11.2014 Journal of International and Global Studies

Transcription

Technoscape
volume 6 number 1 November 2014
journal of
international & global
studies
university press
Village in Mali
The Journal of International and Global Studies is published for the Center for International and
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Introduction
Welcome to Volume 6 Number 1 of the Journal of International and Global Studies. We
continue to increase our subscriptions to this free open access online interdisciplinary journal. If
you would like to subscribe to the journal, just click on the tab at the top of the page below the
journal title. We will be sure to send you the web link to the journal so that you can read and
download the essays in accordance with your interests. You will also provide us with a data base
so that we can draw on your expertise for peer reviewing essays for the journal.
This Fall 2014 issue features seven essays from a variety of different disciplines, one
review essay, and 18 book reviews on globalization topics (defined broadly), a predominant
theme of the journal. The lead essay by Timothy S. Rich discusses a topic seldom addressed in
international relations; how to incorporate microstates into cross-national studies. Microstates
make up one-fifth of all sovereign states. Rich’s contribution to this discussion highlights the
importance of considering this topic for international relations theory and empirically-based
comparative studies. The second essay by Helena Wallenberg-Lerner and Waynne B. Janes is a
cross-georegional study that focuses on the perceived affective components that are necessary for
the development of a global society. Although as they indicate there have been surveys of
international education that investigate global competence, the subject of affective components
for global competence is neglected or marginalized. These authors use a sophisticated
questionnaire distributed to eight different georegions including Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, the
Middle East, North America, South/Latin America, Oceania, and Sub-Saharan Africa to help
illuminate what affective components are perceived to be most important for cross-cultural,
international, and global competence. This discussion contributes to how an understanding of
affective components of global, cross-cultural, and international competence is necessary for the
field of international education and development.
The third essay by Robert Oprisko and Kristopher Kaliher is a sophisticated philosophical
discussion of how a state ought to be understood as a ‘person’ within international relations
theory. They begin with Wendt’s 2004 classic essay “The State as Person in International
Theory” with its attempts to fully engage the concept of personhood with the biological
characteristics of an organism. Wendt drew on John Searle’s notions of intentionality in order to
argue that there really is such a thing as collective intentional behavior, which is not the same as
the summation of individual intentional behavior. Other IR theorists rejected these realist notions
of states as persons. Oprisko and Kaliher discuss the nuanced discourse of these philosophical
debates. They conclude, drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptions of social reality, and Oprisko’s
arguments regarding ‘honor’ in his Routledge 2012 book, that Wendt’s arguments for a
Darwinian-based ‘state as organism’ cannot be sustained ontologically and IR theorists need to
be skeptical of these claims in dealing with international affairs.
The fourth essay by anthropologist Leila Rodriguez explores the issues of Nigerian
immigrants in the U.S. She utilizes both quantitative and qualitative data in order to investigate
the motivations for political activities of the Nigerian immigrants in both Nigeria and the U.S.
Rodriguez explores the transnational political developments that influence the Yoruban and Igbo
Nigerian immigrant population in New York City. Although Nigerians immigrants can have
dual citizenship defined by the Nigerian constitution and can vote both in the U.S. and in
Nigeria, only the wealthy can actually travel to vote in their home country elections. In addition,
those with greater income and education participate in various associations in order to mobilize
political activities. Nigerian men tend to become more involved in political activities than
women. Thus, Rodriguez found that class, gender, and the degree of acculturation are significant
factors in both U.S. domestic and transnational politics.
The fifth essay by anthropologist Brandon Lundy provides a rich ethnographic case study
of a development project in Guinea-Bissau. The case study focuses on the process of developing
a guesthouse building project among the Nalú of southern Guinea-Bissau to illustrate how a local
attempt to connect with globalization is intersected by community relations, NGOs, and
development discourse. Lundy draws on participant observation, interviews, and focus groups to
investigate how NGOs and community leaders participate in decision-making as they negotiate
their interests and evaluate how to proceed in these development activities. Although the
guesthouse building project does not develop in the manner that community leaders desired,
Lundy emphasizes how these community leaders exhibit individual agency in the context of
ethnic and power inequities of various stakeholders throughout the negotiations process.
The sixth essay by R. Swaminathan is a nuanced assessment of the politics of
technoscapes with a focus on the intersection of social media and the internet. However, he
demonstrates that social media is not only different from that of the Internet with a high degree
of relative autonomy in its relationship with the Internet. Discussing the evolution of the
technoscape, Swaminathan argues that this autonomy of social media is mutating into a set of
digitally mediated spaces with their own scripted and connected logic of inclusion and exclusion.
Within these technoscape developments, democratic processes are becoming more unequal and
fragmenting. As the Internet becomes more virtual and embedded within our daily lives it
expands our notions of sociality, while simultaneously promoting exclusive and inclusive zones
of geographic, social, economic, and technological inequalities. In addition, Swaminathan
indicates that a form of singularity has been created that integrates humans, algorithms, codes,
and machines. Drawing on Giddens, he contends that the politics of the technoscape as evident
by the example of the Arab Spring are mutating so quickly that not only does the distantiation
between time and space seem artificial, but it actually seems to be moldable enough for it either
to exist individually, collectively, or as a singularly merged entity. Although critiquing forms of
technological determinism, Swaminathan suggests that as this globalization of the technoscape
evolves, the processes of international politics have been transformed dramatically.
The seventh essay by Colonel Abiodun Joseph Oluwadare from the Open University of
Nigeria discusses the recent conflict in Mali. He discusses the African Union and The Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS) who played prominent and successful roles in
wars and conflicts in places like Burundi, Darfur, Chad, Somalia, and Liberia. Oluwadare
suggests that the US, European Union and its member nations, along with the United Nations
provided their support to these regional and sub-regional organizations. However, the U.S.,
European Union, and the UN did not provide the same support for these organizations regarding
the conflicts in Mali. Oluwadare contends that the late intervention by France into the Mali
conflict undermined the logistic and military support needed to resolve this conflict. Following a
discussion of the history and evolution of the African Union, including its financial weaknesses,
he provides a detailed narrative regarding the roots of the conflict in Mali, and the subsequent
developments. He concludes that peace in Africa must involve leadership of the African
regional and sub-regional organizations and the coordination of their efforts in conflict areas
with the major international powers.
We have one excellent review essay on three Routledge titles dealing with international
relations theory by scholar Charmaine G. Misalucha from De La Salle University in Manila. As
in the past, we have a number of book reviews for those scholars who have an interest in
interdisciplinary research and in globalization and its consequences throughout the world.
Again, as we stated in our first issue of the journal, we intend to maintain this standard of
generalized interdisciplinary readability for all of our essays and book reviews in future issues of our
journal. We hope that you will subscribe to our journal to read future essays, review essays, and
book reviews. We also invite you to submit essays, review essays, book reviews, and suggest
possible book reviews for the journal.
Sincerely,
Raymond Scupin, PhD
Director: Center for International and Global Studies
Professor of Anthropology and International Studies
Email: Rscupin@lindenwood.edu
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ISSN: 2158-0669
Volume 6, Number 1: November 2014
November 2014
Cover Art | Editor's Introduction | Inside Front Cover | Inside Back Cover | ISSN: 2158-0669
Cover Art
Editor's Introduction
Inside Front Cover
Inside Back Cover
Table of Contents
Essays
1-13
Table of Contents
Integrating Microstates into Cross-National Research: An Exploratory Analysis
Timothy S. Rich
14-29
April 2014
Important Components Needed in Today’s Global Society From a Cross-Cultural
Perspective
Helena Wallenberg-Lerner and Waynne B. James
Cover Art
Editor's Introduction
Inside Front Cover
Inside Back Cover
30-49
The State as a Person?: Anthropomorphic Personification vs. Concrete Durational
Being
Robert Oprisko and Kristopher Kaliher
50-71
Table of Contents
The Transnational Political Involvement of Nigerian Immigrants in New York City:
Motivations, Means and Constraints
Leila Rodriguez
Announcements
Subscriptions
The Journal of International Studies is
published online two times a year, November
& April. In order to facilitate research and
scholarship, subscriptions are free to the
global community.
Contact Us
Journal of Int'l & Global Studies
c/o Center for Int'l and Global Studies
209 S. Kingshighway
636-949-9244
cigs@lindenwood.edu
© 2015
- Lindenwood University
Publication Guidelines
72-89
Negotiating Development: Valuation of a Guesthouse Project in Southern GuineaBissau
Brandon D. Lundy
90-105
Politics of Technoscapes: Algorithms of Social Inclusion & Exclusion in a Global City
R. Swaminathan
106-120
The African Union and the Conflict in Mali: Extra-Regional Influence and the
Limitations of a Regional Actor
Col. Abiodun Joseph Oluwadare
Review Essays
121-125
Constructing International Relations
Charmaine G. Misalucha
Book Reviews
126-129
Publications Ethics and Malpractice Statement
Michael Lucken, Anne Bayard-Sakai, & Emmanuel Lozerand (Eds.), J.A.A.
Stockwin(trans.), Japan's Postwar. New York: Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese
Studies, 2011.
Reviewed by Steven Pieragastini
130-133
Daniel Bar-Tal and Izhak Schnell (Eds.), The Impacts of Lasting Occupation: Lessons
from Israeli Society. New York, Oxford University Press, 2013.
Reviewed by Jon Mandaville
134-137
Richard Ronald and Allison Alexy (Eds.), Home and Family in Japan. Continuity and
Transformation. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Reviewed by Ilana Maymind
138-140
Colin S.C. Hawes. The Chinese Transformation of Corporate Culture. New York:
Routledge, 2012.
Reviewed by Catherine S. Chan
141-145
http://www.lindenwood.edu/jigs/index.cfm[4/15/2015 9:00:47 AM]
Debdas Banerjee. Economic and Human Development in Contemporary India:
Cronyism and Fragility. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Reviewed by Alessandra Consolaro
146-148
Shaylih Muehlmann. When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the U.S.Mexico Borderlands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.
Reviewed by James H. McDonald
149-152
Ahmed, Akbar. The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a
Global War on Tribal Islam. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2013.
Reviewed by Raymond Scupin
153-155
Zhang, E., Kleinman, A., & Tu, W. (Eds.), (2011). Governance of life in Chinese moral
experience. The quest for an adequate life. London & New York: Routledge.
Reviewed by Viktor Friedmann
156-159
Raoul Bianchi & Marcus L. Stephenson. Tourism and Citizenship: rights, freedoms
and responsibilities in the global order. 2014. Abingdon, Routledge.
Reviewed by Maximiliano E Korstanje
160-162
Richard Dean Burns, Joseph M. Siracusa, and Jason C. Flanagan. American Foreign
Relations since Independence. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, Praeger, 2013.
Reviewed by Nguyen Thi Thuy Hang
163-165
Liana Chua, Joanna Cook, Nicholas Long and Lee Wilson, (Eds.), Southeast Asian
Perspectives on Power. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Reviewed by Cheong Weng Kit
166-168
Danilo Di Mauro, The UN and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: American hegemony and UN
intervention since 1947. London and New York: Routledge, 2012.
Reviewed by Ellen Jenny Ravndal
169-171
Aaron Hughes. Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction.
Durham: Acumen, 2014.
Reviewed by Carool Kersten
172-174
Beshara, Adel (Ed.), The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, pioneers and
identity. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Reviewed by Pascal Abidor
175-178
K. Raja Reddy (Ed.), Foreign Policy of India and Asia-Pacific. New Delhi: New
Century Publications, 2012.
Reviewed by Md. Abdul Gaffar
179-180
Sun, Wanning and Jennu Chio (Eds.), Mapping Media in China: Region; province,
locality. Routledge, London and New York, 2012.
Reviewed by Gunjan Singh
181-182
Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael, Government and Politics of the
Contemporary Middle East: Continuity and Change. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Reviewed by Özlem Madi
183-185
Anna Sun. Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary
Realities. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.
Reviewed by Rogelio Leal Benavides
186-187
Metin Heper & Sabri Sayari. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Modern Turkey.
London and New York: Routledge, 2013.
Reviewed by Laurens de Rooij
188-190
Christoph Brumann and Evelyn Schulz (Eds.), Urban Spaces in Japan, Cultural and
Social perspectives. London and New York, Routledge, 2012.
Reviewed by Jean Martin Caldieron
http://www.lindenwood.edu/jigs/index.cfm[4/15/2015 9:00:47 AM]
Integrating Microstates into Cross-National Research:
An Exploratory Analysis
Timothy S. Rich, PhD
Western Kentucky University
timothy.rich@wku.edu
Abstract
How do microstates potentially challenge our understanding of international and
comparative politics? Microstates comprise as many as one-fifth of all sovereign states
yet are rarely incorporated into cross-national research. Cursory analysis suggests that
microstates challenge the conventional wisdom in several ways. This paper highlights
some of these challenges and presents preliminary quantitative evidence suggestive of a
microstate divergence. Ultimately the evidence here makes the case for increased
consideration of the theoretical and empirical leverage attained by analysis of
microstates.
Journal of International and Global Studies Volume 6, Number 1
2
Introduction
The literature in both comparative politics and international relations relies
heavily on states that, on one measure or another, are considered politically or
economically influential. Terms like “great power” and “middle power” abound with
some level of consensus. Microstates on the other hand largely are ignored in part due to
their small geographic size, a geography that largely coexists with limited economic and
political clout. When referenced, research highlights microstates’ vulnerability, with an
assumption that their inherent weakness in one dimension translates to a more universal
weakness, rather than considering the potential positive ramifications associated with
their status. Microstates often do not fit comfortably within broader theories in
international and comparative politics and it remains understudied whether insight can be
gleaned from these cases that would be relevant to a broader literature. In other words,
rarely explored is how microstates potentially challenge our understanding of
international and comparative politics. Instead, such states are treated often more as
objects rather than subjects (e.g. Neumann and Gsthol 2004). This article calls for the
need to integrate evidence from microstates into cross-national works as well as show
how evidence from microstates may help in theory generation in international and
comparative politics.
The term “microstate” admittedly lacks definitional clarity. For example,
microstates can be defined by land area or population. While often defined as states with
less than 1 million inhabitants or as less than 1,000 square kilometers of land, wide
variation exists (Anckar, 2004; Anckar, 2008; Commonwealth Advisory Group, 1997;
Raadschelders, 1992). Using 1,000 square kilometers leaves 24 countries (excluding the
Holy See) and increases to 29 and 32 respectively if the cutoff is 5,000 or 10,000 square
kilometers. Using 2009 population estimates, 42 countries have less than a million
people, dropping to 32 and 31 respectively if the cutoff is dropped to a half million, a
standard used by Grydehoj (2012), or a quarter million. For this analysis, I primarily rely
on geographic size rather than population as geography arguably plays a larger role in
defining microstate behavior.
These numbers exclude subnational jurisdictions with significant autonomy and
dependencies that choose to remain part of another country (e.g. Isle of Man, Guernsey,
Hong Kong, Macau, Gibraltar) which share many characteristics with microstates.
However, sovereignty should matter in this discussion if microstates are to contribute to
international and comparative politics literatures that commonly rely on claims of
sovereignty. Furthermore, comparable statistics for non-sovereign entities are rarely
available to the same extent as sovereign states.
Economic realities for these countries vary considerably. For example, of the 24
sovereign states that are 1,000 square kilometers or smaller (excluding the Holy See),
nine have a per capita GDP of under $10,000 US1 (roughly the global average), with six
above $30,000.2 Microstates, even with a broader definition, are commonly associated
with vulnerability in a global economy, many with limited goods for exports or lacking
the geographical positioning to be the next Hong Kong or Singapore. Neuman and Gsthol
(2004) point out the tendency for studies of microstates to be primarily descriptive in
nature and often available only in the local language, rather than in broader cross-national
analyses for a broader audience. This routine exclusion from cross-national studies is
Integrating Microstates into Cross-National Research
3
problematic, presuming either that the exclusion of these cases (Marshall and Jaggers,
2002; Minorities at Risk Project, 2005) does not affect the overall generalizability despite
eliminating, depending on the definition, as high as one-fifth of all independent countries,
or that microstates constitute a distinct class of countries with which comparisons with
larger states would be misleading. Either assumption is risky in the absence of empirical
testing. This treatment differs considerably from other countries commonly lumped into
the nebulously defined “small states” (e.g. Hinsley 1963; Neuman and Gsthol 2004),
which may have similar structural challenges as microstates, but commonly are included
in cross-national studies.
Table 1 illustrates indirectly the neglect of microstates in the broader literature by
comparing Google Scholar hits since 2010 which include “microstates” in connection to
several terms related to international relations and comparative politics. For a baseline,
hits within the same time period for Guatemala are also included, since Guatemala is
neither a microstate under any definition nor is it a major world power.3 Under each
selected term, the literature on Guatemala alone dwarfs that mentioning microstates, with
similar patterns seen if countries similar or even smaller to Guatemala in size or political
clout are substituted in for comparison. Admittedly these patterns may in part be due to
some microstates avoiding the term “microstate” in favor of variations of “small state,”
but this does suggest a limited literature of a class of sovereign states.
Table 1: Google Scholar Hits
Containing Microstates or Guatemala and Selected Terms (2010-)4
Microstates
Guatemala
and “elections”
653 and “elections”
17600
and “democracy”
1130 and “democracy”
35600
and “corruption”
738 and “corruption”
26600
and “international relations”
283 and “international relations”
6660
and “international trade”
215 and “international trade”
8680
and “economic growth”
1220 and “economic growth”
19800
I suggest that microstates provide fertile ground for theory testing. This area of
research highlights a common problem in modern political science—the growing
availability of data surpassing similarly rich theory generation. While structural
conditions may appear stacked against microstates, institutional mechanisms have
developed to largely counteract many of these challenges. As such, this paper in part
acknowledges Baldachinno and Milne’s (2000: 3) plea to challenge the conventional
wisdom that “smallness equals weakness.” This paper first addresses how microstates
potentially challenge our understanding of international relations. Next a comparison of
domestic politics reveals where analyses of microstates may give us greater insight into
comparative politics. Finally, this paper suggests future research opportunities to
integrate the findings of microstates into the larger political science literature.
4
Microstates in International Politics
There appears no uniform origin for microstates. In Europe, several continental
microstates are the remnants of principalities that avoided absorption into larger states,
although San Marino has been a republic since the year 301 and recognized by others as
such since at least the 17th century. Their endurance is peculiar in that theories on state
building and expansion (Tilly, 1985) would presume such vulnerable political units to be
easy targets for invasion and eventual absorption, and yet several remain. In contrast,
microstates in the Pacific and Caribbean primarily are island states and may not have
faced the same existential threat of immediate invasion. While most did not avoid
colonization, and in many cases exist as separate entities largely because of their colonial
experience, the geographic distance between islands (especially in the Pacific) has
provided additional protection from external threats. Despite geographic conditions that
would suggest a precarious existence in the international system, microstates endure.
For most of the post-war era, the international system grappled with how to
address microstates. Until 1965 only one of these entities, Luxemburg, had membership
in the United Nations (UN), where a proposal to seat the Maldives ignited a debate as to
whether microstates even deserved full member status (Harden, 1985). Furthermore, most
microstates reached independence in the past 40 years, commonly holding off the
breaking of colonial ties, in part due to the economic benefits accrued5 but also likely due
to the mixed results from decolonization in larger territories. In fact one of the islands
comprising the former French colony of Comoros (Mayotte) opted to remain under
French rule while its neighbors gained independence in 1975.
Most microstates also have limited if any armed forces, leading to questions of
statehood. For example, Liechtenstein’s application to the League of Nations was denied
because of its lack of an army (League of Nations, 1920; Ware, 2005), introducing an
implicit requirement for statehood based on realist terms. San Marino and Monaco did
not pursue membership in large part due to this denial of Liechtenstein’s application.
Realist theories expect states in an anarchical international environment to respond by
developing military capabilities or at the very least by establishing alliances for
protection (Morgenthau, 1948; Mearsheimer, 2001). Some clearly do rely on others for
military or police services, yet these contingents often appear as token offerings. For
most microstates, concerns of international military conflict are minor, despite what may
initially appear as territorial vulnerability. Threats of course remain. In some cases
neighboring states, if not explicitly claiming the territory of the microstate, expect
eventual unification (e.g. Senegal’s view of The Gambia, Somalia’s initial views of an
independent Djibouti). Still, the general lack of military focus in microstates suggests
limits to realist concerns about the anarchical international environment. In other words,
as Wendt (1992) suggests that anarchy is what states make of it, microstates in large part
have managed to avoid the security concerns one would expect based on their size.
Microstates also confound liberal views of the importance of interaction and
institutions for mutual benefits. Diplomatic recognition is near universal for these
countries, yet signs of substantive relations with most countries are not as evident. Using
Europa World data from 2009, the average number of embassies in countries of 10,000
square kilometers or less was 10, dropping to seven for those under 1,000 square
kilometers. This compares to 44 embassies on average for all countries, 51 if microstates
5
are excluded. In addition, the hurdles for microstates to enter international organizations,
including the United Nations, have largely eroded, yet their substantive influence is
poorly understood. For example, whether microstates meaningfully contribute to the UN
(for example by their simple presence in regards to environmental issues) or whether they
simply use their minimal UN influence in exchange for economic incentives is unclear.
Microstates have been more likely to maintain relations with Taiwan (Republic of China)
instead of recognizing the People’s Republic of China. Of the 21 countries currently
recognizing Taiwan (excluding the Holy See), 10 qualify as microstates even at the most
restrictive 1,000 square kilometers definition. The diplomatic actions of many of these
countries include periodically pushing for Taiwan’s return to the UN, usually after Taipei
offered additional assistance packages.6 Microstates also appear disproportionately
represented among countries that did not vote in favor of Palestine’s upgrading to nonmember observer status in the United Nations on November 29, 2012. Of the nine
rejecting the upgrade, this included the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau—
countries arguably concerned about future aid from the one of the most vocal opponents
of the upgrade: the United States. While the UN operates largely on the notion of equality
of states, microstates rarely perform functions here suggesting an independent or even
collective interest separate from a more powerful state.
The economic weakness of many microstates is also well documented (e.g.
Jackson, 1990; Armstrong and Read, 2000; Bertram and Poirine, 2007; Baldacchino,
2010). With the relative isolation of many of these states and few exports, plugging into
the global market has been fraught with difficulties. Not surprisingly many (e.g. Nauru,
Vanuatu) have battled accusations of assisting in money laundering, much like foreign
assistance has been accused of hampering economic growth in Africa. Even if it arguably
does little to provide long-term sustainability, for microstates such assistance is vital for
the continued existence of the state itself. The strategic importance of many microstates
perhaps may justify their disproportional aid per capita (Poirine, 1999). Microstates may
also view economic development differently, with a greater conception of a community
interest, as competition is viewed at the national level rather than at the individual
business level (Rebollo 2001) and sustainability viewed in terms of the ability to export,
not in the access or preservation of natural resources.
With very few exceptions, most microstates are presented as politically and
economically insignificant in contemporary challenges in international relations, at best
the pawns in a larger strategic environment. Others may view this as strong justification
to ignore this subset of countries entirely. In contrast, I contend that the problem lies in
our narrowly defined expectations of states and the types of resources valued. Instead
microstates in part should lead us to question the nature of conflict in the international
realm where many microstates are not preoccupied about absorption and commonly
extract assistance from more powerful states. For example, the remoteness of many such
states provides ample incentives for others to view these areas as fertile grounds for
military exercises, acquiring fishing rights, and illicit activities such as money laundering.
Microstates also benefit greatly from technological advances from profiting off web
domains (e.g. Tuvalu’s .tv) to providing areas to launch satellites. A broader view
suggests greater agency among microstates, rather than treating them as simply
bystanders.
6
Microstates in Comparative Politics
Another question emerges: how do domestic political structures shape microstate
behavior? Waves of democratization did not skip over microstates, and a sizable
literature suggests a link between size and democracy (Srebrnik, 2004; Diamond and
Tsalik, 1999; Ott, 2000). Small state size has often ignored ramifications, affecting
citizen participation and relations with the state, security, and economic development
(Dahl and Tufte, 1973; Bartmann, 2002). Admittedly microstates vary greatly in
historical experiences. As Rustow (1970: 345) suggested, there exists “many roads to
democracy” that may not always involve “the same social classes, the same types of
political issues, or even the same methods of solution.” Even a cursory view highlights
one way in which these states may differ from others: the linkage between economic
development and democratization. Despite a long history of economic modernization
arguments suggesting that economic development encourages democratization, some go
as far as to see it as a pre-requisite; the weak economies of most microstates seem to
undermine such claims.
Admittedly, viewing microstates at only one moment in time ignores historical
trends and risks assuming greater innate abilities to democratize than larger states.
Anckar (2008: 77) suggests that microstates (defined by population) do not show a
greater tendency towards democratization until the 1990s. Many microstates eschewed
democratic reforms as a means to preserve traditional culture or used international
assistance as a means to placate public demands rather than democratize. Brunei, for
example, remains one of the few sovereign states to not have elections of any sort, free or
not, in its history. Others had extensive democratic self-rule before independence. For
example, Barbados gained independence in 1966, but had an active Westminster-style
parliament in practice since 1639 (Anckar, 2004). Anckar (2008) in particular suggests
that microstates historically connected to the United States or the United Kingdom were
more likely to develop into democracies post-independence. In contrast to bitter
decolonization elsewhere, few microstates engaged in a bitter struggle for independence,
often choosing to extend their protectorate status and seeing independence as an
economic suicide (Watson, 1982; Baldacchino, 1993).
All caveats aside, structural conditions in microstates may encourage
democratization. For example, a comparatively small geographical and population size
potentially provides a more direct connection between ruler and ruled and a lower
likelihood to view the state as a distant abstract entity, democratic or not. Many
microstates average a population-to-national-legislator ratio of less than 5,000 citizens,
with San Marino at roughly 500. To put this into perspective, the global average was over
81,000 citizens per legislator, with the US at 570,000 and India at nearly 1.5 million per
legislator. Similarly, several island microstates intentionally seek means to define rights
to the island within democracy-enhancing designs (Clark 2013).
Promoting democratic engagement may also be aided. Blais and Dobryznska
(1998) find voting in particular is generally higher in smaller units than larger units,
perhaps in part because of the reduced distance between voters and level of government
as well as a greater potential for an individual vote to be decisive (Baker, 1992; Blais and
Dobrzynska, 1998). Malta for example traditionally exhibits exceptionally high turnout,
even with the absence of compulsory voting laws (Hirczy, 1995). Similar arguments can
7
be made for the implementation of a federal or devolved system or for carving small
districts. In addition, because of geographical proximity, representatives in microstates,
even those not directly elected, are seldom seen as disconnected to their purported
constituency as those from larger countries. In many cases nationally elected officials live
in the same towns, creating the potential for frequent formal and informal interaction with
constituents. Microstates thus may provide a form of “direct” democracy seldom seen at
the national level elsewhere. Many microstates also display patterns of widespread
consent, either due to attempts at moderation or the role of tribal or ethnic elders, making
potential electoral losses less conflictual. For example, Nauru and Kiribati both use the
Borda Count system for legislative seats, which allows voters to rank order candidates,
generally resulting in candidates with broad support. In areas of dispute, the
comparatively low threshold to effect change and the ability of leaders to personalize
relations within any collective action may otherwise undermine the general irrationality
of joining such activities (Lichbach, 1990; Heath et al., 2000), providing an institutional
challenge to the foundations of democratic rule.
Freedom House
Table 2: Freedom House Scores by State Size
<5,000 km2 <10,000 km2
<1,000km2
10.8
10.8
9
Above
6.2
Summary statistics provide additional evidence of a correlation between size and
level of democracy. Table 2 summarizes Freedom House scores broken down by the size
of the state. While often criticized for a variety of reasons, Freedom House provides a
measure that includes all microstates unlike other options (e.g. Polity) and remains a
commonly employed measure in cross-national studies (Lijphart, 1999). For simplicity,
Freedom House scores were recoded so that higher scores equate to greater freedom, thus
ranging from least free (2) to most free (14). Here we find clear differences. Under the
most restrictive definition, (under 1,000km2), microstates averaged a recoded Freedom
House score of 10.8, with a same average for states under 5,000km2. This drops to an
average score of 9 for those under 10,000. In contrast, states larger than 10,000km2
averaged a much lower score (6.2).
Table 3 goes further, presenting the results of a simple bivariate regression with
country size (in the log of square kilometers) on combined 2012 Freedom House scores
for political rights and civil liberties (M1). The results find a negative correlation between
the two, significant at the .001 level. In other words, as the geographical size of a country
increases, the existing evidence suggests the likelihood of greater political freedom
declines. Three additional models (M2-M4) using dummy variables for each commonly
used geographical threshold for microstates are also tested. In all three, dummies for
microstates positively correlate with a Freedom House boost between 2.8 and 4,
consistent with expectations about conditions in small countries promoting
democratization. Defining microstates by population produces similar results. Countries
with a population over a million have an average Freedom House score of 7, compared to
9.5 for those under.7 Admittedly these are overly simplistic models and open to omitted
variable bias, but the findings suggest a relationship between size and democratization.
8
Table 3: Bivariate Regressions Between Country Size and Levels of Freedom
(N=198)
Model
Independent Variable
Constant
Coeff.
SE
Coeff.
SE
Adjusted R2
M1
Size in km2 (logged)
-0.5279***
0.092
13.3833***
1.0615
0.1394
M2
2
<1,000km
3.7809***
0.7185
6.9883***
0.2889
0.0983
M3
<5,000km2
3.9691***
0.71853
6.8433***
0.2889
0.1360
M4
<10,000km2
2.7896***
0.5341
6.1887***
0.3641
0.1177
***p<.001
To overcome concerns of over-relying on one time period to make inferences
about microstates, Table 4 uses data from Rich (2009) that includes Freedom House
scores from 1984 through 2008 for all countries but China and Taiwan8, a total of 4,311
country years. Generalized linear regression models (to account for serial correlation)
produces similar results. Size in general correlates with a decline in political freedom
(M1), while dummy variables for each geographic threshold for microstates positively
correlate with a boost between two and three and a half points.
Table 4: Bivariate Regressions Between Country Size and Levels of Freedom
(N=4,311)
Model
Constant
Coeff.
SE
Coeff.
SE
Overall R2
M1
-0.4692***
0.0919
11.9898***
1.0695
0.0804
M2
2
3.5616***
0.8037
6.2669***
0.2759
0.0599
2.2438***
0.554
5.9388***
0.3199
0.0497
3.3654***
0.6934
6.1346***
0.2809
0.0751
<1,000km
2
M3
<5,000km
2
M4
<10,000km
***p<.001
Turning to demographic stability, microstates provide fresh means to test longheld assumptions. For example, high population density common in many microstates
would seem conducive to testing relative deprivation theory as those who see their group
as deprived would be more likely to come in contact with those perceived as better off
(Gurr, 1970). The population density as based on population divided by km2 finds a
global average of about 258 persons per km2, while rates in microstates average over
1,100 in those under 5,000 km2 as well as under 1,000 km2. These same constraints may
also provide a means to test resource mobilization theories as the resource threshold for
viable protest may be lower in microstates (McCarthy and Zald, 1977).
Domestic challenges are also commonplace in many microstates, in part due to
the lower threshold as seen in the coup attempts in Grenada, Comoros, Maldives, and
Seychelles. Since independence, Comoros has endured three successful coups, including
one less than a month after independence, and over a dozen unsuccessful attempts (Rich,
2008). A force estimated at only 50 successfully overthrew the Grenadian government in
9
1983 (Quester, 1983: 161), after the island’s government disbanded their own military in
1981. Suriname, democratic at independence in 1975, suffered a military coup in 1980
led by 16 sergeants (Dew, 1994). Fiji’s ethnic conflicts have resulted in four coups, two
in 1987 alone. The increase of one person or dollar to an anti-state cause should have a
much larger effect on a state with small population than with a larger one. Similarly,
secessionist movements seen in larger countries are also seen in microstates. For
example, Tuvalu opted for separate administrative status from Kiribati after 86 years of
combined rule under British colonialism. While the Tuvalu case is partially influenced by
the distance between Tuvalu and Kiribati (nearly 1,800 miles), similar debates
occasionally flare up in places such as St. Kitts and Nevis, with the latter island claiming
economic discrimination.
Emigration options, for example, provide one explanation. Emigration arguably
allows those most dissatisfied with the state to leave and is commonly viewed as a
response to population pressures. The literature primarily focuses on economic
improvements decreasing emigration (Bohning, 1972), instead of the reverse, that
emigration reduces domestic competition for scarce employment. Emigration thus could
be viewed as a safety valve against anti-state action (Levine, 1995; Ware, 2005; Rich,
2008). Gershenson and Grossman (2000: 819) argue that emigration is not a viable option
for most because of lack of resources (Gershenson and Grossman, 2000). This is
especially true for citizens of island microstates where attractive destinations are
thousands of miles away and where nearby countries are often themselves vulnerable
microstates. Despite this hurdle many microstates retain beneficial emigration policies
with former colonial governments or regional powers which the microstate encourages,
often for the remittances that can augment the local economy. Migration and the
continued flow of remittances encourage the development and maintenance of
“transnational corporations of kin” (Munro, 1990: 63-66). Cape Verdean communities
abroad have been viewed as crucial in securing development aid (Carling, 2002). In many
cases, including Cape Verde, emigrant communities can be as large as the home country.
Unlike most states where emigration is largely a result of short-term political or
economic crises in the home country, emigration is far more routine among microstates.
Finally, microstates also potentially shed light on measures of corruption.
Previous work suggests that microstates, especially in the Caribbean, are highly
susceptible to elite manipulation and corruption (Hope, 1986; Richards, 1990; Ott, 2000).
Yet a broader analysis suggests less corruption in smaller countries. Table 5 regresses
Transparency International’s 2012 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) on country size.
The CPI rates countries on a 100 point scale, with 100 being the least corrupt. While a
crude measure that also fails to score many microstates, the overall statistical pattern is
consistent with expectations. For each increase in size, the CPI decreased by nearly two
and a half points (M1). The relationship between size and corruption is more apparent
when just using dummy variables (M2-M4). Bivariate models find that countries under
10,000 square kilometers correlate with a 12 point increase in the CPI measure, with an
18 point increase for those under 5,000 square feet and almost 20 point increase for those
under 1,000 square feet (significant at .001). Summary statistics produce similar results.
Among all countries, the CPI averages a score of 43, dropping to 38 for those over
10,000km2. Microstates average considerably higher scores, 62 for those less than
1,000km2, 60 for those under 5,000km2, and 50 for those under 10,000km2. Focusing on
10
population sees a similar pattern, with an average CPI score of 55 for those with a
population under a million, compared to 41 for those over. A bivariate regression with a
dummy variable for countries with less than a million people correlates with a 13 point
boost, significant at .01. The underlying mechanism is unclear, but may be related to the
greater ease of oversight. In sum, multiple measures at the domestic level suggest a far
less negative political environment than the conventional wisdom would presume.
Table 5: Bivariate Regressions Between Country Size and Corruption
(N= 174)
Model
Constant
Coeff.
SE
Coeff.
SE
Adjusted R2
M1
-2.4828***
0.6609
72.3254***
7.9461
0.0705
M2
<1,000km2
19.8444***
6.5425
41.9333***
1.4879
0.0453
M3
2
<5,000km
18.4993***
5.4777
41.5776***
1.4972
0.0567
M4
<10,000km2
12.2191***
2.8939
38.1143***
1.8224
0.0886
***p<.001
Concluding Remarks
Cursory empirical evidence suggests that microstates can provide theoretical
leverage and should not be excluded from cross-national comparisons. Many microstates
have deep structural obstacles, yet conditions are not uniformly all doom and gloom. This
preliminary analysis of microstates suggests at both the international and domestic levels
an ability to adapt to the environment, often in ways that challenge the assumptions of
such state behavior. In addition, this analysis suggests a reconsideration of the nature of
conflict and the assumption that microstates have not found the means to tackle some of
their domestic problems. At its most basic, microstates appear to challenge realist
conceptions of international relations as well as common arguments of democratic
prerequisites.
Future cross-national work is necessary for the integration into the larger
literature. Data sources such as Freedom House, however open to criticism, remain rare
in their inclusion of all microstates. To conduct fieldwork in multiple microstates for
individual research may be prohibitive in terms of time, money, and language skills. Still,
integrating individual efforts to better understand how leaders in these countries view the
conception of the national interest and state-society relations more broadly is crucial.
Similarly, regional cross-national studies that include evidence from microstates may
provide leverage. While our traditional conceptions of states and sovereignty may be
challenged by microstates, this should not preclude greater efforts for broad theory
building and empirical testing. Cursory analysis suggests that, borrowing from
professional boxing lingo, many microstates fight above their weight.
11
Notes
1
These include Palau, Maldives, Kiribati, Tonga, Nauru, Tuvalu, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Sao
Tome and Principe.
2
These are Liechtenstein, Singapore, Andorra, Bahrain, San Marino, and Monaco.
3
Guatemala is slightly under 109,000km2 with a population of over 15 million.
4
Date accessed: February 5, 2014.
5
Vanuatu was a colony of both the UK and France simultaneously in a condominium arrangement, with
France initially opposed to the UK’s plans to promote independence.
6
Despite considerable efforts by Taiwan, only about half of their diplomatic allies ever supported the
proposals (Rich, 2009: 181).
7
A bivariate regression with a dummy variable for countries with less than a million people positively
correlates with a 2.5 point increase in recoded Freedom House scores (significant at .001).
8
These countries are absent as the original dataset focused on whether a country had diplomatic relations
with Taiwan or China.
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Important Components Needed in Today’s Global Society
From a Cross-Cultural Perspective
Helena Wallenberg-Lerner, PhD
University of South Florida
Carpe Vitam US
Helenawallenberg@me.com
Waynne B. James, EdD
University of South Florida
Wjames1046@aol.com
Abstract
This article reviews the extent to which individuals from different geocultural regions
view and identify affective components perceived to be important in today’s global
society. Various regions of the world were categorized to ensure equivalent participation
around the world. Eight geocultural regions were identified to compare responses by
geographical regions to obtain information on possible differences. A questionnaire was
administered to respondents in the eight geocultural regions to obtain their perceptions of
important affective components needed in today’s global society. Based on this study,
there were at least nine different affective components perceived to be important in
today’s global society. All of the nine affective components were perceived to be
important in all the geocultural regions. The component adaptability had the overall
highest rating and curiosity the overall lowest rating.
15
Global Competence and Culture
Numerous international educators (American Council on International
Intercultural Education (ACIIE) and the Stanley Foundation, 1997; Bennett, 1993; Chen
& Starosta, 2000, Deardorff, 2004; Hett, 1993; Hunter, 2004; Merriam & Associates,
2007; Olson & Kroeger, 2001; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD), 2003; Reimers, 2008; United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO), 1998; Wilkinson, 2006; Winn, 2003) have discussed the term
“global competence” to determine what knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviors, and
experience are necessary to become globally competent. When comparing the definitions
and descriptions proposed, there has been little commonality among the terms. In most
cases, the assumptions and results have been American based. As a result, much of the
research may have been confounded by ethnocentric influences with a Western
perspective.
Research on the concept of global competence from a theoretical perspective
shows little or no consensus and various arguments support a diversity of opinion (Hunter,
2004). Despite this, most of the researchers and theorists agree with the concept that
knowledge of culture is a component of global competence. The range within the
literature of global competence extends from a narrow perspective on citizenship to a
more encompassing view of intercultural competence.
Focusing on this latter point, as Snyder, James, and Fredriksson (2008) mentioned,
the skill sets needed by a global citizen have changed, “because of our interconnectedness
we, as citizens, have the opportunity, power, and responsibility to use our connections in
ways that bring about positive change and development globally, not just locally” (p.1).
Deardorff (2004) demonstrated in her research that cross-cultural competence
must include the ability to function according to the cultural rules of more than one
cultural system and have the ability to respond in culturally sensitive and appropriate
ways according to the cultural demands of the given situation. She also noted that
intercultural competence includes the ability to successfully communicate and effectively
collaborate with people of other cultures through a recognition of differences and a
mutual respect for one another’s points of view.
Hunter’s (2004) research resulted in both a working definition of the term global
competency, as well a proposed curricular plan. The working definition proposed by
Hunter (2004) for the term global competence, which he frequently mentions in his
writings, includes an open mind actively seeking to understand the culture and
expectations of others.
Olson and Kroeger’s (2001) definition of the term global competence is “a
globally competent person who has enough substantive knowledge, perceptual
understanding, and intercultural communication skills to effectively interact in our
globally interdependent world” (p. 117).
From a cross-cultural perspective there had been no defining research which had
explicitly sought to identify the affective components needed in a global society as
viewed across multiple cultural regions. Cross-cultural in this instance refers to responses
from all of the identified geocultural regions. This study included the following research
questions: (1) what affective components are perceived to be important from a crosscultural perspective? (2) are there differences in these perceptions of affective
16
components from a cross-cultural perspective?
Global experts in the field of education collaborated and developed a data
collection instrument to investigate individuals in eight world regions to identify affective
components perceived to be important in today’s global society.
According to this study, culture is a particular set of socially learned skills, ways
of understanding, and modes of feeling, shared by relatively large numbers of individuals
who share commonalities related to ethnicities, skills, attitudes, knowledge, heritage,
language, and religion.
The impact of the American culture across the world can be seen in Americanowned businesses found in most major cities in the world, dominating the market in their
respective categories, as well as in American-made movies, television shows, and music
videos being shown on a higher percentage of screens around the world than local film
productions (Hunter, 2004). In addition, American colleges and universities are still
seeing a surge in applications by international students from countries such as China
(Steinburg, 2011) and many Middle-Eastern countries (Heavey, 2013).
Today, global cooperation is necessary due to the growing complexities and interdependencies in the world. The world is becoming smaller because of technological
advances and ease of travel, as well as the impact of an internationally interdependent
economy, unprecedented levels of migration, and a continuous stream of information
between individuals of differing cultures circulating the planet (Friedman, 2005).
Living in an interconnected world and sharing global views has prompted some
researchers to suggest a cautious path: West (1996) posits that the problem with the
concept of a shared global view is that people too often accept that it means that all
people share the same world but view it differently. In fact, people learn that there may
be fundamentally different worlds to view. To be effective in another culture, people
must be interested in other cultures, be sensitive enough to notice cultural differences,
and then also be willing to modify their behavior as an indication of respect for the
people of other cultures (Bhawuk & Brislin, 1992, p. 416).
Merriam and Associates (2007) suggested a number of reasons why citizens in
today’s global society should pay attention to systems of learning and knowing other than
the Western perspective (in particular the Americanized system), and how knowledge of
those systems might broaden one’s understanding of important global components from a
cross-cultural perspective. Cahill and Collard (2003) recount how they came to realize
that Aboriginal people of Western Australia learned by watching and listening rather than
asking questions. They suggest that not understanding another cultural perspective can
lead to marginalization and oppressing others. Another example of how familiarity with
other worldviews can impact today’s life as a global citizen is having an understanding of
how differently many Asians view aspects of learning. Their reticence to question or
speak out in class is due to years of training that speaking out might cause someone to
lose face. The accepted strategy is then to approach the teacher outside class. Confucius
(551-479 BCE) wrote: “He who knows, does not speak; he who speaks, does not know”
(Nisbett, 2003, p. 211). In Asia, silence is used as an indication of strength (Liu, 2001).
Sharing something personal is seen as a sign of weakness. In contrast, the Western
perspective is characterized more towards hierarchy, independence, and separation
(Wang, 2006).
In the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Schwab (2014) stated: “The
17
reshaping of our world requires professionals to develop a transformational mindset and
constantly update their knowledge. However, this knowledge is becoming increasingly
difficult to attain through traditional means, precisely due to the growing complexity,
velocity and uncertainty in the world” (p. 1).
According to Cohen (2007), the enemies of globalization, whether they denounce
the exploitation of poor countries by rich ones or the imposition of Western values on
traditional cultures, see the new world economy as forcing a system on people who do
not want it. Cohen argues that the truth of the matter may be the reverse. “Globalization,
thanks to the speed of twenty-first-century communications, shows people a world of
material prosperity that they do want—a vivid world of promises that have yet to be
fulfilled. For the most impoverished developing nations, globalization remains only an
elusive image, a fleeting mirage” (p. 6). Cohen further argues that the means of
communication, the media, never before have created such a global consciousness, and
never have economic forces lagged so far behind expectations.
Cohen (2007) cautions not to consider globalization as an accomplished fact
because of what has yet to happen. There are unfulfilled promises of prosperity because
globalization has so many enemies in the contemporary world. For the poorest countries
of the world, the problem is not so much that they are exploited by globalization as that
they are forgotten and excluded (p. 166).
Reimers (2009) predicted, “Schools and universities around the world are not
adequately preparing ordinary citizens to understand the nature of global challenges” (p.
24). According to Reimers, schools need to effectively develop tolerance, knowledge of
global affairs and an understanding of these global challenges, and a commitment to
peace. The failure to develop these skills will contribute to growing conflicts.
Conceptual Framework
This research was grounded in the work of Bennett (1993) and his Developmental
Model of Intercultural Sensitivity and Bonnemaison’s (2005) views about culture.
Bennett (2004) noted that one aspect of global education is having an understanding of
the perspectives that have previously been unfamiliar or are not currently held by that
person or culture. He asserted that growing up in a culture, individuals are conditioned to
certain biases that allow them to share cultural harmony with their countrymen, but which
simultaneously may be disharmonious with other cultures. It is those cultural sensitivities
that are likely to have an effect on how individuals develop their sense of global
competence. Bennett’s model provides a broad outline of elements geared to helping
individuals increase their sensitivity to cultural differences.
Also grounding the theoretical framework of this research was the position by
Bonnemaison (2005) that what actually constitutes culture diverges widely among the
experts. Specifically, Bonnemaison believes that “Culture is what remains when
everything else has been explained . . . . This mysterious remnant is what motivates
people, what makes them run; yet it cannot be measured” (p. 54). In Bonnemaison’s view,
“Culture is an intangible factor related to human freedom and creativity. Although culture
cannot be reduced entirely to rational analysis, this does not mean that one should
disregard intelligent thinking in order to understand cultural phenomena” (p. 54).
18
Affective Components and Geocultural Regions and Subcategories
To understand the result in this study, explanations for some of the terms used in the
research are needed, specifically, affective component, geocultural region, and regional
subcategories. The following terms were the operational definitions.
Since the intent in this research was to identify affective components, the
emotional and affective areas within an individual, the research was especially sensitive
to the views expressed by Gardner (1983), Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee (2002), and
Pink (2006). They and others espoused that social intelligence is a primary affective
component needed for global competence from a cross-cultural perspective.
According to Gardner (1983), the capacity to know oneself and to know others is
an inalienable part of the human condition and deserves to be investigated no less than
other forms of intelligences and competencies. As previously noted, there has been little
commonality among researchers when comparing definitions and terms of global
competence, but various researchers are in agreement, as globalization continues to
confront the world with new challenges, that each citizen will need a wide range of
competencies in order to adapt flexibly to a rapidly changing and highly interconnected
world.
Goleman (2007) compared the basis of emotional intelligence to social
intelligence. Whereas emotional intelligence includes self-awareness and self-regulation,
social intelligence emphasizes social awareness and relationship to others. Rose (2013)
asserts that an individual’s emotion is a much more powerful influence on behaviour than
was once recognized. “Contrary to what we’ve long believed, modern neuroscience has
shown that there is no such thing as purely rational thought or behaviour” (p. 8). It
ensures that having friends, or at least preventing complete isolation, will affect an
individual’s life in a positive way. Empathy, being one component, is very different when
comparing feeling empathy and showing it.
Several researchers have considered tolerance of ambiguity as a major trait
needed to function in the societal world. Ambiguous situations are perceived as desirable,
challenging and interesting, usually by individuals who embrace less known situations,
seeks sensations and risk-taking behaviour (McLain, 1993, 2009).
The concept of tolerance of ambiguity was originally developed by FrenkelBrunswik (1948), and has since then attracted researchers from all over the world.
Frenkel-Brunswik (1948) conducted a case study where she interviewed individuals high
or low in their tolerance for ambiguity, which she concluded by defining as an
“emotional and perceptual personality variable”.
Subsequently, Budner (1962) studied intolerance for ambiguity as a personal
variable, in which he defined tolerance for ambiguity as “tendency to perceive
ambiguous situations as desirable,” (p. 29), whereas intolerance for ambiguity was
defined as a threat. According to Budner, an ambiguous situation is one in which the
individual is provided with information that is too complex, inadequate, or apparently
contradictory.
Norton (1975) defined tolerance of ambiguity as, “one in which the individual is
provided with information that is too complex, inadequate, or apparently contradictory”
(p. 607). Wilkinson (2006), a leading proponent of tolerance for ambiguity research,
19
believes that the way people think and perceive the world changes their relationship with
ambiguity, risk, and uncertainty. To be tolerant of ambiguity is to embrace complexity,
chaos, constant change, fuzzy boundaries, and risk-taking of the emerging world.
Francois (2010) suggested glocal education as a framework to nurture tolerance
for ambiguity. He defined glocal education as “education policies and practices that
provide students, faculty members, and higher education administrators a melding
globalized and localized perspective of the world, through integration of global
opportunities and the protection of local assets, traditions, values, and beliefs” (p. 252).
