The cultural baggage of Khorezmian identity: traditional forms of singing and dancing in Khorezm and in Tashkent

After Uzbekistan gained its independence from Soviet rule, important political and economic changes took place. The mobility of the population has since then increased drastically and created new spaces for the negotiation of social identities as well as new strategies for identity politics among the culturally and regionally diverse population of Uzbekistan. This article aims to contribute to the discussions on social identity and its ‘contents’ in the light of migration processes. The main argument centres on the importance of what Barth called the ‘cultural stuff’ of social identities when maintaining boundaries during identification processes. The analysis focuses specifically on certain singing and dancing practices of Khorezmians. It shows how these practices survive, but are also transformed in the context of Tashkent, the capital city of Uzbekistan, where people from different regions reside together and are engaged in performing and presenting their own group identity in reference to ‘others’.     

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the questions of identity,territory and political destiny of the indigenous Nuba of the Sudan

ABSTRACT

The Sudan Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of 2005 was successful in ending the longest war in contemporary Africa. However, its implementation has been below the expectations of several communities, particularly in the war-torn regions of the Nuba Mountains, the Southern Blue Nile and the Abyei Area, widely referred to as ‘contested’, ‘marginalised’, ‘transitional’ areas or ‘border territories’. While many interwoven causes were behind the eruption of the protracted civil wars in the Sudan (Elnur 2009; Johnson 2006; Khalid 1987), the political question of sub-national identities and their intrinsic link with specific territories (Murphy 1991; William and Smith 1993) is hypothesised here as a prime factor in extending the civil war into these three areas. Taking the Nuba and their claimed territory of the Nuba Mountains as an example, this article will, first, trace the political striving of the Nuba people and their shift from peaceful political movement to armed struggle; second, it will examine their political status during the peace negotiation process; and third, it will analyse their political responses to the outcome of the CPA and its impact on their future political choices in view of the April 2010 election results, and the projected right to self-determination for the people of Southern Sudan, to be exercised through the referenda in 2011.     

Indigeneity in the Air: The Case of Chinchero Airport in Cusco,Peru

This article problematises ‘indigeneity’ by looking at the various disruptions, conflicts and fractures that the recent sale of the land for the construction of the new Cusco international airport in Chinchero, Peru, has triggered locally. In addition to examining the erosion of the peasant community model that emerged from the 1969 agrarian reform, it explores the formation of new social groupings in a context of tourism and neoliberal development. The discussion highlights the role of tourism-related, large-scale infrastructure in the production of new identity politics that challenges fixed and preconceived ideas about ‘the indigenous’ in the Andes.     

The civilised Self and the barbaric Other: ex-rebels making sense of sexual violence in the DR Congo

This article addresses discourses on gender and sexual violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Based on discussions with 101 ex-combatants, we examine how former FDLR members make sense of sexual violence by studying prevailing gendered images of Self and Other. This analysis of potential perpetrators' mindset is part of the puzzle to find preventive measures. The findings demonstrate that ex-combatants attribute overwhelming power to biological ‘givens’ such as ‘urges’, ‘basic needs’ and ‘domination’ in their interpretation of sexuality. They also differentiate themselves from out-groups - enemy fighters and other nationals, especially Congolese - by attributing the latter with lower degrees of restraint. These insights demonstrate that a process of Othering is at work at the intersection of sex-gender-nation within the Congolese warscape, which complicates existing knowledge of sexual violence. The findings also suggest that the theoretical understanding of the phenomenon of sexual violence in war needs to place the notion of intersectionality central stage.     

