Forced displacements in mining communities: politics in Chiadzwa diamond area,Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

The Chiadzwa diamonds attracted widespread attention due to human rights violations and illegal smuggling. When diamonds were discovered in 2006, thousands of artisanal miners descended on the diamond fields. In response, the government unleashed the army and police in brutal crackdowns to drive artisanal miners off the diamond fields. This militarisation of diamond fields and extraction was followed by forced displacement of the Chiadzwa people. This article examines the lived, everyday experiences of the displaced Chiadzwa people. Findings reveal that displacements dislocated the livelihoods and socialities of the people. Displacements also exacerbated people's vulnerability to livelihood shocks, insecurity, and poverty. In relocating people the government adopted a ‘top-down’ approach which triggered contestations and conflicts with the people who felt alienated from their ancestral land and excluded from diamond wealth. Consequently, sabotage, resistance and subversion were commonplace in the relocation process. These socio-political ‘tactics’ should be viewed as ‘weapons of the weak’.     

THE MYSTERIES OF THE GOBI DESERT

An account of archaeological finds in two great Chinese deserts, the Gobi and the Lop. They now seem utterly inhospitable, yet they were once inhabited, witness the abandoned city of Lou Lan in the Lop, discovered by Sven Hedin in 1893 and subsequently further excavated by Aurel Stein. The graves and mummies discovered there and in the Gobi have given rise to one of the great mysteries of Asia. Who are these people, who lived in the area and seemingly predated the arrival of Chinese settlers by some 2,000 years? Incredibly there is significant evidence to suggest they could be Celtic.     

东北亚文明的创造性起源与发展性保存——以中国和韩国的宗教思想和礼仪为中心(上)

中国将自身的固有思想和印度思想融合后,产生了禅宗和新儒学两种创造性的宗教思想。韩国狂热地接受了这两种思想。不过有趣的是,这两种思想的痕迹在中国人的日常生活中已经难觅踪迹,而在韩国人的日常生活中却能够轻易找到。可以说在理论和实践方面依然保存着这两种思想的国家大概在全世界也只有韩国了。例如,现在韩国的僧侣还在沿用中国唐朝时僧侣背诵的礼法文,普通韩国人举行婚礼、葬礼和祭祀时依然遵循中国的朱子家礼。与此形成对照的是,现在在中国人身上已经很难找到这些旧习俗的痕迹了。     

东北亚文明的创造性起源与发展性保存——以中国和韩国的宗教思想和礼仪为中心(下)

中国将自身的固有思想和印度思想融合后,产生了禅宗和新儒学两种创造性的宗教思想。韩国狂热地接受了这两种思想。有趣的是,如今这两种思想在中国人的日常生活中已经难觅踪迹,而在韩国人的日常生活中却能够轻易找到。可以说,在理论和实践方面依然保存着这两种思想的国家大概在全世界也只有韩国了。例如,现在韩国的僧侣还在沿用中国唐朝时僧侣背诵的礼法文,普通韩国人举行婚礼、葬礼和祭祀时依然遵循中国的朱子家礼。     

The Jewish–Arab Conflict and the Disintegration of the Ancient Jewish Community in the Village of Peqi‘in

The fate of the last community of Arabized Jews in Palestine, in the Galilee village of Peqi’in is surveyed. Peqi’in (al-Baqi’a in Arabic) is still known as the “Village of the Four Religions,” because of its unique mix of Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Druze, who lived together for centuries in good neighborly relations. Although the Arab-Jewish conflict might not have seemed relevant to the Peqi’in Jews, who had lived there for centuries, they were ultimately pushed out of the village. This pioneering study describes how the Peqi’in Jews, who had became a symbol for the Zionist enterprise, were forced from their home, although senior Zionist leaders strove to protect them and even made them a test of the alliance between the Zionists and the Druze. The sequence of events is recounted, from the start of the Mandate through the stillborn attempt to return the Peqi’in Jews to the village after the establishment of Israel.     