Further, Francois (2012), asserted that transcultural integration can foster tolerance for
ambiguity in modern society, because of its implications for transcultural competence,
defined as “the ability to engage in intercultural interactions that transcend standards of
cross-cultural differences and similarities through alternative space creation that is safer
for both integration and questioning” (p. 10).
The geocultural regions consist of eight cultural areas of the world defined by
geographical area with similar cultural attributes, which may include religion, language,
cultural outlook, and other attributes.
For purposes of this research, eight geocultural regions were included: Asia, the
Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, North America, South/Latin America, Oceania, and
Sub-Saharan Africa. Figure 1 provides a visual representation of the geocultural region
map.
In two of the geocultural regions (Asia and Oceania), subcategories (or
subcultures) were identified to determine whether these areas were similar or different
based on culture, history, geography, and other related areas. Asia subcategories
included: Indic, encompassing the countries of India, Pakistan, and Nepal; Sino-Japanese,
encompassing China, Japan, and Korea; Slavic, encompassing Russia and many of the
countries previously under the influence of the USSR; and Southeast Asia, encompassing
Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Oceania subcategories included: Austral
European (Australia, New Zealand), and Insular Oceanic (all of the islands formally
located in the areas of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Melanesia). For additional information
on the rationale behind the creation of these geocultural regions and subcategories, see
Wallenberg-Lerner (2013a) and Wallenberg-Lerner and James (2012).
Figure 1. Geocultural region map.
20
Methods
The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which individuals in
different geocultural regions view and identify affective components perceived to be
important in today’s global society. It focused on the extent to which cross-cultural
affective components exist, and how important they are to individuals around the world.
To obtain the list of affective components, various expert panels over several
rounds of feedback were asked to provide validation. The panels represented individuals
from the eight identified cultural regions of the world. They all had expertise in the field
of cross-cultural education, adult education, educational measurement and research,
and/or foreign relations. These experts all had higher education degrees and were
working with cross-cultural issues. They had also lived in more than one culture for an
extended period of time. The members were asked to help identify the needed affective
components and to provide feedback on the appropriateness of each item and its wording.
One of the initial panels suggested retaining only descriptions of the affective
components, rather than including full definitions. The reason was that some of the nonWestern panel members believed that the definitions represented a Western perspective
and, therefore, might not be understood by individuals in all of the different geocultural
regions and subcategories. Nine affective components were identified. See Table 1 for a
final listing of affective components and their descriptions.
The list of affective components and a background information form for placing
individuals in a geocultural region were subsequently sent to individuals who acted as
intermediaries. The intermediaries were individuals in each region who were willing to
send the list and background form to individuals that they knew personally who could
speak/read English sufficiently to respond to the survey. More specifically, they were
asked to send the survey link to as many individuals as possible in their own region as
well as other regions.
The target population of this study was individuals with varying experiences from
the eight geocultural regions. Possible respondents were identified through professional
and personal contacts and convenient access to individuals from other cultures. Each
geocultural region and subcategories included a minimum of n=20 individuals.
All individuals participating had to be proficient enough in English and
sufficiently educated to respond appropriately to the questionnaire. Four hundred twentythree individuals responded to the request. All of the geocultural regions and
subcategories were represented in the results. Although the majority of respondents were
from Europe (n=108) and North America (n=53), each region and subcategory had a
minimum of 20 responses.
21
Table 1.
Affective Component Description List by the Final Panel
Component
Description
Adaptability
Ability to handle change or be able to manage differences in
diverse cultures and environments.
Connectedness
Ability to encourage understanding across different cultures
Cross-cultural
social intelligence
Ability to understand the feelings, thoughts, actions, and
perspectives of others from different cultures
Curiosity
Being interested in learning more about people and customs from
different cultures
Empathy
Ability to understand the feelings and perceptions of others
without having/wanting to adopt them personally
Non-ethnocentric
Willingness to objectively welcome different cultures and
experience them without judgment
Self-assurance
Trust and confidence in yourself and your own ideas and values
when getting involved with other cultures
Self-awareness
Ability to understand your own feelings and thoughts while
involving yourself in different cultures
Tolerance for
ambiguity
Ability to accept and practice differences in other cultures even if
there is more than one interpretation
Results
Based on the responses to the survey, all the geocultural regions and
subcategories reported that the identified affective components were rated of high
importance over all regions. All the mean scores were based on a six-point scale. The
highest overall mean was 5.45 for Adaptability. The next highest means were
Connectedness (M=5.20) and Cross-cultural Social Intelligence (M=5.16). Selfawareness (M=5.09) was followed by Non-ethnocentric (M=5.04). The Empathy mean
was 5.02 while the Self-assurance mean was 4.99. The two lowest mean scores were
Tolerance of Ambiguity (M=4.11) and Curiosity (M=4.01)
22
Table 2
Overall Mean Ratings of Affective Component Descriptions
Affective Component
Adaptability
Cross-cultural sociaI intelligence
Connectedness
Curiosity
Empathy
Non-ethnocentric
Self-assurance
Self-awareness
Tolerance for Ambiguity
Note. N=423; based on a 6-point scale
M
5.45
5.16
5.20
4.01
5.02
5.04
4.99
5.09
4.11
SD
0.76
0.91
0.89
0.32
0.96
0.96
0.99
0.95
0.54
In order to identify the association between affective component (within-subjects
factor) and geocultural region (between-subjects factor) and the main variable of
importance rating for each affective component, an analysis was conducted using
repeated measures ANOVA for main effects of both affective components and
geocultural region subcategory and their interaction. The repeated measures ANOVA
summary table for geocultural region and subcategory and affective component is
provided in Table 3.
The result for the geocultural region main effect was significant, F (11, 411)=2.15,
p < .001. Similarly, the affective component main effect was significant, F (8,
3288)=176.62, p < .001. Geocultural region and subcategory and affective component
interaction was also found to be significant, F (88, 3288)=2.04, p< .001. The effect size
of these observed significant differences was measured. Several standardized measures of
effect gauge the strength of the association between a predictor (or set of predictors) and
the dependent variable. The effect size estimates facilitate the comparison of findings in
Table 3.
Repeated Measures ANOVA Summary Table
Source
Geocultural Region
Error
Affective Component
GCRxAC
Error
df
11
411
8
88
3288
SS
62.45
1082.92
740.30
93.96
1722.60
MS
5.68
2.63
92.53
1.07
0.52
F
2.15
176.62
2.04
p
0.02
0.0001
0.0001
G-G
0.0001
0.0001
N= 423, significance level = .05 GCR = Geocultural Region and subcategory; AC =
Affective Component.
23
2
this study. Following the results, it was determined that the effect size, η (etasquared),
for the main effect for geocultural regions was 0.57. This was a large effect size. The etasquared describes the ratio of variance explained in the dependent variable by geocultural
region while controlling for other factors in the model. However, it is a biased estimate of
the variance explained by the model in the population. It estimates only the effect size in
the sample. The type II error associated with the study was estimated to be about 0.29. As
such, the power for the geocultural regions and subcategories was about 0.71. This is
considered a medium power.
Also, to determine if there were significant differences between the four
subcategories of Asia (Indic, Sino-Japanese, Slavic, Southeast Asia) and the two
subcategories of Oceania (Austral European and Insular Oceanic), repeated measures
ANOVAs were used to test for differences between the subcategories of Asia and the
subcategories of Oceania. There were no significant differences between the
subcategories, but there were significant differences among the geocultural regions and
subcategories. The results identified significant differences on three of the nine affective
components: empathy, self-assurance, and self- awareness. Some of the observations
evident in the Dunn’s test results revealed that overall, the Caribbean as a geocultural
region scored significantly lower on empathy, self-assurance, and self-awareness. On
empathy, Sino-Japanese (M=5.23), Europe (M=5.07), and North America (M=5.21) had
significantly higher mean importance ratings than the Caribbean geocultural region
(M=4.40). On the self-assurance component, Europe (M=5.13), North America (M=5.32)
and Sub-Saharan Africa (M=5.28) had significantly higher importance ratings than the
Caribbean geocultural region (M=4.20). Self-awareness had the largest number of
significant pairwise mean differences. The regions and subcategories of Austral European,
Insular Oceanic, Indic, Sino-Japanese, Southeast Asia, Europe, North American and SubSaharan Africa all had means that were significantly higher than the Caribbean. The
Caribbean respondents perceived several of the affective components to be of lower
importance than the other geocultural regions and subcategories. In this sample (n=25),
the respondents had significantly lower mean ratings for the affective components:
empathy, self-assurance, and self-awareness.
Conclusions
All of the nine identified affective components were perceived to be important in
all the geocultural regions and subcategories, meaning that they have some universal
applicability. There were, however, differences found in several of the affective
components, indicating some differences between geocultural regions and subcategories.
The data indicated that one of the groups of respondents had a demographic
profile that differed somewhat from the profile of the respondents in general, as well as
most of the other geocultural regions and subcategories. A majority of the respondents
from the Caribbean region were men in their late 40s to late 50s who were businessmen.
Whether the demographics of 40-50 year old Caribbean males impacted the results was
not known. Another speculation about the reasons behind the lower means could be that
the Caribbean region had a unique setting with boundaries based on water; however, the
opinions of this group of people were not bounded just by water because of origin,
24
colonization, and backgrounds within region.
Asia subcategory responses were similar, which supported the notion that Asia
can be considered a single region for purposes of affective component research. Oceania
subcategory responses were similar, which also supported the notion that Oceania can be
considered a single region for purposes of affective component research.
The component tolerance for ambiguity had a low rating overall. This was the
component that respondents had the most difficulty in understanding in relation to the
description and wording. It remains unknown if that impacted the importance rating.
Affective competence is a complex construct that appears to involve more than
one component. For this research at least nine different affective components were
needed in order for one to be a culturally competent individual in today’s global society.
Implications
It is possible that the research and the instrument developed may be used to better
understand which cross-cultural affective components are perceived as necessary in
today’s global society from a cross-cultural perspective. The implications drawn from the
findings of this study include suggestions for researchers, government agencies,
policymakers, educators, and corporations. New programs from an affective level may be
one possible outcome, as is discovering how these affective components can help
educational policymakers and practitioners to create developmentally appropriate
learning objectives, curriculum, and assessments. Identifying the components and their
importance by individuals from a cross-cultural perspective might help with an
understanding of a shared dimension. Ultimately, the exploration of affective components
from a cross-cultural perspective raises the question of how they can be part of making
global competence a policy priority for mass education systems.
Researchers conducting cross-cultural studies within the affective area might gain
insight into how most cultures in the world share similar values related to the need for
affective components in today’s global society. This study might provide them with more
insight into the identified affective components perceived to be important from a crosscultural perspective.
Government agencies concerned with international policies when focusing and
developing their own policies with the intent to foster greater levels of cooperation
between nations may develop the policies with an expressed purpose to appeal to specific
cultural differences as they relate to affective processes and to the leadership that they
address in the specific culture. The preference for specific affective processes may
influence their ability to define and guide their efforts at global relationship development.
Given the finding that a general state of affective universal value does exist crossculturally, with respect to how humans conduct interpersonal relationship building, one
might naturally wonder why terrorist attacks and global conflicts in the last decade have
taken more than three and a half million lives around the world and why so many of them
were unarmed civilians.
Educators could focus on developing a curriculum that helps students with
different cultural backgrounds to foster and develop similar values and priorities for
specific affective processes. Their preferences for these specific affective processes might
25
impact their ability to maximize their human potential in respect to academic and/or
career challenges. The importance of affective competence is still evolving and has
increased over time, so it behooves educators to revisit institutional definitions and the
importance of it on a regular basis to keep definitions current and relevant.
The terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008, Benghazi in 2012, the American drone
attack on a Muslim cleric in Yemen 2011, and the bombing in Boston 2013 during the
marathon, raise several questions. First, in what ways did the education of these
perpetrators shape such hatred that brought them to take the lives of unarmed civilians?
Second, how were the many individuals (parents, teachers, employers, etc.) who enabled
these perpetrators educated? In which ways were those views shaped by teachings of
history and geography that fostered limited and intolerant views towards their
neighbors? Lastly, to what extent has the education of citizens worldwide prepared them
to understand the sources of these attacks, their potential consequences and the likelihood
of growing global instability resulting from these attacks, and to think about appropriate
courses of action for the global community? “What may be viewed as terrorism to some
individuals may be viewed as fighting for freedom to others, depending which part of the
world they identify with” (Wallenberg-Lerner, 2013b, p. 1).
Another implication could be to create a global agenda for how to prepare future
citizens to understand (a) what was behind these conflicts, (b) what the consequences
were, and (c) how world peace or global stability could result from these conflicts by
understanding each other better? According to Reimers (2009), the first dimension
includes attitudes, values, and skills that reflect an openness, interest, and positive
perception of the variations of human cultural differences.
Corporations may focus on (a) developing work assignments and career paths that
help their employees foster and develop similar values and priorities across cultures for
specific affective processes; (b) individual preferences for affective processes that impact
the ability to maximize the human potential in respect to academic and/or job challenges;
and (c) to what extent should employers attempt to modify the work setting to address
cultural differences.
The implications from this study might include curricula development, policy
development, and new research about the need for affective components as important
competencies in today’s global society. It could inform world leaders in different cultures
of the importance of cross-cultural dialogue, understanding, and acceptance of different
views about common challenges for humanity. Global strategies might address the
development of affective components as an important competence in a variety of ways
(i.e., course work, study abroad, on-campus interaction with students from different
cultural backgrounds, etc.) as well as the actual process for acquiring affective
competence.
Recommendations For Further Research
A longitudinal study would complement this study’s design by investigating
changes over time and providing information about individual changes in the
development of affective components in today’s global society. Additional research
based on the age of the individuals could be undertaken. As globalization continues and
26
new challenges arise, each individual will need a wide range of key competencies to
adapt flexibly to a rapidly changing and highly interconnected world where the age of
participants might prove to be more relevant than in the past because of the rapid rate of
technological change and innovation. The speed of 21st century communications tends to
amplify the differences that occur in individual lives as a result of this accelerated rate of
change. For example, the difference between individuals between 20-30 years old may
have a greater impact than individuals between 70-80 years of age who may not embrace
these changes readily. The world may not look the same for younger individuals as for
those who are older, because youth tend to embrace change.
This research made no attempt to compare responses based on education level.
Additional research on educational level may reveal whether there are cross-cultural
differences based on this variable.
It is also recommended that future research examine if differences in the
perceptions of affective components in education, government, and/or corporations exist.
Another area on which to focus the study of affective components would be to
have a more equal distribution of respondents from the geocultural regions and
subcategories in the sampling. The sample size could be increased for some geocultural
regions.
The researcher in this study had a European and North American background, and
these Geocultural regions had the largest number of respondents in this study. Additional
respondents from the other regions might give a different perception.
Global competencies such as skills, knowledge, and behavior have been
researched previously, primarily from an American perspective. However, this study only
focused on cross-cultural affective components. Additional studies could be conducted on
skills, knowledge or behaviors from the cross-cultural perspective.
Gender may have an effect on the ratings of affective components. Therefore, an
exploration of the differences in gender is highly recommended.
Research studies based on socioeconomic status are also recommended. People
who are struggling to make ends meet, in any country, may not have the opportunity to
fully explore other cultures. When people are struggling for food, shelter, or education
there may be differences in their perceptions of the importance of affective competence.
Workers in the poorest countries are unlike the workers at the center of industrial
capitalism.
This cross-cultural study was conducted electronically, which made it easier to
reach the targeted individuals. A follow-up study might provide a deeper understanding
of the respondents’ views on affective components through personal in-depth interviews.
It is, therefore, suggested that a comparative study be conducted where personal
interviews might be possible to determine if the results would be similar or different.
Further investigation into why three affective components appeared to have
significantly lower importance ratings in the Caribbean geocultural region compared to
several other geocultural regions and subcategories might identify reasons for these
differences that this study did not provide.
Finally, further investigation related to the subcategories of Asia and Oceania
might identify whether the subcategories are each unique in other areas of global
competence and should be treated as separate regions, since this study only focused on
affective components as opposed to investigating differences in skills, knowledge, and
27
behaviors from a cross-cultural perspective.
Summary
This article reviewed the findings of a research study investigating the perceptions
of participants from geocultural regions and subcategories in relation to affective
components needed in today’s global society. The results indicated that affective
components had high importance ratings across all geocultural regions and subcategories,
although there was a range of differences in the importance ratings both for the affective
components and geocultural regions and subcategories.
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Wallenberg-Lerner, H. (2013b). Carpe Vitam US is promoting world peace and global
competence. Retrieved from http://carpevitam.us/carpe-vitam-us-is-promotingworld-peace-and-global-competence/.
Wallenberg-Lerner, H., & James, W.B. (2012). Affective components perceived to be
important in today’s global society from a cross-cultural perspective. Paper
presented at the meeting of the American Association for Adult and Continuing
Education Pre-Conference, Las Vegas, Nevada. Retrieved from
http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED539779.pdf.
Wilkinson, D. (2006). The ambiguity advantage: What great leaders are great at.
London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Winn, W. (2003). Current trends in educational technology research: The study of
learning environments. Educational Psychology Review, 15(4), 359- 366.
29
The State as a Person?:
Anthropomorphic Personification vs. Concrete Durational Being
Robert Oprisko, PhD
Center for the Study of Global Change
Indiana University
roprisko@indiana.edu
Kristopher Kaliher
Butler University
kkaliher@butler.edu
Abstract
In “The State as Person in International Theory,” Wendt explores the analysis and comparison of
the classic unit of international relations to a human subject. In an unprecedented manner, Wendt
takes his comparison to the limit, finding connections between the biological aspects of
personhood as well as the social. In this essay, we use a structure similar to Wendt’s but come to
different conclusions. Using the works of Searle’s intentionality and Mitzen’s ontological
security, among others, we find that the social category of state personhood is determined to be
both accurate and helpful for progressing IR theory. We depart from Wendt’s argument,
however, and see the attempt to attribute biological personhood to the state as detrimental. By
adding in perspectives from theorists such as Bourdieu, Oprisko, Lomas, and Wight, we
determine that an objective biological state cannot exist within a socially constructed world. This
leads to the conclusion that the state is a social person but not a biological one. Furthermore,
making connections between the person and state beyond a broad social context is problematic
for progressing IR theory.
The State as a Person?
31
Inscribing a corporate personality into the substance of the state is a tradition as old as
international relations. Thucydides refers to city-states with feminine possessive pronouns,
merging the plural persons that represent the citizens into a singularity (Thucydides, 431 BC).
Recent literature, beginning with Wendt’s “The State as Person in International Theory” attempts
to fully engage the concept of personhood for the state (Wendt, 2004). To this end, we review the
recent literature in order to flesh out the debate. Next, we argue that the state is a social person
with a distinct yet fluid personality but that it is not a biological person because, unlike living
beings, a state can exist indefinitely as an idea and can be resurrected long after it has died, has
been consumed by a larger state, or has fragmented into many smaller states.
The near universal personification of state identities encourages us to adopt a policy of
what Guattari calls “being an ideas thief” or what Michael Weinstein refers to as “love piracy”:
the incorporation of concepts into an argument without incorporating the thought-traditions from
which they are stolen or pirated (Guattari, 2009, pp. 22-23; Weinstein, 1995, p. 4). We feel this is
a necessary methodological choice because the practice of inscribing state personhood is so old,
while the formal engagement on doing so is relatively young, which suggests that the line of
inquiry is already standing upon the entirety of international relations literature generally.1
The Debate Thus Far: A Review of the Literature
In “State as Person in International Politics,” Wendt asks, “Is the State a person?” and
answers with a resounding “Yes.” He concludes not only that the state is socially and
consciously a person but also that it emulates the traits of a biological organism2 (Wendt, 2004,
p. 291). Wendt’s article opens conversation for scholarly debate concerning the topic of state
personhood. The resultant debate within the literature has organized itself into two diametrically
opposed camps: those who favor the notion of state-as-person and those who do not. In addition,
current literature is trending in two directions. In one, the focus of debate rests almost completely
on Wendt’s social qualities of personhood and dismisses the biological. In the other, there is a
resounding absolutist assumption that Wendt is either right or wrong, with no partial acceptance
of state personhood being supposed or considered. By outlining this bi-polar debate, it is possible
to place this work’s contention of social (but not biological) state personhood within the
literature and amend the failures of previous theorists.
State-as-Person
The “state-as-person” school of thought is led by Wendt, who asserts that state
personhood is not simply the implication that the state acts “as-if” it were person but rather that
the state is an intentional, physical, and conscious organism (Wendt, 2004). The heart of Wendt’s
argument relies heavily on the notion of intentionality, especially as conceived of by John Searle.
Although Searle himself has very little to do with International Relations theory, Wendt
appropriates Searle’s theoretical and conceptual constructs concerning the reductionism of
collective intentions. Using Searle’s constructs, Wendt posits that states are persons because of
“Collective Intentions and Actions,” which state, “There really is such a thing as collective
intentional behavior, which is not the same as the summation of individual intentional
behavior.”3 Wendt furthers his argument by providing numerous though sometimes inaccurate
comparisons between the state and the biological organism and their respective qualities and
abilities, such as homeostasis and reproduction.
32
Alexander Wendt identifies Arnold Wolfer’s essay “The Actors of International Politics,”
written in 1959, as the only other major work sustaining debate on state personhood. According
to Wendt, Wolfer is the “originator” of this debate, insisting that “if state behavior is to be
intelligible and to any degree predictable, states must be assumed to possess psychological traits
of the kind known to the observer through introspection and through acquaintance with other
human beings” (Wolfer, 1962, p. 10). Wolfer provides the foundation for the “state-as-person”
school of thought. His work originated within the historical context of the decline of
Westphalian4 state-centric politics and the rise of international organization and non-state actors
following World War Two.
Because the idea of state personhood has only recently sparked debate, many of the
works within the literature are disorganized or relatively unaware of each other. For the purposes
of consistency, we will briefly summarize and place other smaller works of the “state-as-person”
school into their own sub-schools. This will help determine the placement of this work’s
argument in the realm of debate, especially compared to these selected relevant theories. The
work that is most passionately in agreement with Wendt (and maintains a position closest to the
one presented in this work) is Patrick Thaddeus Jackson’s “Hegel's House or People Are States
Too,” which concludes not only that states are people but also that people are states. Jackson
achieves this perspective by relying heavily on Hegel’s theory of constitutive relation, as both
persons and states create and continually maintain social reality (similar to Hegel’s “House”),
making them one and the same (Jackson, 2004, p. 282). Like the authors of this work, Jackson
somewhat disagrees with Wendt’s “realist scientific abduction” of the organism in relation to
person but does not further touch on biology (Jackson, 2004, p. 281).
Along with Jackson, Jennifer Mitzen views states as persons from the perspective of
ontological security. Due to the uncertainty of intentions of states, states are trapped in the
security dilemma not only physically but also ontologically. This notion of entrapment comes
from an individual level, which Mitzen explains as “the need to experience oneself as a whole”
(Mitzen, 2006, p. 342). Ontological security is a craving of personhood that is developed through
relationships. Mitzen never directly engages the state personhood debate, but she all but shows
her loyalty to it through her acceptance of the state-as-person in social and ontological terms.
Jorg Kustermans sees states as persons from an ideological lens, viewing their legal status
as states as a claim to personhood (Kustermans, 2011). Luoma-aho touches on state personhood
in her work concerning international relations theory and religion, seeing the anthropomorphic
nature of the state as a structuring of political theory into a Christian-like religion (Luoma-aho,
2009, p. 296). Both of these works serve as markers for the diverse nature of state-as-person
argument, which sees agreement within the literature in terms of the certainty of state
personhood but not with respect to its logic within political theory. The lack of further
established sub-schools of thought is not only a testament to how underdeveloped this issue
remains but also gives credence to the sub-school proposed by this work, which suggests the
possibility of the “social” personhood of states without the implication of biological personhood..
The State is Not a Person
The natural progression of the state personhood engagement, and the understanding with
which this work allies itself, leads to the school of thought that the state is not a person. The
support for an argument against biological state personhood is much more developed than the
support Wendt provides for his argument in favor of it. The engagements within this school of
33
thought are unique but are closely tied to definition and relevance of the state itself. Because of
the relative agreement and shared basis of argument among the scholars within the second
school, we will not be dividing this school into further categories.
When delving into literature that contends the state is not a person, it is pertinent to start
with Colin Wight. Wight questions the reality of the state, noting that it is as much a theoretical
concept as a physical one. For the sake of argument, Wight contends the state is real, but he
disagrees with Wendt’s assertion that states’ having social agency fulfills the condition for
identifying states as persons (Wight, 2004, p. 273). He asserts that the agents of social agency
and human agency are vastly different, and because of this, “If agency is located in the state, then
no themestation5 of human activity is deemed necessary” (Wight, 2004, p. 275).
Peter Lomas further explores the very nature of the state and disagrees with Wendt’s
assertion that the state is routinely treated as a person within international politics as well as with
his claim that “IR theorists should accept, and [capitalize] on, this practice” (Lomas, 2005, p.
349). In Lomas’ view, the relatively recent debate of state personhood is not a reaffirmation of
strong political realism but rather renders the debate itself “wide open to contradiction” (Lomas,
2005, p. 350) Like Wight, Lomas sees that states consist of persons but clarifies that being
comprised of persons lends to a state’s “group mind,” not its classification as a fully
accommodating human. The idea of group mind is similar to Gilpin’s “conflict groups,” in which
actions undertaken by the group are manifestations of the convictions of the individuals who
comprise the group. Gilpin goes as far as saying that states themselves do not even act but rather
that only individuals act, which may happen within the confines of a coalition (R. Gilpin, 1984,
p. 290). To Lomas, Wight, and Gilpin, states are simply not all they are held up to be.
Furthermore, while some human characteristics are given to states, these characteristics are
neither all-encompassing nor entirely accurate. States are almost never described as having
human qualities such as “greed” or suffering human emotions such as “humiliation,” and if states
are assigned human qualities, they are drastic oversimplifications that do not belong in IR or
political theory.
Erik Ringmar acknowledges that scholars and practitioners of international politics have
historically referred to states as persons “for at least four hundred years,” but he argues fervently
against it, saying, “States clearly are not persons. States can be compared to persons to be sure,
but that does not make them into persons. Most obviously, a state has no unified consciousness,
no single memory, and no subjective will” (Ringmar, 2010, p. 4). Ringmar emphasizes that
arguments that seek to grant personhoods to states are “explicitly Eurocentric,” before further
suggesting that sociological tools, especially those used as toolkits for understanding identity and
its formation, will be of particular importance for international relations theory generally and this
line of argument particularly.
The Discourse of the Argument
Before delving into the necessary placement of this work within the context of the
literature, it is noteworthy to acknowledge the spirited reply of Jacob Schiff to the entirety of the
debate. Although his work does not fit into a traditional school of thought, it does question the
validity of the debate itself. Schiff analyzes the structure and forum of this debate itself,
analyzing the discourse rather than the content. He believes not only that the discourse itself
must become standardized (e.g., What is an actor? What is a state? Are they the same?) but also
that the reality of the state itself needs to be determined (Schiff, 2008, p. 365). He argues that
34
both schools of thought are currently acting on multiple assumptions while also talking past one
another.6
The discourse of state personhood is also examined in J. Samuel Barkin’s “Realist
Constructivism.” Attempting to bridge the gap between the seemingly contradictory theories of
constructivism and realism, Barkin determines that the two are not as different as they would
appear (Barkin, 2003, p. 325). Rather, he says, constructivism and realism are mutually
inclusive. The methodology and ontology of constructivism can give insight to the power
relations that govern classic IR realism, such as the categorization of the state (Barkin, 2003). In
addition, Barkin notes that by clearing up the debates within the contemporary theory, it is
possible to see realism and constructivism working together to explain the physical and social
world to which the state belongs (Barkin, 2003, p. 326).
The Social and Biological in Context
Due to how recent the debate over state personhood is and the paucity of literature with
which to engage, there are many missing pieces within the contemporary engagement. This work
looks to revel in the empty space and seeks to fill some of these holes by engaging with Wendt’s
understanding of both (1) the state’s social personhood and (2) a state’s emulation of a biological
person. This work naturally places itself into both schools of thought, affirming the argument
that the state is a social person while simultaneously rejecting the conception of the state as a
biological entity.
Social Anthropomorphism: State Intentionality
Wendt, in his definition of personhood, makes a distinction between “the inside and
outside” of the individual. The “inside” includes the knowledge of and adherence to the social
structure associated with being a person, described by Wendt as the “self-recognition” of
personhood. The “outside” involves the social recognition of individuals by others and whether
and how individuals are acknowledged as persons within the context of their social society.
Importantly, according to Wendt, if individuals are not recognized as such, they are not afforded
the rights and privileges of a person within that society (Wendt, 2004, p. 293). Throughout
history, internal and external identities of personhood have been negated or accepted in various
ways. Foreigners, minorities, and enemies have been denied personhood status, often even being
called or graphically portrayed as animals. Conversely, animals can and have been given the
legal protection of personhood, most recently, for example, when India declared whales and
dolphins to be “non-human persons” (Hackman, 2013).
The separation between “inside” and “outside” in Wendt’s framework invokes a
biopolitical dichotomy: a distinction between that which is interior or internal to the body—in
this case, the state—(namely, the individuals that comprise it) and that which is external to it
(such as other states). This is a sociological interpenetration with the concept of the political that
has deep roots in international theory and presents the most basic political relationship as “us”
versus “them” or, even more simply, me versus you (Schmitt, 1996, 2005). However, sociopolitical relationships, even at their most basic, are not sufficient to create a social person. As
Wendt himself acknowledges, “Being socially recognized as a person does not mean you are
capable of intelligent rational actions, just as not being recognized [as such] does not mean that
you are not. Neither can be reduced to the other” (Wendt, 2004). Relating to the concept of
internal and external sovereignty, Wendt articulates his case for state personhood only in the
35
internal social realm because, he says, the internal realm is the “[harder] case” to prove, for the
international community by and large already does recognize the external realms of states
(Wendt, 2004, p. 294). He also remarks he will focus his argument on the concept of personhood
in psychological terms because doing so is most applicable to International Relations theory due
to the inherently internal nature of psychology (Wendt, 2004, p. 295) This is a faulty
presumption on Wendt’s behalf, to assume that it is the internal argument rather than the external
that is the difficult element to prove. Using Bourdieu’s set ontology, we see the lines blur
between the external and internal when differentiating between political bodies because a
political actor (i.e., a state) can exist as a singularity, while nonetheless suffering internal
political discord and fragmentation7 (Badiou, 2005, 2009).
If we accept that larger political abstractions include as subsets all smaller political
abstractions (i.e., individuals are subsets of the groups to which they belong), we must evaluate
interiority and exteriority based upon the extreme examples. At the smallest, the individual
human is a political singularity that may belong to multiple social groups and political
abstractions yet can include none. A human is a walking-talking “state” capable of forging
alliances and waging wars (Hobbes, 2009). At the largest, we can only imagine a universal
political entity, stretching out infinitely across the cosmos, including everything and belonging to
nothing; that state would be the ultimate reality. For all intents and purposes, this extreme moves
beyond even a “world-state,” as it must include everything and leave nothing out. It would
simply be. The realization of such a phenomenon distorts contemporary understanding of
politics, as there would be no political contestation between individuals or groups without an
overarching sovereign political authority (Wendt, 2003).
The notion of the universal state is problematic for a number of reasons. First and
foremost is that such a sovereign relationship would be infeasible to create and impossible to
maintain. Entropy suggests that without energy being directed at maintaining such as pervasive
universal order, it would disintegrate along lines of fracture until a multiplicity of sovereign
authorities reemerged (Oprisko, 2014a; Schweller, 2014). Multiplicity, therefore, is almost
certainly guaranteed in an ever-expanding universe filled with creatures of limited
consciousness.
We begin here to assess Wendt’s argument. Wendt’s claim that the existence of “internal
sovereignty” (i.e. the sovereignty of individuals within states) is more difficult to prove than
external sovereignty (i.e. the sovereignty among states) is flawed. One need only to look at the
ways in which states respond to civil uprisings to understand that states perceive individuals to
have very real “sovereignty.” The strength of the individual is clear when states resort to
violence and law to curb disaffected citizens and resolve internal divisions and strife. The
internal rejection of a state’s sovereignty by its citizens may be more common than rejection of
authority between states, but it is distinctly less effective and not tolerated. There is an impetus in
all states to curtail any attempted overthrow of “legitimate” state authorities because such
movements could spread, threatening the authority of the state. Indeed, acts against the
sovereignty of a state are often declared to be criminal, thus resulting in the state declaring the
authority of the individual to separate his “sovereign self” from the state to be invalid and
illegitimate. Reclaiming one’s sovereignty is an act of supreme individuality but is most likely to
end in existential, social, or material annihilation of the self at the hands of the much more
powerful state (Camus, 1991; Oprisko, 2012c).
On the flip side of the coin, Wendt’s assertion that there exists a near universal
acceptance of state sovereignty and that such acceptance implies that state sovereignty need not
36
be questioned is equally flawed. Not only is the external validation of sovereignty not
guaranteed, it is foolhardy to assert that state sovereignty is recognized by the international
community a majority of the time. There is power in the recognition of a group as sovereign, and
recognizing another entity’s sovereignty not only brings little benefit to the recognizing party, it
also grants legitimate authority to an “other,” carving out political space for the existence of that
other, frequently in a contested space. If this were to be an uncontested area, Russia and the
Ukraine would cease to be in conflict over which areas are to be left intact, which to be annexed,
and which to be separated; Scotland would not have had to vote for independence because it
would merely be recognized as separate from the United Kingdom and, therefore, an “other”
sovereign region; Tibet would be more than a memory with a leader in exile; and the IsraelPalestine question would have an answer. It is on this problem of oversimplifying sovereign
identity that Walker provides insight:
International relations simply takes for granted that which seems to me to have become
most problematic. I prefer to assume that any analysis of contemporary world politics
that takes the principle of sovereign identity in space and time as an unquestioned
assumption about the way the world is – as opposed to an often very tenuous claim made
as part of the practices of modern subjects, including the legitimation practices of modern
states – can only play with analogies and metaphors taken from discourses in which this
assumption is also taken for granted . . . . [C]laims to sovereign identity in space and time
. . . might be better placed under more critical suspicion. (Walker, 1993, pp. 8-9)
In other words, the normalization of state sovereignty as being timeless and universal is a happy
fiction created in order to protect the integrity of the state as the premier political actor; it is an
act of preemptive self-preservation.
Like Wendt, Finian Cullity also argues that not only is an analysis of internal and external
identity important in the debate regarding state personhood, but he pays special attention to
internal and external legitimacy. The discussion of state legitimacy often revolves around claims
to territorial boundaries and monopoly of physical force (Cullity, 2014). For Cullity, a state must
hold legitimacy to the majority of its inhabitants before it can have a true monopoly of force. If
the institution attempts to monopolize force without such legitimacy, the institution will not be
seen as an extension of the state but rather a rogue entity. Legitimacy is earned when the state
recognizes the “reasons of belief” (i.e., the reasons why citizens believe what they believe) and
does not deny or reject those beliefs or citizens’ rights when monopolizing force (Cullity, 2014).
As such, if an internal identity of the state must be determined according to Wendt’s practice,
then that identity must first be recognized as legitimate in order to be recognized and act upon
that recognition.8
Wendt’s focus on the internalization of the state is compelling. He presents “three inside
tests” or conditions necessary for assigning psychological personhood to the state: being an
intentional actor, being an organism, and being conscious (Wendt, 2004, p. 296). Wendt focuses
the requirement of being an “intentional actor” and relates it to the idea of intentionality,
asserting that individuals’ acting upon their intentionality is an “irreducible casual mechanism in
the social world” (Wendt, 2005, p. 359). With respect to intentionality, Searle distinguishes
between collective intentions and individual intentions. These two different types of intentions
are helpfully distinguished in a football analogy by Searle:
Suppose we are on a football team, and we are trying to execute a pass play. That is, the
team intention, we suppose, is in part expressed in part by “we are executing a pass play.”
But now notice: no individual member of the team has this as the entire content of his
37
intention, for no one can execute a pass play by himself. Each player must make a
specific contribution to the overall goal. If I am an offensive lineman, my intention might
be expressed by, “I am blocking the defensive end.” Each member of the team will share
in the collective intention but will have an individual assignment which is derived from
the collective but which has a different content from the collective.9 (Searle, 2002)
If we then use the reductionist line of thought that allows for Searle’s group intentions to
ultimately be reduced to an “I” intention, without losing meaning, we may determine that a state
(with its citizens having a collective intention) is at least an internal psychological intentional
actor.10 Intentional actions typically attributed to the state, such as waging war and providing
defense or developing and practicing an economic system, are not a summation of individual
intentions but instead a single collective intention that no single individual may accomplish.
Wendt furthers his engagement with collective intentionality while defending his refutation of a
critique by Lomas. While collective intentionality does include varied intentions, says Wendt,
focusing too much on the variation causes the analysis to lose strength. Wendt uses the example
of German soldiers invading Russia. In this example, he notes that while some of these soldiers
were committed to the cause, some may have felt coerced or even more loyal to their comrades
than to Nazi Germany (Wendt, 2005, p. 359). Despite Wendt’s discussion of the soldiers’
potentially mixed feelings, it remains of greater relevance that all soldiers were all participating
in an action (the invasion) that they could not have accomplished alone. As Wendt himself
acknowledges, this makes them “not a heap of individuals” but rather single entity acting
collectively (Wendt, 2005).
Despite significant discussion of the concept of unified intentionality, Wendt misses the
more important point regarding its relevance, which is not so much related to whether or not it is
undermined by internal division, varying levels of conformity and commitment, or internal
contestation for control of the political apparatus as it is to the fact that unified intentionality
itself is a threat to the rational-actor model of politics. A state is a socially schizophrenic creature
with complex interests and a healthy dose of cynicism toward other states. It is important to
remember that the state of nature hasn’t been eradicated with the erection of the state and the
existence of states meanwhile places conflict on a greater scale. Each sovereign political actor is
both a potential ally and an emergent enemy. However, this potential for conflict is in no way
unique to states but rather reflects the diversity of personality manifest in humanity. As such, in
the social sphere, the state presents a very compelling argument for personhood.11
Wendt also confuses his own explanation of unified intentionality by relying on the
philosophy of supervenience,12 in which lower-level components within a given system
determine its higher-level components, Wendt proceeds to describe the failure of the state in
managing or directing the intentions of the collective entity. Unfortunately, his reliance upon
supervenience is only a continuation of the work of reductionism. Although we find his use of
the supervenience ontology unnecessary and overcomplicated, what Wendt does accomplish in
this section is equate the state having group intentions with personhood status. He says, not only
does a group need common knowledge, but the group must also act upon that knowledge. This,
according to Wendt and Searle, allows for group intentions to exist only in the realm of action,
leading individuals within a group to deduce, for example, with a “pre-intentional, almost
biological-like sense, that another individual is a good candidate for cooperative activity”
(Wendt, 2004, p. 301). This “social to biological” turn, coupled with the idea of emergence, sees
a creation of a single analogous mind, which Wendt sees as “the brain of the state.”13
38
Within this analogous mind, a state not only practices intentionality but also seeks
ontological security. In this sense, each state strives “to experience [itself] as a whole, continuous
person in time—as ‘being’ rather than constantly changing—in order to realize a sense of
agency” (Mitzen, 2006, p. 342). This ideal of agency and self-being lies at the heart of the social
realm of state personhood. Much like the security dilemma proposed in structural realist theory,
the ontological security of the state represents a continuous inner struggle for feeling of
actualization (Mitzen, 2006, p. 341). Jennifer Mitzen outlines ontological security as being based
on the individual level, with a state needing a stable cognitive environment for agency to happen
(Mitzen, 2006, p. 342). Much like the individual, the state must be conscious of who it is and
what its goals are before it can act upon on its will. It is this self-understanding of a singular
concept of identity and values that marks the true connection between state and person at a social
level. Using this agency, states act and interact with one another, which, according to Wendt
himself, is what creates reality. Wendt sees that “the structures of human association are
determined primarily by shared ideas … and that the identities and interests of purposive actors
are constructed by these shared ideas…” (Wendt, 1999, p. 1).
If human association creates reality through purposeful actors and actions, and if states
are both intentional and purposeful via Searle and Mitzen respectively, then states must be social
persons because they construct social reality. Wendt’s use of constructivism is loose enough to
allow state incorporation while simultaneously being open enough to allow social expectations
and dynamic shifts, as long as these dynamic shifts are within the confines of the state’s
ontological security. It is, perhaps, important to concur with this sentiment only through the
Zizekian lens of parallax, in which reality is presented as the actions taken that subsequently
represent failure to achieve and maintain the ideal goal (Zizek, 2012). As Oprisko expands upon
this sentiment, “reality as failure” emphasizes Walker’s warning about the tenuous position of
the state as the ideal political form (Oprisko, 2014b, 2014c). The state is obviously flawed rather
than perfect; it is the sovereign political authority we have and not what we sought to create.
In an intervention between the state personhood debate, Alex Prichard sees the
constructivist views of Wendt’s reality as well. According to Prichard in his dissection of
Proudhon, the state is a tool for understanding the anarchy that is the international world through
the social interaction of “mutually recognized pacts” (Prichard, 2013, p. 4). States, much like
other groups and systems, help explain the world around us, or, as Wendt and Mitzen would see
it, they construct the social world that constitutes society as well. Although the international
community is neither perfect nor utopian, it does exist on a very social level. This community is
made of states that are actors and, more importantly, social persons who create and explain the
chaos that surrounds them.
At this point, personhood, intentions, cognitive knowledge, and activity in accordance
with group intentions have been linked to the state. However, Wendt does not see this analysis of
state personhood as deep enough, however (Wendt, 2004, p. 289). He further asserts that all
groups, including states, have corporate interests and act proceptively in furtherance of achieving
those interests. Because of social reality and the nested nature of group belonging and inclusion,
as long as individual humans belong to a group and group identity has meaning to the individual,
action will be taken in furtherance of these corporate interests, whether or not such actions are
successful and whether or not the individuals undertaking them are enthusiastic. The result—the
imperfect actions of a minion on behalf of a master—forms reality, regardless of the will or
vision of the state decision-makers.
39
Biological Anthropomorphism: State as an Organism
Wendt doubles down on his argument that the state is a person, seeking to forge a link
between the biological concept of a person and the political state. Wendt uses NASA’s definition
of an organism as “a self-sustained chemical system capable of undergoing Darwinian
evolution.”14 Scientifically speaking, this is only one of numerous definitions of an organism.
Instead of defining the state as an organism by a single definition, however, Wendt proceeds to
designate the state as an organism by the observations of states’ innate organismic
characteristics, including “individuality, organization, autonomy, [and] homeostasis...” (Wendt,
2004, p. 307). These terms are the focus on Wendt’s analysis of biological state personhood.15
Darwinian Evolution. Individuality, organization, autonomy, and homeostasis are four
organismic terms used cleverly to describe various IR theories of the state, confined within the
context of biological categorization. Homeostasis is the need for the state to resist a form of
entropy and decay; in other words, the classic realist idea of individualistic survival; autonomy is
the sense that state behavior is not completely determined by the environment; individuality is
the idea that states are unique, which, for Wendt, means spatially. Finally, states, in order to be
functional organisms, regardless of how complex the state is, must be organized as singular
entities, with interdependent but mutual parts (Wendt, 2004, pp. 307-309). Confining himself
within this framework, Wendt leaves no room for exceptions, contradictions, or flexibility. The
state of Yemen, for example, does not have a defined northern border, posing an issue with
respect to its individuality, nor does the recognized state of Somalia have much of an organized
governmental structure or hierarchy, which compromises its autonomy.
This line of Wendt’s argument regarding biological personhood of the state is less
defensible than his argument for social personhood and, at times, undermines the strength of his
own argument regarding the unique social reality and personality of the state. Wendt limits his
anthropomorphism of the international to the state, which is contested as being the sole or even
most important actor within the practice of contemporary international relations. Gilpin clearly
articulates the hedge against sole focus on the state in his chapter of Neorealism and its Critics
(R. G. Gilpin, 1986). The argument can be made against state organic personhood with many
real world examples,16 but we will begin by focusing on Wendt’s selected definition and its
foundation in Darwinian evolution. Darwinian evolution comes with a list of intrinsic life
properties, including: metabolism, self-replication or reproduction, and mortality.
Metabolism suggests that a state must consume “high energy starting materials and produce
lower-energy products that drive the processes of replication and whatever is necessary to
support replication” (Joyce, 2013). What is not necessary is limiting the form of material that
must be consumed by a state because the most generous understanding of the state does not
require a certain prototypical form. In fact, using Darwin’s understanding of evolution, it would
be realistic to assume that states would specialize based upon their specific situations and
positions in time and space in order to maximize their unique position and to minimize
competition. With this in mind, it is possible to conceive of some forms of state organization to
be more predatory and others to be prey. This line of research is quite interesting and worthy of
greater consideration to determine what, if anything, states consume and, more importantly, what
they generate that assists them in reproduction.
Reproduction is the creation of offspring—new organisms similar to but genetically
distinct from the parent(s). In international relations, there are some potential arguments to be
40
made that reproduction has happened. Colonization, conquest and annexation, and nationbuilding each spring to mind, with analogies that are more or less defensible. However, in order
for states to emulate biological organisms, they must direct action toward reproduction, which
historically is not defended.17 By looking at the international system as being finite (at least
practically so), encapsulated within the Earth, we would expect a fierce competition to create
mini-states, thus carving the planet into smaller and smaller sovereign powers until we arrive
back at the Hobbesian state of nature, with each man being his own state, every individual in a
political relationship with all others. Problematically, this sort of reproductive fragmentation
disagrees entirely with Wendt’s vision of the world state as being inevitable (Wendt, 2003). If
Wendt sees the state as a vehicle for integration and coalescence, the state is, itself, merely a
vehicle to a universal order, and is actively working toward its own annihilation.
The mortality of states represents an important separation between a biological organism
and one that is a social organization. Biological organisms are concrete, durational beings with
an expiration date (Weinstein, 1978, pp. 5-6). Living beings take the doom of mortality into
consideration when projecting themselves into the world—thus providing a need for
reproduction. According to Weinstein, there is an important difference between living organisms,
especially human organisms, and social groups, though Weinstein sees humans and social
organizations as being symbiotically connected:
What is relevant to the organization is not the person’s concrete durational being . . . but
the person’s official biography, composed of the record of the person’s involvement with
various organizations such as schools, business firms, military services, hospitals,
prisons, . . . and other government bureaus. . . . [A] person tends to evaluate the
organization as an obstacle or an opportunity with regard to private projects. The basis of
relations between conglomerates and the individuals whom they try to organize is mutual
exploitation, not mutual aid. (1978, pp. 76-77)
Personhood is granted to a biological organism that acts in ways that seek to achieve unique
meaning through time to other persons. This social necessity reflects part of the problem that one
cannot hold an identity without that identity being observed by others; social reality is a
continuous (re)negotiation of what is what (Oprisko, 2012a; Speier, 1989). This would not be
problematic if states were mortal, but a state is an ideational construct for social organization and
may not have an expiration date, thus making time less meaningful or even not meaningful to a
state. In order for a state to exist, the idea of it must remain with individuals willing to grant that
the state exists as such. States can effectively die only to be resurrected. Israel, for example,
arguably ceased to be a state during the Babylonian exile, during the imperial dominion of
Rome, and during the Middle Ages as the object of continuous struggle. Poland has also been
resurrected one more than one occasion: after forceful partition by Austria-Hungary, Prussia, and
Russia. When looking at Somalia, one wonders if it is a state with internal turmoil, a fragmented
area containing multiple states where one state once existed, or something entirely different
(Oprisko, 2014d). Also, when multiple states combine in union to form a larger sovereign body
such as an empire (e.g., British, Roman, Ottoman) or a union (e.g., the European Union, the
United States of America), does it mean that the states that choose to sacrifice part of their
sovereignty are annihilated to create this new sovereign power? Is it possible for said sovereignty
to be reclaimed and for the union or empire to break? If so, does that mean that the state was ever
sovereign? In the contemporary political reality, where state fragmentation is far more likely
than state union, this question gains greater significance. Will current states cease to exist if they
lose provinces? Fragmentation movements are numerous and there is historical precedence that
41
fragmentation is a legitimate option in today’s international political arena, including the Sudan
breaking into multiple parts, Yugoslavia and the USSR fracturing, Scotland seeking to break
away from the United Kingdom, Moravia and Silesia seeking to leave the Czech Republic,
Greenland seeking independence from Denmark, Catalan independence movements in Spain,
Brittany threatening to leave France, and numerous ethnic groups and nationalities seeking to
leave Russia. Thus, we are left with little to no information regarding state metabolism, negative
examples of state reproduction, and historical evidence of state immortality. Therefore, we find it
unlikely that Darwinian evolution provides evidence of states’ emulation of biological organism.
The Social Imprimatur of State Organization
Although we find Wendt’s argument for the state’s emulation of a biological organism
less than compelling, we find that Wendt is highlighting an important element of social
organizations—that they gain personality because of how they are organized and who is
organized within them. The emulation of human personality within social groups, states
included, is a result of humans (those concrete, durational beings with personality) being the
foundational element of all groups. Because a group’s personality is connected to the individuals
who comprise its membership, a state’s personality is fluid and may appear to be schizophrenic,
especially when power is shared and the organizational structure increases in complexity.
