From Exclusion to Resistance: Migrant Domestic Workers and the Evolution of Agency in Lebanon

In addition to hosting a large population of refugees and displaced persons, Lebanon is home to an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 migrant domestic workers. Under Lebanese law, domestic workers fall under the kafala, or sponsorship, system. Existing literature has focused on the legality of the kafala system and the ensuing human rights violations resulting from workers' exclusion from Lebanese labor law. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2016, this article argues that migrant domestic workers in Lebanon have defied their spatial, social, and legal exclusion by organizing collective resistance, triggered in part by the July 2006 Israel-Lebanon war.     

The counterinsurgency/conservation nexus: guerrilla livelihoods and the dynamics of conflict and violence in the Virunga National Park,Democratic Republic of the Congo

The growing militarisation of nature conservation has refocused attention on the relations between counterinsurgency and conservation. This contribution analyses how these two phenomena entwine in the Virunga National Park, located in the war-ridden east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It examines how this entwinement relates to dynamics of conflict and violence, and how these dynamics shape and are shaped by the livelihood and resistance practices of local inhabitants. As it shows, a particularly important form of resistance is ‘guerrilla livelihood’ activities, or cultivation, (prohibited) fishing and logging within the boundaries of the park, which often take place under the protection of armed groups. By studying the interplay among such unauthorised exploitation of natural resources, different types of conflict, and insurgent mobilisation, it is demonstrated that strict law enforcement and joint operations of the Congolese army and park guards fuel, rather than mitigate, the dynamics feeding into armed mobilisation.     

Sustaining Life: Rethinking Modes of Agency in Vulnerability

ABSTRACT

This article discusses ambivalence in the meaning and attribution of agency, and the role it plays in understanding vulnerability as a concept and condition that is specific to individual bodies. This involves examining agency as an embodied resource that vulnerability might draw upon when bodies endure conditions of uncertainty, detention and exile. The documenting of a partial narrative of an individual who set his body on fire provides an analytic lens through which to investigate the complexity and contextual specificities of vulnerability. The article argues that working with a single modality of agency resulting from a certain slippage between meanings of agency, political agency and resistance, might result in foreclosing alternative forms of living and sustaining lives. Agency is considered more expansively as a capacity for action that is necessarily mediated through situated capabilities, struggles and desires. The article argues for the need to analyse concepts held within a ‘grammar of vulnerability’ in order to discuss modalities of agency that capture both activities of resistance, but also other, often unseen, investments in sensory, affective and physical labours required for everyday activities in which individuals sustain their lives.     

Land grabs and primitive accumulation in deltaic Bangladesh: interactions between neoliberal globalization,state interventions,power relations and peasant resistance

This essay provides theoretical and empirical analysis of the interrelationships between land grabs, primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession (ABD) in the context of capitalist development. Evidence from a multi-class peasant formation in deltaic Bangladesh indicates that land grabs have been propelled by interactions between neoliberal globalization, state interventions, power relations and peasant resistance. Key roles have been played by illegal violence and de-linking of poor peasants from production organization and clientelist relations providing access to land. Establishment of a shrimp zone for export production has led to systematic eviction of the poor, backed by state power. Poor peasant resistance has shifted towards overt forms involving coalition-building and collective action. It is argued that the concept of primitive accumulation can subsume both market and non-market mechanisms as well as voluntary and involuntary transactions involving different degrees of intentionality, inclusive of deliberate dispossession, unintended consequences and negative externalities. Primitive accumulation and ABD correspond to distinct historical phases of capitalism and are subsumable under a generic concept of ongoing capitalism-facilitating accumulation. The dynamics of ‘actually existing capitalism’ display a two-way and recursive causal relationship in which continuing primitive accumulation is as much a consequence of expanding capitalist production as its precondition.     

‘Occupied territory is occupied territory’: James Baldwin,Palestine and the possibilities of transnational solidarity

In his 1966 essay ‘A Report from Occupied Territory’, James Baldwin wrote that ‘occupied territory is occupied territory, even though it be found in that New World which the Europeans conquered’. Though written 50 years ago, Baldwin’s observations continue to resonate, indicating historical trends across geographical experiences affected by the legacy of colonialism. A growing theme in development and peace building studies relates to a kind of boundary crossing that sees academics and activists drawing linkages across spatial and temporal divides. The situation in Palestine–Israel has taken an increasingly central role in mobilising transnational solidarities that cross such boundaries. By examining James Baldwin’s analysis of Harlem’s ‘occupation’ – as well as drawing from a range of voices such as Achille Mbembe, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Toni Morrison and Laleh Khalili – this paper will explore the shared experiences of racism, colonialism, military occupation and dispossession that separate and divide, and the possibilities for transnational solidarities that defy those separations.     

