Reframing the Favela, Remapping the City: Territorial Embeddedness and (Trans)locality in “Framing Content” on Brazilian Favela Blogs

In recent years, the internet has become a key site for the portrayal of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas. This article examines blogging by favela residents and argues that digital culture constitutes a vital, and as yet not systematically explored, arena of research on the representation of Rio de Janeiro and its favelas. Based on ethnographically inspired research carried out in 2009–2010, this article examines two examples of blog ‘framing content’ (a sidebar and a static page) encountered during fieldwork, which functioned to establish a concrete link between the posts on the blogs in question, their authors, and a named favela, even when the posts were not explicitly about that favela. At the same time, the framing content also made visible, and affirmed, the translocal connections between that favela, other favelas, and the city as a whole. These illustrative examples from a wider study show how favela bloggers are engaged in resignifying and remapping the relationships between different empirical scales of locality (and associated identities) in Rio de Janeiro, demonstrating the contribution an interdisciplinary approach to the digital texts and practices of favela residents can make to an understanding of the contemporary city and its representational conundrums, from the perspective of ‘ordinary practitioners’.

The Extra-territorial Obligations of European States regarding Human Rights in the Context of Terrorism

This chapter focuses on the growing tendency of international human rights law to require states to protect the rights of non-nationals who are in the state unlawfully and of nationals and non-nationals who are outside the state, especially when any of these people are involved in terrorist or counter-terrorist activity. It reviews these additional obligations within a European context, focusing on EU law and the law of the European Convention on Human Rights and drawing on the case law of UK courts. Part 1 considers when a European state must grant asylum to alleged terrorists on the basis that otherwise they would suffer human rights abuses in the state from which they are fleeing. Part 2 examines whether, outside of asylum claims, a European state must not deport or extradite an alleged terrorist because he or she might suffer an abuse of human rights in the receiving state. Part 3 looks at whether a European state whose security forces are engaged in counter-terrorism activities abroad is obliged to protect the human rights of the individuals serving in those forces and/or the human rights of the alleged terrorists they are confronting. While welcoming the extension of state responsibility, the chapter notes that it is occurring in a way which introduces three aspects of relativity into the protection of human rights. First, European law protects only some human rights extra-territorially. Second, it protects those rights only when there is ‘a real risk’ of their being violated. Third, sometimes it protects those rights only when there is a real risk of their being violated ‘flagrantly’.

Introduction: dispersed minorities and non-territorial autonomy

The concept of non-territorial autonomy gives rise to at least two important questions: the range of functional areas over which autonomy extends, and the extent to which this autonomy is indeed non-territorial. A widely used early description significantly labelled this ‘national cultural autonomy’, implying that its focus is mainly on cultural matters, such as language, religion, education and family law. In many of the cases that are commonly cited, ‘autonomy’ may not even extend this far: its most visible expression is the existence of separate electoral registers or quotas for the various groups. Part of the dilemma lies in the difficulty of devolving substantial power on a non-territorial basis: to the extent that devolved institutions are state-like, they ideally require a defined territory. Ethnic groups, however, vary in the extent to which they are territorially concentrated, and therefore in the degree to which any autonomous arrangements for them are territorial or non-territorial. This article explores the dilemma generated by this tension between ethnic geography (pattern of ethnic settlement) and political autonomy (degree of selfrule), and introduces a set of case studies where the relationship between these two features is discussed further: the Ottoman empire and its successor states, the Habsburg monarchy, the Jewish minorities of Europe, interwar Estonia, contemporary Belgium, and two indigenous peoples, the Sa´mi in Norway and the Maori in New Zealand.

Conclusion: patterns of non-territorial autonomy

This article seeks to generalise about the significance of non-territorial autonomy as a mechanism for the management of ethnic conflict on the basis of a set of case studies covering the Ottoman empire and its successor states, the Habsburg monarchy, the Jewish minorities of Europe, interwar Estonia, contemporary Belgium, and two indigenous peoples, the Sami in Norway and Maori in New Zealand. It begins by assessing the extent to which the spatial distribution of ethnonational communities determined the range of autonomy options available—whether these might be territorial or whether only non-territorial autonomy would be realistic. The article continues with an assessment of the significance of ‘autonomy’ in circumstances where the institutions with which it is associated enjoy a non-territorial rather than a territorial writ. It concludes by suggesting that in almost all cases where autonomy is extended to a minority within a state this is exercised on a territorial basis, and that in many cases of non-territorial autonomy, or national–cultural autonomy, the powers assumed by the ‘autonomous’ institutions are substantially symbolic. It argues that notwithstanding the limited empirical evidence for the existence of non-territorial autonomy, this device should not be written off at a normative level.