Happily, this is normal. The high levels of anxiety that create the differential insecurity of the
international system, the state of nature so feared by Hobbes, is predicated on emotional,
irrational, uncontrollable others who are in this system together. Each person and their
circumstances are different. Though individuals may share motivational catalysts, they
internalize them differently to varying degrees dependent upon their situations and positions in
time and space. As Walker says, applying a formal system onto this arena is worthy of
skepticism. The lack of a biological component in states (i.e., of being neither concrete nor
durational) suggests that a state’s personality and personhood are indefensible from a biological
perspective.
With respect to state organization, Lomas describes Wendt’s state personhood as not only
a social personification but as being anthropomorphic in nature, creating a biological individual
that succumbs to realist tendencies.18 Bourdieu’s “social reality” also heavily contradicts
Wendt’s constrained organismic argument. This social reality constitutes true reality and the
perception of reality. This creates spontaneous visions of the social world that are dynamic and
unique. The analysis only becomes deeper and more dynamic when realizing that those who
contribute to this very construction create the sociological constructions of the world. Bourdieu
speaks of the intensely complicated nature of social reality, in which the state is a direct
component. Defining the state as a person contradicts this notion, trying to put a biological
classification on a social concept that cannot be universally understood or contained. Bourdieu
acknowledges that there is an attempt to create a “legitimate version of the social world” but that
“the holders of bureaucratic authority never establish an absolute monopoly, even when they add
the authority of science to their bureaucratic authority...” such as Wendt’s all-encompassing
scientific foundation for the social issue of personhood (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 18).
Like Bourdieu, Oprisko sees honor as a set of social processes that represent the
negotiation between individual(s) and group(s) over value and identity, with such negotiation
establishing personhood.19 For Oprisko, honor is a social process of “altering reality through the
medium of value,” which, like Bourdieu’s social reality, affects not only the honoree but also
42
other persons involved under the sovereignty of the “honoring agent” (Bourdieu, 1989, p. 22).
This dynamic system of values and identity suggests a continuous restructuring of reality, which
goes directly against Wendt’s argument for a static biological classification of the state.
According to Oprisko, external honor is formed through relational processes between
groups and individuals to classify how social value (including a valued identity) is changed,
gained, and lost. Honor processes are simultaneously internal, (i.e., formed by relational
processes within an individual’s psyche) and include the formation and evaluation of the
execution of projects through time (Oprisko, 2012b, p. 5). The allowance of internal and external
socio-political exceptions and change can exist within the acceptance of the social personhood,
but the outcomes are consequently too volatile and cannot be compliant within the limiting scope
of an organismic personhood. The process of honoring “creates, destroys, and alters norms
through the maintenance and revision of the social status quo” even though the status quo is
determined by Wendt to be a largely unchanging organic formation (Oprisko, 2012b, p. 6).
Oprisko also shows that there is an internal competition of will within states and that a
political relationship can exist between the state (as a unified social being) and its component
parts (i.e., the individual humans who form it) (Oprisko, 2012b). He details how the social realm
is a negotiation between actors, both individual and corporate, which forms the internal and
external pressures, catalyzing change (Oprisko, 2014a). Reality, therefore, is the failure to
achieve and maintain an ideal state because of the constant, dynamic pressures placed upon it
(Oprisko & Caplan, 2014). Oprisko argues that the state is better seen as a fabric, woven together
by the individuals within it and their corresponding actions (Oprisko, 2014b) and argues for an
existential theory of international politics because of the ability of such a theory to link the levels
of analysis (or what he calls realms of action) together, which allows for a more complex
understanding of the international system, rather than a forced positivism (Oprisko, 2014c).
The dynamic social system that undermines much of Wendt’s organismic state is based
on social constructivism, a paradigm most closely associated with Wendt in IR theory.
Constructivists do not see politics as reflective of a material reality but rather of a social,
interpersonal reality (Oprisko, 2014d). As Barkin precisely states, “What actors do in
international relations, what interests they hold, and the structures within which they operate are
defined by social norms and ideas rather than by objective and material conditions” (Barkin,
2003, p. 326). Even Wendt himself writes extensively on the topic of social constructivism but
identifies it more materialist perspectives (Barkin, 2003). This causes his biological state to lean
more towards the objective rather than the ontological inter-subjectivity of social personhood.
It is this narrow and objective biological formation that Jens Bartelson sees as an
inaccurate perspective from which to view the international. Taking from Brian Schmit,
Bartelson sees that by constructing reality and the past “with the narrow aim of legitimizing
present identity, one not only loses touch with the richness of the past but also neglects the
explanatory and critical potentials of disciplinary history” (Wendt, 1999, p. 1). Although
Bartelson’s work concerns history, the implications of his work vis-à-vis the greater international
system are relevant. It is the distinction between an international system and an international
society on which Bartelson focuses. He sees a society as something that is not specifically
defined but inherently is, as opposed to a system, which is a basic form of social organization
that can exist with or without a society (Bartelson, 1996, p. 341). Simply put, when states or
actors interact with consciousness of issues or common values, a society is formed. As such,
almost any fruitful or positive interaction made by states constitutes a society.
43
An international society aims to maintain sovereignty through the process of anarchy
while simultaneously attempting to fulfill the structural goals of the society of actors. This
dichotomy creates a state that will perform expected behavior but does not follow all guidelines
and rules (Bartelson, 1996, p. 341). States may choose when and how to follow the structure of
the international system to which they buy in but can never leave the anarchic and ultimately
unpredictable nature of a fluid and dynamic international society. In order to make his theory of
biological state personhood true, Wendt must approach the world as an ever-present international
system that has structures that have little room for movement or change. The static biological
nature of an organism cannot cope with a universe in which a society and system coexist and the
principle actors are created by the tools of “dialogue and consent” and not structures and cells
(Bartelson, 1996).
In looking at a combined perspective of Bourdieu, Oprisko, and Bartelson, a trend begins
to emerge: the notion that social reality is constructed and dynamic. Social reality is, necessarily,
always changing. However structured or rigid systems of politics may seem, Wendt cannot fully
create his view of a biological state when the world that the state inhabits is simultaneously being
established, altered, and annihilated. Be it a new distinction of honor, an evolving doxa, or a new
vision of social reality, the rules of the game and the nature of states (or any other corporate
person or social group) are always changing and never finite.
Despite this, it seems that states achieve legitimate personality through sovereignty,
regardless of the volatile system in which they exist. Even if state borders or rulers change, the
exceptional power of sovereignty as a political reality enables the consciousness of a group to
become state. Sovereignty is to a state what anima is to a biological person: the prerequisite for
existence and individuality. Although a state gains sovereignty over individuals through the
individuals’ willful or tacit relinquishing of their own sovereignty, the corporate entity holds
sovereignty until the instant an individual decides to reassert self-sovereignty, making states a
social and political reality, whatever form they take.20 As Fowler and Bunck argue,
“Determining sovereignty should not be a matter of conferring compliments; rather, it should be
a matter of describing reality” (1995, p. 39). Ultimately, sovereignty is not a tool of the state but
rather a tool of reality. By no means can a state use any means of sovereignty to claim a
biological classification in a social world.
If the ultimate weapon of sovereignty cannot be used to prove a state-as-person analogy,
then at this time, nothing can. That is not to say that Wendt’s work is without merit but rather
that it failed to see the larger picture. Through the above works, it becomes apparent that social,
international, and political reality is given legitimacy but is ultimately created, and the state is
linked to the political in a way that the human is not linked to their respective worlds. Presently,
the state is one of (if not the most) key components concerning the political and social worlds,
and this close linkage brings dynamics of created reality to the presence of the state.
Coincidentally, humans may change the world, and the world may change around them, but the
two are not dependent on each other or as vitally linked. In a greater context, this is why a state is
very similar to a person socially but varies greatly when going further on the continuum of
classification into the domain of the biological organism. In the political and social domains,
things cannot change or evolve, but rather, individuals must cope and survive with the world
around them.21 Human input is meaningful but not altogether constitutive of a world humans do
not fully shape and control.
It is this human input that Colin Wight dissects in his work that serves as a reply to
Alexander Wendt. Wight contends that states do have agency but not human agency nor human
44
activity, as Wendt posits (Bunck, 1996, p. 385). Putting human agency onto the state is
detrimental to the very core of IR theory according to Wight, who notes:
To treat the state as a person, we once again denude the social field of human agency. We
have agency but no human activity. As such, to treat the state as a person simply leaves
open an individualist riposte that threatens any attempt to construct a structurally aware,
though non-structuralist, theory of IR (Wight, 2004, p. 270).
Wendt’s treatment of the state as a person not only confines its social nature too closely to that of
the static biological, but it also leaves the area of international relations theory void and
confused. Attempting to bring human agency to social structure creates a dichotomy too difficult
to overcome (Wight, 2004, p. 271). This is because much of state agency is not based on selfidentity or recognition but rather on social positioning. Every state engages with selfactualization and seeks a social wholeness in Mitzen’s ontological security, but that security does
not heavily influence the overall agency and action of the state beyond the recognition that there
is potential for action. The state has agency within the context of this “capacity to do” but fails to
be human in the terms of real materialist action (Wight, 2004, p. 274).
Conclusion
Transitioning the state personhood argument into the field of biology was a bold but
ultimately unsuccessful academic move for Wendt. It seems that at least for now, states can only
be considered persons in a broad sense, constituting the social aspects of personality being a
unique perspective that is situated and positioned in time and space. When the logic of
international politics mixes biology and socio-politics, a breakdown of the analogy becomes
apparent. States cannot simply be held to the limiting nature of biological classifications in the
face of the architecture of the manufactured and multifaceted social reality. In Wight’s own
critique of Wendt he simply asks, “If social actors treat the state in this manner [i.e., as
possessing personhood], what right have social scientists to question it” (Wight, 2004, p. 276)?
So what happens when actors go beyond the category of social and treat the state as a
biological person? Current IR theorists weigh the debate of international politics much more than
news articles using state anthropomorphism to increase reader comprehension. If the state is not
a biological singularity, as we have concluded, then treating it as such does have consequences
within international relations and politics. IR theory takes many things for granted in its debates,
especially the existence and supremacy of the state. From a practical standpoint, these findings
alter the theories and ontologies of IR, and the community of international relations scholars
would do well to assume a healthy skepticism of them rather than posit theoretical abstractions
with anthropomorphic personification of states as concrete, durational beings.
45
Notes
1
As Weinstein states with his usual aplomb, love piracy is the “plundering of a text for whatever insights it has to
offer, including new ones and throwing away the dross.” A love pirate is a “devoted appropriator on a mission of
appreciative plunder.” In other words, this methodology for reading political theory contains a Nietzschean spin, as
it refuses to adhere to thought traditions or to assume that concepts from competing paradigms are incongruent
simply because the current understanding within the literature is that it should be so. If we can argue over whether
or not a state can be a biological organism with sincerity, we must be willing to take the paths less traveled.
2
Our emphasis. We think that the emulation aspect is an important distinction and we will come back to this later.
3
From “Collective Intentions and Actions” (Wight, 2004, p. 270).
4
The Westphalian System is a form of customary international law in which nation-states emerge as the singular
legitimate political authority. A government is sovereign over a group of people in a given territory. This concept
emerged following the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War.
5
Wight has misspelled thumos (also commonly spelled "thymos"; Greek: θύμος) which expresses the spiritedness of
a living man and was the source of both rational thought and felt emotion. What he is getting at in this passage is
that if states have enjoy agency as a singularity, then we need not seek to inscribe them with human traits and
characteristics. If they are not agential as singularities, then they are not bio-organisms.
6
We concur that both schools are talking past one another and ignoring the hat of challenge that Wendt initially
threw into the ring.
7
In fact, this blending of that which is the political actor is a point of profound contestation within international
relations theory. The levels of analysis rest firmly upon a human element for politics merely to exist in the world –
raw, existential division, yet often give primacy either to the system (Waltz, Marx, et al.) or to the state (liberalism,
neoclassical realism, etc). We lean heavily on Oprisko’s treatment of this in Honor: A Phenomenology and
Existential Theory of International Politics, in which this is examined in great detail.
8
It would be counterintuitive for a person not to recognize his or her own identity as legitimate. This process of
legitimation of personal identity is so imbedded within human consciousness it is easy to forget. States, on the other
hand, may find it more difficult to prove their own internal legitimacy, which makes the process of internalization
much more vital when concerning state anthropomorphism.
9
From “Collective Intentions and Actions.”
10
Wendt summarizes Bratman’s view of reductionism in that it requires shared beliefs and common knowledge for a
structure. Within that structure, “we” intentions become interlocking “I” intentions towards a group, allowing group
intentions to be eliminated into a single individual intention of a state.
11
State personhood is not an isolated area of contestation. With Citizens United v. F.E.C., personhood has been
granted to corporations by the U.S. Supreme Court, including the religious rights of persons. In India, personhood
has been granted to dolphins and whales. It appears that within contemporary social reality, all humans may be
persons but not all persons are human.
12
Supervenience is an ontological relationship between levels of a system where the lower level properties influence
if not outright determine higher level properties. This hierarchy is easy to see in politics where sovereignty and
authority escalate in levels like matryoshka (Russian nesting dolls). For example, the international system includes
nation-states which include provinces with counties with cities with townships with neighborhoods, etc. However,
Wendt is using superveniece not only in the hierarchy of biological organisms or social structure, but in
philosophical priority. He suggests that as individuals are the component pieces of the state, the state possesses
personality, and therefore personhood as well.
13
Here, Wendt focuses on the idea of collective cognition and its nature within the state. Simply put, collective
cognition refers to the thought that just as activity is divided in group intentions to accomplish a greater goal, so too
is cognitive work of the group. This gives rise to the idea that a state has a “hive mind” in which no member may
know everything happening in the state. (Name the source here, p. 304-05).
14
This definition is neither a formal statement nor an endorsement or official definition used in projects at NASA
but was the result of a 1992 panel on the issue of how to define life in order to have a de facto standard for
determining whether life exists outside of the Earth.
15
Wendt does note that genetic reproduction is essential to the organism but accepts that states cannot reproduce,
detracting from his biological argument at the outset.
16
Lomas cites more examples of imperfectly shared conceptions of the state such as a believer of Scottish
independence in the EU or a Sahelian nomad’s rejection of territorial division.
17
46
Emulation, by definition, requires imitation with the intent to match or surpass that which is being imitated.
Lomas defines anthropomorphic as the identification of a non-human entity as a human one (Searle, 2002, p. 3)
19
In this way, Oprisko is an extension of Weinstein and in complete agreement with Walker insofar as asserting that
identity is the social value of an individual to a group situated and positioned in time and space. The attainment,
cultivation, and maintenance of identity, including status as a state, requires constant and continuous reinforcement
lest the identity be lost.
20
Sovereignty is always held by someone. Each person holds his or her sovereignty or relinquishes it in full or in
part to a group. Within the group, the decision maker(s) hold sovereignty over the collective. “Rulers come and go;
governments end and forms of government change; but sovereignty survives. A political society cannot endure
without a supreme will somewhere. Sovereignty is never held in suspense. When, therefore, the external sovereignty
of Great Britain in respect of the colonies ceased, it immediately passed to the Union” (Fowler & Bunck, 1995, p.
69). This immediacy to sovereign transfer has been parodied by Terry Pratchett in Mort via his creation of the
kingon, the particle that represents sovereignty being passed from deceased to inheritor, which is the fastest moving
particle in his multiverse. He writes, “The only thing known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according
to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle. He reasoned like this: “You can't have more than one king, and tradition
demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir
instantaneously.” “Presumably,” he said, “there must be some elementary particles – kingons, or possibly queons –
that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon.”
His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to
modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.
21
Heidegger posits that there are four possible concepts of the world. The first is ontic, referring to beings as
objects present in a life-world, the second is ontological and interpreted as “things in general” (both are dismissed by
Heidegger as derivative and epiphenomenal), the third is ontic and refers to Dasein, the fourth is ontological and
existential. (Prozorov, 2014, p. 15) We have approached this paper using the ontologico-existential concept of the
world as we find it to best represent personhood’s apprehension of and proceptive crafting of their world from the
unlimited possibility of the World as void. (Prozorov, 2014, pp. 27-30)
18
47
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The Transnational Political Involvement of Nigerian Immigrants in New York City:
Motivations, Means and Constraints1
Leila Rodriguez, PhD
Department of Anthropology
University of Cincinnati
leila.rodriguez@uc.edu
Abstract
Africans represent a small but rapidly growing immigrant population in the United States.
Nigerians, who constitute the largest group, form a well-organized community with numerous
ethnic, hometown and social associations. Through some of these organizations, many Nigerians
have successfully intervened in the economic and social development and the political processes
of their hometowns. Their political involvement in the U.S. is less. In this article I use
quantitative and qualitative data to analyze the motivations that Nigerian immigrants have for
political involvement in Nigeria or the U.S., the means that enable this participation, and the
constraints to participating. Findings suggest the importance of gender, class and acculturation
for shaping political participation.
The Transnational Political Involvement of Nigerian Immigrants in New York City
51
Introduction
There is a growing recognition among migration scholars that immigrants increasingly
maintain links to their homelands, and that these multiple ties have important consequences for
both their sending and receiving countries. Transnational migration is the process by which
“immigrants forge and sustain simultaneous multi-stranded social relationships that link together
their societies of origin and settlement” (Glick Schiller et al., 1995: 48). More broadly, the
concept of transnationalism refers to processes that transcend the boundaries of individual
nation-states, and are bound to the constraints and opportunities of their specific contexts
(Guarnizo & Smith, 1998). Transnationalism can occur in economic, political or sociocultural
spheres (Portes, 2001) and also differs in its level of institutionalization (Portes, Guarnizo &
Landholt, 1999). Two perspectives dominate the discussion of political transnationalism as it
pertains to immigrants. One perspective views it as a grassroots movement, an expression of
“bottom-up” resistance (Guarnizo, 2001; Portes, 2003). In this view, marginalized people use
transnational activities to resist state and other forms of domination. An alternative perspective
interprets transnational political practices as enabling states to exert power outside their
traditional jurisdiction (Glick Schiller, 1999). Specifically, countries of origin seek to incorporate
immigrants, who are beyond their territory, into their national projects.
Immigrants can be involved in the politics of their country of reception and/or in the
politics of their country of origin in multiple ways. When naturalized, immigrants vote in their
receiving country’s elections on many issues, including but not limited to immigration policy
(Guarnizo, 2001; Levitt & Jaworksky, 2007; Richman, 2008). Naturalized immigrants also
participate in local politics and are even voted into office (Richman, 2008). Immigrant
hometown associations can organize national mobilization and protests (Richman, 2008), and
provide aid to immigrants’ hometowns. Finally, immigrants can become directly involved in
political activities in their home countries, either by voting in elections, campaigning for political
parties, or by being courted abroad by home candidates. Among some immigrant groups like
Dominicans in New York City, home country political parties have established offices in
immigrants’ new neighborhoods (Guarnizo, 2001).
Some scholars have questioned early studies of immigrant transnational political
participation on the grounds that the scope of immigrant transnationalism has been overestimated
and that it does not represent a new phenomenon (Portes, 2001). However, despite evidence that
only a small percentage of immigrants become involved in transnational activities, their impact
in both their sending and receiving countries is significant and has macrosocial consequences
(Portes, 2001; Portes, 2003). Similarly, while recent immigrants to the United States are not the
first to undertake transnational activities, some aspects of their use, reach and impact are
different than anything previous because both the global and local contexts, as well as the
composition of the immigrant groups, have changed substantially (Guarnizo, 2001). Compared to
older waves of immigrants, contemporary ones are more informed about the U.S., the local and
global contexts in which their transnational activities are embedded are very different and more
interconnected, and their home country seeks to institutionalize these activities in unprecedented
ways (Guarnizo, 2001).
Finally, research shows that transnational activities oriented towards the country of origin
can occur simultaneously with those oriented towards the host society (Bermudez, 2010). This is
because the process of incorporation does not necessarily weaken transnational participation
52
(Itzigsohn and Saucedo, 2002). Rather, context of reception and mode of incorporation lead to
different causal paths to transnational practices (Itzigsohn and Saucedo, 2002).
This article expands current research on immigrant political transnationalism in two
ways. First, while debates until now have centered on the validity of “transnationalism” as a
concept, the pervasiveness of the phenomenon among immigrants, and forms of political
transnationalism, I examine the conditions under which immigrant political transnationalism can
occur. Specifically, I explore the motivations that Nigerian immigrants have for political
involvement in Nigeria or the U.S., the means that enable this participation, and the constraints
to participating. In addition, Latin American populations have dominated the literature on
immigrant political transnationalism (Escobar, 2004; Grassmuck & Pessar, 1991; Fox, 2006;
Guarnizo & Diaz, 1999; Guarnizo, et al., 2003; Itzingsohn et al., 1999; Kyle, 2000; Levitt, 2001;
Mahler, 1999; Margolis, 1994; Massey et al., 1994) although some work has been conducted
with other populations as well, primarily Asians (Lessinger, 1992; Smart & Smart, 1998). This
article broadens the regional scope by examining transnational political participation among
Nigerian immigrants.
Nigerian Immigration to the United States
Contemporary African immigration to the United States stems from a combination of
factors that includes shifts in African economies and in U.S. immigration legislation. In Africa,
post-independence economic problems peaked in the 1970s, with food insecurity, high inflation,
and rising unemployment affecting many countries (Takyi & Konadu-Agyemang, 2006). The
introduction of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) in the 1980s further reorganized
economic systems from state to private control, devalued the local currencies and caused
governments to cut back on multiple social services (Takyi & Konadu-Agyemang, 2006). These
deteriorating socioeconomic conditions created incentives for migration.
In the U.S., the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act changed the criteria for
admission to the country by removing quotas that favored the immigration of Europeans and by
making family reunification the primary condition for admitting new immigrants (Arthur, 2000;
Konadu-Agyemang & Takyi, 2006). Second, the 1990 introduction of the Diversity Visa Lottery
(DV) program increased the migration of Africans to the U.S. This program was designed to
increase the number of immigrants from underrepresented countries2, which greatly favored
African nations. Of all eligible countries, Nigerians have consistently obtained the largest
number of DV visas since 2002, an average of 6,750 annually, or almost 14%3 of the allotted
50,000 (U.S. Department of State).
The 2000 U.S. Census registered about 880,000 African-born foreigners living in the
U.S., about 3% of the total foreign-born population (Wilson, 2003). By 2009, this number had
grown to almost 1.5 million (McCabe, 2011). The highest concentration of Africans is found in
the Northeast, particularly New York City (Wilson, 2003; McCabe, 2011). The African foreignborn are highly educated and over 90% have at least a high school degree (Dixon, 2006). They
have higher rates of labor force participation than the rest of the foreign-born, and are less likely
to be unemployed (Dixon, 2006). They are, however, less likely than the rest of the foreign-born
to be naturalized citizens (Dixon, 2006). Nigerians constitute the largest group of African
immigrants in the U.S., about 14.1% (McCabe, 2011). Between 2000 and 2009, the number of
Nigerians doubled, to almost 210,000.
53
There are an estimated 250 different ethnic groups in Nigeria, the three largest ones being
the Igbo, Yoruba and Hausa-Fulani (Gordon, 2003). Although there are no estimates of what
percent of immigrants in the U.S. belong to any of these groups, project participants reiterated
that the Hausa rarely migrate internationally, and large concentrations of Igbo, Yoruba and some
minority groups are present in the U.S.
Nigerian immigrants form a well-organized community with multiple ethnic, hometown
and social organizations. The tradition of belonging to associations is historical and began within
Nigerian communities. Trager (2001) documented association membership among the Ijesa
Yoruba and found that there are multiple types of organizations that local people belong to,
based on occupational groups, religious groups, age groups, and social clubs. Of particular
importance are the hometown associations, found within and outside Nigeria, wherever there is a
sizable population of individuals originating in the same town. These organizations are a
significant source of local-level development (Trager, 2001). Abbott (2006) distinguishes
between the smaller scale hometown associations and the larger “ethnic unions.” Amongst their
functions he lists petitioning governments regarding grievances and even organizing the first
mass political parties (p.141).
As a group, Nigerian immigrants exhibit particular characteristics (some of which are
shared by other African migrant populations): they are a recent and growing population, for
nearly a decade they have been the primary beneficiaries of the diversity visa program, they are
on average highly educated and speak English, and they participate extensively in hometown
associations. These traits seem conducive to transnational political participation among a group
of African, specifically, southern Nigerian, immigrants.
Data and Methods
I collected the data for this project during yearlong fieldwork in New York City that
included a dozen qualitative interviews with community and association leaders, as well as
participant observation in association meetings and activities; a quantitative survey with 83
respondents, collected using institutional sampling in churches; approximately 30 semistructured interviews with Nigerian immigrants; and a collection of articles from numerous
Nigerian-American newspapers, Internet forums, and other works written by some of the
project’s participants. A total of 40 Nigerian associations were found, including three professionbased (lawyers, social workers and nurses), six interest-based (youth, soccer, etc.), and 31
hometown or ethnicity-based associations. The 12 association-leader interviews were conducted
with two organizations that aid newly arrived immigrants to settle, and 10 hometown or
ethnicity-based associations, including Yoruba, Igbo, and some smaller ethnic groups.
The association interviews probed the goals of different associations and their
membership composition, their establishment and funding, and obstacles encountered in their
operation. The survey collected information on demographic characteristics, socioeconomic
indicators, labor and migration history, and participation in Nigerian and American activities.
Sampling took place in one or more branches of 10 different churches, including Catholic,
Adventist, Apostolic, and various Christian denominations that originated in Nigeria. For this
article the variables used are: sex, age, marital status, ethnicity, educational level, annual income,
type of employment, number of years in the U.S., visa of entry, U.S. and Nigerian citizenship
status, participation in Nigerian and American associations, voting in Nigerian and American
elections, and whether respondent routinely follows political news from Nigeria and the United
54
States. Table 1 describes the survey sample. Finally, the immigrant interviews included a set of
questions regarding membership and roles in diverse Nigerian or American associations.
Table 1: Survey Sample Description
Variables (N=83)
Sex
Male
Female
69.51%
30.49%
Mean
Range
44.96
19 – 75
Yoruba
Igbo
Bini
77.11%
8.43%
6.02%
Age
Ethnicity
Edo
Other
4.82%
3.61%
Marital Status
Single
Married
Other
14.63%
79.27%
6.1%
Education
High School/2yr College
College
12.20%
46.34%
Post-College
Other
37.80%
3.66%
Self-Employed
Wage Laborer
Non-Wage Work/Other
13.16%
75.00%
11.84%
Type of Job
Income ($)
<30,000
30,000 – 60,000
>60,000
31.88%
43.48%
24.64%
Tourist
Student
Green Card
Refugee
Religious
Other
51.90%
11.39%
25.32%
2.53%
2.53%
6.33%
Entry Visa
Years in the U.S.
Mean
Range
U.S. Citizen
Yes
No
Nigerian Citizen
Yes
No
Nigerian
Association
Member
Yes
No
U.S. Association
Member
Yes
No
Votes in Nigerian
Elections
Yes
No
Votes in U.S.
Elections
Yes
No
Follows Nigerian
News
Yes
No
Follows U.S.
News
Yes
No
14.15
<1 – 36
87.65%
12.35%
84.93%
15.07%
52.00%
48.00%
29.58%
70.42%
11.59%
88.41%
50.00%
50.00%
84.00%
16.00%
94.59
5.41%
55
Results
Nigerians participate in multiple transnational activities. Some of these behaviors
including transnational entrepreneurship and remittances (which virtually every Nigerian sends
home) are primarily economic and will not be discussed here. Other activities, while often
entailing an economic aspect, are more politically oriented and they include voting behavior and
membership in different associations.
Six survey variables are used as indicators of political transnationalism: regularly keeping
up with Nigerian or American political news, voting in Nigerian or American elections and
membership in Nigerian or U.S. associations. Following American or Nigerian political news is a
measure of how invested people are in the events of the two countries; in the case of the U.S., it
serves as a loose measure of acculturation, and for Nigeria, as a measure of the retention of ties
to the home country. Table 2 depicts the cross-tabulations of sex, age, ethnicity, marital status,
education, job type, income, entry visa, years in the U.S., and citizenship status with the interest
in political news. Because some cell counts are low, not all results are considered. Despite this
data limitation, some patterns do emerge.
Table 2: Percent that Regularly Follow Nigerian or U.S. Political News
(N in parenthesis)
Nigerian News
(Total: 84.00%)
U.S. News
(Total: 94.50%)
Male
Female
92.45 (49)
63.64 (14)
100.00 (49)
84.00 (21)
Mean
46.69 (49)
44.30 (54)
Bini
Edo
Igbo
Yoruba
Other
100.00 (4)
100.00 (4)
100.00 (6)
81.03 (58)
66.67 (3)
100.00 (2)
100.00 (4)
100.00 (6)
93.22 (59)
100.00 (3)
Single
Married
Other
55.56 (5)
88.52 (54)
75.00 (3)
100.00 (11)
93.22 (55)
100.00 (3)
87.50 (7)
74.29 (26)
93.43 (27)
100.00 (7)
96.15 (32)
100.00 (28)
100.00 (6)
87.04 (47)
77.78 (7)
100.00 (7)
96.15 (52)
100.00 (9)
Sex
Age
Ethnicity
Marital Status
Education
College
Post-College
Type of Job
Self-Employed
Wage Laborer
Non-Wage Work/Other
56
Table 2 (cont’d): Percent that Regularly Follow Nigerian or U.S. Political News
(N in parenthesis)
Income ($)
<30,000
30,000 – 60,000
>60,000
85.71 (18)
81.48 (22)
93.33 (14)
100.00 (19)
93.10 (27)
93.33 (14)
Tourist
Student
Green Card
Refugee
Religious
Other
77.78 (28)
77.78 (7)
89.47 (17)
100.00 (1)
100.00 (2)
100.00 (4)
91.67 (33)
87.50 (7)
100.00 (18)
100.00 (1)
100.00 (2)
100.00 (5)
Mean
13.97 (61)
13.39 (68)
Yes
No
84.38 (54)
80.00 (8)
93.75 (60)
100.00 (9)
Yes
No
85.96 (49)
80.00 (8)
92.73 (51)
100.00 (11)
Entry Visa
Years in the U.S.
U.S. Citizen
Nigerian Citizen
Overall, across categories respondents were more likely to regularly follow U.S. versus
Nigerian political news. This is not surprising considering they live primarily in the U.S. To
follow Nigerian news requires some additional effort, although Nigerian-American newspapers
are readily found in Nigerian churches and businesses throughout the city. Men were more likely
than women to follow the news in either country. Those married were the most likely to follow
Nigerian news, as were those with the highest education, those with the highest incomes, and the
self-employed. Finally, those who entered the U.S. on a tourist or student visa are the least likely
to follow any news at all. For students, this may reflect their younger age. Those with tourist
visas overstayed their permitted time, and may currently remain on undocumented status.
A second indicator of political transnationalism is voting behavior. The Nigerian
constitution recognizes dual citizenship and immigrants do not have to renounce their Nigerian
citizenship even after becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. For this reason, they can be eligible to
vote in both countries. Table 3 depicts the cross-tabulations of sex, age, ethnicity, marital status,
education, job type, income, entry visa, years in the U.S., and citizenship status with voting
behavior.
57
Table 3: Percent that Vote in Nigerian or U.S. Elections
(N in parenthesis)
Vote in Nigeria
(Total: 11.59%)
Vote in U.S.
(Total: 50.00%)
12.77% (6)
9.09% (2)
47.83% (22)
54.55% (12)
44.50 (4)
49.10 (29)
Bini
Edo
Igbo
Yoruba
Other
0.00% (0)
0.00% (0)
0.00% (0)
14.55% (8)
0.00% (0)
50.00% (1)
75.00% (2)
50.00% (3)
50.00% (27)
33.33% (1)
Single
Married
Other
25.00% (2)
10.17% (6)
0.00% (0)
12.50% (1)
53.45% (31)
100.00% (1)
0.00% (0)
12.50% (4)
14.81% (4)
50.00% (3)
34.38% (11)
65.38% (17)
33.33% (2)
10.20% (5)
11.11% (1)
16.67% (1)
54.17% (26)
66.67% (6)
17.65% (3)
0.00% (0)
18.75% (3)
31.25% (5)
73.08% (19)
56.25% (9)
9.38% (3)
12.5% (1)
11.11% (2)
0.00% (0)
0.00% (0)
0.00% (0)
51.61% (16)
75.00% (6)
44.45% (8)
0.00% (0)
50.00% (1)
40.00% (2)
10.67 (6)
19.59 (34)
11.67% (7)
0.00% (0)
56.67% (34)
0.00% (0)
11.32% (6)
0.00% (0)
50.00% (26)
70.00% (7)
Sex
Male
Female
Age
Mean
Ethnicity
Marital Status
Education
College
Post-College
Type of Job
Self-Employed
Wage Laborer
Non-Wage Work/Other
Income ($)
<30,000
30,000 – 60,000
>60,000
Entry Visa
Tourist
Student
Green Card
Refugee
Religious
Other
Years in the U.S.
Mean
U.S. Citizen
Yes
No
Nigerian Citizen
Yes
No
Overall, across all categories respondents were more likely to vote in U.S. versus
Nigerian elections. A high proportion (almost 88%) of the Nigerians surveyed are naturalized
U.S. citizens. While this is not representative of broader naturalization trends, it serves to explain
the U.S. voting behavior of the sample. More importantly, Nigerians cannot vote in Nigerian
elections from abroad through the embassies, so voting in Nigerian elections requires time and
money to travel. Men are more likely than women to vote in both the U.S. and Nigeria, as are
those with the highest educational level. The self-employed are the most likely to vote in
58
Nigerian elections, but the least likely to vote in U.S. elections. Many self-employed Nigerians
engage in transnational trade and travel frequently to Nigeria. At the same time, self-employment
is a viable economic opportunity for many immigrants who are not legally in the U.S., which
may explain why they cannot and do not vote in American elections. Unsurprisingly, those with
the lowest earnings are the least likely to vote in either country’s elections. Those who do vote in
American elections have on average been in the U.S. longer, which reflects their eligibility to do
so, as immigrants cannot become naturalized until many years after their arrival. Interestingly,
only about 57% of naturalized Nigerian immigrants claim to vote in U.S. elections.
Finally, the survey contained a third indicator of political transnationalism: membership
in Nigerian or U.S. associations. Overall, respondents were more likely to be involved in
Nigerian versus U.S. associations. Of 40 Nigerian associations I encountered during fieldwork,
three are profession-based associations (lawyers, nurses and social workers), six represent
particular interests (women, youth, soccer, elite clubs), and the remaining 31 are hometown or
ethnicity-based. In their study, Orozco and Rouse (2007) found that 16% of Nigerian immigrants
belong to hometown associations. In my survey 52% of respondents claimed membership in
some Nigerian association, hometown or otherwise. Table 4 depicts the cross-tabulations of sex,
age, ethnicity, marital status, education, job type, income, entry visa, years in the U.S., and
citizenship status with association membership.
Table 4: Percent that Participate in Nigerian or U.S. Associations
(N in parenthesis)
Nigerian Association
(Total: 52.00%)
U.S. Association
(Total: 29.58%)
54.72% (29)
45.45% (10)
35.29% (18)
15.00% (3)
47.61 (31)
47.56 (18)
Bini
Edo
Igbo
Yoruba
Other
40.00% (2)
0.00% (0)
40.00% (2)
59.32% (35)
0.00% (0)
33.33% (3)
0.00% (3)
16.67% (6)
32.14% (56)
33.33% (3)
Single
Married
Other
33.33% (3)
54.84% (34)
33.33% (1)
33.33% (3)
27.59% (16)
33.33% (1)
37.50% (3)
57.14% (20)
51.72% (15)
33.33% (2)
15.63% (5)
44.83% (13)
75.00% (6)
50.00% (26)
66.66% (6)
16.67% (1)
29.41% (15)
62.50% (5)
35.00% (7)
50.00% (13)
85.71% (12)
27.78% (5)
25.93% (7)
43.75% (7)
Sex
Male
Female
Age
Mean
Ethnicity
Marital Status
Education
College
Post-College
Type of Job
Self-Employed
Wage Laborer
Non-Wage Work/Other
Income ($)
<30,000
30,000 – 60,000
>60,000
59
Table 4 (cont’d): Percent that Participate in Nigerian or U.S. Associations
(N in parenthesis)
Nigerian Association
(Total: 52.00%)
U.S. Association
(Total: 29.58%)
61.11% (22)
44.44% (4)
38.89% (7)
100.00% (1)
0.00% (0)
40.00% (2)
32.35% (11)
44.44% (4)
22.22% (4)
0.00% (0)
0.00% (0)
20.00% (1)
16.53 (38)
20.14 (21)
Yes
No
56.25% (36)
30.00% (3)
32.79% (20)
11.11% (7)
Yes
No
56.90% (33)
40.00% (4)
30.91% (17)
40.00% (4)
Entry Visa
Tourist
Student
Green Card
Refugee
Religious
Other
Years in the U.S.
Mean
U.S. Citizen
Nigerian Citizen
Men are more likely than women to be involved in both Nigerian and U.S. associations,
as are those in the highest income bracket. Those who are married are more likely to be in a
Nigerian association, but they are the least likely to be in an U.S. association. Those with the
highest education are most likely to be in an U.S. association, and the least educated are least
likely to be in a Nigerian association. The self-employed are the most likely to be in a Nigerian
association but the least likely to be in a U.S. association. Those in U.S. associations have on
average resided in the U.S. longer, which suggests that participation in American associations
increases with acculturation. Finally, naturalized U.S. citizens are the most likely to be involved
in both Nigerian and U.S. associations, but those who retain their Nigerian citizenship are the
least likely to be in a U.S. association.
It is important to highlight here the limitations of the survey data. First, because of
sampling limitations these data apply only to various Christian groups, and some bias is
introduced in this way. Second, the sample is skewed towards those of Yoruba ethnicity, men,
the married, and naturalized citizens. These findings should therefore not be taken as
representative of all Nigerian immigrants in the city or the U.S. Nonetheless, these descriptive
survey results reveal some general patterns that are worth noting. First, in general, respondents
are more involved in American elections and follow American political news more than Nigerian
ones, but they are more likely to be in a Nigerian association than an American one. This
suggests that participation in a Nigerian association is a good indicator of transnational political
participation. Second, men and those with higher education and incomes are most likely to
participate in both American and Nigerian political arenas, indicating the importance of gender
and class for transnationalism. Third, the self-employed are the most likely to participate in
Nigerian associations, vote in Nigerian elections and follow Nigerian political news, yet they are
the least likely to exhibit U.S.–oriented political behavior. The importance of associations, men,
those with higher education and income, and the self-employed also becomes evident in the
60
qualitative interview responses. These interviews also provide further evidence of the
motivations, means and constraints of political engagement in Nigeria and the U.S.
Nigerian Associations
Nigerian associations in New York City vary in size and scope. Some associations,
particularly those representing the more numerous and powerful ethnic groups in Nigeria, have
hundreds of members and are able to accomplish multiple and larger projects. Others,
specifically the hometown associations of some minority ethnic groups, are much smaller and
carry out projects of smaller scope. The larger associations have several chapters in the U.S., and
convene at an annual convention. As a male respondent, who was a member of one of the largest
ethnic associations, described:
I come from the Yoruba tribe so we have an association [of Yoruba people], the New
York chapter. So it is an association that provides a platform for Yorubas to come
together and be able to see what we can do to encourage our children to the African,
Nigerian and Yoruba culture, and also see how we can preserve, you know, all the ideals
of our tradition. So it has a number of events like coronation ceremonies you know, for
high school and graduate students. We try to encourage them and give them awards so we
can encourage them. We also have scholarship programs to send back to Nigeria so we
can help schools and students. We also have what we call the Yoruba day, it’s a day
where we showcase all our culture to people, all the things we do back home, the food,
the dress, you know, it’s for Yoruba and outsiders.
Many respondents echoed the sentiments in the statement. Associations are often
categorized as being involved in “cultural” activities, but their scope is much broader. Nigerian
associations conduct activities both in the U.S. and in Nigeria. The main activities in Nigeria
involve philanthropic projects, including scholarships for students to attend a Nigerian
university, donating hospital equipment, conducting vaccination campaigns and repairing main
roads. More importantly, these activities often involve coordination with state or local Nigerian
governments, linking association members to the political structure in multiple ways. A male
respondent from a large hometown association explained:
We work hand in hand with the government, the state government at home. And every
year we introduce a couple of programs. We had one medical mission. One medical
mission every year, a team of doctors and nurses and medical personnel. We treat [the
patients] for free and we give them medication free. We also have an educational
mission. We try to give them, the people, scholarships and so on. We are also very strong
on the issue of good governance. We are very mindful of the way the government is run.
And we send people there to see how the government is, how it is governing. And when
we see anything wrong we are very critical. We make a report. And so now, the state
government is very conscious of us. And they work hand in hand with us.
The previous statement suggests at least two ways in which U.S.–based Nigerian
associations are politically involved in Nigeria. First, projects aimed at developing local regions
—scholarships, medical missions, road construction, etc.—are coordinated with local authorities.
In fact, some of the projects fulfill the work that should be carried out by the local authorities.
Second, some associations further act as overseers of local and state governments, a role that is
often conflictive.
61
Motivations
While most Nigerian associations help out their communities of origin, a few were
created specifically to help out Nigerian immigrants in the U.S. One of these associations is run
by a single person who has a network of lawyers, doctors and priests ready to provide free
services, counseling and temporary housing to Nigerians who cannot locate their contact person
when they move to New York City, or simply become lost in its bureaucracy. Part of their
motivation was that many newcomers requested aid to the Nigerian consulate but were unable to
obtain it. The director recounted:
I have three calls that came in today. One of them was some Nigerian visiting. They had
this little child who had sickle cell anemia, you see what I’m saying? How can this
organization help? Well, this organization cannot help because we don’t have the means
to help. How about the Nigerian consulate? No, the Nigerian consulate will not be able to
help because they are not funded for that. Now, what else can we do? Well, I can do one
thing and that is find them a place to stay.
Both the associations aimed at immigrants and those whose activities focus on Nigerian
hometowns work to fill what their leadership perceive as a gap left by Nigerian authorities, both
at home and in their diplomatic representations abroad. This role has developed over time, for
the associations were first established to help immigrants acclimate to their new society. One
respondent explained:
Back then [when he migrated] we do not have any constituted body as a mentor.
Whatever kind of mentoring you get is on a one-to-one basis, maybe friends or you
know, acquaintances. But we formed this association so that we would be seen as an
African society authentic group, a group of professional people dedicated to the cause of
Africans. Back then in the ’80s it was just . . . we couldn’t identify one. So that was what
motivated us to set things up.
Another form of political participation in the U.S. is voting. While the survey shows that
only 57% of Nigerians eligible to vote in the U.S. do so, respondents credited the transparency in
the electoral process in the U.S. with encouraging them to vote. Nigerian immigrant newspapers
further motivate involvement in American political processes and voting. One editorial urged
naturalized immigrants to vote because “immigrants have been devolved to the state of a thirdclass citizen of America, and to reverse this immigrants must speak with a loud voice in the next
presidential election” (Editorial, 2008a). Another newspaper reminded Nigerians that while their
experiences with Nigerian elections have likely been negative, given the extent to which
elections are rigged, this should not keep them from voting in American elections (Editorial,
2008b).
Associations geared towards their hometowns cited a widespread perceived need for help
in Nigeria as their primary motivation. One respondent recounted how the first governor of his
state after the end of military rule in Nigeria was corrupt and inefficient:
The schools were closed for a year. The infrastructure was bad, the roads were not good,
the hospitals had doctors and nurses who were not accredited. Everything was just really
going terribly wrong. Nothing was working. And so that was the thing that made us form
the organization. Because if you go at home people were crying for help, our families
were asking us [those who live abroad] to help.
62
Although few individuals spoke directly about it, some association leaders have also used
their work to increase their political clout in their hometowns, and some plan to return to govern
themselves. One informant did admit “[ . . . ] we are trying to expand and seek public office.”
Motivations for participating in activities in Nigeria or geared towards the Nigerian
community are numerous. They range from individual benefit (such as those who plan on
running for governor in Nigeria), group benefit (reproduction of Nigerian culture in the U.S.) and
altruistic (alleviating the problems faced by families and communities in Nigeria). The
motivations for participating in the U.S., however, are fewer and are encouraged by a few
community leaders and through media like the local Nigerian immigrant newspapers.
Means
For Nigerian immigrants, living abroad is the single most important means to participate
politically in their home country. Those who reside in the U.S., even with modest incomes, are
usually better off financially than they were in their communities of origin and they use that
advantageous position to leverage political influence. As a male respondent explained:
I go to the [local Nigerian] government and say look, I make so much money. I can make
some contributions to your campaign, so you take care of me, take care of the things I
care about. Now I can do that because I am right here in the United States. If I make a lot
of money or win the lottery I can go to my government and say I’m going to give you
half. Do not forget that the whole thing is in the social status of everybody. Your social
status is determined by power. Now what is power? You can have lots of money and buy
up everything.
The previous statement helps to explain why in the survey, those with greater education
and incomes had greater rates of participation in Nigerian associations. While many respondents
discussed the power of money, it is clear that not every Nigerian immigrant is wealthy enough to
have such influence over local Nigerian politics. Nonetheless, the importance of being relatively
wealthy by working abroad was echoed in multiple interviews. One respondent further links
money and remittances to increased political power for family members who remain back home:
The people over here have more money than people back home. So, the people over here
have an advantage, what can you do? Things are changing, now when people come over
here, their lifestyle change. Don’t forget also, you left to improve your life. So once
you’re here, you really improve your life, you’re not going to go back. And one of the
things even the governor [in Nigeria] is now finding out, there are now people here
asking, why is this governor doing this. They are looking for the guys who send
[remittances], because the relatives back home depend on the people over here to send
money. You might say, why is this important to the governor? Because the people over
here would tell you, when I send money home, I tell [the relatives] who to go to. So the
governor can get some of the people here to back him, and the people over here now have
to decide who to back and to tell their relatives who to back. Oh yes, people over here are
really involved.
The Nigerian immigrant community’s importance is evident in their relationship with
their hometown and state leaders. Not only are immigrants courted during electoral campaigns,
but governors travel to the U.S. to meet with the larger associations and participate in their
annual conventions. Those who are politically involved take the opportunity of those visits to
influence Nigerian policies. One respondent commented:
63
Even the present governor, of the state, he has not been able to govern well. So now, he
knows what the problems are, so he was here [in New York City] about a month ago, so
we pointed out to him that education and other areas needed work.
In addition to the status granted by wealth, living abroad also gives immigrants the
freedom to confront the local Nigerian governments without fear of repercussions. As one
informant explained:
There was nobody who could criticize the government, nobody who could take a neutral
stance. Everybody wanted to get in the good graces of the government and so we needed
this outside independent voice. In that we are [in the U.S.] we are not beholden to the
government of Nigeria, they are not paying us, we are not under their payroll, we don’t
need their money, we are professionals here so it’s easier for us to take independent
positions. That’s what we’ve been doing.
One association of people from a southeastern Igbo state stands out as playing the most
direct political role, one that doesn’t involve support for specific political parties, but instead
entails a commitment to fighting corruption. A key goal of this association is ensuring good
governance of their home state. They strive to be independent and objective and in the process of
confronting their state government they foresaw conflict. Association leaders claim that is part of
their job, and credit their status as Nigerians living in the U.S. as enabling them to fulfill their
goals. One former association president recounted a specific incident where association leaders
confronted a former governor and prevented him from running for re-election:
There was a lot of conflict […] and so I went to Nigeria to visit his [the governor’s]
office, and at the end of the day after discussing with him he stormed out of his office and
wouldn’t say . . . he said that he was going somewhere, he wouldn’t talk to us again. And
we then went to the press and denounced him and after we did that, that gave the people
the courage. And then people started criticizing him and that eventually led to his
downfall, so, when they had another election, he wasn’t, he couldn’t run because people
now had condemned him.
After a conflictive period with the government they accused of corruption, association
members are now called to act as international observers of local elections, and they host local
leaders at their national convention in the U.S. The work of this association stands out in
comparison to that of smaller associations: it holds the government responsible for carrying out
its duties, and it does not create long-term dependency on immigrants abroad to supplement the
work of the local government.
Finally, newspapers and other means of communications are crucial to the successful
operation of the multiple Nigerian immigrant associations. Newspapers serve to recruit members
to different associations and to announce scheduled meetings. Larger events are publicized in the
“African High Society” pages. Newspapers also encourage transnationalism by providing articles
on everything from how to make money in the Nigerian stock market (Nwankpa, 2007), to
announcing local visits by Nollywood stars and publishing the results of local elections in
Nigeria.
The Internet has been used by other immigrant groups as an important space for political
activity (Bretell, 2008). Nigerians do not rely on this resource much. Association websites are
often outdated and provide little information regarding their work. Some Nigerian-Americans do
use Internet forums to write political columns, and some discussion is held in Internet forums.
