The alluring voice/the allure of film (theaters): the formation of the voice in the Japanese cinema of the prewar period

Abstract

Kitada Akihiro provides a historical overview of film presentation as a transient business, its migration into dedicated cinemas, and the concomitant rise and fall of benshi film explainer culture, as silent film incorporating a narrative developed out of simplistic ‘moving pictures,’ only to be gradually replaced by ‘talkies.’ He does so by following the career of Tokugawa Musei, one of the most prominent benshi of the 1920s and 1930s, from beginning to end; in describing the changes in audience composition and expectations, he outlines the transition from the showman-like VOICE「声」 to the more ‘talkie’-like voice «声».     

A Game Changer in EU-Turkey Relations: The Opportunities and Pitfalls of Migration Policy

ABSTRACT

The mass migration from Syria has been a major turning point and an important ‘game changer’ in EU-Turkey relations, as it marks a watershed in immigration and asylum between two periods: from 1999 to 2011 and from 2011 to the present. During the first period, the EU was one of the driving forces of change in Turkey’s immigration and asylum policy, along with significant migration movements from the Middle East. Although EU demands were largely implemented due to the country’s changing migration profile, there was also ongoing resistance and reluctance towards the EU, thus a certain degree of conditionality. With the Syrian mass migration in 2011, however, and in particular the so-called ‘European refugee crisis’ in 2015, Turkey started to use migration as a foreign policy tool with which to oppose EU conditionality.     

We all dreamed it: the politics of knowing and un-knowing the “war on terror”

This article begins via an exploration of Jean Baudrillard's provocative claim that we dreamed of the ‘events of 9/11’ prior to their occurrence. Baudrillard's particular quote is introduced to raise questions about the politics of knowing and un-knowing in International Relations, with specific reference to risk and the “war on terror”. Building on postcolonial scholarship, this article points to the limits of contemporary approaches to risk and offers an alternative methodological approach – one it argues better identifies the power relations that structure the daily forms of knowing and un-knowing that give meaning to and invigorate articulations of risk.     

Crisis ideology and the articulation of fascism in interwar Japan: the 1938 Thought-War Symposium

In early 1938, the newly formed Cabinet Information Division (Naikaku jōhōbu) held a closed-door Thought-War Symposium (Shisōsen kōshūkai) in Tokyo with over 100 bureaucrats, military officers, media executives and academics in attendance. While the ostensible purpose of the symposium was to discuss propaganda following Japan's full-scale invasion of China in July of 1937, the presentations had very little to do with the practical coordination of information. Rather, the symposium participants brought their specific areas of expertise to bear on elaborating the curious term ‘thought war’ (shisōsen), a term that had only recently been used with any regularity but which had become invested with critical urgency following the invasion of China.

In the conventional literature, the term ‘thought war’ is understood as marking a new modality of state propaganda as Japan moved towards a total war system. However, this reading overlooks the ideological investments in thought war discourse, as well as how ‘thought war’ inherited a multivalent sense of crisis that had crystallized around thought and culture earlier in the 1930s. In this article, I explore how the 1938 symposium reveals a combined sense of historical crisis and an urgent call for the total overhaul of Japanese state and society, a combination which, I argue, underwrote the development of fascism in Japan. I trace how three earlier discourses of crisis – the ‘Manchurian Problem’, the ‘thought problem’ and the ‘movement to clarify the kokutai’ – converged within thought war discourse, thus investing it with fascist urgency.     

GCC-US Alliance-Making Reconsidered: The Travails of Dependency

ABSTRACT

Donald Trump’s presidency may have altered less in relations between the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council than recent accounts suggest. Instead, power relations between the US and its Gulf allies have long been, and continue to be, asymmetrical. Dependency theory and postcolonial analysis illustrate the ways in which the US global hegemon exhibits hierarchy, exerting control over Gulf economic resources (oil) and extending its ‘security umbrella’ (e.g. weapons sales and bases) – all in highly unequal dynamics. A critical discourse analysis of American and Saudi speeches during the 2017 Riyadh summit further confirms this assessment. This raises questions about alliance-making and alliance-maintenance norms of promise-keeping and reciprocity.     

