Theorizing identity: beyond the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy

ABSTRACT

Yuval-Davis discusses three interconnected questions relating to identity. She first examines whether and in what ways the notion of identity should be theorized, on the one hand, and empirically researched, on the other, focusing on the opposing views of Stuart Hall and Robin Williams. She then examines the contested question of what is identity, positioning it in relation to notions of belonging and the politics of belonging, and in relation to several influential schools of thought, especially those that construct identity as a mode of narrative, as a mode of performativity or as a dialogical practice. Her third interrelated question concerns the boundaries of identity and the relationship between self and non-self. She explores both social psychological and psychoanalytical approaches to that question, and deals with questions such as reflexivity, identifications and forced identities. The last part of the article explores several types of relationships between self and non-self, such as: ‘me’ and ‘us’; ‘me/us’ and ‘them’; ‘me’ and other ‘others’; ‘me’ and the transversal ‘us/them’. Yuval-Davis's basic argument here is that dichotomous notions of identity and difference, when theorizing boundaries of individual and collective identities, are more misleading than explanatory.     

Intervention and Statebuilding Beyond the Human: From the ‘Black Box’ to the ‘Great Outdoors’

This article analyses intervention and statebuilding as shifting towards a posthuman discursive regime. It seeks to explore how the shift to ‘bottom-up’ or post-liberal approaches has evolved into a focus upon epistemological barriers to intervention and an appreciation of complexity. It attempts to describe a process of reflection upon intervention as a policy practice, whereby the need to focus on local context and relations – in order to take problems seriously – begins to further undermine confidence in the Western episteme. In other words, the bottom-up approach, rather than resolving the crisis of policy practices of intervention, seems to further intensify it. It is argued that the way out of this crisis seems to be found in the rejection of the aspiration to know from a position of a ‘problem-solving’ external authority and instead to learn from the opportunities opened up through the practices of intervention. However, what is learnt does not seem to be able to fit into traditional modes and categories of expertise.     

Keeping the ‘Ism’ in ‘cosmopolitanism’ – Wieland and the origins of cosmopolitan discourse

ABSTRACT

After having been dormant for much of the 20th century, the concept of cosmopolitanism has regained some of its former rhetorical power in current academic and political debates. Taking Kwame Anthony Appiah and Robert Fine as key interlocutors, the article argues that a historically informed analysis of the linguistic context, in which the language of cosmopolitanism first emerged, can help us understand better the political and ideological underpinnings of the concept. In the first part of the article, I discuss the emergence of cosmopolitanism in the context of what I shall refer to as the ‘ismatization’ of political language in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the second part, I turn to what I consider to be a key text for understanding the paradoxes of cosmopolitanism: the essay Das Geheimnis des Kosmopolitenordens (‘The Secret of the Order of the Cosmopolitans’), published by the German novelist, poet and publicist Christoph Martin Wieland in the journal Teutscher Merkur in 1788. At the end of the 18th century, I argue, Wieland makes a similar observation to Fine, namely that the ‘ism’ connotes something doctrinal, even sectarian, and steeped in secrecy and conspiracy.     

Democratization in the ‘miracle’ economies

Michael R.J. Vatikiotis Political Change in Southeast Asia: Trimming the Banyan Tree London: Routledge, 1996. 230 pp. ISBN 0–415–13484–6.

Garry Rodan (ed.) Political Oppositions in Industrialising Asia London: Routledge, 1996. 338 pp. ISBN 0–415–14865–0.     

‘Buzantine’ security complexes in the Pacific

In Search of Peace: Confidence Building and Conflict Reduction in the Pacific, edited by Muthiah Alagappa. Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS), Kuala Lumpur/Kegan Paul International, London, 1989. vi + 72 pp. £20. ISBN 0–7103–0375–0.

Building Confidence, Resolving Conflicts, edited by Muthiah Alagappa. ISIS, Kuala Lumpur/Kegan Paul International, London, 1990. vi+155 pp. £35. ISBN 0–7103–0372–6.

No Longer an American Lake?, edited by John Ravenhill. Allen &; Unwin, Sydney, Wellington and London, 1989, ix + 227 pp. £10.95 paperback. ISBN0–04–372042–0.

Arms and Defence in Southeast Asia, edited by Chandran Jeshurun. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1989. xiv+174pp. $19.0 (SS35.00) hardback, $14.00 (S$25.00) paperback. ISBN 981–3035–44–7 and 981–3035–45–5.

