Forms Of Political Community Research Articles

Powers of the Gun: On Violence, Frontier and Community

ABSTRACT Since the mid-1990s, the Free Burma Rangers (FBR) – a self-defined ‘multi-ethnic humanitarian movement’ operating in Myanmar, Iraq, Syria, and South Sudan – has supported and trained rebel movements and civil society organisations to create spaces of relief and rescue in war zones at the frontiers of their polities. Central to the FBR’s logic and praxis is the use and governing of weapons as military means in order to ‘immunise’ communities of the oppressed from violence. Aside from their politically disputed character, this article takes the activities of the FBR as an entry point to ask: how are the relations between weapons and humans governed in war frontiers? And how does the management of military means reproduce different forms of political community with their political space? Situating these questions in political geography’s literature on frontiers, the article brings in dialogue Roberto Esposito’s analysis on the relationship between violence and (political/impolitical) community with critical approaches on weapons in security studies to show how violence, frontier, and community stand in a co-constitutive relation. Rather than looking at violence and military means as an instrument for the territorialisation of an ideological-political project at the frontier, I analyse the frontier as a politico-military device consubstantial to a political community with its biological body and political space. Drawing from fieldwork methods, I argue that the governing of human-firearms relations constitutes the political community and the human subjectivities part of it by producing frontiers as zones of distinction and encounter between the civilised and the ‘not yet’. The paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it empirically substantiates the co-constitutive rather than instrumental relation between violence and the frontier. Second, it shows how the immunitary apparatuses that govern the encounters between humans and weapons, in shaping the political community, shape also ‘the dehumanisation of Man’s human Others’. Third, zooming onto the life experiences of activists taking part to FBR and resistance forces, it differentiates between the political and impolitical forms of community produced by managing violence.

Curating Vraca Memorial Park: Activism, Counter-Memory, and Counter-Politics

Abstract In 2005, officials designated Vraca Memorial Park in Sarajevo, Bosnia–Herzegovina, as a national monument. However, official disputes over responsibility for curating stalled progress on the site's restoration. In response, activists initiated two campaigns to save and restore Vraca: “Let's Save and Restore Vraca Memorial Park” and a campaign to restore the vandalized monument Ženi borac (woman fighter). Challenging the slide toward ruination, activist curators produced the site as a lively space of politics. Contributing to international political sociology scholarship on memory and its curation, the article develops the concept of activist curatorship through sustained engagement with activist practices of clearing, cleaning, and re-curating at the site between 2005 and 2020. Activist curation is an evolving and open-ended counter-memorial practice engaged by variously situated curators, both ordinary people and museum professionals. At Vraca, activist curating is held together through an alternative mnemonic community that mobilizes the legacy of anti-fascism, while curation is central to how activist interventions endure. Activist curators create space for political commentary on the past and open space for alternative forms of political community to proliferate, those which reach beyond the fragmentation of political, social, and memorial life in post-Dayton Bosnia–Herzegovina.

Reinventing the Refugee Camp as the City: Theoretical Considerations about Unaccompanied Minors

The visible presence of migrant children (including unaccompanied minors) in current migratory flows manifestly requires some form of state attention in migrant destination states. In recent decades, the question of who is entitled to rights has become ever more discussed. At the same time, immigration regulations have tightened with increasing punitive measures taken against those labelled ‘undeserved and undocumented’. This paper seeks to connect a critical discussion of camp urbanization with the discourse on child rights within the context of the refugee camp space. Considering the urban not simply as a physical space, but also as a particular form of political community and the exercise of citizenship space, the paper explores the question: how does the reinvention of the camp as an urban space contribute to a new and better understanding of experiences and resources that unaccompanied minors arrive with? The article uses the analyses of the reference literature and provides an overview of some concepts to get a broader picture of spatial childhood within the camp. The conclusion is that children do not feature in the discussion of camp urbanization as individual subjects of concern. They are considered as possessions of adults. Moreover, they are trapped in a liminal situation of permanent temporariness. To spend one’s life in such a limbo of disenfranchised destitute has particularly devastating consequences for children.

