A response to Steven Feierman’s ‘writing history: flow and blockage in the circulation of knowledge’

ABSTRACT

This paper responds to Steven Feierman’s ‘Writing history: flow and blockage in the circulation of knowledge.’ Feierman has noted that most of the publications produced in Tanzania, and in Africa more generally, do not circulate to America. As a result, American scholars do not have access to such publications. The consequence of this phenomenon is that American scholars have difficulty producing African historical knowledge that is rich in context. While agreeing with Feierman’s thought-provoking intervention, this paper makes three main propositions. First, while acknowledging the problem of knowledge circulation between Africa and America, the paper renders visible an equally serious and disturbing reality: that the circulation of knowledge between African institutions is far more limited than it is between Africa and America or Europe. Many Africans consume knowledge that is largely produced in America and Europe. Secondly, while agreeing with Feierman that many scholars in America have difficulty producing historical knowledge about Africa that is rich in context, the paper argues that it is still possible for historians to produce contextually-rich knowledge. To do so, it is proposed, such historians need to craft locally-based methodological strategies that are sensitive to Africans’ perspectives on their changing cultural and physical world. Finally, while recognising that the limited circulation of knowledge is an important reason for some American scholars to produce historical knowledge about Africa which is rich in context, the paper offers four additional explanations on this problem, namely the failure of some scholars to conduct sustained primary field research in Africa; lack of personal sacrifice, a proper attitude and commitment to do long-term research in Africa; the tendency of some scholars from America to make no effort to find works produced in African institutions of higher learning when they visit Africa; and the growing over-reliance on digitised sources of information for producing histories, sources which can hardly capture such things as emotions, feelings, thoughts, silences, or cosmologies that are inevitable in the production of contextually-rich historical knowledge.     

Radicalization of Russians in Ukraine: from ‘accidental’ diaspora to rebel movement

Abstract

The article examines different types of macropolitical identities in Ukraine and their interaction in establishing political order in the country. The authors argue that political institutional design was unfavourable to the Russian diaspora in eastern and southern regions. It hindered stable development of post-Soviet identity between Russians in the country. But during the Euromaidan protests, the Russians reacted to unpleasant political situation by exploring who they were and what social and political goals they had. Having been incipient for decades, the identity of the diaspora evolved in a soaring way within three or four months. The violent actions of the newly established government in Kiev radicalized the Russian diaspora. Diasporants started establishing alternative authorities in regions where government had no monopoly on the use of force. The involvement of Russia and international volunteers complexifies the situation in Donbass and the identity formation process in unrecognized republics also known as DNR and LNR.     

It’s Boom Time! (Again): Progress Narratives and Women’s Sport in Australia

ABSTRACT

Over the last three years (2015–2017), various media articles have pointed to an apparent “boom time” for women’s sport in Australia. Evidence for this boom is drawn from examples such as the introduction of the Women’s Australian Rules Football League, the television success of the Women’s Big Bash League (cricket), and the rise in interest in soccer due to the international achievement of the Matildas. Such media reports reflect and reinforce a narrative of progress that assumes that gender equality is becoming closer with every decade. This paper employs a critical historical method inspired by the work of Joan W. Scott to analyse articles that have declared or commented on a contemporary boom in women’s sport in Australia. The 120 contemporary articles are analysed alongside 400 historical articles that present similar arguments and themes. In identifying similarities between the historical and contemporary articles, this paper raises questions about the reality of the so-called moment of progress we are currently experiencing, and discusses the possible consequences for feminism and social change in sport.     

Securing Hong Kong’s identity in the colonial past: strategic essentialism and the umbrella movement

ABSTRACT

The Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong is the most radical political movement to have taken place in the former British colony since 1967 anti-colonial demonstrations. Using empirical evidence obtained from activists who participated in the Umbrella Movement, this paper explains how Hong Kong’s youth are looking simultaneously to both the past and future to secure their identity in the colonial past even as some hope to achieve ultimate secession from Mainland rule. Racism and anti-Mainland hostilities in Hong Kong are the result of nostalgia and the insurrectionary impulse akin to the millenarianism of social movements founded on suffering and loss that continually seek the recovery of pasts of which they are now deprived. We illuminate how, to young activists, the Umbrella Movement presents hope for a future embedded in the past that remains one the territory and former colony may still aspire toward.     

