Latin America as political science’s other

ABSTRACT

This article develops a decolonising critique of contemporary Latin American focused Political Science (LAPS) demonstrating the complicity of its politics of knowledge in the reproduction of the logic and rationalities of coloniality. These logics and rationalities are premised upon the dehumanisation of the raced and gendered other who is denied rationality, agency and political subjectivity. I demonstrate the monological and dehumanising epistemological consequences of this through deconstruction of the foundational myths and disciplinary boundaries of the discipline; the legitimate subject of the political; and the knowing-subject of political analysis that foreground contemporary LAPS. I end with a question and a challenge: how might we learn to create a political science otherwise?     

Come get these memories: gender,history and racial uplift in Bill Condon's Dreamgirls

On the release of the screen adaptation of Dreamgirls (2006), ex-Motown songwriter William ‘Smokey’ Robinson fielded speculations about corruption at America's most successful black-owned business. In the broader context of racial inequalities in media ownership and distribution, this article asks how spectacles of hard-won individual success, juxtaposed sharply against sexually and financially corrupt ‘music moguls’, continue to shape popular mythologies of the US music industry. In particular, the article focuses on the ways that sexual combat, corrupt masculinities and the politics of respectability inform Dreamgirls’ dramatization of the shift from pre-integration to post-Civil Rights America. Finally, the notion of post-racial discourse is used to make sense of the competing historical interpretations at work in the film and its critical reception, especially with regard to the use of past entertainment icons to make sense of Beyoncé Knowles’ and Jennifer Hudson's own success stories. Throughout, the article argues that myths of meritocracy cannot be separated from the racialized and gendered cultures of production that continue to shape the contemporary repackaging of popular histories and musical genres.     

中国穆斯林在现代化过程中的优势

在世界现代民族—国家的建构过程中,宗教信仰、民族归属、国家认同三者之间的巨大不相容性,以及由此引发的各种问题,成为许多国家现代化道路上的巨大障碍。尤其是对许多伊斯兰国家来说,如何处理这三者之间关系,并协调由此引发的伊斯兰教与国家政治、伊斯兰教法与国家法律的矛盾和冲突,往往成为现代化道路上最大的难题。但是在伊斯兰教传入中国,与中国社会的法律、政治、文化等等互相磨合、融通以至共存的过程中,这些难题已经基本得到了解决。因此,今天的中国穆斯林与所有中国人面临着共同的问题,那就是如何步入现代化。从这个角度来说,在现代化的进程中,中国穆斯林所背负的要比其他穆斯林更轻。     

From Waverley to Outlander: reinforcing Scottish diasporic identity through book consumption

ABSTRACT

Books are arguably fundamental to national identity and scholars across various theoretical perspectives perceive books as being integral to the creation, perpetuation, and myths and symbols of nations. This article uses interview data with leaders of Scottish heritage organizations to investigate the role of books in Scottish diasporic identity. This article concludes that books can be a binding force in diaspora communities, and lived diasporic Scots and ancestral Scots consume different types of Scottish books that reflect personalization of myths and symbols presented in these books.     

古代神话与民族史研究

民族史的研究是需要多学科参与的综合研究 ,本文提出田野调查、历史文献、考古材料、神话传说四结合的研究方法 ,并以凿齿神话和形天神话为例 ,着重论述了神话传说在民族史研究中的意义。     

国际政治学视阈下的巴以关系

本文从国际政治学视角对巴以关系的根源及其未来走向进行了解析。巴以冲突的根源是地缘民族政治和国际大国强权政治双重积压的灾难。未来巴以地区必将是地缘民族政治、国际强权政治和全球政治三管齐下的结果。一方面,巴以关系的和平曙光不能寄希望于巴以双方的民族立场和大国强权政治的国家立场;另一方面只有在全球政治引领下,巴以关系才能走出民族政治和国家政治参与的误区。问题的关键是,要想解决诸如巴以冲突这类世界性的难题,必须走出民族利益和国家利益的局限性,站在全球利益的高度。     

黄帝陵地名考

本文在借鉴近年来考古学、历史文献学、人类学、民俗学等多学科新成果的基础上 ,对陕西北部黄帝陵地区的诸多地名进行了梳理 ,阐明了上古神话、传说、记载与历史事实之间的错位与吻合     

Remember the Alcazar! The creation of nationalist myths in the Spanish Civil War: The writings of Robert Brasillach

This article analyses the process of the construction of nationalist myths in the writings of French writer Robert Brasillach on the Spanish Civil War. Brasillach consistently presented the war through romanticised images that he intended to become nationalist myths. In particular, he built into his work a set of markers pointing to medieval epic poetry, which he thought embodied the Spanish – and French – national character. Brasillach envisioned a three-part process wherein myths mobilise the masses and inspire an elite to carry out new acts of heroism, which are then repackaged and presented, through commemoration, as new mythic images. Finally, individuals integrate these mythic images with their own memories, thus placing their lives within the national tradition.     

An Australian immunisation to the extreme right?

