Japan and the Kyoto Protocol: reconstructing ‘proactive’ identity through environmental multilateralism

The aim of this article is to interpret Tokyo's pivotal role in the Kyoto Protocol negotiations as a practice of reconstructing Japan's identity of an ‘international’ and ‘independent’ country. The text bases this argument in poststructural national identity scholarship, which believes that discursive differentiation to international forces (‘others’) plays a decisive role in formulating state's identity. For most parts of the post-war history, United States served as the most significant other for Japan's self construction. Japan narrated itself as a ‘weak’ and ‘subservient’ country dominated by the ‘dominant’ West. This narrative, however, has been significantly altered after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Japan's identity entrepreneurs began describing Japan as an ‘independent’ or ‘normal’ country, one that proactively contributes to world affairs. Tokyo's legitimization of the Kyoto Protocol was in line with this identity reconstruction. The image of a proactive environmental leader created a symbol of Kyoto that overshadowed the opponents of the Protocol, and lead Japan to ratify it albeit the United States chose to withdraw from it. Once the ratification was over, however, the practical implementation failed to comply with Japan's symbolic commitment.     

Linguistic and visual strategies for portraying immigrants as people deprived of human rights†

The majority of news items on sub-Saharan immigrants in the Spanish press refer to their arrival by jumping the fences of Ceuta or Melilla or landing in small boats at the Spanish coast. The data in this article consist of all the news items published on the arrival of sub-Saharan immigrants in Spain by jumping the fences of Ceuta and Melilla, items that appeared in the digital editions of the two most popular Spanish newspapers, El País and ABC, from 1 January 2012 to 1 January 2015. The principles of critical discourse analysis and visual grammar are used to deconstruct the linguistic and visual portrayal of sub-Saharan immigrants when they try to enter Spain by jumping the fence. This research reveals that the immigrants jumping the fence at Melilla are represented as wild and dangerous. There is no reference to their human rights. The study thus aims to provide a visual analysis of the way in which the arrival of these immigrants is represented visually in two serious newspapers. In this way, the study aims to unveil visual ways of negative representation of immigrants, who are portrayed as dangerous invaders.     

Resistance and reform: discourses on marital law in Japan*

This article examines opinions concerning fūfubessei (a married couple retaining their birth surnames) posted on an online forum. Recently, the topic of fūfubessei has once again come under a spotlight, since the Japanese Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Civil Code Article 750, which stipulates that a married couple must choose either the husband's or wife's surname upon marriage registration. Owing to the large number of women forfeiting their surnames, the fūfubessei issue has often been researched from feminist perspectives, which may have hindered the voices of others. This article analyzes, using text mining (quantitative analysis) and discourse analysis (qualitative analysis), a large number of opinions from people of various cultural backgrounds. The results of this study reveal a diversity of beliefs and attitudes towards Article 750, reflecting the complexity of the issue. In general, proponents of reform claim the law violates equality, rights and liberty. From opponents there was a strong push to conform rather than to recognize a need for individual choice. Moreover, the many personal narratives provided insight into issues on the ground and revealed how many in Japanese society have dealt with the law, social pressure and social expectations and why they have followed the path they have chosen.     

Too many enemies: Mobilization,marginalization, and political violence

Over the past decades, a pattern has emerged across the Islamic world of secular actors struggling to build sustainable social movements while Islamists show a higher success rate in doing so—a dynamic often accompanied by high levels of violence and little space for dialogue between actors from across the political spectrum. In this article, we illustrate the utility of social movement theory (SMT) in explaining the ability of some movements to mobilize en masse, while others become marginalized. Furthermore, we suggest that SMT is useful in understanding the processes that produce socio-political dynamics conducive to violent rather than non-violent tactics. Through a case study of Bangladesh, where in 2013 the secular Shahbag mobilization was derailed by a massive Islamist counter-mobilization, this article shows how movements not only capitalize on, but actually contribute to, shifts in cultural discourse through political maneuvering and long-term socialization. By anchoring their ideology in pre-existing religio-cultural imagery, Islamists have been successful in casting themselves as “authentic” defenders of Islam and their secular opponents as “atheists.” In such a socio-political context, the space for dialogue among the various political actors is severely limited and the impetus to employ violent tactics strong.     