One of these is www.nairaland.com, where Nigerians at home and abroad sometimes engage in
64
heated debate. Some of larger associations do make use of communications technology in other
ways. As one respondent explains:
We don’t even have to meet by committee, we do what is also called teleconferencing.
We call into a place, we talk, and then we have the meeting. With this system, the whole
group participates, Austria, Germany, England, France, China, they are in it. So once I
type something, all of them get it. The good is that everybody can get it. We are still
trying to make it strong and we are still looking for people. And one of the problems we
are having, it’s a universal problem, is timing and scheduling.
Constraints
Some constraints also exist to deter transnational political activity. For immigrants
wanting to participate in Nigeria, even when they can afford the trip back to Nigeria, corruption
and lack of faith in the electoral system impede participation. As one respondent stated:
There are some leaders [in Nigeria] who misbehave during the elections and betray the
trust of the people.
Some associations, particularly those wanting to be seen as objective and neutral, are
discouraged from collecting too many public funds or carrying out certain projects for fear of
being deemed too partisan:
We are careful not to do too much so we are still seen as independent, and be able to
remain a constructive political voice. In other words, there are certain things that we
don’t do so it doesn’t become too political. We tend to have to find a balance.
Other associations further deal with internal problems, particularly members who do not
pay their dues, and poor leadership. Even in associations with large membership, participation
for the majority is reduced to paying dues and attending meetings and events. For two
associations that provided me their accounting documents, dues are the single most important
source of financing. As one respondent explained:
Certain chapters don’t have good leadership, and so are not being able to meet their
obligations. Each chapter is supposed to pay a due. If we want to do something like, in a
year we want to go on a medical mission then we will levy the chapters. We’ll say the
chapters pay a few thousand, so a problem that has come out of these chapters is not
being able to meet up with these payments, with their obligations. Under our constitution,
if you don’t pay, then for instance you can’t vote and you cannot be voted for, and you
cannot be an officer, and some other things. To the extent that there’s been problems, we
have come to these chapters, you know, they want something out of nothing. And they
are not able to meet their obligations.
Participation in the U.S. is hindered first and foremost by lack of residency or citizenship.
This situation might change as Nigerians continue to receive large numbers of the diversity visas
and migrate as permanent residents. A few informants felt like being black was an additional
obstacle in the U.S. that did they not face in Nigeria. As one individual explained:
Our motivation, in some ways, cannot adapt itself to a complicated society like America,
especially New York. You see, it’s hard whether you are Dominican, Spanish, African or
black American. If you are black it makes no difference. Everyone sees you as “black.”
65
Finally, one informant who has been in the U.S. for several decades, and has been
consistently in the leadership of his association, believes that newer generations of Nigerian
immigrants will become less politically involved in either the U.S. or Nigeria because they are
only focused on acquiring wealth and not on effecting social change. According to him,
People who come now, are mostly not educated. And they are not educationally inclined.
They are not coming here to get an education, they are probably coming here to look for a
job, no matter what to get employment. I mean, to maybe drive a cab, whatever. Now
that’s totally different from when we came. When we came here, you were coming
specifically to go to school. Most of us finished high school, some had gone to university.
Whoever came here, for the most part, were coming to go to school. And they already
had arranged where they wanted to go and how long it was going to take them. You
know, program and so on. And the plan was to graduate and go back. But people who
come now, most of them, quite frankly are just hustlers. You know they are just hustling
for existence. It’s a totally different outlook, consequently the Nigerians today, a lot of
them come and they don’t even bother to go to school, you know.
He continues to explain that many of the immigrants who returned to Nigeria in the
1960s and ’70s after studying in the U.S. eventually migrated again to the U.S. after being
disappointed by the political turmoil in Nigeria. According to him, for those immigrants the
original desire to build the Nigerian state motivates their political involvement in Nigeria and the
U.S. The newer generations, however, are only focused on making a living for themselves.
Conclusions
This article outlines some of the motivations, means and constraints to transnational
political behavior among Nigerian immigrants in New York City. While the scholarly debate
surrounding immigrant transnationalism revolves around the scope and pervasiveness of such
activities, I sought to explore the context under which such behavior occurs. The survey findings
and the qualitative interviews suggest the importance of gender, class and acculturation for
understanding political transnationalism among Nigerian immigrants (see Table 5 for a summary
of findings).
66
Table 5: Summary of Motivations, Means and Constraints for Political Participation
in Nigeria and the United States
Motivations
U.S.
- Interview responses indicate that
transparency in the political process
facilitates voting. They also suggest a
need to intervene in the settlement
process of new immigrants in the U.S.
- Nigerian immigrant newspapers
encourage involvement in American
politics and voting.
Means
- Naturalization a prerequisite to
voting.
- Survey data suggest the importance of
gender and class.
Nigeria
- Interview responses signal the
importance of perceived needs of
home communities and family
requests for intervention. They also
depict how associations supplement
the work of the Nigerian government.
- Social status (and possibly political
clout) gained by participating.
- Interview responses indicate that
residing in the U.S. gives
independence from local Nigerian
governments. Also, money and status
of living abroad gives power to
influence. Communications
technology facilitates coordination of
associations’ work.
- Survey data suggest the importance
of gender and class. Being selfemployed also facilitates participation.
- Newspapers serve to recruit members
to associations, inform of political
situation in Nigeria, advertise
candidates’ platforms, etc.
Constraints
- Interviews suggest the importance for
some of perceived racism in the U.S.
Also, being an immigrant reduces
social status enjoyed in Nigeria.
Respondents employed in the local
(NYC) government fear participating in
overt political activity.
- Survey data indicate lower
participation rates among the selfemployed. This may be associated with
their legal status or the nature of their
work. Women, those with lower
incomes and education participate less,
too.
- Interviews indicate lack of trust in
the political system and fears that
accusations of partisanship will hinder
association programs and activities.
Internal problems within associations
(leadership, unpaid dues, etc.) also
impede their work.
- Survey indicates that women, those
with lower incomes and education
participate less.
News readership, voting behavior and membership in associations were used as
indicators of transnationalism in the survey. According to the survey, men were more likely than
women to regularly follow both Nigerian and U.S. news, to vote in Nigeria or the U.S., and to be
members of either Nigerian or American associations. In addition, the leadership of the
associations I encountered consisted almost exclusively of men, and all the association members
who granted me interviews were men. The individuals I met or was told about who sought
election in Nigeria were all men as well. Given that the political involvement of Nigerian
67
immigrants is greatly facilitated by their leadership roles in associations, most of this activity is
the domain of men.
The importance of social class is also highlighted by the survey and interview data. In the
survey, respondents in the highest education category were the most likely to follow Nigerian
news, to vote in Nigerian or U.S. elections and to be members of an American association (when
membership rates in American associations are low to begin with). Those in the lowest education
category (two-year college or below) were the least likely to belong to a Nigerian association,
despite the high overall rate of Nigerian association membership. Similarly, those in the highest
earnings category ($60,000 or higher) were most likely to follow Nigerian news and most likely
to vote in either country’s elections. Those in the lowest earnings category were the least likely
to vote at all.
The importance of class is also evident from the qualitative interviews. One factor that
enables Nigerian immigrants to become politically involved in their communities of origin is
their condition as immigrants. Residing in the U.S. gives them access to earnings that are greater
than what they received in Nigeria, granting them social status there. In addition, because they do
not reside in Nigeria, they have the power to criticize local governments or carry out different
projects and campaigns with no fear of retribution. The amount of status and power conferred to
them, however, is likely to increase as their wealth increases, too. In addition, not all associations
are created equal, and those with a larger membership and wealthier members are able to carry
out more ambitious projects. Technology and advertisement in media further facilitates the work
of associations; individuals with higher education and wealth are most able to access these
means. While residing in the U.S. comparatively increases immigrants’ social class to the one
they held in Nigeria, respondents also perceived that it simultaneously undermined their ability
to participate civically in the U.S. Lack of citizenship, racism and immigrant status were
mentioned as constraints to political engagement in the U.S.
Finally, the data also imply the importance of acculturation as a predictor of political
transnationalism. In the survey, self-employed immigrants (as opposed to wage workers) were
the most likely to follow Nigerian news, to vote in Nigerian elections and to belong to a Nigerian
association. They were also the least likely to vote in U.S. elections or belong to American
associations. Because nearly all self-employed Nigerians in New York City are involved in
trading, it is possible that their frequent trips to Nigeria inhibit their acculturation into American
society. The survey also shows that Nigerians involved in American associations had on average
been longer in the U.S. than their counterparts who did not belong to an American association.
The importance of acculturation is also indicated by the interview data. More precisely,
the lack of acculturation seems related to the political involvement of Nigerian immigrants in
Nigeria. Associations were frequently created to preserve Nigerian culture among immigrants,
and more associations work in Nigeria than in the U.S. One respondent related acculturation to
immigrant cohort, complaining that more recent immigrant waves are less interested with staying
involved in their Nigerian hometowns and more preoccupied with “hustling,” or “making it” in
the U.S.
To better understand immigrant political transnationalism, studies must address the
conditions under which such behavior occurs. In this article, I have outlined some of the
motivating factors for political transnationalism, as well as the means that enable it and the
constraints to it. Future research can examine this more formally, and also address the actual
effects of immigrant political transnationalism for individuals and their communities of origin
and reception.
68
Notes
1
This article is based on research supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS-0718968) and
from the Department of Anthropology, Africana Research Center and the Research and Graduate Studies Office at
the Pennsylvania State University. The author wishes to thank all the Nigerians in New York City who took the time
to participate in her study. Erynn Casanova, Littisha Bates and Tayo Banjo at the University of Cincinnati provided
useful feedback on earlier versions of this article. All errors remain the responsibility of the author.
2
Only citizens of countries that sent less than 50,000 immigrants to the U.S. the previous year are eligible to
participate in the DV program.
3
The actual number of visas obtained by Nigerians per year are: 2002 (6,049); 2003 (5,989); 2004 (7,145); 2005
(6,725); 2006 (6,191); 2007 (9,849); 2008 (8,773); 2009 (6,041); 2010 (6,006); 2011 (6,000); 2012 (6,024); 2013
(6,218). Because of the actual cost of the visa and other expenses, this number does not represent the actual number
of Nigerian immigrants per year. On the other hand, those who do obtain permanent residency are subsequently
eligible to sponsor family members.
69
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2003).
Negotiating Development: Valuation of a Guesthouse Project in Southern Guinea-Bissau1
Brandon D. Lundy, PhD
Kennesaw State University
blundy@kennesaw.edu
Abstract
This paper provides a case study illustrating the crossroads between the agendas of
international/national economic development with that of the development objectives of local
communities. It shows how a community development project connects villagers to the larger
world – both practically and imaginatively. This study takes a single case, the process of
developing a guesthouse building project among the Nalú of southern Guinea-Bissau, to
illustrate how a local attempt to connect to the outside world is intersected by community
relations, NGOs, and development discourse. Through a community study using ethnographic
methodology including participant observation, interviews, and focus groups, the village under
investigation is shown to be engaged in a process of negotiated valuation in economic, cultural,
and globalized terms. The context of the guesthouse project is outlined, followed by the
revelation that although the project failed to accomplish what the developers had hoped, it did
succeed in enabling various members of the community to demonstrate what they valued, thus
asserting agency on their own terms.
Negotiating Development
73
Economic development discourse remains tied up in a debate between practice and
critical theory. Jeffrey H. Cohen and Norbert Dannhaeuser summarily submit, “We [in
anthropology] are left with a divided setting where anthropologists take stands either for (those
who practice) or against (those who critique) development, with little ground on which a
compromise can be reached or a more finessed position constructed. In such a setting, there is
little room for a general discussion of development, for an analysis of economic development as
a process” (2002, p. xi). This paper presents a case study of development negotiations in a small
village in the southernmost Tombali region of Guinea-Bissau, ethnically divided between the
Nalú autochthones and Balanta immigrants. The minority Nalú villagers (n=137), supported and
funded by a local NGO known as Nimba, constructed several guesthouses between 2007 and
2010 with the aim of operating a profitable business that would generate revenue for the Nalú
inhabitants, the premise being, “If you build it, they will come.” This paper traces how this
particular site-specific struggle to build guesthouses was influenced by customary values and
localized perceptions of capitalist modernity and how this tension affected established patterns of
community relations, thus providing a treatise between theory and practice.
The first step in bridging the gap between practice and theory includes an examination of
identity. I suggest that the politics of identity can be exposed through the documentation of
economic practice as a public spectacle that affirms, colludes, challenges, and makes meaning
out of diverse cultural articulations of economic investments and development (Crewe &
Axelby, 2012; Crewe & Harrison, 1999; Escobar, 2011; Ferguson, 1997; Grillo & Stirrat, 1997;
Gupta & Ferguson, 1992; Pottier & Sillitoe, 2003). In other words, examining the reality of
ongoing engagement and negotiation can expose competing perceptions and agendas between
various actors as they relate to a specific project. These negotiations take place between actors
with vested interests, power differentials, and shifting values, which can lead to the pursuit of
development projects with stereotypical agendas such as aiming to bring locals into some sort of
modern present. What is needed, and what anthropologists can provide, is further clarity about
how development workers perceive locals, how locals perceive economic development, and,
ultimately, how these perceptions are articulated in practice. According to Jonathan Friedman
(1992), the attribution of meaning, in this case, various stakeholders assigning value(s) to a
particular type of development project, is a motivated practice that comes from different sources
(i.e., customary, economic, modernizing, etc.).
In the circumstance of the guesthouse project, there needed to be buy-in from many
stakeholders: the neighborhood to supply the labor and in-kind materials (through negotiations
between elders, youth, males, and females); the families responsible for the site where the project
was to be situated; the spiritual inhabitants of the land, represented by the secret societies; the
other ethnic groups occupying the larger community (e.g., the majority Balanta, n=545); the
organizational liaisons and interlocutors (i.e., NGO Nimba); and the project funders (i.e., IFAD).
Building on Friedman’s argument, Robert C. Ulin (2004) argues that there are many stakeholders
engaged in a particular event such as the construction of guesthouses and that these
constituencies operate within unbalanced “fields of power that position human agents
differentially” (p. 153). These power differentials can affect the decision-making processes
associated with the event in both anticipated and unanticipated ways, as is shown below through
the discussion of the implementation of the development project.
Based on ethnographic fieldwork begun in 2007, this paper considers the conceptions of
valuation of development and moves the discourse away from the objective patterning of reality
toward the subjective realm of ongoing negotiations. This paper, then, uses a single case study
74
approach related to a finite event, the construction of guesthouses, as an example of community
and economic development, to speak to value formation. Valuation is discussed as a process of
engagement between conceptions of custom (e.g., autochthony, inheritance laws, traditional
religion) and perceptions of modernity (e.g., economic development, tourism). What emerges
then is a hybrid definition of global capitalism, the modification of which is attempted in order to
suit more localized needs. This negotiated hybrid understanding of economic development
strikes a tense balance between the local and global as it intersects with notions of power and
ownership. Because the amalgam understanding of economic development often privileges the
global perspective, the project did not adequately fit the local context and, by strict definition,
“failed.”
At the same time, although the project ultimately did not meet the initial intent of the
developers and community participants to bring in scores of tourists ready to pay top dollar for
the privilege to stay in the village, the project did encourage the articulation of a development
discourse within the community, allowing them to express valuation and, ultimately, agency (a
la Graeber 2001, 2005). From both methodological and theoretical perspectives, current,
ongoing, and complex engagements with stimuli and stakeholders over specific events, such as
the construction of a guesthouse, allows value trends to emerge that should be observable and
interpretable in the ethnographic record. In this case, a value trend is something expressed by one
or more of the stakeholders as something worth seeking (Graeber 2001, 2005) for its importance
in meeting needs (see Abraham Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs”).
This paper is divided in five sections. First, I present some background information on
the community under investigation. Second, I discuss my research methodology, addressing my
research question: How do negotiated practical and imaginative valuations of development result
in community development projects that may not fit local contexts? Third, I present the
development project as well as the various stakeholder interests while simultaneously discussing
value trends related to the development project. This serves as a window into a larger
understanding of social configurations and connectedness. I conclude by showing how this case
demonstrates that failures and successes of development depend on who the referent is and how
they value the initiative, process, and outcome (Crewe & Axelby, 2012; Crewe & Harrison,
1999).
Bissau, the Tombali Region, and the Research Village
The peoples of Guinea-Bissau have been linked in to the demands and vulnerabilities of
the global market for centuries through the colonial enterprise and most recently from
international fishing contracts and a reliance on the world market to sell locally grown cashews
(Lundy, 2012b, 2014). Throughout the Guinea-Bissau countryside, the agricultural sector is
economically beholden to the apparent whims of the world commodity markets, affecting local
communities’ livelihoods and development prospects. Fluctuations in the global price of cashews
directly impacts the country’s entire populace, with 85 percent of the population involved in
agriculture, 85-90 percent of the annual export revenues tied to raw cashew nuts, and more than
250,000 families participating in cashew farming (Lundy, 2012b, p. 36). Communities, therefore,
seek to mitigate the realities of the global market by seeking alternative “safety nets,” often to no
avail (Forrest, 1998; Lundy, 2009).
I purposefully use the idea of “community” as the previous sentence’s subject (as
opposed to “villagers,” “residents,” or “local citizens”) because many of the villages in rural
Guinea-Bissau remain deeply intertwined. For example, Guinea-Bissau’s rural land rights and
75
land use patterns are primarily unwritten, customary, and ethnically delineated. In the rural
Tombali region, for example, the land tenure system could be described as one part
autochthonous commons (i.e., based on primogeniture and ethnic/familial first settler rights), one
part colonial legacy and advancing privatization, and one part land use rights (i.e., partible to an
able bodied workforce). Decisions regarding land use then must be negotiated in both time and
space (i.e., based on customary norms and global perceptions).
Figure 1. Map of Guinea-Bissau. Source: Guinea Bissau, Map, UNITED NATIONS, June 2012.
The Republic of Guinea-Bissau borders the Casamance region of Senegal to the north
and Guinea Conakry to the south and east (Figure 1). Guinea-Bissau has a history of political
instability since gaining independence from the Portuguese in 1974; in fact, it is regularly noted
in the media that no president has successfully served a full five-year term in office. Similar in
size to Taiwan or Moldova, or slightly larger than Maryland, Guinea-Bissau has an estimated
population of 1.6 million people, an amalgam of more than 30 distinct ethnic groups, with the
two largest being the Balanta and Fula, each at about 30 percent. Nalú, the ethnic group under
investigation here, makes up less than 1 percent of the population, with no more than 25,000
Nalú worldwide, divided between Guinea-Bissau and Guinea Conakry (Castro, 2004; Passavant,
2000, p. 385). The official language of Guinea-Bissau is Portuguese, with a Kriol serving as a
majority of the country’s lingua franca.
The country is divided into eight regions plus the capital of Bissau (Figure 1). These
regions are then further subdivided into 37 distinct sectors. The southern region of Tombali,
administered from the town of Catió, is made up of the Bedanda, Cacine, Catió, and Quebo
sectors, many of which are considered the patrimonial territory of the Nalú ethnic group. The
76
guesthouse project under discussion occurred in a village of less than 700 inhabitants in the
southernmost sector of Cacine. This village is a majority (approximately 500) Balanta
transplants, who began moving into the village in 1939 and now inhabit four of the six
neighborhoods. Although the Balanta are the largest ethnic group in the country and are found
throughout Guinea-Bissau, Marina Padrão Temudo has described them as practicing an
“isolationist rationale” (2009, p. 49), valuing agricultural production over education. Balanta
elders maintain strict control in society, making the Balanta ethnic group fairly conservative and
insular in relation to many of the other ethnic groups of the country (Hawthorne, 2003; Temudo,
2009).
In contrast, the Nalú currently number less than 200 in the research community due to
processes of culture and language loss resulting from Susu-ization (i.e., Susu intermarriage and
assimilation), the Susu being the immediate and much larger ethnic neighbors of the Nalú, and
the out-migration and urbanization of Nalú youth seeking educational and work-related
opportunities not available in the semi-isolated rural community. Nalú conversion to Islam was
slow, historically, only catching on in the twentieth century, although today most Nalú selfidentify as Muslim. The Nalú are still thought to have the second most powerful traditional
religion in Guinea-Bissau, just behind the Bijagos of the Bissagos Archipelago off the coast.
Since the village under investigation is home to the primary Nalú sacred grove still frequented by
domestics and foreigners alike, the Nalú throughout the region refer to this village as the biku or
bellybutton of their people. The privileged position of the Nalú based on their spiritual heritage
has led to a unique form of tourism as well as a cultural conundrum in the village. The dilemma
stems from actively encouraging visitation to the sacred grove, the lack of practicing operators
for the traditional religion (due to conversion to Islam), and the burden of being “obligatorily
hospitable” according to their cultural customs, “giving over food, time, and even their beds to
guests” (Lundy, 2012c, p. 124).
When asked what they liked about the research village in southern Guinea-Bissau during
a focus group with ethnic Nalú male youths, they responded:
The ocean makes [the village] a better place to live than elsewhere. We have fresh
air blowing off the ocean, keeping the temperature lower than inland. Fish are
plentiful and easy to catch when necessary. Since our village is small and isolated,
whites might not like it here, … but our environment provides valuable resources.
The second best beach in all of Guinea-Bissau is located here. If this beach were
in Europe, we would have hotels and other businesses here. (Lundy, 2012c, p.
136)
This quote gathered in 2007 prognosticated the community’s desire to develop guesthouses along
the shore. Therefore, I was not entirely surprised when I returned to the village in 2010 to see
that four small guesthouses had been built (Figure 4). The perception of the community as an
environmental treasure and its centrality as a spiritual tourism destination put a heavy burden on
the Nalú community, one that some were looking to alleviate and potentially profit from. As will
be discussed, this valuation led to the proposal of the guesthouse development project under
consideration here.
Methodology
The information in this paper is based on approximately 12 months of ethnographic
fieldwork throughout Guinea-Bissau over a five-year period (2007-2011). Data was collected
through hundreds of hours of conversations with youth, elders, heads of households, merchants,
77
religious leaders, and development officials. Forty-one household surveys (100%) were
administered to collect demographic profile information and economic data on house
construction, land usage, gathering and agricultural practices, the raising of livestock, and
household cost of living. Participant observation and continuous monitoring of community
activities was used to develop rapport and note daily livelihood activities among men, women,
and children from throughout the community to enhance my contextual understanding of the
environment. More than 30 semi-structured interviews, group interviews, and focus groups were
used to follow up after observation sessions and surveys as a form of triangulation to crossreference and crosscheck collected data. In addition, a plethora of digital photographs and videos
were taken throughout the region to bolster observational data. Both the sponsoring home
institution as well as the National Research Institute in Guinea-Bissau (INEP) provided research
credentials. Being fluent in the lingua franca, I collected data in the local Kriol language with the
added assistance of a local research assistant. The research assistant was partially involved in the
guesthouse project, which was managed by Nimba, a local nongovernmental organization (NGO,
ONG in Portuguese) and funded through the International Fund for Agricultural Development
(IFAD, FIDA in Portuguese). Therefore, my research assistant offered unique insights alongside
Nimba’s director and the Nalú community, which sanctioned the project through several
community-wide meetings run by Nimba’s director. Eventually, these meetings led to the
consent of the heads of household to offer in-kind support of the project through labor and local
resources (including adobe, wood, sand, and the land on which to build the guesthouses). In
order to carry out the project, funding was needed since Nimba operated on soft money garnered
from international aid and development organizations.
Constructing the Guesthouse
IFAD’s slogan is “Enabling the rural poor to overcome poverty” (http://www.ifad.org/).
This international financial institution is a specialized agency of the United Nations dedicated to
eliminating poverty throughout the developing world, particularly concentrating on rural areas.
Through low-interest grants and loans, IFAD is responsible for developing and financing poverty
reduction and food security projects to empower vulnerable populations to overcome insecurities
on their own terms (viz. Sen, 1999). At the 91st session of IFAD in Rome, they approved a $4.7
million grant to go forward with a $5.6 million “Rural Rehabilitation and Community
Development Project” for the southern Quinara and Tombali regions of Guinea-Bissau
(President’s report, 2007). In 2010, $1.05 million supplementary funding was added, bringing
the total cost of the four-year project to $6.7 million (President’s memorandum, 2010). This was
the third attempt to work effectively in Guinea-Bissau, the first two projects being approved in
1983 and 1993, respectively. These initial projects were deemed to have performed poorly, with
many “lessons learned” to share with future projects (COSOP, 2003). Types of projects funded
in 2007 through the newest initiative included rehabilitating infrastructure such as 65 kilometers
of essential rural roads, improving basic social services, and strengthening grassroots
organizations by funding local NGOs such as Nimba directly (IFAD, 2014).
The 2007-2010 IFAD Rural Rehabilitation Community Development Project,
headquartered in Buba, targeted approximately 70 percent of the population in the southern
regions, which amounted to 13,000 rural poor households (i.e., <5 hectares of land according to
the Land Laws of Guinea-Bissau) or 100,000 persons total (President’s report, 2007, p. 2).
According to the 2007 President’s report:
78
The overall objective [of the IFAD project] is to reduce rural poverty by
improving the incomes and living conditions of the target group,
particularly through the valorization of natural resources and their
sustainable management. The specific aim is to enable target group
members to become major players in building the social fabric of their
communities and to strengthen their capacity to establish their priority
goals and then develop economic and social initiatives to realize them. (p.
2, emphasis added)
This statement is paramount to the current argument because it recognizes that stakeholders must
see the value in the development project if it is to “succeed” because success is defined by that
very same process of valorization. This statement also implies that the local community must
come to value “natural resources and their sustainable management” in a fashion similar to the
international community (i.e., they must develop value consensus). Based on observed inmigration, focus group data, and interviews, the Nalú already highly valued their land, natural
resources, and the sustainable management of those resources as both symbolic (i.e., tied to
ethnic identity and religion based on first-settler rights through spiritual contracts) and as
practical (i.e., rich with fish, rice fields, palm fruit, and cashew orchards). What was really at
stake concerning the “successful” implementation of projects such as those funded by IFAD,
even when selected by the communities themselves, was that there was an expected
accompanying affective shift in valorization toward, for example, the privatization of land, as an
exchangeable and individually held commodity that could then be “developed” economically.
The IFAD project dispersed funds through calls for proposals on a competitive basis
announced in the national press for two-year, renewable contracts. Participants were recruited
from select NGOs, public sector partners, and target group members. The project steering
committee was made up of “senior representatives of the … Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development, representatives of the regional Government administration, representatives of the
target population (half of these [being] women), and representatives of the NGOs/service
providers contracted to carry out the field work” (President’s report, 2007, p. 4). The local
community stakeholders, the neighbors, the families, the elders, and the ethnic groups (i.e., locals
that were to be “developed”) then met with the steering committee through its service provider
representatives, in this case, the NGO Nimba, to develop and advance specific initiatives tailored
to the identified needs of the people.
According to IFAD, “The project is the first-ever major investment project in Quinara
and Tombali and, despite its small size, is proving to be an important motor of development in
these two regions, … allowing more investments to be made in agricultural production, food
security, and other rural development activities directly benefiting IFAD’s target group in the
regions” (President’s memorandum, 2010, p. 1). The project activities were designed to “be built
around innovations proposed by participants themselves” (IFAD/54/07, 2007). NGO Nimba’s
proposal to construct the guesthouses in the research village was ultimately one of these IFADfunded ventures. But why was it proposed by the community as a “need” in the first place?
Just before the 1998-1999 civil unrest and eventual coup in the capital city of Bissau,
Italian investors were making a bid to build a small beachfront villa at the research site. After
extensive negotiations with the Nalú community elders, they were granted a tract of land and
began to import materials. However, once the fighting in the capital began, the project was halted
and never resumed. It is this initial interest, before my entrance into the research site in 2007,
that I believe sparked the community’s eventual proposal to build these guesthouses. Although
79
speculative, the fact that the Italian project was still discussed as a “what if” and as a “missed
opportunity” almost ten years after the project ceased is a good indication that it was still being
thought about by many in the village. Upon my arrival in March of 2007, the initial
conversations about moving forward with the guesthouse project had been completed between
Nimba’s director and Nalú community representatives (i.e., the heads of household from all three
lineages), and the next steps of securing a site and building materials was already underway. As
far as I could tell, the Balanta were excluded from these conversations from the beginning and
never participated in the project throughout the process. This Balanta exclusion will be discussed
further below.
To explore the rationale behind this and other Nimba directed projects, I decided to
interview Nimba’s director. The following information about Nimba and its operations came
from an interview on July 21, 2010, in his darkened living room in Bissau. I had already known
the director of Nimba for three years at this point, accompanying him when he would travel
south to manage his various projects, including the construction of the guesthouses. By 2010, the
guesthouses were complete, and he had begun other initiatives in other communities throughout
the Tombali region.
He began his story from his return to Bissau in 2000, after having fled to the countryside
during the 1998-1999 civil war that destroyed much of the capital city’s viable infrastructure. He
started working to develop the youth culture in Bissau until 2002, when he went north to Cacheu
to begin managing microcredit and fishing projects. He continued in this capacity until 2006,
when he submitted a proposal to IFAD aimed at developing food security in the rural south. That
same year, he created the NGO Nimba, aptly named for a female fertility statue/masquerade
found among several ethnic groups along the Upper Guinea-Coast. He dedicated his work to
expanding food security throughout the southern part of the country, which was his ethnic
homeland (being from Catio just across the Cacine river from the research village) and was once
considered the breadbasket of Guinea-Bissau (Smith-Morris & George, 2007, p. 584). Funds
were limited, so he was only able to hire a small staff including a driver and secretary. He was
also able to acquire a vehicle and office space in Catio once the funding was approved. Other
functionaries of Nimba were hired as consultants to advise on technical projects or run
workshops such as one on keeping fowl or another on rehabilitating paddy rice fields. He also
began to offer microcredit loans, distribute seed stock, and advocate for adult literacy campaigns.
He explained that since he could not predict the price of cashews in a given year, he instead
advocated for development through agricultural diversification as a protective strategy to slow
the dangerous trend of monocropping that had been gripping the nation during the preceding
three decades.
Nimba had ongoing projects throughout Tombali, including in the Cacine/Quitafine
sector, where he eventually built the guesthouses. His worry by the 2010 interview was that
while he had a number of ongoing and successful projects, the IFAD funding was set to expire
by 2011. According to IFAD, “The short life of the project (four years) permits a return to
operations in Guinea-Bissau and the testing of new approaches, with the possibility of an exit
opportunity should the political situation become unsustainable” (President’s report, 2007, p. 5).
This was the director’s number one stressor since he could not guarantee sustainability to his
employees, constituents, or their initiatives. He stated, “Once the money stops, the projects stop”
(interview, July 21, 2010). His overall objective, aligned with IFAD’s mission, was to promote
independence and get people back to work. He asserted, “If we just give them rice, they won’t go
into the fields to grow it for themselves” (interview, July 21, 2010). He also got quite frustrated
80
when he would learn that someone to whom he had loaned money had used it to purchase a
mattress or pay for their wedding instead of investing the distributed funds into something that
could provide a return and allow for further borrowing in the future. Especially because he was
acutely aware of the lack of funder stability, he worked hard to make all of his projects
“sustainable,” without the continued infusion of cash from outside international donor agencies.
He seemed to be deeply entrenched in the discourse of development through his
conceptions of ideas like sustainability. His view seemed to be that the community members
participating in his projects didn’t quite understand the way global capital worked, leading them
to “misuse” their funding in unsustainable ways. Sustainability, as conceptualized by
international development and aid organizations, carries with it a damning value judgment with
respect to the community members who did not view sustainability in terms of profit margins
and reinvestment, possibly opting for the “sustainability” of a lineage or household livelihood
instead. He implied that these community members had not adopted the “right” values if they did
not use their funds in a “sustainable” way (i.e., by creating a return on the money loaned). The
guesthouse project was allowed to move forward specifically because the investors and
interlocutors valued the project as potentially profitable for the community as a business-venture,
not as a way to mitigate hospitality concerns addressed below as important to members of the
village.
The IFAD-funded guesthouse project was underway in a community split ethnically
between Nalú first-settlers with accompanying land rights and Balanta immigrants, who
outnumber the Nalú villagers almost three to one. The Nalú elders and lineage heads agreed to
place the guesthouses in the main Nalú neighborhood; Nimba was working closely with the Nalú
since the Nimba director shared Nalú ethnic heritage and because the Balanta in the area seemed
“uninterested” in working with outside agencies, although upon further investigation, I
discovered that they were never invited to participate in the project in the first place. In the
research community, the Balanta had been excluded from development decisions and
marginalized in decision after decision regarding a number of projects over the last two decades.
All of the community economic and infrastructural development projects were
centralized in or near the primary Nalú thoroughfare. To illustrate the mounting frustration by
the Balanta, on August 30, 2007, ADEC (Associação Desenvolvimento Ensino Communitário)
agreed to supply rice and oil rations to anyone in the research village who was willing to
rehabilitate two log bridges that kept access to the village open to vehicles year round. These
bridges needed to be replaced every few years. Sixty-one men showed up to cut and place logs,
with ADEC giving each person three kilograms of rice and one-half liter of palm oil for their
efforts. However, only one Balanta from a neighboring village, and none from the research site,
showed up to work. The problem was that the Balanta section chief, who had been asked to
announce the project in his ethnic community and ask for volunteers, spoke out against
participating in this project. The section chief and the Balanta community were expressing their
frustration with the Nalú, who were making all of the decisions on behalf of the entire village
despite representing the minority of the community. Regarding the bridge project, the Balanta
section chief and his constituents had only been consulted after the Nalú villagers had decided to
support the project and were looking for additional labor. During a community meeting, it was
clear that the Nalú wanted the majority of the resources being supplied by ADEC and other
development agencies to remain staunchly in the hands of the Nalú ethnic community. One of
the heads of household in the Nalú village worked for ADEC at the organization’s regional
office, while the Balanta did not have a similar mouthpiece. In this small, semi-isolated
81
community, most projects, whether government-funded or externally-funded, tended to run
through the same narrow channels, owing largely to a lack of institutional capacity.
The same neglect of the Balanta villagers was observed in relation to the guesthouse
project. The Balanta saw little direct benefit of the project for their ethnic community; therefore,
they opted out of participating. As an aside, the relations between these two ethnic communities
in the research village were in fact mostly positive, although there were instances, such as the
engagement with external development under consideration here, that did add some strain to the
ethnic-positive cooperative relationships (see Lundy, 2012a).
As I have described elsewhere, when I arrived in the research village for the first time, I
documented how the village was ethnically divided into discreet neighborhoods and yet the
groups seemed to maintain complex socio-economic interconnections to promote survival,
cohesion, reciprocity, security, and stress reduction (Cliggett, 2001; Lundy, 2012a, p. 237; Wilk
& Cliggett, 2007, pp. 153–176). At the same time, when preference is given to one group over
another, there is always the potential for such preference to enflame cultural difference; in this
case, the Balanta simply opted out of participating in the guesthouse project altogether. Further,
the Nalú heads of household also had some disagreements over the actual implementation and
eventual management of the project.
Space and perceptions of space become quite important in making decisions about how to
use and value “development,” especially when such development involves “communally” held
resources. The Nalú in the village were organized in a centralized neighborhood that contained
much of the village’s infrastructure. The Balanta, on the other hand, lived in extended family
compounds surrounding the main Nalú village (Lundy, 2012a, p. 243-244). Since this project
was intended for the Nalú neighborhood, both for centralization and ethnic affinity, it was first
decided that the guesthouses would be located within the main Nalú neighborhood proper.
Already contained within the centralized Nalú neighborhood were a font, primary school,
mosque, community/dance hall, bread oven, two Fula boutiques, and a defunct health center. The
national government, ADEC, and The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), among others
funded these projects. As mentioned above, land ownership throughout Tombali is both
collective and lineage based. Distribution of land is determined according to both patrimonial
inheritance and production. The Nalú are considered the first settlers of the community and
therefore hold rights over the territory through spiritual contracts. At the same time, the
Portuguese administered this territory from Cacine during the colonial era and granted land
rights to their local allies as a form of cooptation. By 1939, Balanta transplants began to request
agricultural lands from the Nalú elders, who acquiesced due to low population density and an
abundance of arable land. In fact, as long as the land is under cultivation, it belongs to the
individual or family working the plot, no matter the ethnicity. At the same time, the Nalú are
protective of their territory and limit and control their holdings as much as possible. “More
practical considerations are also at play with the Nalú, [who control] approximately 5% of
Guinea-Bissau’s land while making up less than 1% of the country’s population” (Lundy, 2012a,
p. 245).
With these considerations in mind, the four guesthouses were placed in a location at the
periphery of the Nalú neighborhood. The original site negotiated for by Nimba was selected near
the beach and sacred grove since these were viewed as primary draws for visitors, but the family
who had been granted this territory during the Portuguese colonial era rejected this locale and
claimed it as theirs to administer (and therefore, profit from), to the dismay of Nimba and the rest
of the Nalú heads of households. The eventual construction site was then moved further inland to
82
a less desirable parcel, where it rested near a second family including two opportunistic brothers,
who would eventually become responsible for maintaining the property and granting access to
the guesthouses. While the decision to locate the project in this new locale was collectively
determined in a community meeting, it was not entirely without political implications. While the
guesthouses would be owned communally, this family would become the caretakers of the
guesthouses on behalf of the community and would receive any payment first to maintain the site
before profits would be shared among the Nalú villagers. In fact, this arrangement was one of the
primary reasons for the project’s eventual demise. Nimba had planned to allow an outsider, my
research assistant, to manage the project once complete. However, the brothers disagreed with
this plan. The result was that Nimba refused to fund the continuation of the project once the
initial phase was complete. The larger plans for additional guesthouses and a management
building with restaurant have been put on hold indefinitely.
The brothers felt that they had the necessary expertise to operate and manage the
guesthouses (since they had previous experience running a successful boutique) in spite of the
strict hospitality expectations among family, friends, and co-ethnics that might potentially result
in practices that undermined the profitability of the guesthouses. In fact, the success of the
brothers’ boutique was due in part to their having brought in an outsider to operate it, a Fula
youth from Guinea Conakry, who could be easily coopted. This arrangement allowed them to
sell household products to friends and family (as opposed to providing such goods free of
charge) without feeling the social stigma associated with doing business with close relatives. In
other words, the community had selected this site in some respects because of the social
challenges of operating a guesthouse. However, Nimba and the community had different ideas
about how to solve this management issue. By allowing the guesthouses to be built in this
particular spot, they acknowledged the need for eventual outside management if it was to be
successful, although Nimba and the community disagreed over who would ultimately control the
manager and, hence, the guesthouses themselves. In this case, the community was able to wrest
control of the project, while Nimba decided that further investment was no longer “sustainable,”
or more accurately, in the organization’s best interests to continue to fund, especially as IFAD
aid was about to expire.
The closest points of interest to the selected site included a Balanta family compound
(with no observable role with the project), the water tap, the defunct health center, the
community/dance hall, a Fula boutique, the primary footpath access point to the village, and the
family who granted access to the land. Also relatively close by was the village proper, sacred
grove, and beach, although these could not be directly viewed from the project location. At the
same time, the project had been selected through consensus with the bricks being provided from
clay located at the other end of the village. The entire Nalú neighborhood was responsible for
supplying the needed labor; men worked by making bricks, cutting roof beams, and constructing
the buildings, while the women, on a rotating basis, cooked the meals, with the food being
supplied by Nimba. The roof beams were cut from the nearby forest, while the corrugated metal
sheets for the roof, wooden windows and doors, beds, toilets, plastic basins, and other
construction tools came from Nimba after being purchased in the capital of Bissau.
Returning to the interview with Nimba’s director in 2010 for a moment, it is relevant to
mention that he described the Nalú as one of the smallest ethnic groups in the country with one
of the “biggest secrets.” This was not the first time I had heard these sentiments. Because of the
spiritual reputation of the Nalú throughout the country and region, the director believed that
visitors would travel to the southern part of the country seeking spiritual guidance, a
83
phenomenon I had been witnessing on a small-scale (a few hundred visitors per year) since my
arrival in the village in 2007 (Lundy, 2012c). The Nalú’s traditional religion however, was
fading through the acculturation pressures of Islamic conversion and larger neighboring ethnic
groups, particularly the Fula, Beafada, and Susu, which was having a dramatic effect on their
language (with Susu having become the most common lingua franca in the village and the Nalú
language only spoken among the eldest generation) and culture through intermarriage and
assimilation.
Despite these changing cultural patterns, the director of Nimba and others continued to
romanticize the south, leading to untenable development expectations, perceptions, and
ultimately, projects. For example, Nimba’s director foresaw Buba, with its soon to be
rehabilitated port, becoming a modern, commercial hub that would then transport goods through
Catio and southern Guinea-Bissau across the border into Guinea Conakry. According to him, this
would ensure rapid development along this international transit route. He also continued to hold
dreams of the south becoming the country’s breadbasket once again. This was, after all, one of
the primary reasons he was working in the southern part of the country; he encouraged the
population to return to their now defunct and decaying paddy rice fields through seed distribution
projects. The local population too supported these perceptions of themselves as rice farmers,
although they produced only enough to sustain their families for a few months before having to
buy, barter, or borrow this staple for the remainder of the year (Lundy, 2012b). Their idealized
selves and community identities no longer matched the objective realities, as evidenced by many
long conversations excoriating Nalú youth at planting time because many chose to remain at
school or visit urban centers during the rice season instead of returning to the village to help their
families prepare the fields. According to my household survey, while most Nalú in the village
described themselves as paddy rice farmers, the majority of family income was from petty trade,
palm oil production, cashew nuts and wine, and fishing (Lundy, 2009).
Finally, as mentioned above, many Nalú saw this village in particular as a potentially
unique tourist destination for both its beaches and spiritual reputation. There was already a Labor
Day festival in early May that drew thousands of revelers annually from throughout the country
to this tiny village. In addition, folks came from as far as away as Europe to consult with the
boloberu or traditional religious specialists and visit the Nalú sacred grove to petition to become
pregnant, heal unknown diseases, be united with loved ones, or gain political or economic
success (Lundy, 2012c). It is for these reasons that the collaborative talks between Nimba and
the community led to the guesthouse project. According to IFAD’s funding guidelines, an
eligible project needed to be selected by the participants themselves. Due to perceptions about
their community’s environmental, geographic, spiritual, and touristic desirability alongside
outside valuation encouraging such perceptions, including the Italian investors’ interests in the
1990s and the annual Labor Day festival attracting large crowds, the Nalú community was ready
to invest land, labor, and resources into the success of this project.
The guesthouse project broke ground in February 2007, and the buildings were
completed by 2011. The following excerpts related to the project were taken from my fieldnotes
in 2007. For example, on March 7, I wrote, “It is currently 7:40 am. The local schoolteacher and
his primary school class are carrying adobe bricks from behind our house, where they were made
out of the local clay to the guesthouse site down closer to the Cacine River port. Many people
have been working on these four round buildings over the last five days. They are building half
the wall and then allowing it to cure for a few days before finishing them off [Figure 2]. They
have one and a half of the building walls finished.” On March 27, I documented a fight between
84
two teenage girls over a boy outside of the community dance hall. The argument became
physical, and several of the new adobe bricks for the guesthouses were destroyed. The girls’
fathers were quite upset the following day and made the girls compensate the community for the
destroyed bricks, not because they had any value in the economic sense but because they
represented the collective interests of the Nalú community.
Figure 2. Construction on the first guesthouse gets underway. 2007. Photograph by author.
Figure 3. Construction is just about complete. 2010. Photograph by author.
85
By June 2, the guesthouse project was still progressing. The village did not field a team at
a local soccer tournament because the youth group had forgone the games to work on the
guesthouse. What these fieldnotes demonstrate is that Nimba was actively involved in the
research community from the moment of my arrival in February 2007 until my departure in
October of the same year and upon my return in 2010 and 2011. The activity around the
guesthouse project, however, was intermittent since Nimba personnel only visited the site a few
days per month. In fact, by the start of the rainy season, the corrugated tin roofs had not been
completed, and one of the guesthouse walls had collapsed. By my return visit in 2010, all four
buildings were standing (Figure 3). However, much of the talk about expanding the project did
not come to fruition, and the only people who had been granted access to these guesthouses were
Nimba associates, who had not paid for the privilege to sleep there. The project was a success in
the sense that the community did what they set out to do, namely, construct the guesthouses,
fully equipped with indoor shower areas and latrines (Figure 4). The expectation that “if you
build it, they will come,” however, never materialized.
Figure 4. Inside shot of the guesthouse. 2010. Photograph by author.
Conclusion
This paper began by asking how negotiated practical and imaginative valuations of economic
development result in a community development project that may not fit the local context. I
challenged the notion that development projects must be evaluated as successes or failures and
instead suggest that various stakeholders in the guesthouse project both gained and lost
something in the process of negotiating development based on their perspective (Crewe &
Axelby, 2012; Crewe & Harrison, 1999). This project elucidates the idea that hybridized
traditional institutions regulating economic development can operate concurrently with the
ideological and practical infusion of global capitalism onto the cultural landscape.
What a description of a development project and its myriad valuations such as the one
provided above allows us to do is to conduct what Chris Fowler (2004) calls “the archaeology of
personhood.” He explains that “the study of personal transactions, relationships, interactions and
86
transformations” (i.e., personhood) “gives a shape to how identities that shift continually
throughout life are mediated through the small interactions between a few people [whom I have
called the stakeholders, above] and in large community events” (2004, p. 155). These events then
showcase how development is negotiated, shared, and valued.
People throughout southern Guinea-Bissau are small-scale farmers, herders, and
fisherpersons. Along with the majority of the rural population, the village residents are
vulnerable to erratic rainfall and weather and price fluctuations. Entrenched food habits, poor
infrastructure limiting access to markets, inadequate health care, a defunct educational system,
international exploitation of aquatic resources, political instability, and a myriad of other
problems compound their economic insecurities. Amartya Sen (1999) would argue that a lack of
“agency” is responsible for the populace’s inability to turn their “capabilities” (i.e., labor and
resources) into a better quality of life. Recognizing the precarious position of these people, some
international development agencies are now funding national and local NGOs in Guinea-Bissau
to create collaborative projects that are participatorily developed alongside the target population.
This form of decentralized needs assessment is intended to empower the local population by
working on initiatives aimed at increasing local agency by nurturing capabilities. What the case
provided above demonstrates is that decentralized needs assessment is theoretically and morally
a step in the right direction when it comes to international aid and development, while at the
same time, selecting appropriate projects may also benefit from community engagement with
professional expertise beyond the community, such as with those who understand issues of
multivocal valuation and power differentials. Like the work of Crewe and Harrison (1999) and
Crewe and Axelby (2012), this paper challenges the notion of “community” projects by insisting
that one must first understand who the community is. The Nalú are a very small minority group
in the community, and yet the guesthouse project was focused on them largely because the head
of Nimba, the NGO administering the project, was an ethnic insider. At the same time, additional
conflicts arose because the director of Nimba had his own vested interests and was entrenched in
traditional development discourse. Ultimately, this paper looks at how global discourses on
development shape and are shaped by local contexts. In this case, one of those local factors
influencing the valuation of the guesthouse project that was initially overlooked was hospitality.
Hospitality most certainly factored in to the valuation of the guesthouses. It was a
collective drain on the community, as the cost of providing food, shelter, and water to both
domestic and foreign visitors seemed to outweigh the economic benefits from their visits to the
sacred grove. Therefore, the guesthouses had the potential to funnel foreign visitors toward the
outskirts of town, where the community obligations to these visitors were lessened. At the same
time, as mentioned above, hospitality could also serve as a deterrent of business since it was
socially unacceptable to charge friends and family for services. The eventual affect this value
will have on the guesthouse project is still unknown; if a community outsider manages the
project, then friends and family could be charged freely without community reproach. However,
if someone from the community is responsible for managing the property, which was the case in
2010 and 2011, then it is much more likely that visitors will be staying in the guesthouses
without providing compensation.
This story is largely about the negotiation of value and potential value, from the
economic value of the guesthouse project to the values of hospitality, family, ethnicity, heritage,
custom, and personal connection. In the end, what the guesthouse project in Guinea-Bissau
accomplished was to allow members of the community to recognize multiple perspectives on
87
valuation and to better appreciate the community’s various positions of distance and scale related
to value formation.
Notes
1
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This paper was first presented at the American Anthropological Association’s 2013 annual meeting in Chicago as
part of a double session on “Terrestrial Publics: Politics of Land, Values, and Affect in the Era of Economic
Globalization.” I want to acknowledge my co-organizer, Dr. Sarasij Majumder from Kennesaw State University, as
well as thank our two distinguished discussants who graciously commented on an earlier draft, Dr. Lisa Cliggett
from the University of Kentucky and Dr. Michel Chibnik from the University of Iowa. I would also like to thank the
anonymous reviewers for their insightful critiques.
