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Political Structures (political + structure)
Selected AbstractsCONTOURS OF AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF THE CHINESE STATE: POLITICAL STRUCTURE, AGENCY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN RURAL CHINATHE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 3 2004Frank N. Pieke Anthropologists have long been inclined to view China from the perspective of a state-society dichotomy. In this model, the inevitable consequence of economic reform is that , especially at the local level , the state must yield more and more of its power to entrepreneurs, foreign investors, non-state organizations, and local communities. Not only does this approach distort the role of the state in society, but by placing the state above and outside society it also excludes it from the anthropological gaze. This article proposes an anthropology of the Chinese state which does not merely view the state in society, but also investigates the state itself as society. Drawing on fieldwork in northeastern Yunnan province, I illustrate this general point by investigating the changing role of the local state in economic development. This agenda for an anthropology of the Chinese state resonates both with the recent ,reinvention' of the subfield of political anthropology with its focus on governmentality, policy, and rights, and with recent calls by political scientists for the development of an interdisciplinary anthropology of the developmental state. [source] A Dark Age Peter Principle: Beowulf's incompetence thresholdEARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 1 2010Oren Falk Many readers, recognizing the incompatibility of heroism with the duties of kingship, have argued that Beowulf tells a story of colossal failure. Drawing on anthropological theory, I propose that the protagonist is more Big-Man than king and that his heroism, far from a socially dysfunctional flaw, is in fact the leash by which society yanks him back from establishing himself as king. Beowulf thus speaks to an aristocracy disinclined to submit to royalty. The poem shines a light on Anglo-Saxons' aversion to despotic rule: to protect its own decentralized political structure, society against the state foredooms King Beowulf to death. [source] Gresham on horseback: the monetary roots of Spanish American political fragmentation in the nineteenth century1ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 3 2009MARIA ALEJANDRA IRIGOIN This article deals with the political economic consequences of the disappearance of the Spanish silver peso standard in Spanish America, the longest monetary union that ever existed. With the Napoleonic invasion of Spain in 1808, the fiscal and political structure of the empire imploded and most colonies became independent. Regional competition for revenues exacerbated budget shortfalls driven by military expenditure. Local elites established in former colonial Treasury districts started highly diverse monetary experiments to procure funds. Those in control of mint houses started minting their own coins or debased existing silver currency. Elsewhere, inconvertible paper currency was also created to meet budget deficits. As a result, the most valuable feature of the Spanish American silver peso, its quality standard, was broken and the standard that had organized the early modern international economy for more than 300 years ceased to exist altogether. In Spanish America, as diverse monies co-existed within a formerly highly integrated economic space, a widespread Gresham's law effect exacerbated the conflict among local and regional elites. This fostered the political fragmentation of colonial Spanish America into an increasing number of political and monetary sovereign entities during the nineteenth century. [source] Leadership and Learning in Political Groups: The Management of Advice in the Iran-Contra AffairGOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2001Paul A. KowertArticle first published online: 17 DEC 200 For over two decades, the theory of groupthink proposed by Irving Janis has remained the most prominent analysis of group dynamics in policy-making. Suffering from its own popularity, groupthink has become a catch-all phrase without a clear meaning. Moreover, theories of group decision-making,even when applied to public policy-making,have typically ignored political variables, focusing almost exclusively on psychological arguments. This article offers three more narrowly construed propositions about policy-making groups: (1) that extremes in the distribution of power within a decision group reduces the integrative complexity of that group's deliberations and, thus, a leader's ability to learn; (2) that extremes in group size produce similar effects; and (3) that the integrative complexity of deliberations is improved when power concentration is appropriate to group size. An examination of the Reagan Administration's decision-making in two phases of the Iran-Contra affair lends support to these hypotheses and reveals the importance of political structure in decision group dynamics. [source] Constructivist Implications of Material Power: Military Engagement and the Socialization of States, 