Reaction to two perspectives,the present and the future

The author agrees with Alastair Buchan's position that the bipolarity of the two super powers is declining, but disagrees that relations between the United States and the USSR are stabilizing. The future of the international system is seen as determined by exponential growth in (1) the arms race, (2) economic development which is necessarily founded on a limited resource base, and (3) population. The only hope for stability in the world is seen as decreased nationalism, equalization of wealth among the peoples of the world, disarmament, and world government. Without these changes of direction, the predictions of the Limits of Growth are seen as all too likely to materialize.     

The future is uncertain and the end is always near

The standard view of contemporary unipolar politics is that systemic constraints impede the translation of American power capabilities into influence over security outcomes, rendering the United States (US) much less capable than its material capabilities imply. Challenging this logic, William Wohlforth and Stephen Brooks argue that systemic constraints under unipolarity are largely inoperative with respect to the security policies of the unipolar power. Indeed, the US is uniquely positioned in today's world to convert its enormous capability advantages into influence and usable power. While World out of balance is a masterwork of logical and rigorous argumentation, Brooks and Wohlforth, in their exclusive focus on the hegemon and its policies, do not attempt to offer a general theory of unipolarity. Thus, they do not consider the possibility that unipolarity does not constrain any actors or the issue of system change. This essay advances two routes out of unipolarity: (1) a ‘delegitimation’ phase followed by regular balancing behavior and (2) a sudden and dramatic shift from unipolarity to multipolarity brought on by an unforeseen US collapse.     

The utopia of suburbia: the unchanging past and limitless future in Doraemon

The long-running Japanese children's media franchise Doraemon is commonly interpreted both inside and outside academic discourse as a representation of a positive vision of the future, an analysis based partially on its portrayal of a lovable robot. This view is supported by the series' use of ‘science’ to represent unlimited accessibility, and the branding of the series as a companion to children's scientific education. Doraemon's celebration of the future's boundless potential is complicated, however, by the impulse in recent works to reject the same notion of ‘progress’ on which the series relies. The works remain frozen in a romanticised vision of 1960s’ Japan, and have come to connote childhood nostalgia while presenting characters that do not grow or change over time. In the 2008 film Nobita to Midori no Kyojinden, the perpetual act of returning that defines much of Doraemon today is taken to a dramatic extreme, as a pre-modern ideal becomes the blueprint for both morality and might. Doraemon constructs temporal mixtures that simultaneously glorify both the past and the future.     

The Civic Education Project in Belarus,Ukraine, and Moldova: the impact of dependency

The reliance of development NGOs on donor funding exposes them to the danger of formulating programmes geared to meeting the needs of the donors, rather than those of local beneficiaries. In the worst-case scenario, NGOs may exacerbate existing problems through interventions that reinforce their own dominance and undermine local empowerment. This article examines some of the practices of one international NGO which worked in the field of higher education in three former Soviet countries.     

Urban space in the French imperial past and the postcolonial present

  The essay begins with a discussion of some of the parallel forms of imagining urban space found in colonial French and postcolonial Franco-Vietnamese cultural expression. In both cases cities are perceived as dynamic sites of creative exchange and mutual enrichment between the former imperial center and periphery. We also find similar sentiments of regret and longing for an authentic “indigenous” space uncorrupted by Western intervention. The second part looks comparatively at how contemporary Franco-Algerian and Franco-Vietnamese cultural actors depict urban space in the postcolonial present. Here we see that aside from important socioeconomic differences and the more distant and largely absent memory of the French war in Indochina, military conflicts rooted in the colonial past continue to exert a powerful influence on the imagining of urban space. In the case of Franco-Algerians it is the legacy of the Algerian war that pits Algerian-youth against French authorities in urban periphery. For Franco-Vietnamese the memory of the Vietnam War continues to divide the Vietnamese community internally into pro and anti-Hanoi camps within the center of the French capital.     

