Fragments of Lives—The Use of Private Letters in Historical Research

When reading and interpreting private letters the historian needs constantly to be aware of the personal nature of her sources, asking herself to what extent she can use the information revealed in these letters and how far she can go in interpreting another persons' words and deeds—a life. The author argues that the small size of Icelandic society makes this especially important, because descendants or relatives of the people who are being explored and represented in the historian's work are often very sensitive to biographical work of this nature. Furthermore, the historian has to be aware of the ambiguous nature of private letters, as they are not necessarily a “true” narrative of what happened, and the meaning of the sentiments expressed can be unclear to the modern reader. Moreover, what is written in private letters can easily affect the historian emotionally. The author argues that historians must treat private letters with care and do justice to the people that once were alive and left these personal sources for posterity. However, historians must not hesitate to ask new and challenging questions—to reach as far as possible when interpreting a life. This leads the author to reflect on her own disposition in her research, to acknowledge that the boundaries between herself and her subject could become blurred. She does not, however, consider this to be a hindrance for her research but rather sees it as an opportunity to explore and discuss the nature of her sources and to reflect on how knowledge is being produced.     

A pluralist and pragmatist critique of food regime’s genealogy: varieties of social orders in Brazilian agriculture

ABSTRACT

The food regime approach occupies a privileged place in the sociology of agriculture and food. However, it is criticized for its structural, universalist and homogenizing bias. From a dialogue between institutionalism and pragmatism, this contribution discusses an alternative framework constructed from the ‘social order’ concept, which defines the existence of different arrangements of practices related to socio-technical and institutional apparatuses. Both the critique of the ‘regime’ narrative and the new proposition are associated to a reinterpretation of Brazil’s agricultural trajectory. Contrasting with the overemphasized export-oriented plantation/agribusiness image that prevails in the majority of analysis about Brazilian insertion in globalized agri-food regime, this paper explores the heterogeneity of production and consumption practices, arguing for the coexistence of multiple and contradictory ordering processes.     

Learning as territoriality: the political ecology of education in the Brazilian landless workers’ movement

In this contribution, I explore the importance of agroecological education in the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST). I analyze how certain MST educational programs are based in a critical place-based pedagogy. This type of pedagogy can serve as a form of territoriality, influencing individuals’ interactions with the land. Drawing upon a political ecology of education perspective, I conclude that MST educators can serve as Gramscian ‘organic intellectuals’, by using a critical pedagogy of place as a form of territoriality to: (1) create a conception of place that is not discrete, but instead relational, and (2) advocate counter-hegemonic land usage.     

Historical tradition and community mobilisation: narratives of Red Clydeside in memories of the anti-poll tax movement in Scotland, 1988–1990

Contemporary scholarship has shifted focus from a ‘labour history’ focused on industrial movements to a more comprehensive ‘working-class history’, encompassing the broader social parameters of protest with community and industrial struggles unified in material interest and consciousness. This article locates the poll tax non-payment campaign of 1988–1990 on Clydeside, a major expression of working-class mobilisation which contributed to the demise of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, within this international historiography. The analysis is based on oral history interviews with twelve activists who represented all the major political trends from the non-payment campaign. The anti-poll tax movement was embedded in traditions of community mobilisation shaped by a moral economy of housing and amenities, which had roots in the First World War era ‘Red Clydeside’ struggles, and developed through the post-Second World War predominance of public sector housing. The analysis demonstrates how activists constructed narratives of their own resistance in the anti-poll tax movement within a powerful cultural circuit, where the collective memory of past mobilisations and the consciousness associated with the moral economy of housing and amenities informed contemporary perspectives and political activity. The campaign was not politically monocultural. Differences between political groups involved in the non-payment campaign are analysed showing that the need of composure (of memories) led to contrasting interpretations of Red Clydeside. These were influenced by geographical distinctions between traditional working-class areas with strong tenants’ organisations and the peripheral estates where such organisation was weaker. The impact of deindustrialisation and the welfare policies of the Thatcher government created a popular resentment in these areas. This strengthened moral economy opposition to the poll tax, whilst the traditions of community mobilisation provided effective means of harnessing this through non-payment and direct action against sheriff officers.     

The Power of Feminist Judgments?

