Urban Nature

"Urban Nature"

Molnár Zsolt (zsutti)

Territorialities, Spaces, Geographies új tematikus szám elérhető

Az International Political Sociology folyóirat szabadon elérhetővé tette új tematikus számát Territorialities, Spaces, Geographies címmel, a szerzők között szerepel Nisha Shah, John Agnew, Neil Brenner, Stuart Elden és Nick Vaughan-Williams:

This special issue presents a selection of work at the interstices between international relations and geography. It is an invitation for intensifying debates in International Political Sociology on transformations of space and scales, the use of geographical methods and concepts, and the nature and limits of geographical thought in international and global relations.

‘The international is a spatial category and has been invested by variable geographies. The world of the international is flat; a two-dimensional world of relations between sovereign states claiming exclusive power over their territory and people. The international also persistently and often violently draws lines between itself and its outside: worlds of colonies, the uncivilised, transnational networks, and others. Recently, topographic categories are increasingly challenged by topological modes of enacting spatial relations and by analyses foregrounding the importance of temporal practices and narratives.

This special issue samples an international political sociology that deploys and critically engages territorial, spatial, geographical modes of thinking and politics. What are the limits and transformations of spatial practices in contemporary politics? How are territorialities, borders, and lines invested in methods of governing and conceptions of order? What is the impact of foregrounding temporality and mobility on spatial categorizing of the international? How are geopolitics and territoriality produced?

Table of contents

The Territorial Trap of the Territorial Trap: Global  Transformation and the Problem of the State’s Two Territories
Nisha Shah

Henri Lefebvre on State, Space, Territory
Neil Brenner and Stuart Elden

Know-where: Geographies of Knowledge of World Politics
John Agnew

Space, Boundaries, and the Problem of Order: A View from Systems Theory
Jan Helmig, Oliver Kessler

Borders, Territory, Law
Nick Vaughan-Williams

Rethinking Community: Translation Space as a Departure from  Political Community
Reiko Shindo

Education and the Formation of Geopolitical  Subjects
Martin Muller

Think Locally, Act Globally
Terrence Lyons and Peter Mandaville

Áll a sor - Standing in queue

Több száz ember állt ma sorba ételért a Blaha Lujza téren az Ételt az Életért alapítvány húsvéti ételosztása alkalmából

Hundreds of people stood in queue for food today at Blaha Lujza square (Budapest) on the Food for Life (Étel az Életért) foundation's Easter food distribution

Cikk

Klímaváltozás okozta migráció

Találtam egy izgalmas és szerteágazó földrajzos témát a klímaváltozás által okozott migráció diskurzusaira és politikáira vonatkozólag. Azon gondolkoztam, hogy a jellemzően - de nem egyedülállóan - a 19. század végén, 20. század első felében (most nem mennék bele az elhelyezés problematikusságába) művelt "determinista" és "posszibilista" gondolatkör mennyiben "aktualizálódhat" újra a mai diskurzusokban. Nemcsak a környezet, és különösképpen az éghajlat társadalmi hatásainak vizsgálata, hanem az ezek mögött álló ideológiák és politikák újraelevenedése miatt is. Ennek nyomán például az éghajlatváltozás révén felerősödő természeti katasztrófák körüli mai rasszista diskurzusok gyakran olyan posztkolonialista vonásokat tartalmaznak, amelyek már jóval korábban (a kolonialista időszakban) "lerakódhattak" az európai gondolkodás mélyebb rétegeiben. A "climate change-induced migration" címszó alatt ti is guglizhattok további jó anyagokat a neten,  mindenesetre ajánlóként a rassz és a társadalmi nem tekintetében elgondolkodtatóak lehetnek ezek a belinkelt cikkek.

Announcement/Call for Papers

Race, alterity and affect: rethinking climate change-induced migration and displacement
18-19 June 2013
Durham University

Andrew Baldwin (Durham University) and Katherine E. Russo (Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale)

As policy and scholarly debates about climate change and migration gather pace, to date very few interventions have addressed how such debates are shaped by notions of race and alterity. The imperative to address this lacuna is further emphasised by the twinned observations that climate change is expected to amplify the incidence of environmental/natural disasters i.e., landslides, extreme weather events and droughts, and that narratives of disaster very often contain explicit and/or implicit racist sentiment. Such a context suggests that now is a propitious moment to begin a concerted interrogation of these themes.