1972,2000INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2006CAROL ATKINSON The research presented in this article examines one aspect of state socialization, the extent to which transnational military-to-military interactions have served as an effective mechanism of the democratic political socialization of states. Military organizations are very interesting when we consider avenues by which state socialization might occur because military organizations are an influential part of governments, and members share common beliefs and values as soldiers and officers that transcend borders. Thus, it would seem that a state's military structure is one likely channel whereby politically relevant individuals might learn new ideas and have the capability to reform existing institutional structures. The socialization process described in this study is three level: (1) individuals acquire new ideas; (2) coercion, incentives, and persuasion aid in institutionalizing these ideas in the underlying political structure of the state; and (3) once institutionalized, these new ideas/identity of the state influence the material and ideational structure of international society. Using Cox Proportional Hazard models and an original data set encompassing over 160 states during the years 1972,2000, the analyses find U.S. military-to-military contacts to be positively and systematically associated with liberalizing trends. This finding provides evidence that constructivist mechanisms do have observable effects, and that ideationally based processes play an important role in U.S. national security. [source] Protest Cycle, Political Violence and Social Movements in the Basque CountryNATIONS AND NATIONALISM, Issue 1 2001Benjamín Tejerina A close look at the groups, organisations and social movements among which a terrorist organisation seeks refuge and support, will provide a fundamental and strategic view of its evolution. By means of the concept of a protest cycle, I analyse the relationship between political violence and social movements in the Basque Country. With the help of Tarrow's fundamental variables in the political structure, to which I have added the degree of consciousness-raising and mobilisation in civil society, I aim to study the protest cycle of ETA's violence from its social origins at the start of the 1960s, through its consolidation in the 1970s, to its decline from the mid-1980s onwards. The idea I will defend is that political violence should be seen as a form of collective action directed towards a mobilisation of society, and that its vicissitudes depend on the structure of interactions set up between the armed organisation, social movements and civil society. [source] Integrating evaluation units into the political environment of government: The role of evaluation policyNEW DIRECTIONS FOR EVALUATION, Issue 123 2009Eleanor Chelimsky Most discussions of evaluation policy focus on the substance and process of doing evaluations. However, doing evaluations in government requires careful consideration not only of evaluation but also of the larger political structure into which it is expected to fit. I argue in this chapter that success for evaluation in government depends as much on the political context within which evaluation operates as it does on the merits of the evaluation process itself. For convenience, I divide the contextual governmental pressures on evaluation into three kinds: those stemming from the overarching structure of our democracy, those stemming from the bureaucratic climate of a particular agency, and those stemming from the dominant professional culture within that agency. I then examine how those three kinds of pressures have, in my experience, affected the independence, credibility, and ethical position of the evaluation units and evaluators concerned. Finally, I offer some suggestions for evaluation policy in the hope of avoiding a repetition of past evaluative failures that resulted either from unawareness of political relationships in government or from the inability of small evaluation units to protect their work in the face of much more powerful political forces. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Prospects for the Survival of the Navajo Language: A ReconsiderationANTHROPOLOGY & EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2002Professor Bernard Spolsky What is the role of schools in the loss of indigenous languages? A study 25 years ago of prospects for the survival of Navajo placed most of the blame for the spread of English on increasing access to schools. Reconsidering that evidence and recent developments, the central role of the introduction of Western schooling is seen still to be highly relevant. But other factors have worked through the school, the major effect of which has been the ideological acceptance of English. Vernacular literacy, traditional or introduced religion, and political structure all have failed to establish a counterforce. Economic changes also led to new living patterns that, together with improved communication, broke down isolation and supported the threat to the survival of language. This study confirms the importance of seeing language and education in the full social, cultural, religious, and political context recognized