In this chapter an artistic practice involving a performative interpretation of an everyday mundane object, a chair (designed by the modernist architect G. Rietveld), is analyzed as indicative of the power to potentialize space which is hidden in the production and use of everyday objects. Objects may become mediators of sharing, and carriers of an open community of commoners in the making. The project “Sitting is a Verb” seems to hint towards such a possibility. This project took place at IMPA, a recuperated factory in Buenos Aires (2010–2011. A visual artist, Aimée Zito Lema, and a social anthropologist, Nahuel Blaton, conceived this project as an artistic contribution to a larger project: the creation of a University of Workers inside the IMPA building complex. This project tried to orient the means through which its contribution to the emerging University of Workers (to be hosted inside IMPA) was realized towards a commoning ethos. Beyond the distinction between a useful object and an art object (considered as an object of no use), the Rietveld-IMPA chairs were art-works by being useful (as functional) but also by being emblems of cooperation, symbolic condensations of an emerging autonomous education spirit. Excerpts from an interview with the artist are included in the chapter.

While some ethnographers plan their exit strategies extensively, ‘leaving’ is nuanced by several contextual factors, not least the type of relationships fieldworkers build with their research participants, and the nature of their participatory involvement during fieldwork. To illustrate the situated qualities of ethnographic disengagement, the chapter presents two ‘confessional’ vignettes – one from education, the other from (elite) sport – on how two male researchers managed the process of departing their respective fieldwork sites. The first case study charts Alex’s leaving narrative as a working-class academic researching working class schooling. It discusses how the researcher’s social baggage came to influence the mediation and maintenance of field relations, and how, over time, friendly relations (especially with pupils) were formed and enhanced. The narrative reports that even though the researcher planned to stay in contact with participants post-fieldwork, this did not happen for several practical and methodological reasons. The second case study traces the evolution of Harry’s interpersonal connection with his principal gatekeeper, ‘Coach, and examines how the changing circumstances of their relationship shaped the manner of Harry’s disengagement. More specifically, the narrative explores the exchange of power, vulnerability and responsibility that Harry shared with Coach over time that confirmed Harry’s sense of duty to remain in contact long after the cessation of his fieldwork. Through a comparative analysis of these leaving experiences, the chapter concludes by reflecting on the ethical commitment ethnographers make to involve themselves, long term, in people’s lives, and the ethical judgements that arise therefore from ethnographers’ choice of exit strategy.

In January 2019, the Kenyan government rolled out a new ‘National Integrated Identity Management System’ for registering all residents in the country. This is commonly referred to as the ‘huduma namba’. Under the terms of this programme, all individuals residing in the country are required to register their details on a central database. They would then be given a unique number. This chapter focuses on how members of the Shona community in Kenya who are at risk of statelessness engaged with the huduma namba and their experiences of doing this. The chapter finds that some such individuals believed that registering with the huduma namba would provide access to some form of documentation which would help them to access rights and perhaps eventually citizenship. Despite this hope, the research for this chapter found that the huduma namba programme was problematic at several levels. In the first place, persons at risk of statelessness encountered challenges in their attempts to register for a huduma namba. Further, using specific rights – namely, access to employment and the rights of persons with disabilities – as examples, the chapter demonstrates that, in the end, this project created problems, rather than providing solutions. To conclude, the chapter proposes specific measures, which the government can take, to meet challenges that registration processes such as these present. It provides lessons both for the Kenyan context in particular and for wider discussion about the use of documentation programmes to address the challenges associated with statelessness.

The chapter addresses the cultural and symbolic dimension of constitutions, particularly their connection to popular and national sovereignty. Beginning with Rousseau’s symbolic constitutionalism, it demonstrates how fundamental political and legal matters are closely integrated with cultural processes related to affective responses and identification. It argues that sovereignty as symbolism and story, despite its reflexive character, is inherently connected to the constitutional culture of the territorial state.

The postscript reviews some of the key findings of the book, and considers the future of the archive art phenomenon.

