The Calculus of Nation in the Cuban Revolution

The history of Cuba was imbued with a sense of purpose at its inception. To have discerned the need at all for a history of Cuba in the nineteenth century was itself product and portent of a momentous shift in consciousness, an occasion when narratives of the past revealed themselves as a potential source of national community. The history of Cuba began at the moment that the past became relevant to the future. Historical narrative developed as a matter of necessity, a product of a time and place, a means by which Cubans addressed the needs of their times. Purpose and point of view were inscribed into the very premise of the historical narrative, and indeed fixed the narrative genre around which the history of Cuba was structured. The historical narrative in this instance contained a premonition of nation which shared something with the new collective consciousness to which it contributed. Historical consciousness was itself a product of national formation, to which it responded and for which it was summoned: the proposition of a shared awareness of a common past with which to bring a people together and justify a nation apart.     

The political strategy of external aid

When creating a process of international aid, the definition of a political strategy is critically important. In theory, a government able to deliver services and goods to its population and to guarantee participation in decision-making might not need the presence of international aid. International aid should bridge an existing gap between a government and its own population by adopting a relevant political strategy. This viewpoint proposes a reference framework for international cooperation actors to define their basic political strategy and provides a comprehensive framework for situating different political strategies into a wider approach.     

The artist as a medium and the artwork as metaphor in Murakami Haruki’s fiction

Abstract

In many of Murakami Haruki’s works, the protagonist is in a profession close to the world of literature, although usually not exactly a writer. In their role as translators, advertising copywriters, journalists, or editors, Murakami’s protagonists are invested with the task of rearranging fragments of reality into narrative or artistic form, and/or of transmitting a message. This process is emotionally charged, often involving a supernatural dimension. While the process of reconstructing a narrative is largely unconscious, the narrator’s choice to act in this capacity is deliberate, and is presented as a way of fulfilling his responsibility towards others. I read this element as an expression of Murakami’s vision of the role of a writer in society. The figure of the artist-narrator takes an interesting form in Kishidanchō-Goroshi (Killing Commendatore, 2017), where the protagonist, a visual artist specialising in realistic portraits, decides to pursue a more creative approach to painting that leads him to a series of supernatural adventures. Through a close reading of the novel, this article investigates how Murakami’s portrayal of the artist as a shaman-like figure functions like a metaphor for the role of the literary author as a catalyst that enables people to connect with their inner self and with each other.     

沙皇时代的西伯利亚流放

在300余年的漫长岁月中,沙皇政府视西伯利亚为"国内殖民地",在西伯利亚长期奉行"惩罚式的垦殖"政策。西伯利亚成为国内外有名的苦役流放地。西伯利亚流放是俄国社会政治斗争的"晴雨表"。同时,它给西伯利亚开发带来严重的负面影响,是西伯利亚劳动力匮乏、社会经济发展迟缓的重要原因之一。     

Absolute and limited war: The possibility of foreign‐imposed regime change

This paper examines the relationship between foreign imposed regime change and war participation. The oppertunity and willingness of an opponent to impose a new regime on a war participant affects the likelihood that such a change will occur. Results from a logistic regression model suggest that (1) winning or losing the war, (2) the amount of war costs the participant endures, (3) the power of the participant relative to its opponent, (4) the amount of war costs the opponent endures, (5) the occurrence of a domestic regime change during the war, and (6) the difference between the authority structures of the war participant and its opponent all have a significant and sizable impact on the probability that a war participant endures a foreign imposed regime change. The first three variables measure the opponent's opportunity to force a regime change, while the last three measure its willingness. I suggest that these results increase our ability to evaluate the likely consequences of a war, and may have important implications for our understanding of the decision to enter and terminate a war.     

Secrecy and Self-Interest: When Mediators Act Deceitfully

3rd party intervention in interstate conflict is a common strategy for mitigating conflict and obtaining a final agreement. However, not all mediations are successful, leading to the development of a rich literature on the mechanisms which decrease the probability of failure in a 3rd-party intervention. Within this literature, some studies examine how a mediator’ behavior and incentives affect the result of the mediation. Virtually all these studies assume that the mediator is virtuous such that peace is the most desired outcome of a conflict for her. However, this study challenges this assumption and contends that a mediator can gain benefit from the conflict between disputants. If this benefit is adequately large to overcome the benefits of peace, then the mediator has enough incentive not to conduct the mediation toward a peaceful outcome. We develop a signaling game model to study this issue formally and test the proposed hypothesis empirically.     