The aim of this workshop is thus to bring debates about climate change and migration broadly defined into dialogue with contemporary critical race theory and postcolonial theory. Recent interventions (Baldwin 2012; Baldwin forthcoming) have suggested that racialisation in the context of debates about climate change and migration unfolds through at least three interrelated tropes: naturalisation, the loss of political status, and ambiguity. This work also argues that given its historiographical emphasis, theories of the postcolonial appear to be insufficient for properly theorising the alterity of the climate change migrant, since the discourse on climate change and migration is written almost exclusively in the future-conditional tense. In contrast, others (Farbotko 2010) have very productively embraced theories of the postcolonial to interpret issues of climate change and mobility.

Thus one of the aims of this workshop is to consider how critical race theory and theories of the postcolonial might be usefully reinterpreted to address the future-conditionality of climate change and migration discourse. At this stage, we are particularly interested in innovative contributions from post-graduate scholars.

Topics that might be addressed in the workshop include but are not limited to:•       race and affect

• xenophobic and nationalist reactions to environmental disaster
• environmental change, ethnicity and internal displacement
• critical race theory, climate change and migration/displacement
• postcolonial theory, climate change and migration/displacement
• ecocritique
• climate change and cultural media/arts
• environmental change, states of emergency and the suspension of citizenship rights
• ontologies of difference and the future-conditional
• disaster risk reduction/disaster risk management, climate change and difference

Keynote Speakers:
David Theo Goldberg (University of California, Irvine)
Uma Kothari (Manchester University)
Partners: COST Action IS1101 Climate change and migration; Institute for Advanced Studies (Durham University); Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale
Abstract Submission deadline: 15 March 2013

* * *

Call for Papers

Climate Change, Migration and the Urban Environment:  Policy, Governance, Theory

Athens, 26 April 2013

A workshop co-sponsored by COST Action IS1101 Climate change and migration and Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences –  The European Centre for Environmental Research &Training, Athens.

Climate change is routinely said to be one of the most significant global phenomena in the early twenty-first century. As such, it represents a new and emerging set of challenges for urban governance and urban planning, a point now widely discussed by both scholars and policymakers. The purpose of this workshop is to focus debates about climate change and urbanism squarely on questions to do with migration. To date, most research addressing the intersections of climate change, migration and urbanism derives primarily from non-academic contexts such as the third sector and international organizations. The aim of this workshop is, thus, to widen the breadth of participation in this emerging field to include scholars working in the areas of urbanism and climate change. In this way, the workshop aims to catalyze academic research at the interface of climate change and urbanism with a particular emphasis on migration and adaptation. This is an agenda-setting workshop.

Topics to be addressed in the workshop include but are not limited to:

Ø  Cities and climate change

Ø  urban transitions

Ø  urban resilience (including social resilience)

Ø  urban adaptation

Ø  urban disaster risk reduction

Ø  economics of urban hazards/risks

Ø  global governance and urban risk

Ø  post-disaster migration and the city

Ø  urbanization and human displacement

Ø  urbanisms, migration and human security

Confirmed participants

1. Stephen Graham Ph.D., Professor of Cities and Society, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University
2. Lori M. Hunter, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Sociology, Institute of Behavioral Science, Programs on Population, Environment and Society, Associate Director, CU Population Center, Editor-in-Chief, Population and Environment, University of Colorado at Boulder
3. Ilan Kelman Ph.D., Senior Research fellow, CICERO the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research – Oslo) Norway
4. Mark Pelling Ph.D., Professor of Geography, King's College London
5. Alexandra Winkels Ph.D., Academic Director for International Development & Global Studies Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge & Affiliated Lecturer, Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge

If you wish to participate in this workshop, please submit a paper abstract to Dr. Ioulia Moraitou (juliamoraitou[at]yahoo[dot]gr) no later than 12 March 2013. Papers will be selected on the basis of merit and their fit with the aims of the workshop.