Large-scale land deals,global capital and the politics of livelihoods: Experiences of women small-holder farmers in Chisumbanje,Zimbabwe

Abstract

Large scale land acquisitions by foreign conglomerates in Zimbabwe have been a recurrent phenomenon within the last five years. This has led to land deals being negotiated with state, individual and nongovernmental actors, leading to the production of agro fuels. This article investigates how the large scale commercial land deals have affected the livelihoods of women small holder farmers, the role of global capital in entrenching discrimination of women and how the politics of resource use and distribution has become a central force in shaping livelihoods in Zimbabwe's communal areas. The article is based on field work that was conducted in Ndowoyo communal area, in Chisumbanje village, from July 2011 until April 2012. The methods used for collecting data were in-depth interviews with the women, interviews with officials from the Platform for Youth Development, a nongovernmental organisation, Macdom Pvt Ltd and Ratings Investments, focus group discussions and personal observations that involved interactions with the women. In 2011, Macdom Pvt Ltd and Ratings Investments, both bio fuels companies owned by Billy Rautenbach started green fuel production operations in Chisumbanje and this has led to the altering of the livelihoods systems of women smallholder farmers. The argument seeks, first, to demonstrate how the company‘s green fuel production systems have led to the loss of land for women and the redefinition of tenure in a communal area. Secondly it explores how the company has been involved in political issues that have undermined the role of development for the women and, thirdly, the article investigates how the women have created livelihood alternatives in an area which has been transformed from a communal rural area into almost an urban area. It concludes by suggesting the need to give primacy to women centred notions of agency in coping with the negative implications of commercial land deals on women‘s livelihoods.     

东南亚华文教育的过去、现在与未来:国家间关系的视角

东南亚华文教育的发展有其自身的规律,但是,我们不能不承认,国家间关系是促进当前东南亚华文教育出现热潮的主要推手,日益提升的中国—东盟经济贸易关系为东南亚华文教育的发展提供了坚实的物质基础,不断深化的中外人文交流则为东南亚华文教育提供了源源不断的动力。展望未来,东南亚华文教育将会有一个更加美好灿烂的明天。     

Shifting the debate on land reform,poverty and inequality in Zimbabwe,an engagement with Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities 1

Zimbabwe's land reform: myths and realities 2 2. Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and Realities by Ian Scoones, Nelson Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Jacob Mahenehene, Felix Murimbarimba and Crispen Sukume, Woodbridge, Suffolk, James Currey, 2010, 304 pp., ISBN 9781847010247. purports to overturn the western media and academy's ‘myths’ of agrarian failure and cronyism in Zimbabwe's fast-track land reform with a study rooted in the ‘reality’ of its outcomes in the Masvingo area. Yet the positivist picture painted by Scoones, Marongwe, Mavedzenge, Mahenehene, Murimbarimba, and Sukume is another position in portrayals of a complex process entangling many local material struggles–including those seen as successful examples of the yeomanry admired by the authors–with the equally important processes of authoritarian nationalism they side-line. ‘Myth making’ is not counter to ‘reality’, but positions particular claims within it. By concentrating on the ‘local’ and celebrating what they see as non-technocratic successes, the authors ignore the context and politics of the state–which they later invoke to develop adequate supportive policy and stability for the new farmers. Their reality ignores as much as the myths they try to challenge, and thus fails to assist to develop the policies they would like.     

NATO: The United States, Transformation and the War in Afghanistan

During the Bush years, NATO exhibited in stark form two trends which have long characterised its development: periodic exposure to crisis and division, and a subordination to American leadership. Despite signs of American indifference towards the alliance, talk of the Bush administration levering a break with NATO was always overstated, particularly so during its second term of office. Views of NATO after 2004 were shaped by Afghanistan giving rise, in fact, to a return to the alliance on America's part. NATO remains important to Bush's successor but on terms which are as demanding as those of his predecessors. NATO, in other words, is valued in so far as it accords with current US foreign policy priorities. The safest assumption in this regard is that Obama will continue to favour the trend towards a global NATO pursued by the Bush administration. However, retreat (or defeat) in Afghanistan could hasten a contrary trend towards a consolidating NATO with a renewed concentration on the wider Europe.     