Recent years have seen the advent of two feminist judgment-writing projects, the Women??s Court of Canada, and the Feminist Judgments Project in England. This article analyses these projects in light of Carol Smart??s feminist critique of law and legal reform and her proposed feminist strategies in Feminism and the Power of Law (1989). At the same time, it reflects on Smart??s arguments 20?years after their first publication and considers the extent to which feminist judgment-writing projects may reinforce or trouble her conclusions. It argues that both of these results are discernible??that while some of Smart??s contentions have proved to be unsustainable, others remain salient and have both inspired and hold important cautions for feminist judgment-writing projects.     

The ‘Facts’ of Life?

Taken together, evolutionary psychology and neuroscience combine to provide a compelling heuristic account of sex/gender differences. In this article, I explore how the meta-theoretical framework provided by evolutionary psychology provides support for a reading of sex/gender effects in neuropsychological research that sees these as evidence of a ‘hardwired’ neurobiological basis for sex/gender. I discuss the resistance of these ‘hardwired’ accounts to arguments that—like other neuropsychological phenomena—sex/gender could be theorised in terms of experience-dependent neuroplasticity. I conclude that the evolutionary-neuropsychology heuristic obtains much of its appeal from the apparently ‘scientific’ evidence it provides for understanding sex/gender as a ‘natural’ rather than ‘sociocultural’ phenomenon—a view which is aligned with postfeminist ideologies of sex/gender in the contemporary west.     

Purposive derecognition? Empirical evidence of managerial strategy

ABSTRACT

Various authors have referred to the use of ‘purposive’ or ‘strategic’ approach to proactively excluding trade unions from collective bargaining. The assumption has been that exclusion is an end in itself, a return to managerial prerogative, a move back from involvement with trade unions. However, there is a ‘lacuna’ of research into negotiating processes. This research study aims to fill that lacuna in using a case in the UK where access was given to relevant documents and staff over a period of months following the derecognition process in a major process plant; this comprised two separate derecognition processes: internal and external, both affecting two craft unions. This empirical evidence questions the simple dichotomy of ‘purposive’ versus ‘reactive’ derecognition and illustrates the complexity of the processes. Further, the care with which this firm approached the issue of improving productivity illustrates that managerial power is a dynamic, not a static necessary condition for coercive change.     

Wench Tactics? Openings in Conditions of Closure

Picking up the question of what FLaK might be, this editorial considers the relationship between openness and closure in feminist legal studies. How do we draw on feminist struggles for openness in common resources, from security to knowledge, as we inhabit a compromised space in commercial publishing? We think about this first in relation to the content of this issue: on image-based abuse continuums, asylum struggles, trials of protestors, customary justice, and not-so-timely reparations. Our thoughts take us through the different ways that openness and closure work in struggles against violence, cruel welcomes, and re-arrangements of code and custom. Secondly, we share some reflections on methodological openness and closure as the roundtable conversation on asylum, and the interview with Riles, remind us of #FLaK2016 and its method of scattering sources as we think about how best to mix knowledges. Thirdly, prompted by the FLaK kitchen table conversations on openness, publishing and ‘getting the word out’, we respond to Kember’s call to ‘open up open access’. We explain the different current arrangements for opening up FLS content and how green open access, the sharedit initiative, author request and publisher discretion present alternatives to gold open access. Finally drawing on Franklin and Spade, we show how there are a range of ‘wench tactics’—adapting gifts, stalling and resting—which we deploy as academic editors who are trying to have an impact on the access, use and circulation of our journal, even though we do not own the journal we edit. These wench tactics are alternatives to the more obvious or reported tactic of resignation, or withdrawing academic labour from editing and reviewing altogether. They help us think about brewing editorial time, what ambivalence over our 25th birthday might mean, and how to inhabit painful places. In this, we respond in our own impure, compromised way to da Silva’s call not to forget the native and slave as we do FLaK, and repurpose shrapnel, in our common commitments.     

Compiling the first dictionary of british women humanitarians: – Why? what? who? how?

The history of early 20th century humanitarianism has been a neglected field in the context of a period of wars, dictatorships and apparent regression to barbarism. Nevertheless, humanitarianism, defined as response to the desperate need of strangers, has also been a significant aspect of 20th-century history. The rediscovery of more than a 150 mostly forgotten British women who were heroic in their different fields of humane rescue restores an inspiring birthright and raises the question of ethical choice in the selection of subjects for historical research.     

