TRANSGRESSING "VICTIMS" Reading Narratives of "Filipina Brides" in Japan

This article traces the discourse on Filipina hanayome (brides) in administratively mediated international marriages (kokusai kekkon) in Japan from the mid 1980s to the present. In narratives of “international marriages” in the late 1980s, “Filipina” came to index the “problem of brides from Asia.” As seen elsewhere, various textual and media representations have depicted rural Filipino women as socioeconomic victims and sexually subjugated women. Simultaneously, however, constructions of Filipina hanayome in rural Japan have been given local twists. Drawing on examples from largely neglected written texts in Japanese and from an ethnographic vignette, the article next focuses on sexual subjectivity and economic autonomy, two dimensions of the women's lives in which they struggle to recapture their own ways of imputing meanings to their lives vis-à-vis various social forces. In so doing, this article interrogates certain feminist and popular depictions of hanayome.     

“Voices of ordinary citizens”: ban damunhwa and its neoliberal affect of anti-immigration in South Korea

This article looks at the rapid emergence of ban damunhwa (“anti-multiculture”) or the sentiment of anti-immigration in South Korea. Ban damunhwa discourse centers on a variety of issues such as the state's multicultural policy, crimes by foreigners, and problems of the so-called illegal sojourners, and has been most active and visible on the Internet, especially since the mid-2000s. This article focuses on the way ban damunhwa defines the state's multicultural policy as what gives special preferences to migrants, which, in turn, is said to destroy the livelihoods of South Korean citizens. Represented as the “voices of ordinary citizens,” ban damunhwa narratives appeal to a neoliberal idea of fairness and equity, under which migrants emerge as demonic free-riders. Ban damunhwa discourse not only serves as a symptom of a neoliberal ethic but also mirrors the dilemma of the people who struggle within a system of precarity and yet reproduce its main ideologies.     

Distinct mental structures in transitional culture: An empirical analysis of values and identities in Estonia and Sweden

Abstract

This article examines the structures of value consciousness and self-identification in two EU countries: Estonia, a representative transitional society, and Sweden, a representative stable welfare society. The study is an attempt to operationalize Sztompka's concept of “cultural templates” on the meso-level of analysis, by revealing latent mental structures. Our main conclusion is that the transitional culture in Estonia can be characterized by three specific mental patterns: nostalgic resignation, striving for success, and an escapist Western orientation, represented by different social groups. The process of individualization, characteristic of Western welfare societies, has taken place in transitional Estonia with delays and significant modifications.     

Globalization,education, and the politics of identity in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

This essay examines a resurgent interest in “regionness” as a response to globalization, and it looks at how governments and citizens have participated in the discourse on forging a new Asia-Pacific community that has developed over the past fifteen years. Part one distinguishes between “regionalization” and “regionalism” as competing visions for the construction of a future Asia-Pacific community. Regionalization, the dominant paradigm during the postcolonial period, centers on interstate forums dominated by officially recognized political and economic elites who seek interstate cooperation in order to protect state interests, state power, and national identity from foreign as well as domestic challenges. Regionalism, as an alternative paradigm, envisions the creation of transnational networks inclusive of nonofficial actors, whose identification with a particular state and set of national interests does not preclude the creation of a regional identity (or identities) and support for regional interests. Part two considers the challenges that regionalism poses for the nation-state and its leadership. It does so by highlighting the pressure for reform that globalization has brought to bear upon one particular institution that theorists of nationalism have long identified as central to the perpetuation of national identity, national unity, and state authority: schooling. Part three assesses the current prospects for such reforms by briefly examining recent educational developments in Japan, Australia, Malaysia, and Singapore.     

Khatami's Islamist-Iranian Discourse of National Identity: A Discourse of Resistance

Using a discourse approach, the article demonstrates that Khatami's construction of Iranian national identity is a discourse of resistance on the international and regional levels. This resistance is evident in the meanings attached to three sets of values: Iranian-Islamic culture, ‘dialogue among civilisations’ and Islamic mardumsālārī, which are referred to as the three pillars of the Islamist-Iranian discourse of national identity. In terms of Iranian-Islamic culture, it is evident that Islam is Iranianised and furthermore the framework for the political apparatus is not simply politicised Islam, but rather Iranian political Islam. In terms of ‘dialogue among civilisations’, the resistance is not only to perceived Western hegemony in the international system, but also resistance to the dominance of the West and Western perspectives in the discipline of International Relations. Finally, Khatami establishes Islamic mardumsālārī as the most appropriate and authentic means of maintaining Iran as an independent nation.     