by educational anthropology. [source] Rattling the Hesam: International Distractions from Internal Problems in IranASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 1 2009John A. Tures President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began waging a war of words against the state of Israel several months after he won Iran's 2005 election. This article explores the motives for his fiery rhetoric. A series of explanations including ideological zeal, inexperience, international pressure, unifying regional regimes, and inciting a war with Israel are evaluated and critiqued. This article offers a new rationale that examines internal politics as a motive for the Iranian leader's speeches. The diversionary theory of conflict, which claims that leaders try to overcome domestic shortcomings with foreign distractions, is examined in this context. But while this theory has typically been associated with war and unifying the country's political structure, this article contends that President Ahmadinejad's plan may not be full-scale war, but a verbal confrontation and subtle support for terror groups, which can be just as effective in achieving internal aims. Such a policy would also win converts among the rank-and-file Arabs. The resulting regional prestige is also designed to mask his domestic shortcomings in the political and economic arena. Blasting Israel and boosting groups such as Hizballah and Hamas, while receiving cheers from many Arab people for standing up to Israel, in other words, is designed to distract the Iranian people from the sinking economy and President Ahmadinejad's loss of power, blocked appointments, and criticism from even conservatives. In addition, rather than seeking support from the entire country, the president may be trying to outflank his conservative opponents, including many from the clergy, legislature, and ruling elite, who have become disenchanted with his anti-corruption crusades, appointments, and policies. If successful, this plan would pit his country's conservative majority (including young people and the Revolutionary Guard) against the minority moderates and some disaffected conservatives. Finally, this article critiques other theories and suggested strategies responding to the crisis and offers its own diversionary theory, as well as ideas about how to handle President Ahmadinejad's oratories. [source] A Reconsideration of the Political Significance of Shared Responsibility AgreementsAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND HISTORY, Issue 1 2009Elizabeth Strakosch The 1996,2007 Howard Coalition government introduced Shared Responsibility Agreements in 2005 to allocate discretionary funding to indigenous communities in a "mutually responsible" way. The policy was widely criticized as an ineffective and ideologically driven "showpiece". Its significant governance-building dimensions went without comment. Through the deployment of the conceptual tools of contract and governance, SRAs established new and depoliticised relationships between government and indigenous peoples, replacing the centralized political structure of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. The future of the policy under the Rudd Government is uncertain, but understanding the impacts and implications of SRAs remains important. [source] In No One's Shadow: British Politics in the Age of Anne and the Writing of the History of the House of CommonsPARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, Issue 1 2009D.W. HAYTON The publication in 1967 of Geoffrey Holmes's masterpiece, British Politics in the Age of Anne, effectively demolished the interpretation of the ,political structure' of early 18th-century England that had been advanced by the American historian R.R. Walcott as a conscious imitation of Sir Lewis Namier. But to understand the significance of Holmes's work solely in an anti-Namierite context is misleading. For one thing, his book only completed a process of reaction against Walcott's work that was already under way in unpublished theses and scholarly articles (some by Holmes himself). Second, Holmes's approach was not simplistically anti-Namierist, as some (though not all) of Namier's followers recognized. Indeed, he was strongly sympathetic to the biographical approach, while acknowledging its limitations. The significance of Holmes's book to the study of the house of commons 1702,14 (and of the unpublished study of ,the Great Ministry' of 1710,14 to which it had originally been intended as a long introduction), was in fact much broader than the restoration of party divisions as central to political conflict. It was the re-creation of a political world, not merely the delineations of political allegiances, that made British Politics in the Age of Anne such a landmark in writing on this period. [source] LOCAL POLITICS AND VIOLENT CRIME IN U.S. CITIES,CRIMINOLOGY, Issue 4 2003THOMAS D. STUCKYArticle first published online: 7 MAR 200 Recent research has begun to examine the effects of politics on crime. However, few studies have considered how local political variation is likely to affect crime. Using insights from urban politics research, this paper develops and tests hypotheses regarding direct and conditional effects of local