Britannia Phantasmagoria

This essay examines V.S. Naipaul’s analysis of the “idea of England” in *An Area of Darkness*. Though his travelogue is ostensibly about India, Naipaul finds that the “truth about India has to be looked for not in India, but in England.” This “truth” takes the form of a literary history of the formation of English national culture in the nineteenth century, and organizing category for which is “fantasy.” In stark contrast to how scholars of nationalism have suggested, Naipaul sees a crisis in historicism to emerge once the nation emerges as the hegemonic form of political community. This crisis, moreover, leads to a stagnation in the critical capacity of culture as such, from its literature to its architecture. I argue that Naipaul’s peculiar literary history of England, written in a text about his travels to India, is best understood as a Saidian “voyage in,” and in direct conversation with C.L.R. James’s history of Victorianism in *Beyond a Boundary*.

Indigenous Women's Writing and the Cultural Study of Law by Cheryl Suzack

Reviewed by: Indigenous Women's Writing and the Cultural Study of Law by Cheryl Suzack Maggie Ann Bowers INDIGENOUS WOMEN'S WRITING AND THE CULTURAL STUDY OF LAW, by Cheryl Suzack. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017. 208 pp. $27.95 paper; $27.95 ebook. The title of Cheryl Suzack's monograph Indigenous Women's Writing and the Cultural Study of Law reveals the unique content that gives this work its value: the cultural study of law in relation to and explored through indigenous women's writing. Suzack's book reminds us that any discussion of culture, social structures, gender relations, and personal identity is bound by pressures from the conflicting legal frameworks within which indigenous peoples of the Americas live. With an emphasis on the representation in fiction of the influence of legal structures upon indigenous women's lives, this study proposes "the literary as a source for imagining social transformation and community decolonization" (p. 16). While essays exist that consider colonial violence against indigenous women and the lack of legal protection as depicted in indigenous women's writing, this is the first book-length study of novels by contemporary indigenous women writers and connected legal cases. Based at the University of Toronto and published by the institution's press, Suzack adds to the large body of innovative work in contemporary intersectional feminist writing from Canada. Understandably for a monograph of indigenous studies, the scope of the study moves beyond colonial nation-state borders and across regions to include the Anishinaabe writers Louise Erdrich and Winona LaDuke, Laguna Pueblo writer Leslie Marmon Silko, and the Métis writer Beatrice Culleton Mosionier. Suzack's chosen materials, drawn from a wide geographical area from the Southwest to the Northern Great Plains, are selected for their connectedness to specific and significant legal cases rather than for their cultural or geographical proximity. Novels by Erdrich and Silko are established works familiar to [End Page 186] non-specialist readers of indigenous writing while Mosionier and LaDuke, although well recognized in their own regions, are less internationally known and receive overdue critical attention in this study. In this sense, Suzack's text is well-constructed for both specialist scholars of indigenous studies and for those approaching the text from the context of feminist studies of literature or law. This tightly structured book is written in a clear academic style with each chapter focusing upon a single text that is read in conjunction with a particular legal case and examples highlighting an aspect of injustice for indigenous women of North America. The study is situated in a strong theoretical framework of transitional indigenous feminism aiming, as Suzack states, to reinforce "how identity is shaped by multiple sources of meaning-making—discourses of colonialism, practices of racialization, and systems of gender relations" (p. 12). In fact, the one criticism that I would level at this work is that it adheres to its theoretical framework so strongly that there is little exposition to help readers fully understand the rationale of the opposing legal positions that create the complex and conflicted discourse around the cited issues of tribal sovereignty. The selected legal cases exemplify the negative effects of gender imbalances in issues of tribal sovereignty, such as gendered access to tribal membership; lack of agency for indigenous women regarding child custody and "out-adopting"; restrictions on tribal nations to seek justice in cases with non-indigenous offenders; and judgements of land claims being made on the grounds of ancestry (blood quantum) and held in colonial records (p. 14). The repeated structure of the first three chapters provides an introduction, an examination of a case, an examination of a novel, and then a concluding analysis to draw these together. The final, shortest chapter concerns the work of Winona LaDuke, who is both the appellant in the cited case and the author of the connected creative work. For Suzack, LaDuke represents a feminist writer and activist who places community at the heart of her indigenous feminist framework, exemplifying how indigenous women's writing "creates new forms of political community" (p. 125). This study is rare in confronting taboos of gender-related issues facing indigenous women in the context of legal battles...

