Are Catholics still different? Catholicism,political attitudes and party attachments in Switzerland, 1970–95

This article is concerned with the political attitudes and the party attachments of Swiss Catholics between 1970 and 1995. Do Catholics still have distinct political orientations or have the differences between Catholics and non‐Catholics withered away in the process of secularisation? A re‐analysis of several surveys indicates that Catholics are indeed still different politically from the overall Swiss population. But these differences between Catholics and non‐Catholics are relatively small and have almost disappeared in the last 30 years. However, the data also suggests that while the confessional cleavage has lost most of its significance, it is increasingly superseded by a religious one.     

A Formula for Disaster: The Department of Homeland Security's Virtual Ontology

This paper focuses on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in order to theorise the spatialities of post-9/11 security knowledge and practice in the US. It analyses the organisational discourses that animate homeland security work, such as preparedness, vulnerability, the new threat environment, risk analysis and capabilities-based planning, and considers the implications of these practices for contemporary geographies of security. It is argued that DHS operates through a virtual ontology of threat, whereby potential, future threats are addressed as present possibilities that emerge in the spaces of everyday life. The sources of American freedoms and insecurities, the everyday, emerging circulations of goods and people, present DHS with a terrain of shifting threats from which both emergencies and preparedness may materialise. Disaster looming, the potential suspension of everyday life forms the basis for security practice as the emergency becomes a fact of life itself. The spatialities of this environment of imminent threat are considered and it is argued that the everyday emergency operates topologically as a continuous process of spatialisation.     

SOUTH ASIA

For nearly a hundred years, to many foreigners “Peking” meant the foreign legation quarter and its colourful western inhabitants. The article gives details of the extraordinary life they led a stone's throw from the Emperor's palace in a city that remained virtually untouched by the modern world. After the Boxer Rising of 1900, the legation quarter became a Treaty Port with its own laws and administration. That status continued through the First World War and beyond. But just as the foreigners were at last beginning to value Peking's uniqueness, the end was in sight. Life changed a lot after the 1937 Japanese invasion of China and, for many, internment followed the attack on Pearl Harbour. But the end came when Treaty port status was abolished for good at the end of the War     

Everything for Sale? Neoliberalism and the Limits of Michael Sandel’s Philosophical Critique of Markets

Contesting the central tenets of mainstream economic theory, Michael Sandel’s work on markets argues that the marketization of certain goods risks corrupting the value of those goods, and that a reinvigorated public discourse is needed to establish the appropriate use of markets. This article assesses Sandel’s work on markets, arguing that although it provides a convincing critique of liberal defenses of the market, it does not do enough to challenge marketization itself. To illuminate the flaws of Sandel’s argument, the article contrasts it with Marxist critiques of neoliberalism, arguing that the latter oppose the expansion of markets and market thinking in more comprehensive and productive ways. Specifically, it is argued that Sandel ignores the one market that underpins all other markets, namely the labor market; erroneously suggests that marketization is caused by the dominance of market thinking; and fails to appreciate the class interests that are served by growing marketization.