Sexuality,identity and dissidence: new scholarship on sub-Saharan Africa

In this review essay, I consider three recent monographs on sexuality and sexual cultures in Africa. Each of these three books grapple with the “problem orientation” of scholarship on African sexuality, in which sexuality is conceptualised primarily with reference to AIDS, homophobia and violence. The authors move beyond this problem orientation through a common concern investigating the poles of “modernity” vs “tradition”, “global” vs “local” and “authentic” vs “imported” as these concepts are deployed by activists, policymakers, and ordinary people talking about sex. All three authors also engage the question of how and why social changes happen, treating sexual identities and practices as dynamic, emergent phenomena.     

How South African Citizens Evaluate Their Economic Obligations to the State

This article explores the relationship between feelings about political community and citizen evaluations of the state's demands for taxation. It finds preliminary support for the hypothesis that to the extent that individuals identify themselves with the state-sponsored view of the nation, they will perceive the allocation of costs and benefits to be more 'fair', and will be more inclined to comply with demands for taxation. This conclusion is based upon analysis of a 1997 dataset resulting from a national survey of adult South Africans, a society characterized by a great diversity of feelings about political community, and other socio-economic factors.     

韩国文化外交：路径与启示

韩国文化外交是其软实力的重要来源和体现。韩国文化外交卓有成效,其路径主要有政府、企业和社会组织三个方面。韩国文化外交的启示在于：经济现代化是文化外交的物质保障;政治民主化是文化外交的制度保障;完善的社会建设是文化外交可持续发展的内生力;明确的文化产业政策是文化外交的直接推动力。     

马来西亚官方对南海争端的立场分析

自2011年南海问题升温以来,作为东盟成员国中对南沙群岛部分岛礁及水域提出主权申索的国家之一,马来西亚官方对南海争端的立场十分值得关注。本文以马来西亚政府喉舌报《先锋报》为主的媒体网站2011年至2013年的与南海问题相关的新闻报道或评论为分析依据,进行跟踪评论,解读马来西亚官方对南海争端的立场。     

My Country,My Country,directed by Laura Poitras,produced by Jocelyn Glatzer and Laura Poitras Iraq in Fragments,directed by James Longley,produced by John Sinno and James Longley

A new form of “entertaining news,” accessed by most through television, has become a privileged domain of politics for the first time in countries “beyond the West” in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. What are the political consequences of this development: What is the relationship between media and politics in these regions? We answer these questions through a case study of India, the world's largest democracy, where two decades of media expansion and liberalization have yielded the largest number of commercial television news outlets in the world. We show why prevailing theories of media privatization and commercialization cannot account for the distinctive architecture of media systems in places like India. In this article, we first provide an overview of the historical and contemporary dynamics of media liberalization in India and the challenges that this poses to existing models and typologies of the media-politics relationship. We then present a new typology of media systems and a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between television news and democratic politics in India, and by extension in the global South. In the concluding section, we reflect on the broader comparative insights of the essay and discuss directions for future research. We believe that our alternative comparative framework captures more meaningfully the diversity and complexity of emerging media systems and their relationships to democratic practice in these regions.     

Secular geographical polarization in the American South: The case of Texas, 1996–2010

This article uses fine-grained data to demonstrate that, since 1996, the State of Texas has undergone a process of ‘secular geographical polarization’ – a continuous divergence in the geographical bases of its political parties. It is suggested that this process exemplifies a new era of partisan politics in the American South. Analyses of spatial regression models show that the geographical polarization can be partially explained by a tighter link between demographic characteristics and aggregate voting patterns, but that growth in spatial clustering cannot be attributed entirely to demographics. The possibility that spatially-bounded social contexts are affecting partisan change is thus explored. Finally, the article's findings are considered in light of the growing debate about geographical polarization in the American electorate.     

PLANNING AND PARTICIPATION IN CITIES THAT MOVE: IDENTIFYING OBSTACLES TO MUNICIPAL MOBILITY MANAGEMENT

The dual processes of rapidly transforming cities and administrative decentralisation demands that local government address human mobility as a means of countering urban poverty. Despite this imperative, local authorities are often poorly equipped to address the needs of poor and transient residents. Through an examination of four South African municipalities, this article helps to identify three critical factors working against effective responses: poor data and conceptual bias; institutional ambiguities and budgeting processes; and, ironically, participatory planning. Although any one of these could serve as a basis for an article, by taking them together, we better summarise the challenges' scope and outline areas for further research and policy intervention. The article concludes by considering these findings' practical and scholarly implications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Compressed modernity and its discontents: South Korean society in transtion

According to conventional economic indicators, since late 1997 history has been reversed for South Koreans since late 1997. Their current financial crisis, which would have led to a moratorium without the emergency bail-out packae from teh International Monetary Fund, seems to require not only economic austerity for business firms and citizen but also a total devaluation of their developmental ‘micacle’ in the latter half of the twentieth century. South Koreans' dilemma, if evaluated from a broad historical and theoretical perspective on their compresed modernity, is that the vary mechanisms which made their explosive economic growth possible tend to create various hazardous consequences in social, political, cultural as well as economic life. Patriarchal political authoritarianism chaebol's despotic and monopolistic business practice, abuse and exclusion of labour, neglect of basic welfare rights, ubiquitous physical dangers, and ideological self-nagation are particularly serious examples of such hazards of the uniquely South Korean modernity.     

The Gautrain project in South Africa: a cautionary tale

This article analyses the recently completed Gautrain Rapid Rail Project in the province of Gauteng, South Africa. The Gautrain is the continent's first high-speed rail project, and constitutes an important case in transportation megaproject planning. The article discusses the potential merits and limitations of the project, and ultimately argues that several key problems with the Gautrain should provide readers with a cautionary tale regarding such endeavours. Benefits to the project, such as reduced traffic congestion and job creation, must be weighed against the social and political implications of the project. Thus, the article discusses the following potential problems with the project: it may deepen mobility-related exclusion in the province; it prioritizes wealthy, as opposed to poor, citizens in the allocation of public funds; costs for the project have escalated considerably from initial estimates; and other options for a more effective and integrated transportation plan were not sufficiently considered. This case study conforms to what scholars call the megaprojects paradox in significant ways, and suggests that more rigorous and transparent debate should precede the approval of such projects.