Hybrid Politics and New Competitiveness: Hong Kong’s 2007 Chief Executive Election

In recounting Hong Kong's chief executive election in 2007, this paper charts the unexpected appearance of an “unauthorized” candidate and the occurrence of vibrant campaigning. Further, as electoral competitiveness increased, the liberal form of authoritarian rule that has characterized politics in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) began to change in ways that parallel the electoral authoritarianism practiced in Singapore. This paper argues that such change, if regularized and enhanced, may bring greater stability to the HKSAR’s politics, yielding greater legitimacy, popular compliance, and hence, new efficiencies in control. Even so, analysis of the chief executive election shows that this competitiveness was strongly resisted by the central government in Beijing.

Reflecting on Social Movement Unionism in Hong Kong: The Case of the Dockworkers’ Strike in 2013

By analysing the 2013 Hong Kong dockworkers’ strike, this article explores how workers, precariously situated in the world’s freest economy, fight for decent wages with the support of civil society. It is argued that the trade union movement in Hong Kong, a Special Administration Region of the People’s Republic of China, is a typical example of social movement unionism. It suggests that the rise of social movement unionism in Hong Kong was a practical strategy of social activists to support labour rights under the specific context of vulnerable structural power, weak institutional power, failed political unionism and a vibrant civil society. Social movement unionism has a “double-edged sword” effect on workers’ power: on the one hand, it has the potential to create societal power and strengthen associational power; on the other hand, it may compromise workers’ militancy and the possibility of stronger workplace bargaining power during workers’ struggle.     

Djibouti and Beyond: Japan’s First Post-War Overseas Base and the Recalibration of Risk in Securing Enhanced Military Capabilities

Having passed successive legislation in the past two decades to expand its use of the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF), Japan has emerged from its post-war ‘pacifist’ shackles to assume a range of security roles that are typically associated with so-called ‘normal nations’. This article addresses how these have been crystallized in the form of an indefinitely-termed overseas base on the Horn of Africa, in Djibouti. Careful examination of pertaining Diet minutes, media discourse and government ministry papers suggests that the risks identified with this facility’s realization and status have been fundamentally recalibrated, allowing its presence and operational diversification to go largely unnoticed and unopposed – both domestically and overseas – despite representing a seemingly radical departure from common sense interpretations of Japan’s antimilitarist constitution.     

From the Achaemenids to Somoni: national identity and iconicity in the landscape of Dushanbe’s capitol complex

This article focuses on the iconicity of contemporary Dushanbe’s capitol complex, with its state-sponsored architecture and memorial culture, part of the government of Tajikistan’s national identity construction. Dushanbe’s architecture post-independence is actant, a mnemonic and iconographical bridge between the present and favoured historical periods in a quest for national origins. A bricolage of historical symbols, including those of Achaemenid Iran and the early Islamic Samanids, is displayed here in a city with Soviet foundations. Together with pan-Iranian iconography is a desire by the government of Tajikistan for monumentality for its own sake. The capitol complex evokes the natural world, connected to a Central Asian conception of sacred space, suggesting an interlacing of power and religious authority. These monumental building projects are taking place against the backdrop of the destruction of Dushanbe’s ‘authentic’ Soviet architecture and built heritage in the capitol complex, itself a container for collective memory.     

Tunisia’s youth: awakened identity and challenges post-Arab Spring

This paper examines Tunisian youths’ sense of identity and how it is influenced by the economic malaise that the country has experienced since the revolution; this is despite the relative success of the Arab Spring at inciting the country’s political transition to democracy. Although young people appreciate new-found freedoms of expression and association in post-Arab Spring Tunisia, the economy, acquiescent to the neoliberal model and weighed down with corruption and political marginalization, has deprived many of a dignified existence. The research reported in this paper surveys over 100 youth chosen from northern, coastal, central and southern parts of Tunisia. It examines how Tunisian youth view the Arab Spring in the context of unstable socio-economic and political environments. To most surveyed youths, the Arab Spring is a failure in socio-economic terms, but it is also an occasion to reassert their Tunisian identity.     