青海省畜牧业标准化工作的现状和展望

畜牧业标准化是实现畜牧业现代化的基础工作 ,实施畜牧业标准化有利于推广普及高新技术 ,提高自然资源利用率 ,提高经济效益 ,维持可持续发展。随着中国加入ＷＴＯ ,畜牧业标准化的制订、实施更加迫切 ,这项工作涉及畜禽品种、生产环节、管理措施、产品贮存和包装运输、饲草 (料 )生产和饲料标准等多方面内容。青海省的畜牧业在农业中占主导地位 ,尤其独特的高原资源优势 ,使畜牧业有巨大的发展潜力。为了强化畜牧业的基础地位 ,提高畜产品质量 ,实现牧业增效 ,使农牧民增收 ,要依托科技 ,面向市场 ,加快青海省畜牧业生产结构的调整 ,提高管…     

Basic education clusters in Cambodia: looking at the future while learning from the past

School clusters have been adopted as an education policy by most Asian countries since the 1960s. In Cambodia, primary schools have been organised in clusters since 1993. Clusters were considered a mechanism for quality improvements of education and a way to facilitate sharing and interaction between schools. Primary school clusters have been partially successful. Today there is a growing interest among Cambodian policymakers for integrating primary schools (Grades 1–6) and lower secondary schools (Grades 7–9). This article provides a policy suggestion by arguing for extending the cluster mechanism to these integrated basic education schools with all grades from 1 to 9.     

Militancy in Manipur: origin, dynamics and future

It can be argued with considerable conviction that the origin of militancy in northeastern India's Manipur state is linked to the sense of popular alienation, mostly arising out of New Delhi's delayed decision to grant statehood 23 years after the State decided to merge with the country. At the same time, there are no doubts that the militant outfits are today a pale shadow of the groupings that had actually originated to protect the State's interest. Separatist movements in Manipur today do not seem to represent the people of the State or their interests. Most of the rebel groups have shown signs of having been transformed into criminalised entities mostly engaged in activities that benefit none except for the outfits themselves.     

Painful Pleasure: The Politics and Aesthetics of Psychosocial Trauma in Impunity

Abstract

Continuous trauma syndrome (CTS) is the foundation for the characters in the film Impunity. The aesthetic choices in the narrative structure are an exploration of the discursive nature of violence and trauma in contemporary South African society. The theorising of continuous stress trauma provides the necessary challenge to the more conventional understanding of post-traumatic stress syndrome and informs the underlying analysis of the film. This analysis is offered in an interlocutory manner with psychology theorist Garth Stevens who provides a hermeneutic reading of Impunity that draws directly from his own research and others in the field of psychology. The paper is offered as an examination of an artistic research, film practice. The practice itself constitutes a theoretical expression which connects the aesthetic and structural choices of the film with the disciplinary observations made by Stevens. It suggests two theoretical approaches from different disciplines brought in conversation with each other to inform the reading of Impunity as artistic expression. The paper puts at its centre the discursive approach to the study of violence and trauma to suggest how the film’s structure and its aesthetics may be connected to research in the field of psychology.     

Good News! You may be out of a job reflections on the past and future 50: Years for Northern NGOs

After 50 years of spectacularly successful work (particularly in raising the equity stakes, improving the quality of overseas development aid, fostering Southern NGO work at the international level and organising quick and effective humanitarian assistance), Northern development NGOs have come to a crossroads. The author argues that the history of the NGO 'occupational category', coupled with a changing political and economic environment (the end of the Cold War, rising international investment, declining overseas development aid, and vastly heightened Southern NGO capacity), means that most Northern NGOs should close up shop. Instead, a kaleidoscopic rebirth is envisaged, where four key functions remain for Northerners--as humanitarian agents, economic policy watchers, North-South brokers, and corporate responsibility advocates. This change of job is heralded as good news: evidence that the project of global social justice has moved dramatically forwards.     

Getting savages to fight barbarians: development,security and the colonial present

Development today is a radical and intrusive endeavour. Reflecting the interest of homeland security, it is embarked upon transforming societies as a whole within the global borderland. In attempting to secure the future, however, it is reaching backwards to reconnect and rejuvenate earlier colonial modes of governing the world of peoples. This article is a modest attempt to recover part of this genealogy. The concept of biopolitics is introduced and defined in relation to the differences between developed and underdeveloped species-life. In distinction to the life-supporting technologies associated with mass society, development is a biopolitics of population understood as self-reliant in terms of basic economic and welfare needs. The security function of such a biopolitics is that of bettering self-reliance as a means of defending international society against its enemies: it is the art of getting savages to fight barbarians. To give historic depth to this strategization of power, such a manoeuvre is demonstrated in the relationship between colonial Native Administration and insurgent nationalism. It is then used to provide a critical commentary on the interconnection between development and security, in particular, the relationship between sustainable development and internal conflict that shapes current perceptions of global danger. The conclusion briefly considers the cost of this episodic inheritance: a small part of the world's population consumes and lives beyond its means within the fragile equilibrium of mass society while the larger part is allowed to die chasing the mirage of self-reliance. Rather than addressing these divergent life-chances, the securitization of development is further entrenching them.