Caring for Place with Aids Memorial Quilts in Dublin, Ireland

abstract This paper presents empirical material drawn from an intentionally local AIDS quilting project in a disadvantaged inner-city district of Dublin, Ireland. The paper aims to address two key gaps in human geography. Firstly, by examining the AIDS quilts through their primary functions of therapy, activism, and commemoration, this paper finds an emphasis on place, rather than names that foregrounds the geographical, as opposed to merely rhetorical dimensions of the AIDS quilt. In doing so, it questions the forms of political community that have been claimed through the more well-studied NAMES Memorial Quilt. Secondly, by conceptualising AIDS quilts through the lens of humanistic geography, it reflects upon the act of quilting as producing what Yi-Fu Tuan described as a “field of care,” a place that may be more attentive to the structural AIDS vulnerability visited upon affected communities. It concludes with implications for the study of AIDS interventions amid wounded cities. As these damaged communities seek ways to repair themselves, the quilts act as paradigmatic cases of care for others, through care for place.

Mourning the death of a state to enliven it: Notes on the ‘weak’ Yemeni state

Observers interested in Yemen often worry about the near collapse of the Yemeni state. Such worries assume that the death of the state will lead to a complete social disintegration. With a brief reflection on the 2011 Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative, the recent US–Saudi-led intervention, this article argues that thinking about the Yemeni state through public worry is an exercise in symbolic violence. This violence articulates itself through the erasure of Yemenis’ communitarian culture; an erasure that becomes the condition for perpetuating the life of the discursively produced ‘weak’ state, and the domination of regional-international powers. This article proposes an alternative approach towards rethinking the ‘weak’ Yemeni state. It suggests that rethinking the Yemeni state through mourning its death could possibly give birth to a novel form of political community. It is through acts of mourning the injury and (imagined) death of the weak Yemeni state that the promise of the state as a unifying apparatus is reclaimed.

Considering citizenship in imperial Chinese history

ABSTRACTThis article problematizes the meaning and use of ‘citizen’ and ‘subject’ in the global historiography of citizenship. It argues that if in pre-twentieth-century European history citizens have also been subjects, in imperial Chinese history subjects have also been citizens. This argument is laid out in three steps. The first step, which has typically been disregarded in prior discussions on the topic, establishes that membership in some form of political community was articulated through political metaphors and illustrates this on the basis of the body metaphor. Whether and how the people’s membership in the polity also constitutes them as citizens is then addressed through an overview of the rules that govern the reciprocity between those groups constituting the polity and, finally, through a discussion of the types of action open to commoners to shape especially local governance.

Frantz Fanon and the Politicization of the Third World as a Collective Subject

During the postwar conjuncture of the twentieth century, decolonization movements across the world made it possible to imagine collective politics anew. In this essay I center Frantz Fanon as an important theorist who can help us think about the collective dynamics of the Third World project. I argue Fanon articulates the Third World as a collective subject that was not bound to the confines of the nation-state, but based on a conception of intercontinental populism. He conceives of the Third World as a collective subject that stretched between Africa, Asia, and the Americas. In doing so, he shifts the locus of political action and mobilization around postwar transnationalism and internationalism to the masses of the Third World, and thus decenters the exclusive focus on political elites as the main protagonists who struggled to unseat imperialism and institute a more democratic and egalitarian global order. I give more concrete shape to how Fanon is conceptualizing intercontinentalism as a form of political community that emerges out of dialectical tension and conflict, which was crucial to ensuring that intercontinentalism does not ossify into exclusionary forms of political affiliation.