Building new selves: identity, “Passing,” and intertextuality in Zoë Wicomb’s Playing in the Light

This article examines Zoë Wicomb’s wide-ranging use of intertextuality in the novel Playing in the Light to explore the links between identity construction and postcolonial authorship. Focusing on the characters as intertextual agents, I argue that the three coloured women on whom the novel focuses – Helen, Marion, and Brenda – use texts in distinctive ways that illuminate their struggles to position themselves in South Africa’s complex and changing racial landscape. Racial “passing” is one form of a larger pattern in the novel of the use of citation and imitation to achieve specific ends. By embedding the citations of Helen and Marion within the citation-rich narrative of Brenda, Wicomb lays bare the mechanisms of identity construction within a work that stages and highlights its own intertextual practices.     

Continuity and Pragmatism: How Chinese State-Owned Banks Adapted to Hong Kong’s Free Market (1949–1978)

One of the puzzling features of China’s post-1978 economic reforms is how quickly its enterprises adapted to the new business environment. An insight into this puzzle is provided by Chinese state-owned banks in Hong Kong. From 1949–78 these banks, led by the Bank of China, represented China’s primary financial interface with the outside world. What distinguished the management of these banks from their peers was their loyalty to communist values. Yet, despite Mao Zedong’s anti-imperialist anti-capitalist ideology, the Bank of China demonstrated extraordinary business pragmatism in its engagement with the international financial system. It also exemplified a high level of management continuity which enabled it to see beyond a volatile and often hostile political environment. The article shows that the post-1978 retreat from ideology and its replacement with commercial incentives proved costly in terms of professional standards. A homogenisation of bank management also made it more difficult to recruit senior management whose loyalty to the Communist Party could be assumed. These findings highlight the importance of rule variation in explaining international differences in management behaviour. More generally the article shows the long-term importance of Hong Kong’s role as an internationalising force for China’s business and financial sectors.     

On race,sport, and politics in South Africa’s past and present

There has been a steady emergence of quality writing about sport, politics, and the intersection between them in South African society in recent decades. This review essay looks at a number of recent works on soccer, rugby, and cricket, placing them within a larger context of race, sport, and politics in South Africa’s past and present.     

‘Unsatisfactory national identity’: School inspectors,education and national identity in interwar Latvia

Abstract

The trajectory of the school system in inter-war independent Latvia was a microcosm of the larger experiences of the state. The devastation of World War I and the battles that followed undermined seriously the capacity of the new state. The first post-war years were spent laboriously rebuilding from near abject ruin. After initial reonstruction passed, however, the dominant concerns became what was to be taught and how in Latvia's schools. The process of this debate and the at times conflicting, at times complimentary, demands of schoolteachers, school inspectors, local government officials, teachers, and students built a modern, effective school system. This school system reflected an inreasingly sophisticated pedagogy, a professionalism of schoolteachers, and impressive construction of schools.

The content of schools, however, was also severely contested. With the Depression of the early 1930s the opinions of some quarters of society became more emphatic in identifying a great crisis in society, a crisis that demanded more authoritarian action, a return to traditionalism, and increased importance on nationalist content. This trend supported and was supported by the Ulmanis regime, which considerably restructured the school system, the state, and society at large in the last half of the 1930s.

This article relies primarily on archival sources drawn most from school inspectors' reports and other officials within and around the Ministry of Education.     

Safe-guarding the colonial present: game farms on the frontier in KwaZulu-Natal's ‘Battlefields Route’

Drawing on Alistair Fraser's concept of the ‘colonial present’, I show how private game farms are both conceptualised and deployed to maintain ideas of boundaries and belonging that sustain colonial ideals and identities. This article is located on the banks of the Mzinyathi River in KwaZulu-Natal, a river that has functioned as a boundary between various groups for almost two hundred years. The game farms located in this area conserve the idea of the river as a frontier space for ‘white’ South Africa and a boundary with ‘black’ South Africa, as well as entrenching their own boundaries through the imagination and realisation of an idealised space. I argue that the game farms safeguard and perpetuate a colonial present whilst obscuring opportunities for other ways of interpreting and using the space of the farm. Ultimately, how the game farms are now imagined and the way they operate is counterproductive to social transformation in the rural landscape.     