Farming is easy,becoming Brazilian is hard: North American soy farmers’ social values of production,work and land in Soylandia

Since the late 1980s, North American farmers have been migrating to Brazil to produce soybeans and escape a general farm crisis in the United States. This paper analyzes their work, values, social relations and relations with the land in order to understand transnational farming and agrarian change from the perspective of transnational farmers. North Americans’ migration to Brazil and soy production in Brazil can inform our understanding of the mechanisms of the soy boom and unpack the relative significance of social values at play in intensive, technified and financialized agriculture. It also provides an evocative perspective of the soy boom as it engages with issues of transnationalism, crisis, migration and change in business and farming practices. Using ethnographic data, this paper explores the intimate and emerging realities of agrarian change by detailing four elements of transnational farming – migration, farm management, land use and work – through the narration of three farmers’ career histories. These cases address the transformation of social values of work, land and social relations through the processes of migration and agrarian change. Farmers’ work, it is found, emerges out of an entanglement of regulations, expertise, meanings of work and land, worker relations and the political economy of Brazil and the United States.     

A sporting chance: The anatomy of destiny?

We begin this paper by drawing a parallel between women's exclusion from sport and their exclusion from science. Both are stereotypically masculine fields, which women enter only at risk of losing their identity. Moreover, both have justified the exclusion of women by recourse to biological arguments that women are inferior. It is thus not surprising that the combination of these fields in “sports science” adds further justification. We look at some of these biological arguments here, and at how they serve to limit women's participation in sport. Feminists have accepted that biological differences between women and men exist, and have either (i) argued for integration in sports, assuming that the differences are, or will be, unimportant, or (ii) argued for separate spheres, because of existing sex/gender differences. But both of these viewpoints still see our biology as fixed. We argue instead that “biology” can itself be subject to change, and that a truly feminist understanding of women and sport must take the possible transformation of physiology into account.     

Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?

Across the world, ‘green grabbing’ – the appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends – is an emerging process of deep and growing significance. The vigorous debate on ‘land grabbing’ already highlights instances where ‘green’ credentials are called upon to justify appropriations of land for food or fuel – as where large tracts of land are acquired not just for ‘more efficient farming’ or ‘food security’, but also to ‘alleviate pressure on forests’. In other cases, however, environmental green agendas are the core drivers and goals of grabs – whether linked to biodiversity conservation, biocarbon sequestration, biofuels, ecosystem services, ecotourism or ‘offsets’ related to any and all of these. In some cases these involve the wholesale alienation of land, and in others the restructuring of rules and authority in the access, use and management of resources that may have profoundly alienating effects. Green grabbing builds on well-known histories of colonial and neo-colonial resource alienation in the name of the environment – whether for parks, forest reserves or to halt assumed destructive local practices. Yet it involves novel forms of valuation, commodification and markets for pieces and aspects of nature, and an extraordinary new range of actors and alliances – as pension funds and venture capitalists, commodity traders and consultants, GIS service providers and business entrepreneurs, ecotourism companies and the military, green activists and anxious consumers among others find once-unlikely common interests. This collection draws new theorisation together with cases from African, Asian and Latin American settings, and links critical studies of nature with critical agrarian studies, to ask: To what extent and in what ways do ‘green grabs’ constitute new forms of appropriation of nature? How and when do circulations of green capital become manifest in actual appropriations on the ground – through what political and discursive dynamics? What are the implications for ecologies, landscapes and livelihoods? And who is gaining and who is losing – how are agrarian social relations, rights and authority being restructured, and in whose interests?     

Women In or Out of American Economic History?

This viewpoint discusses the absence of women from the economic history of the USA. During the past 25 years American economic historians have been so concerned with conceptual and methodological arguments within the discipline that they have failed to examine the female factor. Though many practitioners might consider that women have had little input into marketplace activities in the past, their attitudes stem from conventional ways of examining both issues and data. A more balanced and realistic approach to writing American economic history will entail seeing women as an integral part of past economic change. To do this will involve asking different questions of the past ‐ both of new and existing sources. American economic history could greatly benefit from looking at changes in both history and economics.