Enhancing Precision and Clarity in the Study of Policy Narratives: An Analysis of Climate and Air Issues in Delhi,India

The study of policy narratives is challenged by inconsistencies and a need for more precise definitions and measurements. The goals of this article are to build precision and clarity in the study of policy narratives by developing a network‐based approach—the ego‐alter dyad—for coding characters and their interactions around a policy issue and then to illustrate this approach in the analysis of air and climate issues in Delhi, India. The empirical results show that (1) the same actors are often heroes and villains, (2) heroes and villains are associated with different actions but with similar victims or beneficiaries, (3) narrators differ in their propensity to tell hero‐heavy or villain‐heavy policy narratives, and (4) the proportion of hero‐heavy or villain‐heavy policy narratives changes over time and differs across subtopics. The article concludes with a research agenda for further theoretical and methodological advancement in studying policy narratives.     

郁达夫自叙传小说与日本私小说相似下的不同

日本“私小说”与郁达夫自叙传小说内容与风格相似。对二者的特点及其形成的背景进行研究和梳理,认为两者尽管出现在同一时代并具有相似的风格特点,但他们是两个独立的学习、借鉴和选择的过程。加之不同民族文化的时代背景,两者在本质上存在着差异。     

Practice narratives enhance children’s memory reports

Practicing recall of a non-target event prior to discussing substantive issues is a relatively new recommendation for interviews with child victims and witnesses. Despite evidence of the effectiveness of these practice narratives in obtaining detailed reports from children, specific recommendations about the duration and content of these interviews have yet to be systematically investigated. In the present study, 176 children aged 6–10 years watched a magic show and then participated in an interview that began with a practice narrative, with varying length (2 or 5 minutes) and topics (unique or commonplace), or no practice narrative. Conducting a practice narrative of any kind was beneficial to children's subsequent recall of accurate details over no practice narrative. Benefits to children's accurate recall were observed with as little as 2 minutes of practice and practice narratives were particularly beneficial if a unique, rather than commonplace, experience was targeted for practice recall. The present results confirm previous field research and laboratory findings indicating that the substantive phase of the interview is enhanced by conducting a practice narrative and extends the benefits of practice narratives to even a very brief practice narrative.     

Transitional narratives of identity among ethnic minority youth gangs in Denmark: from collectivism to individualism

Current literature often depicts the street cultures of ethnic minority youth as forms of collective cultural resistance to experiences of marginalization from mainstream society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and qualitative interviews in 2014 with 23 young men attached to a rehabilitation centre for criminal offenders in Denmark, this article focuses on ethnic minority youth who desist from such street culture and their former gang life, criminality and drug use and how they describe this shift within their narratives. More specifically, we show how this shift can to some extent be characterized by a move from collective to more individualistic self-narratives re-articulating broader individualistic discourses existing in contemporary society. Among these more individualistic self-narratives, we find extensive reference to ideas of self-responsibility and also individual pragmatic interpretations of Islam. Such re-articulations can be seen as a way to create feelings of agency in severely disempowering circumstances.     

Understanding Victim Support as Crime Prevention Work: The Construction of Young Victims and Villains in the Dominant Crime Victim Discourse in Sweden

Starting from the observation that a new victim category has emerged in the form of the ‘young crime victim’, this article explores the notion of support to young crime victims as crime prevention work, considering it as an important constituent of the dominant crime victim discourse among support professionals. In the context of the support work, the (young) ‘victim’ and the (young) ‘villain’ provide mutually necessary counterparts constructed in relation to each other. Corresponding to this division, two approaches in criminal and crime prevention policy and practice are then analysed using Garland's notions of ‘the criminology of the self’ and ‘the criminology of the other’. The first of these strategies is generally associated with rehabilitative measures (with the resulting normalization of the crime, its victims, and villains), while in the second punitive measures remain the norm (with the crime, its victims, and villains becoming ‘Otherized’). Yet, as shown within the context of rehabilitation organized as support to young crime victims, both of these (at first glance mutually contradictory) discourses are drawn upon and operationalized by the professional support staff constructing images of young victims and villains in their daily work. Help-seeking youths resistant to identifying as victims remain represented as (possible future) villains.     

