Cracking Hegemony in Thailand: Gramsci,Bourdieu and the Dialectics of Rebellion

Gramsci's notion of “hegemony,” like Bourdieu's concept of “habitus,” seems designed to explain accommodation to existing social structures, rather than resistance. In this paper, however, I draw from the Prison Notebooks some arguments that contribute to a Gramscian understanding of how hegemony may break apart under the weight of the same uneven development processes central to hegemony. Drawing also from Bourdieu, I argue that the conceptions of “hegemony” and “habitus” inscribe the possibility of resistance within the embodied experience of accommodation to class rule. I then elaborate a dialectical, Gramscian-Bourdieusian account of the Red Shirt movement in Thailand, showing that the seeds for the destruction of royalist hegemony in Thailand have been sown in the embodied processes of accommodation to ruling class hegemony. The breadth and depth of challenges to this hegemony, moreover, are evident not only from the activities of the Red Shirt movement and regional discontent in Northern and Northeast Thailand but from the resistance of working class women to attempts to police their sexuality and limit their consumerism. The refusal of Thai elites to accept the breadth and depth of Thailand's dispositional transformation has legitimised – in their eyes – the brutal crackdown on Red Shirt protestors that resulted in the April-May 2010 massacres. Yet repression can only kill off political leaders and specific parties; it will not likely derail the growing resentment of ordinary Thais over elitist class rule.     

South African foreign policy in the post-Mbeki period

President Thabo Mbeki's resignation in September 2008 six months before the expected end of his term was triggered by the recall issued by the ANC National Executive Committee. It is highly unlikely that any major changes in foreign policy will be made by the caretaker government of President Kgalema Motlanthe before the 2009 elections. However, the significant changes in the domestic political environment signal the start of a new era in South Africa's transformation — what might be called the ‘post post-apartheid period’. This paper explores what those changes might entail, especially in the realm of foreign policy. After reflecting on the legacy of Mbeki's foreign policy, the paper considers the potential implications of the relevant resolutions agreed at the December 2007 ANC National Conference in Polokwane. Constraints on South African foreign policy towards the African continent are considered, especially with regard to perception versus reality of its economic and political hegemony as well as its complex identity as a nation. In light of this analysis and the inevitable impact of the current global economic crisis, the paper concludes with a series of recommendations for a new vision and agenda for South Africa's foreign policy under the government to be elected in 2009.     

International relations in China and Europe: the case for interregional dialogue in a hegemonic discipline

Abstract

The international relations (IR) discipline is known as an ‘American Social Science’ dominated by scholars and theories from the US core. This paper compares IR in two noncore settings, China and Europe. It shows that there is a growing institutional and intellectual integration into global Anglophone, mostly American, IR in both Europe and China. Both Chinese and European IR communities have established top Anglophone journals like the European Journal of International Relations and the Chinese Journal of International Politics to spearhead their integration into mainstream Anglophone IR and carve out a space for regional thinking. Yet, the analysis of their publication and citation patterns shows that IR outside the American core communicates through a hub-and-spokes system where there is always a connection to the American core but rarely very strong linkages to other peripheral regions. The two journals studied thus function as outlets for ‘local’ and American scholars, rely on ‘local’ and American sources, and there is very little integration and exchange between Chinese and European IR. Chinese and European IR would benefit from such a dialogue, especially regarding ‘schools’ of IR at the margins of an ‘American social science’.     

‘Telling our Way of Life': Modes of Mediating Social Life in German and Polish Primary-School Textbooks

The events of 1989-1991 in Central and Eastern Europe brought political and economic changes to the post-Communist societies, which required them to redraw the social and psychological maps of their countries and carried with them the promise of partaking in the 'Western way of life'. The introduction of liberalised ideologies, both at the official level and in most of the freed media, also had to be translated into the countries' education systems. New textbooks that would accommodate the new social and political realities had to be written. We are interested in this article in whether and how these new realities are reflected in primary-school teaching materials. For this paper, our analysis will focus on data from two current textbooks that are used in German and Polish primary schools, respectively. We shall be focusing particularly upon those units of the book aimed at defining or describing realities. Taking into account both linguistic and visual modes of representation, we are interested in revealing the 'way of life', the lived ideologies, constructed in these textbooks.     

