The Gentle Decolonial Civilizer of Nations

Book review of Umut Özsu's Completing Humanit

Commodified by displacement: the effects of forced displacement on Syrian refugee women in Lebanon’s agricultural sector

In an effort to contribute to an emergent body of ethnographic work addressing the labour economy of forced displacement and the contribution of women refugee-labour more precisely, the article uses the case-study of Syrian refugee women in Lebanon’s agriculture to uncover how forced displacement has contributed to the exploitation of an already-commodified, invisible, and migrantized workforce. While there is an established and diverse body of literature that investigates female labour invisibility in agriculture (on the one hand), and the relationship between labour commodification and agriculture (on the other hand), less discussed is the relationship between forced displacement and female labour commodification. Based on ethnographic research including interviews and participant observations conducted between May 2018 and September 2019 in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, this article demonstrates how refugee-labourers are subjected to various tactics and instruments of labour coercion, which affect their decision-making power in both the work sphere and the domestic sphere, reinforcing their invisibility as cheap labour and docile refugees. A closer investigation into the labour dynamics on site yet reveals a much more complex reality where women engage in various acts of negotiations by making instrumental use of their femaleness. Notwithstanding the situation of forced displacement, the conditions facing the case of these female refugee-labourers mirrors more broadly the structural problems inherent to contracted labour regimes in corporatized sectors like agriculture

Refusing the ancestry test: Malagasy Ethnic Identity and Genetic Testing

Through navigating personal and socio-political planes, this essay problematises the use of genetic testing in the Malagasy context, and in its invocation as a form of identity formulation that privileges scientific rationality over storied histories. Through considering the social roles of genetic data, this piece interrogates how DNA fails to acknowledge ethnic variation, ancestral histories and storied identify formulation in Madagascar

Patterns of Trust in Financial Services: Critical Factors and Gender Differences

This study investigates the interrelationships among factors of trust in financial services. Additionally, it examines how these factors correlate with gender differences, offering insights into trust patterns in emerging markets. Ethiopia, characterised by economic and financial volatility, was selected as a case study for an emerging market. A sample of 470 individuals was surveyed with the assistance of interviewers to overcome language and literacy obstacles, with balanced representation across key demographics, particularly gender, enabling robust statistical analysis. Logistic regression and correlation matrices were employed to analyse trust. The study reveals that correlations between trust factors vary widely but are predominantly positive, with only one exception. Gender differences in trust factors are evident but do not represent significant schisms in financial behaviour. Unexpectedly, digital trust exhibits a strong positive correlation with age, challenging assumptions about generational preferences for financial technologies. While the sample size aligns with standard practices in similar studies, expanding the dataset would improve the precision of the analysis. The complexity of administering detailed surveys at scale poses a challenge for single studies. This study demonstrates the utility of combining traditional determinants of trust with advanced statistical methods, such as logistic regression, to uncover probabilities and interactions among trust factors. Gender differences in trust patterns exist but are less pronounced than expected, even in a society with significant gender disparity. Other demographic factors, such as age, education, and income, play more substantial roles in shaping trust behaviours, suggesting that financial inclusion efforts should prioritise these variables. This research highlights the transformative potential of digital trust, which extends beyond traditional definitions of trust. Despite operating in a society with high gender disparity, the findings indicate that gender is not a significant concern in financial trust patterns

The Stilwell Affair

This is a critical study of General Stilwell's mission to China (1942-4), during which he served as the Commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Army in Burma, Commander of the Allied China, Burma and India Theatre, and Chiang Kai-shek's Chief of Staff. The mission started off well but his relations with Chiang deteriorated resulting in his recall at Chiang's demand in 1944. Stilwell created a new modern combat effective force for the Chinese Army and put forth a plan to revitalise the Chinese Army. Chiang could not work with Stilwell as he did not understand how the US system worked and consequently thought Stilwell was incompetent and disloyal. The failure of the Stilwell mission had major consequences for China's military capacity post-war and contributed to Chiang's loss of China. By using newly available arichival sources, including Chiang's Diary, this chapter presents an interpretation that challenges most existing literature on the subject

The colonial migration state

This article sheds new light on the historical roots of contemporary migration politics by introducing the notion of the colonial migration state. Bringing together research on colonial population politics and the political science literature on the ‘migration state,’ we compare modes of migration management in three distinct cases of colonialism – settler colonialism in Algeria, protectorate colonialism in Egypt, and corporate colonialism in Saudi Arabia. We show that migration management in these three colonial spaces operated according to similar hierarchically-structured logics of economic extraction and legal-political differentiation. At the same time, these produced different local migration regimes based on variations in modalities of colonial rule, imperial economic interests, and pre-existing local institutions. Through a careful empirical exploration of migration and mobility practices in colonial peripheries, we contribute both to the global history of colonialism and empires, and to more recent work that rethinks the ‘migration state’ concept and its application to contexts across the Global South. We draw attention to the relationship between historical and contemporary forms of hierarchically structured regimes of mobility management, including the enduring importance of racial and religious categories as significant markers of differentiation in global migration, and suggest ways in which contemporary mobility regimes intersect with larger structures of economic extraction and socio-legal differentiation