Gender Equality (And its Absence) in Singapore’s 2015 General Elections

Abstract

With the dust settled after Singapore’s 2015 parliamentary elections, the only aspect pundits and Singaporean politics watchers could agree on was that the People’s Action Party’s comeback from its performance at the 2011 elections, although not of Lazarus proportions, was most certainly unexpected. While the result of the 2015 elections has gone through several post-election analytical mills, what has been oddly absent in such analyses is a discussion of gender in Singaporean politics. This article considers the relationship between gender and Singaporean politics through the experience of the 2015 election and its results. It shows that while Singapore has moved some way towards assuaging the demands of liberal feminists for greater representation in the political sphere, much more has to be done in order for gender equality to be achieved. The article argues for the Group Representation Constituency method of electing parliamentarians to be adapted to ensure a greater number of female parliamentarians while a quota system may be required for cabinet to be truly representative of the female demographic of Singapore.     

Domesticating Ivoirité: Equating xenophobic nationalism and women’s marginalisation in Tanella Boni’s Matins de couvre-feu (2005)

Abstract

Tanella Boni, an author engaged with African women’s emancipation, has written cautionary essays since the 1990s decrying the xenophobic nature of government-sanctioned ivoirité in the Ivory Coast. Forced into exile owing to the subsequent strife (2000-2010), she wrote Matins de couvre-feu (2005), an allegorical novel in which the woman’s status as a second-class citizen is equated with that of a foreigner in a xenophobic state. This representation plays on the domestic / public space dichotomy, considered by feminist discourse to be a social barrier to women’s equal citizenship. Drawing on Boni’s own ‘feminist’ monograph, Que vivent les femmes d’Afrique? (2008), this article explores the internalisation of national politics (the public sphere) through the ‘domestication’ of an anonymous female narrator who is placed under house arrest. Thereafter an analysis of Kanga Ba, a character who is a victim of xenophobic nationalism, is used to substantiate the equation of the woman’s social and political marginalisation as being that of the foreigner. The argument concludes that Boni’s representational framework ultimately subverts the very notion of a public / domestic dichotomy through narrative strategies that illustrate the porous nature of both spaces, thus eliding the separation between private and national experiences.     

Military frames and Canada’s Conservative government: from extending to transforming perceptions of Canadian identity

This article looks at framing strategies behind the recent Canadian Conservative government’s rhetoric on the military. Critics argue that Conservative rhetoric has politicised Canadian history and overemphasised the armed forces. Few scholars, however, have looked at the specific forms this rhetoric took and the strategies it suggested. The article presents the results of a systematic analysis of Conservative rhetoric between 2005 and 2015. It argues that three key frame alignment strategies were at the heart of the Conservative Government’s rhetoric: extension, consolidation and transformation, with truly transformative rhetoric transpiring only in the last phase. While agreeing with critics that this emphasis on the military aimed to alter perceptions of Canadian identity, the article shows that Conservative rhetoric was far from and monolithic.     

Tunisian Women at the Crossroads: Antagonism and Agonism between Secular and Islamist Women’s Rights Movements in Tunisia

The recent rise in Islamist-inspired women’s activism is posing challenges to the longstanding secular women’s movements in post-Ben Ali Tunisia. Starting from the conviction that cohesive, cross-class women’s coalitions are better suited to achieve gender justice for women of all walks of life, this article draws on the concept of ‘agonistic pluralism’ (Chantal Mouffe) to understand how Tunisia’s women’s movements can deal with the new, multifaceted conflict in their ranks. Through a discussion of the ‘Dialogue of Tunisian Women’, the grounds for strategic coalition-building and ‘agonistic’ engagement between secular and Islamist women’s rights actors are illustrated.     

Women in the House (of Parliament) in Fiji: What’s Gender Got to Do with It?