A short description of a fieldwork experience in highland Peru is used to illustrate how Bailey’s work during his last years at the University of Sussex provided key elements for the author’s ethnographic method and understanding of culture. This is followed by the author’s memories of his time as a doctoral student under Bailey’s supervision. This narrative is then re-envisioned through the lens of selected tools from Stratagems and Spoils.

Humankind has enjoyed a rich history of wars, ever since men could organise themselves into fighting units against adversary forces. While international law categorically sanctioned the resort to war other than for legitimate self-defence, the family of nations has since time immemorial, whether individually or collectively, attempted to regulate personal conduct in warfare. After the Thirty Years War, which was terminated with the 1648 Peace Treaty of Westphalia, war became an interstate affair, rather than as previously a personal feud between princes. This chapter examines the evolution of custom in international humanitarian law and the elements that demonstrate evidence of state practice and opinio juris with regard to criminalisation. Wright, in his comments to the concluding Law Report of the allied trials of World War II, claimed that the punishment of war criminals had 'been recognised by the practice of nations and [was] part of the traditional law'.

Following a decade of restrictive measures on migration and nationality matters, in late 2013 the Constitutional Tribunal in Santo Domingo issued a ruling which effectively denationalised over 130,000 Dominicans of mainly Haitian ancestry. Despite some limited pushback achieved by civil society actors and their allies at home and abroad and notwithstanding official rhetoric to the contrary, this egregious violation of human rights is far from being redressed. This chapter analyses the policy environment in recent years with an eye to anticipating future developments. Compared with international norms for addressing statelessness, the legal framework developed and operated in the country since 2014 is inadequate but nevertheless gives human rights defenders some space with which to manoeuver to restore the rights of nationality-stripped persons. The respective roles of international human rights actors and local organisations will be explored to assess the extent to which there has been effective complementarity in both drawing attention to limitations in the framing of the problem, as well as in the operation of relevant legislation. In particular, the chapter interrogates why important regional jurisprudence on statelessness emanating from the inter-American human rights system has not been met with compliance on the ground – rather, generating backlash. In sum, what are the prospects for better governance of labour migration on the island? Will there be more progress towards inclusion of the descendants of Haitian migrant workers born in the Dominican Republic, overcoming persistent discrimination and discretionary legal latitude and practice which continue to serve to exclude one ethnic minority?

This chapter argues for the usefulness of intersectional feminist analysis in statelessness work. It presents an introductory analysis of how a complex web of power, socio-cultural, disciplinary, interpersonal, hegemonic, and structural relations impact those affected by statelessness. The discussion is grounded in the experiences of multiply marginalised populations in Europe, such as Romani women and same-sex parents, as documented by the European Network on Statelessness. The authors contribute theoretical and practical expertise to move the sector towards a more nuanced understanding of the lived experiences of people affected by multiple forms of discrimination and statelessness, and what this means for policy advocacy in the short and longer term. By applying intersectionality, researchers and advocates can look inside categories, such as a minority group or ‘the stateless’, to understand differences in lived experiences and stitch together new understandings, policy solutions, and effective coalitions for change. In the longer term, intersectional thinking enables those coalitions to transform governance by dismantling exclusionary forms of citizenship which are rooted in patriarchy and institutionalised racism. The authors contend that starting from the lived experiences of stateless people, and asking the other question(s), can make a promising starting point in the political project of fulfilling multiply marginalised people’s human right to a nationality.

This chapter examines the history of the 1947 United Nations Commission on the future of post-mandate Palestine, which ended in a split between one constituency supporting partition and another promoting a federalist future for a unitary Palestine/Israel – a division not only on the fate of Palestine itself but on the role the UN would play in the postwar world. The proposal for a federated unitary state – supported, notably, by the Commission’s India representative and prepared by the subcommittee’s Pakistani chair – represented an alternative vision for the future of Palestine, but also a different and more limited vision of the state-making capacities of the newly formed UN. In the course of the Commission’s negotiations, then, Palestine emerged as a locus of arguments about internationalism, sovereignty and external governance; and the UN’s eventual decision for partition in 1947 represented a step towards a more interventionist state-building strategy for the ‘Third World’ whose ramifications would go well beyond Palestine itself.