A Tale of Two Crematoria:

In 1926, the remains of Siam's last absolute monarch were cremated on Bangkok's royal parade grounds, Sanam Luang, in a highly decorated ceremonial pyre known as the phra merumat or phra men. Modeled on Mount Meru, the center of the Vedic and Buddhist cosmos, ephemeral structures like this drew on the Traiphum phra ruang, a fourteenth-century text that elaborated the hierarchical structure of the universe and the exalted place of royalty within it. After the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932, the sanctity of Sanam Luang was challenged when a controversial crematorium for commoners who died defending Siam's nascent constitution was built in the area once reserved for royalty. Together, the two crematoria played an important role in representing new forms of national belonging in the twentieth century that were consistent with older conceptions of social hierarchy. In A Tale of Two Crematoria: Funeral Architecture and the Politics of Representation in Mid-Twentieth-Century Bangkok, Lawrence Chua examines literary, pictorial, and architectural representations of the monumental crematoria from which powerful, meritorious people were historically dispatched to the upper echelons of the cosmos. As seen in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century temple murals and literature, the phra men was historically depicted as a space in which diverse social groups were brought together but hierarchically segregated. By the twentieth century, the above-noted crematoria for king and commoners—although radically different in appearance and ideology—could be understood as complementary structures that allowed older spatial and political approaches not only to survive but also to flourish in an era of turbulent social upheaval. Key to this continuity was the deployment of new modes of architectural representation such as the plan and section. Associated with Siam's nascent architectural profession and the rational representation of space, these tools depicted a modern form of political community and premodern social hierarchy while underscoring the shared fate of citizens and the state.

Czy wojna nowego typu może być sprawiedliwa?

The thesis of this article is that the just war theory must be reformulated in such a way that it can be applied to new types of wars. Today, there has been a theoretical shift when discussing the nature of war, encompassing both a change in language and a practical shift. The theoretical shift has brought about a crisis regarding the idea of sovereignty as the notion that orders both internal and international relations. Consequently, other concepts related to the theme of sovereignty have lost their relevance. On the other hand, due to the practical shift, war has been redefined as “a new type of war”. War has become a not entirely overt confrontation of forces supported by various, not always explicit sides in the conflict. The legal aspects of war, responsibility for war and future visions of peace cannot be considered without a sovereign power, a political community and a hierarchy. To date, the just war theory has been the basis of international law concerning war. Contemporary international relations and armed conflicts cannot be governed by the laws of war and ordered by the just war theory. An alternative is therefore emerging: the basis of martial law can be discarded or the just war theory can be reformulated. However, it must be reformulated in such a way that it takes into account the changes that have occurred with respect to sovereignty and forms of political community.

The birth of a united Europe: on why the EU has generated a ‘non‐emotional’ identity

ABSTRACT. In several respects, the European Union (EU) represents both a novel system of quasi‐supranational governance and a novel form of political community or polity. But it is also a relatively fragile construction: it remains a community still in the making with an incipient sense of identity, within which powerful forces are at work. This article has three main aims. Firstly, to analyse the reasons and key ideas that prompted a selected elite to construct a set of institutions and treaties destined to unite European nations in such a way that the mere idea of a ‘civil war’ among them would become impossible. Secondly, to examine the specific top‐down processes that led to the emergence of a united Europe and the subsequent emergence of the EU, thus emphasising the constant distance between the elites and the masses in the development of the European project. Finally, to explain why the EU has generated what I call a ‘non‐emotional’ identity, radically different from the emotionally charged and still prevailing national identities present in its member states.

Prospects for a European Identity

In several respects, the EU represents both a novel system of quasi-supranational governance and a novel form of political community or polity. But it is also a fragile construction for it remains a community still in the making with an ambiguous sense of identity and within which powerful forces are at work. This paper has three main aims: first, to stress the shifting nature of Europe’s geographical frontiers and assess whether cultural frontiers have remained more stable throughout time. In particular, it examines the main criteria, which have traditionally been employed when having to decide who should be included and excluded from Europe. A different question concerns the requirements for EU membership and the monopoly of the adjective “European” by the EU, which somehow has become to be identified with Europe. Second, to explore the prospects for the emergence of a European identity. Here, I argue that European identity stands as a “non-emotional identity” in sharp contrast with traditional forms of national identity associated with intense nationalist feelings. Third, through the analysis of the most recent Eurobarometer (annual survey of EU’s public opinion) to examine the views of Europeans regarding the EU at a time of a major global economic crisis. To conclude, the paper explores the main challenges to be faced by a still incipient European identity.

