Post War land reform and the impact on planning in Japan

One feature of Japanese urban areas in the 21st century that is bound to strike any Western visitor is the extensive spread of its suburbs with their varied mixing of land-uses. It is almost impossible to pinpoint precisely where the city begins and where it ends. During the post-War period, this characteristic pattern of land-use sprawled over the countryside, seemingly unimpeded by planning restrictions. The number of studies that highlight the problems of Japanese planning outweighs the research that explores its underlying causes. This paper aims to partly redress this imbalance by describing a case study of the failed implementation of the green belt around Tokyo and to link this with the Allied Occupation’s postwar land reforms and drafting of a new constitution in the period 1946-1951. Overall, we aim to highlight how the ostensible benefits and aims of a land reform programme can entail substantial disbenefits or unforeseen outcomes in terms of land-use planning..

Carl von Clausewitz: On War

OUP Abridged edition, based on the Howard & Paret translation. Includes my Introduction.

Ruminations on war, culture war

To descry that this generation of artists has been in the midst of a war, a cultural war, sounds so obvious. After all, what generation in deeply reactionary times could not claim the same? However, who is struggling with whom and over what can often prove far more open than the popular polarities which pitch government, business, bureaucracy on one side and artists, performers, intellectuals on the other.  But what is it to say we on the one side are at war with the other? Is the war, culturally as much as militarily, limited or unconditional, intermittent or continuous, external or internal, declared or undeclared, defensive or aggressive? Is it a warfare aiming to annihilate or to annex, to conquer or to cleanse, to dominate or to displace, to eliminate or to expel, to impregnate or to enslave. In brief, warfare is waged in diverse ways with diverse goals as the brutally concise words of Thoukydides reveal when brooding upon stasis--the strife from 427 B.C. convulsing city after city in the great war between Athens and Sparta--as  the cause of many calamities--as happens and will always happen while human nature is what it is, though there may be different degrees of savagery, and, as different circumstances arise, the general rules will admit of some variety [Bk 3.82; 1972: 242).

Maine and the Hartford Convention: The Impact of the War of 1812 on the Politics of Maine and Massachusetts

The question of why the New England Federalists failed to force a confrontation with the national government has been a continuing historical controversy. I feel that the vigorous stance of the New England Democratic-Republicans particularly in Maine (then a part of Massachusetts), to radical Federalist schemes acted to restrain their opponents. In the final analysis my argument is that New England could not act without Maine. To paraphrase Federalist George Herbert of Ellsworth, on such a slender thread do the destinies of nations hang.

'Royal science' and civil war in Sri Lanka : a comment on S. Goonatilake

In highlighting the relationship between the production of knowledge, the administration of government and the formation of subject–citizens in colonial systems, post-colonialism has arguably found its most fertile field of inquiry and revision in South Asia. The reasons for this are complex and relate, in part, to the nature of both colonial administration and the colonised civilisations to be found in the region, as well as to the nature of the different independence movements—many of these persisting well beyond the formal grants of independence in the late 1940s. Also important is the emerging post-colonial middle class, its transnational interconnections comprising inter alia extensive participation in knowledge/information economies, and its ‘organic intellectuals’ (Gramsci 1971) whose work represents the interests of their class. In other words, the tremendous insights offered by post-colonial theory into the nature of latent or implicit power relations to be found in forms of knowledge reveal the ongoing complicity of scholarship in government. Post-colonialism, thus, raises the issue of how the nexus of knowledge and power translates into contemporary situations—the post-colonial predicament (Breckenridge and van der Veer 1993).

Exhibit review : Focus on strangers: photo albums of World War II, Stadtmuseum, Jena, Germany, 2011

Focus on Strangers: Photo Albums of World War II is based on a collaborative research project conducted by two German universities (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg and Friedrich Schiller Universität Jena) and was conceptualized in cooperation with four German city museums in Oldenburg, Munich, Frankfurt, and Jena. While the exhibition continues a tradition of museological projects examining Germany’s war history, such as the Wehrmachtsaustellung, which provoked fi erce public debate, Focus on Strangers moves beyond most conventional approaches in a signifi cant way. Th e exhibition pays tribute to the recent development in which private traces of memory have become part of the public perception of history, in this case the history of World War II.