Security and Arms Control in the North Pacific, edited by A. Mack and P. Keal. Allen &; Unwin, Sydney, Wellington and London, 1988. xiv+324pp. £30 hardback, £14.95 paperback. ISBN 0–04–335061–5 and 0–04–332138–0.     

James Bond,Ian Fleming and intelligence: breaking down the boundary between the ‘real’ and the ‘imagined’

This article looks to answer the question of why the James Bond novels and films should matter to scholars of intelligence and national security. We argue that Bond is important because, rightly or wrongly, and not without inaccuracy, it has filled a public knowledge vacuum about intelligence agencies and security threats. On another level, this article explores the unexpected yet important interactions between Bond and the actual world of intelligence. We contend that the orthodoxy dictating that Bond and spying are diametric opposites—one is the stuff of fantasy, the other is reality—is problematic, for the worlds of Bond and real intelligence collide, overlap and intermesh in fascinating and significant ways. In short, Bond is important for scholars because he is an international cultural icon that continues to operate at the borders of fiction and reality, framing and constructing not only public perceptions but also to some degree intelligence practices. Core narratives of intelligence among not only the public but also policymakers and intelligence officers are imagined, sustained, deepened, produced and reproduced through and by Bond. We conclude that Bond and intelligence should be thought of as co-constitutive; the series shapes representations and perceptions of intelligence, but it also performs a productive role, influencing the behaviours of intelligence agencies themselves.     

From the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ policy design: design thinking beyond markets and collaborative governance

Policy design as a field of inquiry in policy studies has had a chequered history. After a promising beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, the field languished in the 1990s and 2000s as work in the policy sciences focused on the impact on policy outcomes of meta-changes in society and the international environment. Both globalization and governance studies of the period ignored traditional design concerns in arguing that changes at this level predetermined policy specifications and promoted the use of market and collaborative governance (network) instruments. However, more recent work re-asserting the role of governments both at the international and domestic levels has revitalized design studies. This special issue focuses on recent efforts in the policy sciences to reinvent, or more properly, ‘re-discover’ the policy design orientation in light of these developments. Articles in the issue address leading edge issues such as the nature of design thinking and expertise in a policy context, the temporal aspects of policy designs, the role of experimental designs, the question of policy mixes, the issue of design flexibility and resilience and the criteria for assessing superior designs. Evidence and case studies deal with design contexts and processes in Canada, China, Singapore, the UK, EU, Australia and elsewhere. Such detailed case studies are necessary for policy design studies to advance beyond some of the strictures placed in their way by the reification of, and over-emphasis upon, only a few of the many possible kinds of policy designs identified by the 1990s and early 2000s literature.     

Rethinking ‘Crowding Out’ and the Return of ‘Private Affluence and Public Squalor’

This article traces the history of ‘crowding out’, and its use as a justification for austerity and state deflation from its origins in the 1920s to its latest post-2010 incarnation. It examines why governments have kept turning to austerity and continue to justify it on the grounds that public sector activity crowds out more productive private activity, despite the accumulated evidence that this traditional pro-market formulation has failed to deliver its stated goals. It examines three other embedded forms of crowding out that have been highly damaging—leading to weakened social resilience and more fragile economies—but which have been ignored by both governments and mainstream political economists.     

‘放下便是’与‘放不下’

‘放下便是’与‘放不下’黄福群老舍先生生前创作时，曾经自己规定任务每天写两千字左右。但就这样的指标他还是不能很好地完成，有时候三天连一个字也写不出，面对着稿纸不知如何下笔。写不出东西往往使作家痛苦万分，同样，一旦文思泉涌来不及写时；也会使作家烦恼不安...     

Whose ‘Freedom of Navigation’? Australia,China, the United States and the making of order in the ‘Indo-Pacific’

The so-called freedom of navigation through the Malacca straits and the South China Sea, some of the world’s busiest trade routes, has long been of concern to scholars and practitioners of international politics in the region. Increasing tensions around territorial disputes recently propelled the issue to the forefront of global foreign and security policy making. Yet, despite the frequent invocation of threats to the ‘freedom of navigation’ for the justification of military measures to protect the ‘liberal rules-based order’, the substance of this rule or norm remains ambiguous and the nature of the threatened order unclear. Located at the confluence of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, Australian discourses represent a suitable case for clarifying both. Starting from the original provisions on navigational regimes in international law, this study analyses the meanings that officials, think tank analysts and academics have been attributing to the freedom of navigation and contextualize them in the evolving debate about order. Focusing on political rather than legal discourses, it finds that concerns with the freedom of navigation are largely unrelated to the safety of maritime transport. Instead, they serve as proxy for an increasingly static imagination of international order – written backward in time – to be secured.     