A small amount of funding is available to cover travel and accommodation costs for this workshop.

A posztszocializmus és a rendszerváltások gazdaságantropológiája

Társadalomelméleti Kollégium
Körtartók: Szépe András, Gagyi Ágnes, Éber Márk, Pulay Gergő, Jelinek Csaba

További körökről információk itt.
Akit izgat a téma, a kör vagy a szakirodalom, emailben érdeklődhet nálam: zginelli[kukac]gmail[pont]com.

A kör ötlete az előző féléves “Rendszerváltás” olvasókörön merült fel, annak is az egyik utolsó alkalmán, ahol a rendszerváltással kapcsolatos antropológiai irodalomról beszélgettünk. A kör konklúziója az volt, hogy egyrészt van elég sok angolul publikált, a “nyugati” diskurzusban is ismert, mára már klasszikus kutatás (téeszekről, informális gazdaságról, szegénységről, stb.), másrészt viszont a kelet-európai, főleg 1989 után intézményesült antropológiai diszciplína ezekről nem nagyon vesz tudomást különböző tudományszociológiai okokból. A kör célja a kelet-európai posztszocialista átalakulások kontextusában született, a kortárs kritikai társadalomtudományok irodalmába kapcsolódó, de ebben a régióban kevésbé ismert munkák összegyűjtése és feldolgozása. A kör során megpróbáljuk felfejteni hogy a leegyszerűsítve szocializmusból kapitalizmusba történő átmenetnek nevezett folyamat során hogyan változtak meg a különböző társadalmi-gazdasági intézmények és a hatalmi erőviszonyok. A szövegek kiválogatásánál fontos szempont, hogy azok a helyi folyamatokat a globális hierarchia-viszonyokba beágyazottan kezeljék.

A kör során minden alkalomnak lesz egy-egy felelőse, aki az adott alkalom témájából alaposan felkészül és az adott alkalmat moderálja. A kör célja hogy a témák közötti kapcsolatokat együtt, közösen fedezzük fel és rakjuk össze. A kör végeztével nyáron egy rövid erdélyi kutatótábort is tervezünk, ahol Gagyi József antropológus vezetésével egy romániai falu példáján keresztül a “terepen” is végiggondoljuk a félév elméleti munkáját.

1. alkalom: Does it make sense to study postsocialism?

Buyandelgeriyn, Manduhai (2008): Post-Post-Transition Theories: Walking on Multiple Paths. In Annal Review of Anthropology, Vol. 37, pp. 235-250.

Thelen, Tatjana (2011): Shortage, fuzzy property and other dead ends in the anthropological analysis of (post)socialism. In. Critique of Anthropology Vol. 31, No. 1, pp 43–61.

Dunn, Elizabeth C. & Verdery, Katherine (2011): Dead ends in the critique of (post)socialist anthropology: Reply to Thelen. In Critique of Anthropology Vol. 31, No. 3, pp 251–255.

Thelen, Tatjana (2012): Economic concepts, common grounds and 'new' diversity in the Anthropology of post-socialism: Reply to Dunn and Verdery.  In Critique of Anthropology Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 87–90.

2. alkalom: Postsocialism, postcolonialism, globalization – in the field and in the academy

Buchowski, Michał (2006): The Specter of Orientalism in Europe: From Exotic Other to Stigmatized Brother. In Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 3, 463-482.

Cervinkova, Hana (2012): Postcolonialism, postsocialism and the anthropology of east-central Europe. In Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Vol. 48, No. 2, 155-163.

Gille, Zsuzsa (2010): Is there a Global Postsocialist Condition? In Global Society, Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 9-30.

Rogers, Douglas (2010): Postsocialisms Unbound: Connections, Critiques, Comparisons. In: Slavic Review, Vol. 69, No. 1, pp. 1-15.

Tishkov, Valery A. (1998): U.S. and Russian Anthropology: Unequal Dialogue in a Time of Transition. In Current Anthropology, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 1-18.

