Editorial
We have worked on Issues Volume 4 amid the loss and suffering caused by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We especially extend our sympathies to our contributors, colleagues and readers who continue to live with the devastating impacts of the pandemic.
Issues Volume 4 offers a collection of essays in Dutch, Nepali, iTaukei, Pijin and Turkish, in addition to English. The first three essays relate the impacts of COVID 19 on diverse forms of social life, discussing waste and blame in Amsterdam, kinship and care in New York, and digital media and barter economy in Fiji. The final two essays explore the role of smartphones in everyday life in the Solomon Islands, and the political performance of urban space in Turkey. Our featured authors are Annemarie Mol (University of Amsterdam), Ross Perlin (Endangered Language Alliance), Nawang T. Gurung (Independent researcher), Sienna R. Craig (Dartmouth College), Maya Daurio (University of British Columbia), Daniel Kaufman (City University of New York), Mark Turin (University of British Columbia), Glenn Finau (University of Tasmania), Jason Titifanue (University of the South Pacific), Romitesh Kant (University of the South Pacific), Suliasi Vunibola (University of Canterbury), Geir Henning Presterudstuen (Western Sydney University), Heather Horst (Western Sydney University), Sharon Inone (National University of Ireland), Geoffrey Hobbis (University of Groningen) Stephanie Ketterer Hobbis (Wageningen University), and Oznur Sahin (Western Sydney University).
Mol’s essay follows the traces of trash, or “sin” as she says, in Amsterdam, showing how waste is mobilised to elicit blame. She follows the changing contours of blame as it travels between neglectful neighbours, a failing municipality, overflowing containers and even the government that ordered the lockdown. Mol argues that blame moves around institutions, materials, and people of the city like a ghost or spirit and asks, “how has this spirit managed to survive so tenaciously?”
Perlin et al. foreground questions of cultural continuity and change among the diasporic Nepali community in New York afflicted with COVID 19. This community mobilises its assets—kin and community relations, and people’s knowledge of diverse languages and social media—to survive the crisis. The authors argue that the care shown by the Himalayan community in New York instils “a sense of belonging as well as maintaining concrete social safety nets.”
Finau et al. explore the impacts of the COVID crisis on the fragile economic landscape of Fiji in 2020. They show how Fijians mobilised barter on Facebook to reduce the economic impacts of the global pandemic, especially unemployment. Beyond its economic function, they argue these online groups also emerged as sites for new discussions on compassion and virtue. The authors contend that by invoking the indigenous concepts of gift and reciprocity in Fiji along with Facebook’s enabling capacity of “visibility, virality and personalisation”, bartering became a way of reinvigorating community ties and traditions during the pandemic.
Drawing upon their long-term research in the Solomon Islands, Inone et al. analyse the sociocultural significance of smartphones in day-to-day life. They underline the increasing salience of smartphones for maintaining family relations, entertainment and education. Their contribution underscores the importance of studying smartphones as “supercompositional”: technological objects around which social and cultural relationships and meanings coalesce.
Sahin explores the performances of place in Istanbul’s recent political history to indicate the role of mayoral agency in producing a spatial imaginary of the city. She foregrounds the controversies surrounding central-municipal relations, which shows that urban governance in Istanbul is limited by the structural and constitutional regulations in Turkey. Despite such limits, Sahin’s vivid account demonstrates how Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul, has taken control over the city through his employment of urban space and oratory to circumvent national power.
Oznur Sahin, Liam Magee & Malini Sur
Editorial team
Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University
*Featured image by Ross Perlin