88
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Politics of Technoscapes: Algorithms of Social Inclusion & Exclusion in a Global City
R. Swaminathan,1 PhD
Observer Research Foundation
swami@orfonline.org
Abstract
Social media and the Internet are seen as Siamese twins. The discursive architecture of social
media is so tightly coupled with the various imaginaries of the Internet that the distinct
spatiality, territoriality, and relational power dynamics of each is often simplistically blurred
and merged. This paper makes the case that the sociality and spatiality of social media is not
only different from that of the Internet but is increasingly becoming part of our contemporary
built environment in a manner that confers social media a high degree of relative autonomy in
its relationship with the Internet. The paper further argues that such autonomy is
fundamentally mutating social media from a site of articulation into a set of digitally
mediated spaces with their own scripted and connected logic of inclusion and exclusion. The
paper establishes that the integration with the built environment is foundationally linked to a
suite of six inter-related technologies of wireless transmission: Radio Frequency
Identification (RFID), interactive and emotive display systems, electronic payment gateways,
digital cartography systems, and geo-locational mapping systems and services. The paper
also raises questions about our understanding of these emergent digitally mediated spaces,
arguing that a limited approach of reducing social media to sites of articulation marginalizes
the underlying socio-technical politics of such spaces. In conclusion, the paper makes the
case that the digital augmentation of public and private spaces is creating a hybridized sociotechnoscape that bridges the gap between “the epistemological realm and the practical one,
between mental and social, between the space of the philosophers and the space of people
who deal with material things,”2 in the process transforming the fundamental principles of
democracy.
Politics of Technoscapes
91
The Changing Sociality of Social Media
The number of the people using some kind of social media is 1.73 billion, up almost
50 million from last year. This means, worldwide, one in four people is connected to Twitter,
Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, or one of its several Internet cousins. If the trend continues,
which by all accounts will, it is expected that in another four years, in 2017, 2.55 billion
people in the world will have some aspect of social media embedded into their lives. That’s
slightly more than the population of two Indias put together. Not surprisingly, this charge
toward a digitally mediated socialization is led by India, China, Indonesia, Mexico, and
Brazil. India, for example, has seen an almost three-fold increase in the number of social
media users, from approximately 55 million in 2011 to 128 million in 2013. The number
breached the 150 million mark in early 2014 and is expected to close at 170 million by the
end of the year.3 The story in other emerging economies is similar. Faced with such
compelling numbers, it is easy to get the impression that social media and the Internet are an
integral part of the same fabric, as if one is a warp, and the other, a weft. Strengthening such
an impression is also the historical reality4 that the Internet floats in a seemingly ethereal
manner on an interconnected system of server farms layered with predictive algorithms,
secure payment gateways, and search engines. The Internet has always had, and large parts of
it still have, a tightly coded dependency on fixed telecommunications infrastructure and
devices. Such a tethered relationship, on one hand, led to the emergence of a communicative
architecture of protocols and standards, a language so to speak, to allow the physical
infrastructure of routers, undersea cables, and switching systems to talk to each other. On the
other, it led to means and modes of articulation that came to be defined by the territoriality
and spatiality of the Internet. The physicality of the Internet, in essence, came to define both
the means and modes of its various emergences, social media being one such emergence. In
being informed by the coded dependency of the Internet and molded by its essential
positioning as a platform for exchange of information, social media came to be imagined
primarily as a site of socio-cultural articulation that reflects, amplifies, and marginalizes
concerns of the real world. At best, then, social media is seen as a lens through which to
arrive at a mediated understanding of the physical sociality of the real world and, at worst, it
is perceived as a reflection, even a microcosm, of the real world. It’s a reductive logic that
informs—as much as it derives from — a simplistic understanding of the Internet as a
medium of virtuality, “unconnected,” as it were, to the fundamental cyber forces of
production largely consisting of server farms, codes, algorithms, and software architectures.
Such an analytical framework fails to take into account the relational dynamics between two
critical nodes, one material and the other epistemological. In the last decade, and especially in
the last five years, technological developments have transformed the tightly coupled and
continuous relationship between the Internet, cyber forces of production, and its various
emergences into one that is simultaneously multimodal, discontinuous, and relatively
autonomous. This reconfiguration has resulted in an increasing embedding of a scripted and
coded logic—one that was earlier exclusively confined to the territoriality and spatiality of
the domain of the Internet—into the contemporary built environment through asynchronous
and non-linear integration of specific digital technologies. It covers a wide variety of
emergent socio-technical phenomenon ranging from electronic money and Aadhaar cards5 to
3D printing and wearable human-machine interfaces. None of these digital interfaces
necessarily requires the pipeline of the Internet for either fulfilling their functionalities or
replicating and networking with other digital services, products and devices.
The dominant epistemological framework acknowledging this transformation refers to
it as “ubiquitous digitalization” or computing, often inadvertently falling into a trap of
technological determinism that leads to narratives and discourses of apparent inevitability
92
(Hill, 1998, p. 23) of technology and progress. Consequently, then, technology is seen to
acquire not only an agency of its own that is independent from the social relationships of
power of daily life (Townsend, 2013) but also a value-neutral additive that makes “time
instantaneous and space unnecessary” (Pawley, 1995). Derived from these logical constructs
of time-space compression is the narrative of transmission and transference of space, in
which values, cultures, economies, and entire human societies are seen to migrate into
electronic spaces. Our current and simplistic understanding of social media (as simply a
digital platform for virtualized articulation) can be traced, to a certain extent, to this analytical
framework, in which the sociality of social media is intrinsically, almost as an a priori
starting point, defined by the territoriality and spatiality of the Internet, which is seen as a
spearhead of this ubiquitous digitalization. Two examples will indicate the limits of our
prevailing understanding of sociality. Adam Sadilek of Google and John Krumm of
Microsoft have created algorithmic software that claims to predict your future with a fair
degree of accuracy. They attached GPS devices to 300 residents of Seattle and tracked their
lives for three months. This tracking provided 32,000 “man days” of data, which worked out
to 150 million data points. The two researchers tracked the residents’ the time of waking,
eating habits, frequently used routes, and time of sleeping, among other things, in order to
“provide better reminders, search results, and advertisements by considering all the locations
[they were] likely to be close to in the future.”6 The second example is from the Tangible
Media Group of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The group has created an
application – InFORM – that gives physical form and shape to digital data. This allows for
digital and physical domains to intermesh with each other, “mediating interaction… by
providing dynamic physical affordances through shape change….” It permits them “to
manipulate by actuating physical objects.”7 The system is built “on top of a state-of-the-art
shape display, [providing] for variable stiffness rendering and real-time user input through
direct touch and tangible interaction.”8 Both the Google-Microsoft predictive software and
MIT rendering application use the contemporary “Internet-only” social media as a set of data
points as a material foundation, among several others, in creating a meshed digital bridge to
the physical world. Such systems are increasingly becoming part of built environments. One
of the ways in which they derive information for their algorithms of intelligence and real time
analysis is by deconstructing social media into bits and pieces of discrete data points – phone
numbers, gender profile, likes and dislikes. By selectively integrating themselves with these
bits and pieces, these systems are fundamentally changing the nature of sociality of a social
media from being exclusively confined as an articulatory framework of a virtual world to a
physical factor determining social relationships of power in the real world. The sociality of
social media is today is as much a material component of human relational dynamics as class,
caste, religion or ethnic identity are. In fact, several applications and software systems, from
traffic management systems9 to the world of peer-to-peer digital currency of Bitcoins,10 are
using social media as a foundational base for extending their sociality into the real and
physical domains. This meshing together of several discrete and varied data points is made
possible by a new suite of digital technologies.
There are three fundamental material and epistemological shifts taking place that are
architecting unique relational dynamics in the domain of built environment. The first is the
mutating virtuality of the Internet. This happens as a continuous process of integrating a
digitally mediated physicality of the real world through an embedding of specific digital tools
and technologies in daily lives, creating a hybridized socio-technoscape.11 The second is the
expanding notion of sociality within this hybridized domain. Such a reconfiguration is
transforming physical spaces into nodes that are scripted, coded, and networked, creating a
new socialized digital logic that is organizing physical landscapes as exclusionary and
inclusionary zones. The third is an emergent singularity that is based on an increasingly
93
coupled, often integrated, relationship between humans, algorithms, codes, and machines.
This process is asymmetrically extending the logic of sociality of the hybridized sociotechnoscape into real and lived domains not directly mediated or engaged by technology,
resulting in a narrative and discursive architecture that informs daily knowledge creation.
Taken together, these three shifts are reconstituting the material base of a network society “in
ways that [allows for] their endless expansion and reconfiguration, overcoming the traditional
limitations of networking forms of organization to manage complexity beyond a certain size
of the network…, [including] some people and territories while excluding others, so inducing
a geography of social, economic, and technological inequality.”12
From Sites of Articulation to Digitally Mediated Spaces
The Internet evolved from an American military effort to develop alternative lines of
communication in case of the breakdown of traditional fixed line communication networks in
the event of a war. That historical legacy, one of communication, ensured that the eco-system
powering the Internet, from technologies, hardware, software, protocols, and standards to
access devices, fixed line distribution networks, and even content, was by default tuned to
serve and strengthen the communicative architecture of the Internet. Despite the seemingly
serendipitous and chaotic nature of the Internet, a large part of its growth is actually a story of
linear progression, though in massive leaps and bounds. So a Usenet of the early 1980s, for
instance, can justifiably be positioned to have mutated first into a forum of the 1990s, the
message boards of the 2000s, and the social media phenomenon, spearheaded by Facebook
and Twitter of the current generation. But the common thread running through all these
mutations has been the constant focus on communication; the devices changed; the character
lengths shortened; pictures and videos were added, yet the platform remained a site of
articulation. At a fundamental level, the sociality of a Usenet13 and that of a Twitter is not all
that different, confined as they are to the spatiality and territoriality of the Internet. Yet there
is a critical difference.
The sociality of the contemporary forms of social media is extended, mutated, and
transmitted, its value systems, logic, and perceptual mechanisms embedded into daily life
through a set of six inter-related digital technologies of wireless transmission: Radio
Frequency Identification (RFID) systems, interactive and emotive display systems, electronic
payment gateways, digital cartography, and geo-locational mapping systems and services.
This complex process of embedding ranges from the visible (Twitter applications on mobile
phones) to the invisible (databases of social media platforms being used for algorithmic stock
trading).The history of wireless transmission can be traced back to last part of the 1800s, with
some of its most famous milestones being the invention of the telephone and the experiments
carried out by the maverick Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla, especially his Wardenclyffe
Tower project on wireless transmission of electricity. The contemporary tipping point in the
history of wireless transmission came with the large-scale development and deployment of
mobile communication technology from the early 1980s, aided in no small measure by the
military advances in the manufacturing of chips, optimized microwave technologies that
leveraged the propagation characteristics of the different frequencies in the spectrum range in
a substantially improved manner.
The maturation of wireless transmission technologies ensured that services layered
upon such technologies changed from one exclusively associated with voice to one including
the transportation of data, images, and movies. The advent of mobile telephony and wireless
fidelity (Wi-Fi) brought about two key transformations. First, it loosened the tightly coupled
relationship of the Internet with fixed telecommunications infrastructure. Second, it afforded
the Internet a certain relative mobility, allowing it to be positioned and located in a larger
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number of physical domains. Closely linked to the developments in wireless transmission is
the technology ecosystem of RFID systems,14 which makes use of radio-frequency
electromagnetic fields to transfer data. Later day RFID systems (tags) also store such data
and communicate with each other and other networked digital systems, including databases
built upon and integrated with the Internet. For all practical purposes, modern retails chains
would not have achieved their scale and size if it wasn’t for RFID technologies, most
obviously seen in the barcode stickers on products. In embedding the material domain, from
products to identity/access cards, RFID technologies brought in a scripted logic of ordering
daily life that created its unique socio-politico technocape of exclusion and inclusion.
Computing has always been about different sets of algorithms with their own embedded
binary logic systems interacting with other. In essence, then, the Unix of yesteryear and
today’s Android 4.4 Kitkat Operating System share the same genetic code. Codes became
accessible, in fact, democratic, with the development and deployment of Graphic User
Interfaces (GUIs), and DoS prompts made way for desktop click-and-point, mouse-driven
actions and, ultimately, to the current swipe and slide interfaces.
This transition would not have been possible without new technologies for display
and expression, with the prominent tipping point being the liquid crystal display (LCD) and
light-emitting diode (LED) display technologies. In layering the raw code with a GUI, two
transformations took place in the socio-technoscape. First, the complexity of the code is
hidden, creating a simultaneous process of accessibility and democratization, as evidenced in
the use of immersive and emotive mobile applications for a range of services from gaming to
prenatal health. Second, an irrevocable distantiation occurs, which divorces an individual—as
a stakeholder in the engagement with the code—from the code itself. This leads to forms of
disempowerment that can range from automatic exclusion from public transactional spaces,
like how retail investors in the United States were literally coded out by the 2010 Flash
Crash, triggered by automatic trading algorithms and High Frequency Traders (HFTs) to
conditional inclusion into a system on the fulfilment of certain parametric factors, like how
information must necessarily be organized in a document-sub-folder-folder format in a
computer for it be made searchable. The Internet, arguably, would not have made the
transformation from a platform of communication to a domain of transactions if it were not
for a combination of secure encryption technologies (SSL) and authentication protocols that
underpin today’s electronic payment gateways. The virtualization of money not only created
completely new and digital means and modes of transaction but also intermeshed with
existing physical systems of commerce and money, creating a digitally mediated and
modulated relationship between individuals and institutions.
This further extended a coded logic into the existing built environment and lived
spaces. Such processes are reconstituting relational dynamics in unconventional ways, as the
relative ability to decontextualize time and space (i.e., making it global and unnecessary) is a
political and social power in itself. Two co-located sets of technologies, digital cartography
and geolocation, are the primary movers behind the emerging scripted and coded ordering of
physical spaces. By integrating themselves with satellite imagery and manipulating and
layering software (CAD-CAM, photoshop), and by using the Internet as a distribution
mechanism, digital cartography and personal locational services (GPS and GIS) are creating
scripted layers of satellite images, streetviews, and earthcams. This complex process
integrates a simultaneous distantial, granular, and segregated view, reconstituting the
relational dynamics between physical, virtual, and imagined spatiality and territoriality. In
positioning physical space as interchangeable and transformable, like the layout of a web
magazine, an emergent artificial-asocial intelligence, similar to the ones constructed by the
electronic brains of networked military unmanned combat vehicles is seen. Ironically, making
physical spaces more navigable and transparent, such as through GPS-based street navigation
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devices, also injects a coded sociality of inclusion and exclusion, as locations ranging from
exclusive seven-star gated communities to ghettos are contoured not by their physical
location but their virtualized physicality. The underlying relational dynamics of gated
communities and ghettos, incidentally, are startlingly similar.
The emergent digitalization as result of these technologies is fundamentally different
from the earlier forms of digitalization in the manner in which it intersects and integrates with
existing social relationships of power, of which conventional social media is reduced to one
dematerialized component, configuring discourses that transcend institutional and noninstitutional underpinnings. Such simultaneous processes of evolution inform the relational
dynamics of digital technology, human territoriality, and space, inextricably linking social
production of material and digital spaces (Mosco, 1996; Soja, 1989, 2009; Castells, 1996).
This co-location creates an extended notion of sociality that opens us to the experiences of
“de-realization and de-localization,” while allowing us to continue having “physical and
localized existences” (Robbins, 1995, p. 153). Epistemologically, this mutates the logic of
virtual reality into one of “real virtuality,” in which processes of the material productions of
space “tap into digitally available resources of the world to enrich reality in real places”
(Abler, 1995, p. 3). This “culture of real virtuality” (Castells, 1996, p. 373) is experienced
through new and integrated digital systems that capture lived reality and then virtualizes and
communicates them by embedding an ordered logic, creating an experience that is at once
real and digital. Such co-located processes embody “complex global-local articulations
between space of places and space of flows” and a digital “ordering of the urban” (Castells,
1996, p. 423-28; Castells, 2010), simultaneously transforming virtual sites of articulation and
physical sites of engagement, contestation, and negotiation into a hybridized set of digitally
mediated spaces. Such technospaces require a completely new lens—a fresh conceptual and
theoretical framework—which is able to spot, capture, understand, and analyze the multiple
realities that seem to exist simultaneously in physical and virtual forms. Recent
interdisciplinary work by researchers who take inspiration from the fields of anthropology,
sociology, human geography, architecture, biotechnology and the techno-sciences provide a
good theoretical starting point for understanding the ‘”dual, mixed reality, and PolySocial
Reality” (PoSR) (Applin & Fisher, 2013) of the techno-social landscapes:
A new heuristic for human experience now blends physical and virtual space in
personal, asynchronous time and physical and virtual space in group oriented,
synchronous time. At present, the Internet has modified our experience of both space
and time, within its domain rendering time as asynchronous and spatial locations as
ubiquitous. When the Internet was composed of fixed servers and clients, these two
views of time and space were contextually moderated. With the advent of ubiquitous
mobile devices, and the sensor rich environments of Dual Reality, Mixed Reality, and
the Internet of Things, new capabilities and lived experiences will lead to a
convergence of those views.15
Emergent Politics of Technoscapes
The emphasizing dynamic of digitally mediated spaces is how “bits and pieces—bodies and
machines, and buildings, as well as texts—are associated together in attempts to build order”
(Bingham, 1996, p. 32), creating an existential domain in which space, time, and agency are
never absolute and are constantly defined and redefined through their relational dynamics.
The virtual and lived spatiality of the digitally mediated spaces is often seen as “fragmented,
divided, and contested,” as relationships of power within this socio-technoscape link the
“local and nonlocal in intimate relational, reciprocal connections” (Graham, 1998, p. 179).
These relational frameworks construct “multiple realities” (Harvey 1996, p. 256), creating an
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impression of an experiential diversity that is simultaneously anchored to fixed material
means and modes of spatial production and mobile nodes of narratives and discourses.
Understanding the emergent politics of digitally mediated spaces requires us to revisit their
foundational layers again.
Chips and Codes
The first layer powering these spaces consists of the physical infrastructure of electronic
components, servers, telecommunication lines, and the infrastructure’s embedded intelligent
logic of codes, algorithms, and predictive software. Taken together, these components
constitute the material support for these spaces. Such spaces, it must be reiterated, are more in
the nature of principles of control and order than physical spaces. So the spatial form of a
digitally mediated space could as well be a “city” one moment and a “global region” the next.
This architects a unique relationship of quantum mutation in which space and spatiality
seamlessly interchange, co-exist, and merge. Such entanglements are creating shared
experiences that are virtual and real, as this conversation with Sunil Dalvi indicates.
I love European football and follow it very closely on the Internet and television. I
don’t miss any matches of Bundesliga, English Premier League, and La Liga. My
favorite teams are Bayern Munich, Barcelona, and Manchester United. We have a
small football team in the neighbourhood. We don’t have a park to play, so we play
on the roads. I love the shoes and the kit the players wear. All these teams play in
such nice stadiums, and I really love watching those snippets where they do a quick
tour of the city. It’s so neat, nice, and clean. The roads are broad, and everyone seems
so modern. I have never been to a football stadium. There are no football stadiums in
Mumbai. There are only cricket stadiums. One day I hope Mumbai also becomes like
those cities with clean, wide roads and football stadiums.16
Hubs and Nodes
The second layer underlying digitally mediated spaces consists of nodes and hubs,
much like a computer network, which transport and transfer data, physically, and ideas, logic
systems, and values, ephemerally, creating a “space of flows.”17 These nodes range from
collective hubs, like Wi-Fi hotspots to individually demarcate domains of a collective
network, like a Facebook or Twitter account to relatively private and unique nodes, like a
mobile phone. In employing logic systems of all types of computing, from master-to-client
(one server and numerous receivers), client-to-client (also called peer-to-peer), and many-toone (called multicasting), each node potentially has multiple forms embedded in it. A mobile
phone, then, can be used nearly simultaneously for a call (one-to-one), send/receive
bulk/group SMSes (one-to-many/many-to-one) and can also be used as a conference bridge
(server-to-client). These nodes are stacked in a hierarchical manner depending on the
principle of order and control, though the hierarchy is also one of impermanence, molded by
whether the logic of order and control is for material production, socio-cultural articulation,
or collective consumption. Such interrelatedness of nodes construct digitally mediated spaces
as processes rather than places, making the spatiality and territoriality of digitally mediated
spaces as interchangeable and transportable, independent of time and space. For example, a
leading environmental activist of Mumbai, in explaining his participation in the BMWGuggenheim lab in Mumbai, displays the discursive logic that informs the construction of
these digitally mediated spaces, which are virtual, real physical, and transferable in a near
simultaneous manner:
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The lab was an interesting mix of people from the city and from around the world. We
exchanged notes, and I found it interesting to know how people in other cities
protected their unique environments. The best part about the lab was that the initial
thought processes about evolving solutions for better urban living started face-to-face,
but it is now continuing, using social networking tools and the BMW-Guggenheim
lab website. [The] urban experience is no longer confined to people with access to
knowledge and information. In fact, I showed some videos of the discussions
[subtitled in Marathi] at the lab on the importance public spaces for urban living to a
group of people in Kasara [a small town around 100 kilometres from Mumbai]. They
now want parks, places to sit and congregate. The local corporator [elected
representative] even said he would build a Central Park [after watching New York’s
Central Park] in Kasara.18
Order and Control
The third layer contributing to the emergence of digitally mediated spaces consists of
the people who manage the nodes and material base and, in the process, integrate themselves
with it, becoming the “dominant, managerial elites (rather than classes).”19 They articulate
the spatiality and territoriality of the digitally mediated spaces. These social actors are
positioned within a material and articulatory system that molds and embeds them with a
scripted and coded logic, primarily through a system of training, making them a part of the
techno-financial-managerial elite. Through this complex process of logic actualization, the
elites become both a stakeholder and a protector of this system, an integral part of the
material and articulatory system of dominance. In the process, often, they become a collective
node of transfer of ideas and values that are “global, decontextualized, and ahistorical.” The
digitally mediated spaces supersede the logic of any specific place, replacing it with an
interconnected system of material and articulatory frameworks that position technocratic
processes as global, contemporary, and cosmopolitan, while locating people as local. Nandan
Nilekani, in explaining the philosophy of the Aadhaar card unwittingly displays his own role
as part of the dominant, managerial elite that merges global logic and local contexts.
[The Aadhar card] gives a holder the ability to authenticate his identity. Once you
have the card, it makes it easier to integrate various social welfare measures directly
with the individual. No one then remains cut off. There will be no local blockages. It
will reduce leakages, remove bureaucratic interfaces and interferences, and will
empower the individual. The ability of the Aadhaar card to have a 128-bit smart chip
embedded in it also frees it from being completely being dependent on any kind of
online authentication. In being integrated with a standalone authentication device, the
card brings in the convenience of digital technology without being bogged down by
bad Internet. It’s a simple number that gives so much amount of flexibility. It’s digital
empowerment in the real sense.20
Producing Social Space
The politics of digitally mediated spaces reflect a self-perpetuating and circular logic
(reason) in four ways, creating a new framework of exclusion and inclusion. The first is
through a complex process of appropriation of the social production of space.21 At a
conceptual level, space has always been an organizing tool, and the way physical and lived
space is spatially and territorially ordered is through a material and imagined demarcation of
public and private space (Madanipour, 2003). Such a socially organized demarcation, in fact,
constitutes the base upon which the theory and practice of some of the fundamental building
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blocks of contemporary daily life is built, from public goods and governance to the notion of
nation-state itself.
The electronic augmentation of physical and lived spaces and the physical
augmentation of electronic spaces, most notably represented by Second Life,22 blurs the
relatively clear historical demarcation between public and private space, creating a spectrum
of privateness and publicness that keeps changing as newer forms of digitally mediated
means and modes of social production emerge. The blurring of this distinction produces a
new spatiality that brings together the domain of Gemeinschaft (arena of social mores and
norms, often loosely referred to as community) and Gesellschaft (arena of formal controls,
referred to as society).23 Both are brought together as a singular digitally mediated space by a
shared coded and scripted logic, creating a “de-localized” articulation that is diffused in an
asymmetric and non-linear manner. So, on one hand, it informs the politics of development
that unfolds in the material domain through a range of mutations, from narratives of
riverfront development and beautification projects to greening of open spaces (as opposed to,
say, the narratives of the regeneration of rivers and the ecological balance of open spaces).
On the other hand, it molds the various levels of social articulation, ranging from discourses
of the migration of outsiders to the demolition of slums (as opposed to discourses of
migratory diversity and the socio-economic agency of slum residents).A snippet of a
conversation with 32-year-old journalist PreetyAcharya reveals the undercurrents of these
processes.
I am a Marwari from Rajasthan, and generations of my family have been
moneylenders in Mumbai. Marwari girls marry early, but I broke out of the mold. I
work as journalist and earlier used to work out a small office in Lower Parel [a
business locality in Central Mumbai]. Recently, we all shifted to the Indiabulls
Centre.24 The office is world-class, and when you enter the complex, you feel as if
you are entering a new world.25 Earlier, I used to wear good clothes, but here a lot of
big companies are located. Everybody dresses so professionally and well. Not a hair
out of place. I have also changed my wardrobe, and I have realized that you need to
look really international if you want to make an impact. I am fat and need to lose
weight. Maybe I will undergo a bariatric surgery. It is difficult in Mumbai to jog and
exercise, as there is no space. My office is located on the 30th floor, and from there
Mumbai looks so beautiful. But once you come down, you have all these slums and
they smell.26 I understand they are also people making a living, but there are too many
people in the city. There are very few green spaces27 in Mumbai, and all these slums
can be converted into parks. We cannot call ourselves a global city if we don’t have
parks.
Augmenting Social Space
The second way in which a new framework of exclusion and inclusion is created by
the emergence of digitally mediates spaces is by a relatively autonomous augmentation of the
existing scripted and coded logic within digitally mediated spaces. Each layer of
augmentation displays greater level of order and control, divorced from local contexts,
including people, creating a daily lived reality in which an individual has an illusion of
control through an immersive experience with emotive interfaces (touchscreen being one),
while the non-visual, coded and encrypted, becomes smarter and more intelligent,
increasingly occupying domains of agency and choice. These processes range from predictive
algorithms of social media determining individuals’ “needs” and displaying what it thinks
they “want,” inadvertently creating a digitally mediated selection bias that informs practically
everything from election speeches to voting strategies, to retails chains systematically
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eliminating products that do not fit in with their scripted logic of tracking, scale, and logistics,
creating a self-fulfilling system of customer choice, demand, and satisfaction. In its extreme
manifestation, as seen in the Swedish city of Lund, the city gets “constantly produced, reengineered and mediated by computers in complex networks, [which] takes considerable
amounts of work and material infrastructure as well as large numbers of highly skilled
workers….[T]he scripted space as the info-layer of the city is a complex and networked
software structure [in which] algorithmic scripts organize and control the city and our
experience of it.”28 Kevin Slavin of MIT Media Labs explains the dangers in his own
inimitable style:
Major market crashes have occurred and will continue to occur because the market no
longer has a human interface. All the tools designed to make it legible have made it
impossible to read, and I think that's weird. Isn't it strange when you add computers to
physics, we unleash the Higgs Boson, but apply it here and we're further away from
understanding the market than we have ever been? Physics researchers have estimated there
have been 18,000 algorithm-driven black swan events29 in the last five years, but that number
doesn't sound very black swanny to me….There are only two ways to write these kinds of
algorithms. They can either be written by humans, or not. Both are extremely problematic. It
means there's a human idea in there, actually an ideology. Scarier still is if there's nobody
there when an algorithm is working without context or explanation …. The [US] Department
of Defense developed an algorithm to detect for tanks in the field. They trained the cameras
and took 100 photos, but when it came to testing, it was total chaos. It was performing so
well, so they went back and had a human look at them, but all photos with tanks on them
were on a sunny day, and photos without tanks were from a cloudy day. It turns out what they
had trained it to do was tell the weather. This is what happens without a theory –it's in the
explanation.30
Creating Social Meanings
The third way in which a new framework of exclusion and inclusion is structured is
through the creation of an integrated set of concealed meanings, almost like a secret
language, which, in order to be understood, must be navigated within the digitally mediated
space. This language functions as a “sign of signs… [and is] readable for those with the right
code but cannot be accessed by outsiders…, ‘[who are blocked by] signs indicating hidden
infrastructures, security alarms, and surveillance cameras. We find many physical structures
guiding and welcoming us, combined with electronic layers sorting and disciplining the
clientele. [F]or example, the signs in alluring shop entrances indicate[that]credit cards [are]
accepted, in this way welcoming those with the right cards and excluding those without
money.”’31 It’s through these sets of concealed meanings that the scripted space maintains
and augments its mediated character, often sub-consciously molding the routes of those
engaging and interacting with it. The best representation of such a set of concealed meanings
is seen in theme parks, where “each square food must pay off…, [creating a sort of] happy
imprisonment… [as a means of] ergonomic control” (Klein, 2004, p. 332). It is a logic system
that has already permeated lived physical space and can be seen in attempts to replicate
European cities, as in the city of Lavasa,32or smaller efforts to create connected enclaves of
gated communities. The complex politics of such socio-technoscapes, often referred to in a
seemingly value neutral way as “dynamics of Information Architecture,”“Ergonomics,” and
“User Experience,” all of which are terms originally associated with information technology,
reflect a range of aspirations for a city, from those of private municipal governance to
corporate-style Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). The narratives backing up these aspirations,
in order to depoliticize the system and the discourse, often marginalize or eliminate the
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democratic potential and the inclusionary logic of political processes. Two narrative strands
of the dominant discourse in Mumbai are being showcased here to highlight the case:
Bombay had a world-wide brand image. We now need to build a similar brand image
for Mumbai. How about making Mumbai the Las Vegas (casinos)-cum-New York
(finance and entertainment)-cum-Paris (fashion)-cum-Singapore (law and order and
cleanliness) of the world? For this, Mumbai definitely needs a CEO like Lee Kwan
Yu of Singapore or Chandrababu Naidu. Today, Mumbai is a city with a brilliant
brain but paralyzed limbs. The infrastructure needs to be completely overhauled.
Double-decker roads and trains need to be built — like Bangkok — to decongest
traffic. Hovercrafts can be used to link the western coast of the city, while a helicopter
service can link the airports to the heart of the city. For slums, the Singapore example
can be followed. In the 1960s, slum-dwellers in Singapore were rehabilitated in highrises with shopping centers at the bottom, where they were given work. You would be
surprised how fast efficiency seeps downwards once you begin wielding the stick. Of
course, for this, the CEO needs to operate without political influence.33The success of
the Mumbai CEO shall depend on a good dashboard. If Oracle CEO Larry Ellison
can track 20,000 salespeople, tracking Mumbai city is in the realm of the possible.
This may sound just like Chandrababu Naidu redux, but that should not be an
argument against it—how well it is done is the key. Restructuring civic incentives,
based on improved information flows, will go a long way towards tackling this
weakness. That is what corporate dashboards are about. Mumbai CEO can use them
too. He can choose to be efficient. [Mumbai] can seriously put its world-class IT
industry to work to make that happen.34
Space-Time Compression
The fourth way in which the framework of exclusion and inclusion is created is
through a simultaneous process of “distantiation and space-time compression” (Giddens,
1999) within the digitally mediated spaces, allowing material and non-material forces of
production to co-locate and co-exist, often in an interchangeable manner, creating a singular
and circular logic of self-sustaining codes of sociality that recreate, at a conceptual level, the
politics of exclusion and inclusion as a binary set of logins and logouts. The political
manifestation of these processes are still evolving and range from questions of mediated
identity, citizenship, and nationhood raised by Aadhaar cards to facial recognition software,
biometric identification systems, and magnetic strip cards to access public, semi-public, and
private spaces. By default, the participation of a person in a social realm would require, at the
least, an engagement with multiple layers of digital access points, but in all probability, it
would realistically require a complete integration with the essential logic of digitally
mediated access. In some ways, some of the future cities being planned in India have already
imbibed this logic.
In much of the developed world, innovative new digital technologies are being
retrofitted onto aging infrastructure to make cities work better for the 21st century.
But here in India we have a tremendous opportunity: to build new cities from the
ground up with smart technologies. Using technology and planning, we can leapfrog
the more mature economies. Unlike the cities that grew up in the United States in the
19th and 20th centuries, we don’t have abundant supplies of land, energy, and water.
So we have to build cities in far more innovative and sustainable ways so that access
to resources, services, and products and its demand and supply systems are
integrated.35
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Answers and Questions
The Politics of the digital spaces are often exclusively conceived and conceptualized
as an articulation of Internet-only social media platforms: the Twitter revolution and the Arab
Spring are dominant metaphors. Yet, there isn’t one “single” politics of digitally mediated
spaces. There is, however, without a doubt, a socio-technical connectedness between the
multiple politics of the hybridized techno-spaces that creates a real world spatiality and
territoriality of social singularity. There is also not a single metanarrative of these spaces, yet
the micro-narrative of each one of these spaces mimics the nodal architecture of network
systems, contributing to and drawing from other narrative nodes in a nearly instantaneous
manner. The politics of such spaces can best be described and understood as a multitude
stringed together by an overarching logic of control and order that is digitally manipulated,
scripted, and coded. The narrative and discourse of these spaces have distinct characteristics
but are also intrinsically linked to the larger connective architecture of globalization, finance
capital and technology.
The politics of these spaces are extraordinarily dynamic, changing and mutating so
fast and so quickly that not only does the distantiation between time and space seem artificial,
but it actually seems to be moldable enough for it either to exist individually, collectively, or
as a singularly merged entity. It is almost as if there is a certain quantum logic associated
with every single phenomenon of these socio-technoscapes: every emergence has the
potential to exist in different modes and forms at once. It also seems that the very act of
observing a digitally mediated space changes it; after all, for instance, one cannot research the
political articulations of Twitter as a social media platform without becoming a part of it and,
in the process, submitting one’s movements to the predictive and tracking algorithms of
multiple and layered digital platforms of the virtual and physical world. Digitally mediated
spaces are not just a rich landscape of new means and modes of production of space,
spatiality, and territoriality; they also foster methodological challenges that raise fundamental
questions about the tools, techniques, and approaches towards social science research. One
might even be tempted to understand the articulatory fragmentation and multiplicity of
contestations as a manifestation of a post-modern world order—one that is underpinned on a
network of integrated digital technologies.
Each new layer of fragmentation, engagement, and contestation is embedded with a
logic that is becoming increasingly autonomous to the point of complete independence—so
much so that the logic of the digital has permeated the consciousness of daily common sense,
existing, as it were, without any material foundations. Ironically, this logic, while
fragmenting the material and non-material means and modes of social production, the
sociality of life, is based on a singular imperative of order and control, which ranges from the
genetic manipulation of ecology and ecosystems to reconfiguration of physical and imagined
spaces. It’s almost Newtonian in spirit and reminiscent of early 20th century triumphalist
modernism, making one wonder if in order to understand and analyze digitally mediated
spaces, one has to revisit almost every single epistemological domain with a new lens.
Notes
1
R. Swaminathan is Senior Fellow of Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Fellow of National Internet
Exchange of India (NIXI) and Contributing Editor of Governance Now. This paper was written as part of a
larger research project on Social Media and Democracy funded by Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung (RLS) Foundation,
Berlin and Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Delhi. 2
Henri Lefebvre (trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith), The Production of Space, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford,
1991, pp 3-4.
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3
eMarketer, Worldwide Social Network Users: 2013 Forecast and Comparative Estimates, 2013, pp 24-46
Internet started its life as ARPANET, a US military network for closed loop communication, and that legacy
has informed to a certain extent the nature and direction of its development.
5
Aadhaar is a digital identity card being issued to Indians by the government that stores biometric, social and
demographic data of a person. Till March 2014, 600 million Indians have been issued the card. The target is to
issue it to all 1.2 billion Indians by the end of 2016.. 6
Adam Sadilek, John Krumm, ‘Far Out: Predicting Long-term Human Mobility’, Proceedings of the TwentySixth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, August 2013, pp 814-815.
7
Sean Follmer, Daniel Leithinger, Alex Olwal, Akimitsu Hogge, Hiroshi Ishii, ‘InFORM: Dynamic Physical
Affordances and Constraints through Shape and Object Actuation, MIT Media Lab, November 2013, pp 1-5
8
Ibid pp 7-8.
9
A Mumbai-based start-up Traffline has built a real-time traffic information service that helps urban commuters
in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore avoid traffic jams through a mobile application that integrates digital maps,
Twitter updates, voice web and traffic details.
10
Bitcoin is a distributed, peer-to-peer digital currency that functions without the intermediation of any central
authority. Bitcoin is called a cryptocurrency as it is decentralised and uses cryptography to control transactions
and prevent double-spending. Please go to http://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf to access the originator Sakoshi
Nakamoto’s paper ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.’
11
Arjun Appadurai’s body of work extensively details global cultural flows of ethnoscapes, mediascapes,
technoscapes, financescapes,ideoscapes.
12
Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, 2010, pp XVII-XVIII.
13
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system from the general purpose UUCP dial-up network
architecture. Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it
was established in 1980.Users read and post messages to one or more categories, known as newsgroups.
14
Like several technologies associated directly or indirectly with cyberspace, RFID also had a military
dimension. In 1945 Lev Sergeyevich Termen, also known as Léon Theremin, invented an espionage tool for the
Soviet Union that retransmitted incident radio waves with audio information, and this device is considered to be
a predecessor of RFID technology.
15
Sally A. Applin, Michael Fisher (2011), 'A Cultural Perspective on Mixed, Dual and Blended Reality', IUI
Workshop on Location Awareness for Mixed and Dual Reality, Palo Alto, California. Accessed @
http://www.dfki.de/LAMDa/accepted/ACulturalPerspective.pdf on October 08, 2014.. 16
This is part of a conversation with 25-year-old Sunil Dalvi who is a Maharashtrian and a member of the Shiv
Sena (right-wing conservative party) and has not passed basic school education. Dalvi has never been to
Kolkata, considered to be India’s football capital, yet has acquired the nuances of football and a Global logic of
what should constitute a totality of urban experience. A similar imaginary was shared by Zubin Mehrotra, who
is a banker educated in the United Kingdom, and working with a multinational finance company in Mumbai.
17
Manuel Castells is the originator of this epistemological tool.
18
Such narratives routinely inform discussions on quality of life, especially on the overarching logic of creating
green spaces.
19
Ibid, pp 445-446.
20
Nandan Nilekani during his talk India’s Transformation: The Role of Information Technology at the AustraliaIndia Institute, University of Melbourne, October 16, 2013.
21
Henri Lefebvre has written extensively on the social production of space.
22
Second Life is an online virtual world, developed by Linden Lab, which is a company based in San Francisco.
It was launched on June 23, 2003 and currently has over 1 million users. The virtual world can be accessed via
Linden Lab's own client programs or third party applications. Second Life users create virtual representations of
themselves, called avatars, and interact with other avatars, places or objects. They can explore the world, which
is known as the grid, and meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, build,
create, shop and trade virtual property and services with one another. Second Life features 3D-based usergenerated content. It also has its own virtual currency, the Linden Dollar, which is exchangeable with real world
currency.. 23
Ferdinand Tönnies evolved this conceptual distinction as a tool to understand the ordering of social ties (now
social networks).
24
The high-rise Indiabulls Centre once housed a housing complex (chawl) of textile workers from various parts
of India who used to work in the nearby textile mills. Most of the mills have now been converted to office
complexes and descendants of textile workers now work mainly as janitorial staff or as mall helpers.
25
This imagery informs the narratives of ‘enclaves of global urbanity’, which also sometimes become the ideal
urbanity.
26
Such a sentiment underlines the larger narrative of the sensory and olfactory realignment of modernity.
4
103
27
The changing contours of the narratives surrounding the concept of public space in Mumbai also need to be
explored. The infusion of the ‘green logic’ of the global environmental movement into the conceptualisation of
urban space is amplifying the imaginary of public space as a specific configuration of a ‘park-driven recreation
and leisure.’
28
Christian Ulrik Andersen, Søren Pold, 'The Scripted Spaces of Urban Ubiquitous Computing: The
Experience, Poetics, and Politics of Public Scripted Space', The Fibreculture Journal, Issue 19, 2011, pp 3-4.
29
The black swan theory describes a seemingly random event that has a large and unexpected impact on other
seemingly unconnected events or situations. The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.. 30
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-07/01/mit-media-lab-kevin-slavin/viewgallery/cn12411
31
Ibid, pp 5-9.
32
Lavasa is a private, planned city spread across 25,000 acres being built near Pune. It is stylistically based on
the Italian town Portofino and is being developed by Hindustan Construction Company (HCC).
33
Alyque Padamsee, CEO, AP Amalgamated and Naushad Forbes, Vice-chairman, CII Maharashtra while
speaking at July 26, 2007 release of the McKinsey-Bombay First report Mumbai Vision 2015.
34
Sanjay Mehta, Chief Executive Officer, MAIA Intelligence (http://egov.eletsonline.com/2011/11/a-ceo-formumbai/).
35
Amitabh Kant, who was the CEO of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), explaining the concept of
future cities in India in a blog (http://smartcitiescouncil.com/article/how-india-hopes-cut-front-smart-city-lineand-how-ibm-plans-help).
104
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Vol. 6, No. 3, pp 100-106, London. The African Union and the Conflict in Mali: Extra-Regional Influence and the Limitations of a
Regional Actor
Col. Abiodun Joseph Oluwadare, PhD
National Open University of Nigeria,
omoijewi@yahoo.com
Abstract
The role of regional and sub-regional organizations cannot be overstated in conflict resolution,
especially in their sphere of influence. The African Union and The Economic Community of
West African States (ECOWAS) have played prominent roles in places like Burundi, Darfur,
Chad, Somalia, and Liberia. The success achieved in these interventions would not likely have
been forthcoming if the US, European Union and its member nations, along with the United
Nations had not given their support to these regional and sub-regional organizations. In other
words, the cooperative, collaborative, and supportive understanding between these extra-African
bodies and the regional and sub-regional organizations has recorded more success than a
unilateral intervention. To elaborate, the support given to ECOWAS in Liberia led to a
successful resolution of that country’s war, and the AU-UN hybrid operations in Darfur is
yielding some kind of modest success. Analysts have posited that at present, in the resolution of
protracted conflict, there is no substitute for coherent, coordinated intervention by global power
and regional and sub-regional organizations. In contrast, unilateral intervention, which, in
addition to being wasteful and expensive, can be internationally controversial on the grounds of
both legality and legitimacy, especially where the UN has not given its nod. This article submits
that cooperation between the UN and regional and sub-regional African organizations should
have been applied to the resolution of Mali’s conflict. Even though African regional institutions
lack the required expertise, logistics, diplomatic, and financial muscle to singularly mount a
successful intervention without support from extra-Africa, a swift response from and the
immediate engagement of the Western world in the form of willing partnership with regional
African organizations would dramatically improve the outcome of peacekeeping operations in
Africa.
It is the contention of this paper that France’s late intervention (after the troops of African led
International Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA) were overrun) significantly weakened a
proactive response to the conflict. The same resources used by France could have been more
effectively and efficiently utilized if made available to the African Union. - Considering the fact
that the African Union lacked the resources to effectively intervene in Mali, making such
resources available to the Union would have bolstered its capacity to intervene in Mali. In this
case, cooperation not for that mission alone but future missions could have been achieved.
The African Union and the Conflict in Mali
107
Since the end of the Cold War, concerns have heightened about sustained violent
conflicts in Africa. Conflict mitigation and resolution have become the dominant governance
activities in almost every part of Africa. Many of these conflicts seem intractable; conflict
mitigation and resolution initiatives are at best yielding modest success. Even so, such successes
typically provide peace in the short term but hardly lay the foundation for the reconstitution of
order and the attainment of sustainable peace. Although the underlying causes of these conflicts
are multifarious, the fluid, shifting nature of conflicts and their underlying causes require both
top-down and bottom-up approaches that ensure both external expertise and local ownership.
Peace and security have become priority issues not only for the African continent but also
for the international community. Although resolving violent conflict has been recognized as one
of the most urgent challenges facing the continent, until recently, many such conflicts had not
gained the marked profile they are currently attaining in terms of political priority and effort
(including those made from both inside and outside Africa). Thus, the parameters of conflict
resolution have shifted in the direction of greater visibility and a heightened political will to act.
Conflict resolution in Africa through military intervention, although recent, has
accounted for an alarming proportion of the methods attempted (though this was not the case in
the 1970s and 80s). African institutions such as the former Organization of African Unity (OAU)
and the international community (including the United Nations and other key regional, subregional, and state actors) have been willing to intervene militarily in extreme, emergency
situations to protect civilian populations. However, numerous critical doubts—both from the
African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)—have
been expressed regarding military actions in Africa and the motives informing the initiatives and
military actions taken by external actors in Africa.
This paper is an effort to offer a nuanced engagement with the conflict in Mali. Even
though the conflict in Mali is considered one of the most devastating conflicts on the African
continent, little attention has been given in the academic literature to assessing the various
conflict resolution mechanisms adopted by the African Union Peace and Security Architecture
(APSA), how such mechanisms are operationalized, and the challenges they face. This paper
aims to fill this gap. The overarching objective is to analyze how the collaboration between the
extra-African bodies and the regional and sub-organizations played out in the resolution of the
conflict in Mali. In order to achieve this objective, this study triangulates both primary sources
through interviews and secondary sources, including journal articles, online sources, and reports.
This is enriched by historical analysis of the conflict in Mali.
The AU Mechanism for Conflict Resolution
In its 1990 declaration, the OAU Heads of State and government recognized that the
prevalence of conflicts in Africa was seriously impeding their collective and individual efforts to
deal with the continent’s economic problems. Consequently, they resolved to work together
toward the peaceful and rapid resolution of conflicts. During the OAU Summit held in Cairo in
1993, African leaders established the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, and
Resolution (MCPMR). In doing so, they recognized that the resolution of conflicts is a
precondition for the creation of peace and stability, and a necessary precondition for social and
economic development (UN, 2004:1).
From the outset, the issue of peacekeeping on which the OAU mechanism was predicated
was controversial. It was widely felt within the OAU political leadership that peace and security
108
were the preserve of the United Nations, which was mandated to keep peace globally and which
possesses more resources than the OAU. The OAU defined its objective narrowly as that of
primarily anticipating and preventing conflicts and left large-scale peacekeeping to the UN and
Africa’s sub-regional organizations. Nonetheless, with respect to conflict mitigation and
resolution, the continental body identified three aims regarding the resolution of those conflicts
in which it was willing to become involved: first, to anticipate and prevent situations of potential
conflict from developing into full-blown wars; second, to undertake peacemaking and peace
building efforts if full-blown conflicts should arise; and third, to carry out peacemaking and
peace building activities in post-conflict situations. While this initiative thrust the OAU into the
center of conflict management efforts in Africa, the reality is that the pan-African organization
never became a principal player in the peace processes in Africa (CSIS, 2004:2). Despite its
deficiencies, the OAU had the potential to coordinate the evolving early warning systems in
Africa’s various sub-regions. It went further to develop the potential to act as an information
bank with sub-regional desks or other alternative systems where information about the activities
of each sub-region and its organizations can be coordinated.
However, on July 9, 2001, the OAU made the decision to transform itself into a
continental African Union (AU) following the 2000 signing and ratification by fifty Heads of
State and Government of the Constitutive Act of the African Union (hereafter, “the Act”) in
Lusaka, Zambia. However, it remains to be seen whether the AU will build on the capacity of its
predecessor in the area of conflict prevention, management, and resolution. Unlike the OAU
Charter, the constitutive act of the AU allows for interference in the internal affairs of member
states in cases of unconstitutional changes of governments, genocide, and conflicts that threaten
regional stability (Herbst and Mills, 2003:21). Furthermore, the Act also provides for the
participation of African civil society actors in the activities of the organization, establishes a PanAfrican Parliament, and provides for an Economic and Cultural Commission. One year after the
establishment of the new union, African Heads of State and Government adopted a protocol
relating to the establishment of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) in Durban, South Africa.
The council replaced the former OAU Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, and
Resolution, incorporating relevant structures and methods in order to serve as the continent’s
collective security and early-warning mechanism.
The Protocol Relating to the Peace and Security Council of the African (hereafter, “PSC
Protocol”) states the rationale for and delineates the interlocking components of the African
Union Peace and Security Architecture (APSA), in which the PSC is the principal decisionmaking organ for conflict prevention, management ,and resolution and is supported by a
Continental Early warning System (CEWS), a panel of the Wise (PoW), a Special (Peace) Fund
(the Fund), an African Standby (Peacekeeping) Force (ASF), including a Military Staff
Committee (MSC), and the AU Commission (AUC), through the chairperson of the AUC, along
with the Commissioner for Peace and Security and his/her Peace and Security Directorate (PSD).
All these components aim to provide an all-encompassing set of instruments to address African
security needs by African actors (Keenan, 2004:478).
The African Union Peace and Security Architecture
Although the APSA has evolved over a period of four decades, the period from the
formation of the OAU in 1963 to the 4th Extraordinary Summit of the OAU in September 1999 in
Sirte (where African leaders agreed to transform the OAU to AU) could be described as the
109
background context of the establishment of Africa’s new security mechanism. The approval of
the Constitutive Act of the African Union in July 2000 and the creation of the AU represents a
significant milestone in the vision, goals, and responsibilities entrusted to the new pan-African
institution. The AU still upheld the principles that directed its weak predecessor that placed a
premium on sovereignty, “African solutions to African problems,” noninterference in member
states’ internal affairs, and non-use of force for the peaceful settlement of African disputes.
