The Politics of Pain and the End of Empire

This article is a discussion of the role of feeling and emotion, and particularly the experience of pain, in contemporary global political events. In placing pain at the center of an analysis of a lived experience of global politics, the aim is to forge strategies to resist neoliberal imperialism and to create emotionally literate political communities. Drawing on the work of Elaine Scarry, Sara Ahmed and Frantz Fanon, the article situates the concept of emotions in a modern colonial landscape that is both racialized and gendered, complicated by neoliberalism as a subjectivity that contains the scope for emotions. As a case study, the article considers the emotions of viewing the deliberate infliction of pain through the circulation of the ‘Abu Ghraib photos’, particularly in the form of recent museum exhibitions in the USA.     

Retour sur le « secteur informel ». L'économie du Katanga (Congo-Zaïre) face à la falsification de la loi

In the social sciences, the idea of an informal sector has been criticized more for the classification of economic activities in two separate sectors than for the labeling of them as “formal” or “informal”. In the Congo (formerly Zaire), the use of such labels is ambiguous. Labeling has to be understood in the context of corruption, i.e., in a transaction involving the personal networks and social identities of the parties to it. An analysis is made of how such transactions with civil servants shape the local market in the case of the import trade in Katanga. Compared with the formal/informal cleavage, this approach enables us both to see the labeling of economic activities as a social and political process and to draw attention to the plurality of such practices in relations with authorities.     

Écrire la loi. Un travail de bureau pour hauts fonctionnaires du ministère de l’Écologie

This article analyses the process of the drafting of the Bachelot Bill on technological risks, passed on 30 July 2003 but initiated by Lionel Jospin's government immediately following the AZF factory disaster in September 2001. It focuses on the practical work of the civil servants at the Ministry of Ecology responsible for setting the orientations of the reform, transcribing them into legal provisions and ensuring that they would be supported and passed in Parliament. The analysis approaches the task by tracking both the successive versions of the bill and the multiple documents used in the preparation of these versions. This immersion in the administrative production of law provides a better understanding of the relations between the civil service and the political authorities, and shows how the boundary between these two worlds of practice is difficult to draw in the legal drafting process.     

Entre « usage contrôlé », invisibilisation et externalisation. Le précariat étranger face au risque chimique en agriculture intensive

Based on the testimonies and career paths of Moroccan workers hired on seasonal contracts through the International Organization for Migration (IOM), this article shows how the governance of chemical risk in agriculture has authorized the circulation of toxic substances in the workplace. By setting up a regulatory framework for exposure, the “controlled use” of pesticides produces “clandestine” contamination and makes it possible to sidestep responsibility for its health effects. This paper explores the question of how the IOM's seasonal immigration process helps organize both the invisibilization of occupational exposure to pesticides and the outsourcing of the pathologies it causes.     

“I’ve changed my mind; I don’t want to go home”

Abstract

This article considers the motif of porosity and its opposite, impenetrability, in relation to the home or places where we feel at home. It discusses ambiguities in how the physical boundaries of the home—but also of the perceived human subject—are portrayed in the technology-pervaded world of the dystopian science fiction narrative Total Recall. Tracing the story from the 1966 novel by Philip K. Dick, through the 1990 film to the recent remake (2012), allows for a consideration of the changes in our understanding of how the boundaries between the home and its other are culturally conceived and what happens when the integrity of these boundaries are put into question. Despite their differences, we argue that all three narratives use the built structures of walls and the imagery of the container as a way of portraying the basic conflict of an outer world that tries to take possession of the protagonist’s inner life. Tracing narrative shifts, we suggest, can become a vehicle for understanding the ongoing negotiation of boundaries of the “self,” the human body, the home and even the city, and the implications these cultural negotiations have across the period from 1966 to 2012.     

Le diable et les prolétaires. Le travail dans les mines de Potosi, Bolivie

For miners in Potosi, Bolivia, mining is more than a victory for acquiring underground wealth thanks to hard work and human know-how. This intrusion into an underworld understood to be the dwelling-place of ancestors, devils and wild forces is a ritualized activity, both a pilgrimage and an initiation. Learning the job and doing the work are conditioned by the diabolic divinity of the mineral world indwelling the miners' bodies. Mine work is examined from the angle of workers, bodily experiences so as to explore both the quite intimate grounds of the occupational identity of miners and the imagery that, in the Andes, emerged with miners as a social category distinct from the peasantry.     

