New letters from Hiroshima

Abstract

Wartime censors, as Phillip Knightley's The First Casualty reminds us, perform a twofold mission: (l) deny vital data to the enemy and (2) conceal from the citizenry potentially perturbing news as to how their leaders are conducting the mayhem at the front. This protective zeal tends to be habit forming and can outlast formal hostilities. Take the case of two historians who tried to pry past the “received wisdom and the received ignorance” about Western military activities in a gory conflict fought on Third World terrain: A tyrant launched a lightning invasion into a neighboring southern country over which he claimed historical sovereignty. A U.S. diplomat earlier had “signaled” the avaricious dictator that the target state lay outside the perimeter of vital U.S. interests. Nonetheless, seventeen U.N. countries—though primarily the United States—charged in to repel the invaders with a ferocious aerial campaign and a massive ground assault. The tyrant, alas, survived this onslaught because several hundred thousand—and eventually several million—highly motivated Chinese troops came to the rescue.     

Nuclear energy fifty years after Hiroshima

Environmental restrictions are posing restraints on hydrocarbon fuel use. Barring widescale acceptance of limits to growth, or mass conversion to the ecology movement, it would seem that nuclear power is the only alternative energy supply today to achieve a measure of industrial capability. But whether the role of nuclear power can be disassociated from weapons in the next century's energy/environment complex remains to be seen. These issues are analyzed by IIPS Distinguished Research Fellow and Kyorin University Professor Ryukichi Imai, who has served as Japan's Ambassador to Kuwait, Mexico, and the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. He is the author of numerous books and articles on nuclear issues. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the July 1995 Pugwash Hiroshima Conference.     

Introduction to dalit poems

Abstract

The word dalit in Marathi, the language spoken by 50 million people in the state of Maharashtra in Western India, means “downtrodden,” “ground down,” or “depressed.” A caste-less word which ex-Untouchables have chosen for the new school of literature they have created, it includes all those who have suffered from the religio-social system. Short stories by ex-Untouchables began to appear in the 1950s, but the great swelling of creativity — poetry, novels, short stories, plays — appeared only in the late 1960s. The school is acknowledged by the Marathi literary establishment as a new and important development in the long history of Marathi literature. It represents a new voice, and its themes are protest, grievance, pride — and often revolution.     

Hiroshima and the Historians: History as Relative Truth

As is clear from the historiography of the US decision to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the judgments of historians are relative to the time, place, and perspective from which they are writing. There are four major schools of historical interpretation of the decision. First is the orthodox view that was offered by the participants in the decision. Second is the revisionist view of historians writing during the era of the Vietnam war who adopted a much more critical interpretation. Third is an interpretive school that gives weight to the Japanese role and responsibility. Finally, the author's view is found in a more long-range perspective that finds the momentum created by President Roosevelt's unconditional surrender policy as the decisive factor. This policy provoked unconditional resistance in the Japanese military. By 1945 the legacy of Roosevelt's policy was firmly embedded in American public opinion. Historians have reached no consensus among these different interpretive schools.     

Emotion by design

Zusammenfassung Der Prozess gesellschaftlicher Gefühlsregulationen ist in der soziologischen Theoriegeschichte als Ausbreitung von Selbstzw?ngen und Rationalisierung beschrieben worden. Demgegenüber stellte sich die Lockerung emotionaler Disziplin im 20. Jahrhundert als Informalisierung von Emotionsregeln dar. Die gegenw?rtigen Programme emotionaler Selbststeuerung hingegen, wie sie in aktuellen Konzepten von Arbeit und Management, von Beratung, Training und Therapie vorfindbar sind, deuten daraufhin, dass sich mittlerweile der Gegensatz von Disziplinierung und Informalisierung aufzul?sen beginnt. Im Gefolge einer modernen Wettbewerbsgesellschaft, die ihren ?konomischen Fluchtpunkt im Markterfolg findet und kulturell von Prozessen der „Subjektivierung“ begleitet wird, breiten sich Programme des Selbstmanagements aus, die sich vor allem der kognitiven Veranlassung und des strategischen Einsatzes von Gefühlen widmen. Gefühle sind dadurch nicht mehr allein Objekt subjektiver und sozialer Kontrolle. Vielmehr zielt modernes Selbstmanagement auf die „Optimierung“ des emotionalen Erlebens und Darstellens ab, wofür das Konzept der „emotionalen Intelligenz“ beispielhaft ist. Derartige Programme einer modernen Emotionalisierung von Gesellschaft und ?konomie hinterlassen jedoch den paradoxen Effekt, erst zu jener „affektiven Neutralit?t“ hinzuführen, der sie vermeintlich begegnen wollen.

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Emotion by design

Summary In sociological theory, the social process of regulating emotions has been described in terms of self-constraints and rationalization. In contrast, the loosening of emotional discipline in the 20th century represented itself as “informalization” of feeling rules. Present programs of emotional self-management, however, to be found in current concepts of work and business, as well as of consultation, training and therapy, point to the fact that the contrast of disciplining and informalization is blurring. In the wake of a market society, which seeks its economic yardsticks in personal efficiency as well as financial success, and which is culturally accompanied by processes of “subjectivation,” programs of self-management dedicated primarily to the cognitive triggering and strategic use of emotions are on the rise. But feelings are not just the object of subjective and social control. Rather, modern selfmanagement aims at the “optimization” of emotional experience and performance, for which Daniel Goleman’s popular concept of “Emotional Intelligence” is exemplary. Curiously, such programs of a modern emotionalizing in society and economics have the paradoxical effect of leading precisely to the “affective neutrality” they stood up against in the first place.

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Résumé Le processus de régulation sociale des sentiments a été décrit dans l’histoire de la pensée sociologique comme progrès de l’autocontrainte et de la rationalisation. A l’opposé, le relachement de la discipline émotionnelle au cours du 20ème siècle est apparu comme une informalisation des règles de ma?trise des émotions. Les programmes contemporains de contr?le de ses émotions, tels qu’on les trouve dans les concepts développés actuellement par les ressources humaines et le management, le conseil, les méthodes d’entra?nement et la pratique thérapeutique, indiquent que l’opposition entre disciplination et informalisation commence à s’estomper. Avec l’avènement d’une société concurrentielle moderne mesurant toute activité économique à l’aune du succès commercial et s’accompagnant de processus culturels de „subjectivation“, des programmes de management de soi se répandent qui se consacrent en premier lieu à la motivation cognitive et l’utilisation stratégique des sentiments. Les sentiments cessent ainsi d’être objets du seul contr?le subjectif et social. Le management de soi moderne vise bien plut?t à „optimiser“ le vécu et les représentations émotionnelles ; le concept d’„intelligence émotionnelle“ est à ce titre exemplaire. Néanmoins, de tels programmes visant une émotionnalisation moderne de la société et de l’économie ont paradoxalement pour effet de conduire à cette „neutralité affective“ qu’ils prétendent conjurer.