29526 research outputs found
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Waters of Contestation: Hydropolitics and Resistance in the Amu Darya Basin
No full textThis paper analyses hydropolitical tensions between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan in the Amu Darya Basin, reframing them as expressions of resistance rather than failures of cooperation. It defines resistance as multi-scalar and multi-modal, encompassing infrastructure, institutions, narratives and everyday practices. Tajikistan’s hydropower development, particularly the Rogun Dam, challenges downstream dominance and post-Soviet dependency, while Uzbekistan’s infrastructural entrenchment, environmental framing and diplomatic leverage counter upstream initiatives. Drawing on political ecology, resistance theory and Indigenous scholarship, the study incorporates the Amu Darya’s agency, its seasonal variability, sediment transport and climate vulnerability as a political force influencing state strategies. This perspective challenges anthropocentric hydropolitical models and highlights how human and non-human actors co-produce enduring contestation. Situated in a history of imperial rivalry, Soviet modernisation and post-independence state-building, the analysis shows that resistance is central to governance in the basin. It concludes that adaptive, flexible governance approaches are essential for negotiating a shared future in this dynamic ecological and political landscape
SOAS Journal of Postgraduate Research: Issue 17 (January 2026); Resistance: Meanings and Methods
No full textBiocultural Rights in the Biodiversity Regime: Relationality and the Limits of Instrumentalism
No full textThe biodiversity regime has attempted to navigate conflicting conceptualisations of human–nature relations, straddling instrumental, intrinsic and relational valuations of Nature. Yet, from the inception of the Convention on Biological Diversity, instrumental value has been given primacy, shaping not only the goals of the regime but also the tools it uses for implementation. Against this backdrop, this article traces the doctrinal emergence of biocultural rights within the Convention on Biological Diversity’s traditional knowledge architecture, focusing on Article 8(j) and the ‘family’ of related decisions as governance conditions. The article then examines the regime’s instrumentalist hegemonic valuation of Nature in practice. Access and Benefit Sharing act as one of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s main goals, while translating biodiversity governance into transactions organised around access, consent and benefit flows. Ecosystem services underpin the science–policy interface of the regime, and turn entire ecosystems into market mechanisms while rendering biodiversity governable through measurements and indicators. The result is a pattern in which relational commitments are repeatedly acknowledged while being filtered through economic and technocratic logics, risking performative pluralism. Finally, reading the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework as a critical moment, the article argues that its implementation considerations must operate as a cross-cutting constraint on targets, indicators and finance, and that community protocols and mutually agreed terms can function as interfaces for legal and value pluralism. The key point is that resolving the regime’s tensions is less about choosing between diverse value systems, and more about clarifying how these value systems are meant to interact in practice
Embodied Virtual Reality: Redistributing Narrative Power in Contexts of War and Displacement
Full text linkThis article examines how embodied Virtual Reality (VR), when used as a participatory research method, can support the narrative sovereignty of refugees from the Global South by recognising their stories as key sources of knowledge production. This approach challenges dominant humanitarian and state discourses that often frame refugees as passive victims in need of saving. The article critiques the prevalent use of VR as an empathy machine designed to provoke emotional identification with war survivors. Instead, it argues that embodied VR opens spaces for alternative narratives that offer deeper insight into the lived experiences of displacement. These 360° VR productions, filmed from a first-person perspective and incorporating multisensory cues, enable refugees to exercise narrative agency. Refugees in this study repurpose VR as a performative tool to challenge public representations and actively shape how knowledge about refugees is produced
Specters of slavery in the global economy: rupturing the selective tradition in the history of Lloyd’s of London
Full text linkIn 2020, amid global protests following the murder of George Floyd in the US, Lloyd’s of London – the world’s largest insurance marketplace with origins dating to 1688 – issued an historic apology for its role in the Atlantic slave trade. This confession was a volte-face following a century of ‘forgetting’ the subject. As a foundation of the global colonial economy, we increasingly know more about how insurance enabled Atlantic slavery, but much less about how such atrocities were subsequently marginalized and, in turn, how public controversy was renewed. At the intersection between finance, race, and empire, the argument here responds to this puzzle by explaining the Lloyd’s evading of slavery as a strategic orientation, backed by intellectual, legal, and corporate resources. The article argues that the reexamining of the Lloyd’s-slavery nexus was not only the product of Black Lives Matter, but the labor of many critical agents – scholars, lawyers, and insiders at Lloyd’s – who demanded accountability. By using the concept of the ‘selective tradition’ to excavate these cultural dynamics, the article has wider implications for IPE’s understanding of the racial politics of the insurance industry, as well as how institutional memory and narrative control work in the service of power
The Perception of 'The Other' In Tourism – A Case Study on Residents of Switzerland and Their Views of Chinese Tourists
No full textOne facet through which Europeans encounter Chinese people is by assuming the role of hosts for Chinese tourists. The critical examination of Western perceptions of China is important due to its inherent connection and impact on international political and economic relations. Consequently, this study aimed to examine the Western perception and understandings of Chinese tourists, using the case of Switzerland. Based on a comprehensive set of data and by combining qualitative insights with quantitative analysis, this paper explores the dynamics of different word associations made by participants. The study was able to show that the ‘Swiss gaze’ on Chinese tourists was in general rated as positive or neutral. Still, a critical discussion of the responses points to a minimal but notable presence of underlying themes of Orientalism and othering. The results are relevant both for academia, contributing to a better understanding of the issue of the image of China abroad, as well as for the tourism sector at large, which must increasingly consider the ‘host-visitor-relationship’ and the acceptance of tourists by residents’ communities when designing and governing offers and services
Path Dependency and the Politics of Judicial Governance by the Higher Judicial Council in Cameroon
No full textThis chapter offers a critique of the institutional design of Cameroon’s judicial appointment body, the Higher Judicial Council (HJC). It critically interrogates the extent to which the HJC can enhance or protect judicial independence in Cameroon. It is contended that the institutional design of the HJC, which has largely remained unaltered since its establishment, obviates the potentials to secure the independence of the judiciary. The author adopts institutional theory to argue that lack of progressive change to the structure and functioning of the HJC can be attributed to a path dependent approach to institutional evolution which is intrinsically linked to a political culture of executive dominance. The persistence of this institutional design in its original configuration, is part of a self-reinforcing process necessary to achieve the coordination effect—to ensure that the other institutions within the political system complement each other in maintaining a system of executive dominance. To consider the prospects for reforming the HJC, the author offers some reflections on the potentials for institutional transformations in political systems where institutional interdependence is deeply entrenched and underpinned by an established political culture
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