AGAINST ODDS: A THIRTY-YEAR STRUGGLE TO SAVE THE FORESTS OF SARAWAK

When Malaysia came to independence, considerable powers, particularly in the natural resources sector, were devolved on the rulers of the states of East Malaysia, Sabah and Sarawak. The subsequent deforestation, which benefitted the logging companies (and the politicians) was hard to reconcile with the interests of the indigenous peoples. Their plight was projected internationally by a Swiss activist, Bruno Manser, who lived with the Penan people for several years. But the resulting expressions of international concern over the rate of deforestation from, for example Al Gore and Prince Charles, have received short shrift from the government of Malaysia. Sarawak reputedly continues to have among the highest rates of forest destruction in the world.     

Chinese policy towards Kaifeng Jews

China is the only country in Far East in which Jews have continually lived for over 1,000 years. The best-known Jewish community in China is the Kaifeng Jewry. What, if any, has been official policy of China towards Jews and their religious practices? This article seeks to explain the issue from a historical perspective with a focus on the Kaifeng Jews, who have lived in China for many hundred years but are not considered as official ethnic group. It does so by exploring official attitudes (based on available documents) towards the Jews of Kaifeng over the past five decades.     

Consanguinity as capital in rights assertions: Japanese-Filipino children in the Philippines

This paper examines the material dimensions of ethnic identity claims by Japanese-Filipino children in the Philippines and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) advocating on their behalf. Most Japanese-Filipino clients of NGOs in the Philippines were raised by their Filipino families with little knowledge of their Japanese fathers and little or no lived experience of Japan. Although these children and young adults are often called “multi-cultural” by NGO workers, they frequently grow up with no connection to Japan other than an awareness of their Japanese parentage and Japanese cultural products equally accessible to most Filipinos. I argue that filiation can be leveraged to gain access to resources not only through the legal implications that are provided by biological relationships, but also through symbolically salient claims for belonging to a nation or people by virtue of descent. This consanguineal capital should primarily be understood in politically symbolic terms, mobilized in processes of claims-making and based on notions of “blood” and belonging and their frequent conflation with ethnicity.     

Bursary Scholars at the American University of Beirut: Living and Practising Arab Unity

This article investigates the first generation of scholarship students sent by the Mandate governments of Iraq, Palestine and Transjordan to the American University of Beirut (AUB). These students lived at the front lines of the transition from empire to nation-state, as the borders enforced by colonial powers and the ‘fictive kinship’ of newly colonized people were at odds with one another. Students inscribed limits of belonging based on shared experiences, language, culture and formerly Ottoman boundaries. This article uses records and publications of student organizations, the AUB alumni bulletin and official reports to trace the forging of a transnational network of graduates as well as a vision of the Arab world expressed in educational methods, textbooks, pan-Arab and anti-colonial agitation. The story of these students is that of intellectual and professional pilgrimage, new experiences and also new encounters with governments, most particularly their own.     

Another Form of Aboriginal Exemption — Employment as Protection Against Removal

The Queensland Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, which introduced the system of exemption certificates, also initiated another form of “exemption” — one based on employment. The Act permitted “lawfully employed” Aboriginal people to be “excepted” from forcible removal to reserves. Those placed on an Aboriginal reserve faced a restrictive life of disconnection from Country, kin networks, and traditional practices and way of life. Many Aboriginal people found employment in the pastoral industry and thus avoided the Act's provision of removal to a reserve. This paper interrogates government records and reports to provide an understanding of the development and implementation of this legislation and the racial ideologies underpinning it. The 1898 diary of a Queensland pastoralist who employed Aboriginal men on his station is also examined to obtain an understanding of the roles, experiences, and position of Aboriginal people in the pastoral industry during this period. These findings reveal that despite hardships faced in the pastoral industry, Aboriginal people found advantages in this form of employment. Through their highly sought-after pastoral skills and expertise, and strategic engagement with Europeans, Aboriginal people excelled in the pastoral industry, and many achieved significant levels of freedom and success.     

