Knowledge production and the construction of ‘Africa(ns)’ in the Caribbean

Abstract

There is a considerable lack of awareness of the interrelated nature of human activities due to insufficient information. A community without relevant information or public sensitivity to participation, in fostering a sense of personal environmental responsibility and greater motivation towards achieving personal goals, becomes problematic. Using the poststructuralist theory, this article takes a qualitative approach to analyse discourses and people's reaction to an ‘insecure’ environment within South African communities. It examines organisations which provide support to empower communities through education in Cape Town. One assumption here is that people gain knowledge about themselves, their environment and others around them, if they are empowered. The focus thus is on educational schemes and activities that communities and organisations undertake to challenge, accept and negotiate their ideological positions. The inventiveness and responses of the organisations considered, through the local communities and pupils, are therefore significant as they enable an understanding of the challenges encountered in democratic South Africa, including the causes of xenophobia. Ultimately, the consequences of ignorance about one's environment are detrimental to both neighbouring communities and people at large. The local communities considered expressed this sentiment while implicating the government's role in depriving its people of vital socio-cultural and politico-economic information.     

The first woman in the process of book production in Livonia: the case of Ursula Krüger and Daniel Hermann

I present the first case from the history of early modern Livonia, when a woman participated in the editing and publication of a printed book. Ursula Krüger, wife of Prussian–Livonian humanist Daniel Hermann, illustrates the wider perspective of non-aristocratic women’s activities involving book production in the geographical periphery of humanist culture, Riga, rather than in the heart of European humanism. Her story also illustrates the ability of women to collaborate as an editor, both as a learned woman who could compose Latin dedications and a businesswoman who could financially and organizationally engage in publishing books.     

Falling Foul of Section 44(i): Australian's Dual Citizenship Saga and the Problems of Institutional Inertia and “Drift”

Australia's “dual citizenship” crisis erupted in 2017 when several elected members of the federal parliament discovered that they were ineligible to sit because their dual citizenship status meant that they were in breach of s 44 (i) of the Australian constitution. The controversy has had enormous political consequences, prematurely ending several political careers and confirming that millions of Australians are ineligible to sit in the federal parliament because they hold dual citizenship. It has raised important questions about the contemporary relevance of s 44 (i) for multicultural, trans-national Australia, given its association with singular, racialized (British-colonial) notions of identity, allegiance and belonging. Using a historical institutionalist approach, and associated concepts of policy “drift”, I demonstrate the inevitability of the recent controversy, given decades of government inertia and both unintentional and purposeful non-decision-making on s 44, despite repeated expert warnings about its risks. I reflect upon the possible interests and ideological biases that have compelled political leaders’ resistance to proposals to decisively fix the constitutional anomaly by holding a popular referendum. I argue these failures have left Australia vulnerable to ongoing political instability and raise considerable concerns about its democratic quality.     

Construction of Gender and National Identity in Turkey: Images of the First Lady in the Turkish Media (2002–7)

This article analyses the conception of womanhood and nationhood in Turkey through images of the First Lady in the media. It demonstrates that while there is a struggle between the secularist and Islamist media on issues such as Turkish national identity and public visibility, the secularist and Islamist discourses overlap when it comes to gender roles. In both cases, the private sphere is designated as the primary domain of women and the agency of women in the public sphere is limited by the symbolic duties they are expected to perform in accordance with the national imaginary.     

The Distribution of the Armenian Abandoned Properties in an Ottoman Locality: Kayseri (1915–18)

Abandoned properties of the deportee Armenians is a new topic in the literature which began to attract the interest of scholars. As a general tendency, most of the related studies focused on the evaluation of the rules and regulations on the abandoned properties. Even though it is important to take legal framework into consideration, this article would rather focus on the analysis of the actual process in an Ottoman locality, Kayseri. By doing this, it tries to go beyond presenting the ‘mentality’ of the ruling elite, and construct the actual history of the process. In the first part of the article, the studies on the abandoned properties would be analyzed, and in the second part, the distribution of the Armenian abandoned properties in the sanjak of Kayseri would be detailed.     

