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Abstract

This article suggests that the quarter of the world's states that are African can yet contribute to new “developmental” regionalisms in theory and practice, as the North enters a period of ambivalence about, if not retreat from, positive global engagement. This article builds on the pioneering analysis of Björn Hettne with Inotai on new regionalism and the related contributions out of contemporary “development” studies by Jan Nederveen Pieterse on East-South relations and Oliver Stuenkel on a non-Western world.

Abstract

The regions–cohesion nexus focuses on how much people and place “prosperity” cannot be readily distinguished but are intimately connected. After reviewing some older sources on this logic, the article examines the current status of social cohesion within the European Union and what the future might hold depending on how much a crucial balance between global competitiveness and social cohesion is restored as the centerpiece of the supranational union. Current trends point in different directions, so critical choices will have to be made if the European Union as a whole is to survive and prosper. The income and fiscal divides between East and West and North and South should be the primary focus for rehabilitating the regions–cohesion nexus.

Abstract

This article analyzes the evolution, between 2010 and 2020, of the organizations created during the Latin American post–liberal regionalism wave. It describes their rise and decline and includes recent public opinion data to claim that there is no demand or supply for an eventual fifth wave of regionalism that would replicate the previous models. Considering the failure of national governments in fulfilling basic human needs, it nonetheless claims that the deepening of the critical social and economic conditions, especially in the COVID-19 pandemic context, could lead to a fifth wave of regionalism in Latin America. Nevertheless, to succeed, such a wave could be inspired by international and regional technical organizations in a way that would recall the principles of David Mitrany's functionalist theory.

Abstract

This article considers the railways as a decolonial option for moving toward mobility justice. It views the photographic artwork Trained Man by Ngalkban Australian artist Darren Siwes through a mobilities lens, considering how the artist plays with time and attends to space, making visible what colonial projects of protection and assimilation have attempted to erase. Attending to the truths and imaginaries that reside and move with Trained Man, it draws on the work of Aboriginal and Black artists, scholars, and activists to trace Australia's past and present colonial history of training Aboriginal people into whiteness. It considers the railways as carrying “two lines of destiny” with potential moving in both colonial and decolonial directions. The article concludes by suggesting that shared spaces such as the railways open possibilities for mobilizing the decolonial project.

A unique exhibition was held between 19 and 22 September 2018 in the deep blue waters of Amorgos, Greece.1 Amorgos is the easternmost of the Cyclades islands, neighboring the Dodecanese island group. The island's rich aquatic life and architectural beauty featured prominently in French director Luc Besson's internationally acclaimed English-language film on freediving, The Big Blue (Le Grand Bleu, 1988), transforming the island into an international destination for tourists and freedivers. The exhibition, Underwater Gallery: On a Single Breath, was installed at a depth of 7 to 17 meters inside a sea cave in the area of Aghios Pavlos, below the Monastery of Hozoviotissa. Hozoviotissa's famous top-floor window of the “big blue” opens to the Aegean Sea, affording visitors a bird's eye view to the Aegean. It is clear that the gallery's connection to Besson's artwork is indisputable.

Abstract

This article reflects on the dissenting act of mobility as articulated by migrant workers in India, who, during the nationwide lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, are walking back home, hundreds of miles away, in lieu of public transport. Their mobility—precisely, the act of walking—has thus acquired a metaphoric status, and laid bare the ideological practices of territorializing the city-space. This article argues that the migrant worker's mobility, from within the axiomatic of the prevalent “mobility regime,” can be read as a powerful metaphor of our tensions within the global political-economic order that the pandemic has so starkly exposed. The article provokes less literal, but more literary, understandings of mobilities in general, in order to come to grips with the manifold contradictions, paradoxes, and counteractions in the way the world moves.