Especially focused on the ways spatial form can organize (form-as-organization), express (form-as-expression of values), and materialize (form-as-construction process) spaces of commoning, this chapter sketches the theoretical trajectories that will be developed throughout the book with the help of concrete research examples. By understanding architecture as an intellectual practice that focuses on the shaping of space, its role in developing an awareness of the potentialities of space and in searching for spatialities of emancipation is explored.

The introduction to Humanitarianism and the Greater War lays out key debates concerning humanitarianism during the First World War and its aftermath. It introduces principal concepts, identifies major trends and historiographical problems, and outlines the collection’s main findings, its larger contribution to scholarships as well as areas for future research.

This chapter begins by providing an account of Fletcher’s education and then offers a thorough and systematic analysis of the ways in which Fletcher selected and approached his classical sources in the context of his writing practice, something that has never been done before in such a comprehensive way. This leads to the identification of a modus operandi that appears to have been distinctive to Fletcher’s deployment of the classics. Fletcher was fond of consulting works by historians of Late Antiquity (especially Greek ones) rather than those belonging to the ‘golden age’ of Latin historiography. This choice of unexpected sources seems to have had a role in determining the sense of disorientation that comes across as the cipher of Fletcher’s portrayal of Rome, especially insofar as those historians generally provided a depiction of Rome that tended to be more pessimistic than that offered by golden-age writers. This chapter then considers Valentinian and The Prophetess in close detail as two case studies that effectively exemplify Fletcher’s approach to his classical sources, which also characteristically entails what appears to have been a programmatic intention to combine well-known materials with recently published works. Finally, the chapter relates Fletcher’s de facto rejection of the grammar school canon in his dramatic writing to his depiction of scholars and learning in his plays, thereby shedding light on a potential connection between his life experiences and his portrayal of education.

During the interwar era the child emerged as an object of international relations. This development is conventionally told through international organisations such as the SCIU (Save the Children International Union), and scholarly emphasis is placed on the mid-1920s when the role of child welfare in international politics became embodied in the 1924 Declaration of the Rights of the Child. This focus, however, marginalises the very immediate (1919–1920) postwar period’s politics of child-centred food aid as well as the role of individuals and existing networks of feminist activists. By contrast, this chapter uses the untold story of Emily Hobhouse’s involvement in the foundation of SCIU (1920) and her Leipzig school feeding scheme (1920–22) to emphasise the role of individuals and of ‘hunger politics’ in 1919–20. It sees Hobhouse’s humanitarian engagement as a practical intervention in political debates over the desirable form of international relations and postwar order. In analysing the link made between nutrition and peace, the chapter tracks the forgotten tensions at the foundation of the SCIU and highlights the impact of controversies over relief to German children in 1919–20 on the evolution of international child welfare. It also underlines the changed context for the 1924 Declaration by drawing it into comparison with other postwar international legal and humanitarian projects. The chapter argues that the Genevan legalism that prevailed in 1924 represented a stark alternative to the 1919–20 credo of gender-based activism. As such it challenges the idea of a straightforward ‘expansion of sympathy’ suggested by other scholars.

The need for new arrangements stemmed from the success of the Convention, whilst the means selected to enable the system to cope with the increasing demand was the creation of a new Court of Human Rights to replace the original institutions. This chapter describes the main features of the new Court, outlines its procedures and reviews its work in order to explain the current supervisory arrangements. Normally, failure to appeal to the Constitutional Court will lead to a ruling of inadmissibility on the ground of non-exhaustion of domestic remedies. With the advent of Protocol No. 11, a new Agreement was required and so the European Agreement relating to Persons Participating in Proceedings of the European Court of Human Rights was concluded in 1996. Judgments of a Chamber and of the Grand Chamber must be reasoned and, as with the original Court, any judge may deliver a separate opinion.