Palestinian Political Prisoners: Hunger Strikes and the Battle for Dignity

Thousands of Palestinians have been imprisoned in Israeli jails since 1948, reflecting an objective of Israel's occupation of Palestine to break the spirit of Palestinians in their struggle for liberation. A form of protest often undertaken by Palestinians in response to their political imprisonment is hunger strike. Indeed, when considered in relation to governance as an enactment of power upon people in prison, hunger strikes are an attempt of powerless prisoners to exercise some level of power over their circumstances. Concepts around hunger strike as form of protest are complex and multidimensional, and may reflect the interests of an individual or group, and/or speak more to the broader rights of people. Of interest to this study is the relationship between hunger strike and human dignity as manifest as a form of protest by Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli jails. Specifically, this study aimed to investigate the extent to which the concept of human dignity is a fundamental principle guiding Palestinian political prisoners' initial decision to hunger strike and then to continue to hunger strike. To facilitate the investigation, a stratified sampling approach was used to support the collection of quantitative data via a survey of 29 expolitical prisoners who had participated in hunger strikes during their imprisonment in Israeli jails. The collected data were related to three core dimensions of the protest construct: motivations for undertaking the protest (hunger strike); personal feelings when undertaking protest; and the experienced responses to/outcomes of the protest. Analysis of the participants' responses and the reporting of the main findings was informed by reference to key theoretical frameworks developed by Habermas, Kant, Sartre, and Durkheim. This study found that Palestinian political prisoners often considered human dignity to be more important than food. They therefore believed that hunger strike was a way to express that they would not surrender their dignity nor stray from their resistance. This article contributes to the important debate on the extent to which the hunger strike is an effective way to protest against the loss of human dignity experienced as a Palestinian political prisoner.     

Negotiating the “Drunken Aborigine”: Alcohol in Indigenous Autobiography

This article approaches the question of how Aboriginal Australians describe their own experiences of drinking alcohol, sometimes to excess, and how they recover, through a reading of seven autobiographies alongside the scholarship on Aboriginal drinking. The evidence contained in these life stories stresses personal factors and adds to the picture we glean from the scholarship, whether academic or governmental, epidemiological, anthropological or historical, which explains Aboriginal drinking habits in more social terms. Thus, the autobiographies themselves make an important intervention into the scholarship on Aboriginal drinking. Beyond this, negotiating with the stereotype of the “drunken Aborigine” is unavoidable for Aboriginal people who write about their drinking and these autobiographies represent a challenge to this popular image. This article examines a previously unexamined discourse on Aboriginal drinking that goes some way towards undermining the public representation of a drunken Aboriginal culture while simultaneously giving individual Aboriginal Australians greater voice in describing their past and current experiences.     

Linking past and future: cross-border development and quality of life in the Badakhshans

The 1895 Pamir Convention divided the mountainous region of Badakhshan into separate entities under Russian and British/Afghan influence, leading to a remarkable divergence in the development fortunes of a people once united by kinship. For those in today's Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan, incorporation into the Soviet Union brought investments in education, health, physical infrastructure, and the economy. People living in Afghanistan's Badakhshan Province retained more political freedom but lived remotely within a feudal state where development investment was limited. In recent decades, both regions have experienced conflict that has affected their development. In this article, we use findings from quality of life assessments carried out by the Aga Khan Development Network to illustrate the stark differences between the Badakhshans. We discuss ongoing efforts to implement cross-border development programmes to improve quality of life in both Badakhshans, while noting that their success depends on a stable security environment in the region.     

The Diaries of Daisy Smith: The Experience of Citizenship for an Exempted Family in Mid‐Twentieth Century Queensland

There has been limited sustained analysis of the lived reality of citizenship amongst Indigenous Australians exempted from protectionist legislation last century. Through examining the diaries of Daisy Smith, this paper explores how her household, exempted from such legislation in Queensland, experienced citizenship during the 1940s and early 1950s. The diaries show that Daisy Smith and her family exercised civil, political and social rights of citizenship, enjoyed meaningful lives and had a sense of belonging to the Australian nation. However, they also show that Daisy Smith constantly worked hard to uphold the conditions of exemption and protect her family's exempted Aboriginal status. These conditions required the Smith family to deny and relinquish all connection with their Indigenous heritage and embrace the dominant Anglo‐Celtic culture or risk losing exemption. In this way, their inclusion in the Australian nation and enjoyment of citizenship rights were conditional upon them being manifestly normative Anglo‐Celtic citizens. Their experience of citizenship was by its nature restrictive and coercive.     

