The public spheres of unprotected workers

This article examines emergent forms of political subjectivity amongst subordinate social forces, focusing on how ‘unprotected’ workers in household relations of production can become political subjects antagonistic to world order. For unprotected workers the very lack of institutional protection makes articulating political demands risky. At the same time, the need to conceptualise the manner in which the workers in the households and in proximate forms of social relations of production become political subjects is increasingly urgent. The article begins by articulating a conception of the public sphere relevant to the forms of political subjectivity examined. The argument then proceeds to situate the family in the global political economy. Next, the article examines the circulation of women between the household and proximate forms of social relations of production. It is in this circulation that unprotected workers produce potential and emergent counter-public spheres needed for the forms of political subjectivity that challenge the dominant forces in world order.     

Human Migration and the Conceptualization of Pre–Modern World Politics

The debate regarding historical continuity and transformation of international systems within International Relations (IR) theory has turned to conceptualizing world politics in terms of civilizations, particularly with respect to analysis of the pre–modern era. The political consequences of human migration have been overlooked in this debate. Migration shaped the demographic, social, and political dynamics within pre–modern civilizations and migration was a major medium of interaction between civilizations and their external environments, including other civilizations. This argument is elaborated in case studies of ancient Greece and Rome. Migration played a critical role in the development, relative power, and interaction of Greek city–states as well as the transformation of Athens into a polyethnic empire. Migration was central to the rise and decline of the Roman Empire, as particularly highlighted in the development of Roman citizenship, its role in the political incorporation of non–Romans, and the bearing of this process on the relationship between the Roman Empire and its environment.     

Postcards and Propaganda: Cartographic Postcards as Soft News Images of the Russo-Japanese War

Postcards are an important resource that has been largely overlooked in mainstream research on historical events, political attitudes, perceptions, propaganda, and communication. Accordingly, this article expands the relevance of the postcard from social artifact to historical document embodying social and political messages. In particular, the article examines the images and representations used in cartographic postcards during and after the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). Not only is this relevant to the study of political propaganda, but also for the study of historic media, popular consumption of political messaging, and as an additional tool with which to study the history of international politics and communication. The political history leading up to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War is briefly covered. Images of cartographic postcards are examined in context of the conflict, with the goal of gaining a greater appreciation for postcards as a form of early “soft news” visual mass media. As such, this is a means by which imperial attitudes and public opinion were shaped. Recommendations are made to broaden the use of postcards as primary documents, especially as these cards are enjoying an online renaissance (e.g., collecting, displaying, discussing). They are valuable in augmenting a variety of research agendas and are fruitful for the study of early modern mass media, social history, public discourse, and political messaging with regard to soft news and public opinion.     

From contention to social bargaining: labour unions and democratic consolidation in Spain

The main objective of this article is to examine how the links between trade unions and affiliated political parties of the left influenced the strategies of labour during the transition and the early years of democracy in Spain. It argues that political partisanship is a key factor for understanding the unions' strategies. After a period of intense labour conflict during the transition to democracy, labour mobilization decreased and Spain's unions and other social actors initiated distinctive processes of social bargaining, starting in 1979. The central argument is that the relationship of unions and political parties in the authoritarian and transition periods was a major factor in conditioning strategies in the post-authoritarian period. In the end, the consolidation of Spanish democracy has led to the strengthening of the main trade unions. Contrary to what happened in other historical periods they used this power to contribute to governability and the consolidation of the new democratic regime.     

Location "Authority" in the Global Political Economy

This article addresses the problematic nature of "authority" in the global political economy. Focusing on the rules governing international commercial relations, which today form part of the juridical conditions of global capitalism, the location and structure of political authority are argued to be historically specific. They have changed with the emergence of different historic blocs and as a result of consequent alterations in state-societyrelations. The article emphasizes the significance of private corporate power in the construction of the global political economy and hegemonic authority relations. However, the significance of private authority is obscure and little understood by students of international relations. This gives rise to analytical and normative grounds for adopting a historical materialist approach to theanalysis of global authority that incorporates national, subnational, and transnational influences.     

Exploring the link between patronage and party institutionalization: an historical-institutional analysis of the Italian transition

This article analyses party patronage transformations in Italy since the early 1990s, a time when political parties and the party system entered a phase of continuing change. It examines how the interaction between the temporality of party system restructuring and historical legacies rooted in the nature of public bureaucracies reproduced patronage practices aimed at capturing state resources. The article employs a historical institutionalist approach as a research framework and concludes that this provides a cogent explanatory argument for the development of state exploitation taken by Italian political parties since the crisis of the early 1990s.     

