Das Alter: adressiert, aktiviert, diskriminiert

In the last years, ageing – or rather active ageing – has become a highly popular issue. In contrast to the disputed activation in labor market policies, the activation of old age seems to be a win-win-situation that benefits everyone. However, embedded in two highly topical debates – demographic change and activation-based welfare state reform – the conditions of the popularization of active ageing remain a blank within the German discussion. This concerns the specifics of old age activation as well as the power-related implications and the normalizing and standardizing consequences of this re-negotiation of old age. It is the aim of this article to discuss these blanks theoretically, paying reference to Anglo-Saxon gerontology, to works on active society and to gender theory on sameness and difference.     

Charles Bean: Man,Myth, Legacy

Charles Bean: Man, Myth, Legacy . Edited by Peter Stanley (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2017), 249 pp. AU$39.99 (pb).     

INTRODUCTION: HERITAGE,NATIONHOOD, AND LANGUAGE

The latter half of the twentieth century saw the notion of “heritage” become one of the critical global tropes, through which many have voiced their preoccupations and aspirations. At the heart of heritage politics are three questions: what heritage is, who decides what it is, and for whom is the decision made. Researchers on heritage language education have rarely asked these questions. Determining what constitutes one's “heritage language” is a complex effort; for migrants, claiming which language is their heritage language can also be a political statement. Based on ethnographic research in Bolivia, Peru, the United States, and Japan, the articles in this two-part series, “Heritage, Nationhood, and Language,” investigate diverse subjectivities of migrants with connections to Japan and analyze the processes by which they negotiate, contest, support, and rupture the notion of heritage. The articles examine the disjunctures between the notion of social justice and the experiences of empowerment and marginalization among these migrants. This series sheds light on the conditions, processes, and effects of a particular language becoming one's “heritage.” Intersecting factors that influence the ways a language becomes one's “heritage” include a desire for belonging, a drive for social status, aspirations for economic gain, fear and guilt about discrimination, and an obligation and hope for social justice.This introduction outlines the historical and theoretical backgrounds to the subject and introduces the main arguments of the articles in the two-part series.     

Fourfold subalterns: Catalan,women, translators,and theorists

In Europe’s cultural poly-system, the two women translators examined in this paper can be considered subalterns four times over: because of their nation (Catalonia), gender (female), intellectual activity (translation), and genre (for daring to write translation theory). Born in the late nineteenth century, Carme Montoriol (Barcelona, 1893–1966) and Maria Antònia Salvà (Palma, Majorca, 1869 – Llucmajor, Majorca, 1958) were pioneering women of letters. These two, of different origins, were among the first Catalan women translators to reflect on translation in the male-dominated literary circles of the early twentieth century. In 1928, Montoriol added “Brief Introductory Notes” to her Catalan translation of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets (Els sonets de Shakespeare). In 1945, at the height of the terrible repression of Catalan language and literature by Franco’s dictatorship (1936–1975), Salvà wrote a brief but pertinent “Introduction” to her translation of the poems of St Thérèse of Lisieux (Poemes de santa Teresa de l’Infant Jesús). By framing these two paradigmatic translations and accompanying forewords in their context, we will attempt to ascertain how and why these Catalan translators (despite the restrictive, hostile political environment in the case of Salvà) quietly entered the realm of authorship, explained their work, and placed it in the limelight, how and why they employed what appeared to be a “discreet”, “humble” tone and discourse, and an almost colloquial rhetoric, and what relatively original translation ideas they held.     

Hamas in Politics: Democracy,Religion, Violence

Ahmed Midhat Efendi, a nineteenth century Turkish author, maintained that it was necessary to establish customs duties and other barriers against foreign sellers in order to convince them to produce locally in the Ottoman Empire. This would be a way to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) to a country in need of capital and technology. However, today, liberals around the world as well as in Turkey see a free trade environment as a prerequisite for FDI. This study tries to find out whether a relationship existed between free trade and FDI inflows in Turkey during a period when the Turkish foreign trade and financial markets were almost completely liberalized.     

Malaysia's Foreign Policy: The First Fifty Years: Alignment,Neutralism, Islamism

Abstract

What is the role of new media in driving political change in China? How do we understand the interaction of rapid increases in connectivity, regime censorship and democratic outcomes? This article seeks to assess the democratic implications of new media in China through the lens of three key and nested criteria derived from general theories of deliberative democracy: information access, rational-critical deliberation and mechanisms of vertical accountability. The key finding is that connectivity expands political opportunity. How this opportunity is exploited is up to users, who often vary widely in their political preferences, values, and norms of behaviour. The results are multiple mechanisms of change taking place simultaneously and the development of a more interactive and pluralistic public sphere. While China obviously still has to develop far more formalised and institutionalised mechanisms for managing state-society relations, political pluralism in the form of online deliberation might be considered a foundational condition for a more interactive and liberalised political order rooted in greater public deliberation and societal feedback. Moderate forms of discourse and societal feedback are tenuous and increasingly exist in a chaotic and diversified online discourse defined equally as much by new methods of authoritarian propaganda and virulent nationalist ideas.