文化融入策略与恐怖组织的认同

恐怖组织的认同构建过程可分为三个阶段：个体恐怖分子在群体中找到自我、组织内部同一性的构建以及组织一致对外的恐怖主义活动。在整个认同构建过程中,始终贯穿着恐怖组织内外群体文化融入策略选择的矛盾,具体表现为：第一阶段,潜在恐怖分子在主流文化中认同受挫,转而寻求加入恐怖组织。第二阶段,恐怖组织以自身所处的宗教文化为基础,构建其组织文化,并积极通过各种方式加深组织成员对这一文化的认同,但与此相对,恐怖组织外群体却很难认同其组织文化。第三阶段,恐怖组织内外群体文化融入策略选择的矛盾持续激化,最终导致恐怖组织采取一致对外的恐怖主义活动。通过“伊斯兰国”作为案例,对上述恐怖组织的认同过程进行分析后发现,“伊斯兰国”的“成功”是与其“成功”的文化融入策略密切相关,而其在阿富汗的受挫,在很大程度上也是由于文化融入策略“失当”所导致的,即“伊斯兰国”在阿富汗不但无力完成与塔利班的竞争,而且无法解决组织面临的跨文化冲突问题。因此,在打击“伊斯兰国”等暴恐极端势力时,关注文化融入策略的影响并有针对性地采取对策,具有重要意义和价值。     

Adaptive strategies of smaller foreign investors in the Russian agricultural sector: identity,narrative and performance

This paper utilises a qualitative narrative analysis approach to examine smaller foreign investors operating within the Russian agricultural sector as private farmers: the foreign versions of the krestyansko-fermerskiye khoziaistva (peasant farms) that were the early focus of agrarian reform. With difficulty experienced by foreign investment in Russian agriculture, and with the Putin administration shifting its focus to larger scale agriculture, interest lies in the fate of these smaller foreign investors, set in the broader question of: ‘Is there really a future for smaller foreign investors in Russia?’ The investors were aligned along a performance and narrative spectrum, and the construction of their identities – guided by their adaptive processes on the ‘Turnerian’ frontier – were found to shape their business conduct, and interactions with labour forces and regional authorities. Negative prejudgment of the labour force existed amongst the investors – with associated negative notions of trust, inefficiency, laziness, morality, and sexual deviancy – and they were involved in explicit or ambiguous forms of gift-gifting, drawing parallels to Soviet blat behaviour. This paper concludes that despite efforts to construct identity, the narratives of the investors betrayed themselves in certain aspects, with elements of ‘undoing’ in the identity process.     

Playing the regional card: why and how authoritarian gravity centres exploit regional organisations

The evidence of regional authoritarian clustering across different world regions goes together with the finding that after the end of the bipolar world regional patterns of interaction became more important. Especially in the 2000s a process of revitalisation of regional organisations and even the creation of new regional organisations took place. Interestingly, these newly founded organisations consist predominantly of authoritarian regimes. Due to the emergence and resilience of authoritarianism in the world, the question arises: To what extent do regional organisations (ROs) play a role in this phenomenon? We argue that authoritarian protagonists which we call authoritarian gravity centres (AGCs) constitute a force of attraction for countries in geopolitical proximity – and use ROs as a transmission belt and a learning room for disseminating autocratic elements. In a cross-regional comparison, based on extensive field work, we provide empirical analysis on two AGCs (Saudi Arabia and Venezuela) within their respective ROs Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA-TCP) and tackle the questions of why and how autocracies decide to move forward multilaterally within the RO.     

Repackaging national identity: Cool Japan and the resilience of Japanese identity narratives

‘Cool Japan’ is an instance of Japanese government's nation branding exercise as part of its soft power projection in which the unique selling point is identified as Japanese national identity. In this paper, I examine the relationship between Cool Japan and Japanese national identity and highlight a tension in the construction. Cool Japan is about emphasizing Japan's attractiveness for public diplomacy, while the top-down nature of the branding undermines the imagery that the branding is designed to convey. I show that policy elites resolve this tension by invoking the traditional Japanese identity narratives that construct Japan into both a non-Western and an un-Asian entity, reproducing the myth of Japanese uniqueness. I argue that the elite narratives surrounding Cool Japan readily replicate the language reminiscent of prewar identity construction. Despite the contemporary popularity of manga and anime, the purported ‘coolness’ of these products are framed within older constructions of Japanese Self that can trace their pedigree back to the nineteenth century. Using the minutes of committee meetings, policy documents, as well as media interviews given by policy- and business elites, I show that Cool Japan is effectively a twenty first century rendition of the familiar Japanese identity construction.     

