20世纪七八十年代引滦工程决策历程

水资源短缺一直制约着京津唐地区经济和社会的发展。20世纪70年代,因缺水引发的经济、社会问题逐渐凸显,促使中央和地方政府开始考虑实施跨流域调水工程。引滦工程作为北方最大的跨流域调水工程,其决策经历了曲折的过程。1958年,北京和唐山曾分别提出引滦河水的设想,唐山还实施了引滦入还和引还入陡工程。1972年,海河流域大旱促使中央做出加快实施引滦工程的决定,但由于地质情况复杂等原因,引滦工程设计方案被反复修改。1981年,天津提出了单独引滦济津路线并得到了中央的支持。引滦工程对缓解京津唐用水紧张发挥了重要作用,天津是引滦工程受益最大的地区。     

Assembling dams in Ghana: A genealogical inquiry into the fluidity of hydropolitics

The paper offers a geographical interpretation of the evolving technical, political, and economic intricacy of large dams. It incorporates existing hydropolitical scholarship and the notion of the Chinese Water Machine to reframe dams as assemblages built by specific political, financial and technical processes in particular socioenvironmental regions. The paper examines the continuity of hydropolitical relationships through a genealogical inquiry into the formulation and materialisation of Ghana's three dams: the Akosombo and Kpong dams built during the Cold War, backed by Western lenders and engineering companies; and the Bui dam commissioned in the 2010s, with support from China. Based on fieldwork in Ghana and China, as well as documentary evidence, the paper argues that the thinking, planning and building of dams interconnect the host regime and external techno-financial actors with their floating political-economic interests, but in a durable way. Sometimes, even if little concrete is actually poured, the symbolic power of dams endures, transforms, and at certain times and places expands, through events and discourses of national and international interest groups pursuing their own purposes, albeit with the replacement of influential individuals and powerful institutions, and regardless of the involvement of Western, Chinese and/or other actors. Ruptures exist but do not necessarily break the continuity of dam assemblages. The emergence of an opposition assemblage that battles against dams is a more recent complexity.     

The Uses of Neoliberalism

Abstract: The term “neoliberalism” has come to be used in a wide variety of partly overlapping and partly contradictory ways. This essay seeks to clarify some of the analytical and political work that the term does in its different usages. It then goes on to suggest that making an analytical distinction between neoliberal “arts of government” and the class‐based ideological “project” of neoliberalism can allow us to identify some surprising (and perhaps hopeful) new forms of politics that illustrate how fundamentally polyvalent neoliberal mechanisms of government can be. A range of empirical examples are discussed, mostly coming from my recent work on social policy and anti‐poverty politics in southern Africa.     

How to justify a crusade? The conquest of Livonia and new crusade rhetoric in the early thirteenth century

This article addresses the issue of how it was possible to justify a crusade to a region, such as the eastern shore of the Baltic, where there were no sacred shrines to protect or Christian lands to reconquer. Adopting a pluralist perspective of crusades, it argues that the Livonian crusade of the early thirteenth century offers some interesting clues to the new developments of crusading ideology. Conceiving of the conquest and conversion of Livonia as a crusade, albeit not quite equal to the liberation of Jerusalem, its initiators and apologists employed legal and rhetorical devices to justify the occupation of a region under the auspices of a crusade. This article examines these strategies through the medium of contemporary chronicles and papal letters.     

The Left(s) and Nationalism(s) in contemporary Western Europe

This article introduces our themed section on The Left(s) and Nationalism(s), which provides a comparative analysis of the relationship between nationalism and different left-wing parties in Western Europe. It highlights the innovative comparative perspectives offered by this themed section, which not only concerns a series of different geographical cases studies but also involves the ideological plurality of the Left. The larger research question that our contributors address is how different left-wing parties have dealt with the inherent ideological tension between the universality claimed by the Left and the particularism inherent in nationalism, as a doctrine and a principle of political legitimacy. The article stresses three main contributions of our themed section: (1) Western European left-wing parties do engage with the themes of nationalism and nationhood, but they often rely on convenient silence to solve some of the contradictions with their progressive ideology. (2) None of these parties have formulated thick versions of the respective national identities. (3) State-wide left-wing parties have used instrumental conceptions of nationhood to address the challenge of separatist parties, but only with mixed results.     

Forming an anti-imperialist national identity in Republican China: The Finnish interpretation

This article focuses on Finnish national identities because they expressed the shared experiences of newly established Finnish communities, and they were crucial in constructing a new nation. It also explores created images of the Finnish and Finland, as well as community construction in Republican China, especially after Finland gained independence in 1917. Another aim is to examine those Finnish political, cultural and economic activities that supported their identity construction in China. The specific emphasis will be on analysing the largest and sometimes cross-functioning Finnish groups in China: the governmental officials and the commercial community. By using qualitative methods, namely, discourse analysis and historical analysis, this study shows how the Finnish community created alternative, sometimes imaginative and frequently anti-imperialist national identities in the new Republican China. Indeed, by signing the Treaty Principles of Reciprocity and Equal Treatment, it was agreed that Finland and China ‘shall enjoy same rights, privileges, favours, immunities and exemptions which [might] be accorded to similar foreign agents in accordance with the principles of international law’. This article argues that Finnish aspirations were positively regarded by many Chinese, and they respected this quite unique national connection with Finland.     

Strontium isotope analysis in ancient glass from South Asia using portable laser ablation sampling

In order to carry out strontium (Sr) isotope analysis, glass artefacts from South Asia were sampled with portable laser ablation (pLA), a relatively novel sampling technique that leaves damage invisible to the naked eye. Subsequently, thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) was used to obtain Sr isotope ratios after sample dissolution and separation. In this study, the goal was twofold: to determine whether the measurements of Sr isotope ratios were impacted by using a portable laser as a sample tool; and to assess the pertinence of using Sr isotope ratios to provenance Indian glass. Despite a deterioration in the precision of the measurement of the Sr isotope ratios for artefacts sampled with pLA compared with the traditional sampling method, the Sr isotope ratios of certain Indian glass are so different that this does not affect their separation but a comparison of data sets obtained using standard methods and pLA might be challenging.     

Geochemical evidence for the manufacture,logistics and supply‐chain management of Emperor Qin Shihuang's Terracotta Army,China

Non‐invasive materials characterisation of reconstructed statues of Emperor Qin Shihuang's Terracotta Army has revealed distinct micro‐geochemical patterning within the clay paste used in their manufacture. The significance of this is explored in terms of the production sequence, logistics and supply‐chain management involved in the construction of this enormous funerary assemblage. Of particular interest is a compositional distinction between figures marked with the names ‘Gong’ (宫) and ‘Xianyang’ (咸阳). These seem to represent the products of two workshops involved in the supply of ceramic objects for this ambitious, large‐scale building project undertaken by the Qin Empire during the third century bce .     

“A plantation can be a commons”: Re‐Earthing Sapelo Island through Abolition Ecology

This paper is based on the 2018 Neil Smith Lecture presented at the University of St Andrews. It considers the plantation past/futures of Sapelo Island, Georgia, one of the Sea Islands forming an archipelago along the US Southeastern coast. I work through the abolitionist efforts of the Saltwater Geechee’s who have resided there since at least 1803 to better understand how we can mobilise an emancipatory politics of land and property and to produce commons that work to repair and heal the violence done through enslavement and ongoing displacement. I weave together a series of historical threads to better situate linked ideas of abolition democracy and abolition geography, and to extend the notion of abolition ecology as a strategic notion to connect Eurocentric based political ecologies with the emancipatory tradition of Black geographies.