Living in the Marikana world: The state,capital and society

Abstract

The ‘Marikana massacre’ that happened on 16 August 2012 at Lonmin mine near Rustenburg in the North-West province of South Africa, in which the South African police shot dead 34 mineworkers for protesting against low wages and other unbearable employment and/or living conditions, cannot be understood as merely an accidental event. It may therefore be useful to view the massacre as one of those tragedies that dramatises, in visible ways, the generally hellish conditions which the peoples of the non-Western world have come to endure ever since the advent of Western modernity. The ‘voyages of discovery’ undertaken by figures such as Christopher Columbus after 1492 marked the commencement of a world system characterised by a Western-centred modernity whose ‘darker side’ inflicted hellish conditions on the non-Western subject, while its ‘brighter side’ in the West saw positive developments – from the 16^th-century ‘rights of people’ to the 18^th-century ‘rights of man’, up to the late-20^th-century ‘human rights’. This article is a decolonial critique on the Marikana massacre and seeks to explain how the modern world system has, since its advent in 1492 as global power structure, been producing a series of ‘Marikana-like’ conditions and events on the part of the non-Western subject that underlies its hierarchical arrangement. The article's point of departure is that rather than understand the Marikana massacre as a unique event or accident, it can better be characterised as a sign of the non-Western subject's subjection to Western-centred modernity. The article explicates how the modern South African state and capital are part of the same ‘colonial power matrix’ (Quijano 2000a), hence the two were bound to be on the same side against labour during the Marikana massacre.     

The logic of competitive influence-seeking: Russia,Ukraine, and the conflict in Donbas

The crisis in Ukraine since late 2013 has seen four successive internationally mediated agreements that have been at best partially implemented. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and 42 key informant interviews sides, we explain this outcome with reference to the logic of competitive influence-seeking: Russia is currently unable to achieve a friendly and stable regime in Kyiv and thus hedges against the consolidation of an unfriendly pro-Western and stable regime by maintaining its control over parts of eastern Ukraine and solidifying the dependence of local regimes there on Russian support. This gives Russia the opportunity to maintain the current status quo or settle for re-integration terms through which Russia can sustain long-term influence over Ukraine’s domestic and foreign policy. We conclude by reflecting on the consequences of competitive influence-seeking in the post-Soviet space: the likely persistence of low-intensity conflict in Ukraine; the further consolidation of territorial divisions in other post-Soviet conflicts; and the need for policy-makers in Russia and the West to prioritize the management of the consequent instability.     

Working On,Through and Around the State: The Deep Marketisation of Development in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

This article describes an important new push by international financial institutions towards broadening and deepening capitalist social relations in the underdeveloped world in ways well beyond Washington Consensus structural adjustment or even post-Washington Consensus forms of institutionally-oriented “participatory neo-liberalism.” Described here as the “deep marketisation of development” (or simply “deep marketisation”), this process is attracting increasing resources that are formally allocated directly to private actors around states, while also demanding and promoting shifts in state form and function that relate to cultivating “enabling environments” for capital and facilitating “access to finance.” The article begins by conceptualising deep marketisation and placing it in historical and political context. The second section presents examples of deep marketisation in action in the work of the World Bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, in the Asia-Pacific. The article concludes by highlighting some serious concerns with the deep marketisation agenda.     

Good Inflation, Bad Inflation: The Housing Boom, Economic Growth and the Disaggregation of Inflationary Preferences in the UK and Ireland

This article presents a comparative analysis of the determinants, sustenance and broader macroeconomic consequences of the ultimately unsustainable housing boom in Ireland and the UK in recent years. It examines, in particular, the role played by ostensibly depoliticised monetary policy in both contexts in the development of a house price bubble that has served to fuel consumer-led growth. It assesses the viability, sustainability and reproducibility of the private debt-financed consumer boom that house price inflation has generated. In the process it draws attention to the increasingly differentiated character of both government inflationary preferences and counter-inflationary performance—with the shift to official measures of inflation that exclude mortgage interest repayments and, in the UK at least, to the covert re-politicisation of monetary policy. It concludes by suggesting that governments may well not have time-inconsistent inflationary preferences so much as sectorally specific inflationary preferences. This might be summarised in terms of the aphorism: 'retail price inflation bad, house price inflation good'.     