Wounds that won't heal: cartographic anxieties and the quest for territorial integrity in Georgia

This paper examines the role of territorial integrity narratives in the Republic of Georgia, which currently features two separatist territories – Abkhazia and South Ossetia – which are de facto independent and have begun to receive limited international recognition. Political rhetoric is further buttressed by various government policies and practices that help transmit the message of territorial integrity to the Georgian public. Cartographic anxieties, or the preoccupation and fear of a country's loss of territory, is a central feature of Georgian nationalist discourse. Referring to the loss of territory as amputation exemplifies the cartographic anxieties displayed in Georgia. Specifically, I will focus on the role of political discourse, maps, patriotic youth camps and billboards and other elements of the landscape, documenting how they help to reproduce the discourse of territorial integrity. It is precisely these discourses and practices that reproduce territorial integrity narratives and construct the entire Georgian territory (including Abkhazia and South Ossetia) as integral to Georgian national identity, enabling the separatist regions to be understood as wounds that won't heal.     

The gap between the natural and social sciences sometimes leaves the public poorly informed

Abstract

In his book On Human Nature, sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson expresses many of the frustrations of natural scientists, complaining that the intellectual community has failed to recognize the importance of their contributions. He attributes this partly to the natural scientists' lack of literary ability and laments that even those who “step outside scientific materialism to participate in the [dominant] culture” have almost never been able “to close the gap between the two worlds of discourse.” But he directs his main criticism at those who work in the social sciences. He argues that they control the cultural establishment and that their reflections “are devoid of the idioms of chemistry and biology, as though humankind were still in some sense a numinous spectator of physical reality.”     

Teaching China in college: Nine texts

Abstract

When I began teaching in the fall of 1971 at a small liberal arts college, I was greeted by a team-taught, one-semester introductory history course, two-thirds of which outlined the past few centuries of European history. As the one and only “Asia expert” around, I was asked to come up with a book which would present “the Chinese case” in one week's time. I've been searching for a suitable introductory text ever since.     

Is Irrigationalism a Dominant Ideology in Securing Hydrotopia in Mekong Nation States?

ABSTRACT

For over six decades, grandiose proposals calling for significant expansion of public irrigation schemes have been commonplace throughout the Mekong region, irrespective of the political configuration or developmental stage of each state. From Pol Pot’s Democratic Kampuchea to Thailand’s military and quasi-democratic regimes, irrigation has figured prominently on development agendas. Mainstream narratives around irrigation are embedded in a technocentric, developmental and nationalistic discourse, incorporating socially pre-conditioned beliefs and values that closely reflect the rhetoric of state-linked elites. This article critically examines some of the narratives employed by key actors and groups to justify ongoing practices and processes of irrigation development, focusing on Thailand and Cambodia. It seeks to look beyond conventional econometric and instrumental drivers, to consider other socio-political factors that may account for irrigation’s critical role as a “technology of control,” but which are rarely examined across comparative national contexts. Further, it proposes a dominant ideology of irrigation developmentalism or “irrigationalism” as a useful concept in explaining certain aspects of contemporary social power in these nations. State-led irrigation may be perceived as a utopian intervention that aids in the emergence of an effective monopolistic authority and control by bureaucracies and other powerful groups over development decision-making processes and silencing opposition.     

Identity dynamics of Russian-speakers of Estonia in the transition period

Abstract

The question of the development of the identity of those of the Russian diaspora in various post-Soviet independent states has attracted many scholars. With this article the authors would like to join the discussion by exploring the strategies used for retrospective self-designation and creation of boundaries between “us” and “them” of younger Russian-speakers¹ living in Estonia. The authors consider that there are good preconditions for the rise of group-consciousness among Estonian Russian-speakers on the basis of their common political exclusion. However, Estonia has been one of the countries that has moved most rapidly into global communication networks and post-modern values, thereby offering fertile soil for distancing oneself from previous identity-references, individualization and fragmentation of identity. The aim of this analysis is to outline the patterns of identification and discuss them in relation with generation replacement and individualization — aspects that have not been fully explored thus far.     

