Scientific racism,race war and the global racial imaginary

Abstract

The premise of this paper is the elucidation of a different ontology of global politics and order of the nineteenth century. International relations theory takes for granted a largely ahistorical state-centric ontology, which reifies a specific Eurocentric state and state-system as the embodiment of global politics. Instead, I focus on an alternative ontology of race, racial hierarchy and racial difference as significant for defining the content of an imperial global politics and order. My paper places into context the emergence of scientific racism and social Darwinism as key intellectual elements in defining a political imaginary that influenced the politics of difference and violence. What I show is that this intellectual history reveals a global order that was fundamentally racialised and that global violence was understood and practiced as race wars.     

High food prices in urban Cameroon: coping strategies and suggested policy actions

Governments tend to focus on short-term policies to address the immediate effects of high food prices when spikes occur, while in the long term, urban residents are left to their own devices struggling to ensure adequate household food consumption. Using data collected in three cities in Cameroon among 300 households, this article documents participants’ opinions on appropriate policies to address high food prices as well as how households cope with chronic high food prices. It emphasises the importance of long-term government strategies such as improved farm-to-market roads and agricultural sector supports as means to improve food security.     

Making the Korean nation in the Russian Far East, 1863–1926

Exploring the history of Koreans in the Russian Far East from the perspective of New Imperial History, the article demonstrates that political activism of Koreans and policies of the Russian (Soviet), Korean, and Japanese governments resulted in consolidation of two visions of their future. The first vision implied unity between the Koreans living in the Russian Far East with those who stayed in Korea, moved to Japan, or emigrated elsewhere and corresponded to the agenda of building a Korean nation. The second vision implied that the bilingual or Russified Koreans aspired to stay in the Russian Far East permanently, ensuring their own livelihood in the new regional frontier. The two currents interlaced in the project of Korean autonomy in a post-imperial state, first the Far Eastern Republic and later the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics. The project involved inclusion of Koreans into the global spread of revolution through the Communist International and left open the issue of the duration of Korean presence in the Russian Far East. Its ultimate failure in 1926 left the Koreans partly excluded from the Soviet system without the institutional benefits of national autonomy.     

Books Received

Criminal Law Forum -     

Who Controls National EU Scrutiny? Parliamentary Party Groups,Committees and Administrations

The article addresses the question of how parliamentary actors, namely parliamentary party groups, parliamentary administrators and committees, interact with each other in the new post-Lisbon institutional environment. On the basis of assessing scrutiny of EU proposals in the spheres of pensions and labour migration in the parliaments of Sweden, the Czech Republic and Romania, the article comes to the conclusion that despite existing opportunities for parliamentary administrators and committees to obtain greater leverage, parliamentary party groups continue to play a crucial role in defining the outcomes of the scrutiny process. Parliamentary party groups tend to focus on the division of competences between the EU and member states even when they have electoral incentives to address the content of EU proposals.     

Shimane Prefecture,Tokyo and the territorial dispute over Dokdo/Takeshima: regional and national identities in Japan

Abstract

This paper joins the debate on Japan's territorial dispute with South Korea over the Dokdo/Takeshima islets. Informed by the ontological security framework of analysis, this paper seeks to explain the decision to adopt the ‘Takeshima Day’ ordinance by the Shimane Prefectural Assembly and the subsequent ascendance of ‘Takeshima’ to the fore of Japan's identity construction vis-à-vis the Korean ‘other’. In this paper, I distinguish between two processes: one that led to the adoption of the ordinance and another that resulted in the entrenchment of ‘Takeshima’ in Japan's identity construction vis-à-vis the Korean ‘other’. The paper argues that the former process should be understood within the context of Shimane Prefecture's distinct identity construction vis-à-vis Tokyo, while the latter can be attributed to recent changes in Japan–Korea relations unrelated to the territorial dispute per se.