Astropolitics and the “Exopolitics” of Unacknowledged Activities in Outer Space

The role of unacknowledged classified programs remains an enigma for fully understanding activities in space and the study of astropolitics. Classified programs by law are not publicly announced, and remain inaccessible to all except those with valid security clearances to be briefed about them. In the United States, waived Unacknowledged Special Access Programs are the most highly classified programs conducted by the military and intelligence community. The same classification protocols are also required of private contractors working with U.S. military departments and intelligence agencies on classified programs. As space continues to grow in its national security significance, the number of these unacknowledged programs pertaining to space is likely to grow significantly from its current number. This requires adopting the necessary conceptual tools and methodological flexibility for investigating unacknowledged activities in space. This also extends to evidence concerning unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrial life. This article suggests that “exopolitics” is a unique multidisciplinary approach to extraterrestrial life that offers a helpful set of conceptual tools for studying unacknowledged space activities, and complements the field of astropolitics.     

LGBTQ “selves” in films from the Reel-Lives project as signifiers of political and social change,and of personal value

To accurately reflect the complexities of unusual sexual or gender identifications in non-stereotypical ways, film documentarians are challenged to represent people as both sexual/gender identities and as subjectivities engaged in personal experiences. This imperative is explored through a semiotic lens focused on films produced through the Reel Lives youth media training project, which aims to give voice to marginalised youth, and which presents their stories on the Reel Lives website through two consequent layers of signification that successfully represents LGBTQ people in complex ways. On the one hand, the search function reflects a typology of shared characteristics associated with identity categories that speaks to political change. On the other, the film grammar showcases shared circumstances within communities in ways that redirect focus from political change to a more durable and transformative socio-cultural change. The films in turn serve a third function: to reflect gender and sexual identification as a personal resource on which participants might subjectively call for the positive recognition and re-presentation of their value as individuals.     

The Perils of Hubris? A Tragic Reading of “Thucydides’ Trap” and China-US Relations

In the last few years, Graham Allison’s “Thucydides’ Trap” has stimulated much discussion within International Relations (IR). Most IR scholars understand Thucydides’ Trap as a shorthand for power transition theory, and view it as highly inadequate for analyzing China-US relations. This article seeks to offer an alternative, tragic, understanding of Thucydides’ Trap that may have more purchase on the analysis of the dynamic of China-US relations. It first argues that while Thucydides’ Trap shares power transition theory’s focus on the shifting balance of power, it is also different from the latter in its emphasis on the emotional implications of changes in the balance of power. This article then explores a tragic understanding of Thucydides’ Trap. Economic success often encourages a rising power to display ambition, confidence and enhanced sense of self (what Allison calls “rising power syndrome”), which leads to loosened restraint, overextension, and strategic blunder; meanwhile, its assertive and ambitious moves spark a ruling power’s fear, insecurity and even paranoia (what Allison calls “ruling power syndrome”), which prompts it to take “preventive” actions in response to the rising power’s assertiveness. This article finally looks at China-US relations through this tragic lens. It suggests that this tragic understanding of Thucydides’ Trap can illuminate the emotional aspect of China-US relations, and also argues that the Thucydides Trap Research Project should henceforth develop an emotional line of inquiry into interaction between the great powers.

     

The OECD and “The Rest”: Analyzing the Limits of Policy Transfer

Abstract

Prompted by the rise of the emerging economies and the growing importance of the G20, the OECD has formally announced its intention of establishing itself as a key actor in global policy coordination. As part of this ambition, it has embarked on cultivating closer relations with five G20 countries it designated as key partners through the so-called “Enhanced Engagement” programme: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia and South Africa. This article mobilizes concepts from the policy transfer literature to explain why the OECD’s attempts to increasingly involve all five countries in its policy have fallen short of its original ambitions, and also why the transfer of its policy work has been uneven across policy and country issue.     

Comment on Elvin K. Wyly and Daniel J. Hammel's “Islands of Decay in Seas of Renewal: Housing Policy and the Resurgence of Gentrification”

Abstract

Gentrification ought to be examined, for policy purposes, as part of a general restructuring of the space of cities resulting from broader changes in the nature, location, control, and effects of economic processes. However, even if it is narrowly seen as simply residential change, as in the article by Wyly and Hammel, the displacement of poor households by an upper‐income gentry ought not be confused with the effort to mix moderate with low incomes in public housing through the best of HOPE VI.

Despite this confusion, Wyly and Hammel provide some interesting data showing the extent to which investment in inner‐city areas has accelerated in recent years, paralleling changes in financial arrangements and contradicting any notion that degentrification is a continuous, long‐term process. Their data, although short on demographic detail, also implicitly highlight the role of government in pushing the market to respond rationally to economic demand and the continuing danger that gentrification will displace African‐American families.     

Recontextualizing racism and segregation by ways of “cozification” in a TV sports broadcast

This paper qualitatively examines a Swedish case where a TV broadcaster takes it upon itself to confront discriminatory practices in sports by addressing issues of segregation and racism in relation to the practice of cross-country skiing in a seven-part series called Stephan, Gliding. It is argued that racism and segregation are addressed through processes of cozification of both form and content. This means that the producers use semiotic resources and strategies of narration that strip the subject matter of any threatening and confrontative components, and instead embed it within a cosy story frame that will not alienate those watching. At a denotative level, Stephan, Gliding tells the story of a beginner who takes on the challenge of skiing in the 90-kilometre cross-country ski competition The Vasa Race. On an ideological level, the programme can be read critically as the narrative of a foreigner deciding to undertake the mission of his own integration into Swedish society by ways of learning to ski. It is argued that the existence of these simultaneous, competing discourses may be a better strategy to maintain a successful “communicative relationship” with audiences than to not address the topic at all.     