‘Are We Still Running?’: Violent Migration to Violent Refuge

For most foreign nationals of African origin who lived in South Africa during 2008 and 2015, this period will be remembered with horror and fear. These were the years when South Africa’s growing culture of xenophobia matured into mass deadly violence. This violence has been widely reported in the press and is the subject of much scholarly engagement. The pre-migration life stories of many who take refuge in South Africa are laden with violence but such narratives are less well known and reported. The forces at home that propel migration are frequently excessively violent and traumatic. Once in South Africa, many migrants experience further violence and vulnerability in their places of refuge, as in 2008 and 2015. The violence fuelling migration and characterising refuge are thus tragic combinations of multiple forms of physical, symbolic and structural violence. In identifying repeated cycles of trauma, dehumanisation and vulnerability, this article discusses the pleas of migrants for better understanding, formal recognition and support from South African citizens and the government. Finally, the role of peace education, including healing interventions, for creating greater justice and harmony between foreign nationals and their host communities is discussed.     

All by Myself: Personal Qualifications versus Party Affiliation in Colombian Mayoral Elections

Political decentralization has been promoted as a way to devolve responsibility, bring government closer to citizens, and improve accountability. The shift prompted new local elections, but were the elected officials responsive to citizens or to national party elites? This study examines unique survey data from 125 Colombian mayors to identify the factors they believe were critical in their victories and thereby to identify the people to whom they believe they owe loyalty: citizens or party leaders. Examining the relative value mayors assign to their own actions versus those of the party, combined with information on how they financed campaigns, sheds important light on subnational electoral dynamics in Colombia.     

Seducing the people: Populism and the challenge to democracy in South Africa

Recent ructions in South Africa's ruling African National Congress have been described from time to time in the media as signalling a dangerous shift towards ‘populism’. The article examines this contention. It argues that South Africa is witnessing a significant challenge to the founding precepts of constitutional democracy. This challenge emanates from the (populist) equation of democracy with ‘the will of the people’. The article unpacks some of the implications of reducing democracy to majoritarianism. It provides also an analysis of why populist appeals of various kinds have been so appealing to South African voters 15 years into democracy. The article argues that the challenges that are currently being experienced in relation to democratisation in South Africa have to do with the inherent tension between the animating ideology of democracy, which suggests that power resides with the people, and the practical functioning of democracy, which relies on the devolution of power to the representatives chosen by a section of the people who rely on order and predictability in the polity in order to govern in a workable way. Populist appeals, it is argued, exploit this tension. But what makes it possible for this strategy to succeed is the failure on the part of political elites to engage in the process of building democracy by way of inculcating respect for democratic values.     

Socio-economic differentiation in the post-communist rural Baltics: the case of three kolkhozes

This paper uses longitudinal quantitative data to examine socio-economic differentiation in the rural Baltic areas after decollectivization. It argues that the rural social structure in the post-Soviet Baltics is best determined by two criteria: source of income (income from farming entrepreneurship or income from salaries) and land holdings. Four rural groups are identified: people getting their main income from farming can be differentiated into large landowners engaged in the commercial production of agricultural goods and people with small or medium-sized farms; and people earning their main income from wages can be separated into people with no farming activities and people who are still keeping small or medium-sized farms. The paper also finds that the importance of farming activities in the countryside decreases while importance of wage income tends to increase.     

Melby: the mandate of heaven

Abstract

Until recently young scholars have been content to study China in a vacuum while ignoring the background and the climate in which the whole study of modern China grew up in this country. China was just another dusty attic available for scholarly rummaging. There was data for all. Few stopped to examine the people who were doing the rummaging, by whom they were being educated, and the ends to which their work was put. Even fewer cared to remind their classes, or themselves, that the work being done and the ideas being set forth were largely the products of men who had either survived or missed a purge. With rare exceptions several kinds of “China specialists” survived; the cold warriors who believed in the international communist conspiracy, and those who retreated into a kind of academic senility or liberal limbo land where value-free truth was found equidistant between any two current extremes.