The Simon Mann Trial,the Demise of the “Dogs of War,” and the Discursive Legitimation of “Humanitarian” Private Security Companies in Africa

The essay provides a critical intercultural analysis of the 2008 trial of the “mercenary” Simon Mann, accused of instigating an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. The author argues that Equatorial Guinean President, Teodoro Obiang, tried to turn this trial into a tactical, neocolonial critique of mercenary activities that were allegedly supported by the United Kingdom, Spain, and other Western powers. Unfortunately, he was only partially successful. The growing influence of private security corporations and the suasory power of new military “rescue” tales meant that there were no shortage of defenders of these types of coups. This study demonstrates how certain actions can, at times, be simultaneously characterized as dominant strategies and subaltern tactics.     

Evolution of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: The Effects of the “Third” on the Interplay Between Cooperation and Competition

Minerva - The paper investigates the evolution of the first manned international space mission – a rendezvous and docking between a US and a Soviet spacecraft in 1975 known as the...     

“The Hardest Task”—Peer Review and the Evaluation of Technological Activities

Minerva - Technology development and innovation are fundamentally different from scientific research. However, in many circumstances, they are evaluated jointly and by the same processes. In these...     

The “sacred” standing for the “fallen” spirits: Yasukuni Shrine and memory of war

This essay examines the rhetoric/politics of Yasukuni Shrine as an experiential memory-scape, a material and discursive ground to frame and enact banal patriotism and militant nationalism. As a powerful mnemonic and rhetorical institution, Yasukuni Shrine (re)produces a nationalistic narrative and identity by (con)fusing natural feelings of individual grief and cultural tradition of commemoration with national heritage of banal patriotism. By (con)fusing what is “particular” and “universal,” Yasukuni Shrine establishes its rhetorical ground to justify a “banal” sense of patriotism that slips into the “ordinary yet honorable” fervor of militant nationalism, while effectively evading its moral/ethical reflexivity.     

The Church of the Maddalena in Venice: the use of laser in the cleaning of the façade

The Church of the Maddalena was built between 1763 and 1778 by Tommaso Temanza. The building has a central plan and is surmounted by a copper-covered brick masonry dome. The conservation work conducted on the façade has highlighted the superb quality workmanship of the Istrian stone surfaces, which feature extremely fine grain, perfectly regular tooth-chiselling. This finish has led, however, to very specific conditions of decay and laser treatment provided appreciably better results than traditional chemical and mechanical methods. In addition to laser, however, other methods of cleaning were used in order to find the best response to each of the various situations encountered. Indeed it should be emphasized that in restoration it is often appropriate to exploit the potential of several systems, combining their action on the basis of careful preliminary analyses.     

“The Ennobling Unity of Science and Technology”: Materials Sciences and Engineering, the Department of Energy, and the Nanotechnology Enigma

The ambiguous material identity of nanotechnology is a minor mystery of the history of contemporary science. This paper argues that nanotechnology functioned primarily in discourses of social, not physical or biological science, the problematic knowledge at stake concerning the economic value of state-supported basic science. The politics of taxonomy in the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences in the 1990s reveals how scientists invoked the term as one of several competing and equally valid candidates for reframing materials sciences in ways believed consonant with the political tenor of the time. The resulting loss of conceptual clarity in the sociology of science traces ultimately to the struggle to bridge the disjunction between the promissory economy of federal basic science and the industrial economy, manifested in attempts to reconcile the precepts of linearity and interdisciplinarity in changing socio-economic conditions over a half century.     

“Innovation Studies”: The Invention of a Specialty

Innovation has become a very popular concept over the twentieth century. However, few have stopped to study the origins of the category and to critically examine the studies produced on innovation. This paper conducts such an analysis on one type of innovation, namely technological innovation. The study of technological innovation is over one hundred years old. From the early 1900s onward, anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and economists began theorizing about technological innovation, each from his own respective disciplinary framework. However, in the last forty years an economic and ??dominant?? understanding of technological innovation has developed: technological innovation defined as commercialized invention. This paper documents the origins of this representation and the tradition of research to which it gave rise: ??innovation studies.?? More specifically, it analyzes what distinguishes this tradition from that concerned with technological change as the use of inventions in industrial production, and looks at why such a tradition originated in Europe.     

The Philippine–American War and the American Debates about the Necessity and Legality of the “Water Cure,” 1901–1903

Abstract

This essay provides a critical genealogical study of the “water cure” controversies that took place during the Philippine–American War. The author extends the work of Foucault and Agamben to argue that a biopolitical review of this controversy illustrates how many of the legal and cultural arguments used to legitimate the water cure have resurfaced in contemporary debates about waterboarding and enhanced interrogations techniques. The essay also illustrates how anti-imperialists and other critics of Theodore Roosevelt's administration tried to use these water-cure debates as discursive vehicles for complaining about the systematic abuse of Filipinos during the Philippine “Insurrection.”