Infrastructuring Amphibious Space: The Interplay of Aquatic and Terrestrial Infrastructures in the Chao Phraya Delta in Thailand

Abstract

The historic flooding that occurred in 2011 in central Thailand revealed fierce struggles over flood protection, which were made particularly complex because of the unruly nature of water itself. The interplay between two forms of infrastructure, each of which shape the flows of water coursing through the Chao Phraya Delta, is key to understanding this complexity. As an ambiguous place in between the sea and land, a delta environment can be seen alternatively as an extension of the sea or as reclaimable land. Constructing infrastructures based on either of these views remakes the landscape accordingly—thus making the landscape more terrestrial or more aquatic. In the Chao Phraya Delta, the terrestrial infrastructure, which consists of road networks and land-based urban living, has been overlaid on a pre-existing aquatic infrastructure characterized by canal transport and flood adaptive architecture. Mainly due to state interest in facilitating water transport, the aquatic infrastructure organized the landscape of the delta until the mid-twentieth century. However, since then the introduction of modern irrigation has progressively rendered the delta landscape more terrestrial. Dry land created by the irrigation system made modern forms of agriculture, commerce and industry possible. While this terrestrial trend seemed to take over the entire delta, the terrestrial infrastructure did not eliminate the aquatic one. Instead it created a dynamic interplay between different forms of infrastructure. The 2011 flood foregrounded the centrality of this interplay in flood protection and sheds new light on the role of the aquatic infrastructure.     

What is the Meaning of Greening? Cultural Analysis of a Southern Baptist Environmental Text

Scholars and journalists alike interpreted “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change”, a document released in 2008 by a group of American Southern Baptists, as evidence that American evangelicals were becoming increasingly concerned about the environment. Using the tools of textual analysis, I show that this was not the only interpretation of the document at play. While journalists and scholars understood the Declaration as addressing the need to halt climate change, for a group of key Southern Baptist signatories, the document expressed a need for Southern Baptists to engage more actively in the public environmental discourse, lest they relinquish this domain to secular and liberal voices. Critically, the latter group viewed the Declaration as compatible with climate scepticism. My analysis shows how cultural context informs climate change attitudes, while also suggesting socio-historical factors—particularly evangelicals’ embattled mentality—that may support climate change scepticism in Southern Baptist circles.     

Human rights and religious education in the contentious context of conflict-troubled societies: perspectives from human rights education

This article explores some of the tensions that are created from the entanglement of religion and human rights and offers a possible response to these tensions in the context of religious education in conflict-troubled societies. It is suggested that a historicised and politicised approach in religious education in conjunction with human rights education perspectives can promote three important aims: taking power relations between peoples, societies and cultures as sources of problematising the meaning(s) and consequences of both religion and human rights; developing a teaching and learning process in and through which the emphasis is not on identification with religious or cultural identity, but rather a process through which new and productive ways of relationality with the ‘other’ are developed; and, encouraging students to interrogate moralistic discourses of religion or human rights that often prevent the enactment of friendship, compassion and shared fate.     

Cultural Adaptation of CBT for Aboriginal Australians

This paper provides a commentary and provides international context to the research conducted by J. Bennett‐Levy et al. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is a highly structured psychological treatment that has unprecedented empirical validation relative to other approaches to therapy. Despite the wealth of evidence supporting its use, the case for CBT is far less compelling for ethnic minority groups. There is however a growing body of international literature supporting the notion of adaptation of CBT for these groups. The research by J. Bennett‐Levy et al. represents a positive step toward validating CBT for use with Australia's indigenous people that is likely to shape the future direction of research in this field. Suggestions are made regarding the next logical empirical steps in this important area of investigation.     

Political and clinical developments in analytical psychology, 1972‐2014: subjectivity,equality and diversity—inside and outside the consulting room

Utilizing Jung's idea of theory as a ‘personal confession’, the author charts his own development as a theorist, establishing links between his personal history and his ideas. Such links include his relationship with both parents, his sexuality, his cultural heritage, and his fascination with Tricksters and with Hermes. There follows a substantial critical interrogation of what the author discerns as the two main lines of clinical theorizing in contemporary analytical psychotherapy: interpretation of transference‐countertransference, and the relational approach. His conclusion is that neither is superior to the other and neither is in fact adequate as a basis for clinical work. The focus then shifts to explore a range of political and social aspects of the clinical project of analytical psychology: economic inequality, diversity within the professional field, and Jung's controversial ideas about Jews and Africans. The author calls for an apology from the ‘Jungian community’ for remarks about Africans analogous to the apology already issued for remarks about Jews. The paper is dedicated to the author's friend Fred Plaut (1913‐2009).     