Strategic Othering: Framing Lebanese Migration and Fraser's “Mistake”

Australian Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, has framed the mid‐1970s immigration of Lebanese affected by civil war as Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's “mistake”. His remarks sparked controversy in the parliament and the media. The issue became a contest of frames between the Murdoch media, which supported the Minister's “mistake” frame and argued his right to “tell the truth”, and the Fairfax media, which viewed the Minister as being “racist” for “scapegoating” the Lebanese community. Along with archival documents, this article examines the context and coverage of the Minister's remarks, noting that the frames presented in the media “indexed” those adopted amongst political elites, while failing to re‐examine the historical record. This case study demonstrates the power of framing and the media's tendency to accept rather than challenge frames used by those in the political contest, with the result that errors in the representation of history were never corrected. This article draws on framing theory and indexing theory and concludes that the “mistake” frame for the Lebanese feeds into narratives that serve to “other” Muslim and Arab groups, fanning fears and mobilising a discourse of Islamophobia around the exclusion of “undesirable” immigrants on the basis of “cultural fit”.     

Book reviews

ABSTRACT

This essay looks at the figure of echolalia, the pathological repetition of someone else’s speech, to examine how Wicomb’s novel conceives of the formation of identity as an activity of speech in which the speaker is external to her own discourse. Speakers in this novel frequently disavow the agency and originality of their own voices as a way of distancing themselves from recent history. This disavowal of agency and culpability (“I didn’t vote for them,” etc.) paradoxically works to establish a subjective framework within which they can conceive of themselves as agentic individuals capable of social mobility through hard work. It ultimately argues that Wicomb’s novel offers an implicit rebuke to the politics of “the between” championed by many postcolonial theorists such as Homi Bhabha. Moreover, Wicomb’s novel offers a formal response to a problem of subjectivity that has been too cleanly swept into the aesthetics of liminality and hybridity.     

“Nation” and “Europe”: Re-approaching the debates about Lithuanian national identity

Abstract

The article explores the historical roots of the contemporary debate about Lithuanian national identity. The analysis of the development of two major traditions of defining and positioning Lithuanian national identity in the international context sets out to introduce and explain the co-existing conservative and constructionist concepts of national identity that have been persisted throughout the twentieth century. Particular attention is paid to Lithuania's relationship to Europe. In this way, the article contributes to the current debate about the destiny of national identity, the importance of which is increasing in countries preparing for European Union membership.

It is not easy to be a man and a Lithuanian, to stay faithful to oneself, one's nation and humanity.     

Between Interest and Responsibility: Assessing China's Foreign Policy and Burgeoning Global Role

Abstract

This article is situated within the contemporary debates about the nature and purpose of China's growing power. It uses the concepts of “national interest” and “international responsibility” as a framework of analysis for Chinese foreign policy, and develops a three-dimensional typology to conceptualize their relationship (antagonistic; instrumental; mutually constitutive). This article adopts two main arguments. First, a stronger China is one gravitating toward greater notions of international responsibility, albeit instrumentally. Second, observable trends in China's evolving worldview indicate, however, that it is conceiving its national interests more broadly, embracing further socialization and greater normative commitments to international society. One may therefore view China's burgeoning global role as a great power with a degree of “cautious optimism.”     

Hegemony and the politics of culture and identity in Thailand

Abstract

This article argues that the establishment of the Ministry of Culture in Thailand needs to be understood in a broadly historical perspective that relates to the role of culture in hegemonic strategies of the state. It presents an overview of broadly defined culture policy in Thailand from the 1930s before moving to a more detailed discussion of the period from the 1980s to the present. The principle contention, developed in the second half of the article, is that the current policies of Thailand's Ministry of Culture, and its role in hegemonic identity production, can only be understood by taking account of the variety of factors that shaped the Ministry's emergence. These factors include the influence of international development agencies, strategies of appropriation by the Thai state, and the role of progressive forces within Thailand that seek political and cultural reform. The circumstances under which the Ministry was formed have made it a site of contestation between conservative royalist-nationalist perspectives on Thai national identity and progressive localist and international understandings of Thai national identity.     