Keough, Leyla J. (2006): Globalizing 'Postsocialism:' Mobile Mothers and Neoliberalism on the Margins of Europe, In Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 79, No. 3, pp. 431-461.

Poblocki, Kacper (2009): Whiter Anthropology without Nation-state? Interdisciplinarity, World Anthropologies and Commoditization of Knowledge. In Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 225-252.

3. alkalom: Postsocialism and capitalism

Eyal, Gil (2000): Anti-Politics and the Spirit of Capitalism: Dissidents, Monetarists, and the Czech Transition to Capitalism In Theory and Society, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 49-92.

Daphne, Berdahl (2005): The Spirit of Capitalism and the Boundaries of Citizenship in Post-Wall Germany. In. Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 47, No. 2, pp. 235-251.

Boyer, Dominic-Yurchak, Alexei (2010): American Stiob: Or, What Late-Socialist Aesthetics of Parody Reveal about Contemporary Political Culture in the West. In Cultural Anthropology, Vol 25, No 2, pp: 179-221.

Altshuler David S. (2001): Tunneling Towards Capitalism in the Czech Republic. In Ethnography, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp: 115-138.

Buyandelgeriyn, Manduhai (2007): Dealing with uncertainty: Shamans, marginal capitalism, and the remaking of history in postsocialist Mongolia. In American Ethnologist, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 127-147.

Patico, Jennifer (2009): Spinning the Market. The Moral Alchemy of Everyday Talk in Postsocialist Russia. In Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 205-224.

4. alkalom: Development, liberalism and personhood

Holc, Janine P. (1997): Liberalism and the Construction of the Democratic Subject in Postcommunism: The Case of Poland. In Slavic Review, Vol. 56, No. 3, pp. 401-427.

Creed, Gerald W – Wedel, Janine R. (1997): Second Thoughts from the Second World: Interpreting Aid in Post-Communist Eastern Europe. In Human Organization, Vol. 56, No. 3, pp. 253-263.

Junghans, Trenholme (2001): Marketing Selves: Constructing Civil Society and Selfhood in Post-socialist Hungary. In Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 21, No., pp. 383–400.

Sampson, Steven (2002): Weak States, Uncivil Societies and Thousands of NGOs. Western Democracy Export as Benevolent Colonialism in the Balkans, source: http://www.anthrobase.com/Txt/S/Sampson_S_01.htm

Arfire, Ramona (2011): The Moral Regulation of the Second Europe: Transition, Europeanization and the Romanians. In Critical Sociology, Vol. 37, No. 6, pp. 853-870.

Kaneff, Deema (2002): Why People Don’t Die ’Naturally’ Any More: Changing Relations between ’The Individual’ and ’The State’ in Post-Socialist Bulgaria. In The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 89-10.

5. alkalom: Postsocialist disorder

Nazpary, Joma (2002): Post-Soviet Chaos. Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan. London-Sterling: Pluto Press.

Port, Mattis van de (1998): Gypsies, Wars & Other Instances of the Wild. Civilisation and Its Discontents in a Serbian Town. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

Koehler, Jan – Zurcher, Christoph eds (2003): Potentials of disorder. New Approaches to Conflict Analysis. Manchester University Press.

6. alkalom: Agriculture, property, cooperatives

Lampland, Martha (1991): Pigs, Party Secretaries, and Private Lives in Hungary. In. American Ethnologist, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 459-479.

Creed, Gerald W. (1995) Agriculture and the Domestication of Industry in Rural Bulgaria. In American Ethnologist, Vol. 22, No. 3, pp. 528-548.

Hann, Chris (2006): “Not the Horse We Wanted!” Postsocialism, Neoliberalism, and Eurasia. Berlin: LIT Verlag.

Humphrey, Caroline-Verdery, Katherine eds (2004): Property in Question. Value Transformation in the Global Economy. Oxford-New York: Berg.

Verdery, Katherine (1994): The Elasticity of Land: Problems of Property Restitution in Transylvania. In. Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 4, pp. 1071-1109.