1964 Tokyo Olympics as Post‐War

This is an analysis of the historical continuity of the military‐cultural spatial formation of the Tokyo Olympic Games throughout the prewar and postwar era. The sites that eventually became the basis for hosting the 1964 and 2020 Olympics had already materialized in the plan for the 1940 Olympics. Tokyo's modernization process entailed a shift of the city's core from the rich cultural heritage accumulated since the Edo in the city's northeast towards an area extending from the southwest of the city center into the suburbs. The northeast area of central Tokyo had been home to commoner districts since the Edo period, and with land that was highly subdivided, did not lend itself to large‐scale development. But the southwest of the city center was originally the site of feudal estates, and these large sites were generally amenable to large‐scale development. These areas were home to numerous Imperial Japanese Army bases before the surrender, which after seizure during the US occupation eventually became the footprint for large parks and urban developments. The 1964 Olympics played a determinative role in the developments of the southwest of the city center. This continuity from prewar to postwar planning is reflected in the similar placement of venues, and the their conversion from former military uses. So the Olympics came to postwar Japan as a postwar event, in the strict sense of the word. The term postwar here refers foremost to the strategy of converting the social consciousness from war that accompanied reconstruction and economic growth.     

Les usages nationaux d'une science « globale » : La diffusion de nouveaux paradigmes économiques comme stratégie hégémonique et enjeu domestique dans les champs nationaux de reproduction des élites d'État

This paper analyses the production and international diffusion of different forms of State expertise, such as economics, from a threefold perspective: hegemonic strategies structured around the Cold War, professional rivalries between lawyers and economists within the field of state power and the internationalisation of the academic circuits for the reproduction of national elites. In order to understand the relatively low (or delayed) introduction of neo-liberal paradigm in Asia, it starts by highlighting the authoritarian genesis of these new fields of economic expertise, as an instrument for the developmental policies launched by the Cold War dictatures, such as Suharto in Indonesia or Marcos in the Philippinnes. Then, by focusing on the cases of India and South Corea, it analyses how the processes of institutionnalisation and consolidation of these new professional fields was structured around an international division of scientific labour, in which the elite US campuses control both the production of theoretical innovation and the academic networks for the reproduction of the elites of the periphery.     

Information technologies and representational spaces at the outposts of the global political economy: redrawing the Balkan image of Slovenia

Drawing upon insights from Deibert's (1997) reconstituted medium theory and critical geopolitics literature, this article examines Slovenia'sefforts at crafting an image of itself via the Internet for specific strategic goals such as EU and NATO accession, the promotion of tourism and the attraction of foreign direct investment. Through an examination of both the material and discursive practices undertaken by the Slovenian government, we demonstrate the difficulty inherent in challenging tropes that hegemonic powers disseminate through various media in order to craft the geopolitical world they operate in. Slovenia's websites represent an important form of resistance to hegemonic visions of space, visions that have excluded Slovenia's accession to certain power structures. The government uses the Internet to construct a discourse refuting assertions of unreadiness to accede to these institutions, a form of online lobbying that attempts to redraw the image of Slovenia in the minds of a global public. We conclude this examination not by making grand pronouncements about the efficacy of these efforts, but by demonstrating that these images are part and parcel of the efforts to disassociate Slovenia from the negative connotations of the Balkan moniker.The fact that these efforts incorporate the Internet, when linked to material practices and policies, raises questions about the possibilities of such resistance via new communication technologies.     

INFORMATION-CENTRED DESIGN: A methodology for designing virtual meeting DESIGN environments

Development of single-user computer applications has often been based on user-centred or task-centred design methodologies, with some success. These methodologies are also useful for guiding the development of multi-user CSCW applications whenever the basic characteristics of the users, or the type of tasks for which the system is being designed are identifiable. The effectiveness of these methodologies as a basis for the design of virtual meeting environments for supporting community-based activities, on the other hand, is rather limited. This is mainly due to the fact that for such systems it is not generally possible to identify the user or task requirements, as these vary considerably from one community to another, or even within the same community over a period of time. New methodologies need to be devised, or existing methodologies have to be modified, to direct the development of virtual environments for which the characteristics of the users or their activities are not known in advance. This paper introduces the concept of information-centred design. Information-centred design, though not fully devised yet, focuses on the identification of the type of information, as well as the way it is collected and utilized by the users of a virtual meeting environment. This pool of information, which plays an important role in facilitating interaction and communication between the members of a community, could be defined as their communal memory.     

Dispositifs d’intermédiation marchande et politique des marchés. La modernisation du marché des fruits et légumes en France, 1950-1980

As this study of experiments with organizing the fruit and vegetable market from the 1950s till the end of the 1970s shows, there were alternatives to the principle of distribution, for instance: the modernization of traditional wholesale marketplaces (carreau) or the establishment of veilings (marchés au cadran) controlled by producers. After exposing the rationale underlying each of these arrangements, the empirical conditions are examined for actually modernizing markets. Attention is drawn to the factors that weigh on players in the market, in particular the tensions, on the one hand, between homogenization and concentration and, on the other hand, the singularity of products and transactions.     

