Between reform and Islam: The Arab spring in Jordan 2011–2014

This article discusses the Arab Spring in Jordan and the reasons the Hashemite regime was able to survive it. Liberals, retired military officers, young people, members of tribes, and members of the Muslim Brotherhood all participated in the demonstrations against the regime, which began in January 2011. In the beginning, it seemed that diversified demonstrations would bring about the regime’s collapse, as happened in other Arab countries. But in the end, it turned out that each group acted in its own interests. Tribal leaders worried about economic concerns, liberals sought to promote political reform, and the Muslim Brotherhood demanded the establishment of an Islamic caliphate. The lack of a common goal combined with Jordan’s policy of allowing demonstrations free from the fear of violent repression, sapped protesters’ motivation and minimized the number of participants. The fear of the type of anarchy and terror seen in Syria and Egypt also frightened the protesters and led them to the conclusion that it is better to live in an undemocratic but stable regime than pursue a fight for democracy that might end badly. Ultimately, it was King Abdullah’s astute political strategy in combination with international contingencies that enabled Jordan’s Hashemite regime to survive the Arab Spring.     

The Unexpected: Bionic Woman at the Millennium

Wilfred Bion's A Memoir of the Future provides a point of departure for feminist thinking about the millennium. Bion problematizes hopes for the future and associates thought with catastrophic change. Women play an unexpected role in Bion's experimental autobiography, posing provocative questions and unsettling the status quo . Since Bion has little to say about women in his clinical writings, A Memoir sheds light on his thinking and on the post-Kleinian culture of the 1970s. Book I of A Memoir depicts a class- and sex-nightmare played out between men and women, and women and women, in an age of anxiety whose setting appears to be the fascist 'pacification' of Middle England during an unspecified period. In this hallucinatory drama, all encounters are reduced to a brutal fiction of dominance and submission. The violence of the action suggests the primitive mental world of psychosis. Book II of A Memoir satirizes 'the brilliance of masculine thought' through the voices and criticisms of women. But this is the purgatorial movement of Bion's autobiography, inhabited by 'idées mères' (untransformed beta-elements) and haunted by the ghosts of Bion's traumatic war-time experience. A monstrous plot is hatched to kill primitive, fascistic Man, who retaliates and takes the female spoils. Is this the prelude to catastrophic change? Book III stages a country-house debate between different characters who represent aspects of Bion's personality, recapitulating the concerns of his later writing. The debate includes a meditation on childbirth as compared to war trauma, but Bion takes his distance from feminine intuition or common sense. Women fight on both sides of the barriers in the Bionic revolution - becoming, however, figures for the 'unexpected' and precursors of emotional upheaval. The gendering of millennial thought in Bion's Memoir provides an opportunity to scrutinize our own unthought fantasies of change.     

Lessons from “Around the world with Oprah”: Neoliberalism,race, and the (geo)politics of beauty

On 6 October 2004, viewers went “Around the world with Oprah” and received a rare glimpse inside the lives of 30-year-old women from 17 different countries. When Oprah turned her gaze (and that of middle-class American housewives) eastward, she highlighted South Korean women's penchart for plastic surgery. Oprah's “trip” to South Korea is emblematic of Western discourse surrounding South Korean Women's plastic surgery consumption, most of which focuses on cosmetic eyelid surgery or the sangapul procedure as it is called in South Korea. Given its widespread popularity, the sangapul procedure has come to signify South Korean women's acquiescence to not only patriarchal oppression but racial oppression as well. This essay goes beyond the psychologization of South Korean women in order to ask what such psychological musings obscure about the very political nature of beauty itself. Using “Around the world with Oprah” as a starting point, then, this essay examines beauty at the intersection of race, technology, and (geo)politics in order to show that, in an era of neoliberalism, plastic surgery is often rationalized as an investment in the self towards a more normal, if not better future. As this essay suggests, such a framing of plastic surgery is contingent on Oprah's production of neoliberal feminism based on liberal notions of choice. Given her global reach, these neoliberal feminist subjects are not produced equally, however, but are discursively constructed along a First World/Third World divide.     

论菲律宾穆斯林群体的性质和影响

菲律宾穆斯林具有特殊的部族集团属性,这是群体在形成过程中与外界各种势力互动的结果,也是其内部文化演化的产物.菲律宾穆斯林的这一属性决定了部族认同与伊斯兰认同交替主导群体意识,极大地影响了其与北方天主教徒的交往与互动模式,进而决定了连延多年的南部穆斯林反抗运动必将在分与合、离散与统一间徘徊.     

爱国妇人会的战争宣传一窥

文章简述了日本爱国妇人会的创立背景和思想渊源,对该会的宣传教化执行机构和意识形态工作进行了梳理。通过对该会在日俄战争、九一八事变、全面侵华战争(前期)这三场大规模侵略战争中的宣传内容、策略和目的加以分析,进一步从微观上勾勒出日本裹挟妇女走向战争深渊的必然路径。     

关于性骚扰立法的几点思考--兼评《妇女权益保障法》相关条款

本文就中国性骚扰立法提出浅见。首先须准确界定性骚扰的概念,将公众场所性骚扰、女性对男性性骚扰、同性间性骚扰和非受雇性骚扰纳入性骚扰范畴;其次坚持以反性别歧视法为主的立法路径,明确雇主责任;最后应综合运用公法和私法手段,形成反性骚扰的法律体系。     

从社会性别视角对延安时期新女性的研究

文章从女性的经验和视角出发,探究延安时期新女性所经历的“妇女解放”的艰辛历程。以翔实的资料,展现出延安新女性在革命者与妻母角色、家庭责任与女性自我发展、男性歧视与女性的苦闷这些矛盾冲突中的现实处境。     

非政府组织与菲律宾族群冲突的解决

各种因素使得困扰菲律宾多时的族群冲突迟迟得不到彻底的解决,这严重影响了菲律宾政治、经济与社会的发展.市民社会健康、和谐的发展不仅可以减少发生族群冲突的可能性,也会在缓和已有冲突并最终建立持久和平方面有所贡献.菲律宾的非政府组织在这方面做了许多尝试.