However, the act brought with it significant normative changes, particularly in the areas of peace
and security, human rights and democracy, respect for the sanctity of human life, the
condemnation and rejection of unconstitutional governments, and an openness to intervention. It
is instructive to note that with the transformation from the OAU to AU, the maintenance of peace
and security became the primary issue on the AU agenda. These new norms and standards form
the basis on which the PSC Protocol and the Common African Defence and Security Policy
(CADSP) were to be enacted. Indeed, as Engel and Gomes argued, both the PSC Protocol and
CADSP could be seen as the APSA’s legal foundation (EU, 2003:3).
One aspect of the African Union that represents a clear departure from the OAU is the
principle of the AU’s right of intervention. According to Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of
the African Union, the AU has the right to intervene in member states’ activities in cases of
grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Furthermore,
the article was amended in 2003 by the Protocol on Amendments to the Act to include other
serious conditions under which the AU could intervene, particularly those that included threats to
legitimate order. In such cases, according to the amendment, the AU was permitted to restore
security to any AU member state based on the recommendation of the PSC. Specifically, Article
4(j) provides for “the right of member states to request intervention from the Union in order to
restore peace and security.” With the provisions outlined in various sections of Article 4, Africa
has moved away from unqualified respect for state sovereignty to an approach where the duty to
protect populations and the right to intervene shapes Africa’s security management agenda.
Ethiopian scholar Dersso sheds light on the importance of Article 4 with respect to post-Cold
War African security needs when he asserts that the new security architecture, with Article 4(h)
at its core, is not just a mere commitment to the promotion of peace and security, but it shows
Africa’s determination to avoid a repeat of the “Rwanda experience.”According to Dersso, the
article in question not only creates the legal foundation and justification for armed interventions
in member states’ violent conflicts, but it also imposes an obligation on Africa’s foremost
institution to intervene in such cases in order to prevent the occurrence or stop the perpetration of
atrocious international crimes in Africa (The Commission for Africa, 2005).
At the heart of the APSA lies the PSC. The latter is a standing decision-making organ for
the prevention, management, and resolution of conflicts, defining and directing the AU conflict
management agenda. It is equally responsible for the overall implementation of the Common
African Defence and Security Policy (CADSP) purposely to protect the sanctity of human life
and also to lay the foundation for sustainable development in Africa. The PSC Protocol
acknowledges that the PSC is to function in accordance with the UN and within the framework
of the UN activity, as the UN remains the principal custodian of international peace and security.
In return, the PSC Protocol requests the UN’s acknowledgement of the role and obligations of
regional organizations in the management of regional conflict.
According to Article 7 of the PSC Protocol, the PSC, in consultation with the chairperson
of the AU Commission, is mandated to

110
Anticipate and prevent disputes and conflicts, as well as policies that may lead to
genocide and crimes against humanity;
 Undertake peace making and peace building functions to resolve conflicts where they
have occurred;
 Authorize the mounting and deployment of peace support missions;
 Intervene on behalf of the AU in a member state’s conflict under grave circumstances,
namely those involving war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity, as defined in
relevant international conventions and instruments;
 Institute sanctions whenever an unconstitutional change of government takes place in a
member state, as provided for in the Lome Declaration;
 Implement the common defence policy of the African Union;
 Follow-up on the progress made towards the promotion of democratic practices, good
governance, the rule of law, protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms,
respect for the sanctity of human life, and the upholding of international humanitarian
law by member states; and
 Support and facilitate humanitarian action in situations of armed conflicts or major
natural disasters (UN, 2004).
The PSC has been granted the authority to make decisions on its own on a wide-range of
security related issues in Africa, ranging from preventive diplomacy to post-conflict peace
building. However, in serious crisis situations such as those specified under Article 4(h) or when
action is needed in a non-consenting member state, it is only the AU assembly that can make the
ultimate decision regarding whether or not to intervene based upon the PSC’s recommendations.
The council is also responsible for facilitating close collaboration with the Regional Economic
Communities (RECs)/Regional Mechanisms (RMs)1 and the UN.
Since its inauguration, the PSC has made crucial political decisions in response to peace
and security challenges in Africa, with the mixed result of both shortcomings and achievements.
It should be understood that most of these responses have been in the areas of condemning
violence and the use of political and economic sanctions against unconstitutional changes of
government, particularly the coup d’état in the Central African Republic (2003), Guinea Bissau
(2003 and 2012), Sao Tome and Principe (2003), Togo (2005), Mauritania (2005 and 2008),
Guinea (2008), Madagascar (2009), and Niger (2010), the post-election crisis in Cote d’Ivoire
(2010-2011), and the post-election violence in Kenya (2013). The council has also been able to
authorize peace operations in Burundi, Somalia, Sudan, and the Comoros.
In spite of these efforts, the development of the African Standby Force (ASF) is being
challenged by a number of problems, hampering its full2010operationalization. Problems
ranging from regional differences, questions about mandating modus operandi and coordination,
intuitional capacity building, funding, equipment, logistics, and training are slowing the pace of
progress towards the full operationalization of the ASF. These problems have been identified and
must be critically addressed in the next phase of ASF implementation, which lasts until 2015.
There are clear disproportions in the readiness of the RECs/RMs in terms of their capabilities for
peace operations and their capacity to effectively manage that with which they have been
charged. While the regional body, the AU, has not made any appreciable progress in preparing
the RECS/RMs to achieve their objectives, two sub-regional bodies, ECOWAS2 and SADC, are
making substantial progress in this (Volt and Shanahan, 2005).
The PSC Protocol calls for the establishment of a continental-wide Early Warning
System (CEWS) as part of the APSA to “facilitate the anticipation and prevention of conflicts”
111
through gathering and analysis of information that will help the AU to prevent conflicts in a
timely manner. The CEWS, which operates as the early warning component of the APSA, builds
on the RECs/RMs’ early mechanism. The idea behind it is to boost the AU capacity to prevent
conflict by providing the chairperson of the AU commission with information and to enable
him/her to use the data gathered to advise the PSC on potential conflicts and threats to African
peace and security and, finally, to recommend the best course of action to be used by the Peace
and Security Council (Volt and Shanahan, 2005:16).
Structurally, the CEWS consists of the Observation and Monitoring Centre (OMC),
known as “The Situation Room,” housed at the Conflict Management Division (CMD) at the
AU Commission, and the Observation and Monitoring Units (OMUs) of the RMs. According to
Article 12 (2b) of the PSC Protocol, the Situation Room is to be linked directly to the RMs’
OMUs through appropriate means of communication. The OMUs are to continuously collect and
process data at their respective levels and transmit all data to the Situation Room. The AU takes
prompt actions in response to a threat of any violent conflict that has the propensity to disturb
African peace and security (Report of the Secretary General of the UN 2012: 1-10).
Since the AU’s peace and security activities need to be financed, the PSC Protocol, as
part of the APSA, provided for the establishment of a Special (Peace) Fund (hereafter, “the
Fund”). This fund has been described as anaemic, with a weak governance structure. One of the
six parts that make up the African Peace and Security Architecture, the Peace Fund and the need
for its enhanced funding cannot be overemphasized. The Fund is envisioned as a standing pool
on which both the AU and the RECs/RMs can call in emergency situations and to meet
unexpected priorities. Relevant financial rules and regulations of the continental institution
govern the operations of the Fund, and it is financed directly from the requisitions from the AU’s
regular budget, including arrears of contributions and voluntary contributions from states and
private sources within and outside the African continent. The Fund has been inexistence since
1993, under the OAU regime, at which time6% of the OAU budget was allocated to it. Due to
the precarious nature of African economies, however, a number of AU member states find it
difficult to honor their financial obligation of the organization, thereby limiting the AU in its
activities, including those relating to peace and security. Between 2004 and 2007, AU member
states’ contributions to the Fund amounted to an average of 1.9% of the total resources
mobilized, while the remaining amounts were provided by external partners. This scenario
became worrisome, as its negative consequence on the AU-mandated peace operations were
significant. This is concern was presented by the 2007High-level Panel Audit of the African
Union:
African countries should endeavour to contribute substantially to AU peace
operations. The assessed contributions of member states to peacekeeping
operations should be paid regularly. The percentage of regular budget
allocated to the Peace Fund should be increased, and the AU commission
chairperson should also intensify his efforts at mobilizing funds and
resources for AU peacekeeping operations from within the continent and
the Diaspora. (AU, 2007)
Acknowledging this frustrating development, African leaders, in August 2009, decided at
the AU summit in Tripoli to gradually increase the statutory transfer from the AU regular budget
to the Fund from 6% to 12%by 2012. This transfer is intended to avoid the crippling of the AU in
its peace and security functions due to lack of funding. Even prior to these recent efforts, the
African heads of state, realizing the continent’s financial limitations, adopted a resolution during
112
the AU Summit in Maputo, Mozambique in July 2003, calling on the European Union to
establish a Peace Support Operation Facility (PSOF) from funds allocated to African countries
under the existing cooperation agreements with the European Union. In response to this request,
the EU African Peace Facility (APF) was established in March 2004, with the initial sum of Euro
250 million, under the 9th European Development Fund (EDF) budget (2000-2007) to support
the APSA and Africa’s vision of transitioning itself from the sufferer of protracted conflict to the
builder of sustainable peace. The European Union APF is one of the main sources of finance for
the APSA project, which, according to the European Union Commission, puts the European
institution at the forefront of international support to the APSA, African peace operations, and
capacity building activities at the levels of both the AU and RECs. Due to the AU’s wide-range
of peace and security activities, especially peace operations in the field, the money originally
designated for the establishment of the APF became insufficient and was increased four times to
a total of Euro 440 million by 2007 (AU, 2010). Considering the fact that international donors
provide as much as 98 percent of the funding for AU peace keeping efforts and activity, it is
questionable whether this regional body can assert its independence and autonomy in
peacekeeping. This has remained one of the most visible Achilles heels of the AU in proactively
responding to conflict in the region.
The Roots of Mali’s Conflicts
The roots of Mali’s conflicts lie in two decades of poor governance after a 1968 military
coup, followed by a fragile democratic transition in1992. The country has been characterized by
weak state institutions and a nepotistic, corrupt, and sometimes insensitive ruling elite. Mali
ranked 105th out of 182 countries profiled in Transparency International’s 2012 Corruption
Perception Index Transparency International, 2012).The roots of the rebellion against the ruling
elite can also be pointedly traced to ethnic-political tensions, which developed into a separatist
movement in the northern part of the country. The tensions came to a head in 2012, when armed
Islamist extremists joined the rebellion. The 500,000-strong Islamic Tuaregs in the north felt that
they had been marginalized since independence from France in 1960, alleging that the
development needs of the northern region had been long neglected and that the region lacked
representation in the central government of Bamako. They therefore initiated a rebellion that
raged particularly strongly in the early 1990’s. They felt that neither the National Pact for Reestablishment of Peace nor the Brotherhood and National Unity in Northern Mali in 1992—nor
the Algiers Accord of 2006—had addressed their grievances (UN, 2012). In addition to the
grievances alleged by the Tuaregs, Mali as a whole, nearly 80 percent of the population of 14
million live below the poverty line in 2013 (Ibid), suggesting that the central government was
also neglecting other regions and groups in the country. The more proximate cause of the Mali
conflict lay in the perception of junior officers of the Malian army that their senior officers were
diverting resources meant to fight the counterinsurgency in Northern Mali into their own
pockets. This led to low morale among government troops and manifested in the inability of the
troops to work together, even to operate equipment, for example. The president, Amadou
Toumani Toure, himself a former general and head of state between 1991 and 1992, was seen as
having mismanaged both this situation and the militant threat in the north. On 10 January 2012,
the Tuareg group, the movement pour la liberation de l’Azawad (MNLA); Ansar Dine, an
Islamic splinter group from the MNLA (whose political leadership was based in Mauritania); as
well as Islamic extremists, Al- Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the mouvement pour
l’unicite et le jihad enAfrique de l’Ouest (MUJAO), launched attacks on government forces,
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which led to the taking over the northern two-thirds of the country, including the towns of Gao,
Timbuktu, and Kidal.3 The coup was reminiscent of the military uprising staged by military
officers in Sierra Leone in April 1992, when junior officers toppled the regime of former general
Joseph Momoh, who, it was felt, neglected the needs of the Sierra Leone military as they were
fighting Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.
The Malian government’s ability to respond to the threats being posed at that time by the
mujahedin was weakened by the coup staged by US-trained Malian Captain Amadou Sanogo in
March 2012. In the same month, ECOWAS appointed Bukinabe head of state and Blaise
Compore, as its mediator. The sub-regional body also announced plans to deploy a 3,000-man
strong standby force if the rebels refused to settle the situation peacefully. The following month,
an ECOWAS deal forced the resignation of the Malian president, AmadouToure, and saw the
appointment of DioncoundaTraore as interim president. Compaore urged the MNLA and Ansar
Dine to negotiate collectively with Bamako. Led by Sanogo, the insurgents, however, continued
to wield tremendous influence over the interim government.
The Politics of Intervention and the Conflict in Mali
Following the March 2012 coup, a support and follow-up group on the situation in Mali,
consisting of representatives from ECOWAS, the “core countries” (Algeria, Mauritania, and
Niger), the AU, the EU, and key bilateral donors, started to meet regularly. The AU pushed for
better coordination of domestic and international efforts and stressed the need to restore state
authority, security sector reform, and elections. Even as 412,000 Malians were displaced by the
conflict (including 208,000 refugees in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mauritania, Niger, and
Togo), by November 2012, tensions erupted between the rebels in the north, with Ansar Dine
and MAJAO repelling the MNLA out of the main towns that it had occupied. AQIM notoriously
destroyed many historic and cultural sites in Timbuktu. These attacks closed down the country’s
gold mining industry. ECOWAS’ leadership was, at the time Mali crisis erupted, francophonedominated, allowing France to wield great influence among the conflict’s major players. Blaise
Compaore, Burkinabe leader who positioned himself as a key mediator in regional conflicts, it
was argued, hosted French gazelle helicopters in his country before they were deployed for
military combat in Mali in January 2013 (Wright & Okolo, 1999). The Chairman of ECOWAS
since February 2012 was Alassane Ouattara, leader of Cote d’Ivoire, whose presidential mandate
had been largely restored by the French army. The ECOWAS president since February 2012 was
former Burkinabe prime minister and a member of Compaore’s Congress for Democracy and
Progress (CDP) Party, Kadre Ouedrogo. All three individuals were, in a sense, closely aligned
with France and can be seen as French Trojan horses within ECOWAS. This placed Nigeria in
tight corner since it was diplomatically encircled and linguistically different than its Francophone
neighbors. Apart from the power play that has always manifested between France and Nigeria in
West Africa, Nigeria’s interest in intervening in Mali, it was argued was to curtail the perceived
links between Boko Haram and al-Qaeda’s northern African wing. In the words of President
Goodluck Jonathan, “We believe that if we stabilise northern Mali, not just Nigeria but other
countries that are facing threats will be stabilised. The terrorists have no boundaries. They don’t
respect international boundaries” (Madike, 2013). Beyond this claim, however, has been
Nigeria’s attempt in furthering her leadership position in Africa, to serve the strategic best
interest of the country.
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In June 2012, the ECOWAS commission started to discuss the possibility of deploying a
stabilization force to re-establish state authority in northern Mali. The UN and external donors
provided support to ECOWAS’ planning. The Malian army, ECOWAS, and the AU all requested
that the UN Security Council authorize deployment of an ECOWAS stabilization force with a
peace-enforcement mandate (under chapter VII of the UN charter) to restore the country’s
territorial integrity and also to secure its border areas, while the Malian army would attempt reestablished state authority. The concept behind the operations of the ECOWAS force was refined
at two meetings involving senior Malian military officers, ECOWAS, the “core countries”
(Algeria, Mauritania, and Niger), the AU, the UN, and other partners such as France, the US, and
the EU in Bamako in August and October/November 2012. From that emerged a harmonized
concept of joint operations—the “strategic operational framework”—which sought to align the
plans of the Malian army with those of a sub-regional force, the African led International
Support Mission in Mali (AFISMA). The joint mission would back the poorly- equipped 5,000member strong Malian army in three phases: to build its capacity; to recover occupied parts of
the north of the country and reduce the terrorist threat therein; and to transition to stabilization
activities in order to consolidate state authority in northern Mali. The plan also stressed the
importance of longer-term security sector reform of the Malian army.4 A joint coordination
mechanism was established involving the ministers of defence of Mali, ECOWAS troopcontributing states, the neighboring “core countries,” the AU, the UN, and other international
donors (The Economist, 2013).
International Organizations and Governments’ Intervention in Mali Crisis
Both ECOWAS and AU leaders endorsed the plan in November 2012 and asked the UN
Security Council to authorize an African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA)5
a 3,300-member strong African-led international support mission in Mali—with infantry units,
air assets, and formed police units—for an initial one-year period. The force was authorized in
December 2012 in a resolution drafted by France (ECOWAS, 2012), with the UN Security
Council urging AFISMA forces to take all necessary steps to rebuild Mali’s army; help the
government to extend its authority to the north; protect civilians; and help stabilize the country
after military operations (UN, 2012). In order to ensure efficient deployment of AFISMA to
Mali, the AU asked for a logistical support package to be provided to the mission through
assessed UN contributions, as had occurred with the AU/UN Hybrid operation in Darfur in 2007.
This plan was great on paper, but it would be difficult to implement in practice given the
logistical and financial challenges of sub-regional armies, along with Nigeria’s overcommitments with respect to peacekeeping efforts. From Congo crisis, Nigeria had contributed
both military and police personnel to more than forty peacekeeping operations in Africa and
across the world. During the onset of the conflict in Mali, Nigeria had a high contingent of
military, police, and civilian personnel in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Darfur. Additionally,
AFISMA was mandated to train, equip, and provide logistical support to the Malian Army, but it
could hardly equip or provide logistics to sustain itself in the field without substantial external
assistance. The UN Secretariat and Department of Peacekeeping Operations , headed by
Frenchman, Bernard Miyet, had been particularly hostile to the Nigerian peacekeeping presence
in Sierra Leone (The Economist, 2013) and later and was later (under another Frenchman, JeanMarie Guehenno) critical of the AU/UN hybrid model in Darfur.6 Due to its rather severe
limitations, the AFISMA mission was received by the UN only lukewarmly, as reflected in
Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s reports to the UN Security Council. He regarded AFISMA as
115
an instrument of “last resort” (despite the fact that it was clearly time for last resort measures, as
only military force would clearly dislodge hardened militants in the northern Mali). He
continually warned that ill-conceived intervention by AFISMA could worsen the situation on
the ground, and he noted that the deployment of such a force could result in human right abuses.
He persistently cautioned that AFISMA troops would have to be “held accountable” for their
actions and called for UN human rights monitors to be deployed to effectively “police” AFISMA
peacekeepers (The Namibian, 2012). Instead of providing AFISMA logistics and funding, the
UN was more concerned with human rights observance. By March 2013, the consolidated
appeals process to secure funding for the AFISMA mission to support Mali had received only
$73.3 million, representing only 20 percent of its $368 million target (UNSC, 2013:5). While the
UN Secretary-General was hesitant to provide the logistical support package that AFISMA was
requesting, the provision of such support would have been in the interest of not just the West
Africans but of the entire international community, including particularly powerful western states
like France and the US (UNSC, 2013:4).
Undermining AFISMA viability, Ban Ki-Moon called for funding of its military
operations to be done by bilateral or voluntary contributions: a clearly unsustainable approach
for such a dangerous mission. Similarly, he authorized France to intervene only if the UN troops
are “under imminent and serious threat and at the demand.”
The Strange Reappearance of the French
France’s strategic interests in West Africa clearly informed its influence over the UN’s
Ban Ki-Moon. First, France has historical and structural relations with regimes and elites in the
sub-region. Second, it also has deep economic interest and extensive economic ties.7 Last, it
regards the region as falling under French geopolitical influence. This combination of facts has
lent credence to claims that France’s “finger-prints” are to be found over several of the UN
Secretary-General’s reports.
The history of France’s involvement in the region is lengthy. Most recently, on 10
January 2013, as militants from Ansar Dane, MUJAO, and AQIM came to within 680 kilometres
of Bamako, routing weak and demoralized Malian government forces, President Dioncounda
Traore requested French assistance to prevent a march on the capital. The fact that a supposedly
sovereign African country was turning to a former colonial power to protect its sovereignty was
itself the greatest indictment of pax Africana. The same day of this attack, Paris pushed the UN
Security Council to declare Mali’s crisis a “threat to international peace and security,” thus
legitimizing France’s impending military actions.
Even before the militants’ push into Bamako, French special forces had already
reportedly been fighting in Mali alongside the Malian army (BBC, 2013). In a well-coordinated
move, France launched “Operation Serval,” the aim of which was to oust the Islamic militants
from the northern region,the day after the French-drafted UN Security Council resolution, with
its troops eventually reaching 4,000. In a Blitzkrieg conducted closely thereafter, with 2,000
troops from autocratic Chad (rather than from the AFISMA forces), France retook major
northern towns like Gao, Konna, and Timbuktu by the end of January 2013, as the militants
withdrew farther north into the desert and the Adrar des Ifoghas Mountains. Some of the jihadists
staged suicide bombings and hit-and-run strikes against French and Malian units, as well as
against the MNLA (Roggio, 2013).Despite French efforts, by March 2013, the militants still
retained a presence in Kidal, Gao, and along the Niger River and Ouagadou Forest, with some
also retreating to neighboring countries. Northern Mali had been rendered a “wild west,”
116
featuring drug cartels, cross-border banditry, ransom kidnapping, human trafficking, and moneylaundering (Rice, 2013:5). The US, Britain, Germany, Canada, and Denmark rushed to provide
France with the logistical support that AFISMA had earlier been denied.
French President Francois Hollande, confronted with low domestic poll ratings, pledged
that France would stay in Mali as long as it took to defeat the terrorists (Aljazeera, 2013). He
argued in January 2013 that “Mali would have been entirely conquered and the terrorists would
be in a position [not only] to force … the Malian population to [submit to] a regime it did not
want but [also] to put on pressure on all countries of West Africa” (Economist Intelligence,
2013:9). This placed France in a position enviable to that of Nigeria, as the former was no
longer seen solely as a guarantor of peace in Mali (Milne, 2013: 27) but in West Africa as a
whole. Despite the popularity of Operation Serval, a critical analysis of France’s foreign policy
efforts in Mali may not be unconnected to its economic interests in Mali. With 14 percent of
France’s imports coming from Mali in 2012, France had reason to want to protect both the social
stability and the industrial productivity of Mali. Indeed, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius’
announcement that Paris would maintain a 1,000-man strong garrison in Mali (Rice, 2013:5) did
not come as a surprise to many observers.
The long-delayed AFISMA deployment moved into Mali by February 2013, following
assurances of the logistical and financial support that had previously been withheld. By March
2013, a 6,288-memberstrong AFISMA force (smaller than the originally authorized force of
9,500) was expanding its presence in parts of north and central Mali under the leadership of
Nigeria’s General Shehu Abdulkadir. Other ECOWAS troop-contributing countries included
Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Niger, Senegal, and Togo. Predictably, the troops faced
logistical challenges including the securing of food, fuel, and water, requiring bilateral donor
support to overcome these deficiencies (Melly and Darracq 2013:13). A hastily-created UN Trust
Fund provided AFISMA with $26.7 million by March 2013 (Economist Intelligence, 2013:6)
and in April, the UN officially formed the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated
Stabilization Mission in Mali (Mission multidimensionnelleintégrée des Nations unies pour la
stabilisation au Mali),MINUSMA. By June 2013, five logistics bases were established in Mali
and Niger to supply,in addition to the military, intelligence and logistical support provided by
key Western nations: Britain, Belgium, Canada, and the U.S (Francis, 2013). Serious questions
were raised in Africa as to why these arrangements had not been put in place to support the
regional troops before the French military intervention. The AFISMA mission’s struggle to
mobilize troops served only to legitimize the cynicism of the Western countries. In June 2013,
the UN Secretary General confirmed what everyone had known all along—that AFISMA lacked
the enabling units to act as an effective peacekeeping force. The troops were given four months
to reach UN standards (UNSC, 2013:16).
A surprising voice of support for French efforts in Mali came from Nigeria’s foreign
minister, Olugbenga Ashiru, who noted in April 2013, “If the French had not intervened at the
time they did, the situation in Mali would have been different today. Nigeria and indeed all
members of the AU are grateful for the intervention” (Ohia, 2013). At their summit in the Ivorian
town of Yamoussoukro in February 2013, ECOWAS leaders also expressed “profound gratitude”
to Paris for its “decisive action” (ECOWAS, 2013). Despite this favourable press, however,
France’s intervention in the conflict in Mali, especially its role in pressuring the UN Security
Council, has tended to strengthen its hegemonic stance in West Africa, particularly with respect
to Nigeria.
117
Conclusion
Mali provides a good example of the machinations and the politics behind peace making
missions. Far from being altruistically motivated, interventions in conflict in Africa are often
colored with parochial and self-serving interests. In the case of the role played by France in Mali,
one cannot fail to see how the former sought to multilateralize its past discredited unilateral
interventions on the continent. While stability may have occurred as a result of some of these
efforts, it was incidental to primary French interest of maintaining its own economic stakes in the
area.
Although the objective of setting up AFISMA was clearly noble, it was inevitable that
AFISMA would not achieve its mandate. Apart from being grossly underfunded, it had
inadequate military troops to match the strength of the rebels. It could thus better be described as
a “phantom force” that was dead on arrival in Mali and had to be resurrected as the UN’s
MINUSMA The question of why ill-equipped African peacekeepers were allowed to flounder
before their well-equipped counterparts from Europe were deployed complicates the puzzle.
Additionally, knowing that the AFISMA force lacked the size, logistics, and financing to sustain
itself in the field also begs the question why it was deployed in the first place. The fact that after
the French military intervention in 2013, the UN authorized a force that was four times as large
as the proposed African AFISMA force exposed the apparent insincerity of the Westerndominated Security Council. Its initial strength of 3,300 was tripled to 9,500 as soon as the
French intervention occurred, and the support that had previously been denied it suddenly
appeared. As with previous African-led missions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Burundi, and Darfur,
the Africans felt that the UN’s efforts in the region served to steal the glory of victory after the
Africans themselves had attempted to conduct tortuous regional peace making and peacekeeping
efforts that the world body failed properly to recognize.
The undesirable trend in which organizations lacking the necessary capabilities are left to
bear the brunt of peacekeeping efforts (particularly with respect to providing an initial
response), while other, more capable international entities only engage after sufficient losses
have been sustained or other political interests are at stake have been condemned (Adebabo,
2011:13). The approach of first deploying ill-equipped African peacekeepers and then
transforming peacekeeping efforts into a larger, better-resourced UN operations (Adebabo,
2011:13) had previously been practiced with the conversion of a 13,000 ECOWAS force in
Sierra Leone into a UN force of 20,000by 2000; an AU force of 2,645in Burundi into a UN force
of 5,650 by 2004; and an AU force of 8,000 in Darfur into a UN/AU hybrid force of 26,000 by
2008. In all of these cases, the Western world only belatedly supported the deployment of
sufficient forces after ill-equipped and poorly-funded regional peacekeepers had been outgunned. No immediate offers of international support or funding were forthcoming (despite the
serious nature of the violence in each of these cases) until regional efforts had imploded. This
hesitance to provide support was also evident in the deployment of AFISMA in Mali. The
consistent demonstration by the international community of hesitation to support regional
peacekeeping efforts in Africa.
Critically, however, pax Africana will not be achieved through an alphabet soup of
acronyms, but by greater political commitment and resources being provided by the international
community, led by Africa’s regional powers.
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Notes
1
RECs refer to all the eight Regional Economic Communities recognized by the African Union. The RMs refers to
Regional Mechanisms for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution in Africa. 2
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional group of fifteen West African
countries, founded on 28 May 1975, with the signing of the Treaty of Lagos. Its mission is to promote economic
integration across the region. 3
Several thousand heavily armed Tuareg fighters had returned to Mali in October 2011, having fought with Libya’s
deposed Muammar Qaddafi; this was a blow-back from the French-led military intervention in that country. Ansar
Dine worked with AQIM towards its goal of imposing Sharia law across the Sahel, and was fighting against the
MNLA (Mali Economic Intelligent Report 2012:18-19). The MNLA declared what is called the “independent state
of Azawad,” which no country recognized. These groups numbered around 3,000 core fighters and also involved
criminal networks. MUJAO and Ansar Dine were reported to be fighting alongside Nigerian militants, Boko Haram,
giving Abuja a direct stake in defeating this rebellion. 4
Telephone Interview with General C. Obiakor 2012 5
The African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA) is an Economic Community of West African
States (ECOWAS)-organized military mission sent to support the Malian government against Islamist rebels in the
Northern Mali conflict. 6
The French have headed the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations since Ghana’s Kofi Annan promised it to
them in 1996 in order to win their support to secure the post of the UN Secretary-General that year. This has led to
French dominance within AU/UN peacekeeping operations. 7
Despite its supposedly “humanitarian” intervention in Mali, France has historically had economic interests in both
Mali and Niger’s uranium sectors. About a quarter of French electricity production relies on uranium. On April 2013
French government white paper on Defence and National Security – with an advisory group chaired by Jean-Marie
Guehenno, the former French UN Undersecretary-General for peacekeeping – specifically singles out Africa (the
Sahel, the Gulf of Guinea, and the Maghreb) as a priority area for French defence and security policy. While the
white paper noted that France would help strengthen African peacekeeping capacity, Paris envisaged undertaking
future interventions like the one in Mali and planned to maintain at least four military bases on the continent. The
white Paper also recognized Africa‘s economic potential, while urging the EU to acknowledge that African security
was a key interest for the whole organisation (Melly &Darracq, 2013: 13) The African Union and the Conflict in Mali
119
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Review Essay by Charmaine G. Misalucha, Assistant Professor, International Studies
Department, De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines, charmaine.misalucha@dlsu.edu.ph
Rebecca Adler-Nissen, ed. Bourdieu in International Relations: Rethinking Key Concepts in IR.
Nicholas Greenwood Onuf. World of Our Making: Rules and Rule in Social Theory and
International Relations. London and New York: Routledge, 2013.
Arlene B. Tickner and David L. Blaney, eds. Thinking International Relations Differently.
International Relations (IR) has created for itself distinct and oftentimes impermeable
boundaries: states are the main actors, survival is their goal, and self-help is the system they
operate in. Moreover, what constitutes real, meaningful, or significant knowledge in IR has been
dependent on a methodology with a positivist inclination. The result of these ontological and
epistemological commitments is a view of international life that privileges certain groups over
others. Arlene B. Tickner and David L. Blaney’s Thinking International Relations Differently
provides a picture of international relations from the perspective of the non-Western world, and
highlights how knowledge about the “international” is produced and reproduced in what are
considered the peripheries of IR. The picture they and the contributors in the volume paint,
however, is one characterized by asymmetric relationships and structures of domination and
subordination, and – due to the lack of critical engagement with theory – one that seems to
promise incremental but nonetheless minimal change. Explaining, understanding, and
overcoming these structures are what Nicholas Greenwood Onuf and Rebecca Adler-Nissen
offer in the reissued World of Our Making and the edited volume on Bourdieu in International
Relations, respectively.
Thinking International Relations Differently is the second book in the “Worlding Beyond
the West” series. Similar to its predecessor, this volume explores international life outside the
core and thereby exposes “the provincialism of (Western) IR… (3).” The book revolves around
five main themes: “security,” “state, sovereignty and authority,” “globalization,” “secularism and
religion,” and “the international.” In examining how notions of security are different outside the
West, Pinar Bilgin looks at the cases of the “Arab world” and Turkey and finds that
understandings about security are “differently different” not least because of the various
challenges (such as state building and development) that countries in the non-West experience.
Meanwhile, Ole Waever offers a summary of the Aberystwyth, Paris, and Copenhagen schools
and how they have contributed to our extant understandings of international relations. Liu
Yongtao traces the evolution of Chinese thinking about security over the last thirty years, while
Arlene B. Tickner and Monica Herz move the discussion to Latin America and posit that security
knowledge in the region is “practical, applied and policy relevant (92).”
Part two of Tickner and Blaney’s volume identifies the theme “state, sovereignty and
authority.” Under this umbrella, Siba Grovogui highlights that Africa has been marginalized in
studies of politics, primarily due to the ambivalence and ambiguities surrounding issues like
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slavery and colonialism, as well as the role and impact of American thinking in the discipline.
At the same time, however, he does not discount the agency of Africa itself: “Africans have been
actors of history, even in their own subordination (134).” Similar trajectories are attended to in
Siddharth Mallavarapu’s chapter on South Asia, who looks at governance issues surrounding the
Indian Ocean in the pre-colonial past and the post-colonial present. Fernando Lopez-Alves
focuses on the Latin American state and forwards the idea that its development is different from
Asia and Africa because it was consolidated during the first wave of globalization (around 18701914).
Part three of the volume explores the theme of globalization. Isaac Kamola provides a
nuanced take on the issue and deftly asserts that the academic take on globalization is produced
by the absence of Africa. To support his claim, he examines three major texts on globalization
and thereafter reaches the conclusion that more attention to Africa is not the solution because its
very invisibility speaks of how a concept like globalization can only operate if some experiences
are privileged over others. Andrei P. Tsygankov’s chapter underscores factors that contribute to
the “critical” and “defensive” character of Russia’s reading of globalization. These include
Russia’s historical identity, its experiences with economic reforms in the 1990s, and its status as
an energy producer today. Arab scholars’ take on globalization is Wafaa Hasan and Bessma
Momani’s purview. They argue that globalization is a complex process that is both beneficial
and harmful.
Part four, which centers on secularism and religion, includes Ahmad Fauzi Abdul
Hamid’s chapter on Southeast Asia and zeroes in specifically on practices in Indonesia and
Malaysia. Mona Kanwal Sheikh and Ole Waever call for critical studies on secularism to help
improve the ways in which IR can address issues and conflicts relating to religion. Finally, the
last part offers understandings of the “international.” Karen Smith uses South Africa as a case
study and emphasizes the arbitrariness of the line that divides the domestic from the
international, while Ayesha Khan describes the experience of a research center in Pakistan and
how it shapes knowledge on what is considered local and international.
In its entirety, the main contribution of Tickner and Blaney’s volume is its depiction of
the multifaceted consequences of the way IR is presently constructed, i.e., state-centric and
biased towards the experiences of the so-called core. They present a world that is characterized
by a high degree of asymmetry in the capabilities of actors, which thus leads to relations of
domination and subordination. However, this domination, they conclude, is so totalizing that the
non-Western world is really no different from the West. There is “not enough difference,” they
point out, despite the infusion of “local flavors” to established disciplinal concepts. This is a
provocative claim, and one that Ticker and Blaney have not been able to fully explore in the
volume, likely due to the lack of critical engagement with theory. They leave unanswered, for
instance, how we can and must account for the so-called differences in the non-Western world,
or how power is negotiated between the West and the non-West. Also, where and how does
change in their relations enter the picture? An equally important question is how states and nonstate actors alike within the non-Western world relate to each other. These are important facets
that can be explored with recourse to theory. Onuf’s reissued World of Our Making and AdlerNissen’s edited volume on Bourdieu in International Relations offer sophisticated and nuanced
theoretical frameworks that can be deployed to explain and understand the dynamics of
international relations in both the core and the peripheries.
Onuf’s 1989 (reissued 2013) classic piece is the pillar of Critical Constructivism. Similar
to the other variants of this school of thought, the ontological foundation of Critical
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Constructivism is that social creation is the ongoing co-constitution of actors (agents) and their
environments (structures). International relations are a social process: actors interact with each
other and negotiate their positions (ideas, interests, and even their own identities). At the same
time, these interfaces engender structures. Given the basis for the creation of these structures,
they become mutable. Contrary to the notions of, say, Neo-Realism about the permanence and
timelessness of the international system, Constructivists share the assumption that change is
possible. What makes Onuf’s version “critical,” however, is the epistemology he enlists. The
“linguistic turn,” and hence the focus on language, speech acts, and discourses is central to his
analysis. Language helps actors create and recreate the rules of their interactions – the rules of
the game. Consequently, rules give rise to different types of rule or structures. In short, Onuf’s
is a three-step paradigm: language, rules, rule.
When actors “speak” or articulate themselves, they engage in speech acts. Speech acts
enable an action whose meaning lies in the rules of the utterance. The best example here is
saying “I do” in a marriage ceremony. The meaning of the phrase therefore makes sense only to
the extent of the practices and the rules surrounding that particular context. Uttering the same
phrase in a different context (such as saying “I do” while in a, say, fishing expedition) gives a
totally new meaning to it. When actors exchange speech acts in the course of their interaction,
the cluster of speech acts are known as “language games,” following Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
philosophy. In Onuf’s analysis, speech acts can be clustered into three: assertives, directives,
and commissives. Expressions of assertives include to name, to declare, or to inform. Directives
are usually identified through articulations such as to request, to order, or to command.
Commissives, meanwhile, embrace utterances that promise, commit, or oblige someone to do
something. Speech acts and the ensuing language games are powerful because, as Onuf argues,
they can be used to represent and perform deeds. Crucial here, however, is the claim that the
meaning of a speech act or the clout of a language game is determined by looking at the
underlying rules. Rules are what give and constitute meaning to what we say and do.
In order to identify the rules of the game, we need to go back to the clusters of speech
acts. Each cluster, according to Onuf, corresponds to a category of rules. Hence, assertive
speech acts follow instruction-rules, directives follow directive-rules, and commissives follow
commitment-rules. Instruction-rules make assertions or offer instructions about particular states
of affairs. Directive-rules issue orders and specify consequences for disobeying the rules.
Commitment-rules specify rights and duties that commit speakers to a future course of action.
It has been previously mentioned that Onuf’s Critical Constructivist framework offers a
three-step paradigm, that which involves language, rules, and rule. As each speech act cluster
has a corresponding category of rules, so too do they have correlating types of rule. Assertives
and instruction-rules produce a hegemonic rule. Directives and directive-rules produce
hierarchy. Commissives and commitment-rules generate heteronomy. In this sense, language is
at the heart of Onuf’s analysis because none of the three types of rule would hold if language
games were absent. Some definitions and parameters are necessary to capture Onuf’s
perspective. Hegemony in IR depicts the relationship between a major power and its
subordinates, similar to the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the early Cold War era. Here,
the major power redefines social reality through regimes, and subordinates consent to such a
rule. Hierarchy is best seen in how a bureaucracy works where directives and orders flow from a
higher officer to the one below. Hierarchy in IR highlights asymmetry in power relations and the
threat or the use of force or intervention in order to effectuate the dominant power’s rule.
Heteronomy, meanwhile, takes place when actors enter into agreements and realize that their
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maneuverability is compromised because of those commitments. A historical example of such
includes lord-serf relations: serfs needed the physical security that only lords could provide, so
they entered into agreements with them on the latter’s terms.
Onuf’s thesis is simply that the world is our making (hence, World of Our Making). Our
words, our deeds, our acts create the rules, relationships, and structures we find ourselves in.
Logically, it follows that we can also re-make (or even un-make) the worlds we have built.
Change, thus, is incorporated and embedded in the framework. Still, this begs several questions.
First, what of the motive of the actor? Are actors conscious of the type of rule they are creating
when they enunciate a speech act? Does the motive matter? Second, and in the same vein,
whose language games matter? Which actor gets privileged (and how and why) in any analysis?
Finally, what happens in the presence of multiple clusters of language games? Would they result
in overlapping types of rule, e.g., hegemony on top of hierarchy alongside heteronomy? These
notwithstanding, Onuf’s contribution to scholarship cannot be discounted. His framework can
help account for the asymmetric relationship between the West and the non-West, as well as
identify the possible areas where transformation can occur.
Bourdieu’s philosophy can likewise aid in our understanding of the dominance of
Western-oriented conceptualizations of IR in the non-Western world. Here, Adler-Nissen’s
edited volume is thus a welcome addition to the efforts that push the limits of the discipline. Not
unlike Onuf’s thrust, Bourdieusian thinking sheds light on activities, transactions, and actors that
are beyond the usual purview of International Relations. His philosophy puts the spotlight on
“how people create international relations in their daily activities (1).” Hence, everyday
practices are central in the prompting of symbolic structures.
Vincent Pouliot and Frederic Merand’s chapter provides the conceptual focus of the
volume and explicate the theoretical framework that the rest of the contributors use in their
respective empirical chapters. Pouliot and Merand point out that “the world according to
Bourdieu is one where our familiar metaphysical dualisms dissolve (26).” This is aligned with
the reflexive epistemology that Bourdieusian philosophy subscribes to, which entails “turning
reason against itself (27).” This is aimed at historicizing and relativizing (scientific) reason:
“Rather than viewing science as a collection of transcendent truths as with the positivist
tradition, it forces the researcher to recognize that rational scientific criteria are themselves a
product of an intellectual history, rather than a primordial essence (28-29).” In this sense,
Bourdieusian philosophy and Onuf’s worldview are similar as both see social processes at work.
Unlike Onuf, however, the ontological foundations of Bourdieusian thought rest on the
notions of habitus and field. The habitus consists of the historical experiences of individuals,
which influence and contribute to their dispositions and positions in the field. The field then is
the objective component of Bourdieu’s relational ontology: it is a social space structured along
the axes of power relations, objects of struggle, and taken-for-granted knowledge or doxa. In
short, Bourdieu’s theory is a theory of practice since “actors act based on the dispositions that
have been crafted over time (habitus) which, at the point of intersect with their socially defined
positions (in the field), are actualized in the form of practices (31).” These practices can be
teased out and analyzed systematically through the use, according to Pouliot’s chapter on
methodology, of “mixed methods (45).” Research strategies involve getting access to practices
through interviews and textual analyses, reconstructing the dispositional logic, and constructing
the positional logic. Multiple fields in international relations, each being a “vector of power
(33),” foment the inevitability and ubiquity of social domination. This is what Bourdieu calls
“symbolic power.” Trine Villumsen Berling highlights this issue in particular, especially in light
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of how the discipline of IR engages in a particular production of knowledge at the expense of
other practically generated knowledge.
With the conceptual framework clearly elucidated, the remaining chapters in the volume
shift the focus to its application. With each chapter touching on a concept in IR (power, strategy,
security, culture, gender, norms, sovereignty, integration, and citizenship), Adler-Nissen’s book
demonstrates how Bourdieu’s sociological imagination can help redefine the way we study
international relations. Stefano Guzzini deploys Bourdieu’s framework of power analysis and
underscores its relational quality between the powerful and the powerless. Frederic Merand and
Amelie Forget see strategy as a category of practice inclined towards domination and winning
“social wars (97).” Didier Bigo attends to security and utilizes a relational approach to unmask
the practices that led to arbitrary choices borne of categorizing facts, people, and knowledge as a
danger, a risk, or a threat. This then deconstructs the meaning of security and discloses its
historicity. In examining culture, Michael C. Williams finds that it is about the “production of
belief” or the recognition of the legitimacy and acceptability of some principles over others.
Vivienne Jabri uses the topic of gender to demonstrate how structures of domination are at the
same time sites of resistance and contestation. Charlotte Epstein employs the structural power of
norms in the international politics of whaling. She argues that norms are organizing principles in
a field and identifies what actions may and may not be taken within it. In this sense, norms serve
as a source of symbolic power and domination. Against this backdrop, she finds that “the
struggle for recognition is not a struggle to be able to continue whaling but rather to be reincluded on the side of those who draw the lines (175).” Along the same lines, Rebecca AdlerNissen’s analysis centers on the way the concept of sovereignty is used to ensure symbolic
power. Dissecting sovereignty requires focusing on the various agencies and bureaucracies and
people, such as the EU’s new diplomatic service, that run a state. Also, distinct from the
traditional analyses on integration, Niilo Kauppi advocates looking at the role of individuals in
the European Parliament in their capacities as rapporteurs or as members of political groups or
committees. In this way, human agency is centered in institutional dynamics. Finally, Virginie
Guiraudon urges IR scholars to expand the objects of research they take on and to look at issues
of “low politics” like citizenship. These issues entail tackling the everyday realities of migrants
and dual nationals.
Bourdieu referred to himself as a Structural Constructivist, given the emphasis he placed
on symbolic power in the field. A question arises, however, as to how fields change. Can they
be transformed at all? Looking at the habitus and multiple fields may help ground analyses of
domination, but how can relationships like this be overcome? Granted, these questions are
beyond the scope of the present volume. As it stands, nonetheless, the book showcases a solid
and balanced offering of both theoretical and empirical contributions.
In sum, the works of Tickner and Blaney, Onuf, and Adler-Nissen provide IR scholars
with a view of international life beyond the usual geographies and frameworks. All three
emphasize the need to question – and contest – the seemingly impermeable borders of the
discipline. They complement each other in the sense that Tickner and Blaney’s volume can
benefit more with an engagement with theories that either Onuf or Adler-Nissen can provide.
They further demonstrate that there is really is a world beyond the strict confines of established
IR.
Michael Lucken, Anne Bayard-Sakai, Emmanuel Lozerand (Eds.), J.A.A. Stockwin (trans.),
Japan's Postwar. New York: Nissan Institute/Routledge Japanese Studies, 2011
Following the 1945 defeat of Japan at the conclusion of the Second World War, Japan
experienced a partial redefinition of its national identity. Significantly included in this
redefinition was Japan’s negotiation of the long-standing contradiction between traditional
Japanese culture and foreign cultures (and their industrial capitalisms), from which Japan
selectively incorporated particular. This collection of essays (originally published in 2007 as Le
Japon après la guerre) is concerned with how to chronologically delimit and conceptually define
the postwar period in Japan. Such attempts are made most directly in Eric Seizelet’s essay, “The
Postwar as a Political Paradigm,” but the collection as a whole provides reflection on how to
mark divisions in time. Unlike Europe, which can plausibly point to the end of its postwar period
as coinciding with the end of the Cold War, Japan can point to no such clear conclusion. The
postwar period in Japan is often considered to have ended in the late 1950s and early 1960s, with
the establishment of the “1955 system”1 of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule, the revised
Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, and the takeoff of the Japanese economy. It could
alternatively be dated to Japan’s asset bubble burst in the early 1990s and the resulting economic
stagnation. However, as Michael Lucken argues in his Introduction, the notion of a “postwar”
period is a shifting, indistinct concept that is often employed for political purposes and
“…cannot be taken as a simple period of time. It is plural and complex. It is a network of
historical time-periods…” (5).
Challenging simplistic categorizations of the postwar period in Japan is the stated goal of
Emmanuel Lozerand’s essay on three intellectuals writing in the years immediately following the
defeat: Sakaguchi Ango, Takeda Taijun, and Takeuchi Yoshimi. Despite their political
differences, all three thinkers shared a focus on “negative” existential experiences—those that
are not to be resolved but rather followed “to the end,” towards a genuinely transformative
experience. This notion is Nietzschean but also distinctly Japanese. (Takeda and Sakaguchi were
both strongly influenced by Buddhism.) All three disparaged the results of militarism but also
shared misgivings about the postwar period, which Sakaguchi labeled “decadent” in 1946.
Eddy Dufourmont’s essay on Yasuoka Masahiro similarly challenges oversimplifications
of postwar intellectuals’ thought. Dufourmont contends that Yasuoka, generally labeled a fascist,
was a complex and pragmatic thinker who did embrace fascism in the early 1930s but moved
towards elitist nationalism throughout the 1930s. Yasuoka was an expert on Confucian
philosophy and was connected with Hu Shi, Liang Shuming, and Kang Youwei. Although he
endorsed the pan-Asianist rhetoric of the war, he was also a fan of Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi)
and opposed the Japanese military’s conduct in China. After the war, Yasuoka maintained ties
with the political right but also built ties with liberals like Yoshida Shigeru and was central to
Japan’s New Life Movement Association.2 He almost certainly helped write the August 15
1
Defined primarily by the merger of the Japan Democratic Party and Liberal Party, leading to the formation of Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP), which has remained in power against a weak Socialist opposition since 1955 (except for two brief
periods including in 1993-1994 and 2009-2012). 2
Although arguably influenced by the Chinese New Life Movement launched under the Guomindang in the mid-1930s, the
postwar Japanese New Life Movement also drew on indigenous pre-war initiatives and had a larger grassroots element than the
highly-politicized Chinese movement. .
Japan's Postwar
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Declaration3 and saw the postwar period as an opportunity for Japan to “cleanse its shame” and
become an ethical exemplar to the world, based on Confucian values.
Jacques Joly’s essay on Maruyama Masao shows that postwar reevaluations of Japanese
identity and ethics from the left were likely to lead to the formation of views similar to that of
Yasuoka. Maruyama stressed the importance of pacifism and democracy as the keys to autonomy,
though for him this was both national autonomy in the geopolitical environment of the early
Cold War and personal autonomy against social conformity and the state (Yasuoka would
consider such individualism foreign to Japanese culture).