Abstract

Women in Fiji have made steady, albeit slow, progress in terms of parliamentary representation, with women now holding 14% of seats in the lower house of parliament. Some of the progress has occurred as a result of improvements associated with increased socio-economic development, such as education, female employment and incremental changes in women’s standing in Fiji society. Much of this change, however, has been due to women’s movements and civil society activism becoming more astute to concerns of gender equality and lobbying for women’s political participation. In a country that witnessed four political coups, women have had to create their own path into the public sphere. Despite progress, with an increasing number of women in the 2014 parliament, patriarchy is still a major force hindering women’s political advancement in Fiji. This paper argues that a combination of cultural stereotyping and persistent gendered norms contribute to masculinisation of the political realm and eulogise women’s role in the private sphere. But gender intersecting with ethnicity, age and class create differential levels of political agency for different groups of women in Fiji.     

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’.     

An alternative reading of religion and authoritarianism: the new logic between religion and state in the AKP’s New Turkey

ABSTRACT

Since roughly 2011, the Turkish state and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been going through a process of mutual transformation. Some of the historical apprehensions, biases and frustrations exhibited by Turkey as a middle power have been absorbed by the relatively reformist AKP. Conversely, the AKP and its undisputed leader Erdo?an have seen their socio-political fears, power based conflicts and ethno-religious desires become dominant in all areas, including religion. As a consequence of this bilateral transformation, Turkey has become both an inclusionary and a hegemonic-authoritarian state, and at the same time a weak one. Within this new identity and structure of the state, Sunni Islam has become one of the regime’s key focal points, with a new logic. This article seeks to explain the transformation of the relations between the AKP’s Turkish state, religion and religious groups, by scrutinising Karrie Koesel’s logic of state-religion interaction in authoritarian regimes.     

Japan’s Quest for “Soft Power”: Attraction and Limitation

Japan is seeking to project its “soft power” through the allure of manga and anime in its public diplomacy. The production, diffusion and global consumption of manga and anime are driven by market forces and consumer tastes and not by the Japanese state. However, the latter is seeking to harness this popular culture to burnish Tokyo’s international image. Despite the attractiveness of Japanese pop culture and other more traditional forms of public diplomacy, Tokyo’s pursuit of “soft power” and a good international image is undermined by its failure to overcome its burden of history.

‘Fighting for the Right’: A Functionalist Oral-History Analysis of Conservative Brazilian Women from the Military Dictatorship (1964–1985) to Jair Bolsonaro's Presidency (2018–)

Conservative women in Brazil played a significant role in the 1964 military coup and Bolsonaro's 2018 election victory. Oral history interviews with conservative women who experienced these two significant political events indicate that they both occurred in a climate of heightened anxiety and anti-modern moral panic, where social order and traditional structures such as the family and the church were perceived to be under threat from feminism and Marxism. Although it is somewhat disregarded in contemporary studies, this article argues that functionalist ideology, which upholds the sanctity of the traditional family, serves to explain why Brazilian conservative women continue to fervently support the patriarchal status quo.     

Continuity and Pragmatism: How Chinese State-Owned Banks Adapted to Hong Kong’s Free Market (1949–1978)

One of the puzzling features of China’s post-1978 economic reforms is how quickly its enterprises adapted to the new business environment. An insight into this puzzle is provided by Chinese state-owned banks in Hong Kong. From 1949–78 these banks, led by the Bank of China, represented China’s primary financial interface with the outside world. What distinguished the management of these banks from their peers was their loyalty to communist values. Yet, despite Mao Zedong’s anti-imperialist anti-capitalist ideology, the Bank of China demonstrated extraordinary business pragmatism in its engagement with the international financial system. It also exemplified a high level of management continuity which enabled it to see beyond a volatile and often hostile political environment. The article shows that the post-1978 retreat from ideology and its replacement with commercial incentives proved costly in terms of professional standards. A homogenisation of bank management also made it more difficult to recruit senior management whose loyalty to the Communist Party could be assumed. These findings highlight the importance of rule variation in explaining international differences in management behaviour. More generally the article shows the long-term importance of Hong Kong’s role as an internationalising force for China’s business and financial sectors.