Beyond Militant Particularisms: Collaboration and Hybridization in the “Contact Zones” of Environmentalism

ABSTRACT

This paper seeks to build on scholarship that historicises the commodification of water in Africa. It foregrounds this phenomenon as part of broader processes of colonial remaking of society–nature relations. An empirical analysis is developed that illustrates how the British colonists’ condescending attitudes to indigenous social-ecologies, as well as the attendant exclusionary practises relating to colonisers versus colonised body-space interactions, not only formed the moral and material justification for subjugating the “inferior other” but also provided legitimating narratives for entrenching a racially differentiated urbanism, imposing western sanitation attitudes and introducing modernist ways of capturing and domesticating water at Blantyre. These marked a watershed moment in reconfiguring water–society interactions from being quotidian activities performed by the indigenes to produce water as a use-value/basic need, to that mediated by the circulation of money, modernist public health concerns and water technologies primarily intended to serve the interests of the minority white settlers; thus setting in stone the production of Blantyre town in Malawi as an alienated and commodified waterscape.     

“Being black and feeling blue”: the mental health consequences of racial discrimination

The association between racial discrimination and mental health was examined using Wave 2 (1987–1988) and Wave 3 (1988–1989) panel data from the National Survey of Black Americans (NSBA). Mental health status was assessed by psychological distress and depression. In cross-sectional analyses, the perception of racial discrimination was related to high levels of psychological distress at Waves 2 and 3. Experiencing racial discrimination was marginally related to a high likelihood of depression at Wave 2. In longitudinal analyses, reports of racial discrimination at Wave 2 were associated with high levels of psychological distress at Wave 3. High psychological distress or depression at Wave 2 was not associated with reports of racial discrimination at Wave 3—indicating that poor mental health did not predict subjective reports (perceptions) of discrimination. The Discussion focused on possible directions for a more comprehensive program of research on mental health, stress, and experiences of racially based discrimination.     

“Market” Classification and Political Campaigning

ABSTRACT

There is an argument for a flow of logic from market structure to marketing strategy and performance. The nature of the political “market” and service-product constrains and dictates marketing strategy choices. Interactions between the voter, parties, and candidates in political campaigns could be likened to human services (Dickens, 1996) in commerce. However, parties and candidates operate in peculiar poligopolistic markets competing for the authority to deliver government services through an exclusive right of franchise bidding process similar to that in business-to-business markets. A structure-conduct-performance model is presented based on an analysis of political markets from consumer, industrial, and services marketing perspectives to provide strategic marketing insights. Political marketing is a hybrid subdiscipline of marketing incorporating characteristics from all three major marketing paradigms, with services marketing theory holding particular promise for future theory development.     

Where is the political? Insurgent mobilisations and the incipient “return of the political”

There is an emerging intellectual body of thought on the dynamics of de-politicisation and the “disappearance of the political”. In the first part of the paper, I shall consider the process of post-politicisation. In a second part, I shall re-centre the political by drawing on the work of a range of political theorists and philosophers who have begun to question this post-politicising process. The theme of the final section will consider the contours of a reawakening of the democratic political understood as a political order contingently based on the axiomatic presumption of equality of each and every one in their capacity to act politically.     

Comment on Jack Goodman's “houses,apartments, and the incidence of property taxes”

Abstract

Goodman finds from his analysis of the 2001 Residential Finance Survey that multifamily housing bears a higher effective property tax rate (EPTR) than single‐family owner‐occupied housing and argues that much of the differential is associated with the lower average property value of apartments. We offer comments on how this important research can be enhanced and analyze the EPTR by using a different database, the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the decennial census.

Like Goodman, we find from the PUMS that the EPTR of multifamily housing is high relative to that of single‐family detached housing and that lower‐value multifamily housing has a higher EPTR relative to that of higher‐value multifamily units. We offer preliminary findings from the PUMS on the implications of the EPTR for development patterns (it may discourage smart growth), equity (the poor and minorities bear a higher tax burden), and housing (high EPTRs challenge affordability).     

Educating a New Generation: The Model of the “Genocide and Human Rights University Program”

This paper examines the design and teaching of "Genocide and Human Rights," an innovative, higher education course introduced in 2002 to provide training for a new generation of scholars and teachers. The course was developed and funded by a small non-profit organization, the Zoryan Institute, in Toronto, Canada. One purpose of the course is to teach about the Armenian genocide within a comparative genocide and human rights framework. Another goal is to fill a gap in the curriculum in response to increased student interest and research in genocide and human rights. The course serves as a valuable pedagogical model including its comparative framework, teaching by invited specialists, adjusting the curriculum to reflect student interest and new scholarship, and setting up and maintaining formal and informal scholarly networks. Features of critical pedagogy include classroom dialogue and critique and respect for differences in background and opinion. For example, interactions between students of Turkish and Armenian background provide an opportunity to explore issues of stereotypes, memory, denial and reconciliation. The course provides training for a new generation in research, publications, teaching and advocacy in fields related to genocide and human rights.