浅论娱乐“霸权”对未成年人权利的侵害

娱乐市场运作中,部分利益集团取得了一定范围内的娱乐“霸权”.娱乐霸权形成了单向文化趣味的隐患,冲淡了文化内涵及思想厚度,且在一定意义上直指未成年人这一庞大的消费群体,剥夺了他们的选择权利,并对未成年人成长和教育提出了新的挑战.大众文化有其存在和生长的必然性,并非代表其他文化就应销声匿迹,未成年人更加需要文化方式的多样性,需要精品文化的陶冶.因此娱乐“霸权”现象应引起关注.     

美国霸权与伊拉克战争后的世界动荡

美国发动的伊拉克战争加剧了世界动荡,因而对美国的指责也超越了国家、阶级、宗教和年龄界限,已经成为一种全球现象。美国自以为在为世界工作,世界却认为美国蛮横霸道。从本质上说,美国的世界霸权是全球化的产物,但其指向却与全球化趋势相悖。     

The emerging middle power concept: Time to say goodbye?

To deal with the wide range of states that are considered middle powers, scholars distinguish between traditional middle powers on the one hand, and emerging, non-traditional or Southern middle powers on the other. This article examines the middle power concept in light of such diversity. It rejects middle power conceptions based on a ranking of size, power or position, on performing morally commendable international actions, on playing niche roles in international diplomacy, or on national self-identification. The article then considers a conception of middle powers as international stabilisers. The difficulty with this latter conception is that new middle powers exhibit a counter-hegemonic streak and a preference for multipolarity. Both of these are destabilising. The proposed solution is to jettison adjectives such as ‘emerging’ or ‘Southern’ with regard to middle powers, to stop classifying mid-range states with counter-hegemonic tendencies as middle powers, and to restrict the middle power term to mid-range states that actively support the liberal hegemonic project.     

美国次贷危机的成因及其对国际金融秩序的影响

美国次贷危机起源于房地产泡沫的破裂,金融创新形成的多重利益链条使次贷危机深化,金融全球化则是次贷危机国际传导的背景条件.次贷危机引发的全球金融动荡动摇了美国的金融霸权,国际金融力量对比正在发生深刻的变化,全球金融版图面临重绘的可能.对于中国而言,次贷危机为中国进一步融入国际金融体系提供了机遇,也带来了挑战.     

International Organisations and the Production of Hegemonic Knowledge: how the World Bank and the oecd helped invent the Fragile State Concept

This article examines the role of the World Bank and the oecd in the emergence and circulation of the ‘fragile state’ concept. These organisations were critical to the early development of the concept and in the consolidation of a knowledge-based agenda set out by Western aid donors to justify international assistance to poor and conflict-ridden countries. Attention is focused on three normative processes affecting the production of transnational knowledge: normalisation, fragmentation and assimilation. ‘Normalisation’ is the process by which influential knowledge producers help to transform a rough concept into a widely accepted transnational norm based on expert knowledge, detailed definitions and statistical exercises. Once the concept has been appropriated by several international actors, it undergoes normative ‘fragmentation’ as it is subjected to various interpretations across time and space. ‘Assimilation’ is the process by which the overarching concept is renewed, enriched and gradually adapted through the incorporation of additional insights. The article argues that the World Bank and oecd have functioned as central knowledge hubs, facilitating the circulation of new and controversial ideas on fragile states and their integration into the prevailing policies of the most powerful aid donors. The two organisations have thus taken an active role in the consolidation and perpetuation of the aid donors’ policy doctrine, ultimately protecting it from major normative dissent.     

Biotechnology and bio-hegemony in Uganda: unraveling the social relations underpinning the promotion of genetically modified crops into new African markets

This paper aims to uncover the social relations used to promote genetically modified (GM) crops into new African markets. It unravels the network of corporate actors, development agencies, policy officials, and research scientists that support the unquestioned dominance of GM in Uganda, which houses one of the largest experimental program dedicated to agricultural biotechnology on the continent. Gramscian insights reveal how these constellations of power align to support biotechnology at the expense of other technological possibilities, and how this consensus maintains its position of dominance while remaining largely unquestioned and unchallenged.