Who's the Pest? Imagining Human–Insect Futures Beyond Antagonism

Joining the effort to reimagine our relationships with insects, the Wellcome Collection's ‘Who's the Pest?’ programme attempts to challenge the stigma of insects as ill-disposed ‘bugs’. The article reviews two events in the series, the workshop ‘Insects au gratin’ and the debate ‘Insects vs. humans’, and places them in the context of recent engagements with ‘pests’ in the public realm.     

Politics and religion beyond state borders: the activity of Spanish MEPs on religious issues

This study examines the interplay between the political and religious factors in the activity of Spanish members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in their work within the European Parliament (EP). First, we explore the impact of Spanish MEPs’ religious preferences and ideological beliefs regarding religious affairs on their parliamentary activity. Second, we analyse the parliamentary activity of Spanish MEPs (parliamentary questions and motions for resolution) related to religious affairs. We argue that the rapid and profound process of secularisation in the Spanish population is also observable in the stances of MEPs towards religious affairs. Most of them perceive religious issues as belonging to only the private sphere, and do not consider that their personal religious affiliation and preferences should play any role in their political activity in the EP. The analysis also shows that religion is mainly addressed in an indirect way in the EP and is not a central concern on the agenda. We conclude that despite the fact that religion plays a minor role, the analysis of the activity of Spanish MEPs permits us to detect an affinity between ideological and religious positions. Therefore we argue that the religious cleavage that has characterised the history of Spain, despite having lost its historical strength, is still detectable in the activity of MEPs: right-wing parties are defenders of the values and interests of the Catholic Church within the EP, while left-wing parties have a more secularist agenda and use the EP as an arena to denounce the privileges and attitudes of the Catholic Church in Spain.     

“A new and modern golden age of Jewish culture”: shaping the cultural politics of transnational Jewish antifascism

The Holocaust and a worldwide Jewish enthusiasm and support for the Red Army’s defeat of the German Army on the Eastern Front led to a greater sense of international Jewish consciousness and solidarity often tied to an antifascist politics. Utilizing a transnational lens, I explore how Jewish antifascists of the immediate post-war period proffered a novel cultural politics as a means of addressing ongoing international issues of post-Holocaust Jewish survival in a dangerous and politically uncertain modernity. I examine three Jewish left magazines of the late 1940s that were involved in a loose international antifascist progressive Jewish network and ideological framework. These magazines Jewish Life (USA), New Life (UK) and Unity (Australia) represented similar antifascist politics and cultural outlooks in the USA, Britain and Australia, respectively. They have received little sustained scholarly attention previously. I analyse their vision of diverse multilingual Jewish cultures which were to be promoted and developed in any country where Jews lived and in whatever language they spoke. Their cultural vision represented antifascist values against bourgeois or nationalist Jewish culture and broadly reflected a pro-Soviet, progressive and Jewish internationalist, Popular Front politics and worldview.     

Are organisational politics responsible for turnover intention in French Firefighters?

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of different facets of perceived organisational politics and workplace attitudes onto turnover intention in the French Fire and Rescue service.MethodologyAn electronic survey was administered to fire department employees (n = 255) to investigate the effects of different forms of perceived organisational politics (POP) onto turnover intention, and test for mediation by affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction with structural equation modelling (Lisrel 8.80).FindingsBoth pay-and-promotion and general perceived organisational politics indirectly predicted turnover intention in French firefighters, although the total effect of pay-and-promotion politics was greater than general politics. Affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction mediated the effect of perceived organisational politics onto turnover intention.Practical implicationsPublic organisations, which have recently undergone reorganisations, should monitor perceptions of organisational politics to better understand the association with attitudes (such as affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction), as well as to predict turnover intention.Originality/valueThe study goes expands on the identification of various turnover intention's antecedents to contribute to consider understanding of its reasons, such as perceived organisational politics, where pay-and-promotion politics appears to be more salient factor than general politics. Affective organisational commitment and job satisfaction mediate the effects of POP onto turnover intention with nuanced effects. We also generated support for the order of factors in the model, where job satisfaction is a first-order predictor of turnover intention and organisational commitment second-order one. The POP Scale (Kacmar & Ferris, 1991) was validated in French.     

In Defense of Seeking Wisdom

Abstract: Steven Yates has criticized my claim that we need to bring about a revolution in the aims and methods of academic inquiry so that the aim becomes to promote wisdom rather than just acquire knowledge. Yates's main criticism is that the proposed revolution does not have a clear strategy for its implementation and is, in any case, Utopian, unrealizable, and undesirable. It is argued, here, that Yates has misconstrued what the proposed revolution amounts to; in fact it is realizable, is urgently needed, and involves exploiting the kind of strategies utilized so effectively by the philosophes of the eighteenth‐century French Enlightenment.