Unlike many of its western counterparts, Australia has been spared powerful surges of the extreme right throughout its history. While the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw European democracies threatened time and time again by movements relying on ethno-exclusivism and thriving on capitalist crises, Australia suffered only relatively weak extreme right bursts whose impact remained marginal. Even the rise of the One Nation Party in 1996, as sudden as it was impressive, showed the limits in the Australian context for organisations which have proved long-lasting in Europe. This brief outline could bear a simple conclusion: Australia is immune to the extreme right. However, through a study of some of the most important extreme right failures in Australia, this article shows that rather than being immune, the country was spared an extreme right because of the policies put in place by mainstream parties and governments. By analysing mainstream politics in times of extreme right resurgence, this article highlights that by negating the extreme right's ability to appear as an alternative to the power in place, Australian mainstream politicians suffocated it. The conclusion of this article demonstrates that while the Australian extreme right has been mostly inaudible since 2001, extreme right politics, such as ethno-exclusivism, still play a crucial part in the shaping of Australian politics, notably during election campaigns.     

民国时期的边政研究与民族学——从杨成志的一篇旧文说起

杨成志1941年发表的《边政研究导论——十个应先认识的基本名词与意义》一文,对边政研究的内容及方法作了精到阐述,揭示了边政研究的内涵和思想背景,强调了边政研究与民族学的密切关联,反映了当时中国民族学的现实关怀及努力方向。对比吴文藻《边政学发凡》及参照时人关于民族学与边政研究关系的论述,可看出当时学界致力于国族建构和边疆建设的共同努力。     

Colonial legacies,post-colonial (in)securities,and gender(ed) representations in South Asia's nuclear policies

Through a comparative study of India and Pakistan's national security discourses, this article explores the linkages between post-colonial India and Pakistan's nationalist/communalist identities, configurations of masculinities, and gendered representations underpinning their nuclear (in)securities. This paper contends that the colonial politics of place-making in the sub-continent has not only inscribed a process of ‘othering’ between these states but has also facilitated the rise of divergent visions of post-colonial nationalisms, which, at each of their phases and with particular configurations of masculinities, have used women's bodies to re-map India-Pakistan's borders and national (in)securities. This article particularly draws attention to a new form of gendered manipulation in South Asian politics in the late 1990s, whereby both states, embedded in colonial notions of religious/cultural masculinities, have relied on discourses of Hindu/Indian and Muslim/Pakistani women's violence and protection from the ‘other’ to pursue aggressive policies of nuclearization. It is at this conjectural moment of a Hinduicized and Islamicized nationalism (flamed by the contestations of a Hindu versus an Islamic masculinity) that one needs to provide a feminist re-interpretation of India-Pakistan's nationalist identities, gendered imaginaries, and their re-articulation of national (in)securities – that represents a religious/gendered ‘otherness’ in South Asia's nuclear policies.     

The specifics of Balkan ethnic identity construction: ethnicisation of localities

This article analyses specifics of the process of ethnic identity formation in the Balkans in some comparison with Western European national identity construction. It ascertains that Balkan nationalism is based not on assimilation of local communities into the national whole as in the West but on dissolution of local communities by constructing out of them ethnic communities. Ethnicity construction was born from a severe rivalry around which one of the ethnic definitions would be imposed on a single local group. The article concludes that civic vs. ethnic models of nation-formation are applicable for the region.     

South Tyrol: the importance of boundaries for immigrant integration

ABSTRACT

Using South Tyrol as a case study, this article analyses how boundaries between groups and their institutionalisation through power-sharing arrangements affect the politics of immigrant integration. Through a longitudinal qualitative analysis of party manifestos, the article focuses on the period between 1993 and 2013 to evaluate the immigration and integration discourses of political parties, claiming to represent the German and Ladin minorities. It is argued that these parties have deliberately framed immigration as a challenge to the strength of their respective cultures and languages, as well as the array of institutions that support the separate but equal coexistence of South Tyrol's linguistic groups. The consequence of this tendency to ‘think in groups’ is that the main political parties of the German and Ladin minorities are shoring up group boundaries and advancing an assimilationist model of immigrant integration.     

Looking forward into the past: Partido Nacionalista Vasco and the immigrant question in the Basque Country

ABSTRACT

This article examines the discursive and political response to immigrant-generated diversity by Partido Nacionalista Vasco (PNV) in the Basque Country of Spain. A much-ballyhooed fact about PNV is that its founder, Sabino Arana, articulated a racist nationalist doctrine in the late nineteenth century. Alarm bells were raised in the early 2000s when the Basque Country became a destination for foreign immigrants arriving in Spain from Latin America and North Africa: do foreign immigrants pose a threat to Basque national identity? The PNV's answer to this question has been a clear ‘no’. Rather than distance itself from its past, however, party elites legitimate the inclusive and compassionate attitude towards foreign immigrants through selective discovery of the Basque national narrative. While sceptics of ideational variables are quick to suggest that nationalist elites manipulate the past to serve current purposes, this article suggests that such an interpretation does not do justice to the subtle ways in which symbols, myths, and images of the past have shaped the worldviews of PNV elites in the realm of immigration.     