International Signaling and Economic Sanctions

Do economic sanctions serve international signaling purposes? A fully structural statistical model that employs a signaling game as a statistical model is used to investigate the existence of signaling effects of sanctions. Estimation results suggest that sanctions fail to work as a costly signal. The cheapness of sanctions prevents a target state from being able to distinguish a resolute sender state from a sender who is bluffing. When sanctions are imposed, a target rarely updates its initial evaluation of the sender state’s resolve, much less than when a military challenge is observed.     

Diary of a participatory advocacy film project: transforming communication initiatives into living campaigns

In August 2007, the government of Tanzania made a commitment to doubling the number of training places for skilled midwives, following a five-year campaign by the White Ribbon Alliance for Safe Motherhood in Tanzania (WRATZ), which culminated in the first television screening of a participatory film, ‘Play Your Part’. With contributions from a range of health professionals, communities, a pop singer, and the Minister of Health, the message was that everyone at every level has a part to play in saving mothers' lives. WRATZ was successful because it was able to promote its message in a way that provides a model for advocacy, combining the reactive creativity of journalism and the methodological rigour of participatory video to bring about a tangible impact.     

Notes on recent articles

An increasing number of studies in political communication focus on the “sentiment” or “tone” of news content, political speeches, or advertisements. This growing interest in measuring sentiment coincides with a dramatic increase in the volume of digitized information. Computer automation has a great deal of potential in this new media environment. The objective here is to outline and validate a new automated measurement instrument for sentiment analysis in political texts. Our instrument uses a dictionary-based approach consisting of a simple word count of the frequency of keywords in a text from a predefined dictionary. The design of the freely available Lexicoder Sentiment Dictionary (LSD) is discussed in detail here. The dictionary is tested against a body of human-coded news content, and the resulting codes are also compared to results from nine existing content-analytic dictionaries. Analyses suggest that the LSD produces results that are more systematically related to human coding than are results based on the other available dictionaries. The LSD is thus a useful starting point for a revived discussion about dictionary construction and validation in sentiment analysis for political communication.     

关于黑龙江省对俄劳务合作的研究

1988年以来,黑龙江省对俄劳务合作得到了较快发展,双方的合作达到了一定的规模,合作领城逐渐拓宽,中长期合作项目增多。但受中俄双方政策调整的影响,黑龙江省对俄劳务合作也出现过波动。对俄劳务合作对于缓解省内就业压力、进一步开拓俄罗斯市场、实现对俄经贸关系的战略升级都具有重要意义,为此应适度对俄投资,开展多种经营,实现多元化发展,全面提高劳务人员素质,争取国家给予相应政策支持。     

黑龙江省对俄边境旅游的现状、问题及对策

中俄边境旅游已进入新的发展阶段 ,对地方经济发展起到了显著的牵动作用 ,带动了产业结构的调整 ,促进了外向型经济的发展 ,增加了地方财政收入 ,成为发展对俄经贸关系的重要渠道。中俄边境旅游还存在一些问题 ,为使其顺利发展 ,需要进一步把发展边境旅游作为全省实施对外开放战略的一个重点 ,将其列入高层次领导的会晤内容 ,认真整顿边境旅游市场 ,建立省级对话及协调机制 ,争取国家对黑龙江省实施优惠政策。     

Terrorism Research: The Record

Looking back at the beginnings of academic research on terrorism just over 40 years ago, it is extraordinary to see that what was once a marginal subject for social science has developed into a full-fledged program of “terrorism studies.” In fact, recently a sociologist considered the subject of sufficient importance to write a doctoral dissertation and then a book on the “social construction” of the field (Stampnitzky 2013). This essay highlights some examples of the contributions scholars from different disciplines have made to understanding terrorism. There is no consensus on any general theoretical laws of terrorism (there is no equivalent of a democratic peace theory, for example), but researchers have defined key concepts and deepened explanations of cause, effect, and process.What follows identifies four interrelated areas of explanatory inquiry into terrorism that have emerged over years of research: the effectiveness of terrorism as a strategy of opposition, the determinants and consequences of counterterrorism policies, how campaigns or waves of terrorism end, and how analysis of terrorism can be situated in a broader theoretical framework rather than treated as a phenomenon sui generis. Particular emphasis is placed on studies that are comparative and/or that situate the specific case of terrorism in a general theoretical perspective.     