They Come over Here … 300 Years of Xenophobic Propaganda in England

England's rulers, merchants, and organized labor in the early modern period (from the 16th to the 18th centuries) were all actively using what today we would call propaganda. Each group appreciated the need to get popular opinion on its side, or at the least to convince other groups it was in the public interest to act in a particular way. This study focuses on the use of xenophobic narratives by these actors in order to further their political, economic, or cultural objectives. The targets were economic rivals including the Dutch, but most particularly ethnic and religious outgroups, including Roman Catholics, Muslims, and Jews. Although there were public relations win-wins for anyone who was able successfully to demonize foreigners, racist and xenophobic propaganda was often more pernicious than the tellers realized, in many cases extending its influence over several generations. In addition, it is clear that many narratives failed to engage with public opinion, for reasons that were not always clear to the groups responsible for them.     

Understanding Russia’s energy turn to China: domestic narratives and national identity priorities

This study investigates whether, as part of a broader “Asian Energy Pivot,” Russia’s energy giant Gazprom refashioned its export strategy away from Europe, and what impact such a reorientation might have on the EU–Russia gas relationship. It uses four empirical cases to emphasize the domestic movers underlying Russia’s eastward shift in energy trade, developing a constructivist theory rooted in the dynamics of Russia’s dominant public narrative and the contours of domestic politics. It argues that Russia’s national interests changed as a result of how Russian policy-makers interpreted and reacted to the stand-off with Europe, in response to what they perceived as Europe’s attempt to isolate it economically and geopolitically. Russia’s Eurasianists, who had advocated the notion of a necessary turn to the East for a long time, positioned themselves as norm entrepreneurs and their new interpretation of the preexisting material incentives shaped the future course of action.     

能源大部制改革的历史分析与启示

以1988年至1993年第七届中央政府时期的能源部改革为案例,运用分析性叙述的方法,深入描述这次改革的背景、方案、运行、结果及影响。在分析能源部改革历史逻辑、总结改革失败教训的基础上,提出三个有关行政体制改革的观点:(1)大部制并不能针对性地解决部门协调的问题,仅仅提供了协调的机会和可能性;(2)以简政放权为目的的大部制改革难以实现部门协调的目标;(3)在对行政改革进行评价时,必须重视改革文化的培育与维护。     

Theorizing identity: beyond the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy

ABSTRACT

Yuval-Davis discusses three interconnected questions relating to identity. She first examines whether and in what ways the notion of identity should be theorized, on the one hand, and empirically researched, on the other, focusing on the opposing views of Stuart Hall and Robin Williams. She then examines the contested question of what is identity, positioning it in relation to notions of belonging and the politics of belonging, and in relation to several influential schools of thought, especially those that construct identity as a mode of narrative, as a mode of performativity or as a dialogical practice. Her third interrelated question concerns the boundaries of identity and the relationship between self and non-self. She explores both social psychological and psychoanalytical approaches to that question, and deals with questions such as reflexivity, identifications and forced identities. The last part of the article explores several types of relationships between self and non-self, such as: ‘me’ and ‘us’; ‘me/us’ and ‘them’; ‘me’ and other ‘others’; ‘me’ and the transversal ‘us/them’. Yuval-Davis's basic argument here is that dichotomous notions of identity and difference, when theorizing boundaries of individual and collective identities, are more misleading than explanatory.     

超越生物防御：“两用性”安全叙事与美国生物技术政策的演进

生物技术对人类社会的进步既有巨大推动作用,也有巨大的潜在风险,这种现象被称为生物技术的“两用性”。自九一一事件后,美国政府开始对生物技术“两用性”概念进行话语操弄,形成了一套独特的安全叙事,也推动了美国生物技术政策的演变。从小布什政府到拜登政府,在“两用性”安全叙事下的生物技术具有了多重的安全效应,并逐渐形成了生物技术政策领域防御性与竞争性的两种目标。从理论逻辑上看,此种防御性目标与竞争性目标之间存在着明显的矛盾,这揭示了在当前大国竞争的背景下,美国霸权逻辑已经开始侵蚀正常的决策理性。从实践上看,为了维护霸权,美国的生物技术政策已经逐步超越其生物防御战略,企图采取科研“脱钩”和加强军事化投资的方式来打压竞争对手,以此维持美国的生物技术领导地位。新兴生物技术的发展功在全球化、利在全人类。美国霸权逻辑下的政策行为是违背科研发展规律的,必将遭到客观现实的严厉“回击”,这对美国自身的生物技术发展和全球的生物安全都将带来严重的负面影响。