Radiologic proof for the Iceman's cause of death (ca. 5’300 BP)

A possible cause of death of the Iceman – a ca. 5’300 BP natural human glacier mummy from the Tyrolean Alps – is an intrathoracic stone arrowhead. The aim of this study was to prove radiologically his enigmatic cause of death. In August 2005, the Iceman underwent his first multislice computed tomography examination. As the main pathologic finding, the left dorsal subclavian artery contures shows a 13 mm-long part where the vessel wall is damaged and a 3 mm-long irregular pseudo-aneurysm – a typical complication of a laceration of the subclavian artery. In the surrounding soft tissue a large haematoma is visible. Historic records highlight the fatal destiny of subclavian artery injuries e.g. due to massive active bleeding and shock-related cardiac arrest. Therefore, the Iceman's cause of death by an arrowhead lacerating among others the left subclavian artery and leading to a deadly hemorrhagic shock can be now postulated with almost complete certainty, especially when taking the environmental (3’210 meters above sea level) and historic (5’300 BP) settings into account.     

Circulation as a Visual Practice**

This special issue looks at some of the ways that images are adopted, co-opted, and adapted in the life sciences and beyond. It brings together papers that investigate the role of visualization in scientific knowledge-production with contributions that focus on the distribution and dissemination of knowledge to a broader audience. A commentary provides a critical perspective. In this editorial we introduce circulation as a practice to better understand scientific images. Along two themes, we highlight connections across the papers. First, the social life of scientific representation follows the contexts, settings, and spaces through which images circulate. Second, authorship, expertise, and trust inform the capacity and the failure of images to circulate. Altogether, this volume raises a set of new questions about circulation as practice in the historiography of images in the life sciences.