Waal, Clarissa de (2004): Post-socialist Property Rights and Wrongs in Albania: An Ethnography of Agrarian Change. In Conservation & Society, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 19-50.

7. alkalom: Work and workers in postsocialism

Burawoy, Michael-Krotov, Pavel-Lytkina, Tatyana (2000): Involution and Destitution in Capitalist Russia. In Ethnography, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 43-65.

Kideckel, David A. (2008): Getting By in Postsocialist Romania. Labor, the Body & Working-Class Culture. Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press

Friedman  Jack R. (2007): Shame and the Experience of Ambivalence on the Margins of the Global: Pathologizing the Past and Present in Romania’s Industrial Wastelands. In Ethos, Vol. 35, No 2, pp. 235-264.

Dunn, Elizabeth C. (2004): Privatizing Poland: Baby Food, Big Business, and the Remaking of Labor. Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press.

Heintz, Monica (2006): “Be European, Recycle Yourself!” The Changing Work Ethic in Romania. Berlin: Lit Werlag.

Stenning, Alison (2005): Where is the Post-socialist Working Class? Working-Class Lives in the Spaces of (Post-)Socialism. In Sociology, Vol. 39, No 5, pp. 983-999.

8. alkalom: Poverty

Haney, Lynne (2000): Global Discourses of Need: Mythologizing and Pathologizing Welfare in Hungary. In Burawoy, Michael et al: Global Ethnography. Forces, Connections, and Imaginations in a Postmodern World. Los Angeles-London: University of California Press, 48-73.

Smith, Adrian et al (2008) The Emergence of a Working Poor: Labour Markets, Neoliberalisation and Diverse Economies in Post-Socialist Cities. In Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, Vol. 40, No. 2, pp. 283-311.

Ries, Nancy (2009): Potato Ontology: Surviving Postsocialism in Russia. In. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 24, No 2, pp 181-212.

Caldwell, Melissa L. (2004): Not By Bread Alone. Social Support in the New Russia. Los Angeles-London: University of California Press.

9. alkalom: Postsocialist nationalism and the question of community

Hann, Chris (1998): Postsocialist Nationalism: Rediscovering the Past in Southeast Poland. In Slavic Review, Vol. 57, No. 4, pp. 840-863.

Creed, Gerald W. (2004): Constituted through Conflict: Images of Community (And Nation) in Bulgarian Rural Ritual. In American Anthropologist, Vol. 106, No. 1: pp. 56-70.

Henig, David (2012): ‘Knocking on my neighbor’s door’: On metamorphoses of sociality in rural Bosnia. In Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 3-19.

Partridge, Damani James (2008): We Were Dancing in the Club, Not on the Berlin Wall: Black Bodies, Street Bureaucrats, and Exclusionary Incorporation into the New Europe. In Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 660-687.

10. alkalom: Money and morality

Lemon, Alaina (1998) "Your Eyes Are Green like Dollars": Counterfeit Cash, National Substance, and Currency Apartheid in 1990s Russia. In Cultural Anthropology Vol 13, No. l, pp 22-55.

Wanner, Catherine (2005): Money, Morality and New Forms of Exchange in Postsocialist Ukraine. In Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 70, No. 4, pp. 515–537.

Rogers, Douglas (2005): Moonshine, money, and the politics of liquidity in rural Russia. In. American Ethnologist, Vol 32, No 1, pp. 63-81.

Sneath, David (2006): Transacting and enacting: Corruption, obligation and the use of monies in Mongolia. In Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, Vol. 71, No. 1, pp. 89-112.

11. alkalom: Informal economy/Corruption/Crime

Ledeneva, Alena V (1998): Russia’s Economy of Favours. Blat, Networking and Informal Exchange. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press.

Humphrey, Caroline (2002): The Unmaking of the Soviet Union. Everyday Economies after Socialism. Ithaca-London: Cornell University Press.

Shore, Chris – Haller, Dieter (2005): Corruption. Anthropological Perspectives. Ann Arbor-London: Pluto Press.

Polese, Abel – Rodgers, Peter eds (2011): Surviving post-socialism: the role of informal economic practices. Special Issue of the International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 31, No. 11.

