Intelligence scholarship as all‐source analysis: The case of Tom Bower's the perfect English Spy

Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War 1935–90 (London: Heinemann, 1995). Pp.385, 24 photos, biblio., index. £16.99. ISBN 0–434–0080–9     

Catastrophe risk

This paper examines the recent emergence of initiatives involving the reinsurance industry and the capital markets to develop mechanisms to finance the losses arising from catastrophic events. These initiatives are discussed from two perspectives. One perspective explores these financing mechanisms from the contention that catastrophic events are becoming increasingly non-insurable within contemporary risk society. In this regard the paper addresses issues relating to the coherence and sustainability of the risk networks underpinning efforts to maintain the insurability of catastrophic events. These catastrophe-financing initiatives are also discussed from a second, although related perspective. This refers to the very emergence of these different financing mechanisms. In this regard the moving potential of liberal government or the inventive mechanics driving the development of different ways to manage catastrophic risk become significant. The paper argues that the emergence of these different catastrophe-financing mechanisms is occurring at the intersection of concerns over the non-insurability of the catastrophic and the extremes of capitalist ingenuity, suggesting both perspectives might offer insights into some of the possible future trajectories of risk society.     

Economies of contagion: financial crisis and pandemic

Abstract

The outbreak of an influenza A (H1N1) pandemic in 2009 coincided with a severe global financial downturn (2007–8). This paper examines the use of ‘contagion’ as a model for assessing the dynamics of both episodes: the spread of infection and the diffusion of shock through an intrafinancial system. The argument is put that a discourse of globally ‘emerging’ and ‘re-emerging’ infection helped to shape a theory of financial contagion, which developed, particularly from 1997, in relation to financial crises in ‘emerging markets’ in Southeast Asia. Conversely, concerns about the economic impact of a global pandemic have been influential in shaping public health responses to communicable diseases from the early 1990s. The paper argues that tracing the conceptual entanglement of financial and biological ‘contagions’ is important for understanding the interconnected global environment within which risk is increasingly being evaluated. The paper also considers the consequences of this analogizing for how financial crises are understood and, ultimately, how responses to them are formulated.     

On arbitration,arbitrage and arbitrariness in financial markets and their governance: unpacking LIBOR and the LIBOR scandal

Abstract

Amongst a series of scandals to hit international financial markets in recent years, that surrounding the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) – a highly influential interest rate benchmark – has attracted particularly intense media scrutiny. This paper seeks to push beyond conventional understandings to unpack critically both LIBOR itself and the scandal involving its manipulation by major international banks. Envisioning LIBOR as a commodity beset by inherent contradictions, the paper mobilizes the tropes of arbitration, arbitrage and arbitrariness to illuminate, respectively: the market-making work performed by LIBOR; its role in enabling the transfer of financial risk, most notably when fraudulently manipulated; and the nature of the regulatory prosecution of such manipulation.     

The formation of an ‘Islamic sphere’ in French Colonial West Africa

One of the most unintended consequences of colonial rule in French West Africa was the Islamization of large parts of it. Islamic movements have often been interpreted in specifically plitical terms, as instances of ‘collaboration’ with or ‘resistance’ to colonial domination. They can better be understood in terms of the emergence of a qualitatively new ‘Islamic sphere7rsquo; conceptually separate from ‘particular’ affiliations such as ethnicity, kin group membership or salve origins, as well as from the colonial state. This paper considers two cases in detail: the Hamawiyya, a branch of the Tijani Sufi order whose leader was exiled by the French and which was brutally repressed in the 1940s; and the ‘Wahhabiyya’, an anti-Sufi movement which emerged after World war II.     

Remembering the family home: emotions,belonging, and migrant men in multicultural Australia

Abstract

The article opens a space in which to discuss migrant men's emotions and their engagement with family life. It focuses on Australia's Goan community to explore the fluidity of ethnic identity and its relation to remembered family and childhood. The article suggests a “family” that is not only a domestic home but is constituted across both time and space. The men's memories of their childhood and family life prior to arrival in Australia are central to their constitution of self within Australia. These memories provide the men with the emotional means to contest their positioning in Australia's multicultural framework. The men's memories of childhood are experienced beyond domestic and multicultural spaces, making remembered families an important part of their work lives and sense of success in Australia.