Confounding Conventional Wisdom: Political not Principled Differences in the Transatlantic Regulatory Relationship

The transatlantic complaints over hormone-treated beef and genetically modified organisms before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) seem to confirm two separate but related conventional wisdoms about the transatlantic economic relationship: that it is highly conflictual and that many of the conflicts are rooted in profoundly different approaches to regulation. This article argues that neither of the two conventional wisdoms is accurate. Rather, it contends that they are products of two, compounding analytical shortcomings: one methodological, one empirical. The methodological shortcoming takes the form of an implicit selection bias. While WTO complaints are high profile they are rare and extreme examples; it is, therefore, unsound to generalise from them to the regulatory relationship as a whole. The empirical shortcoming has to do with neither the beef hormones nor the GMO dispute demonstrating what it is purported to. The article thus serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on obvious cases and the need to question whether evidence really does support a prevailing popular narrative.     

Exploring the Realm of the Unconscious in Anna Kavan’s Sleep Has His House

Abstract

Sleep Has His House, one of Anna Kavan’s most radically experimental novels, appeared in Britain in 1948, in the wake of the Second World War. An objection levied at the novel on its publication was that it bore no relationship to external ‘reality’. However, this article argues that the novel’s focus on the oneiric realm, contrary to what hostile contemporary reviews claimed, does not take place in isolation of larger society. Portraying modernist, surrealist and psychoanalytical influences, the novel is namely concerned with the representation of a nocturnal realm that emphasizes the osmotic relationship between the external world and an individual’s subjectivity. Focusing on the ways in which violent images of war infiltrate the dream world, this article suggests that Sleep Has His House can in fact be understood as reflecting and responding to the pressures of British war-torn society in the mid twentieth century.     

Manhunt Presidency: Obama,race, and the Third World

Abstract

President Obama’s commitment to a creedal narrative of American exceptionalism and his understanding of the Third World as a space of ontological deficit together made for a presidency that could neither mitigate the structural racism of the United States nor deflect a racist foreign policy premised on an unending war against terror. By examining the murders of two American teenagers – Trayvon Martin and Abdulrahman Al-Awlaki – this essay argues that the very self-fashioning narratives that propelled Obama to the presidency of the United States rendered him incapable of effecting any substantive changes in the racism than animates its domestic and foreign policies.     

基于生命意义构建视野下的公安院校体改生心理健康教育

人是一个意义的存在，意义世界是人安身立命的基础。生命意义感与心理健康状况密切相关，教育作为一种塑造青少年健全人格的活动，有责任把学生引向意义世界，让学生在教育活动中发现和体验生命意义。对公安院校体改生进行生命意义构建的教育是新时期公安工作的现实需要。     

Congressional voting on funding the international financial institutions

The United States is the largest contributor to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, providing resources in exchange for voting power in these international financial institutions (IFIs). While the Treasury Department manages the day-to-day aspects of US participation in these institutions, Congress retains authority on funding. With the aim of understanding the microincentives of US support for the IFIs, I analyze congressional voting on bills to fund the IFIs. I argue that members of congress are more likely to support a funding increase (1) the more “liberal” their ideology, (2) the larger the share of campaign contributions they get from banks that specialize in international lending, and (3) the larger the share of voters that gain from economic globalization that reside in their districts. Statistical analyses of voting on five IFI funding bills since 1977 provide support for these arguments.

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Tourism in Society

This essay starts with a discussion of the scope of tourism as a major force in our contemporary global consumer culture. It also contains information on the development of tourism education in universities and problems students studying tourism often face in the workplace. The main function of the essay is to introduce the articles I have solicited from a number of tourism scholars, which reflect various disciplinary approaches to tourism. They deal with the following topics: sociological studies of tourism and modernism, questions about postmodernism and the role of authenticity in tourism, a historical perspective on the growth of the cruise industry, a case study investigating the role of advertising in tourism and an analysis of the functions of stereotypes in tourism. It is hoped that these essays will induce scholars not working in the area to consider investigating tourism in future research.

Culture and Terrorism: The Role of Cultural Factors in Worldwide Terrorism (1970–2013)

The relationship between terrorism and culture was systematically examined using three high-quality global databases. Contrary to prior research, terrorism—collapsed across form and era—was not related to any of Hofstede's cultural dimensions. Yet, particular forms of terrorism—incidents involving substantial casualties and damage, suicide bombings, and the proportion of incidents involving fatalities—all showed relationships with cultural dimensions. Tolerance of terrorism and relative tolerance of the 9/11 attack were related to cultural dimensions and terrorist events. Finally, populations that were relatively voiceless, disengaged from their communities, suffering, angry, and hopeless showed more tolerance of terrorism and incidents of terrorism.     

We all dreamed it: the politics of knowing and un-knowing the “war on terror”

This article begins via an exploration of Jean Baudrillard's provocative claim that we dreamed of the ‘events of 9/11’ prior to their occurrence. Baudrillard's particular quote is introduced to raise questions about the politics of knowing and un-knowing in International Relations, with specific reference to risk and the “war on terror”. Building on postcolonial scholarship, this article points to the limits of contemporary approaches to risk and offers an alternative methodological approach – one it argues better identifies the power relations that structure the daily forms of knowing and un-knowing that give meaning to and invigorate articulations of risk.     

Injustice and the New World Order: an anthropological perspective on “terrorism” in India

This article presents biographies of three activists of the Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). Following 9/11, the Indian state banned SIMI for fomenting “terrorism”, “sedition” and “destroying Indian nationalism”. Of the three SIMI activists, Qasim Omar had spent 30 months in prison and Samin Patel, a US citizen of Indian origin, 27 months. Both these prominent SIMI leaders were charged with denigrating the photo of India’s flag and making provocative speeches. I interviewed them after their release. The third was an ordinary (non-office bearer) activist. Drawing on their biographies, I argue that Islamist radicalism or “terrorism” should be construed politically. Contrary to the prevalent politics, the pivot of which is bare rationality of profit and loss and ruthless pursuit of national interests, the kind of politics SIMI actors enact is best understood as a profound act of ethics manifest in the quest for justice. As such, they are not enemies of freedom, democracy and human rights; on the contrary, activists such as those in SIMI strive to rescue freedom and human rights from being monopolised and molested by the mighty few and thereby truly universalise them. Against methodological nationalism, I take the post-World War II global order as the human condition in which to situate the radical politics of these young SIMI activists.     

Unheard voices: a critical discourse analysis of the Millennium Development Goals’ evolution into the Sustainable Development Goals

The United Nations’ 2001 Millennium Development Goals and 2015 Sustainable Development Goals are of major importance for worldwide development. This article explores the construction of poverty and development within and across these documents, specifically focusing on the influence of dominant economic discourses – Keynesianism and neoliberalism – in the development paradigm. It assesses the failures of the Millennium Development Goals, as articulated by oppositional liberal feminists and World Social Forum critics, who embody competing values, representations and problem-solution frames that challenge and resist the dominant economic discourses. Finally, it evaluates responsiveness of the UN in the constitution of the Sustainable Development Goals.