Wedel, Janine R. (2003): Mafia without Malfeasance, Clans without Crime. The Criminality Conundrum in Post-Communist Europe. In Parnell-Kane eds. Crime’s Power. Anthropologists and the Ethnography of Crime. Palgrave: New York, pp 221-244.

Historians in Space: Concepts of Space in recent European Historiography

Call for papers

“HISTORIANS IN SPACE”

Concepts of Space in recent European Historiography 

7th Annual Graduate Conference in European History

April 25-27, 2012

Budapest, Central European University

Organized by the Central European University, Budapest in co-operation with the European University Institute, Florence and the University of Vienna.

Historicize space! This injunction has not always been on the agenda of historians. Traditionally, historians were tempted to take space for granted. The boundaries of the nineteenth century nation-state were regarded as the natural presupposition of much historical research. These established “mental maps” still continue to influence the structure of history writing today. However, historians were not entirely immune to the effects of the “spatial turn” and can probably no longer be accused to treat space as if it were “packed solidly on to the head of a pin,” as Edward W. Soja did in his Postmodern Geographies in 1989.

History is primarily about time, about what happened when. Concurrently, it should not be forgotten that events and processes took place somewhere. Historical phenomena have a setting, a location - their place. However, taking their cue from geography, anthropology and sociology, some historians have come to broaden established notions of space. The concept may not refer merely to “geographical” or “real space” which “contains” peoples, nations and cultures. Rather, it may as well point to socially and culturally constructed objects of inquiry and how these are perceived by individuals or groups. In other words, space is understood as being framed through social and cultural relations, as Henri Lefebvre showed already in his path-breaking The Production of Space (1974).

Thus, some historical phenomena are essentially marked by their spatial dimensions and can thus be better approached from the vantage point of spatiality alongside temporality. The 7th Graduate Conference in European History (GRACEH) is inviting graduate students and young researchers to reflect on the rather ambiguous relationship historians entertain with the category of “space.”

We are welcoming abstracts which interrogate the various understandings of space, those which present new methodological approaches to the topic, and case studies which are placed within a wider theoretical context. Possible topics include, but are not limited to the following:

1. Historians and Space: methodological and theoretical approaches
2. Representations of space
3. Going Global: linking local, regional, national, transnational history
4. Symbolic geography and cultural spaces: for example ‘Europe’, ‘Central Europe’, ‘Southeast Europe’ or the ‘Balkans’, the ‘Levant’, the ‘Orient’, etc.
5. The spatial constitution of politics: empires and nation states (territoriality, kinship)
6. Economic history: world systems, ‘core’ and ‘periphery’, ‘backwardness’
7. Spatial dimensions of everyday life: approaching gender, ethnicity, class, religion
8. Urban spaces (morphology, planning; spaces of production, consumption and exchange, urban/rural divides)
9. Geographies of knowledge: production and transfers
10. Space and Memory
11. Digital technologies and tools for writing spatial history, visualizations, Geographical Information Systems

The working language of the conference will be English. Please send an abstract of no more than 400 words and a brief CV to graceh[at]ceu.hu by January 20, 2013. Full papers will be pre-circulated and grouped into thematic panels of 3 to 4 contributions. We would like to ask all participants to prepare a presentation of no more than 15 minutes, in order to allow ample time for discussion and questions.

Final papers are due on March 31, 2013.

GRACEH 2013 Organizers:

Jan Bröker, Mihai-Dan Cirjan, Adrian Grama, Liliana Iuga, Oskar Mulej, Zsuzsa Sidó

GRACEH 2013 Advisory Board:

Nadia Al-Bagdadi, Head of the CEU Department of History and of the School of Historical and Interdisciplinary Studies, EC member of the Religious Studies Program

László Kontler, Professor at the CEU Department of History, Pro-Rector for Hungarian and EU Affairs

http://graceh2013.wordpress.com/

Eredeti felhívás itt.

Cultural capitalism, conscious capitalism: "First tragedy, then farce" (24 Nov 2009)