‘Local is lekker’: Nation,narration and the sABC's Afrikaans programmes

Abstract

This article provides an exploration of the role of the SABC's Afrikaans language programmes in contemporary South African constructions of national identity. It examines the programmes’ engagement with the construction of (a) national identity by addressing the SABC's mandated obligation towards nation building, and exploring how the broadcaster's Afrikaans programmes are positioned in this regard. The article suggests that the SABC's task to ‘narrate the nation’ is complicated not only by the theoretical dilemmas faced by the terms ‘nation’ and ‘nation building’, but also by the broadcaster's historical ties to the apartheid government. This matter is further complicated for the Afrikaans-language programmes on SABC, given the language's binary position as both ‘unifier’ and ‘oppressor’.     

The meaning of post-apartheid Zulu media

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between certain South African media corporations, growing post-apartheid Zulu media platforms, the size and diversity of Zulu-speaking media consumers, and the historical socio-cultural construction of ‘Zuluness’. This relationship, this author observes, manifests largely through media corporations’ increasing recognition of Zulu people's pride in Zulu (i.e. the language) and ‘Zuluness’ – all of which are historical products of various forms of socialisation. Coopting this pride, profit-driven media corporations are commodifying Zulu and ‘Zuluness’. This commodification via the establishment of Zulu media outlets is paradoxical: 1) it is a transformation of a public and open Zulu cultural sense of ‘being’ into institutionally determined commodities exchangeable for revenue, for the ultimate benefit of media owners other than the masses of Zulus themselves; 2) it is a form of commoditisation that gives Zulu a linguistic profile that has historically been accorded only to English and Afrikaans. This article's argument is further briefly articulated through various intellectual frames: Graham Murdoch and Peter Golding's conceptualisation of critical political economy of communications and culture (2005); John and Jean Comaroff's anthropological analysis of commercialisation of ethnicity (2009); and, for South African specificity and precedent, through Herman Wasserman's reading of Afrikaans media corporations’ commercialisation of Afrikaans language and identity. Then the question is: What does the explored relationship mean for South Africa's multilingualism?     

Turning Counter-Terrorism into Counter-Revolution: Russia Focuses on Kazakhstan and Engages Turkmenistan

Abstract

From the early days of Putin's presidency, Russia's energy policy towards Central Asia has been intertwined with the policy of counter-terrorism, which initially was aimed at exploiting the threat of the Taliban in order to cajole the post-Soviet regimes into closer cooperation with Moscow. The deployment of US and NATO forces in the region in autumn 2001 signified a serious shrinking of Russia's influence but it invested considerable effort in recovering its position. A series of setbacks from spring 2004 to spring 2005 culminating in the'orange revolution’ in Ukraine made this period a true annus horribilis for Russian foreign policy but the brutal crackdown on the uprising in Andijan, Uzbekistan in May 2005 was the turning point. It helped Russia to design a counter-revolutionary strategy according to which it would be ready to provide extensive support to the regimes that were ready to defend themselves with forceful means. In order to legitimize this support, Moscow decided to revive and strengthen several post-Soviet inter-state organizations that for many years had essentially been ‘paper structures’. Russia has achieved some success in instrumentalizing the counter-revolutionary momentum to advance its energy interests; in this sense, it certainly works much better than the tired counter-terrorism policy. Building on this success is going to be more difficult due to the pronounced anti-Western content of this strategy.     

An analysis of news sources used in reports on slavery in the Sudan in the New York Times and Washington Post between 1986 and 2001

Abstract

For over 25 years the Sudan and the United States have had a contentious relationship. In 1986 several international human rights organisations pointed to the re-emergence of the practice of slavery in the Sudan. Past research by American media has shown that journalists tend to use routine channels and American government officials, especially those from the ‘golden triangle’ (the White House, Pentagon and State Department) when covering stories related to foreign countries. However, in the case of the Sudan there was no clear American foreign policy for an extended period of time. Consequently, there was a stark absence of reporting on the slavery issue in the two elite American newspapers (the New York Times and the Washington Post) examined in this study. Furthermore, even when the topic was covered the sources used defined the issue through an American perspective, rather than within an historical and geopolitical context.     