A flock divided: race, religion, and politics in Mexico, 1749-1857

Catholicism, as it developed in colonial Mexico, helped to create a broad and remarkably inclusive community of Christian subjects, while it also divided that community into countless smaller flocks. Taking this contradiction as a starting point, Matthew D. O'Hara describes how religious thought and practice shaped Mexico's popular politics. As he shows, religion facilitated the emergence of new social categories and modes of belonging in which individuals-initially subjects of the Spanish crown, but later citizens and other residents of republican Mexico-found both significant opportunities for improving their place in society and major constraints on their ways of thinking and behaving. O'Hara focuses on interactions between church authorities and parishioners from the late-colonial era into the early-national period, first in Mexico City and later in the surrounding countryside. Paying particular attention to disputes regarding caste status, the category of Indian, and the ownership of property, he demonstrates that religious collectivities from neighborhood parishes to informal devotions served as complex but effective means of political organization for plebeians and peasants. At the same time, longstanding religious practices and ideas made colonial social identities linger into the decades following independence, well after republican leaders formally abolished the caste system that classified individuals according to racial and ethnic criteria. These institutional and cultural legacies would be profound, since they raised fundamental questions about political inclusion and exclusion precisely when Mexico was trying to envision and realize new forms of political community. The modes of belonging and organizing created by colonialism provided openings for popular mobilization, but they were always stalked by their origins as tools of hierarchy and marginalization.

Cavanaugh on the Church and the Modern State: An Appraisal

ABSTRACTIn a series of recent articles and books, the Catholic theologian William T. Cavanaugh has leveled a profound challenge to the modern state. He critiques its pretentions to be a savior and to provide social cohesion. He proposes that the church should provide resistance to, and even be an alternative to, the modern state. While Cavanaugh draws creative insights from Augustine's political thought, he misuses that thought in ways that dismiss the positive goods provided by the government. Cavanaugh also makes a positive contribution to Catholic social ethics by employing “the social imaginary” to describe the modern state, but overemphasizes the states historical distinctiveness, downplaying what it has in common with earlier forms of political community, namely the pursuit of bodily well-being and social organization.

Федерация Между Государством и Империей

SUMMARY: The article by Olivier Beaud surveys the recent legal and political theoretical debates about federation and federalism and suggests an alternative interpretation of federation as a political form different from the state. The author mentions two misconceptions and logical vicious circles about federation: one reads that federation is a state form, the other – that federation is different from confederation. These misconceptions arise from the analysis of federation through the hegemonic lens of the political, that is, the modern concept of sovereignty. Some political theorists, Beaud observes, note the logical inconsistencies of analysis of federation from the view point of sovereignty and refrain from the legal and political classification of federation as a political form. Beaud takes a different approach and on the basis of analysis of European political thought constructs a different interpretation of federation. He suggests that federation is a form of political community rather than a hierarchically based system of political relations. Therefore, Beaud contends that the best way to approach the theoretical riddle of federation and federalism would be to bracket federation and confederation as a single political type and allow for the possibility of dual orders of sovereign relations inside the political community of federation.

Patriotismo e responsabilidade na época da globalização

Most definitions of globalization agree on the fact that the role of the national state seems to become less and less important. If this is true, which place have indi-viduals as citizens? Is political participation still possible? This essay aims to offer a (minimally normative) theory of the role of the citizen in time of globalization, stretching out the possibilities offered by new forms of political community (interna-tional organizations etc.). Key words: Patriotism; constitution; nation state; globalization; political com-munity.

Security, cosmology, Copenhagen¹

Analysts of international security employ notions of the subject or object of securitythat draw on a Newtonian cosmology. This view of the world, which treats objectsas independent of observation and existing before they interact, arose alongside thechanges in forms of political community that led to the modern sovereign state.Michael Frayn's play "Copenhagen' examines competing narrativesof a meeting in Copenhagen in 1941 between nuclear physicist Niels Bohr, hisformer student Werner Heisenberg, and Bohr's wife, Margrethe. This articleuses a reading of Frayn's play to explore the discontinuities between thecosmology of Bohr and Heisenberg, which takes as accepted the impossibility ofindependent observation and pre-existing objects, and the picture of security stillcommon in international relations. It asks in what way ideas of security would bechanged if a cosmology that recognized the "final core of uncertainty at theheart of things' were taken seriously.