The Application of Tanzimat in the Desert: The Bedouins and the Creation of a New Town in Southern Palestine (1860–1914)

The second half of the nineteenth century was a period when the Ottoman government's centralization efforts gained momentum. In Southern Palestine, this entailed a struggle for central government to gain the upper hand over the Bedouin tribes. In the 1860s, the Ottoman government was still using military power to end the internal strife between the Bedouin tribes. However, from the 1890s on, the government began to use sophisticated means and tactics in order to secure control and encourage the integration of the Bedouin element in the empire. The creation of a new town, namely Beersheba, the changing apparatus of administration, the construction of public buildings in desert, all meant that the government attempted to penetrate the nomad's way of life. In this study the main emphasis will be given to describing the role of the state in forming and changing the tribal institutions.     

Alternative production and consumption relations?: fair trade,the state,and cooperatives in the global South

This paper explores the relation between the fair trade market in the North and producer cooperatives in the South. It specifically focuses on three agricultural cooperatives in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and South Africa to look at the way in which the fair trade market and the state have promoted or hindered alternative production in the global South. Fair trade has gained considerable popularity among Northern consumers in the last decade. For many consumers, the assumption is that buying fair trade ensures producers in the South receive a fair price for their goods. However, fair trade is much more complex than consumer choices or simply offering fair prices to producers. Does fair trade constitute an alternative trading system or is it an attempt to introduce fairer conditions within the current system? What is the role of the state? What is the role of the market? Are there other ways to ensure producers in the global South receive fair prices? These are the central questions explored in this paper.     

Allende in Athens: The Political and Cultural Impact of the Chilean 1970s in Greece during the Colonels' Dictatorship and the Metapolitefsi (1970–1981)

This article discusses how Greeks perceived Salvador Allende's overthrow, Pinochet's military dictatorship, and US interventionism in Chile. By the end of Greece's dictatorship (1967–1974), left-wing militants emotionally identified with the ‘Chilean tragedy’ through their own experiences of military authoritarianism. Indeed, the Greek Colonels' Junta amplified the 1973 Chilean coup's local impact. Subsequently, during the early Metapolitefsi period (1974–1981), a wide variety of Greek political, social, and cultural actors used the Chilean 1970s as a key reference in the crucial debates that ultimately redefined Greece's collective political and cultural identities.     

Representation and resistance in Restoration Scotland: the political thought of James Stewart of Goodtrees (1635–1713)

This article presents a Scottish case study of early modern ideas on parliamentary representation and popular political participation. By scrutinizing the context and content of a treatise published in 1669 by the lawyer James Stewart of Goodtrees, the article seeks to demonstrate that views had shifted on the nature of the Scottish Parliament. In addition, it is argued that the promulgation of Scotland's covenants – that is, the National Covenant (1638) and the Solemn League and Covenant (1643) – unwittingly created space for the development of popular political engagement. However, the implications of this were not fully realized until a group of middling and lower class men rose in arms to uphold the Covenants after their rescission in law by parliamentary statute in 1661.     

In the Service of Industrialization: Etatism,Social Services and the Construction of Industrial Labour Forces in Turkey (1930–50)

This article explains the employment practices at Turkish state factories during the 1930s and 1940s when the state expanded industrial activity. Complaints about the availability of industrial workers had been commonplace since the population exchange, but emerged as a key constraint on industrial activity in the 1930s and 1940s, as industrial production expanded considerably. The article argues that the Turkish state introduced social services in Turkish state factories in response to workers' resistance to the low wages and long hours of work. Rather than a deliberate attempt at populism or building political support, the expansion of social amenities through state economic enterprises reflected the weakness of the state in enforcing industrial discipline and the limitations of creating industrial labour forces through compulsion.     

Transtexuality and the Precarious Materials of Dissent (1973): Radicalism in Cecilia Vicuña,Felipe Ehrenberg and the Beau Geste Press (1970–1976)

The article analyses the material strategies of dissent through two transtextual bookworks, Cecilia Vicuña's Sabor a mi (Vicuña, 1973) and Felipe Ehrenberg's Pussywillow (1973) produced at the Beau Geste Press radical collective. Contesting Pinochet's coup in Chile, they resorted to visibly undisciplined responses to ‘the New Disorder now in power’. Experimenting with embodied poetics based on the page as a site of resistance, on textual construction predicated on relational impetus, they exploited litter and impoverished materials. Heterodox aesthetics at the BGP personified equivocal gender imagery. Word objects and body contours transmogrified to bring to the surface the interpenetrated textures of perception, identity and language.     