论东亚文化合作中的儒学再现

笔者主张基于历史唯物主义原则，在世界多元文化格局中评价、研究和应用儒学。儒学既可以成为东亚文化合作的内容，也可以成为促进东亚社会发展的先进文化。以儒学为中心的文化合作，不仅仅是人文学术的合作，也应该提倡儒学理论与社会实践相结合，使儒学在实践中得到补充、完善和更新。儒学更新与东亚区域文化合作是一种互动、互利关系。东亚社会的和平发展将得益于儒学的更新和合理实践，得益于东亚各国平等而开放的对外文化关系政策。基于儒学的传统和理念，用文化合作观回应文化冲突论必将有利于协调个人与社会、不同的种族、民族乃至于人类与大自然之间的种种复杂关系。     

古巴革命的历史意义和成就

古巴革命是古巴民族意识和精神的象征,政治和社会变革的旗帜,崇尚伦理价值和理想的境界,勇于进行社会主义探索的精神,无私的国际主义义务和发展中国家寻求自主发展的重要启迪.50年来,古巴在革命和社会主义建设事业中取得了重大成就,克服了90年代初的经济危机,实现了经济持续增长;社会主义政治体制机制不断完善;教育、科技、医疗卫生事业获得长足进步,惠及全民;社会发展成就得到国际公认,住居世界先进水平.展望未来,古巴人民将继往开来.把革命和社会主义事业继续推向前进.     

Basic problems in the theory of uneven and combined development. Part II: unevenness and political multiplicity

Where does ‘the international’ come from? What accounts for its existence as a dimension of the human world? This article attempts an answer, in three steps, using the idea of ‘uneven and combined development’ (U&CD). First, a depth model is constructed, comparing different ways of linking uneven development with international relations. Thus far, it turns out, these ways have all presupposed the fact of political multiplicity, rather than explaining it. In search of explanation, the article turns, secondly, to the compelling historical sociological argument of Barry Buzan and Richard Little. This locates the origins of geopolitics in the late prehistoric shift from hunter-gatherer to settled agricultural existence, together with associated processes of social differentiation and proto-state formation. Buzan and Little's explanation appears at first to pre-empt the need for the concept of U&CD. Yet closer inspection reveals that unevenness and combination play a key role in their empirical account without, however, being theorized. The third step of the argument therefore seeks to show how these are necessary parts of the process of social change which Buzan and Little describe. And in this way it emerges that the origins of ‘the international’ do indeed lie in the uneven and combined character of historical development.     

‘Community development’ as a buzz-word

This article examines the semantic evolution of the term ‘community development’ (CD) in the latter half of the twentieth century. It is argued that CD has acquired different meanings, theoretical grounding, and practical applications, starting from a focus on traditional societies up to the 1960s, moving to a focus on social and/or civil-rights movements up to the 1980s, and further to a focus on the modern middle class from the 1990s. The thrust of the argument is that the concept is not cohesive and unified but represents a repertoire of meanings which include many shades of CD that are not necessarily mutually compatible but reflect particular political and social practices in the contexts in which they occur.     

民族心理、社会现代化与俄罗斯的政治转型——兼论俄罗斯政治发展的未来方向

本文首先从俄罗斯民族心理和社会现代化入手考察了俄罗斯20世纪90年代初政治转型的基础,然后从意识形态(非)政治化入手,分析了叶利钦时期的政治生态和普京时期政治稳定化背后的原因。结论认为,俄罗斯的民族心理和社会现代化水平在实质上对俄罗斯转型以来的政治发展进行了限定;意识形态的(非)政治化政治化分别适应了转型的需要和秩序重建的需要。俄罗斯民族心理通过意识形态政治化所表达出的群体信念在很大程度上决定着俄罗斯政治发展的未来方向。     

Cambodia's broadcast TV: promotion of consumerist desires

Broadcast television in Cambodia has historically been left out of scholarship, be it that of economics, politics, or mass communication. That, however, does not mean the study of Cambodia's broadcast TV has only academic significance. Indeed, the entire mass communication industry has experienced a sea of change since the introduction of the UN-backed democracy project in 1991, followed by the call for a “free market” economy and its accompanied globalized and liberal discourses. That wholesale political and economic shift has led, and continues to lead, to the transformation of not only the macro aspects of the state, such as the imposed structural adjustments as the pre-condition for international funding, but also the micro, private aspects of the society's members, those ranging from religious practices, gender relations, social and familial values, and the like. While that shift in the early 1990s is now a thing of the past, its social consequences are now more apparent than ever with such issues as gap of inequality and conflicts in social relations and values being strongly felt. Cambodia's television is indeed at the forefront of representing and acting in these social changes, which demands of academics, development workers, and policy makers interested in the country that they attentively examine the country's broadcast TV. Thus, this paper takes the chance to primarily draw a landscape of Cambodia's broadcast television as it is at present, while at the same time juxtaposing the industry against its current societal context. In doing that, I first put into perspective a brief historical development of broadcast television in relation to the country's political and economic shift. I then proceed to introduce an overall picture of Cambodia's broadcast TV, describing its current state of ownership, technological and regulatory framework, market, and programming. Eventually, I turn to provide a critical argument about the industry as a promoter of the surging consumerist desire—“freedom of choice”—for the last several years. Towards the end of the paper, I move toward a speculation over the future of Cambodia's broadcast TV by taking into account current institutional aspects of the country's politics and economy, as well as discursive aspects of technology, free market, and regulations.     

