Trading in the secretive commodity

Over the past century and a half, a handful of transnational corporations have built fortunes trading commodity crops such as corn, soy and wheat. Graded and standardized, these commodities are considered uniform and therefore fungible; information about their origins need not accompany them to market. But in recent years major food brands, as part of broader ‘sustainable sourcing’ commitments, have begun to ask about the places and practices that produce these crops. Their inquiries have exposed the limits of the commodity traders’ supposedly unrivalled market intelligence. They also raise questions about how the advent of agricultural grades and standards made knowledge of crop origins seem unnecessary in certain commodity supply chains, and about how those supply chains might henceforth change, now that lack of such knowledge has become a liability.     

Modern post-colonial approaches to citizenship: Kwame Nkrumah’s political thought on Pan-Africanism

This project of critical citizenship studies and comparative political theory utilizes a framework of multiple modernities in order to deeply explore the ontological foundations and complexities of a non-Western conception of citizenship and nationhood: political pan-Africanism. It does so through a study of the political thought of Kwame Nkrumah, a deeply influential political theorist and actor, in the context of the Gold Coast’s struggle for independence and in the initial years of Ghanaian post-colonialism. How did Nkrumah conceive of Pan-Africanist citizenship and nationhood in political and ontological terms? How does this relate to both modern conceptions of citizenship as tied to the nation-state and traditional Ghanaian conceptions of citizenship and belonging? After considering these questions, this paper explores how Nkrumah’s vision of Pan-Africanism was influenced by, yet contradicted central tenets of, Western political thought and modernity. It explores the theoretical and practical tensions inherent between this non-Western conception of the nation and the dominance of aspects of ‘Western’ modernity. Exploring these questions through the lens of Nkrumah’s political thought offers an Afrocentric study in an effort to strengthen African historical agency and to deparochialize citizenship studies and political theory.     

Determinants of Pro‐Fracking Measure Adoption by New York Southern Tier Municipalities

New York municipalities passed more than 60 measures promoting high‐volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF), 2008–12. These policies and resolutions signaled to state officials that municipalities desired HVHF's promised economic benefits and were anxious for an end to the state's HVHF moratorium. They also may be evidence of municipalities proactively preparing for a drilling boom. Why did some jurisdictions adopt these measures while others did not? While scholarship suggests that policy adoption is facilitated when jurisdictions and citizens possess more resources, capacity appears to have a negative or negligible impact on pro‐HVHF action. Such action appears more likely when local actors anticipate HVHF's potential gains but have not previously experienced substantial drilling, perceive that the industry could be viable locally, and can access relevant policy examples. Some lessons from conventional adoption scholarship may not apply when policies are symbolic, advocacy may be elite‐driven, and mimicry is an important diffusion mechanism.     

On Humanitarian Refugee Biometrics and New Forms of Intervention

This article traces the development from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) initially using biometrics in a few pilot projects (in the early-to-mid-2000s) to the emergence of a policy in which biometric registration is considered a ‘strategic decision’. It then engages key insights from current debates about ‘materiality’ and agentic capacity in combination with current debates about new forms of intervention. Finally, these insights are combined into a framework through which the article engages critically with this development of humanitarian refugee biometrics by posing the following question: how does an approach to technology that takes seriously the idea of matter as capable of agentic capacity enhance an appreciation of the ways in which these humanitarian technologies may contribute to the emergence of new forms of intervention? Through an analysis of how the emergence of digitalized biometric refugee data has affected the relationship between the UNHCR, donor states, host states and refugees, the article shows how the UNHCR’s trialling of new biometric technologies – combined with actual and potential data-sharing practices – has advanced the technology’s performance and acceptability whilst at the same time also rendering new dimensions of refugee life intervenable, not only to humanitarian actors.     

