Freeport and the States: Politics of Corporations and Contemporary Colonialism in West Papua

2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 881-910
Author(s):  
Veronika Kusumaryati
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Transnational Corporations ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
West Papua ◽  
The 1960S

AbstractCorporations often claim to be economic actors solely interested in capital accumulation. However, historical and anthropological scholarship has argued they have had outsized political roles, especially during high colonialism when transnational corporations such as the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company shaped colonial entities. This article explores the case of American mining company Freeport-McMoRan, which runs the world’s largest gold and copper mine in West Papua, and its entanglement with contemporary imperial and colonial projects in the region. Through the study of the company’s decisive role in the transfer of West Papua from the Dutch to Indonesia during the decolonization period of the 1960s, and in the formation of the postcolonial Indonesian state characterized by its militaristic and capitalistic stances, this article argues that Freeport’s operation in West Papua has been central to shaping U.S. imperial policy in Southeast Asia. The company’s relationship with the U.S. government and its contract of work with the Indonesian government reproduce an older form of state-corporation partnership called a charter, which grants a corporate body privileges associated with exploration, trade, and colonization. Combining a historical study of the political role of corporations across time and an ethnographic study of Freeport’s operation, this article rethinks the anthropological and historical study of transnational corporations and their roles in the contemporary politics of colonialism.

Nasser's Gamble

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Ferris
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Middle East ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Decisive Role ◽  
Original Material ◽  
Egyptian Revolution ◽  
Arab Nationalism ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Arab Spring

This book draws on declassified documents from six countries and original material in Arabic, German, Hebrew, and Russian to present a new understanding of Egypt's disastrous five-year intervention in Yemen, which Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser later referred to as “my Vietnam.” The book argues that Nasser's attempt to export the Egyptian revolution to Yemen played a decisive role in destabilizing Egypt's relations with the Cold War powers, tarnishing its image in the Arab world, ruining its economy, and driving its rulers to instigate the fatal series of missteps that led to war with Israel in 1967. Viewing the Six Day War as an unintended consequence of the Saudi–Egyptian struggle over Yemen, the book demonstrates that the most important Cold War conflict in the Middle East was not the clash between Israel and its neighbors. It was the inter-Arab struggle between monarchies and republics over power and legitimacy. Egypt's defeat in the “Arab Cold War” set the stage for the rise of Saudi Arabia and political Islam. Bold and provocative, this book brings to life a critical phase in the modern history of the Middle East. Its compelling analysis of Egypt's fall from power in the 1960s offers new insights into the decline of Arab nationalism, exposing the deep historical roots of the Arab Spring of 2011.

scholarly journals Džon i Žaklina Kenedi: politika, kultura i „nova granica“ odevanja

2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 857
Author(s):  
Simona Čupić
Keyword(s):  
Political Affiliation ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Specific Kind ◽  
The Public ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Internal Politics ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War

Jacqueline Kennedy’s style is one of the mainstays of the history of fashion and popular culture, as well as contemporary politics. John Kennedy’s way of dressing garnered much less attention. Even though, at first glance, not as interesting as the first lady’s “fashion sense”, the president’s style was no less thought-out. If, however, we view the changes in clothing as social changes and a determinant of various kinds of social differentiation: marital status, sex, occupation, religious and political affiliation, the way in which the Kennedys were presented to the public becomes more interesting – from the (carefully planned) photos and appearances to art and culture. Having in mind that the 1960s were a time when the appropriation of popular and fictional came back into modern art, and that general changes inherent in the new lifestyle, as well as a layered image of American internal politics, and the cold war map of the world, the carefully thought-out image of the presidential couple can be viewed as a specific kind of metaphor for a complicated time.

John Stuart Mill on China’s Stationary State

2021 ◽  
pp. 833-856
Author(s):  
Yue Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Stationary State ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Mutual Effect ◽  
John Stuart Mill ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Stationary States ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Stagnation

Current literature on John Stuart Mill’s writings about Asia have focused mainly on his relationship with India because of Mill’s thirty-five year career in the East India Company. Scholars in both China and the West have not paid attention to Mill’s views on China. This paper delves into Mill’s notion of China’s stationary state from two perspectives: (1) a stationary state of capital accumulation and (2) a stationary state of human improvement. In Principles, Mill explained his conception of stationary state. He linked China’s economic stagnation to the low desire for capital accumulation. In On Liberty and Considerations, Mill explored the reasons for China’s stagnancy in human improvement. He discussed the negative impact of the “despotism of custom” on individual liberty and the defects of a bureaucratic government in nineteenth-century China. Mill thought that a stationary state of capital accumulation does not necessarily imply a stationary state of human improvement. However, he seemed to argue that, in China, these two types of stationary states have a mutual effect upon each other.

From New Anarchism to Post-anarchism

Kropotkin ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Kinna
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines contemporary anarchist critiques of Kropotkin, especially post-anarchist analysis. It argues that science has become a byword to describe Kropotkin's political theory, providing an exemplar for classical anarchism. This theory is described as teleological, based on a particular concept of human nature and linked to a form of revolutionary utopianism that promises the realisation of anarchy. Post-anarchists dissolve the distance between Kropotkin and Bakunin that advocates of his evolutionary theory invented in the 1960s in order to rescue anarchism from its reputation for violence. This repackaging of historical traditions underpins judgments about the irrelevance of anarchism to contemporary politics and political theory. In response, critics of post-anarchism have sought to defend nineteenth-century revolutionary traditions. The result of this argument is that Kropotkin emerges as a political theorist of class struggle. This defence raises significant questions about the coherence of Kropotkin's position on the war in 1914.