Civilisation: A Concept and its Uses in Australian Public Discourse

This article examines the concept of civilisation in Australian public discourse, focussing on some recent political uses. Rhetoric defending Australia's traditional attachment to Western civilisation has focussed on three themes — the role of the British heritage in Australian public life, the moral foundations of Australia's “Judeo‐Christian” belief system, and the rational principles of the Enlightenment. Although the language of civilisation is not confined to centre‐right political discourse, it has been most vocal among conservative‐leaning commentators. This article highlights examples of civilisation and its uses in the contemporary Australian context and attempts to give meaning to civilisation in light of debates about Australian history and national identity. I argue in the course of this article that civilisation is differentiated from culture, and that the culture‐civilisation distinction correlates with left‐right political leanings.     

MONUMENTALIZING THE EVERYDAY: The Edo-Tokyo Museum

The Edo-Tokyo Museum is both the crowning achievement of the populist historiography of Edo-Tokyo studies and the monumental embodiment of an era of cultural nationalism in Japan. It embodies the perennial tension between the city as home to a unique local culture and the city as a site of state power. The historians who oversaw the design of the exhibits envisioned a celebration of local everyday life, and focused their efforts on narrating the history of a mythic urban folk. A critical walk through the museum reveals three fundamental modes of mythic projection that underwrote this folk narrative: the city of the past as a “world we have lost,” commonplace tools as icons of an essential native culture resisting modernization, and the modern century as a march of progress in everyday life, indexed by ever-improving commodities. Throughout this narrative, the protagonists are the “ordinary people” (shomin) of Edo-Tokyo. In contrast, the building's architect saw the city solely in terms of its national significance and sought to project an image of grandeur suited to the position of Japan as triumphant superpower. No conflict was recognized between the two seemingly contradictory impulses, however, since myths of the everyday, exploited by government as well as academics in these years, promoted the easy fusion of local and national narratives.     

Intercepting Disgrace: Lacuna and “Letter to John Coetzee”

ABSTRACT

This review article examines two palimpsest rewritings of J. M.Coetzee’s canonical but controversial novel, Disgrace (1999). Both rewritings are by women: Lacuna, a novel published in 2019, is by a white South African woman, Fiona Snyckers, and “Letter to John Coetzee” takes the form of a short story by Michelle Cahill, a woman of color living in Australia, published in Cahill’s collection Letter to Pessoa (2016). The article uses Cahill’s coinage of “interceptionality” to discuss how dominant narratives may be disrupted and subverted, particularly when it comes to representing gender-based violence in the arts. It concludes with a discussion of South African artist Gabrielle Goliath’s exhibition, “This song is for … ” (2019).     

Working On,Through and Around the State: The Deep Marketisation of Development in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

This article describes an important new push by international financial institutions towards broadening and deepening capitalist social relations in the underdeveloped world in ways well beyond Washington Consensus structural adjustment or even post-Washington Consensus forms of institutionally-oriented “participatory neo-liberalism.” Described here as the “deep marketisation of development” (or simply “deep marketisation”), this process is attracting increasing resources that are formally allocated directly to private actors around states, while also demanding and promoting shifts in state form and function that relate to cultivating “enabling environments” for capital and facilitating “access to finance.” The article begins by conceptualising deep marketisation and placing it in historical and political context. The second section presents examples of deep marketisation in action in the work of the World Bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, in the Asia-Pacific. The article concludes by highlighting some serious concerns with the deep marketisation agenda.     

Alexei Navalny and challenges in reconciling “nationalism” and “liberalism”

This article examines the challenges and complexities in the efforts by political activist Alexei Navalny to reconcile “nationalist” and “liberal” modes of thinking in the current Russian environment. After deciphering three major axes of Navalny's narratives on the national question, the author then discusses the social and political context within which the national-democratic (Natsdem) movement was forged. Natsdems, who are simultaneously pro-European and democratic but also xenophobic, and who target an audience among the urban middle classes, reflect a fundamental shift in Russian society. The last part of the article discusses the paradoxes of Navalny's trajectory, in which a failed theoretical articulation between “nationalism,” “democracy,” and “liberalism” nonetheless has translated into a political success.