The Renewed ‘Struggle for Syria’: From the War ‘in’ Syria to the War ‘over’ Syria

ABSTRACT

Syria is generally considered a case of non-intervention. One of the dominant (since the 1990s) kinds of intervention, namely multilateral humanitarian intervention, failed, as did other attempts by a select group of countries to implement a ‘red line’ concerning the use of chemical weapons. However, in this case, there is no sharp dichotomy between intervention and non-intervention. In lieu of an intervention that would tilt the balance and coordinate help to halt massacres, various rival and uncoordinated international and regional interventions overlapped over time, fuelling a market for violence. ‘Weakened interventionism’, as opposed to principled and hierarchical intervention, has manifested itself in Syria in a model recalling “the struggle for Syria” of the 1960s in a new, contemporary setting.     

Spiritualism and modernism in the work of Kawabata Yasunari

Abstract

Kawabata Yasunari held a deep interest in the study of spiritualism from his very youth. He demonstrates his knowledge of the field in his writing in a variety of ways, particularly in the short stories he published during the prewar period. Thus far, scholarship has considered Kawabata's relationship with spiritualism primarily in terms of his biography: there has yet to be a satisfactorily rigorous study taking into account historical context and his use of spiritualism as novelistic technique. This article analyzes Kawabata and spiritualism with respect to modernism by looking at the short stories ‘The Full White Moon’, ‘Requiem’, and ‘Lyric Poem’. This analysis will also help illuminate the diversity of Kawabata's approaches to modernism.     

The concept of ‘respect’ in African culture in the context of journalism practice: An Afrocentric intervention

Abstract

For decades, since the debate about the role of the media in post-colonial Africa emerged, a distorted interpretation of the meaning of ‘respect’ in the African cultural context has persisted in academic discourse to the present day. The distorted view suggests that according to traditional African beliefs it is disrespectful to criticise authoritative figures. On this basis, in some African countries journalism students have opposed criticism of heads of states, arguing that it is un-African to do so. On the other hand, journalism academics and practitioners have condemned and dismissed the concept of ‘respect’ in African culture as undemocratic and inimical to the role of journalism as a tool for democracy. This article argues that a critical examination of the concept of ‘respect’ in the African cultural context reveals that historically, in traditional Africa, ‘respect’ was not equated to obsequiousness by the citizens in their encounter with power. Sycophancy and submission in the face of power were invoked in the name of a falsified version of African culture by postcolonial power-hungry dictators, who sought to entrench themselves by distorting African culture for self-serving purposes.     

Horizontal and Vertical Diversity: Unintended Consequences of EU External Migration Policy

ABSTRACT

Unintended consequences arising from EU external migration policy are a result of the multi-actor nature of this policy and of policy interactions. In addition, scholars face serious methodological challenges in establishing what the EU’s ‘intent’ is in external migration policy and, therefore, in determining which consequences are intended and which are unintended. The literature on the implementation and evaluation of EU external migration policy is in its infancy, and future work should take into account all policy outcomes – both those that were intended and those that were not.     

Confining conditions and breaking with the past: Historical legacies and political learning in transitions to democracy

Historical factors have more often been assumed than explored in democratization studies. Their importance has been acknowledged broadly in reference to matters of change and continuity, including the effects of predecessor dictatorships on transition trajectories. But historical factors can have varied and sometimes persistent influences on the democratization process as a whole. These influences therefore need examining in a systematic way that considers also their implications for democratic consolidation. Developing from Kirchheimer's thesis of ‘confining conditions and revolutionary breakthroughs’, the discussion turns to forms of interaction and the changing balance between past impacts and the dynamics and changing agenda of regime change. A three‐part approach is presented and applied: historical patterns and historical memory; historical legacies and ‘overcoming the past'; and, then, political ‘learning’ and its ability to look to the future. It is generally argued that focusing on ‘history’ opens up new avenues in the study of regime change.     

