The Boundaries of Property: Complexity,Relationality, and Spatiality

What does the property boundary mean to laypersons? How do everyday geographies of property work? Merrill and Smith offer an influential set of hypotheses concerning the boundary's role in communicating simple messages of exclusion in the everyday world. The first goal of this article is to assess these claims. Drawing from qualitative data on gardening from Vancouver, I suggest that the messages of the boundary may also be complex, intersubjective, and ambiguous. The supposedly robust moral intuitions that inform people's interactions with boundaries are not always exclusionary. Drawing from the sharp distinction between the heterogeneity of the empirical record and the studied simplicity of Merrill and Smith's account, my second goal is to make some broader claims regarding property and the boundary. Rather than seeking universality, simplicity, and singularity, I suggest the necessity and value of working with complexity. A relational view of property and space (or “spatiality”), I suggest, offers us a better perspective in which to begin to think about the complex work of the everyday property boundary.     

Engaging China,With Strings Attached

There is a dearth of information in the open literature with a direct focus on the Hizbollah organization. Symptomatic of the shortcomings of the existing literature is the tendency to analyze Islamist movements in general with only peripheral reference to specific organizational entities such as Hizbollah. This paper will examine the development of the Hizbollah organization in the context of the Lebanese civil war, address its emergence in Amal, follow the Party of God's long march toward an Islamist republic, and observe the splitting of the party into an emasculated Hizbollah and a marginalized Islamic Resistance.