politics on violent crime in 958 cities in 1991. Results from negative binomial regression analyses show that violent crime rates vary by local political structures and the race of the mayor. In addition, the effects of structural factors such as poverty, unemployment, and female-headed households on violent crime depend on local form of government and the number of unreformed local governmental structures. Implications for systemic social disorganization and institutional anomie theories are discussed. [source] Engaging Science Education Within Diverse CulturesCURRICULUM INQUIRY, Issue 3 2003James Gaskell At the heart of discussions about an appropriate school science in a diverse world are questions about the status of modern science versus other schemes for understanding the natural world. Does modern science occupy a privileged epistemological position with respect to alternative beliefs? There has been a movement from an emphasis on replacing students' ideas based on traditional cultures to one of respecting those ideas and adding to them an understanding of modern science ideas and an exploration of when each might be useful. Respecting both sets of explanations need not deny discussions about credibility in particular contexts. School science, however, is always located within wider educational and political structures. Broad elements of the community must be engaged in dialogue concerning what knowledge about the natural world is important, to whom, and for what purposes. [source] Centralization and Decentralization in Administration and Politics: Assessing Territorial Dimensions of Authority and PowerGOVERNANCE, Issue 1 2001Paul D. Hutchcroft Throughout the world, diverse countries are implementing programs of decentralization as a means of promoting both democratic and developmental objectives. Unfortunately, however, scholarship has yet to offer a comprehensive framework within which to assess and reform central-local relations. This article seeks to overcome the "division of labor" that has long separated analyses of administrative and political structures, and to provide stronger conceptual vocabulary for describing and analyzing the complexities of centralization and decentralization in both administration and politics. After developing two distinct continua of administrative and political centralization/decentralization, the paper then combines them in a single matrix able to highlight the wide range of strategies and outcomes that emerge from the complex interplay of the two spheres. Depending on where a country lies within the matrix, it is argued, strategies of decentralization may do more harm than good. Strategies of devolution are especially problematic in settings with strong local bosses, and should never be attempted without careful analysis of the preexisting character of central-local ties. [source] What Should Historians Do With Heroes?HISTORY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 2 2007Reflections on Nineteenth-, Twentieth-Century Britain This article reviews research on modern British heroes (in particular Henry Havelock, Florence Nightingale, Amy Johnson and Robert Falcon Scott) to argue that heroes should be analysed as sites within which we can find evidence of the cultural beliefs, social practices, political structures and economic systems of the past. Much early work interpreted modern heroes as instruments of nationalist and imperialist ideologies, but instrumental interpretations have been superseded within the New Cultural History by broader analyses of the range of gendered meanings encoded in heroic reputations. Studies of heroic icons have generated important insights for historians of masculinity and femininity. More research, however, is needed on the reception rather than the representation of heroic icons, on visual and material sources, and on the changing forms and functions of national heroes after 1945. [source] Thucydides and Modern RealismINTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2006JONATHAN MONTEN This paper makes two main arguments about the relationship between Thucydides, modern realism, and the key conceptual ideas they introduce to situate and explain international politics. First, Thucydides refutes the central claim underlying modern realist scholarship, that the sources of state behavior can be located not in the character of the primary political units but in the decentralized system or structure created by their interaction. Second, however, analyses that discuss Thucydides exclusively with respect to this "third-image" realism do not take into account the most important emendation made to political realism in the last half of the twentieth century, Kenneth Waltz's Theory of International Politics. Waltz reformulates the theory of how anarchic political structures affect the behavior of their constituent units and suggests that the question posed by realism,and to be asked of Thucydides,is not whether states behave according to the Athenian thesis or consistently observe the power-political laws of nature, but whether they suffer "costs" in terms of political autonomy, security, and cultural integrity if they do not. Many scholars are therefore incorrect to assume that demonstrating the importance of