Somali piracy prisoners and biopolitical penal aid in East Africa

2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brittany V Gilmer

Piracy off the coast of Somalia has elicited a growing body of interdisciplinary research. Much of this research focuses on identifying the root causes of piracy, analyzing onshore and offshore responses, or evaluating various rule-of-law approaches; no study has yet to examine how Somali piracy has impacted prisons. Drawing upon ethnographic research, this article explores how UNODC counter piracy funding is reshaping the carceral spaces of East Africa. I examine how the need to secure and develop Somali piracy prisoners in regional prisons has created a bodies-for-aid penal market in East Africa. Large aid packages are awarded to prisons that agree to accept suspected Somali pirates and ensure the support, maintenance, and enhancement of the lives of Somali piracy prisoners. I theorize a new form of penal aid— biopolitical penal aid—linking prison development funding to the containment of specific prisoner populations. Using the Montagne Posée Prison in the Seychelles as a case study, I explore how biopolitical penal aid is reshaping prison spaces and practices to tease out underlying tensions between international and regional security projects, how these projects are negotiated and appropriated at different scales, and how they are being experienced by staff and Somali piracy prisoners.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Scott Travanion Connors

Abstract This article explores the emergence of reformist sentiment and political culture in Madras in the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover, it contributes to, and expands upon, the growing body of literature on colonial petitioning through a case-study of a mass petition demanding education reform. Signed in 1839 by 70,000 subjects from across the Madras presidency, the petition demanded the creation of a university that would qualify western-educated Indians to gain employment in the high public offices of the East India Company. Through an analysis of the lifecycle of this education petition, from its creation to its reception and the subsequent adoption of its demands by the Company government at Fort St George, this article charts the process by which an emergent, politicized public engaged with, and critiqued, the colonial state. Finally, it examines the transformative effect that the practice of mass petitioning had on established modes of political activism and communication between an authoritarian colonial state and the society it governed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie I. Kaiser ◽  
Rose Trappes

AbstractBiological individuality is a notoriously thorny topic for biologists and philosophers of biology. In this paper we argue that biological individuality presents multiple, interconnected questions for biologists and philosophers that together form a problem agenda. Using a case study of an interdisciplinary research group in ecology, behavioral and evolutionary biology, we claim that a debate on biological individuality that seeks to account for diverse practices in the biological sciences should be broadened to include and give prominence to questions about uniqueness and temporality. We show that broadening the problem agenda of biological individuality draws attention to underrecognized philosophical issues and discussions and thereby organizes and enriches the existing debate.


2021 ◽  
pp. 016059762110140
Author(s):  
Emma G. Bailey

The reasons gay men seek out gay travel destinations has been well established in the literature. However, less research has been published on the consequences of that travel on the destinations themselves and the effect of gay tourism on the LGBTQ+ community as a whole. I use ethnographic research in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, a popular international gay tourist destinations for American and Canadian gay men. I focus on how gay destinations are constructed as sites where members of the gay community can experience acceptance and inclusion and I ask the following questions, is this acceptance and inclusion dependent upon consumption? Are the tourist site and expectations for behavior in those sites oppressively normal? That is, does the site create a normative standard of behavior for gay tourists? Furthermore, while gay tourists may experience inclusion and a level of acceptance, how does gay tourism affect the destination site itself? Is this acceptance and inclusion problematized by larger systems of inequality such as class, gender, and race? Lastly, as members of a historically oppressed group, does and should gay tourism rise above its commodification to produce just, equitable relationships within and beyond the LGBTQ+ community including the environment?


Africa ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Françoise Le Guennec-Coppens

Opening ParagraphAs one goes through the numerous publications concerning East Africa, it becomes apparent that certain subjects have rarely been approached, having been neglected or even totally ignored. Such is the case concerning the problems linked with the Hadrami diaspora, the extended study of which—apart from a few notable exceptions—has not yet aroused the interest of historians or the curiosity of anthropologists.


Exchange ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 383-397
Author(s):  
Jan Joris Rietveld

AbstractThe Cariri region is the most isolated and poor part of the rural zone of the diocese of Campina Grande in the Paraiba state of Brazil. The Catholic Church has been present here for a relatively short time: 335 years. Moreover the region has an isolated context and this favors conservatism so that only fundamental changes have an impact. These facts make the Cariri an interesting region for a case study about how Catholicism develops. I distinguish five periods, which are described with religious key words and situated in the socio-cultural context. This classification is a schematization: different types of Catholicism often exist together. It is obvious that the dominant features of Catholicism change with time, but in the mainstream of the fifth period we see a small revolution. Now there are not only influences in the socio cultural context and factors in the Church itself that cause changes, but there are also influences of powerful newcomers, the evangelical churches. Their main impact is that many people have left the Catholic Church and are going to live their old faith in a new form. The Catholic Church is searching for adequate ways to respond to this phenomenon.


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