LAW,TRANSLATION, AND VOICE

The channeling of popular struggles through legal cases is central to the strategy of the emerging “rights defense” movement in China, linking grassroots contention with professional mediators who translate grievances into the institutional environment of law. This was the case in an unusual, ultimately unsuccessful campaign in 2005 to remove an elected village chief in Taishi Village in Guangdong, China, by legal means. While the grievances that sparked the campaign were about the unequal distribution of the benefits from village development, the strategy of instituting a recall procedure and the framing of the campaign in terms of democracy and rule of law obscured distinctly gendered issues of poverty and inequality in the village, even though women were among the most visible protesters. This article employs a “sociology of translation” to link framing processes and power dynamics, thus proposing a methodological approach to reconnecting framing with other aspects of movements. In the Taishi case, the translation of the dispute into the language of law had contrary effects: it opened the door to a legitimate, if temporary, public space for the airing of villagers' claims. At the same time, translation legitimized the voices of “experts” who then became de facto leaders in this public space; it also increasingly shifted the action to the internet, to which the villagers apparently had no access. This analysis raises questions about whether such strategies may result in either the formation of durable rights-based identities among grassroots participants or a sense of being connected to a broader social movement.     

LAND,LIVELIHOODS, AND REMITTANCES

This article seeks to draw connections between a political ecology of global investment in resource sector development and a culturally informed understanding of rural out-migration across the Lao–Thai border. The author highlights how the departures of rural youth for wage labor in Thailand and the remittances they return to sending villages are becoming important for understanding agrarian transformations in Laos today. In the first section the author introduces the contemporary context of cross-border migrations across the Lao–Thai Mekong border. The second section shifts focus to a village in Laos's central Khammouane Province, where extended field research was conducted between 2006 and 2009. In this village, youth out-migration to Thailand has become a widespread phenomenon, with nearly every household involved. The segmented cultural and gendered features of this migration and its salience for understanding contemporary transformations in this locale invite a broadening of agrarian studies analysis. The final section expands upon how political ecology can provide such a broader analysis by drawing attention to how extractive resource projects affect local tenure rights and livelihoods, with significant rents captured by the state and resource firms. By making these connections, the author argues there are coercive underpinnings to contemporary Mekong migrations, which may be linked to governance problems in the Lao resource sector.     

DISPLACEMENT,RESETTLEMENT, AND MULTI-LOCAL LIVELIHOODS

This article examines shifting attitudes toward rural migrants in Lampung Province, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, in the context of a history of enclosure, commercial expansion, and dispossession. The author examines how contemporary multi-local livelihoods in Lampung reflect an adaptation to the vulnerabilities associated with being a migrant, as people position themselves to qualify for livelihood resources. The author's interpretation draws on Michel Foucault's analysis of the production of governable subjects and, in particular, norms of conduct that produce subjectivities and identities that “fit.” The article explores how different policy phases associated with environmental governance in Lampung have created contrasting positionings and norms of conduct for migrants, as they have been defined, on the one hand, as pioneer entrepreneurs, bringing progress to Indonesia's hinterland, and, on the other, as forest squatters, threatening the cultural and ecological integrity of the province. The author suggests that rural migrants have attempted to resolve their problematic positioning through multi-local livelihoods, which combine access to nonlocal income through temporary migration with the maintenance of a foothold that signals belonging and legitimate entitlement to state resources.     

INTRODUCTION: HERITAGE,NATIONHOOD, AND LANGUAGE

The latter half of the twentieth century saw the notion of “heritage” become one of the critical global tropes, through which many have voiced their preoccupations and aspirations. At the heart of heritage politics are three questions: what heritage is, who decides what it is, and for whom is the decision made. Researchers on heritage language education have rarely asked these questions. Determining what constitutes one's “heritage language” is a complex effort; for migrants, claiming which language is their heritage language can also be a political statement. Based on ethnographic research in Bolivia, Peru, the United States, and Japan, the articles in this two-part series, “Heritage, Nationhood, and Language,” investigate diverse subjectivities of migrants with connections to Japan and analyze the processes by which they negotiate, contest, support, and rupture the notion of heritage. The articles examine the disjunctures between the notion of social justice and the experiences of empowerment and marginalization among these migrants. This series sheds light on the conditions, processes, and effects of a particular language becoming one's “heritage.” Intersecting factors that influence the ways a language becomes one's “heritage” include a desire for belonging, a drive for social status, aspirations for economic gain, fear and guilt about discrimination, and an obligation and hope for social justice.This introduction outlines the historical and theoretical backgrounds to the subject and introduces the main arguments of the articles in the two-part series.     

MAINTAINING A UNITARY STATE: COUNTER-TERRORISM,SEPARATISM, AND EXTREMISM IN XINJIANG AND CHINA

This essay reviews the history of Uighur related terrorism in Xinjiang as well as elsewhere in China and discusses the political motivations and effectiveness of the Chinese government in suppressing terrorism. The essay assesses both the motivations of the Uighurs engaged in terrorism, as well as the motivations for counter terrorist by the Chinese authorities. A key objective of the essay is to determine what are the political and other reasons that drive the Chinese government’s counter terrorism strategy and tactics and whether these have been effective or counter-productive. The essay assesses the counter terrorism strategy of the Chinese government in Xinjiang Province and across China, the political motivations for the strategy, the impact and success or otherwise. The essay discusses if the government is combatting terrorism, or separatism, or extremism, the confusion of these terms, and whether this has had any impact on the effectiveness of counter terrorism.     

MEDIA,IDENTITY, AND STRUGGLE IN TWENTY-FIRST-CENTURY CHINA

Abstract

Hayashi Kyoko was born in Nagasaki in 1930, but as a child she lived in Shanghai where her father was working. Except for her father, her family returned to Nagasaki in the spring of 1945 as the Pacific War drew to a close. On 9 August, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki was also the target of an atomic bomb. When the bomb fell Hayashi and fellow students who had been mobilized for the war effort were working in a factory located close to the hypocenter, an area where tens of thousands died instantly.