non-structural factors in The Peloponnesian War severs the connection between Thucydides and structural realism. Thucydides may in fact be a realist, but not for reasons conventionally assumed. [source] A Neo-Gramscian Approach to Corporate Political Strategy: Conflict and Accommodation in the Climate Change Negotiations*JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 4 2003David L. Levy ABSTRACT A neo-Gramscian theoretical framework for corporate political strategy is developed drawing from Gramsci's analysis of the relations among capital, social forces, and the state, and from more contemporary theories. Gramsci's political theory recognizes the centrality of organizations and strategy, directs attention to the organizational, economic, and ideological pillars of power, while illuminating the processes of coalition building, conflict, and accommodation that drive social change. This approach addresses the structure-agency relationship and endogenous dynamics in a way that could enrich institutional theory. The framework suggests a strategic concept of power, which provides space for contestation by subordinate groups in complex dynamic social systems. We apply the framework to analyse the international negotiations to control emissions of greenhouse gases, focusing on the responses of firms in the US and European oil and automobile industries. The neo-Gramscian framework explains some specific features of corporate responses to challenges to their hegemonic position and points to the importance of political struggles within civil society. The analysis suggests that the conventional demarcation between market and non-market strategies is untenable, given the embeddedness of markets in contested social and political structures and the political character of strategies directed toward defending and enhancing markets, technologies, corporate autonomy and legitimacy. [source] The Transitional Impacts of Municipal ConsolidationsJOURNAL OF URBAN AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2000Igor Vojnovic This article examines the transition and short-term effects of municipal consolidation on five recently amalgamated municipalities in Canada. The data for this study were collected from provincial and municipal legislations, tax-rate by-laws and finance reports, as well as surveys and interviews with a variety of municipal officials and mayors. The analysis shows that municipal consolidation involves a complex reorganization of intricate administrative and political structures. Many of the problems encountered, and successes achieved, were particular to the circumstances of the municipalities that amalgamated. Ultimately, the success of consolidation in achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness in governance and service delivery will depend on the distinct history, as well as the spatial and economic circumstances, of the region considering reform. The five case studies, however, provide some useful lessons on how to improve the success of consolidations. [source] TOMBS FOR THE DEAD, MONUMENTS TO ETERNITY: THE DELIBERATE DESTRUCTION OF MEGALITHIC GRAVES BY FIRE IN THE INTERIOR HIGHLANDS OF IBERIA (SORIA PROVINCE, SPAIN)OXFORD JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY, Issue 3 2010MANUEL A. ROJO-GUERRA Summary An interpretation of the features surrounding the complex and deliberate closure ritual in several collective Middle Neolithic tombs of the Ambrona Valley (Soria) is offered, where fire and quicklime played a major role in the rituals. The problems involved in the excavation and the understanding of this complex burial evidence are examined. The roles they might have played in the context of the important social and economic transformations of the local Neolithic groups around the end of the fourth millennium cal BC are also analysed. It is argued that the burial rituals tried to reinforce group solidarity at a time when the community was beginning to fragment, as the economic systems began to yield a surplus production whose management would have altered political structures. [source] Multiple Sovereignty: On Europe's Self-Constitutionalization and Legal Self-ReferenceRATIO JURIS, Issue 1 2010This article focuses on theoretical reflections on sovereignty and constitutionalism in the context of the globalization and Europeanisation of the nation states, their politics, and legal systems. Starting from a critical assessment of the Kelsen-Schmitt polemic, the author claims that sovereignty needs to be analysed by the sociological method in order to disclose its current structural differentiation. The constitution of society may be imagined as the multitude of self-constituted and functionally differentiated social subsystems. The constitutional pluralism argument subsequently reconceptualizes sovereignty as socially differentiated and divided between specific subsystems. The EU's differentiated constitutional domain and the paradox of divided sovereignty are used as examples of profound structural and semantic changes in contemporary national and transnational societies. While the sovereign nation-state institutions have become marginalized in political structures of European societies, the self-constitutionalization of the functionally differentiated