Transformal Role of Product Design in Singapore’s Transition to a Service Economy

2011 ◽  
pp. 431-446
Author(s):  
Peer M. Sathikh
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Free Market ◽  
Small Population ◽  
East India Company ◽  
Scarce Resources ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
City State

Singapore, a city state of 4.8 million people, located at the tip of the Malaysian Peninsula, was founded in 1819, when Sir Stamford Raffles of the East India Company established a trading settlement in Singapore. The meeting point for Chinese, Malays, Indians, Arabs, Europeans and others on their journey through the southern seas, Singapore achieved its initial economic success through international trade as a free port and free market. Given the status of an independent country in 1965, Singapore suddenly found itself in a struggle to survive. It’s small population and scarce resources meant that regional and world markets were larger than the domestic market, presenting the government and its policymakers with distinctive economic challenges and opportunities. This chapter tries to recount the policies and subsequent actions put in place in Singapore from the 1960s till the present, promoting the creative industry, including product design, in order to transform a market dependent economy into a service centered economy. This chapter also discusses if and how such a ‘planned intervention’ played an important role in building up the resources and infrastructure within Singapore and in attracting multi-national companies to locate their R&D and design facilities in Singapore, pointing to where it has succeeded and where it has not.

scholarly journals Praetorian Army in Action: A Critical Assessment of Civil–Military Relations in Turkey

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-222
Author(s):  
Berk Esen
Keyword(s):  
Historical Analysis ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Officer Corps ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Military Relations

With four successful and three failed coups in less than 60 years, the Turkish military is one of the most interventionist armed forces in the global south. Despite this record, few scholars have analyzed systematically how the military’s political role changed over time. To address this gap, this article examines the evolution of civil–military relations (CMR) in Turkey throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Based on a historical analysis, this article offers a revisionist account for the extant Turkish scholarship and also contributes to the broader literature on CMR. It argues that the military’s guardian status was not clearly defined and that the officer corps differed strongly on major political issues throughout the Cold War. This article also demonstrates that the officer corps was divided into opposite ideological factions and political agendas and enjoyed varying levels of political influence due to frequent purges and conjectural changes.

Globalization and Corporatism: The Growth and Decay of Organized Labor in Venezuela, 1900–1998

2001 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 180-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trudie Coker
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Foreign Debt ◽  
The State ◽  
Organized Labor ◽  
Private Capital ◽  
Democratic State ◽  
State Capital ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The One

The contradictory goals of state capital accumulation and redistribution eventually led to the demise of corporatism in Venezuela and probably in much of Latin America. When the Venezuelan state was at its zenith of intervention in the economy, it globalized accumulation via foreign debt. Rather than emphasize accumulation and redistribution as it had during the 1960s and 1970s, accumulation to service the debt became the state's central goal by the 1980s. Declining oil prices by the early 1980s highlighted the weakness of a state caught in the grips of antithetical demands from labor and an increasingly impoverished population, on the one hand, and private capital demanding debt repayment, on the other hand. By definition, corporatism creates a dependency between the state and organized labor. Historically, labor depended on the state for economic subsidies, and the state relied on labor to maintain legitimacy. By the late 1990s, lack of labor autonomy literally dragged labor down with a state drowning in debt and incapacitated by lack of legitimacy. While corporatism is more a relic of things past, the positive implications of increasing labor autonomy are dismal as organized labor has been disarticulated and the democratic state is all but a skeleton.

Southern Africa: Regional Politics and Dynamics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Chan
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Regional Politics ◽  
New Era ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Dominant Party ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Almost All

Southern Africa is a region marked by huge tensions caused by the longevity of colonial rule and racial discrimination. Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa all achieved independence only years after most of Africa, and only with protracted militarized struggle. Even those countries that did enter independence in the 1960s, alongside most of Africa, were marked by the struggles of their neighbors—Zambia, host to exile liberation movements, was a frequent military target; and wars, sponsored or supported by apartheid South Africa, continued to rage in Angola and Mozambique even after they achieved independence. This has marked the post-independence politics of most countries of the region, almost all of whom have gone through, or remain within, an era of one-party politics or dominant party rule. In part, this can be read as a residual longing for stability. In other part it can be read as a “liberation generation” using its history as a lever by which to hang onto power. Having said that, the politics of each country has distinctive characteristics—although one has certainly been protracted effort to adhere to forms of ethics, such as “Humanism” in Zambia, and truth and reconciliation in South Africa. The contemporary politics of the region, however, is one with forms of authoritarianism and corruption and, in many cases, economic decline or turmoil. The rise of Chinese influence is also a new marker of politics in the region as all of Southern Africa, with many different former colonial powers, enters a new era of problematic cosmopolitanism—with the international jostling with already sometimes-volatile elements of ethnic diversity, balancing, and conflict.

The political role of Christian churches

2020 ◽  
pp. 136-149
Author(s):  
Gregory Deacon
Keyword(s):  
Public Services ◽  
Central Place ◽  
The Political ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Christian Churches ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
Political Realm

Christianity has been intimately involved with power in Kenya since the country’s birth even though much has changed with regards to what Christianity is and what it does. Today, as during the colonial and early post-colonial periods, the political role of Christian churches includes the activities of individual clergy and organized churches, both of which make periodic public statements, provide public services, and support local and national governance. However, increasingly important is the central place of neo-Pentecostal ideas, concepts, and imagery in Kenyan society, which pervade the political realm. This chapter outlines the role of Christian churches as organizations. It also analyzes the growth and spread of Christianity as a religion and as a discursive institution as well as associated understandings and practices. Together, this analysis contributes to an understanding of contemporary politics in Kenya, including the place of neo-Pentecostalized Christianity in the 2013 and 2017 elections and Jubilee regime.

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