中国原始社会乱婚说质疑

本文从历史学和人类学的角度 ,重新审视了被众多学者用来证明中国原始社会存在乱婚或杂乱性交的有关古籍和神话传说 ,认为这些资料所反映的情形与人们所下的结论之间存在矛盾。古代学者由于受历史条件的限制 ,对远古先民的两性关系作出了错误的判断 ,而当代学者在用感生神话来解释“知母不知父”的现象时则带有先入为主的倾向 ,忽视了基本的历史事实。文章认为古籍和神话传说中“知母不知父”的现象并非是乱婚或杂乱性交的表现 ,而是反映了远古人类对性交和生育之间的关系缺乏基本的生理常识     

Labour migration brokerage and Dalit politics in Andhra Pradesh: a Dalit fabric of labour circulation

ABSTRACT

Why and how do labour migrant brokers engage with henchmen of bosses, small-time criminals and violent politicians? What significance do labour brokers’ political relations have in the fabric of labour circulation? This article argues for migration brokerage to be examined along a broad continuum of brokerage to explore the local fabric of labour circulation in the Indian construction sector. Considering migration brokerage as part of a broader landscape of brokerage firstly allows look at how migration brokers concretely navigate the worlds of labour and politics to pursue their activities and to further their own agendas. It secondly offers insight into how the everyday relations between migrant brokers and henchmen of bosses shape the lives of migrant labourers in the urban construction sector. Based on a detailed ethnography of the relation between a Dalit labour maistri and a Dalit henchman of a boss in a context of violent criminal political economy, this article explores the roles of Dalit politics in shaping the Dalit fabric of labour circulation and labour broker’s trajectories in South India. It further looks at the ambivalent production and mobilisation of Dalit identities in the making of an ideal Dalit migrant labourer.     

Mad Max: The Car and Australian Governance

This article argues that the car is an intimate aspect of the governance of Australia. The term 'governance' is defined as the techniques used to know, order and manage individuals. The film Mad Max II: The Road Warrior is used as a prism to separate out the roles that the car performs in governance. Three roles are identified: the car as identity, the car as myth and the car as power. Applying this framework to Australia reveals the car's complex involvement in Australian governance, from the knowing and ordering of others, to collective myths of possession and future prosperity, to the knowing of place from space, to the removal of indigenous children. The significance of the car means Australia can be characterised as the petrochemical, chrome-plated cyborg republic of Oz.     

Tareq Oubrou's Geotheology: Shari'ah of the Minority and the Secularization of Islamic Theology in the European Context

This article introduces the work of the French imam-theologian Tareq Oubrou as a prominent voice of the emerging “European Islamic thought”. It argues that the imam uses Islamic classical jurisprudential devices (such as fatwas), contemporary hermeneutics and critical thought, and personal communion with the divine (spirituality) to renew the understanding of God, Man, and the Qura'n in the European context. In so doing, he (1) “relativizes” shari'ah law by emphasizing the questions of ethics and meaning, (2) “minoritizes” Islam as a religion in a pluralist liberal milieu, and (3) “localizes” its norms, “nationalizes” religious authority, and “institutionalizes” its manifestations. His work is synthesized in this article in three concepts: (1) “geotheology,” (2) “shari'ah of the minority” which are Oubrou's own terms/concepts, and (3) “European Islam”.     

Aviation as deportation infrastructure: airports,planes, and expulsion

ABSTRACT

The practices and mechanisms states use to forcibly move deportees across borders and sometimes vast distances have been curiously neglected by scholars. To remedy this imbalance this article develops a concept of deportation infrastructure. By building bridges between critical studies of infrastructure and migration and deportation studies, the article argues we can better understand topology, power relations, and resistance in the field of state-forced mobility. The article grounds this discussion in an analysis of deportation charter flights. It ends with a discussion of two additional concepts that speak to the theme of this special issue [Eule, Tobias, David Loher, and Anna Wyss. (2018). “Contested Control at the Margins of the State.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 44 (16): 2717–2729. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2017.1401511.], that is, the place of asymmetrical negotiations in the making and unmaking of border regimes. The first of these is strategic position, a term borrowed from studies of logistical politics. Deportees are sometimes able to utilise strategic positions when they exploit opportunities to disrupt finely tuned ecologies of air travel. The second is the mutability of infrastructure, a term that captures dynamics of change in the border regime.     

How Islamic Has the “Islamic State” Been?

Two principal views have emerged on the nature and operations of the so-called Islamic State or khilafat. One contends that IS had nothing to do with Islam in both its ideological disposition and practical operations. The other view claims that IS was the embodiment of a Salafist?Wahhabi version of Islam, and therefore it was Islamic. Whereas the first view recognizes the fact that Islam like any divine faith is open to a range of interpretations and applications, the second perspective has treated Islam as a monolithically adaptable doctrine, ignoring the diversity within the Muslim world. The question is: Was IS Islamic or not, or did it exude a form of political Salafism and Islamism of our time?