Editor's note

This article examines the argument that the ability of a government to generate “audience costs”—to create a situation, that is, in which it would pay a domestic political price for backing down—plays a key role in determining how international crises run their course. It does this by looking at a dozen great power crises to see how well various aspects of the audience costs argument hold up in the light of the historical evidence. The audience costs mechanism, it turns out, does not play a major role in any of those crises—a conclusion which, the author claims, has certain important methodological implications.     

Can Dispersed Practices Be Held Ethically Accountable?

This article offers a positive answer to: can dispersed practices, such as global civil society and the society of democratic states, be held ethically accountable? To clarify this kind of ethical judgement, a contrast is made between the ways we hold individuals ethically accountable within social practices, awarding praise/blame to individuals (individual persons or collective actors such as states), and the way in which we deploy critical theories to hold a dispersed practice ethically responsible for certain consequences flowing from its operation. Such judgements are ironic given that within such practices individual actors are not, from an ethical point of view, doing wrong. The kind of ethical criticism made possible by critical theory in general, and constitutive theory in particular, is a necessary precursor to many political campaigns aimed at transforming the global dispersed social practices within which we are constituted as who we are.     

The political theology of the empire to come

This article considers the character and substance of the war on terror and the global security paradigm in the light of political theology and its pivotal place in the constitution of modern liberal politics. The argument is that global liberal governance is predicated on a sacralised temporality, the historicisation of eschatology, and this claim is developed in the light of the juridical–political logic of states of emergency.     

Is social networking fostering the fungibility of the Other?

The argument will be made here that the various social networking platforms and mobile communicational technologies that have proliferated within the 21st century have promoted a powerful sentiment of technological determinism, particularly with regard to what it means to be a social individual within (post)modern society. The article will show how these new communicational technologies have accelerated and amplified a highly commodified and instrumentalised form of rationality within a relational context. By relying on an interdisciplinary methodological framework – focusing primarily on the critical insights of Bauman, Turkle, Adorno and Horkheimer – this investigation essentially highlights how (contrary to popular perception) these new communicational devices have had an inimical and undermining effect on individuals’ apperception of the Other, and what it means to be a sociable being. As a result, the focus is on how these new mediums of communication foster the sentiments of objectification, fungibility and the disposability of the Other in the realm of interpersonal relationships – a paradoxical outcome, in light of the fact that such technological developments are often purported to encourage and foster a sense of interpersonal cohesion and contiguity.     

社会转型中的国家认同:乌克兰的案例研究

自获得独立以后,乌克兰社会就面临着从社会主义制度向资本主义制度的转型。乌克兰的社会转型在政治方面可以理解为构建现代国家的过程,不仅要进行民族-国家的重新构建,而且还要进行民主-国家的构建。社会的转型造成了乌克兰社会在历史宗教文化上的认同矛盾,经济发展上的道路之争,在政治上的民主危机。这三个方面的矛盾演化成为乌克兰国家认同的危机。通过分析乌克兰出现的国家认同危机,笔者认为,社会转型过程中出现的国家认同差异并不可怕,重要的是政治家如何去处置。乌克兰政治家在处理民族问题上的过激言行是导致民族国家认同差异问题演化成为危机的关键,而民族认同危机又增加了民主转型过程中的不确定性和复杂性。     

Using the principle of non-discrimination to reconcile the national contract with the global compact

The argument of this article is that the best way to reconcile the national social contract with the global compact is to ensure that the terms of the national social contract are compatible with the principle of non-discrimination. It suggests that if national societies were seriously guided by the principle of non-discrimination, the response to the rights claims of non-citizens would be a lot different from the present situation, without, in fact, requiring more of any of us than we, as ordinarily self-centred human beings, are capable of delivering.     

Citizenship Capital

ABSTRACT

This article examines the citizenship dimension of transnational inequalities. It is clear that some citizenships offer great advantages while others are liabilities for the individual, and the aim of this present article is to develop a conceptualisation of citizenship and inequality, in order to be able to assess and compare them. For this purpose, elements of Pierre Bourdieu's sociology are utilized. The argument is that citizenship can be thought of as a form of capital in this Bourdieusian sense – that is, as a resource with which individuals are more or less endowed, and which impacts on people's transnational social positions, their capacities for action, their strategies and perceptions. The main contribution is to develop this idea, which is referred to as “citizenship capital”. Its usefulness is demonstrated by considering its interaction with economic capital for shaping positions in transnational social space.