Globalization,governance, and Administrative Culture

ABSTRACT

Globalization forces are colliding with international and national systems of governance, giving rise to a limited sovereignty of the nation-state. Globalization has also negatively affected poor countries and, in its wake, contributed to violence, hunger, and deprivation despite its powerful technological innovations and new economic, cultural, administrative, and political initiatives. This study conceives globalization, good governance, and the culture of governing as inextricably connected. After reviewing positions by proponents and opponents, the authors conclude that the dysfunctions of globalization are threatening the very foundation of developing nations’ systems of effective governance. Based on a review of developments in countries of the Middle East and South Asia, the authors believe that to serve the transformative process, leading to good governance and democratic development, globalization has to take account of important indigenous value systems.     

Globalization, Culture, and Identities in Crisis

Culture in its various forms now serves as a primary carrier of globalization and modern values, and constitutes an important arena of contestation for national, religious, and ethnic identity. Although reactions in Europe, Japan, and other societies where modern values prevail, tend to be symbolic, in areas of the developing world, especially in Muslim countries where traditional values and radically different notions of identity and society predominate, reactions tend to be very intense and redirected at external targets through forms of transference and scapegoating. Ultimately, this is not so much a clash between civilizations as a clash within civilizations.     

Rethinking the Economic Relationship between Kazakhstan and Russia

According to their governments, economic relations between Kazakhstan and Russia—the two largest post-Soviet countries—have been exceptionally solid and robust. However, statistical data demonstrate that Russian investments in Kazakhstan's economy have been weak, and that Kazakhstan has only recently increased investment in the Russian economy. This raises the question of whether relations between the two countries have been more uneven than has been claimed officially. The article also explores the influence of off-shore investments via third countries and other aspects of the bilateral relationship between Kazakhstan and Russia and the involvement of each country in the other's economy.     

Torn Between God,Family, and Money: The Changing Profile of Lebanon's Religious Terrorists

Based upon this researcher's prior work and the conceptual denouement from geocultural immobility to religious terrorism, the author speculates that the reverse may be achieved and a zealot's motivation for religious terrorism might be purged once his or her basic Moslovian needs are fulfilled. Thus, this article attempts to empirically assess in some elements of Hizbullah, the effect of newly found wealth, money, and family exigencies on the Lebanese Shi'a's religious zealotry, his or her perceived religious commitments, and their acts of terrorism. This research concluded that Hizbullah in Lebanon, an organization originally established as a religious network with narrowly defined politico-socioeconomic goals, has eroded. Many of its individual cells now serve primarily their own self-interest instead of their perception of God's will. These cells are defying Hizbullah's main leadership wishes and committing criminal actions designed to serve cell or family interests. Its sophisticated network is already being used to transport and harbor criminals across the Mid-East and Europe. This research stress that the well-established Hizbullah cell organizations that protect each and every element and coordinate with other terrorist organizations are ripe to be exploited for international criminal activities. More importantly, this research attempts to explain and delineate the process by which nations may manage, control, reform, or even eliminate such international affliction.     

Rethinking the Iberian Transformations: How Democratization Scenarios Shaped Labor Market Outcomes

This article examines how dissimilar democratization scenarios in two historically important cases helped to shape a major societal outcome, that of unemployment levels. With an empirical focus on the neighboring countries of the Iberian Peninsula, the paper argues that Portugal's relative success and Spain's persistent failures in the provision of employment cannot be fully explained by the focus of some analysts on comparative labor costs, and that the Iberian countries' employment levels also rest on a set of factors connected in sometimes complex ways with the two societies' very different paths from authoritarianism to democracy in the 1970s. Factors emphasized include the degree of incorporation of women into the labor force, the availability of adequate financing for small and medium enterprises—and the impact of national financial systems and state policies on that intermediary outcome—and the extent to which the two countries' welfare states are employment friendly. Central to this article's argument is the claim that the divergence between these Third Wave pioneers in their democratization scenarios accounts for the dissimilar penetration into the Iberian cases of another global wave of the late twentieth century, that of market-centric economic liberalization.     

Rethinking diasporicity: embodiment,emotion, and the displaced origin

Abstract

This paper explores how Merleau-Ponty's existential phenomenology can be used to articulate an account of the lived experience of diasporicity that contrasts sharply with the abstract formulations of post-structuralism and post-colonialism. Becoming displaced from an originary time and space is the characteristic of being human. Therefore, Merleau-Ponty's philosophy provides the outline of a universal diasporic experience. The question that arises is how this ontological diasporicity relates to the field of discourse, the optics of racialized power relations and the lived experience of the black diaspora. The work of Franz Fanon is introduced in order to explore how the fundamental black diasporic moods of melancholia and nostalgia can be thematized in such a way that both pre-discursive and discursive elements can be incorporated.     

Commemorating 1917 in Russia: Ambivalent State History Policy and the Church’s Conquest of the History Market

Abstract

Russia’s historical policy towards the centenary of 1917 was composed of several parallel strategies: diminishing the meaning of the event to avoid the head of state and other government figures having to take a stance; outsourcing commemorative events, with no pre-planned grand design; developing a reconciliatory narrative of the ‘Whites’ and the ‘Reds’; and allowing other actors to promote a plurality of contradictory readings of the events. Yet the space left by the state’s refusal to commemorate 1917 has been taken over by the Church, which, as today’s most active engineer of Russia’s historical policy, promoted a very clear pro-Tsarist narrative best embodied by the multimedia historical park ‘Russia—my history’ (Rossiya—moya istoriya).     