The positions adopted by postwar Japanese intellectuals had their equivalents in the
artistic community. Karine Arneodo argues that the Arechi (Waste Land) group of poets
conveyed the silence and non-communicability of defeat and death as an attempt to create the
basis for a new, non-ideological ethics opposed to the subordination of the individual into a
totalizing collective (especially by using the rhetoric of death as a sacrifice for the nation),
echoing Maruyama’s notion of autonomy. The poet Ishihara Yoshirō also dealt with questions of
the non-communicability of experience and ethics in the first decades after defeat. Ishihara spent
the war as an intelligence officer in Manchuria and suffered eight difficult years in a Soviet labor
camp in Siberia after the war. He began writing poetry intently only upon his return to Japan,
“speaking silence” for the Siberia-gaeri, who were treated with indifference and suspicion on
their return to Japan.
Three essays deal with institutional “regimes of memory” in the arts. Anne BayardSakai’s essay on the Akutagawa Prize explains how the jury for the prize unenthusiastically
chose novels that did not directly deal with the war and defeat, or awarded no prize at all, before
fully embracing the genre of apure gēru4 in 1950-51. Michael Lucken’s essay examines the
history of the Nagasaki Statue for Peace, built by Kitamura Seibō in 1955. Lucken explores the
symbolism of the statue, which likely incorporates influences from Buddhism and Japanese
popular religion but which was also intentionally designed to express a broadly intelligible
humanism. The Neo-Dadaist group Action Art, examined by Anne Gossot, tried but evidently
failed to turn the page on the postwar period, as their genesis was clearly influenced by the
political context of late 1950s Japan.
Four essays in the collection can be classified as social or institutional history, using a
long-term approach. Christian Galan’s essay on postwar education traces the decades-long
battles between the proponents of “democratic education” and the conservative advocates of a
curriculum that inculcated a (now-pacifist) “Japanese spirit.” The 1947 Fundamental Law on
Education5 set the basis for postwar education but ran into challenges soon after being enacted,
both because of cultural differences between the occupiers and the Japanese and because of the
strengthened position of conservatives from the late 1940s. According to Galan, education from
the late 1950s through the 1970s was above all focused on fostering economic growth by
providing students with technical skills. The law was amended by the Koizumi government in
2006, ostensibly to reduce public expenditures and include more choice for parents but also to
please nationalists who had opposed the law all along. Galan sees it as telling that the 2006
3
On August 15, 1945 Emperor Hirohito gave a recorded radio address officially declaring the surrender of Japan to the Allies. 4
Borrowed from the French phrase Après-guerre ( “postwar”). 5
The Fundamental Law of Education, first passed in 1947, replaced the pre-1945 Imperial Rescript on Education, which was
based on nationalist and Neo-Confucian ideology. Journal of International and Global Studies Volume 6, Number 1
128
reform was passed on the same day that the Defense Agency was renamed the Ministry of
Defense, signaling a gradual move away from the postwar system.
Brice Fauconnier plumbs the Allied General Headquarters’ (GHQ)6 archives (as Japanese
archives of the purges are still not open) to make a revealing comparison between the purges of
militarists immediately following the war and the red purges of 1949-1952. Fauconnier shows
that the number of individuals purged as Communists was much smaller than the number of
rightists purged, though most purged rightists were quickly “depurged” in the following years.
Interestingly, neither purge was guided by classification according to political activity; instead,
guidelines for purging were couched in bureaucratic language (“administrative reorganization,”
“limitation of personnel”) and opaque criteria that categorized subversion in terms of
“usefulness,” “enthusiasm,” and “diligence” at work. Bernard Thomann’s essay on labor
relations in the 1950s-1960s also provides a more complex picture of Japanese politics in the
postwar period by dispelling not only the Marxist interpretations that the “failure” of the postwar
labor movement was the result of an alliance of corporate and state interests but also the claims
of neoliberal critics, who argue that labor’s postwar “privileges” were the brainchild of Marxist
central planners. Thomann instead argues that the postwar relationship between labor and capital
grew out of “a corporatist and familial social politics,” having originated in the 1920s and being
heavily promoted during the war as an alternative to both socialism and economic liberalization.
This carried over into postwar middle class ideals and relations between families, firms, and the
state.
Paul Jobin’s essay also deals with postwar labor relations, though his focus is on drawing
unexpected connections between the labor and environmental movements. In the 1990s, longestablished Japanese firms were beset by lawsuits, filed both by workers who had been
mistreated in their wartime factories and by individuals and communities suffering from the
effects of industrial pollution. In some cases, these two concerns co-existed, as some wartime
workers developed diseases after the war, presumably because of exposure to chemicals. These
coinciding concerns also appeared in the community unions of the 1980s that opposed industrial
pollution and campaigned for pacifism and recognition of Japan’s wartime atrocities, including
the mistreatment of industrial workers (especially Koreans). For Jobin, these unexpected
connections reflect the Japanese left’s attempt to write its own history of a war in which it was
largely complicit by adopting the wider “victim consciousness” regarding the atomic bomb,
which sensitized postwar Japan to victims of industrial pollution.
Taken as a whole, these essays provide important though uneven contributions to our
understanding of postwar Japan. As the original essays were published in 2007, the authors could
not have incorporated a discussion of subsequent events, including the brief rise and fall of the
Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ),7 the 2011 earthquake/tsunami, the resulting Fukushima disaster,
and Japan’s increasingly acrimonious relations with China. It seems quite possible that Japan is
moving into a post-postwar era, and just as the postwar was defined by a repudiation of the
perceived factors that led to the war, any post-postwar order would likely involve a partial or
complete repudiation of postwar values. One can only hope that this will not entail a return of
chauvinistic nationalism to the mainstream of Japanese politics.
6
Following World War II, Japan was under the military and political control of the United States and its allies for a period of
over six years and was subject to the authority of Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), General Douglas
MacArthur and his successor, General Matthew Ridgway, and the offices of the General Headquarters (GHQ) under SCAP. 7
The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was founded in 1998 by the merger of several parties opposed to the Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP). Although the DPJ became the ruling party in the House of Representatives in 2009, it lost badly in the 2012 general
elections to a resurgent LDP. Japan's Postwar
Steven Pieragastini
Brandeis University
Sjp24@brandeis.edu
129
Daniel Bar-Tal and Izhak Schnell (Eds.), The Impacts of Lasting Occupation: Lessons from
Israeli Society. New York, Oxford University Press, 2013.
The Impacts of Lasting Occupation is a sober and critical analysis by twenty three Israeli
academics on the effect of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza on Israeli society over the
past forty seven years. The book is organized in four sections: “Fundamentals,” “Politics,”
“Society and Economics,” and “Culture.” The first section begins with a chapter on the legalities
of the occupation and the means by which Israel has circumvented international law concerning
state seizure of land. For its part, Israel attempts to justify its “belligerent occupation” of the
West Bank and Gaza, its settlements there, its confiscation of Palestinian land, and a great deal
more. David Kretzmer examines the main legal issues surrounding Israel’s occupation of the
West Bank and Gaza, including those pertaining to the existence of the Israeli settlements within
the region, the Israeli-built separation barrier along the West Bank border, the expropriation of
land designated as Palestinian territory for the highway system, and the security of the Israeli
populations residing in the contested area. Kretzmer concludes that Israel is, in fact, running two
parallel systems of law: one that guarantees human and legal rights for all Israelis and another,
for Palestinians, under which military force is justified and no guarantee of human or legal rights
exists. “Thus,” Kretzmer asserts, “legal mechanizations have been found to justify all forms of
plunder, exploitation, and control” (p. 53).
A chapter on morality follows section one and notes, among other things the relevance to
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict of Franz Fanon’s concept of “colonization of the mind,” in which
the colonized are brought to accept of the moral superiority of the colonizer, who works in many
spheres to establish it. This segues into a tightly argued discussion of the elements of conflict
resolution, which, alas, offers no resolution for the current conflict. Izhak Schnell offers a fine
discussion of the use and manipulation of spatial/geographic features to define a “sense of place”
in his chapter on the geographical ramifications of the occupation. He argues that Israel has used
a wide variety of mechanisms to privilege Israeli identity and perspective, including the creation
of school textbooks and maps that present the territories as Israeli land; the offering of tours to
the region, thus highlighting Israeli “ownership” of the land; the “Hebraizing” of names of
streets and neighborhoods within the occupied territories so as to emphasize the Israeli
connection to the area, the creation of Israeli settlements within the territories so that Israelis may
feel that it is their birthright to reside there, and the glorifying of the “working of the land” by
Israeli settlers so as to incorporate the occupied territories into Israeli society’s view of the
national homeland, thus ignoring and eliminating Palestinian identity.
Chapter 4, “Psychological Legitimization” is a lengthy 63 page, multi-authored
discussion of the changing political portrayals and public perception of the occupation since
1967. Name concludes, “Partly due to the concealed yet deliberate acquiescence of the elected
politicians of the state, the legal and law enforcement authorities of the state of Israel persistently
failed to subordinate the settlers’ illegal and often violent actions to the law…. The process of
self-democratization of the state…was seriously hampered, if not reversed” (p.190). The
conclusion is based on a chronological reading of political leadership statements and empirical
studies of public attitude surveys.
Chapter 5, “The Occupation and Israeli Democracy,” the introduction to the section on
politics, considers the effect of the occupation on Israeli democracy. The chapter sub-headings
tell a story all their own: “The Failure to Tame Extralegal Force” (with respect to the
The Impacts of Lasting Occupation: Lessons from Israeli Society
131
settlements), “The Defense Army Becomes an Army of Occupation,” “The Uncivil
Administration” (of the occupied territories), “The Occupation and Israeli Arabs,” “The
Occupation and the Place of Religion in Israeli Society,” “The Occupation and the Deterioration
of Civic Education,” and “The Occupation and the International Legitimacy of Israel as a
Democracy.” The author, Yaron Ezraki, concludes that Israel has moved from an idealistic
liberal democracy to a militarized democracy, in which a steady erosion of law and an increased
reliance on military force has resulted in a democracy that is compatible with occupation and
ideological lawlessness—particularly after 1977 and the political shift to the Right (Likud)—
resulting in a loss of international status.
In Chapter 6, “The Effect of the Occupation on the Military,” Reuven Pedatzur points out
a fundamental truth: Israeli soldiers are not trained as civilian policemen (something the United
States learned belatedly in the months following its invasion of Iraq). “In practice,” he asserts,
“[Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)] soldiers do not enforce the law, are not familiar with the
protocol, and are not interested in the least in functioning as policemen” (p. 232). Indeed, says
Pedatzur, the IDF has become an active partner in the settlement enterprise. Local, armed
settlement militias have formed in the territories in cooperation with IDF reserve duty soldiers.
IDF cooperation with such militias may be due, in part, to the fact that the settlers have the ear of
the politicians, who can influence military promotions. By 2005, the army had re-focused its
activities from XYZ to fighting “terror” in the occupied territories, by using imprisonment and
torture as acceptable tools. Pedatzur draws a parallel between the conflict over the West Bank
and Gaza and the Algerian war between the French and the Algerian National Liberation Front
(Front de Libération Nationale (FLN) and its effect on the French military—although he fails to
draw out one important point: unlike the French volunteer army, Israel’s IDF is an army of
conscripted Israeli citizens. All citizens of Israel complete a mandatory term of military service
and then return to their civilian lives directly affected by what they experienced in the territories.
Chapter 7, “Inter-domestic Bargaining over the Lands” deals with Israeli political party
struggles over the issue of whether or not to give up land for peace. Doran and Rosenthal
conclude, unsurprisingly, that a coalition of Right (Likud) and Left (Labor) parties will be
needed for settlement withdrawal. The subsequent chapter, “The Impact of the Occupation on the
Political Discourse of the Arab Israelis,” reviews the attitudes of Arab Israelis since 1948 but
especially after 1967. Before 1967, Arab Israelis were politically fragmented and focused on
communal affairs; after 1967, they began to focus on Palestinian national matters, identifying
with their compatriots on the West Bank while expressing more openly their religious affiliation.
By 2000, marginalized by both Israelis and the PLO, Arab Israelis began to emphasize “equality
and peace” in their politics. A document issued by community leaders in 2006, “Future Visions,”
gave full expression to their rejection of Israel’s now dominant theme of Jewish statehood,
supporting the idea of Israel as a single state offering equality to all residents, regardless of
religion or ethnicity.
“Wall Keepers,” the chapter introduction to the section on social issues, deals with the
wall between peoples, describing how---through media and education control, Israel sees the
Palestinians exclusively as “the hated Other,” knowing little about the Palestinians as real
people. The physical wall itself is only a part of the story. Chapter 10, “The Economic Cost of
the Occupation,” is grim. The author, Shir Hever, indicates based on his research that by 2038,
50% of the Israeli budget will be spent on maintaining the occupation. Israel’s growth rate has
gone steadily down since 1967—such a decline being the cost of a militarized state. On the
subject of gender (Chapter 11), Hanna Herzog points out that with national security as the social
132
paradigm, the militarization of society serves to marginalize Israeli women, whose role within a
militarized context is primarily to provide support from home for the “fighting men.” Domestic
violence is increasing. Chapter 12 “The Psychological and Moral Consequences for Israeli
Society,” partially explains this increase in domestic violence. The chapter describes how Israeli
soldiers serving on the West Bank are becoming increasingly brutal and, upon completion of
their military duty, take such brutality home with them. For them, human life takes on less value.
At the same time, violence perpetuated on the West Bank by members of the Israeli Right Wing
is carried into Israel proper.
Chapter 13, “Human Rights” (which might have been better put under the section
“Fundamentals” or “Politics”) by Edy Kaufman discusses how discrimination against Arab
Israelis, though practiced in earlier decades, has increased dramatically since 1967. The use of
“casual bigotry” is now commonplace. An example given is the not uncommon use by
politicians of the term “dirty Arabush”—a term not unlike “nigger” in its reprehensibility, the
only difference being that the use of “nigger” by a US politician would likely destroy a political
career or candidacy. The Israeli government and the politicians, relying on the Right Wing vote,
have done little to reduce discrimination. A significant minority in Israel (30 to 50 %) supports
the torture of Palestinian detainees and perpetrators of violence, the use of live ammunition
against non-violent Palestinian demonstrations, curfews for Palestinians, and detention without
trial. Given the emphasis in Israeli politics on the themes of a “Jewish State” (i.e. not a state that
necessarily offers rights or protection for all) and “Security” (with a heavy emphasis on the need
for violence in the name of security against a violent “Other”), discrimination against Arab
Israelis tends to grow stronger. In brief, human rights, originally seen in Israel as universally
applicable, are now seen as applying only to Jews. The apartheid-like attitude towards
Palestinians that permeates the occupied territories is now penetrating into Israel itself. The
Israeli settlers in the West Bank and a compliant Israeli government have turned the historical
Jewish focus on “justice” into an acceptance of “oppressive occupation.”
The conflict’s impact on the arts is represented by a chapter on theater (Chapter 14), in
which plays that reflect the views of playwrights on the occupation are explored. Through their
works, playwrights have used their art to display both sides of the occupation. The first play
examined, “Co-existence,” produced in 1970, dealt with Israeli Palestinians but ignored the
occupation. The second, “Winter in Kalandia,” produced in 2004, dealt directly with the
“impossible situation” of soldiers administering the humiliation and suffering of the Palestinians
of the occupied territories. Not surprisingly, many plays have generated controversy, given their
political nature. One is reminded of the New York Metropolitan Opera’s “The Death of
Klinghoffer,” which explores, in part, the plight of the Palestinians. Its global broadcast was
cancelled this year amidst accusations that it encouraged anti-semitism. Chapter 15, “Vocabulary
and Discourse,” by Nadir Tsur, analyzes the names and labels used to obfuscate and hide the
realities of the occupation, the laundering of words by the political establishment, the media, and
school text books, the biases of which filter into everyday language on the street. Even the key
phrase “occupied territories” was used only in the first week of the occupation and then
abandoned, in order to avoid triggering the Geneva Accords requirements. In its place, a variety
of more “palatable” phrases have been used to refer to the occupied region: “held territories,”
“territories,” “Judea and Samaria,” “liberated territories,” terms that embody the language of
separation and disengagement, the language of national claim. It should be noted that “occupied
territories” is used throughout this book.
The Impacts of Lasting Occupation: Lessons from Israeli Society
133
In the last chapter, the editors, Schnell and Bar-Tal, summarize that Israel has undergone
a radical reconstruction of its image because of the occupation, which is destructive to both the
state and to Palestinians. Legal justification for holding the territories is offered, but the
justification excludes Palestinian rights within it. A shift to “neo-Zionist” belief, with messianic
sanctification of the land has taken place, say the editors, providing Jews with the sole right to
the occupied territories. The occupation is paralleled by an ethnocentric worldview and a shift in
morality in which an ethnic “Other” is afforded few (if any) human rights and services. The
democracy of Israel is overwhelmed by a “national-religious component”; the quality of Israeli
democracy is declining. As Arab Israelis increasingly support the one state/all equal solution,
they are increasingly mistrusted by Israeli Jews. On the West Bank, settlers steadily increase in
number under creeping annexation, living with full citizenship rights in a contested land;
Palestinians among them continue to live without rights under military law. With the ideals
regarding the international recognition of Palestinian statehood, Israel is becoming increasingly
isolated in the world.
This text is an excellent critical introduction to the dilemmas that face Israel regarding its
occupation regime. Each chapter is accompanied by a detailed bibliography. Well-researched
and documented, The Impacts of Lasting Occupation: Lessons From Israeli Society is a must
read for all writers and teachers of the Israel/Palestine conflict, as well as a must-have for all
libraries supporting classes and research on Middle Eastern affairs. Although the book will be
criticized by many, it ought to be included in an overall assessment of Israeli politics. It should
also be read by all members of the United States Congress.
Jon Mandaville, PhD
Portland State University
mandavillej@pdx.edu
Richard Ronald and Allison Alexy (Eds.) Home and Family in Japan. Continuity and
Transformation. New York: Routledge, 2011.
The essays in this collection are composed by a range of contributors who combine their
anthropological and sociological expertise to explore various aspects of Japanese home and
family life. They address such issues as the threat to the support of the elderly; an alarming
increase in childless couples and unmarried adults; changes in the provision of housing as a
result of an unfavorable economic climate and neoliberal policies; the gender imbalance in
qualifying for benefits; and alternative living arrangements, among other issues. The essays
demonstrate how the Japanese family structure is being transformed, contested, and reimagined
while continuing to reflect the traditional ie norms1, although those are being transformed as
well.
Chapter One foreshadows the remainder of the essays by providing background
information. Richard Ronald and Allison Alexy discuss the “Japanese concept,” which denotes a
wide range of issues, including not only actual houses and the families that inhabit them but also
conceptual notions such as loyalty to one’s place of employment and to the nation at-large. The
authors discuss the fact that the Meiji Code (1898) and the Family Registry System (1871)
established uniformity and the adoption of particular practices. Specifically, the Family Registry
System required all family members to be registered in order to benefit from any legal rights.
These two regulatory systems established the system of taxation and land ownership and
indirectly continued promulgating patriarchal authority in law. The authors underscore sociopolitical pressures on the state as “a provider of welfare and care” (12). Despite the current
increase of nuclear families that deviate radically from ie norms, the authors predict that
“normative family relationships will persist, albeit in terms of far greater diversity and in forms
we may not yet recognize” (18).
Brice White, in “Reassembling Familial Intimacy,” writes that the Japanese bureaucracy
has always had a tendency to manage familial relationships by blaming them for a wide range of
society’s ills, including youth delinquency, problems with the treatment of the elderly, and the
inadequate number of newborns as potential contributors to the society’s welfare, etc. According
to White, there is a “mismatch between the state construction of Family and the realities of
families” (26). He discusses four alternative visions of the Japanese family. White’s four
examples aim to “illustrate the lack or loss of familial intimacy and simultaneously propose
solutions for its reassembly” (41). By and large, these examples illustrate, whether intentionally
or not, certain nostalgia for things lost, though creatively reimagined and projected into the
future.
In “Reforming Families in Japan,” Takeda Hiroko addresses the structural reform of the
Koizumi and post-Koizumi governments in relation to contemporary family life. Hiroko provides
a critique of neoliberal policies that ignore the actual structure of the modern families and
impose normative expectations. Karl Jacob Krogness in “The Ideal, the Deficient, and The
Illogical Family,” focuses on koseki seido, the Japanese administrative household registration
system, which often defines family units differently than these units perceive themselves with
respect to their actual living arrangements. Krogness employs various examples to depict the
1
The ie is a Japanese term which translates directly to “household.” It can mean either a physical home or refer to a
family’s lineage. It is popularly used to refer to the “traditional” family structure. The symbolic definition of ie
includes the cultural notion of the physical processes of kinship, such as those relating to mating and procreation. Home and Family in Japan. Continuity and Transformation.
135
complexity of ‘koseki,’ which in turn mirrors the complexity of Japanese social structure.
Krogness concludes by stating that “the koseki system most likely cuts through [people’s] lives a
swathe that is even wider than the one described here” (88). Despite its structural usefulness, it
seems safe to assume that the koseki system might be prone to perpetuating negative stereotypes,
achieved through the means of exclusion. This will become particularly apparent not only in the
subsequent discussion of Japanese homelessness but also in relation to unwed mothers.
Ekaterina Hertog, in “I Did Not Know How to Tell my Parents, So I Thought I Would
Have an Abortion,” addresses the difficulty of being a single mother in Japan. She notes that
because of limited welfare provisions, these mothers must often depend on the assistance of their
parents. Receiving this assistance, however, can be problematic given the negative views of
some of these parents on out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Hertog argues that given the economic
constraints, accompanied by the changing generational attitudinal approaches to single
motherhood, “The continuous [and] strong association of marriage with childbearing in Japan is
striking” (109). The current state of Japanese economy makes any significant change unlikely.
Here, in the case of single motherhood, we notice a commitment to traditional norms despite
contemporary transformations.
Tomoko Hidaka, in “Masculinity and the Family System,” focuses on the post-war
Japanese conception of the sararīman or “salaryman”2 as a representative of “the hegemonic
form of masculinity” (112). The changes in the economy in the 1990s, which destabilized the
corporate assurance of life long employment and its associated benefits, affected the image of
salaryman, though men continue to be defined as the primary financial providers. Hidaka notes
that the construction of masculinity is inseparable from the gender role in general and the marital
bonds in particular. Hidaka notes, as do others in this selection, the significance of the Koseki
Family Register as a means for preservation of certain values and approaches, even in cases of
their inherent obsoleteness.
Whereas Hidaka’s attention was placed on men, Lynne Nakano, in “Working for an
‘Appropriate Person’,” focuses on single women ranging in age from 25 to 45 and living in
Tokyo, which is considered “the center of singles culture in Japan” (131). Nakano addresses
women’s resistance to dominant forms of marriage, gender expectations, and the pressure to
marry “on schedule” (132). In Nakano’s articulation, these single women’s experiences
“transcend conventional understanding of women as rooted in home and family” (132). The
idealized vision of the Japanese family and the means of support it attains does not match the
Japanese reality, especially when a family does not fit the conventional model. The choices that
single women make problematize the family model since they are aiming “to find meaning that
transcends the current family and gender model” (148).
Yosuke Hirayama, in “Home Ownership, Family Change and Generation Difference,”
once again turns the reader’s attention to the increase of unmarried adults and the close links
between home ownership and family formation affected by this increase. The focus is placed on
generational differences in relation to housing opportunities. Hirayama writes, “The housing
ladder system of facilitating home ownership has provided many households with routes into
mainstream society, which has been a key catalyst for enhancing social integration” (170).
However, this expected social integration has not fully materialized because of social class
inequalities, largely based on home ownership. Because being a homeowner is a mark of one’s
2
Following World War II, becoming a “salaryman” was viewed as a gateway to a stable, middle-class lifestyle. In modern use,
the term carries associations of working long hours for little recognition, of being a cog in the corporate hierarchy. The term
salaryman refers exclusively to men. Journal of International and Global Studies Volume 6, Number 1
136
economic solvency, parents’ inability to support their children marks these children as insolvent
and affects their socio-economic status. This has a spiral effect since the decline in housing
opportunity becomes translated into a decline in the fertility rate as more younger people decide
to postpone having children or not to have any children at all. This decline is further
accompanied by a decrease in the workforce. The connection between housing, fertility rates,
and workforce indicates that “housing provision is a significant policy issue … not only in
terms of shelter but also in regard to social processes and transformation at large” (171).
Thus far, the essays in this collection have focused on the inhabitants of family homes
along with the habits and tribulations of those inhabitants. Richard Ronald, in “Homes and
Houses, Senses and Spaces,” directs the reader’s attention to these homes’ architectural and
aesthetic value as something culturally fundamental. He notes that one’s physical home is a
mark of “social interactions and cultural values” and highlights the significance of the Meiji
Civil Code of 1898 in regard to Japanese architectural production, especially because of the
“joint meaning of ie as both material homes and family units” (174). The development of
nuclear family advanced a “considerable atomization” that affected the physical form of
Japanese homes, transformed to better suit new societal patterns. The spatial organization of
homes took the mediating function between social relationships and social system. This
transformation sheds light not only on cultural meaning and societal values but also on how
they are negotiated and regulated, e.g., the concept of inside as purity and the outside as
impurity. This chapter demonstrates literal and figurative transformations of dwellings to
account for societal changes. Ronald predicts that “future changes in urban environments are
likely to be driven by the intensified fragmentation of households that began in the 1980s”
(196). Here again, we note the persistent link to the past despite contemporary transformations.
The essays discussed thus far have only tangentially referred to homelessness and the
formation of the underclass in Japan. Akihiko Nishizawa, in “The Changing Face of Homeless
in Tokyo in the Modern Era,” turns full attention to this issue. Here again, the Koseki system is
invoked as having a direct impact not only on how every individual is “defined as a member of
the ie family” (200) but also on how some individuals become effectively excluded from the
nation-state and society. The Koseki system provided the criteria for being labeled a “bad”
citizen. This criterion was based on the absence of a permanent address, family, or permanent
work. To account for any Meiji period migrants, a temporary category, “Temporary Residence
System,” was created to note any homeless individual’s original birth place and family
household. Those who did not have any home to return to and any other working poor who had
no means to build an economically sustainable life were labeled “uncivilized” or “wild
creatures.” The introduction of the concept of a welfare state after WWII did not drastically
change the conditions of the urban underclass but rather introduced an additional normativity
that included some discriminative measures. Rather than deal with these problems, homeless
individuals were concealed through dispersion and segregation. The concealment mechanism
further increased “[a] system of division” (207). The neoliberal policies of 1990s further
increased the number of poor.
Sachiko Horiguchi, in “Coping with Hikikomori,” focuses on a group of people
characterized by the tendency for withdrawal. Sounding eerily similar to American youth often
described as being antisocial or even sociopaths, hikikomori exhibit violence directed toward
their parents and a tendency to contemplate or commit suicide. Horiguchi states that regardless
of the underlying cause, hikikomori are viewed as “the ills of today,” particularly in relation to
contemporary Japanese families. Despite hikikomori not being formally diagnosed with mental
Home and Family in Japan. Continuity and Transformation.
137
disorders, many parents acknowledge that their children at some point have been admitted to
mental hospitals or diagnosed with mental disorders such as schizophrenia or manic depression.
Horiguchi does not, however, provide any analysis of this problem and leaves the discussion to
be primarily of a descriptive nature.
Allison Alexy, in “The Door my Wife Closed,” turns our attention to divorce in
contemporary Japan and notes that “houses play a fundamental role in and explanation for
divorce.” Alexy underscores the fact that houses play both a literal role (by providing spatial
arrangements) and a figurative role (by representing normative expectations). Just as the
household system plays a figurative role in the imagining of physical houses, physical houses
can also play an integral role in resolving marital problems. Houses, Alexy argues, are “much
more than mere repositories of capital,” and traditional ie norms continue impacting lives of
contemporary Japanese families even when they are faced with marital problems.
The book concludes with the essay by Anemone Platz, entitled “Living apart Together,”
which focuses on how older Japanese people “negotiate their housing arrangements, lifestyle
questions, and social contracts within and beyond their families” (254). Platz’s analysis shows
the centrality of parent-children relationships to any decision-making. Platz brings this collection
of essays full circle by stating that “children or other family members remain the chief reference
point when anticipating housing for old age” (267). Despite many transformations discussed in
this selection of essays, the fact that family relations continue to be central and the role of the
“house,” in its many manifestations, has not lost its saliency. In the words of Joy Hendry, this
selection is “a gem for those who wish to understand more about the way life operates in Japan”
(xviii). Her words capture the value of this collection quite accurately.
Ilana Maymind, PhD
Ohio State University
Maymind3.osu.edu
Colin S.C. Hawes. The Chinese Transformation of Corporate Culture. New York: Routledge,
2012.
In 1867, Karl Marx argued that once end products enter the capitalist market as
commodities, the human relations of productions—supposedly between the worker and the
capitalist—come to be disguised under fetishism and market exchange. Fast-forward to the 20th
century, and Adorno and Horkeimer attribute commodity value to the calculated production of
culture and meaning. With the continued transnational expansion of economy and market
production, scholarly study has so far seen a return to the norms of labor and human relations of
production in recent years.
In The Chinese Transformation of Corporate Culture, Colin Hawes tackles the admission
and practice of corporate culture in a world colored by Communism and old traditions.
Following the footsteps of Western companies, China has, since the early 1990s, embarked on
the highway to corporate culture, merging the work place with old Confucian beliefs and
Communist-inspired perseverance. With this clear-cut picture in mind, Hawes singles out the
features of Chinese corporate culture through two main chapters and six sub-sections. The first
sub-section covers the official and academic interpretations of corporate culture within China,
identifying the former as stressing political and ideological cultivation and the latter as a more
practical, hands-on guide book for Chinese companies and foreign investors. Interpreting lessons
from such texts, the second sub-section uses four case studies—examining one state-controlled
and three private-owned businesses—to look at the varying values, missions, and philosophies of
the organizations, along with the “corporate spirit” imposed by each of those organizations, in
light of their respective corporate cultures. From producing customized handbooks to using
stories of Mao Zedong’s struggles, and monitoring employee conduct through self-criticism, the
Chinese take on corporate culture appears more creative than imagined.
Indeed, culture does not happen overnight. In the next four sections, Hawes analyzes the
ways in which corporate culture is bred in Chinese companies. Section three demonstrates the
use of cultural propaganda (e.g.: training programs, company manuals, corporate songs,
employee feedback) in creating corporate identity and collective security. Another important
form of propaganda examined in section four is that of corporate magazines. Hawes believes that
in-house magazines act as an outlet for employers and employees to come together: leaders
demonstrate the honor of initiating new projects and meeting politicians; employees, meanwhile,
are free to write about management ideas and inspirational experiences and are, at times,
acknowledged as corporate stars. Section five further highlights the role of leaders and CEOs as
philosophers, deep thinkers, and followers of the daodejing,1 whose calligraphy and linkage to
the central government are crucial to the goodwill of corporations. In the last part, Hawes uses
corporate giants Haier and Huawei to demonstrate the different transitions corporate cultures
have undergone in the face of business expansion and internationalization, briefly closing with
the challenges that both corporations are currently facing: a growing workforce, the influx of
overseas labor, a high turnover rate, the complexity of fund and shares distribution, and the
political influence of the PRC government.
Culture has, for ages, been commonly understood to refer to social collectivity made up of
language, customs, memory, and objects; in other words, it is a bundle of elements that ties
1
Believed to be based on the teachings of philosopher Laozi (founder of Chinese Daoism), Daodejing (道德經) is
a classic in Chinese literature which instructs on a way of life aimed at restoring harmony and peace through noninterference, spontaneity and basically, refusal to take action.
The Chinese Transformation of Corporate Culture
139
together a community of people. To understand culture is to deconstruct the concept layer by
layer, examining its components of rites, symbols, and evolution. Drawing heavily on textual
sources and existing analyses from Chinese scholars, Colin Hawes achieves this deconstruction
by looking at the elements that make up culture in a Chinese corporation: in the end, collective
values are created, imposed, and collectively acknowledged through company songs, chants, and
ritual activities like morning creativity exercises and even mass corporate weddings. As a result,
symbolic confirmation is everywhere: identity is made through shared values and everyday
practices. Further, not simply bringing employees together during work, Chinese corporate
culture, as sketched by Hawes, is one that overshadows individual life. Employees in a Chinese
corporation tend to be taken as part of a bigger entity, their private lifestyles overshadowed by
their workplace identities; through the adoption of customs, many of which commonly carry the
meanings we assign to culture, corporations discern employees and their families as a part of a
more colossal corporate “household.” Stringing together the six themes from the six sub-sections
of the text, Hawes’ writing suggests that the central objective of Chinese corporate culture is to
transform work into the biggest and most crucial aspect of an employee’s life; employees and the
company are one, both in image and in essence. This is made possible, Hawes asserts, by the
unique equation of adding family, political devotion, and traditional beliefs into the same basket,
the resulting end of which is a staunch laborer overtly willing to work over-time and commit
fully to serving the company.
Breaking down corporate culture by analyzing its fragmented composition, Hawes is able to
suggest the process of cultural formation through textual documentation regarding practices and
rituals in various Chinese corporations. However, his choice of references and focus on the
traditional and Communistic features within corporate ideals merely delineates a theoretical
framework around which Chinese companies attempt to create corporate culture, leaving the
question of its practical execution unaddressed. To what extent are the customized rituals and
group activities practiced and welcomed by employees? What is the reception of in-house
magazines? How do employees position and perceive themselves in a work place that
emphasizes self-criticism and collective identity and potentially hammers creativity and
innovation? On another level, the applicability of a singular corporate culture within an
organization of considerable size is questionable. For example, Hawes reports (disregarding the
complex ethnic sub-constitution of Huawei employees) that as of 2013, the company has over
150,000 employees, of which 30,000 are non-Chinese. Considering the range of cultural
backgrounds, the nature of different jobs within the corporation, and the literacy rates of different
groups of employees, the plausibility of the universal application of a corporate culture within
the different strata of corporate hierarchy is left out of the picture in Hawes’ work.
In an economic sense, the creation and sustenance of effective corporate culture is a low-cost
investment directed at generating untold profit and wealth. When a shared culture becomes the
soul of a corporation, previously unimaginable vivacity, enthusiasm, synergy and, importantly,
trust emerge. Put simply, a good culture should pave the way for happy employees and, in turn,
satisfied customers and high quality products; when employees feel respected, trust grows
between employees and management. Over time, the company becomes employees’ first priority.
During the introduction, Hawes briefly discusses non-Chinese interpretations of Western culture,
highlighting the achievement of increased work motivation and improved productivity in
Japanese and Western examples. However, Hawes’ examination of Chinese corporations, in turn,
lacks such substantiation. He uses a piecemeal approach in demonstrating the different types of
practices within Chinese companies, resulting in an illustration that pays little attention to the
140
structure of management. In his examination of privately-controlled corporations alone, he fails
to ask, for example, whether the China Guangsha Group publishes in-house magazines like the
one published by the Cosun Group. Without a proper narration of the construction of corporate
culture in one particular corporation, it is doubtful whether the “institution” that Hawes attempts
to formulate would attain profit maximization or customer loyalty.
Through the cases of Haier and Huawei, Hawes tackles the existence of unique institutions
in Chinese management, if only in brief. In the last section, he addresses the negative impacts of
corporate culture transformation on the managements of the two corporations as having led to
uncontrollable expansion, a politically-influenced image, and damaging short-term gains, all of
which, if not properly handled, will lead to unwanted loss in the long run. Crediting such
changes to corporate culture, however, is a hasty conclusion that negates (or at least
underestimates) the roles of the more solid elements of, say, business networks, strong
leadership, and innovative marketing. Furthermore, China’s hunger for foreign investment and
global expansion in the last few decades does not contradict what Hawes believes to be negative
consequences; indeed, adopting the Western idea of “corporate culture” has served as an
intangible ticket, a cultural diplomacy for the Chinese government and local corporations to enter
foreign markets, especially in light of the re-branding of the Chinese economy as becoming less
Communist and more Western in nature.
The Chinese Transformation of Corporate Culture is an extensive compilation of textual
sources from numerous Chinese companies. However, without a more concentrated study of the
transformed structure of management approaches within the corporations, a better look at the
effectiveness of and reception to the applied practices, a clearer analysis of the ultimate
objectives of China’s corporate culture, and a closer encounter with corporate employees (via
interviews that reveal their own accounts, for example), the applicability of this work may be
limited. In the meantime, this book serves as a good albeit piecemeal introduction to China’s
corporate culture, particularly for English readers.
Catherine S. Chan
Hong Kong Baptist University
catschan@hkbu.edu.hk
Debdas Banerjee. Economic and Human Development in Contemporary India: Cronyism
and Fragility. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Is India heading towards segregating society, enclaving economic space, and
privatizing natural resources such as land and water in a way that excludes the majority from
the path of development? Is the “ecological dishevelment” associated with fast-track
development unavoidable? Has the Indian state decided to ignore alternative models of
development, including ones that would grant environmental sustainability or protect the
lives and livelihoods of millions of ordinary people? These questions are extremely urgent in
times of global crisis, when inequalities deepen, poor populations appear increasingly
expendable, and environmental crises grow darker.
The main narrative surrounding India’s aggressive embrace of globalization has been
one of success and unstoppable advance. Nevertheless, a deeper analysis of India’s
globalization efforts must be performed in order to account not only for the fact that India’s
poor have not benefitted from such efforts but also for the gross inequalities and
contradictions that still face the Indian economy and society. The crucial questions raised in
Economic and Human Development in Contemporary India: Cronyism and Fragility by
Debdas Banerjee regard processes that are not unique to India: in neighboring countries such
as Bangladesh and Pakistan, displacement, dispossession, and environmental degradation
have emerged almost as structural components of development, representing an irreversible
socioeconomic structure that favors the rich. All major international institutions such as the
World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank actively
support and facilitate these processes, promising a better “investment environment” and faster
economic growth. The state has consequently emerged as a major supporter of the entire
process of neoliberal reconstruction.
With India as a case study, the volume under review presents a strong criticism of the
economic parameters of such development, discussing the growth-intensive model of
neoliberal economists and their faith in trickle-down benefits. It advocates instead
development as a form of governance. The book depicts the complex and difficult expansion
of informal work in globalized India, emphasizing the multifaceted vulnerability connected to
work informality and pointing out the importance of and the urgent need for wider social
protection policies. Since the 1990s, there has been a far-reaching shift in India’s economic
policy: global capital ingress in all economic sectors has been facilitated, labor has been
downsized, economic activities have been outsourced, and an aggressive urbanism based on
gentrification and privatization has been promoted. International financial institutions and the
global corporate sector back such policies, based on the exploitation of the product of labor,
the pillaging of nature, and the expropriation of social property. The state has retracted from
its role as provider and, in the name of the supposedly “politically neutral” practice of
developmental governability, has become a boisterous facilitator of private capital.
Nevertheless, India has not completely reached global competitiveness, and Banerjee
investigates the reasons for this. He stresses that agriculture remains a crucial sector if India
wants to “catch up.” In fact, agriculture still provides a livelihood for most of the country’s
population, yet the state has not recognized the potential for agrarian transformation to propel
India’s development efforts. Meanwhile, “digital capitalism” is unfolding without the
assistance of capitalism in agriculture and despite low agricultural productivity. Says
Banerjee, the social division of labor and India’s development efforts remain underdeveloped
because of the failed agrarian transformation of India. To this, the issue of sustainability must
be added. India accounts, worldwide, for the largest number of homeless, illiterate, and
malnourished people. However, for the Indian ruling classes, which continue to believe in the
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power of finance capital and trickle-down economic theory as the panacea for all evils related
to poverty, “development” does not mean the improvement of the quality of life or wellbeing
of commoners. Capital accumulation by the Indian corporate sector has led to a sort of
“reversed colonization,” with some Indian companies—such as Lakshmi Mittal or Ambani’s
Reliance—investing in Europe and the States. The bulk of India’s population has been
excluded from the processes of visible economic growth. Mutually alterable and flexible
identities of labor are the backbone of the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZ)1 and
other global economic regions, which ultimately result in land appropriation and
displacement of the poor. The major victims of such displacements are Adivasis and social
groups that the Indian State categorizes as Other Backward Classes (OBC) . Here, political
democracy is made subservient to the accumulation of capital. Additionally, increased social
conflict makes poor and marginalized sectors of the population prone to embracing violent
ways of struggle, posing a greater challenge to formal democracy. In fact, socio-economic
deprivation and exclusion have already resulted in the growth of the Maoists in large
underdeveloped areas of the country.
Banerjee invites the reader to engage in a critical analysis of the implications of the
political, social, and economic processes of economic liberalization that have been underway
in India for the past two decades. Drawing on a range of important issues, including food
safety, the transformations that have crossed the Indian state, and the interaction between
poverty and gender, the volume also pays attention to the implications of the recent global
economic crisis on the Indian scenario. The book investigates with rigor the issue of unequal
distribution, meant as disparity in income, access to health, education, and other variables of
human development, as well as in terms of regional gap, rural/urban divide, and
differentiation in social components. Many indicators suggest that in the past two decades, a
backdrop has taken shape in India, where the poorest sections of the population have been
exposed to serious risks of further marginalization.
Banerjee’s basic argument is that granting more flexibility in labor laws will not help
development but will rather favor the further expansion of crony capitalism. An alarming
peculiarity about India’s briskly expanding economy, in fact, is that India’s growth hides a
stagnant job market. In the past two decades, India’s job market has generated neither an
expected nor proportional level of employment: almost no formal employment has been
created—certainly nowhere near the 10 million jobs that would be need to be created
annually simply to absorb new entrants to the labor force as the population grows. The
growth of joblessness has been accompanied by growth in the casualization and
informalization of employment.2 Most neoliberal economists claim that Indian employers are
so wary of the country’s outdated and worker-friendly labor laws that they are reluctant to
hire permanent employees. In their view, companies in India try to remain as small as
possible to avoid coming under the remit of laws. As a result, the country has failed to build a
1
In Banerjee’s worlds, SEZ is a “duty-free enclave and is a deemed foreign territory for the purpose of trade operations,
duties and tariffs”. This policy was introduced in India by the SEZ Act (2005), whose aims include generation of additional
economic activities, promotion of exports of goods and services, promotion of investment from domestic and foreign
sources, creation of employment opportunities, and development of infrastructure facilities. Yet, since existing laws could
not be applicable in the SEZ, “job security, work security, income security, social security and right to association could
easily be denied to the workers inside the SEZ" (p. 70).
2
The expression “informal economy” is used referring to the large range of activities that take place outside, or at the
borderline of what tends to be viewed as “formal economy,” where income-generating activities are regulated throught the
intervention of the state and other institutional actors, such as unions and governmental enforcement agencies. Globalization,
deep economic restructuring across countries, and neoliberal policies have transformed labor markets: in order to meet the
pressures of global markets production has been increasingly segmented out, through outsourcing and subcontracting. This
has generated growing informality, precarious jobs for a large proportion of the population, and rising economic insecurity.
Informality has reached many levels of activity ranging from mid-size subcontracting firms to microenterprises, workshops,
sweatshops, and home-based production.
Economic and Human Development in Contemporary India: Cronyism and Fragility 143
large, labor-intensive, export-oriented manufacturing sector. They also emphasize the
generally poor quality of education and training, so that even where there is demand for
labor, there is a shortage of supply. India, therefore, lacks skilled workers both for the service
industries and the high-technology outsourcing sectors, where it has succeeded thus far.
Banerjee’s analysis shows how this view is partial and incorrect. Notwithstanding the
existence of legislation aimed at protecting wages and the labor force, there are gross abuses
and violations of law, and the creation of SEZs—the privileged locus for foreign direct
investments—has made this legislation almost irrelevant, insofar these enclaves are “like a
sovereign colony within the country,” where job, work, income, and social security, as well
as rights to association, can easily be denied to the workers. As organized trade union
activism retreats from the labor market outcomes, employment on a contract basis becomes
the norm, and casual workers are now one third of all employees in factories, violating the
Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act (1970). Additionally, job outsourcing has
become a way to bypass social security regulations and labor laws, without regard to the high
social costs of outsourcing (which are also not taken into account in the neo-capitalist
discourse). Banerjee stresses an often underestimated point, emphasizing that the
performance of SEZs, despite their appeal, does not seem to meet expectations: investment in
such zones is almost entirely paid for by public subsidy, much of the production is sold
domestically, employment generation is below projections, and workers are short-changed.
As for tertiarization,3 Banerjee convincingly shows the illusory part of this growth. For
example, India’s share in IT global market is higher in sectors where wage rate per hour is
comparatively lower than in other IT segments associated with high-end research and
development, that remain exclusive domain of already developed countries. The overevaluation of the sector is also due to the increasing privatization – and consequent pricing –
of services, such as water distribution, which were earlier treated as free public goods.
Another problem in assessing the progress in the Indian tertiary sector in general, and in the
IT sector in particular, depends on the fact that official data regarding trade and outputs of
sub-sectors of services are poor or non-existent, unlike those on agriculture and industry;
therefore, the author claims, there is a great deal of guessing among scholars and planners
regarding the outputs of sub-sectors of such services.
If an “inclusive” (i.e. socially feasible, economically viable, and politically
acceptable) development is to be promoted, then poverty and (disguised) unemployment must
be eliminated. How can this be done? Considering the decades-long agrarian crisis, the state
of food insecurity in both rural and urban India, the massive migration movements connected
to under-employment and unemployment in the country, then, in Banerjee’s view, the present
Indian backdrop requires that public policies supporting employment and labor be urgently
strengthened. He discusses government interventions in the sectors of health and
employment, pointing out the issue of unequal access to facilities.
The author argues for statist interventions as a remedy to the imperfections of the
market and makes a strong case for the substitution of existing economic indicators with
some assessment of “happiness.” Paradoxically, a rising per capita income or improvement in
the human development index do not reflect an improvement to the wellbeing of the
underclasses; in fact, such measurements themselves are marred by inequality, as they do not
take into account unequal access to the basic components of livelihood. Banerjee does not
give an exhaustive definition of the criteria that should be used in order to measure happiness,
but from the text, it is clear that social security, employment, and health, in addition to
freedom and control and lack of discrimination, are relevant factors. Governance is identified
as having critical input in growth, as long as greater accountability of the governance
3
Tertiarization is the term used to refer to the development of the tertiary (service) sector and the growing proportion of
employment represented by this sector as compared with the primary and secondary sectors.
144
processes is granted. Proactive programs designed to support employment of the poorest
strata of the population, such as the National Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), have no
doubt had a positive impact and, in some regions, have not only provided a tool for poverty
alleviation but have also produced significant transformative outcomes for rural laborers,
such as pushing up rural wage levels, enhancing low-caste workers’ bargaining power in the
labor market, and reducing their dependency on high-caste employers. Nevertheless, the
failure of development programs in areas where the collusion between local self-government,
the well-to-do elites, and political parties at local level is evident.
The concluding section of the volume argues for a more critical “collective reasoning”
by the civil society, attributing the lack of such reasoning to the widespread lack of literacy.
Over the last few decades, India has made significant steps in reducing inequalities in
education, although the current situation is still far from equitable. Illiteracy is decreasing but
is still widespread. Elements of inconsistence and underdevelopment persist as far as access
to education and schooling is concerned, with data showing that the average rate of those
attending formal schooling is still lower than would be expected if compared to national per
capita income. Nevertheless, the new generations seem to have benefited by affirmative
action policies that have granted access to schooling to lower levels of social strata, such as
scheduled castes and tribes that were previously excluded from education. Today, young
Indians are less illiterate and better trained than they were in the recent past. However, the
situation is still uneven in terms of gender and access to post-secondary education, as only
3% of the population has graduated from secondary school, and this will remain one of the
major challenges for the future.
India is going through a social transition, the result of which will depend on politics
that will be implemented in order to spread change among those that are at present excluded.
Debdas Banerjee’s data are updated to the first decade of the 21st century, and in some cases
the situation has changed slightly since the publication of this work. Nevertheless, his
analysis remains absolutely valid. He shows that economic inequality is damaging and
worrying not only because it is morally questionable but also because it has negative impacts
on economic growth and poverty reduction, and it can compound social problems. With a
political capture of wealth, the rules bend to favor the rich, to the detriment of everyone else.
This causes the erosion of democratic governance, the pulling apart of social cohesion, and
the vanishing of equal opportunity for all. This dangerous trend can be reversed, but its
reverse requires bold political solutions to curb the influence of wealth on politics, together
with a cultural change, as the minority literate population of the country is pushing for a
market-intensive economy that is unfavorable for the majority of the illiterate and semiliterate populations, caught in loops of land dispossession and casualization of labor.
Unfortunately, the results of the 2014 general election show that the chief beneficiaries of the
current neoliberal model of “development” have succeeded in presenting it as the one best
suited for all people’s needs, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – the Hindu nationalist
party that eventually won the election– promising that the “Gujarat model”4 could be
4
This catchphrase was used by Narendra Modi, at present India’s Prime Minister, as a central theme of his successful 2014
election campaign. Having been Gujarat chief minister since 2001, he claimed the credit for Gujarat's apparent economic
success and promised Indian voters that he can replicate it across the country. This model is based on trade and businessfriendliness, a heavy focus on agricultural transformation and industry, encouraging private enterprise in health and
education, taking urban-level infrastructure to rural areas and a decentralized model of government where schemes are
tailored for specific populations. Notwithstanding success in infrastructure, investment and e-governance, the Gujarat model
has attracted much criticism. The very high GDP growth is driven by lots of concessions to large corporates, not necessarily
by wage growth. Concessions are partly in terms of land and mineral resources, but some are fiscal subsidies, which makes
this model dependent on a non-sustainable large debt. The Gujarat model has not benefited the poor: its limitations are
highlighted by failings in public health and education, with the state still behind its peers in infant mortality rate and
women's literacy.