The Golden Age? What the 100 Most Cited Articles in Terrorism Studies Tell Us

In a context where widespread failings in the nature of terrorism research are well recognised—yet where the quantity of work is still enormous—is it possible to fairly assess whether the field is progressing or if it has become mired in mediocre research? Citation analysis is widely used to reveal the evolution and extent of progress in fields of study and to provide valuable insight into major trends and achievements. This study identifies and analyses the current 100 most cited journal articles in terrorism studies. A search was performed using Google Scholar for peer-reviewed journal articles on subjects related to terrorism and counter-terrorism. The most cited articles were published across sixty-two journals, which reflected the interdisciplinary nature of terrorism studies. Compared to other articles, the most cited articles were more likely to be the result of collaborative research and were also more likely to provide new data. Sixty-three of the top 100 articles have been published since 2001. The findings are discussed in relation to the evolution of terrorism research and current debates on progress in the field.     

The transatlantic dialogue on Iran: the European subaltern and hegemonic constraints in the implementation of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran

This article analyses the US–EU transatlantic dialogue on the Iranian nuclear dossier with a particular view to the implications for EU foreign policy on Iran. Doing so, it uses neo-Gramscian scholarship to put the EU’s “over-compliance” with Iran sanctions into perspective. Constrained by the imperatives of hegemonic coercion in the form of US financial Iran sanctions against third country entities and with the hegemonic consent of a Western US-led “historic bloc”, Europe was relegated to a subaltern below its mediatory potential. It will be shown how this finding complicates the EU’s ambition to renew relations with Iran. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with experts and delegation members from the P5+1, this article thus analyses “the normative element” in the transatlantic security dialogue on Iran at a time where the latter is undergoing a sea change in the wake of the implementation of the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” of July 2015.     

Building foundations for the comparative study of state and non-state terrorism

In this article, we argue that a comparative study of state and non-state terrorism that uses the minimal foundationalist definition of terrorism as its central analytical framework offers a unique and instructive approach for answering the question: “what is terrorism?” To date, most recent comparative case study analyses of terrorism focus on ideologies, political/governance models, structural/contextual enablers, practices, organisational structures, and/or the basis of issues such as trust, belonging, and membership. We uniquely contribute to the growing literature on comparative terrorism studies by comparing and contrasting state and non-state terrorism on the basis of strategic communication vis-à-vis the preparation, execution, and outcomes of political violence (the “terrorism attack cycle”), the instrumentalisation of victims, and fear management. We argue that state and non-state terrorism are co-constituting and co-enabling phenomena, possibly best conceptualised as two bounded and coiled strands of the political violence DNA.     

《论衡》训诂方法浅析

《论衡》正文中保存有大量丰富宝贵的训诂资料,这些资料在训诂方法方面具有其自身特点。《论衡》的训诂方法以义训为主,间或使用音训,不用形训。这是同《论衡》文体与其训诂目的直接相关的。     

语言思想:语言学研究的一个新领域

经过语言人类学家的梳理,“语言思想”已经逐步形成了语言学研究的一个新兴领域,吸引着越来越多学者的研究兴趣:重新确定语言学的研究对象,改变几十年来主导语言学界的语言思想,重新审视一些核心观念并构筑新的理论框架。对于语言思想的研究也应脱离同质性的文化模式,并把它作为一种社会过程,挖掘在这种过程中存在于同一语言社区的不同理念及差异、在特定的社会历史条件下是如何经过相互竞争而形成或改造的原因。     

In search of a theoretical approach to the analysis of the ‘Colour revolutions’: Transition studies and discourse theory

The article aims to identify a theoretical framework which would be able to provide explanation for the cases of political mobilization during the ‘Colour revolutions’ in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. It reviews the existing literature on the topic, which is predominantly oriented by the ‘transition paradigm’. The major shortcomings of this literature are identified: the privileging of either structure or agency when accounting for social change, a strong emphasis on the role of elites and insufficient attention to collective agency. Accordingly, I argue that the methodology of poststructuralist discourse theory may importantly supplement the ‘transitological’ framework owing to its ability to conceptualize the dynamic interdependence between structure and agency, as well as the formation of collective political identities.