Human nature, freedom and political community: An interview with Noam Chomsky

For Noam Chomsky ‘human nature’ is a clearly defined concept, biologically endowed and largely independent of social and historical conditions. Because its deepest properties are genetically determined, for Chomsky the study of human nature ought to proceed in much the same way the functions of other bodily organs are examined. His ground‐breaking research into the language faculty, which he claims is one of the more accessible attributes of human nature, revolutionised the study of linguistics and cognitive science generally in the 1950s and 1960s. However, this approach has put him at odds with those, such as behavioural scientists and existentialist philosophers, who have long argued that physical and mental development should be understood as separate processes because of the overwhelming influence of environmental conditions on the latter. It also sets him apart from some recent post‐modern thinkers who deny the existence of an intrinsic human nature, arguing that our moral and political values are socially and historically determined. For his part, Chomsky still finds it odd that what we take for granted in explaining physical growth becomes so ‘controversial’ in a discussion of the psychological aspects of human nature. Noam Chomsky's understanding of human nature underwrites his conception of desirable social and political arrangements. A good society, according to Chomsky, is one ‘that leads to [the] satisfaction of intrinsic human needs, insofar as material conditions allow’ (Peck, 1988, p. 195). It should give expression to an ‘instinct for freedom, the consciousness of which gives us ‘the opportunity to create social conditions and social forms to maximize the possibilities of freedom, diversity, and individual self‐realization (Chomsky, 1973, pp. 395–6). Libertarian socialists and anarchists like Chomsky believe complex industrial societies can be organised within a framework of free institutions and structures leading to, in Rocker's words, a federation of free communities which shall be bound to one another by their common economic and social interests and arrange their affairs by mutual agreement and free contract’ (Peck, 1988, pp. 191–2). An appreciation of Chomsky's understanding of human nature provides some important clues to his political values, specifically his attitudes towards human rights, the nation‐state and alternative form of political community. These topics are explored in the interview below which is divided into two parts: human nature and moral behaviour; and political community and globalisation.

The transformation of political community: E. H. Carr, critical theory and international relations

The obsolescence of war in the relations between the leading industrial powers, and the declining significance of national sovereignty in the context of globalization are frequently cited as key indicators of the steady decline of the Westphalian era.For an insightful overview, see J. Richardson, ‘The End of Geopolitics?’, in R. Leaver and J. Richardson (eds.), Charting the Post-Cold War (Boulder, CO, 1993). The transformation of world politics has encouraged the formations of new linkages between the study of change in international relations and the normative consideration of alternative principles of world politics. Imagining new forms of political community has emerged as a major enterprise in the contemporary theory of the state and international relations.W. Connolly, ‘Democracy and Territoriality’, in M. Ringrose and A. J. Lerner (eds.), Reimagining the Nation (Buckingham, 1993); D. Held, Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Global Governance(Cambridge, 1995); W. Kymlicka, Liberalism, Community and the Culture (Oxford, 1989); A. Linklater, ‘Community’, in A. Danchev (ed.), Fin de Siècle: The Meaning of the Twentieth Century (London, 1995); and R. B. J. Walker, Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory (Cambridge, 1993). In this context, E. H. Carr’s writings on the crisis of world politics in the first part of the twentieth century acquire a relevance for contemporary debates which his reputation for Realism has served to distort. His writings contain a striking analysis of the changing nature of the modern state and the possibility of new forms of political association. Carr’s observations about these subjects are as profound as they are inspiring, and they are rich in their significance for the contemporary theory and practice of international relations. They make significant contributions in three areas: the empirical analysis of the transformation of the modern state, especially but not only in Europe; the embryonic but increasingly sophisticated normative analysis of how the nation-state ought to evolve, and what it ought to become; and the evolving discussion of how the study of internation relations might be reformed to tackle the dominant moral and political questions of the epoch. These questions are concerned above all else with the metamorphosis of political community.