The concept of democracy: moments,meanings and images in the “long term” (a proposed rethinking of conceptual history in the Ibero-American world)

ABSTRACT

In recent years there has been a notable increase in the practice of conceptual history in the Ibero-American world. There has been a particular focus on the use of fundamental concepts previous and subsequent to the Independences (1750–1850). This work is a proposal to broaden the temporal framework of analysis, until the Second World War at least. It also suggests the introduction of three central aspects: incorporation of images as a complement to texts in the analysis of concepts; identification of the historical moments at which there occurs a change in the dominant semantic of each concept; and consideration of the Ibero-American sphere, not in isolation but in interaction with the global world. To illustrate this new approach, we provide a case study related to a paradigmatic key concept of modernity: Democracy.     

Party Politics and Governance in Grenada: An Analysis of the New National Party (1984–2012)

Abstract

This article examines party politics and governance in post-revolutionary Grenada, using the case of the New National Party (NNP). The central question is what does the evolution of the NNP suggests about governance and democracy in post-invasion Grenada? The article traces four phases of the NNP since its formation in 1984: (1) externally imposed marriage of convenience; (2) intra-party conflict and splintering; (3) rebranding, consolidation and dominance; and (4) electoral defeat. The article contends that Grenada has transitioned to formal democracy and the NNP is a significant actor. Yet, despite this transition, Grenada has not become the showcase of democracy that the US said it would in 1984.     

Alternatives to the constitution of Cádiz in New Spain: republicanism and the insurgent constitutional decree of Apatzingán (1814)

This article compares the Decreto Constitucional para la libertad de la América Mexicana, published in Apatzingán by the insurgents of New Spain in 1814, with the 1812 Constitution of Cádiz which established a constitutional monarchy in the Spanish Empire. It argues that the Decreto Constitucional cannot be understood as simply a product of Hispanic political thought and a reflection of the Cádiz text. Rather, it contends that the decree published in Apatzingán represents an alternative republican response to the dissolution of the Spanish monarchy. This alternate constitutional settlement drew on the debate of constitutional ideas that had taken place in New Spain since 1808 and was grounded in many of the same ideas as those present in the Pennsylvanian Constitution of 1776 and the first French republican constitutions of 1793 and 1795.     

Radicals and moderates in the Liberal party in 1886: The processes of political assimilation in the house of commons∗

Joseph F O'Callaghan: The Cortes of Castile‐León, 1188–1350 (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1989; pp. x, 265; ISBN 0–8122–8125‐X; £31.95)

Jack P. Greene, Charles F. Mullett, and Edward C. Papenfuse, Jr. (eds), Magna Charta for America: James Abercromby's ‘An Examination of the Acts of Parliament Relative to the Trade and the Government of our American Colonies’ (1752) and ‘De Jure et Gubernatione Coloniarum, or An Inquiry into the Nature, and the Rights of Colonies, Ancient and Modern’ (1774), Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, Held in Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, Vol. 165 (The American Philosophical Society, Independence Square/Philadelphia, 1986; pp. v‐xii, 346; ISBN 0–87169–165–5; US ISSN 0065–9738).     

Slipping through the net: everyday agency of youth and the politics of amnesty in Nigeria’s Niger Delta (2009–2015)

Using the 2009 Amnesty in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, this paper explores youth manipulation of neopatrimonial systems of coercion and cooptation. It makes three arguments. First, the violence preceding the amnesty declaration was as much a youth-led insurgency to protest social and environmental justice issues as it was a crisis within Nigeria’s neopatrimonial system. Second, the amnesty programme was designed to re-constitute the collapsed neopatrimonial system, linking youth to patrons both within the Delta and in the broader Nigerian society. Finally, the paper argues that a counter hegemonic process through which youth express their agency by manipulating the amnesty in innovative ways is going on simultaneously. These arguments indicate a need to reconsider familiar tropes of ethnicity, culture and institutional deficits in the way we think about governance projects in post-colonial Africa and the tendency to exaggerate the relevance of the ‘bigman’.