Corporatism and the ‘privileged position’ of business

This article examines the contradictions between Lindblom's thesis of the ‘privileged position of business’ and the corporatist views of writers such as Schmitter and Lehmbruch. The implications of the two theories are analysed in the context of the exchanges between the capital and labour in corporatist systems. The analysis focuses on the kinds of exchange business may enter into, with special attention to the question of capital mobility, for that gives important insights into the stability of corporatist systems. Case studies of Sweden and Norway show that the kinds of bargain struck under corporatism may have serious consequences for corporatism, both as an analytical device and as a working system.     

Ararat and the politics of ‘preserving’ denial

ABSTRACT

Daldal analyses Atom Egoyan's film Ararat (2002) in terms of its ‘truth claims’ and its ostensible critique of the politics of denial of the Turkish authorities. Her essay is not an apologia for Turkish attitudes but claims that, while searching for the ‘truth’ amid denial and deception, the film creates its own ‘official history’, which is presented as the history, mostly based on nostalgia and ‘post-memory’. The Armenian diaspora still relies heavily on the genocide in order to build consciousness and cohesion, and Ararat contributes further to the need for sacred codes, sacred lands and sacred myths. Although the Turkish denial of the genocide is unacceptable, by demonizing the Turks and Turkey, the film contributes to the preservation of that denial, which has been helpful in the creation of diasporic Armenian identity.     

Reproducing the ‘national home’: gendering domopolitics

Walters developed the concept of domopolitics to refer to the ways in which the securitisation of migration contributes to the construction of the UK as a ‘national home’. Domopolitical policies and discourses produce the UK as the ‘national home’ of ‘neoliberal citizens’; they thus serve as tools of neoliberal governmentality, disciplining both citizens and migrants into displaying qualities associated with neoliberal citizenship, especially economic productivity. However, the concept of ‘home’ has a particular genealogy within liberal discourses of citizenship. As Pateman contends, the political ‘public’ sphere of liberal citizenship is constructed in opposition to an apolitical ‘private’ sphere. The public sphere has been coded as the domain of men, while women have been relegated to the private ‘home’. Consequently, women have been deemed responsible for the reproduction of both the private, and the ‘national’ home, a construction which has persisted under neoliberalism. While often superficially gender-neutral, domopolitics actually relies upon, and reinforces, these gendered understandings of neoliberal citizenship. Domopolitical policies and discourses construct migrant women’s reproductive practices as a legitimate and necessary site of state intervention, disciplining migrant women to ensure they ‘correctly’ reproduce the neoliberal ‘national home.’     

Neo‐Nazis see the ‘protocols’ fraud

A neo‐Nazi intellectual finds the ‘Protocols’ to be ‘far removed from reality’.     

Reconstructing the French ‘Etat’: Progress of the loi Defferre

French local government has been subjected to sweeping reforms since the Socialist Party took office. The numerous measures, not yet all finalised or implemented, are aimed at creating a decentralised administration with local democratic control, particularly through the creation of local civil service corps and the transfer of tax‐revenues to the localities. It is apparent that considerable administrative problems will arise, and the parties will also be affected, not least by the introduction of PR voting at the local level. Democratic control will be enhanced and there will be a greater apparent politicisation of the administration, but it is also to be expected that the bureaucracy will protect its own interests and priorities.     

Rethinking the ‘Cold War’ in the Asia‐Pacific*

Abstract

Whereas the Yalta System collapsed and the Cold War ended in the Euro‐Atlantic context, the basic structure of the Cold War remains in the Asia‐Pacific region, and still provides potential sources for future conflicts. This paper reconsiders the regional Cold War and its implications for current international politics in the Asia‐Pacific region. It argues that the relaxation of tensions seen since the late 1980s resembles the 1970s’ détente in the Euro‐Atlantic region, i.e. recognition of a Cold War political status quo, rather than the ‘end of the Cold War’. Along with political and ideological confrontations, significant elements within the Cold War structure in the Asia‐Pacific are regional conflicts among its major players. Their historical correlation within the San Francisco System has been neglected in past studies. The paper suggests that re‐examining the disputes within a multilateral framework may provide a key to a breakthrough in understanding the current status quo.