The Australian journalism vs cultural studies debate: implications for South African media studies

ABSTRACT

This article describes an investigation into factors required for a development programme in intercultural business communication amongst the personnel of a South African company operating in the Japanese market. Drawing from items that were identified in the literature, and amongst individuals who operate in the Japanese market, a set of criteria was identified that could be included in a South African-Japanese intercultural business communication course. These criteria were used in a structured questionnaire, which was pre-tested in interviews and a focus group, and then administered to a group of company managers who had travelled to Japan on business. The results of the research are a set of items ranked in terms of salience within three categories. The first comprises degree of knowledge of important aspects of Japanese life, the second consists of factors that lead to culture shock, and the third includes aspects that are deemed to be important in a course on South African–Japanese intercultural business communication.     

新冠肺炎疫情与全球安全文化的退化

安全文化是一个社群就怎样界定安全和安全威胁、怎样保障和实现安全所达成的主体间理解和共同知识。冷战之后,全球化推动了一个全球社会的初步形成,因之也催生了一种以开放安全、共同安全与合作安全为基本内容的合作型全球安全文化的雏形。但是由于全球治理失灵,不断出现且日益积累的全球性威胁得不到有效应对,民粹现实主义强势兴起,合作型全球安全文化屡遭重创,开始向以封闭安全、孤立安全、零和安全的冲突型安全文化转变,明显降低了国际安全合作的几率。抗击新冠肺炎疫情中的全球公共安全合作的失败就是一个明显的例证。虽然人类向共同体进化的历史大趋势不可阻挡,但在一段时间内,合作型全球安全文化与冲突型全球安全文化的激烈竞争将会是国际关系的新常态。     

From a Rhetoric of Nostalgia to a Health-Based Policy: Tobacco,Obesity and the WTO

The globalisation of health demands a multilateral response. Instead of the developed world pursuing agricultural policies oriented towards propping up declining sectors of their economies, a better approach would put health concerns as a top priority. The new Framework Convention on Tobacco Control is a good example of a useful global agreement to promote health. This approach could be replicated in a multilateral framework to control obesity.     

The Politics of Fertility and Economic Development

This paper presents a formal model that characterizes the two faces of development—persistent poverty, and industrialization and rising incomes—and establishes that the interaction between politics and economics determines which path a nation travels. We demonstrate that political factors affect fertility decisions so that a one-time disturbance compounds across generations, impacting a country's entire development trajectory. Modeling strategic multiobjective policy-setting by the government, we derive a new concept of political capacity and prove that a sufficient amount of political capacity is necessary to escape a poverty trap and develop the economy. Empirical tests for a sample of 100 countries from 1960 to 1990 provide strong support for the predictions of the formal model. In particular, we show that both political stability and political capacity significantly influence birth rates. We conclude that politics can be either a stimulant or a barrier to economic development.     

A Rising Naval Challenger in Asia: Lessons from Britain and Japan between the Wars

The end of Great Britain's standing as a superpower conjures up a frightening picture of how a post-American world might come about, not by a gradual, managed decline of the United States, but rather by a sudden defeat at sea. Some 70 years ago, Britain's navy suffered staggering losses at the hands of an emerging peer competitor in Asia. Could a reversal of fortune of this magnitude—the world's leading naval power being soundly beaten by a rising challenger—happen again? Britain's naval downfall in Asia provides a sobering parable, warning of potential dangers looming for the United States in the twenty-first century.     

Christianity and violence: The case of liberation theology

In the late 1960s a form of Christian radicalism known as liberation theology emerged in Latin America that argued that Latin America's ills were caused by dependent capitalism, and that Latin America could be liberated only by a socialist revolution. The theory of liberation theology had a direct impact on Central America in the 1970s since it justified the alliance of Christians and Marxists in attempting to overthrow repressive regimes in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Under Pope John Paul II, the Vatican has been critical of liberation theology's borrowings from Marxism and its implied endorsement of violence, although a moderate version that stresses the organization of the poor into Christian Base Communities has been more favorably received. Partly as a result of Vatican pressure and partly as a result of a generalized disillusionment of the Latin American left with violence as a means for social change, liberation theologians today have moved away from their earlier infatuation with revolution, and they argue for a deepened democracy that is aware of ‘the preferential option for the poor’.