Poets,culture and orature: A reappraisal of the Malawi political public sphere, 1953–2006

Mapanje and Mphande make a persuasive case for the significant role of literature in challenging Dr Banda's one-party hegemony. The contested terrain, as Mphande notes, was orality, the dominant medium in Malawi where literacy levels are low. It has been assumed, though, that orature did little to challenge Banda's hegemony. I argue that far from being silent, the popular musicians and dramatists (as orature) were much braver than the writers. While written poetry and prose was often presented in coded and dense texts, the musicians’ and dramatists lyrics and texts were usually much more explicit. And while writers used folk tales and appropriations from traditional culture as templates to critique Dr Banda's autocratic regime, oral practitioners went further, critiquing Dr Banda's regime using the same templates but also pointing out the socio-economic suffering of the peasantry.

Since 1994, as writers’ critiques have become muted and spasmodic in the ‘multiparty’, musicians have consistently been loud and forceful voices on behalf of the poor. From 1953 to 2006, orature has been a continuous tool of resistance whereas literature has been an intermittent response, often related to patronage, to political and socio-economic events. Further, while literature tends to be concerned predominantly with human rights and democracy issues, orature is concerned with these as well as socio-economic rights; a distinction reflective of class, the rural/urban divide and education in Malawi. The findings are generalisable to other Bantu-language-speaking countries such as Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Mozambique. I posit that assessments of Malawi's current and future socio-economic and political cultures that exclude oral critiques miss significant and critical factors impacting on developmental changes in these spheres.     

多囊卵巢综合征体质指数、性激素及胰岛素抵抗水平与中医证型相关性研究

目的 探讨多囊卵巢综合征（polycystic ovary syndrome,PCOS）患者的体质指数、性激素和胰岛素水平与中医证型的相关性。方法 选择91例PCOS患者（肝经湿热型50例、痰湿阻滞型41例）,观察并比较两种证型患者的人体测量学指标、性激素及空腹血糖(fasting plasma glucose,FPG)、空腹胰岛素(fasting insulin,FINS)、稳态模型胰岛素抵抗指数(homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance,HOMA-IR)水平。结果 痰湿阻滞型患者的体质指数(body mass index,BMI)、腰臀比（waist-to-hip ratio,WHpR）、腰身比（waist-height ratio,WHtR）均明显高于肝经湿热型患者（P<0.05）;痰湿阻滞型患者FPG、FINS、HOMA-IR水平均明显高于肝经湿热型患者（P<0.05）;肝经湿热型患者黄体生成激素(luteinizing hormone,LH)、卵泡刺激素(follicle stimulating hormone,FSH)水平明显高于痰湿阻滞型患者（P<0.05）。结论 PCOS痰湿阻滞型患者BMI、WHpR、WHtP等人体测量学指标和FPG、FINS、HOMA-IR水平明显高于肝经湿热型患者,LH、FSH水平明显低于肝经湿热型患者。     

丹蛭降糖胶囊对2型糖尿病合并肥胖患者胰岛素抵抗及脂毒性改善作用

目的 观察具有益气活血功效中药复方制剂丹蛭降糖胶囊对2型糖尿病(type 2 diabetes mellitus,T2DM)合并肥胖患者胰岛素抵抗、脂毒性相关指标的改善效果.方法 选取T2DM合并肥胖患者80例,随机分为对照组及治疗组各40例,均给予降低血糖、调节血脂的基础治疗,治疗组在常规治疗上加用中药复方制剂丹蛭降...     

Political ontology,constituent power,and representation

In this piece, I discuss some aspects of the tension between democracy and constitutionalism in light of Pettit’s attempt to think popular control of government by way of a mixed constitution and the introduction of an alternative concept of representation.     

Millions of Small Battles: The Peronist Resistance in Argentina

This article studies the working‐class clandestine political organisation known as the Peronist resistance. Created after Argentine President Juan Perón was overthrown in 1955, the resistance movement was much more than a reaction to the limitations imposed on the organisation of unions. It signalled the birth of a new paradigm of political and cultural resistance firmly anchored in the household and the neighbourhood. Looking into the cultural dimensions of violence, the study shows how violence functioned as a creative force, producing transformations in political agency and cultural practices that reached into the Peronist household and shaped mourning rituals and the politics of martyrdom.