The cartography of responses to state crime: understanding the linkages among state abuses/crimes/deviance/harms/illegalities/wrongs,resistance/control,and state organizational reactions

Although a considerable amount of thoughtful scholarly research on state crime has been conducted and published, researchers have failed to assemble a comprehensive model of the process and reactions that begin after state crime has occurred and been detected. This article outlines a heuristic model that presents the major political actors that participate in this process and the relationships that can develop among them. In order to create the model, research that has been conducted on state crime is reviewed and integrated, difficulties with this work are analyzed, and recommendations about future research that can be conducted using the model are made.     

Colonial Existence,Home and Nationalism in the Narratives of British Cameroons’ Exiles in the United States

This article explores the personal meanings and public expressions of colonial existence, home and nationalism among exiles of British Cameroons from the standpoints of 11 biographies of British Southern Cameroons’ first-generation exiles living in the United States. Examining their narratives reveals why the exiles actively resist a public categorisation as being Cameroonians. This article provides a new type of research regarding British Cameroons’ exiles and their vision of the restoration of the statehood of British Cameroons, a former United Nations trust territory deserving its separate sovereignty and independence in accordance with the UN Trusteeship Agreement (1946) and UN Resolution 1514 of 1960 on the independence of colonial people. Significant about this study of the narratives of British Cameroons’ exiles is its focus on biography for portraying particular facets of nationalist resistance, including questions relating to the processes that surround the right to define the community one calls home.     

Au Retour a Gramsci: Reflections on Civil Society,Political Society and the State in South Asia

Abstract

This article critically analyses Partha Chatterjee’s recent concepts of civil society and political society, showing that their binary character is derived from a culturalist conflation of capitalism with modernity. In turn, modernity becomes equated with a naturalised liberal democratic state, precluding any appreciation of how resistance can and does shape the character of the state. Second, it compares Chatterjee’s categories of civil and political society to those of Gramsci, arguing that a return to classical Gramscian categories, along with an appreciation of the impact of colonialism on state forms, can provide studies of resistance with a richer and more elegant understanding of social change from below in contemporary India.     

Judicial Justice for Special Economic Zone Land Resistance

Abstract

The context for land resistance in liberalising India is dynamic. As the state promotes capital investment, lines between public and private are blurred. Land is central to these efforts, as new industries, mines, large-scale agricultural projects and infrastructure initiatives all require vast amounts of land. The introduction of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) in the Indian state of Goa highlight land deal tensions. Following protests rallying thousands and widespread public mistrust of land and regional planning processes, the state’s chief minister halted the zones. This action mollified public unrest and temporarily appeased anti-SEZ social movements. However, scepticism arose as the chief minister failed to legally de-register the zones and return SEZ lands to original owners or collectives. Amidst state inaction, movement members sought judicial justice. Protest and corruption theories are integrated with political interpretations of liminality in this article to frame how social movements shift their patterns of intervention in response to or in anticipation of inaction. Enhanced opportunities for corruption, exemplified by the SEZ model, lead movements to adapt strategies of resistance beyond state-oriented protest. The interventions discussed represent a shift in the ritual form of protest and the degree of political engagement with the judiciary. The multi-faceted contestation altered power structure, while politicising and scrutinising land deals.     

Autonomous peasant struggles and left arts of government

I argue that self-organisation cannot account for how grassroots struggles can pursue transnational political change. I develop an account of some ‘left arts of government’ through which resistance is facilitated and organised without reintroducing oppressive and hierarchical forms of rule. I do so by focusing on the practices of autonomous peasant mobilisations. Land occupation movements facilitate the ability of people to engage in ongoing resistance on their own behalf. They organise resistance through horizontal communication and through transnational networks involving representative structures. Finally, peasant mobilisations engage with states and international institutions to solidify gains made.     

Remaking markets in the mountains: integration,trader agency and resistance in upland northern Vietnam

As part of an ongoing agenda by Vietnamese lawmakers and local state officials to accelerate market integration in the northern mountains, rural marketplaces are being physically and managerially restructured according to standard state-approved models. Moreover, these market directives are coherent with the ‘distance demolishing technologies’ that James Scott (2009 Scott, J.C. 2009. The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. New Haven: Yale University Press. [Google Scholar]) suggests the state has implemented to bring these uplands more directly under its panoptic gaze. This integration strategy seldom meshes well with upland livelihood needs. In this paper we examine a number of power contestations currently unfolding as upland market traders – both Vietnamese and ethnic minorities – negotiate or resist these developments while striving to maintain meaningful livelihoods.     

On fighting for global justice: the role of a Third World international lawyer

Abstract

The life of a Third World international lawyer is devoted to resistance to the norms of international law designed by agents with power to promote the interests of the powerful sections of the international community. Increasingly the instrumental norms of international law are fashioned through the use of private power, making the positivist claim that public international law is a law between states illusory. The task of this paper is to identify a framework of common concerns so that a collectivity of Third World lawyers can work together, examine how mechanisms of power can be countered, and devise a confrontational strategy.     

资源失灵与阻抗力——基于M村婚姻暴力现象的研究

解释婚姻暴力时资源正功能论和资源负功能论并存,现实中女性拥有较多资源也可能长期遭受婚姻暴力,构成本文所谓"资源失灵"现象。本文通过对资源概念进行界定及分类,厘清问题本质,考察农村家庭中妻子面对婚姻暴力时经济资源失灵的过程与机理,揭示家庭背景、社区文化等结构资源对个体经济资源的主导作用,从阻抗力的角度思考相关对策。女性具有的男权中心性别观念会扭曲其对经济资源的主观认知,抑制其资源利用能力,导致资源失灵。家庭因素、社区环境等结构资源通过社会化过程影响个体的观念系统,也会以社会支持方式促进或压制经济资源的作用。婚姻暴力阻抗力能减少受暴女性对施暴者或者婚姻关系的依赖性,其产生需激活相应的外部结构资源,并激发个体的意愿与决心。     

当代中国农民与政治权利

建国以来,中国农民经历了政治公民、半政治半社会公民和社会公民三个阶段。当代中国农民的平等权、自由权、人身权、参政权、自治权等政治权利的保障和实现不同程度地受到了旧体制的制约。农民的维权活动从日常抵抗上升到以法抗争,给农民以宪法关怀是解决农民问题、保持社会持续稳定发展的关键。