Distanced suffering: photographed suffering and the construction of white in/vulnerability

There has been much debate about the ethics and effectiveness of the circulation of photographs of suffering. An analysis of commentaries and reviews of such photographs shows that the genre interpellates a particular spectator, for whom the “distance” of suffering is viewed from a comfortable centre. This mode of spectatorship is identifiable as “white” in its claim to unmarked privilege. The photographs threaten to destabilise this unmarked privilege in potentially productive ways, but the reproduction of colonial viewing relations means that whiteness remains centred. The paper concludes by attempting to destabilise the centre by bringing the discussion of the relation between suffering and sovereignty closer to “home”.     

MAHARAJA: THE SPLENDOUR OF INDIA'S ROYAL COURTS

A curtain-raiser for the current “Maharaja” Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum, which explains the evolution of Indian concepts of kingship from the early18th to the mid-twentieth centuries. The article describes how pageantry and symbolism formed part of the essentials of kingship, together with martial prowess and patronage of the arts. The British Raj thus took over a valid existing pattern of behaviour, which however became increasingly difficult to sustain and justify as independence loomed.     

Reviews

Les relations de pouvoir façonnent le cours de l'existence du secteur pétrolier depuis la découverte et la commercialisation de l'or noir remontant au 19e siècle. Progressivement, quoique bien rapidement, cette substance devint le moteur de l'évolution économique mondiale toujours en vigueur. Étrangement, plusieurs études actuelles, que l'on rassemble sous la thèse de la malédiction des ressources (resource curse [RC]), semblent pourtant esquiver leur centralité à la compréhension de la paupérisation et des violences vécues chez les populations de certaines régions riches en ressources pétrolières. À travers la problématisation de la littérature analytique portant sur la RC appliquée à la situation chaotique de la région du delta du Niger au Nigéria et sa mise en relation avec les débats appréciatifs des pratiques de RSE (responsabilité sociale des entreprises), cet article démontre l'importance de prendre en compte l'ensemble des dimensions politiques du vécu de la RSE dans une réalité locale, nationale et internationale aux diverses ramifications "s'inter-constituant."     

Economic Integration and Vulnerability in the EU Neighbourhood

In 2004, the EU launched the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), a unified policy framework towards its neighbours in the external EU periphery, aiming at strengthening prosperity, stability and security around its geopolitical borders. However, in-depth empirical analysis provides clear-cut evidence that, while the size and composition of trade flows between the EU and the ENCs may be growing, they are not favourable for the ENCs from the perspective of export diversification, in terms of either products or number of destinations. This condition increases their exposure to volatility in international markets. These results provide valuable insight into economic integration theory and for policymaking.     

The Liberal Left Opts for Terror

For a century, intellectual debate on political violence has been dominated by efforts to romanticize the extremist and to invest him with the aura of the altruistic “freedom fighter.” It is astonishing that in the post-9/11 era, the terrorist's image continues to remain habitually mystified and ennobled, while terror attacks are justified as self-defense. “Terrorist discourse” is indicative of the universality of the intellectual position of the Left with regard to terror, national discrepancies notwithstanding. The present article evaluates leftist liberals' attitudes towards terrorism in the 20th-century Russian Empire, Europe, the U.S., and especially Israel—one of the epicenters of terrorism today. The article proposes to examine psychological responses to terrorism in conjunction with a range of contemporary reactions to threats, acknowledged or displaced with an assortment of mental constructs and rationalizations.     

Book review

Richard Wolin. The Terms of Cultural Criticism: The Frankfurt School, Existentialism, Poststructuralism. Columbia University Press, 1992. pp. 251.

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church 1880–1920. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. xii + 306 pp. $34.95.)

Rickie Solinger. Wake Up Little Susie: Single pregnancy and race before Roe v. Wade. New York & London: Routledge, 1992

Sonia Kruks. Situation and Human Existence: Freedom, Subjectivity and Society. London: Unwin Hyman, 1990.     

Subsidiary,supporter or challenger? Local‐national relations in Japan

The impact of governance attributes on frequently overlooked attitudes of local councillors towards local governance reform agendas is assessed, based on the MAELG survey of approximately 11,000 councillors in 15 European countries and Israel. Eighteen policy statements are grouped into six reform agendas, followed by analyses of their explanatory factors. Europe's north–south divide is found meaningful for the understanding of variations in attitudes towards reform, being most profound in notions of democracy, participation and devolution. Southern Europe, including post-communist Europe, shows clear support for new democratic mechanisms, whereas northern European councillors reveal more reserved, perhaps weary, attitudes towards reforms. Councillors may provide the ‘correct’ statements in the south, because less has been reformed there so far, knowing that change would anyway be difficult. Substantial variations between different northern sub-groups could be linked to the memory of non-democratic regimes in Germany and Austria and to the influence of existing systems, deeply embedded in local political cultures. Nevertheless, the impact of present institutional practices is far from universal. Councillors in liberal regimes are not pro-privatisation, and cautious attitudes towards reform are shared by northern decentralised and centralised countries.