Space,discourse and environmental peacebuilding

The concept of environmental peacebuilding is becoming increasingly prominent among peacebuilding scholars and practitioners. This study provides a brief overview about the various discussions contributing to our understanding of environmental peacebuilding and concludes that questions of space have hardly been explicitly considered in these debates. Drawing on discourse-analytic spatial theory, I discuss how the social construction of scale, place and boundaries are relevant for environmental peacebuilding processes and outcomes. This theoretical approach is then applied to the Good Water Neighbours project, which aims at improving the regional water situation and at building peace between Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians. The results suggest that discursive constructions of space are important in facilitating, impeding or shaping environmental peacebuilding practices. Analyses of environmental peacebuilding, but also of peacebuilding more general, are therefore encouraged to draw more strongly on the findings of spatial theory.     

Women's Resolutions of Lawes Reconsidered: Epistemic Shifts and the Emergence of the Feminist Legal Discourse

This paper has arisen from my interest in questions ofsubjectivity of primary concern to contemporaryfeminist jurisprudence. Rather than side with anyparticular view represented in the debates surroundingthese questions, I have used Foucault's concept ofepisteme to explore the tradition of feministlegal thought. By focusing upon seventeenth-centurywomen's writings in which the earliest statementslinking law to women's oppression are to be found, thepaper argues that knowledge claims about law'sassociation with women's oppression are predicated notupon the positing of a sovereign feministconsciousness, but upon the specific positivities ofknowledge which existed at the time. Theunderstanding of the birth of the feminist legaldiscourse in terms of the specific conditions of itspossibility, although historically contextualised,raises questions about the hitherto seeminglyunassailable adherence to subjectivist epistemologywhich the current feminist engagement with lawmaintains.     

试论西方女权主义理论走向

西方女权主义运动经历了三次高潮 :第一次以争取妇女参政权、受教育权和就业权等基本人权为重心 ;第二次在有关性别歧视的起源、性质及解决方式等问题上 ,出现了以自由女权主义、社会主义女权主义和激进女权主义为代表的三家之说 ;第三次高潮中 ,由于后现代主义话语理论影响 ,女权主义理论更强调女性经验的复杂性及建立女性话语的必要性。本文在此基础上预测了新世纪女权主义的基本走向     

中国基层执法中的相机选择:从策略赋权到话语使用

在基层执法领域,纵向与横向部门之间的推诿、执法队伍与执法相对人之间的冲突,都是相关主体对于行政执法权采取相机选择策略的结果。既有研究局限于末端执法行为及其影响因素,将执法机构的权力配置视为"默认设置"项,忽视了初始权力配置对于执法策略选择的影响。行政执法权的选择性执行包括垂直互动关系中执法权的选择性下放,水平互动关系中执法主体间的选择性协同,以及政社互动关系中执法队伍与相对人对合法性话语的选择性利用。在垂直互动维度上,乡镇政府的赋权诉求与县级执法部门的控权惯性共同塑造出权能有限的乡镇综合执法机构,从而为基层执法权的运行设置了初始条件。在水平互动维度中,受制于条块结构约束和政府科层制特性,不同执法队伍之间缺乏具有约束力的协作机制,促使横向执法协作流于形式。在政社互动方面,党政体制所依赖的两套合法性话语,即伦理化的"人民政治话语"与理性化的"法制话语"之间的张力,塑造了乡镇执法权的名实分离取向,是文明执法诉求与暴力抗法实践两张皮现象的结构化动因。对于基层执法领域相机选择的三维互动分析,突出强调了初始权力配置与党政体制合法性话语对执法行为的重要影响,可以拓展和深化现有的基层执法行为研究。     

An Unbearable Price: War Casualties and Warring Democracies

Israeli society has changed its attitude to the sacrifice of life in war, a change that is reflected in the bereavement discourse. Attitudes have shifted from the unquestioned justification of military losses prior to the First Lebanon War (1982) to the emergence of an antiwar bereavement discourse after the war and during the South Lebanon war of attrition that followed it. More recently, following the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Second Lebanon War (2006), a discourse that accepts losses has emerged. While the retreat from the hegemonic discourse prior to the First Lebanon War is explained by the changing attitudes to military sacrifice among the social elites, the latter shift took place in parallel with the alteration of the social composition of the Israeli Defence Force. It is argued that the social composition of the military affects the level of sensitivity to losses. While secular upper-middle class groups tend to show a high level of sensitivity to war losses, which they then translate into a subversive bereavement discourse, religious and peripheral groups with a hawkish agenda are more tolerant of military losses, or, alternatively, may seek to avoid excessive casualties by improving the military’s performance or the quality of the political directives.