WEB PAGES, AUTHORS AND AUDIENCES: The meaning of a mouse click

One popular framework for analysing web pages has been to think of them as identity performances on the part of the author. This framework opens up possibilities for analysis of the ways in which identity performances are composed. The personal web pages to which this perspective is most immediately applicable, are, however, now only a small proportion of the overall amount of information available on the World Wide Web. It would be possible, by extension, to analyse institutional web pages as performances of the institutional identity. It is the contention of this paper that to do so is to miss out on some important aspects of web page design: namely that the production of a web page involves understandings not only of the audience for the page but also of the capacities of the technology. In addition, web page production has to become a socially meaningful act for the individual web page developer and the institution concerned. It is, therefore, argued that the analysis of web pages can usefully learn from media studies and the sociology of technology in this respect. An interview-based study of the developers of web pages for the service departments of a UK university is described. The ideas of audience which the authors use are far from homogeneous: they include an institutional offline audience for the page, a pre-existing imagined audience, developers themselves as audience, and the technology of the browser as a stand-in audience. The audience and the capacities of the technology are developed in context through the practices of designers.     

A curious trajectory of interrace relations: the transformation of cosmopolitan Malay port polities into the multiethnic divisions of modern Malaysia

This article aims to examine several interrelated issues pertaining to the historical development of pluralism in areas forming today´s Malaysia. Firstly, it intends to analyze the transformation of the formerly cosmopolitan populations of Malay port polities into the highly ‘racialized’ society of modern Malaysia. It also seeks to clarify the roots of ethnicity-based issues and relations in the country. Lastly, it attempts to challenge the very concept of Malaysia as a society primarily consisting of three ethnic pillars, dominated by the Malays, and ‘complemented’ by the Chinese and the Indians. I argue that the main driving force behind these tensions is the segregational colonial policies and the postcolonial arrangements of the Malay ethnocentrist governments, rather than ethnic and cultural factors as the ruling politicians tend to stress. I also contend that religious issues, especially those stemming from the dakwah movement, are gradually becoming an increasingly important factor in interrace strife.     

The Benedictine Ethic and the Modern Spirit of Scheduling: on Schedules and Social Organization*

This paper examines the role of schedules in social life. It first explains why both the schedule and the clock were introduced to the West through the Benedictine monasteries. Then it brings into focus the main principle underlying the schedule, namely temporal regularity, which involves the standardization of the temporal locations of events and activities and of their rates of recurrence, as well as the rigidification of their durations and sequential structures. Following a discussion of the constraints as well as the conveniences involved in using the schedule, it also examines two other implications of its introduction to the West–an abstract conception and a utilitarian philosophy of time. It ends with a discussion of the role of the schedule in enhancing both mechanical and organic solidarity.     

« Adieu les artistes, here are the managers » : les réformes managériales au sein de la DG Développement de la Commission européenne

The managerial reform of the European Commission's DG Development-formerly DG8-started in the 1990s. Placed in a historical perspective, this reform is seen as the temporary outcome of a long process for bureaucratizing an institution marked, since its origins, by the pervasiveness of patronage. The sociology of the principal parties involved in the DG8 and their changing coalitions are linked to the powers and instruments successively used to establish this institution's authority and legitimacy and to professionalize its procedures for allocating aid to countries in Africa, the Caribbean Basin and the Pacific. Light is shed on this incomplete bureaucratization, punctuated by successive expansions of the EU, as new member-states have sought to rationalize the DG's operations in order to better control it.     

The new dependency: Technological change and socioeconomic restructuring in Latin America

This article analyzes the implications for the Latin American societies of the ongoing restructuring of the world economy, which is driven by the accelerated application of science and technology to the production process. After a short review of the current developments at the regional level, the article focuses on Mexico and Bolivia. These two extreme cases, ranging from high-technology industries on the United States-Mexico border to the growth of an underground economy based in the production of coca and cocaine, allow the analysis of new forms of dependency that are already constraining the economic adjustment and the democratization process in Latin America.     

Midnight regulations and the Cinderella effect

Recent studies have shown preliminary evidence of a tendency for outgoing administrations to generate a flurry of last-minute regulatory activity. This so-called Cinderella effect is described as resulting from the combination of an administration being in power yet, because it is out-going, not being subject to political ramifications from its actions. In this paper, we look at monthly regulatory activity over the past 30 years and compare the baseline growth in regulations (measured using the proxy of pages in the Federal Register) to the growth immediately following a Presidential election when the sitting President is re-elected, not re-elected, and when the party in control of the White House changes. We find significant evidence supporting the existence of a Cinderella effect.     

Is Islam in Western Europe Like Race in the United States?

Asking whether Islam in Western Europe is like race in the United States is, to a large degree, to ask whether Muslims in Europe share the same fate and face the same barriers as blacks in the United States. The article considers (1) the nature of the hostility to Islam in Western Europe and why it is a greater barrier to inclusion for immigrants and their children than in the United States; (2) the dynamics of color‐coded race in the United States, comparing, on the one hand, the severe barriers confronting individuals and groups with African ancestry in the United States with the barriers facing Muslims (as well as black immigrants) in Western Europe and, on the other hand, considering certain advantages available to immigrants of color in the United States that Muslim and other immigrants lack in Europe; and (3) whether the boundary based on religion will prove more permeable for the descendants of Muslim immigrants in Western Europe than the racial boundary in the United States for those with visible African ancestry.