Demanding Their Rights? Collective Identity and the Tactics of Older Persons’ Organisations at the UN

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship in International Relations focuses on the tactics of international non-government organisations and transnational advocacy networks, with scholars mostly explaining the diverse and dynamic tactics of organisations working on similar issues. Based on multiple qualitative data sources, this article explores why the members of a transnational advocacy network, comprising organisations of, and representing, older persons, that are calling for a UN Convention on the Rights of Older Persons adopt tactics that are static, uniform and surprisingly softly-softly, despite their modest gains since the issue was put on the UN’s agenda nine years ago. The article demonstrates many of the existing explanations for tactical choices, but it extends what we know by importing the concept of collective identity from social movement studies. It argues that the older persons’ network has a weak collective identity that is conservative in nature, which influences the tactics deployed at the UN.     

身份自觉：维护党的领导核心实践逻辑之新视角

党的领导核心引领着中国共产党的组织与发展。新时代对于党的领导核心的维护要转换视角,以党员为主体,从认知—情感—意动理论的角度分析党员的心理因素,揭示党员的心理与维护行为的关系。维护的逻辑起点是通过教育手段使党员对自己的身份认知更加清晰,有了自我身份的清醒界定。逻辑衔接点是通过内部的推动力与外部拉动力对党员情感进行调动。逻辑落脚点是党员有了身份自觉,与自上而下的维护要求同向共力,有力的维护领导核心。这种由内而外的维护逻辑更坚定、持久,有助于党的团结稳定和党的事业发展。     

Historical aspirations and the domestic politics of Russia's pursuit of international status

What determined Russia's national interests and grand strategy in the first decade after the Cold War? This article uses aspirational constructivism, which combines social psychology with constructivism, to answer this question. Central to aspirational constructivism are the roles that the past self and in-groups, and their perceived effectiveness play in the selection of a national identity and the definition of national interests. This article explains why Russian political elites settled on a statist national identity that focused on retaining Russia's historical status as a Western great power and hegemon in the former Soviet Union and in engaging the country in bounded status competition with the United States.     

I have a Facebook account,therefore I am – authentication with social networks

ABSTRACT

Social login is the use of a social network account to get access to other services. Since the internet in its architecture does not have the possibility to identify the internet user, for many services, social logins are the solution to authenticate users without the need to set up individual identity management systems. Social logins are not useful for all types of services, however, and the potential lock-in and lock-out of users needs to be considered.     

The Impact of Gender Identity on Female Offending: A Quantitative Assessment Using the BSRI

Despite considerable research showing the importance of masculinity in male offending, the role of gender identity in female offending remains unclear. The current study explores the impact of gender identity on female offending among a sample of 843 college women using the Bem Sex Role Inventory and Multiple Problem Behavior Index. The impact of gender identity on rates of general deviance, as well as behaviors typically in high male and female participation, aggression and self-harming, respectively, were examined. Results found that women with masculine identity were more likely to engage in aggression as well as general deviance broadly. Gender identity was not found to impact rates of self-harming.     

The effects of populism as a social identity frame on persuasion and mobilisation: Evidence from a 15-country experiment

This article investigates the impact of populist messages on issue agreement and readiness for action in 15 countries (N = 7,286). Specifically, populist communicators rely on persuasive strategies by which social group cues become more salient and affect people's judgment of and political engagement with political issues. This strategy is called ‘populist identity framing’ because the ordinary people as the in-group is portrayed as being threatened by various out-groups. By blaming political elites for societal or economic problems harming ordinary people, populist communicators engage in anti-elitist identity framing. Another strategy is to blame immigrants for social problems – that is, exclusionist identity framing. Finally, right-wing political actors combine both cues and depict an even more threatening situation of the ordinary people as the in-group. Based on social identity theory, an experimental study in 15 European countries shows that most notably the anti-elitist identity frame has the potential to persuade voters. Additionally, relative deprivation makes recipients more susceptible to the mobilising impact of the populist identity frames.     

Deglobalization: Identity Crisis in Western Countries

In recent years, the trend of deglobalization has spread over western developed countries as an irrational response to the fierce challenges from global markets and syndromes of the national identity crisis. In a new world order of post-western era, the trend of deglobalization cannot turn down the dynamic process of economic globalization, but may lead to more setbacks suffered by these countries in their domestic identity split and social conflicts.     

A community under siege: exclusionary education policies and indigenous Santals* in the Bangladeshi context

Abstract

This article presents and analyses the voices and responses of the research participants about the impact of exclusionary formal and informal education policies imposed on the Santal community in Palashpur, Bangladesh (Palashpur is a pseudonym for the site of my research; it is also a metaphor for contested space where the colonial power and politics of the nation state exert domination and subordination). These policies are implemented through a state-led, centralised, monolingual and exclusionary curriculum in local primary and secondary schools, schools run by the churches, and schools supported by nongovernmental organisations. The education policies in Bangladesh bear the legacy of the combined forces of cultural homogenisation and social exclusion rooted in the colonial learning structure and its objectives. Embedded in these policies are elements of the civilising mission, an ultra-religious assimilative but exclusionary nationalistic agenda, and Western values of modernity and development. In this rural context, these alien ideologies and practices in education are actively engaged in eliminating local institutions, the knowledge system of indigenous peoples, the texture of their lives, their joy of living, their spirituality and their sense of being. This article reveals how, imposed from above, education policy and practices have dispersed an indigenous community to negotiate a life that goes against the interests of the community itself and its members.     

Laughing with / at the national self: Greek television satire and the politics of self-disparagement

This study engages with the cultural consequences of the self-disparaging politics of television satire. It focuses on an emblematic program of Greek television fiction, Oi Afthairetoi (MEGA channel, 1989–1991) and the ways it both constructs and ridicules a particular version of the Greek self, the “Neoellinas”. By proposing a wider understanding of the political side-effects of television satire, which have so far been mainly addressed within the study of political satire, it turns the attention toward the role of satirical discourse in a public’s view on its national self in times of change or transition. More specifically, while it recognizes the contradictory impact that satire can have on society, it applies the concept of “satiric misfire” as a means to understand satirical endeavors which reinforce rather than counter the problematics they set out to fight against in the first place.     

对海外华裔青年学生中华文化认同的调查分析——以泰国华裔学生为例

青年华裔是推动新时期海外华侨工作,推动中国软实力建设的重要力量。本文以云南民族大学泰国华裔学生为标本,以文化适应理论为基础,以问卷调查、访谈的方式,探讨华裔学生在华留学文化适应上的特点,并提出相应对策和建议。