Call me Caitlyn: making and making over the ‘authentic’ transgender body in Anglo-American popular culture

A conception of transgender identity as an ‘authentic’ gendered core ‘trapped’ within a mismatched corporeality, and made tangible through corporeal transformations, has attained unprecedented legibility in contemporary Anglo-American media. Whilst pop-cultural articulations of this discourse have received some scholarly attention, the question of why this ‘wrong body’ paradigm has solidified as the normative explanation for gender transition within the popular media remains underexplored. This paper argues that this discourse has attained cultural pre-eminence through its convergence with a broader media and commercial zeitgeist, in which corporeal alteration and maintenance are perceived as means of accessing one’s ‘authentic’ self. I analyse the media representations of two transgender celebrities: Caitlyn Jenner and Nadia Almada, alongside the reality TV show TRANSform Me, exploring how these women’s gender transitions have been discursively aligned with a cultural imperative for all women, cisgender or trans, to display their authentic femininity through bodily work. This demonstrates how established tropes of authenticity-via-bodily transformation, have enabled transgender to become culturally legible through the wrong body trope. Problematically, I argue, this process has worked to demarcate ideals of ‘acceptable’ transgender subjectivity: self-sufficient, normatively feminine, and eager to embrace the possibilities for happiness and social integration provided by the commercial domain.     

Autocratic legitimation in Iran: Ali Khamenei’s discourse on regime “insiders” and “outsiders”

The article analyses Ali Khamenei’s discourse on insiders and outsiders in the Islamic Republic of Iran, arguing that it shows the leader of an electoral revolutionary regime striving to counter elite fragmentation and growing democratic demands. It studies identity demarcation as a tool of autocratic legitimation. In a political system where the possibility to access political positions depends on supporting a belief-system, all cadres share a basic identity, which rulers can exploit to draw boundaries between “us” and “them”. The analysis reveals how Iran’s leader capitalizes on the existence of an insider-outsider divide to promote ideas about an imagined “we” of the regime. The “we” is portrayed as an Islamic we, fully committed to his rule. The article maintains that Khamenei developed this discourse in response to the challenge of the Iranian reform movement. It analyses, first, the context in which the discourse emerged and, second, the discursive strategy itself, to substantiate the claim. It concludes that the discourse had two essential aims in the containment (1997–2003) and crushing (2009–2010) of the pro-democracy reformist and Green movements: to de-legitimate Khamenei’s opponents through othering and to legitimate the counter-mobilization of repressive agents.     

Post-hegemonic regionalism in Oceania: examining the development potential of the new framework for Pacific regionalism

This article explores the early potential of the Framework for Pacific regionalism, a new political process that Pacific nations are using to establish regional development priorities. The emergence of this process is positioned within a context of a desire for a new era of Pacific-led regional development collaboration. The early outcomes of the Framework are outlined and examined. Specifically, the article questions whether it is meeting aspirations for ‘game-changing’ development goals that enjoy greater levels of ‘ownership’ amongst Pacific leaders. It also explores whether the new process canbe seen as evidence of a new era of ‘post-hegemonic’ regionalism in Oceania, characterised by a revitalisation of regional political debate; a rejection of ‘economism’; and the reassertion of indigenous and civil society concerns.     

The territoriality of personalization: New avenues for decentralized personalization in multi-level Western Europe

In light of the increasing scholarly attention to the concept of decentralized personalization, this paper argues that the territoriality (the level of government to which an MP belongs) of an MP would also lead to variations in that MP’s incentive to personalize their campaigns. Using data from the PARTIREP Comparative MP survey, this paper tests the role of the territoriality of an MP in their incentive to personalize their campaigns across nine multi-level countries in Western Europe. Although the level of personalization of campaigns does differ according to territoriality, the underlying explanatory variables do not behave uniformly across territoriality. This paper thus draws attention to the rarely explored role of territory, and the complications it may bring to the explanation of the personalization of politics.     

Normative and Civilisational Regionalisms: The EU,Russia and their Common Neighbourhoods

The contours of regionalism in a wider Europe are shaped by two dominant actors, the European Union (EU) and Russia, which often have divergent visions of the regional landscapes in a vast area constituting their common neighbourhood. The EU can be characterised as the promoter of normative regionalism, while Russia generates different forms of civilisational regionalism. Russia’s emphasis on the civilisational underpinnings of its regional integration model paves the way for two different strategies: one based on liberal imitation and replication of EU experiences in order to strengthen Russia’s position in the global neoliberal economy, and another grounded in illiberal contestation of the normative premises of the EU with the purpose of devising an ideologised alternative to the liberal West.     

From a follower to a trendsetter: Hungary's post-Cold War identity and the West

The article attempts to make sense of recent developments in Hungary's relationship with the EU and the US by explicating the logic behind the formation of its post-Cold War identity. The article's central theoretical argument derives from social identity theory (SIT) in social psychology which argues that social groups strive for positive distinctiveness and provides concrete hypotheses concerning the identity management strategies that groups use to enhance their relative position. Extrapolating the identity management techniques predicted by SIT to international politics, I suggest that states may enhance their relative standing by imitating more advanced states (strategy of social mobility), trying to displace the higher-ranked state (strategy of social competition), or finding a new arena in which to be superior (strategy of social creativity). The article argues that Orban's government post-2010 steps in domestic and foreign policy can be conceptualized as attempts to redefine Hungary's identity by moving away from the strategy of social mobility pursued since the end of communism towards the strategy of social creativity.