Dynamism in Adversity: a Comparative Study of Trends in the Performance of Listed Family- and Non-Family-Controlled Companies in Hong Kong, 1997–2014

This paper addresses the long debate over the superiority of the performance of family- vs non-family-controlled companies from the contesting perspectives of entrepreneurial familism and managerial capitalism. Publicly listed family- and non-family-controlled companies in Hong Kong have been selected for a comparison of their overall performance. The focus is on Hang Seng Index constituent companies in general, and on two cases in particular: one non-family-controlled bank (HSBC), and one family-controlled bank (BEA). We found that family-controlled companies were not necessarily less competitive than non-family-controlled companies. Specifically, when HSBC and BEA were compared, the latter showed no clear inferiority in operating profit margin and return on assets, even though the former enjoys unparalleled advantages, such as an overwhelming superiority in size, the privilege of issuing notes, and status as Hong Kong’s quasi-central bank. Therefore, we argue that entrepreneurial familism seems to be a resilient source of business dynamism, particularly when family-controlled companies have been repeatedly tested by adverse socioeconomic crises. Based on the finding, it is suggested that governments across the world should provide a favorable institutional set-up to facilitate the development of family businesses.     

Haven under erasure?: Hong Kong,global Asia and human rights

Discussions of Hong Kong's human rights situation tend to focus on the ex-colony's struggle to protect civil and political rights against the encroachment of the Chinese state. Without contradicting the well-grounded concern with Hong Kong's human rights future articulated in these discussions, this article offers a complementary narrative of human rights development in post-1997 Hong Kong that looks beyond the national frame of such discussions. Drawing attention to Hong Kong's position as a regional centre in the struggle for human rights in Asia under globalisation, the article argues that the activities of local and transnational human rights advocacy groups in the city show positive and promising possibilities of coalitional solidarity on the ground of human rights. Notably, the protests against national security legislation opened up opportunities of articulating diverse struggles for the rights of various social groups, including migrant groups, with the local struggle for civil and political rights. A perspective of Global Asia enables a reading of this important episode in Hong Kong's struggle for human rights that suggests more open-ended future possibilities than the common nationally-framed accounts.     

South Africa’s peacebuilding in the DRC: Convergence and dissonance with the liberal model

The task of transforming countries affected by conflict towards sustainable peace has been a persistent problem. In response to growing intra-state conflict in the post-Cold War era, it has become the norm to prescribe a cocktail of liberal democracy and free-market economics as a universal formula for building peaceful societies. South Africa, since its post-democratic emergence into global affairs, has also been active in promoting peace in Africa along similar lines. This article embarks on an exploratory qualitative analysis of South Africa’s peacebuilding engagements in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It aims to contribute a better understanding of South Africa’s peacebuilding engagements by utilising the DRC case study to point out areas of convergence and dissonance with the dominant liberal model of peacebuilding. The article finds that, although peppered with successes and failures, South Africa does approach peacebuilding in a unique manner. It also calls for a revision of South Africa’s approach, given the varying levels of success in the DRC.     

Cultural revolt in a colonial society: The non-brahmin movement in Western India, 1873–1930

Abstract

As the title implies, the central theme of this book is the role of colonialism in western India. The author argues that colonialism encouraged certain castes to rise to a position of dominance in society by creating an atmosphere that fostered polarized and competing groups. Dr. Omvedt's geographical focus is the state of Maharashtra during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when the Brahmin elites who responded to western education and new occupations in the bureaucracy moved into positions of status and authority based on a colonial model of society. Beneath them in the indigenous social hierarchy remained the non-Brahmins or Untouchables who were not granted the same opportunities for advancement,     

Understanding Russia’s energy turn to China: domestic narratives and national identity priorities

This study investigates whether, as part of a broader “Asian Energy Pivot,” Russia’s energy giant Gazprom refashioned its export strategy away from Europe, and what impact such a reorientation might have on the EU–Russia gas relationship. It uses four empirical cases to emphasize the domestic movers underlying Russia’s eastward shift in energy trade, developing a constructivist theory rooted in the dynamics of Russia’s dominant public narrative and the contours of domestic politics. It argues that Russia’s national interests changed as a result of how Russian policy-makers interpreted and reacted to the stand-off with Europe, in response to what they perceived as Europe’s attempt to isolate it economically and geopolitically. Russia’s Eurasianists, who had advocated the notion of a necessary turn to the East for a long time, positioned themselves as norm entrepreneurs and their new interpretation of the preexisting material incentives shaped the future course of action.