EU legal system proceeds by internalizing the concept of divided sovereignty and using it semantically as its mode of self-reference. [source] Disability activism and the politics of scaleTHE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER/LE GEOGRAPHE CANADIEN, Issue 2 2003Rob Kitchin In this paper, we examine the role of spatial scale in mediating and shaping political struggles between disabled people and the state. Specifically, we draw on recent theoretical developments concerning the social construction of spatial scale to interpret two case studies of disability activism within Canada and Ireland. In particular, we provide an analysis of how successful the disability movement in each locale has been at ,jumping scale' and enacting change, as well as examining what the consequences of such scaling-up have been for the movement itself. We demonstrate that the political structures operating in each country markedly affect the scaled nature of disability issues and the effectiveness of political mobilization at different scales. Dans cette dissertation, nous examinons le rõle de l'échelle spatiale dans la médiation et le développement des luttes politiques entre les handicapés et l'État. Spécifiquement, nous nous inspirons des récents développements théoriques concernant la structure sociale de l'échelle spatiale pour interpréter deux études de cas d'activisme des handicapés au Canada et en Irlande. Dans ces deux études, nous analysons en particulier le taux de succès obtenu par les mouvements des handicapés dans chacun de ces pays en matière de « saut d'échelle » et pour provoquer un changement. Nous examinons aussi les retombées d'une telle augmentation d'échelle sur le mouvement lui-m,me. Nous démontrons que les structures politiques présentes dans chaque pays affectent profondément la nature hiérarchique des questions d'invalidité et l'efficacité de la mobilisation politique à différentes échelles. [source] Front and Back Covers, Volume 22, Number 5.ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY, Issue 5 2006October 200 Front and back cover caption, volume 22 issue 5 Front cover Kayapo men of Brazilian Amazonia dance at a meeting of all Kayapo villages held in March 2006 with the aim of forging a united movement against the encroachment of agribusiness and large-scale development projects into the Xingú river valley. Up to the time of this meeting the widely dispersed Kayapo communities had never joined together as a single political organization under a common leadership. That they were able to do so at this meeting owed much to their ability to draw upon their shared tradition of collective ritual dance performances, which serve as the principal means of reproducing the social and political structures of their separate villages. At the meeting, held at the Kayapo village of Piaraçu on the Xingú, members of rival communities with mutually suspicious leaders joined in dances such as this one, drawn from the ritual for war, that expressed their solidarity in opposition to the common external threat. For the general audience, periodic interludes of dancing also provided a dramatic way of showing solidarity with one another and jointly expressing support for the orators, who were mostly leaders of the different communities. The meeting closed with a new ritual created for the occasion that began with a collective dance and culminated in a rite symbolizing the new level of common chiefly authority and leadership, encompassing Kayapo society as a whole, that had been created at the meeting. Back cover COMPETITIVE HUMANITARIANISM The back cover of this issue shows a detail from a map of ,Humanitarian actors involved in tsunami-related activities in Sri Lanka'. This excerpt lists but a few dozen of the many hundreds of agencies competing to provide relief in the wake of the tsunami that hit Sri Lanka in December 2004. In most disasters, a major problem facing relief agencies is a lack of resources. In the case of the 2004 tsunami, however, agencies were forced into competition with each other for effective distribution of an embarrassment of riches. Yet this distribution had to be in line with international standards, and needed to meet the requirements of those who had donated to the various appeals in other parts of the world and had specific ideas of what constituted relief. The result was an over-concentration on the visible and the photogenic rather than the arguably more important work of rebuilding institutions and social networks. As well as needing to meet international standards, relief agencies were subject to the bureaucratic requirements that they should expend their resources in an accountable fashion. Their slow reaction opened the way for a plethora of small and inexperienced organizations (and individuals) to enter the relief business. The aid they dispensed was often poorly directed and technically inferior, but the visibility of their operations prompted an easy criticism of the more ponderous activities of the larger relief organisations. While ready availability of resources marked out the tsunami relief effort from most other disasters, what seems to characterize aid operations in the wake of such disasters is a high degree of competition between relief