The power of Trump-speak: populist crisis narratives and ontological security

Abstract

For most observers, the election of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States (US) came as a shock. This has been widely recast as the culmination of the American public’s long-standing dissatisfaction with the political elite and deep-seated frustrations with broader socio-economic conditions. We argue that the Trump campaign’s success also stemmed from its effective use of an emotionally charged, anti-establishment crisis narrative. With insights from political psychology, we examine the socio-linguistic mechanisms that underlie the effectiveness of ‘Trump-speak’ through both quantitative and qualitative content analysis of Trump’s communications toolkit during the 2016?US presidential election campaign. We show that his leadership legitimation claims rest significantly upon ‘crisis talk’ that puts his audience in a loss frame with nothing to lose and explain why ‘crisis talk’ impacts on political behaviour. As we demonstrate, the crisis stories that political agents tell simultaneously instil ontological insecurity among the American public and serve to transform their anxiety into confidence that the narrator’s policy agendas are the route back to ‘normality’. Through these rhetorical mechanisms, the Trump campaign manipulated individuals’ ontological (in)security as a tool in the politics of reassurance at the broader, societal level.     

Internationalized regimes: a second dimension of regime hybridity

Traditional approaches have conceptualized political regimes almost exclusively with reference to domestic-level political factors. However, many current and historical political regimes have entailed a major role for international actors, and in some cases the external influence has been so great that regimes have become internationalized. This article explores the concept of ‘internationalized regimes’ and argues that they should be seen as a distinct form of hybrid regime type that demonstrates a distinct dimension of hybridity. Until now, regime hybridity has been conceived along a single dimension of domestic politics: the level of competitiveness. Yet, some regimes are characterized by a different type of hybridity, in which domestic and international authority are found together within a single political system. The article explores the dynamics of internationalized regimes within three settings, those of international occupation, international administration and informal empire.     

In the wake of revolution: Eastern Europe in the 1990s

Summary

A ‘new world order’ and a ‘Europe whole and free’ are phrases that epitomize the hopeful rhetoric born of East European revolutions in 1989. In the three years since we were awed by the courage of citizens disgusted with communist party rule, and surprised by the rapidity of such regimes’ demise, socio‐economic and political realities have dimmed hopes and constrained expectations. The work of building free governments and free markets after decades of neglect and abuse faces East Europeans in the 1990s and beyond.

The dangers suggested above are not hyperbole, and represent real and present threats to the hopes of Poles, Romanians, and the other people, for better futures. Comparisons across the region are much less valid than at any time in the last half century. Nevertheless, the goals of post‐communist leaders ‐ security, democracy and market ‐ face similar extraordinary challenges that can easily derail these processes. Americans and our longstanding allies cannot ensure the survival and further development of East European democracy, but we must certainly be more engaged in helping them help themselves.     

‘Gunboats of soft power’: Boris on Africa and post-Brexit ‘Global Britain’

As Britain prepares to leave the European Union after the popular vote of June 2016, the government is embarking on the revision of foreign policy. Boris Johnson, or ‘just Boris’, has been entrusted with forging the new ‘Global Britain’ for the post-Brexit era and reinventing British economy around new relationships. Boris has a track record of misrepresenting and offending foreign peoples, leaders and countries. This article assesses the prospects for Africa in Johnson’s vision for ‘Global Britain’ as presented in his foreign policy speeches. The paper unpacks Johnson’s discursive construction of ‘Africa’ and inserts it into a broader historical and political context of British relations with Africa. It argues that, by constructing Africa as a ‘problem’ and offering liberal values as a condition for development, Johnson is continuing British imperial and post-colonial discourses of ‘developing’ or ‘civilizing’ Africa. In the post-Brexit world of a changing global balance of power, democratic conditionality serves to sustain and reproduce British forms of power and policies.