Somewhere Between Love and Justice: a Roman Catholic Church in Paris Responds to the European Migration Crisis

The European migration crisis has had a transformative impact on many transit and destination localities in Europe, and in doing so it has mobilised many faith-based communities. This paper analyses the social action of Saint Bernard de La Chapelle, a Roman Catholic parish in northern Paris, which hosts a semi-formal association called Solidarités Saint Bernard (SSB) involved in support and relief activities for indigent migrants in the local area. Based on ethnographic research conducted within the parish and the association, I analyse how the topic of migration has become a point of exchange between the parish community and local civil society, how religious and secular discourses and motivations co-exist within SSB, and how these influences shape SSB’s social action. Through this micro-scale approach, and drawing on Luc Boltanski’s theoretical framework of regimes of action, my aim is to identify conceptual elements to better understand the broad convergence between religion, social action, and migration, and to better understand the relation between charity and justice within faith-based social action in the domain of migration advocacy more specifically.     

全球化时代的文明冲突与文化多样性

当今世界,文化与经济、政治的交融是一种发展的趋势。世界上各种文明、不同文化彼此尊重,在竞争比较中取长补短,在求同存异中共同发展,是全球化时代关于文化的科学态度。那种由经济全球化而引申出文化全球化的观点,以民族文化的差异来解释全球化时代一切冲突的根源的观点,都是站不住脚的。     

Rethinking the Arab Spring: uprisings,counterrevolution, chaos and global reverberations

This article evaluates the aftermath of the Arab Spring through the dual optic of a regional phenomenon and a series of country narratives. These narratives are categorised by reference first to the secular states that found a path to stability after experiencing strong uprisings that drove rulers from power, second to the states in which the uprisings generated prolonged resistance and continuing acute instability, and third to the monarchies that neutralised the uprisings at their inception and restored stability. When other dimensions of conflict are taken into account, it seems likely that the Middle East will continue to experience chaos, intervention and counterrevolution for years to come, and possibly even a second cycle of uprisings directed at the evolving order.     

全球化压力下的中国文化走向

在经济全球化的推动下,文化也正在冲破国家的、民族的文化壁垒.文化的全球化打破了地区和本土文化的时空限制,有利于弘扬人的主体性.改革开放的中国正在融入人类文明进步的大潮.从文化上接受共同价值,是融入世界的前提.相互学习、相互借鉴,大胆吸收人类文明的一切优秀成果,追求人类文明的共同价值,成为中国文化发展的主要趋向之一.     

Religious Terrorism,the Media,and International Islamization Terrorism: Justifying the Unjustifiable

This study examines the relationship between the Hizbullah and Islamic Brotherhood organizations, the media, and the hypothesized outcomes of their symbiotic relationship, International Islamization Terrorism. It revisits the effects of the media on the propensity of Muslim zealots for conflict and terrorism by sampling 2,619 individuals in 8 European Union countries, and empowers the field with some foundations for Islamist violence.‐     

Resolving the Kashmir Conflict: Pakistan,India, Kashmiris and Religious Militants

This article introduces a conflict resolution framework to address the Kashmir ¹ 1. Henceforth in this article, ‘Kashmir’ refers both to the independent territory under Dogra dominion since 1846 to 1947 and to the territory that nowadays encompasses ‘Jammu and Kashmir’ (JK), under Indian control, and ‘Pakistan Administrated Kashmir’ (PAK), under Pakistan. Throughout the article the term ‘Pakistan Administrated Kashmir’ encompasses both Azad Kashmir and the Federally Administered Northern Areas. View all notes conflict. Firstly, Kashmir is mapped out as a multi-dimensional dispute between various parties: besides the interstate dispute between India and Pakistan, Kashmir is also an armed conflict both between India and the Kashmiris over the right of self-determination and between India and the religious militants who are waging a jihad to create a theocratic state. Secondly, in order to understand the complexity of Kashmir, I introduce an original framework based upon six levels of sovereignty that helps us in underscoring the implications of the bargaining process between India, Pakistan and Kashmir. Based on this, I propose a roadmap for peace, which comprises three successive steps: confidence-building measures, restoration of the asymmetric original status of Jammu and Kashmir and, finally, shared sovereignty (partial or total condominium) between India and Pakistan.     

Faith,Church and nationalism in Armenia

This article explores the status of Turks in Bulgaria under the transition from Communism to post-Communism. After a summary of the demography of the Turkish population in Bulgaria, the paper focuses on developments in three specific areas: religious, political, and educational issues. For each issue a brief historical background is given but the emphasis is on developments since 1989. Since the article is an expanded version of a presentation on East European Linguistic Minorities, the issue of Turkish language and Turkish language education in Bulgaria is discussed in greater detail than religious and political issues. This in no way implies that the latter are any less important.     

The Military as a Split Labor Market: The Case of Women and Religious Soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces

A conflict between religious male soldiers and secular female soldiers has emerged since the 2000s within the Israel Defense Forces. This clash has gradually taken the form of religious rhetoric, articulated by rabbis and other religious activists, that has moved from refraining from publicly questioning the fitness of women as combatants to discourse that gradually delegitimized women’s service. Based on the theoretical theme of the split labor market, I will argue that there is a link between the extent to which the growing introduction of women into field units threatens to devalue the religious youth’s symbolic rewards and the escalation in anti-feminist rhetoric, whose ultimate goal is to exclude women from the military.