agencies, and a continual call for a greater degree of co-ordination between relief organizations. Yet competitive pressures mean that co-ordination is unlikely to be attainable over more than the short term. From an anthropological point of view the following paradox is worthy of study: while philanthropy can be seen as the antithesis of self-interest, philanthropic organisations are inherently part of a self-interested, market-orientated social order. What starts out as a ,free gift' from the public of Europe, Asia or elsewhere ends up as a commodity in the marketplace of competitive humanitarianism. [source] The Rich, the Powerful and the Endangered: Conservation Elites, Networks and the Dominican RepublicANTIPODE, Issue 3 2010George Holmes Abstract:, This paper explores conservation as an elite process in the Dominican Republic. It begins by showing how conservation at a global level is an elite process, driven by a small powerful elite. Looking at the Dominican Republic, it demonstrates how the extraordinary levels of protection have been achieved by a small network of well connected individuals, who have been able to shape conservation as they like, while limiting the involvement by the large international conservation NGOs who are considered so dominant throughout Latin America. Despite this, conservation both globally and in the Dominican Republic is shown to share similar political structures and the same lack of critique of capitalism or its environmental impacts. [source] Challenges and dilemmas: fieldwork with upland minorities in socialist Vietnam, Laos and southwest ChinaASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 2 2010Sarah TurnerArticle first published online: 28 JUL 2010 Abstract The Chinese, Vietnamese and Lao spaces within the upland Southeast Asian massif, sheltering over 80 million people belonging to geographically dispersed and politically fragmented minority populations, have only recently reopened to overseas academic endeavours. Undertaking social sciences research there among ethnic minority groups is underscored by a specific set of challenges, dilemmas, and negotiations. This special issue brings together Western academics and post-fieldwork doctoral students from the realms of social anthropology and human geography, who have conducted in-depth fieldwork among ethnic minorities in upland southwest China, northern Vietnam, and southern Laos. The articles provide insights into the struggles and constraints they faced in the field, set against an understanding of the historical context of field research in these locales. In this unique context that nowadays interweaves economic liberalisation with centralised and authoritarian political structures, the authors explore how they have negotiated and manoeuvred access to ethnic minority voices in complex cultural configurations. The ethical challenges raised and methodological reflections offered will be insightful for others conducting fieldwork in the socialist margins of the Southeast Asian massif and beyond. This specific context is introduced here, followed by a critique of the literature on the core themes that contributors raise. [source] King Canute and the ,Problem' of Structure and Agency: On Times, Tides and HerestheticsPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2009Colin Hay The story of King Canute (Cnut) is well known. Indeed, in perhaps its most familiar form it exists as an oral historical tradition passed from generation to generation. In this almost legendary account, King Canute is depicted as an arrogant ruler, so confident as to his own omnipotence that he takes on the forces of nature, pitting his own powers against those of the rising tide , his wet robes paying testament to his powerlessness in the face of potent material forces and to the triumph of (natural) structures over (human) agency. Or so it might seem. In this article I suggest that even in this, the simplest depiction of the story of Canute, the relationship between structure and agency is more complex and involved than it appears. This complexity is only accentuated if we turn from the legend to the historical evidence. Moreover, by reflecting on Canute's practical negotiation of the ,problem' of structure and agency we can not only gain an interesting political analytical purchase on a seemingly familiar tale, but we can also generate a series of valuable and more general insights into our understanding of the structure,agency relationship. In particular, the (various) stories of King Canute and the waves alert us to the need: (1) to maintain a clear distinction between the empirical and the ontological; (2) to resist the temptation to attempt an empirical adjudication of ontological issues (or, indeed, an ontological adjudication of empirical issues); (3) to differentiate clearly between the capacities of agents with respect to material/physical structures on the one hand, and social/political structures on the other; (4) to acknowledge the significance of unintended consequences; (5) to attend to the ,performative' dimensions of agency; and (6) to recognise the dangers inherent in an overly instrumental view of actors' motivations and intentions. [source] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||