比较政治学在东南亚权威主义研究中的新进展:议题、方法与趋势

自21世纪以来,比较政治学研究发生了从民主转型到权威主义政治的转向,东南亚的权威主义国家也得到了比此前更多的关注。现有研究已经建立起系统的理论分析框架,形成了从权威主义起源到运作过程,再到持续结果的主要研究议题,出现了以斯雷特、比宾斯基和布朗利为代表的学者群体,他们分别提出了抗争政治与权威主义利维坦形成、执政党组织与权威主义持续性以及精英联盟关系与经济危机结果等理论。这些研究采用了诸如控制式比较、过程追踪和正负面案例的比较分析方法,并引入了时间和空间等维度去发展和检验理论。在未来的研究中,澄清起源和运作过程对权威主义持续结果的作用以形成统一的理论框架,在权威主义韧性外引入经济发展、社会稳定和公共福利等国家治理维度的议题,拓宽研究视野,将区域政治与国别政治相结合,是东南亚权威主义三个值得进一步探讨的研究方向。     

The Mining Industry and the State: The Politics of Tin Restriction in Bolivia, 1936–1939

In the aftermath of the Chaco War (1932–1935) a strong left nationalist political current emerged in Bolivia which defined the three large mining companies of Patiño, Hochschild and Aramayo as a superstate, controlling both the economy and the politics of the nation to their own advantage. This article challenges that characterisation by examining the way in which the state exercised control over the two largest producers. Unfortunately, the state lacked the technical capacity to use its powers responsibly, preventing the development of a coherent mining policy.     

Electron democracy,populism, and generational politics: The case of the April 15, 2004 general election in South Korea

The primary purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influenced the results of the April 15, 2004 general election in South Korea. A backlash after the impeachment of President Roh Moo Hyun by a coalition of opposition parties in the National Assembly (NA) was the single most important factor that determined the election outcomes. Generational and regional differences in the parties voters supported and the “defeat movement” of citizens' organizations also had significant effects on the election processes. For the first time since the early 1960s a progressive party won a majority of the NA seats. Thirty-nine women members will serve in the 17th NA, the largest number ever, and the left-wing Democratic Labor Party became the third largest party by receiving 13 percent of the proportional representation votes. Generational and ideological shifts in the power elites seem to be evident in the election results.     

Cultural Policy,Literature and Readership in Revolutionary Cuba: The View from the 21st Century

This article presents a fresh perspective on cultural policy in revolutionary Cuba, focusing specifically on the centrality of dialogue with the general readership to the production, reception and regulation of literature. It first summarises the positions regarding revolutionary literature that have been asserted and essayed at various points along the sometimes chaotic trajectory of revolution in Cuba. It then examines reading-related policies and recent attempts within Cuba to re-orient reading practices in the aftermath of the Período Especial [Special Period], and ends by presenting current Cuban debates on the need to mitigate dialogic breakdown between literary text and readership.     

The Health of the Rurality: The Encuesta de Folklore and Popular Healing Practices in Tucumán, 1921

This article examines healing practices among the rural inhabitants of Tucumán in the opening quarter of the twentieth century through a reading of the 1921 National Folklore Survey. It argues that popular medical practices, referred to as curanderismos (popular healing), continued into the twentieth century not only as cultural practice of the popular classes but as necessity due to limited investments in public health in the rural regions on the part of the national and provincial government.     

形成中的中亚地区格局:尚存的单极残余、不稳定多极和其他选择

作者认为中亚地区格局不能使用"大博弈"的模式予以解读,复合的权力结构模式可能更具有解释力.具有传统影响力的俄罗斯、崛起的中国、强大的美国以及区内大国哈萨克斯坦和乌兹别克斯坦等一起构建了中亚地区复杂的地缘政治网络.中亚国家从国际政治行为客体到日益具备行为主体特征的身份转变,是形成这种地区格局的重要原因.就中国而言,以一种合作性的多边主义为原则,推动各方以中亚地区的和平、稳定、可持续发展为共同目标实行开放型的合作,营造和谐的中亚地区,是一个较好的战略选择.