Economic and Human Development in Contemporary India: Cronyism and Fragility 145
replicated all over India. In this context, it seems that the Indian government will work for the
interests of the rich, while economic and political inequalities continue to rise.
Alessandra Consolaro
University of Torino, Italy
alessandra.consolaro@unito.it
Shaylih Muehlmann. When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the U.S.-Mexico
Borderlands. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.
“That the United States and Mexico continue to impose a ‘war’ that has been such a
spectacular failure is also enormously lucrative for both the countries and the markets involved”
(p. 14). When I Wear My Alligators Boots explores how the Mexican narco-economy impacts
and shapes the everyday lives of poor people on the northwest Mexican margins through a
variety of local voices and perspectives that animate this lively and insightful book. Through
Andrés, Paz, Cruz, Lupita, Celia, and many others who graciously shared their experiences,
analyses, and insights, Shaylih Muehlmann has expertly woven together an exploration of the
impact of the narco-economy on ordinary people in otherwise mundane settings as they struggle
to get by. In so doing, she adds to a small body of literature that provides deeply embedded,
first-hand accounts of the Mexican narco-economy at the personal and community levels. Her
work underscores the power of an ethnographic approach to dig intensely into the worlds of
people living in poverty and their complex relationships with the illicit drug trade. She reveals
how the drug trade creates webs of penetration into communities and regions in ways that touch
just about everyone, be it through direct employment, a jailed son or daughter, or cooking food
for the local capos at a restaurant.
Key themes, roughly following the sequencing of chapters, include womens’ lives; the
shaping of male identities; corridos (popular folk ballads); addiction; money laundering; the
calculation of risk; and the ever-shifting guise of narcos through clothing and other trappings.
Muehlmann points out that women are largely rendered invisible in most narco-analyses,1 as are
children. Because women are more economically marginal and vulnerable than men (and
children even more so), the incarceration or death of a husband, brother, or other male kin may,
for women, mean not only loss of income but also added expenses for food, protection, and other
services during their loved one’s incarceration, not to mention emotional heartbreak. Women
may also find themselves in danger as of result of their relationships to males involved in the
drug trade. For example, women may be incarcerated if a drug stash not belonging to them is
found in their home. And, of course, women often find themselves in situations where economic
necessity outweighs risk, and they wind up operating as drug or money mules. Far from ignoring
the role of women, Muehlmann, flips the discussion of the role of women in the drug trade on its
head by engaging in a fascinating examination of the less-often discussed narco-wives who are
seduced by the prestige, power dynamics, and lifestyle involved in the drug trade. Like their
male counterparts, of course, many of these women wind up in jail or worse.
Men are equally exploited, for their labor is cheap and expendable. Like women, men are
often drawn, willingly or otherwise, into the narco-economy not only out of sheer economic
necessity but also because of webs of kinship or friendship that coax participation. Indeed, I
know of a particular case in which a woman in a narco-town is regularly harassed by local cartel
operatives and is used as a bargaining chip to exploit her migrant husband, who works as a
farmworker in the U.S. and sometimes as a low-level cartel operative. If such men are caught
(and this one eventually was), there are more in the queue to take their place. Muehlmann makes
clear that she sees the massive “reserve army” of the poor in Mexico as a byproduct of the North
American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and neoliberal policies in general that have led to
1
In contrast, women are not rendered invisible in popular film, however. They are typically portrayed as full of
agency as they confront and survive many forms of exploitation. Here we might include such recent Mexican films
as Miss Bala (2011) and Heli (2013). When I Wear My Alligator Boots: Narco-Culture in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands 147
massive rural (and also urban) unemployment. In the process, she says, the male identity as the
dominant bread winner has been destabilized. That narcos are also thought of as machos, thus,
becomes attractive as a further lure and leads to an overcompensation in what she refers to as the
“pufferfish syndrome,” as men, unlike women, tend to exaggerate their roles and activities as
narcos.
Muehlmann next addresses the pervasive popularity of narco-corridos, or “drug ballads,”
which constitute a sub-genre of Mexican northern ballads, a form of traditional folk music.
Narco-corrido lyrics often refer to particular events and places; like ganster rap in the U.S., the
lyrics of narco-corridos tend to speak approvingly of illegal activities. Muehlmann explores these
songs not only as non-state-dominated accountings and the music of the poor but also a form of
narco-propoganda by and among its “in crowd.” She comes to understand the songs through her
interlocutors as a kind of visceral embodiment of the emotions associated with involvement in
illicit activity; the rhythm and lyrics of the songs represent the emotional rush of such
involvement—through a powerful and accessible pop culture format.
Drug addiction among traffickers themselves and in the local Mexican population is yet
another dimension that is not often engaged in narco-analyses. While the U.S. is clearly the
major market draw for traffickers, the fact that product (particularly methamphetamine, aka
cristal) is available and cheap along drug corridors has led to a considerable rise in addiction in
Mexico. Muehlmann brings great humanity to her discussion of addicts and how their lives
unravel, as well as the stigma that accompanies addiction (women being far more stigmatized
than men, not surprisingly).
As an economic anthropologist, I found the penultimate chapter on money laundering and
the physicality of money to be perhaps the most intriguing chapter of the book. Her description
of how fishmonger Don Emmanuel laundered money through multiple, geographically dispersed
bank accounts set up through (often quite complicit) others based upon kinship and friendship
illuminated a remarkably complex and sophisticated system. Further, Muehlmann critiques much
recent analysis on the nature of contemporary money as abstract and virtual. In the narcoeconomy, unlike in other economies, she argues, the physicality of money is paramount; weight
and volume are key (especially for money mules, who have to tote the stuff around). She also
argues that drug money is infused into all dimensions of the legal economy, from restaurants to
churches to security forces, all of which benefit or receive supplemental income from it. Drug
money is an important engine in the global capitalist economy, and one wonders what would
happen to that economy if the drug money spigot were suddenly shut off.
Finally, Muehlmann ties up the book with an equally fascinating meditation on the
concept of risk and the complex calculations and rationale of risk assessment in different subject
positions relative to the narco-economy. Her portrayal of the pervasiveness of the narcoeconomy is extremely apt—everyone in one way or another is part of it. There are no true in / out
boundaries, as exemplified by her analysis of subcontracting and loose networks that are fluid
and often fluid, opportunistic, and reactive to immediate need. Having cited David Graeber on
the antiquity of credit and debt as the earliest form of “money” in pre-monetized societies, one
interlocutor notes that debt always “keeps you sucked in” under conditions of poverty and
uncertainty. Interlaced into the chapter is another cultural effect of the narco-economy: how
people dress. The stereotype of the boots, cowboy hat, and massive ornate belt buckle no longer
holds. Narco-towns where I have worked are dominated by folks in tennis shoes, polo or button
down shirts, and baseball caps. Indeed, one noteworthy narco-migrant came back and purchased
a ranch in a region that was long dedicated to dairy farming. He took up a legitimate and
148
traditional form of making a living through which locals gained social status (albeit through a
rather significant shortcut). Not only did he take on the job of ranching, however, he also
swapped his baseball cap and tennis shoes for cowboy boots and hats. Taken together, his change
in livelihood and attire amounted to a sort of “sanitizing,” a retro-reinvention of himself so that
he would fit in with traditional norms and values.
Muehlmann’s shares with readers deep a frustration and despair over the Mexican “drug
war.” Though not cited in the book, she provides estimates as high as 130,000 dead, with another
27,000 having disappeared since late 2006. Government figures are, of course, much lower, at
around 60,000+ (Molloy, 2013). Molly Molloy refers to this disparity as the “Mexican undead,”
a play on words meant to indicate that by underestimating or underreporting the numbers of
causalities of the drug war, the government can effectively deny not only the deaths but also the
very existence of a multitude of “undesirables.” She argues convincingly that security forces are
using the “drug war” to camouflage a campaign against anyone labeled as undesirable, a tactic
seen elsewhere in Latin America, and tantamount to social cleansing (cf. Arias & Goldstein,
2010).
In closing, When I Wear My Alligator Boots is an accessible, well-written book that
mines the complexity of the narco-economy as it plays out in an ordinary, rural, poor community
where globalization has rushed in with tremendous power and fury. At the book’s end,
Muehlmann beseeches the reader:
Think of Andres bearing up, trying to breathe under all the weight [of the money strapped
to his body] at the military checkpoint, or of Paz slipping her last wad of cash into the
guards hand at the jail. Remember Lupita, stuffing her baby’s diapers with hundred-dollar
bills…And don’t forget Cruz [a meth addict], out there in the desert on top of his
bulldozer [which he guarded for someone else for a few pesos], counting his way through
earthquakes. Rather than regret their actions, they just try to do whatever they have to
do, and try to do it well. (p. 190)
Put in terms of a well-worn local phrase, “puro pa’delante” (always strive forward). Muehlmann
has brought great empathy and humanism to her analysis, and this book should be read by
anyone interested in global drug trafficking and its pernicious effects. Her work tells the story of
not only the human resiliency of the many who must endure it but also the deep toll it takes on
those involved and the many losses they must also endure.
References
Arias, E.D. & Goldstein, D.M. (2010). Violent democracies in Latin America. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Molloy, M. (2013). The Mexican undead: Toward a new history of the “drug war” killing field,
Small Wars Journal, 21 August. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/the-mexicanundead-toward-a-new-history-of-the-%E2%80%9Cdrug-war%E2%80%9D-killing-fields
James H. McDonald
Southern Utah University
mcdonaldj@suu.edu
Ahmed, Akbar. The Thistle and the Drone: How America’s War on Terror Became a Global
War on Tribal Islam. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press. 2013.
Akbar Ahmed is the Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies at American University in
Washington, D.C.; a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution; and a Visiting
Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, M.D. where he was the First Distinguished
Chair of Middle East and Islamic Studies. Ahmed belonged to the senior Civil Service of
Pakistan and was the Pakistan High Commissioner and Ambassador to the U.K. and Ireland. He
earned his MA at the University of Cambridge and his PhD in Anthropology from the University
of London, School of Oriental and African Studies. Ahmed has taught at Princeton, Harvard, and
Cambridge Universities. Ahmed is also a promoter of interfaith dialogue and an international
peace activist.
Ahmed is the author of over a dozen award-winning books, including Discovering Islam,
which was the basis of a six-part BBC TV series called Living Islam. The critically acclaimed
Journey into Islam: The Crisis of Globalization discussed Muslim perceptions of the United
States and its Western allies. Journey into America: The Challenge of Islam detailed the life of
Muslims in the U.S. and the views Americans toward Muslims. His next book, Journey into
Europe: the Specter of Islam, Immigration and Empire will become his fourth book examining
the relationship between the West and Islam. In these books, Ahmed has been critical of the
simplistic 'clash of civilization,' thesis perpetuated by Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington that
became the dominant metanarrative of the U.S. government following the tragedy of 9/11/01.
As a Muslim anthropologist Ahmed is aware of the complexity and diversity within the so-called
‘Islamic civilization.’ His major goal is to describe the realities of Muslim communities so that a
true interfaith dialogue can develop between America, the West, and the Islamic world.
Ahmed's recent book The Thistle and the Drone: How America's War on Terror Became
a Global War on Tribal Islam, the third volume in his series, is partially based on his experience
as a civil service official for the Pakistan government prior to earning his degrees in
anthropology. He was a political agent in a number of tribal zones, including South Waziristan in
Northwest Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), the area where
the Taliban and Al Qaeda sought sanctuary following the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Ahmed
studied the tribal cultures and became familiar with many of the political leaders and elders in
these tribal zones.
Within the tradition of Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah and the descriptions of the tribal
solidarity or asabiyah and later Evans-Pritchard, and his close colleague at Cambridge, Ernest
Gellner, Ahmed discusses the acephalous (headless), segmentary lineage system as the
genealogical and structural basis of clan and subclan units of affiliation and balanced opposition
found in many of these tribes. Ahmed characterizes the segmentary lineage system in an ideal
form as highly egalitarian segments with a genealogical charter claiming descent from a
common, often eponymous, ancestor with a council of male elders to mediate conflicts, the
recognition of territorial rights for the different segments through tradition, and a customary code
of honor and distinctive language. The Pukhtunwali ideological honor code enforcing hospitality
and revenge as described by Ahmed in his earlier work on the Pukhtun in Millennium and
Charisma among Pathans: a Critical Essay in Social Anthropology (1980), and Pukhtun
Economy and Society represents the ideal typical model of a tribal group with segmentary
150
lineage characteristics.1 Although Ahmed admires the egalitarian spirit and the stability,
security, and the authenticity of identity for members of these tribal groups, he admits that the
emphasis on genealogical and ethnic exclusiveness, revenge, and the inhumane treatment of
women are unacceptable in this era of modernity and globalization.
As is well known the U.S. military has been using drones to kill targeted "Islamic
terrorists" in Pukhtun, Yemeni, and Somali tribal regions. Ahmed emphasizes how the drones
embody the weaponry of globalization: “high-tech in performance, sleek in appearance, and
global in reach.” (p. 20). The term ‘thistle’ is drawn from Tolstoy’s novel Hadji Murad about a
Muslim tribal leader’s struggle in the Caucasus region against Imperial Russia in the 19th
century. Tolstoy’s narrator bends to pick a thistle for a bouquet of flowers but found it so tough
and prickly representing the courage, pride, and egalitarianism of the Muslim tribes. In addition,
Ahmed notes how the tribal Scots made the thistle their national symbol of resistance of the
Highland Clans to British internal colonialism.
Ahmed discusses how the members of these tribal groups define themselves with respect
to their Islamic faith as well as blood, clan, and loyalty to their honor codes. They maintain that
the Prophet of Islam is “a kind of tribal chief par excellence” (p.28) and trace genealogical
linkages and descent to Muhammad, which instills a religious fervor and inspiration for
defending the faith against outsiders. Ahmed emphasizes that these tribal Muslim conceptions
are antithetical to the formal literalist traditions of Islam associated with the religious centers of
Mecca, Medina, and Al Azhar. Tribal identity is based on syncretic pre-Islamic and Non-Islamic
cultural traditions such as Zoroastrian and Hindu fire rituals that are used in trials of ordeals by
some communities. Muslim modernists and literalists view these tribal traditions as blasphemy
and ignorant superstitions.
The major focus of the book is on the four core Muslim tribal groups including the
Pukhtun, (also known as Afghan, Pashtun, or Pathan, all referring to the same ethnic group),
Yemenis, Somalis, and Kurds who are classified as ‘nang,’ (honor-code based societies).
However, the range of peripheral Muslim groups surveyed in the book is much more
comprehensive. There are forty case studies of various peripheral Muslim groups based on a
loosely-constructed typology. Aside from the four core groups, a second category includes
peripheral Muslim peripheral societies that have segmentary lineage systems of the present or
distant past who are not the targets of U.S. drones. This large group includes the Achehnese of
Indonesia, the Qashqai and Bakhtiari of Iran, the Azeris of Azerbaijan, the Chechens of
Chechnya of Russia, the Baluch in Pakistan and Iran, Bedouin tribes in the Egyptian Sinai and
the Negev desert of Israel, and the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, the Uyghurs of
China, the Tuareg of the Sahel, the Uzbeks of Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Kyrgyzstan and
others. A third category consists of Muslim groups that do not have the segmentary lineage
systems, but are segmented tribal societies that operate within a strong ‘nang’ orientation based
on honor. Ahmed discusses two Muslim minority groups in this category: the Tausug of the
Philippines and the Malays of South Thailand. The fourth category embraces non-tribal Muslim
groups such as the Cham of Cambodia, the Kashmiris of Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, and the
Rohingya of Arakan State in western Burma/Myanmar.
In his analysis Ahmed describes the centralized authoritarian state paralleling what Karl
1
Recently this model of the segmentary lineage has been emphasized to promote generalizations about Muslims by
Philip Salzman in his Cultural and Conflict in the Middle East. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books (2007) who draws
on Charles Lindholm’s ethnographic studies of the Swat Pukhtun in North Pakistan described in The Islamic Middle
East: Tradition and Change. Malden, MASS and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing (1996, 2002). The Thistle and the Drone
151
Wittfogel call the ‘hydraulic society’ or ‘Oriental Despotism’ in its totalistic power over
peripheral tribal regions, as an ongoing dialectic since the evolution of the state in various areas
of the world. From the ‘center’ the periphery was viewed as backward, ignorant, rebellious,
alien, and the central government constructed derogatory labels and categories for tribal peoples.
Historically, as authority waned at the center, autonomy and independence was emphasized in
the peripheries. In the age of 18th and 19th century colonialism tribal peoples that had resided
with one another for centuries were often cut off and dispersed as modern nation states were
formed by European authorities. For example, the nearly 50 million Pukhtuns were split
between Afghanistan and Pakistan while the 30 million Kurds have been divided with residents
in Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq.
Ahmed describes how the U.S. military drones often kill innocent civilians, including
women and children in these tribal areas. He notes how these innocent Muslim tribal victims
killed by the drones are described inhumanely as 'bug splat,' by some within the U.S. military.
Ahmed demonstrates that this U.S. drone warfare has become one of the principal causes of
more active terrorism in Pakistan, resulting in more recruits for the Taliban and al-Qaeda. His
book discusses many other tribal regions of the Islamic world including Yemen, Somalia, and
Kurdish areas where the 'War on Terrorism' has increased conflict and violence directed at the
central governments, the U.S. and the West within Muslim communities. One of the main themes
of the book is how the traditional cultures of these tribal peoples has been disrupted by both the
political oppression and violence of their central governments, as well as globalization and
violence from external sources. As these people recognize that globalization is not incidental to
their lives, but rather is a recognizable transformation in their everyday circumstances, they draw
on reconstructions of tribal identity and religious fundamentalism as a means of restoring power
over their lives. The reconstruction and reinvigoration of their tribal and religious identity give
these people a sense of greater control in what appears to be a “runaway” and destructive world.
Fundamentalist religious movements articulate the uncertainties and distress brought about by
expanding globalization and loss of control over local realities. These disruptive local and global
conditions result in alienation for many of the young people from their tribal and community ties.
This destabilization of tribal identity provides a context for the recruitment of young people in
these peripheral communities into fundamentalist terrorist and violent activities.
Ahmed discusses how the West ought to win the 'War on Terror' in the last chapter of the
book. First, the U.S. and Western governments should learn from the research of anthropologists
who have been engaged in in-depth ethnographic studies of Muslim societies instead of relying
on 'instant terror experts,' who have very little training and rely on the 'clash of civilization
thesis.' These instant experts tend to distort the history and religious culture of Muslims and
perceive jihadists in every corner producing global terrorism. In contrast, anthropologists spend
years doing field work among these populations and interview and observe not only elites, but
people from every sector of society. In this context Ahmed notes that the former commander of
coalition forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, admitted that the U.S. military had
a very superficial understanding of Afghanistan and its tribal peoples. Yet, Ahmed describes how
the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did provide the U.S. military with a much greater
understanding of tribal cultures and encouraged commanders to interact with tribal elders.
Second, rather than focusing on a 'clash of civilizations,' Ahmed recommends fostering better
relationships between central governments and tribal or minority Muslim ethnic peripheries. As
these central governments recognize more autonomy, full political participation, and human
rights for the tribal or ethnic Muslim communities, the less reason there will be for resistance,
152
violence, and conflict, and fewer recruits for terrorist groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
The ethics of the U.S. drone warfare is a topic of discussion for many Americans and
Westerners. If the ability to ascribe responsibility for rights and wrongs committed in the course
of combat is integral to thinking ethically about war, does the emergence of these unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs) jeopardize this enterprise? The book contributes empirically-based
materials and fascinating discussions of, respectively, the false promise and pernicious effect of
risk-free warfare, and the implications of the destructive aspects of drone warfare in these tribal
areas that have consequences for global developments throughout the world.
References
Ahmed, Akbar S. (1980). Millennium and Charisma among Pathans: a Critical Essay in Social
Anthropology London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Lindholm, Charles. (1996, 2002). The Islamic Middle East: Tradition and Change. Malden,
MASS and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
Salzman, Philip. (2007). Cultural and Conflict in the Middle East. Amherst, NY: Humanity
Books.
Raymond Scupin, PhD
Rscupin@lindenwood.edu
Zhang, E., Kleinman, A., & Tu, W. (Eds.). (2011). Governance of life in Chinese moral
experience. The quest for an adequate life. London & New York: Routledge.
Foucault's notions of biopolitics and governmentality grew out of his study of the history of
Western political thought and practice. This West-centrism offers one reason why an encounter
between these concepts and Chinese politics and society is of particular interest. Considerations of
civilizational differences aside, modern and considerably Westernized Chinese politics provide rich
fields not only for a Foucauldian analysis of power relations but also for probing the limits of
Foucauldian dominant concepts. The study of revolutionary government on these terms has so far
remained marginal due to its limited relevance for contemporary Western societies, but it is
indispensable for understanding China's past and present. Moreover, a focus on the concrete
practices and mentalities of Chinese governance provides a welcome alternative to the oppositional
framing of liberal democracy versus China’s authoritarian one-party system.
All these issues appear in varying depth in this collected volume. Although the contributions
to Governance of Life in Chinese Moral Experience do not follow a coherent framework, the
diversity of approaches and topics – many of them written from an anthropological perspective –
deliver what is promised by the title, providing a remarkable overview of how an “adequate life”1 in
China has been formulated in and through governmental practices. Everett Zhang's introduction
clarifies the concept of “adequate life” by placing it within the context of Foucault's terminology of
governmentality and biopower2: what is at issue is the inclusion of the biological life of the
population into the way societies are governed and power is exercized. Foucault differentiates
biopower that seeks to promote life – or at least adequate forms of it – from sovereign power that
“makes die” or “lets live.” Zhang complements this binary system with her own concept of
revolutionary power based on the sacrifice of life for the revolutionary cause, a governmental
rationality that doubtless remains under-examined in the literature. Her chapter in this volume
pursues this issue by analyzing the interaction between these three forms of power in the context of
the democidal famine3 that resulted from the flawed policies of the Great Leap Forward. She finds
that the goal of promoting life was stifled as the combination of sovereign and revolutionary power
undermined the center's access to information about the extent and nature of the crisis.
Addressing the same historical tragedy, Stephan Feuchtwang provides further thoughts on
revolutionary mobilization for sacrifice as a form of state power, in a chapter that interrogates the
role of irony in reconciling moral beliefs and the requirements of success in people's attitude to the
Communist Party. Feuchtwang notes that the Chinese revolution should be seen as yet another form
of the “state-organized self-strengthening” that have dominated China’s policies since the second
half of the 19th century (p. 47). This continuity points to a shortcoming of Zhang's otherwise
instructive framing of the book. By relying almost exclusively on the biopolitics-sovereigntyrevolution distinction, she misses out on an opportunity to put to productive use Foucault's further
explorations of governmentality. Above all, both the overall framework and the discussion of
revolutionary power lack a more direct engagement with both the distinction between regulatory
and (neo)liberal forms of governmentality and the relation of raison d'état to their operation.4
1
Although not explicitly defined by the authors, “adequate life” refers to the complex of ethical, political and scientific
norms according to which a society evaluates human life at a given time.
2
In Foucault’s words, biopower is “power over man in sofar as man is a living being,” i.e. the incorporation of
biological life into technologies of (political) power. Foucault, M. (2004). Society Must be Defended. London: Penguin
Books, p. 239.
3
Between 1958 and 1962 the policy of forced industrialisation led to a scarcity of food and to 20 to 40 million excess
deaths resulting from famine.
4
Foucault, M. (2007). Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-1978. Basingstoke;
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 227-361. Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège De
France, 1978-79. Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 119-123.
154
Susan Greenhalgh's chapter – the best in the volume – offers a positive example.
Summarizing her extensive research into different forms of population governance in China, it gives
a clear account of the geographical distribution and historical shifts of such governance. Moving the
discussion of population control away from the usual emphasis on direct coercion by the state,
Greenhalgh describes the role of science, technology, disciplinary institutions, and changing
rationalities of government in managing the quantity and quality of China's population. The chapter
demonstrates not only how from the mid-1990s self-disciplining and the neoliberal logic of the
market largely took over from direct biopolitical state-intervention but also that despite its dispersal
to a wide range of actors – experts, institutions, individuals –, the exercise of biopower remains
tightly controlled by, and dependent on, the state.
Greenhalgh emphasizes how the interaction of traditional family values and the modern
biopolitics of population control have generated an unintended gender bias, resulting in concomitant
problems for the government of the population. This encounter between governmentality and the
traditional role of family in the internal organization of society – including rendering the latter as a
target of the former – is a theme running through many chapters. Rubie S. Watson, for instance,
discusses how tradition, universal human rights, and “filial-biological” bonds constitute grounds for
competing discourses for debates about women's rights in Hong Kong. Wu Fei's account of the
activities and experience of a Chinese suicide-prevention NGO not only offers further evidence that
the operation of de-centered biopower in China depends on close cooperation with state actors but
also argues for the importance of the family as a specific site of intervention for biopower in China.
In a further example of the interaction between tradition and modernity, Yang Nianqun's chapter
describes how a “barefoot doctor system” applying traditional Chinese medicine functioned
between 1965 and the early 1980s as an alternative or parallel medical apparatus to costly Western
practices.
This broad range of issue areas is complemented by Joan Kaufman's comprehensive chapter
on the transformation of AIDS governance in China since 1985 and James L. Watson's excellent
piece on the collectivization of cooking and eating in Maoist China. The latter describes how, by
shifting from the family to the community this activity fundamental for the preservation of human
life, the Communist Party also took aim at the traditional centrality of the family to the organisation
of society. While Watson demonstrates the limits of social engineering through examples of
resistance, Liang Zhiping's account of the (now under reform) hukou system, which divides China's
population sharply into urban and rural segments and subordinates the latter to the interests of the
former, shows its extreme power. Both at the level of theory and of empirical content, the chapter is
a highlight of the volume. Liang's use of Agamben's theory of “bare life”5 is debatable, but it is
certainly productive in describing how the Communist Party, having dissolved traditional status
distinctions in society, produced through its modern, sovereign political power a new status
distinction – with attendant differences in rights and burdens – between peasants and city-dwellers.
Other references to Agamben in the volume seem more gratuitous. Matthew Kohrman puts
forward deeply interesting arguments about the role of medicalization, images and discourses of
masculinity and good life, and personal memory-making in explaining why China's population
places no blame on the government or the tobacco industry for the extreme financial and sanitary
costs of smoking. Yet the role of his Agambenian framework remains unclear. Not only do his
findings remain marginal to Agamben's core concerns, they actually require no support from the
authority of the Italian philosopher.
The compound of traditional social bonds, a living heritage of revolutionary power, and an
increasingly dispersed and market-based governing of the population that yet remains tightly under
the sovereign power of a statist Communist Party forms what Arthur Kleinman, in his foreword,
calls the “new political reality” of China (p. xiv). Using detailed survey data, the chapter by Tony
Saich shows that the transformation of the state from an ideological agent to a governing party has
5
“Bare life” is Agamben’s term for a human life stripped of its ethical and political form. It is different from biological
life, since it is defined by this reduction rather than simply as animal existence.
Governance of life in Chinese moral experience
155
led to a significant increase in citizens' satisfaction levels with the government, indicating the
resilience of the current system. In his contribution, Tu Weiming contemplates the possible
emergence of a “functional equivalent of a liberal democracy” (p. 268) based not on individual
rights but on a combination of public discussion conducted by an intellectual elite, popular protests,
and a moral expectation that the government is responsible for providing an “adequate life” for its
citizens. This emphasis on governing subjects of interest rather than subjects of right is, of course,
precisely what Foucault described as part of the neoliberal rationality of government. This volume,
hence, also points to a significant degree of convergence between the West and China in terms of
governing societies while remaining wide apart at the level of fundamental political principles. As
the chapter by Nikolas Rose demonstrates, this is especially the case since China’s eugenicist
policies of the 1990s gave way to more liberal forms of governing through individualized
responsibility. Rose's concept of biological citizenship, standing for the right to health and the duty
to be well, characterizes the concerns of Western states with sustainable economy just as much as it
does those of China.
The wide range of topics addressed – AIDS, suicide and population control, internal
migration – and historical periods covered make Governance of Life in Chinese Moral Experience a
valuable companion to the many facets of biopolitics in China. As such, it is certainly of interest to
anyone working on how China is governed and what its form of governance means for its
international position. For those coming from governmentality studies, in turn, this book offers not
only a range of unusual and original cases but also a confrontation with a non-Western context,
revolutionary power, and an authoritarian system combined with a neoliberal rationality of
government.
Viktor Friedmann
Central European University
friedmann_viktor@ceu-budapest.edu
Raoul Bianchi & Marcus L. Stephenson. Tourism and Citizenship: rights, freedoms and
responsibilities in the global order. 2014. Abingdon, Routledge.
The book Tourism and Citizenship, authored by R. Bianchi and M. L Stephenson,
explores the contradictions and fallacies of neo-liberal discourse, which encourages mobility
and tourism as a means of peace-keeping. The six chapters that present this research
articulate the double edge sword that is mobility in a world of sharp contrasts. At time when
first world tourists explore the vast geographies of this world, peripheral migrants are
scrutinized, immobilized, and monitored by existent technology. In this book, authors explore
the ebbs and flows of mobility as well as its connection with globalization.
The first chapter examines the historical origin of tourism and imperial travel and the
formation of political poles (i.e., the Cold-War), which leads the industry of travel to draw a
geography of asymmetry. Against this backdrop, tourism not only serves to re-define the
potentialities of citizenships but also enhanced nationalism in many senses. Tourism grew
dramatically from 1960 to 1970, emerging as one of the leading industries of the world and
paving the way for the accentuation of new material asymmetries within societies. Certainly,
the role of tourism in local economies should not be exaggerated, nor should the promises of
globalization be accepted as unquestionable truths. However, what Bianchi and Stephenson
wish to examine is the extent to which tourism and globalization have contributed to the
development of contrasting landscapes within tourist-receiving countries. Their goals are
aimed to examining tourism as an ideological mechanism that creates different economic
wealth in the world. The success of globalization consists in interrogating third world nations
under the luxury goods posed by tourism consumption. This means that tourism not only
seems to be a commercial activity, but also a political instrument that strengthens inequalities
in peoples. At the time globalization opens the opportunities to travel for many richer
citizens of first world, others are limited to be immobilized or penalized such as blue-collar
workers or migrants. The tension generated by the economic disparity made apparent by
tourism (particularly through visible displays of wealth by tourists) cements the resentments
off of which discontent, agitation, and, ultimately, terrorism feed. The violence exerted
against tourists worldwide points to the fallacy of “democratized mobility” for those who
have no access to it. Those asymmetries generated by economy are enlarged in the meeting of
local and tourists. Based on the resulted sentiment of resentment, local peripheral populations
show hostility against first world travelers. The attacks perpetrated by terrorists against
tourists are reminders that Bianchi and Stephenson add to the understanding of the political
nature of tourism. Indeed, privileged travelers coming from the periphery cite “security” as a
necessity in order to enjoy their sojourn. Why would local agents attack first-world tourists?
The politics of tourism incite agitation, assert the authors, particularly given that the historical
evolution of “citizenship” tended to include the ability to travel. The second chapter, in a
similar vein, analyzes the configuration of the globalized elite on the foundation of the
expansion of multiculturalism and “cosmopolitization.”1 This foundation created a new
consciousness of what post-modern travel means, in which tourists are exploited by
commercial forces that operate beyond the nation-state sovereignty.
The third chapter of the book delves into the connection between tourism and
imperialism. Regarding world travel, the ideological discourse of empires entails making
citizens believe not only that tourism offers a “world without boundaries” but also a stable
political atmosphere for all nations. In perhaps the best chapter, Bianchi and Stephenson
remind the reader that marketing and management disciplines have paid the attention to those
1 The term Cosmopolitization signals to the thesis that all human beings belong to the same universal
community.
Tourism and Citizenship: rights, freedoms and responsibilities in the global order 157
aspects of nations that can be commoditized (i.e., and sold to tourists) while ignoring others.
Chapter four unravels the contradictions and fallacies of a “double-oriented mobility,”2 which
is employed as a mechanism of control, keeping marginalized populations from seeing other
parts of the world and, as such, compounding their marginalized status. The final sections of
the work emphasize the process of securitization and how it securitization efforts emerged
within a context of terrorism and a globalized fear. Both tourism and terrorism, assert the
authors, share a crude sort of instrumentalism—the exploitation of others to protect one’s
own interests.
Although this book elegantly deepens the connection between tourism and terrorism,
it fails to explain the historical evolution of tourism as an “inoculated form of terrorism.”
Through this text, the explanation employed to describe the role of globalization in shaping
the politics of violence and terrorism put the cart before the horse. In earlier studies, the
reviewer found (by the compilation of sufficient evidence) that “modern tourism” is terrorism
by other means. Tourism was formed by the pressure of worker unions, a movement widely
reinforced by the anarchist-related ideologies brought by Italian migrants in the nineteenth
century. Although anarchists were violent at the outset, they were opting for more efficient
ways of negotiating their ideals with state. We will explain in detail this thesis in this review.
Without the terrorism produced by anarchism in the nineteenth century, tourism would never
exist.
What Bianchi and Stephenson ignore is that leisure and tourism were answers
formulated by the capital-owners to unionization and the 1935 Wagner Act3in the U.S. By the
turn of the twentieth century, the process of European industrialization had generated a strong
movement from rural zones to cities. However, the working conditions in industrialized
European cities were far from acceptable. As such, millions of European workers migrated
further, to the periphery (US, Australia, Argentina, and other South American destinations),
prompting a process of acculturation in those host nations as never before. In America, the
claims issued by workers for shorter hours and increased wages obscured the atmosphere of
new opportunities the European migrants expected to meet. The European workforce that
migrated to America looked to an imagined landscape of peace, prosperity and wealth.
Among the newcomers were anarchists who arrived with a new ideology that not only
valorized the role of the worker as critical to the “production-machine” but also coordinated
the efforts of workers in order to cause political instability. Since suspicions against capital
owners were high, the first anarchist activists planned and perpetrated violent attacks against
important persons of society, such as chiefs of police and politicians. The fear of these new
alien immigrants resulted in a strong response by the state. Prosecuted, jailed, and deported as
“terrorists,” they were labeled as “undesired guests”. However, their ideology was enrooted
in the capitalist ethos.
In parallel, other groups of activists believed that the right to unionize laid fertile
grounds for the realization of their beliefs and ideas. Activists worked hard to organize
workers and bring workers’ demands to government representatives, adopting legal
instruments offered by the state to effect change. In response, the capitalist system adopted
2
Double oriented mobility means the paradoxical condition where some citizens are encouraged to
travel while others are not. North-to-North mobilities among rich nations seems to be pretty different
than north-to-south movements. While southern citizens are employed as cheaper workforce in
industrial centres, northern tourists are posed as the ideal model to follow. The underdeveloped
destinations are limited to offer their natural landscapes to tourists without any intervention of local
actors in the process.
3
The Wagner Act is a foundational statute of U.S. labor lawthat guarantees the basic rights of private
sector employees to organize into trade unions, engage in collective bargaining for better terms and
conditions at work, and take collective action, including strike if necessary. Journal of International and Global Studies Volume 6, Number 1
158
the anarchist ideology by pressing terrorism toward its boundaries. The bombings against
forces of security or politicians created an unstable sentiment of panic in America. These
factional groups were persecuted and deported under the label of terrorists while others less
radical anarchist groups opted to organize the struggle through the worker unions. The claims
issued by workforce had more chances to prosper than violent tactics. However, the same
ideology persisted. The benefits of worker unions resulted in better wages and less working
hours. The capital owners took the opportunities to offer leisure conditions that later paved
the ways for the advent of mass tourism. The violence, as originally was exerted by anarchist
activism was disciplined by the state in forms of leisure and entertainment. To understand
this better we have recur to the metaphor of the virus and vaccine, as it has been formulated
by Michel Foucault (2009). The virus can be understood as a threat which puts a serious
danger to society, while the virus limits to be a mitigated (disciplined) form of the threat.
This reminds how the modern societies work. States conferred the legal strike to workforce to
abandon their terrorist tactics. So, if start the premise that tourism was originated by the
struggle of unionization, we must accept it would never possible without local terrorism
(anarchism). This has been the historical connection between tourism and terrorism.
A closer look at the links between tourism and terrorism reveals some similarities.
Notably, the authors maintain that a labor strike (understood as the legal form of protest) and
a terrorist attack share some common features. Both use and/or exploit a subordinated Other
in order to negotiate with a stronger structure, using the element of surprise as further
leverage or mechanism of extortion. Workers’ unions in tourism fields take the opportunity to
threaten to strike in the face of great events such as the Olympic Games or the World Cup in
order to achieve as much leverage as possible. Consumers or citizens are only valid sources
of exploitation for the interests of workers. Indeed, whenever thousands of tourists are
stranded, this serves as a message to government. Once again, the Foucauldian metaphor of
virus and vaccine helps understanding this better. The capitalist ethos has evolved by the
introduction of disciplinary mechanisms where the threat (virus) is sublimated in widelyaccepted institutions (risk).
The analogy between the risk and threat discussed above reminds tourism not only
dissuades the workforce not to employ terrorist-like behavior, but corresponds with a
disciplined form of terrorism. Simply because the strike and terrorist attacks, beyond the
degree of violence, shares commonalities such as the surprise factor, the instrumentalization
of the other which is hosted for other ends, and sometimes extortion, it is safe to say that both
have the same point of origin. (Korstanje and Clayton 2012; Korstanje 2013; Skoll and
Korstanje 2013).
When terror analysts studied the psychological profiles and biographies of the Muslim
terrorists who perpetrated the attacks on the World Trade Center, they realized that
Mohammed Atta and his colleagues had been educated in the best Western universities. The
plans and policies they followed had even been extracted from a marketing guidebook. As
Luke Howie (2011) put it, one of the aspects that frighten the West with respect to
“terrorists” is that they are like us, live like us, and may, in fact, be one of our neighbors.
Quite aside, the book of reference would be useful for anthropologists, sociologists,
and policy-makers interested in knowing further about the commonalities among terrorism,
citizenship, and tourism.
Tourism and Citizenship: rights, freedoms and responsibilities in the global order 159
References
Howie, L. (2011). “They were created by Man and they have a plan: subjective and objective
Violence in BattlestarGalactica and the War on Terror.”International Journal of Zizek
Studies.Vol. 5 (2): 1-23
Foucault, M. (2009) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977-1978 (Vol. 4). London, Macmillan.
Korstanje, M. E. and Clayton, A. (2012). “Tourism and terrorism: conflicts and
commonalities.” Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, 4 (1): 8-25.
Korstanje, M. E. (2013). “Preemption and Terrorism. When the Future Governs.”Cultura, 10
(1): 167-184.
Korstanje, M. E. (2013). “Del Patrimonio al Terrorismo. Regular el Turismo en una Época de
Incertidumbre.” Rosa Dos Ventos, 5 (4): 655-658.
Skoll, G. R., and Korstanje, M. E. (2013). Constructing an American fear culture from red
scares to terrorism. International Journal of Human Rights and Constitutional
Studies, 1(4), 341-364.
Maximiliano E Korstanje
University of Palermo, Argentina
maxikorstanje@arnet.com.ar
Richard Dean Burns, Joseph M. Siracusa, and Jason C. Flanagan. American Foreign
Relations since Independence. Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, Praeger, 2013.
American Foreign Relations since Independence, published in 2013, is a one-volume
history that brings together the collective knowledge of three generations of diplomatic
historians: Richard Dean Burns, Professor Emeritus of History at California State University,
Joseph M. Siracusa, Professor of Human Security and International Diplomacy at Royal
Melbourne Institute of Technology, and Jason C. Flanagan, Assistant Professor in
International Studies at the University of Canberra. The book offers insight into the key
events and significant ideas that have moulded American diplomacy since the Revolutionary
War and examines historical factors that have substantially influenced American debates and
commitments in the Middle East, Europe, and Asia since that time. With the belief that to
understand the present, we must first understand the past, as the past is still with us, the
authors argue that the issues currently confronted by the United States in its attempts to
advance American national interests and increase American security in the 21st century can
be best understood as merely the latest demonstration of perennial foreign policy, rather than
being exclusive to the present day. Exploring and investigating the complexity of American
policies and comparing such policies to national interests and the limits of American power,
the authors openly question the continuing debates about isolationism versus
internationalism. They argue convincingly that the main feature of American foreign relations
from the Founding Fathers to the present age has been the constant tension between the
American endeavor to engage with the world and the American intention to avoid involving
itself in world issues.
The book is organized into eighteen chronological chapters. The first four chapters
focus on the struggle for American independence and the establishing of the American sphere
of influence in the Western Hemisphere. Chapter one, “The Diplomacy of the Revolution,”
describes in detail how the American colonies started to explore the possibility of
independence from Britain. Chapter two, “The New Republic in a World at War,” argues
that American diplomacy after the Revolution, based on neutrality outlined by the founders of
the Early Republic, helped the United States extract advantages from the tensions among
European powers. Chapter three, “The War of 1812: Re-establishing American
Independence,” illustrates that “no feature of Anglo-American relations in the nineteenth
century was more striking than [the realization] that there were better methods than war for
settling disputes between the two countries” (p.38). American diplomats smartly used
arbitration to defend their sovereignty and settled Anglo-American conflict. Chapter four,
“The Monroe Doctrine and Latin American Independence,” highlights American
determination to remain in isolation with respect to world politics. The authors explain in
detail the circumstances behind the origins of these non-colonization and non-interference
principles.
The next five chapters offer insight into American diplomacy intended to extend its
boundaries and increase its power. Chapter five, “Manifest Destiny Triumphant: Oregon,
Texas, and California,” examines American diplomatic activities meant to expand its size by
two-thirds, pushing the United States’ border westward to the Pacific and southward to the
Rio Grande. Chapter six, “A House Divided: Diplomacy during the Civil War,” depicts
American diplomacy in the Civil War. The authors reveal that one of the most significant
victories won by the United States in the American Civil War was never fought on a
battlefield. Rather, it was a series of diplomatic victories that prevented the Confederate
States of America from being recognized by any foreign governments. Chapter seven,
“Territorial and Commercial Expansionism: Alaska, the Caribbean, and the Far East,” points
American Foreign Relations since Independence 161
out how all administrations from Ulysses S. Grant to William McKinley sought to acquire
further territories and expand the United States’ foreign markets. Chapter eight, “War with
Spain and the New Manifest Destiny,” deals with the Spanish-American War and the
American acquisition of a colonial empire in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The authors
argue that that war brought the United States the power to assume unprecedented imperial
responsibilities and become a world leader. Such American power and influence were
described in chapter nine, “The United States Adjusts to Its New Status,” with a detailed
analysis of American diplomacy intended to dominate the Caribbean, lead the Far East, and
participate in European affairs. The authors convincingly argue that the United States, under
the Theodore Roosevelt administration, held a new attitude: looking outward and adapting to
the world.
The continuity of such an attitude in American foreign relations is carefully depicted
in Chapters 10 through 13. Chapter 10, “Woodrow Wilson and a World at War,” shows how
the United States, under President Wilson, responded to the breakout of the First World War
and analyzes Wilson’s diplomatic choices in this period. Chapter 11, “The Slow Death of
Versailles,” painted the picture of American diplomatic activities during the interwar period.
The United States realized that self-imposed isolation could not defend the country. Chapter
12, “World War II: The Grand Alliance,” argues that isolationism became silenced in the
United States. The elaborate neutrality legislation of the 1930s could not stop American
involvement in the war in Europe and Asia. Chapter 13, “A New Global Struggle: Founding
of the UN to the Cold War,” examines the origins of the United Nations and reveals the drifts
in the Grand Alliance, which finally itself became a new conflict, a “Cold War,” driven by
the United States’ fear of Soviet expansionism and the potential “domino effect,” in which
other nations would, as a result of Soviet expansion, fall into Communist leadership.
The next four chapters provide a full picture of American foreign policy from the
1950s to early 1990s. Chapter 14, “Crises, Conflicts, and Coexistence,” touches on how the
Cold War flourished in Asia and Europe from the 1950s to the 1970s. The chapter highlights
that it was the terrifying prospect of a nuclear war amid the rush between the superpowers to
achieve nuclear parity that ultimately forced the United States and the Soviet Union to begin
meaningful arms control activity and reach a temporary détente. Chapter 15, “The United
States and Southeast Asia: Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam,” analyzes the American policy of
containing communism in Southeast Asia and reveals how the United States was gradually
drawn into the hostilities in Southeast Asia. Chapter 16, “Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev, and the
End of the Cold War,” critically investigates U.S.-Soviet relations under the Reagan and
Bush administrations and how the Cold War came to an end. Chapter 17, “The United States
and the Middle East: Israel, Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq,” examines how the relations between the
Arab states and the United States since the Second World War have characteristically been
moulded by competing and contradictory factors, often influenced by the Arab-Israel conflict.
The authors point out that Washington was confused while attempting to formulate and
implement a policy that could best serve America’s interests in the Middle East. The last
chapter, “Twenty-First-Century Challenges,” discusses terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and
wars as the major challenges facing the United States in the twenty-first century.
Although there is already abundant academic literature on American external
relations, American Foreign Relations since Independence represents a solid attempt, as a
collective contribution from a historical approach, to comprehend American foreign policy
since the nation was created. In a surprisingly brief book for its subject matter and stated
objective – at 446 pages – the three authors successfully take readers through a historical
excursion of American foreign relations and convincingly illustrate the permanent tension
inherent to the American desire to play a role in the international system while equally
strongly endeavoring to remain insulated from the world’s troubles.
162
Taken as a whole, American Foreign Relations since Independence appears as a fair
assessment of the relationship between American foreign policies and the country’s national
interests, particularly with respect to the limits of national power. After considering all
aspects of American international involvement, the authors accurately indicate that the
discussion of American foreign policy cannot simply be represented by the binary positioning
of isolationism versus internationalism. The main lessons to learn from the successes and
failures in the history of American diplomacy, say the authors, is that the United States
should not think that its institutions and values are superior to those of other nations, nor
should it react to developments in international affairs unilaterally.
It is difficult to summarize the foreign policy history of a nation in a short text, yet the
authors have succeeded in producing a comprehensive and cohesive historical account of the
main events and salient ideas that have moulded the American diplomatic experience since
the Revolution. Such a text is significant to history, and the authors deserve credit for the
book they have written. The narrative is straightforward, and the analysis is easy to
understand, and the authors support their conclusions well. This solid and concise piece of
scholarship should be of great value for modern American history courses, foreign policy
surveys, and international politics classes. However, the one glaring weakness is that as a
synthesis, there is little new research added to the scholarship of American foreign relations
history. Additionally, a small suggestion for the next edition of the book is that it should
ideally include a glossary of the IR terms used throughout the chapters. Such a glossary
would be a useful tool for general interest readers who have not mastered IR terms the way
students and scholars of global politics must do.
Nguyen Thi Thuy Hang
Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam
thuyhang032003@gmail.com
Liana Chua, Joanna Cook, Nicholas Long, and Lee Wilson (Eds). Southeast Asian
Perspectives on Power. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Power has been a heavily discussed yet elusive concept that has marked Southeast
Asian studies. In spite of the term’s near ubiquitous use, Liana Chua et al., in chapter one,
argue that the need remains for an understanding of “the ways that power is understood by
the people of Southeast Asia” (p.1, emphasis added). Only with such an understanding can
one not only analyze the essence, flow, and effects of power but also “explain people’s
orientation towards, and away from, particular models of power” (p.2). To undertake such
analysis, “arguments anchored in diverse intellectual traditions … [must be] accorded
equivalent status as potential explanatory tropes” (p.4). Cultural models of power must also
be deployed as research questions, not as mere “explanatory devices” but as “phenomena to
be accounted for” (p.8).
Following the introductory chapter, Shelly Errington traces the developments of
power as “clashing concatenations, not a master narrative smoothly unfolding in time” (p.16).
Shifts in post-colonial relations between the colonized and colonizers ruptured the narratives
of time, space, and knowledge production (i.e., the “idea of progress”), thus opening up
questions about the “structure of history” (p.17) and the nature of power and leadership.
Here, Benedict Anderson and Clifford Geertz are two towering figures in the re-definition of
the nature of power. Errington observes that Anderson’s point on the difference between
hierarchy and social class remains helpful to understanding power relations. As she asserts,
however, rather than seeing hierarchy as a “horizontal solidarity of the powerful versus the
marginalized,” it is better viewed as “chains of patrons and clients or as encompassing and
encompassed personages/entourages” (p.23). This approach opens an understanding that,
throughout history, “peers … were rivals, and their followers and dependents fought under
each as part of the noble’s political body” (p.23). She critiques Geertz’s essentialized sense
that “all humans have a stable core self that lies beyond any linguistic cline of “I” that can be
culturally deconstructed and reconstructed (p.28). Rather, she says, conceptions of power can
be learned from analyzing “speech levels [that] imply a micropolitics of interpersonal power”
(p. 28), demonstrating, for example, how a person of higher social status must evoke from his
interlocutors the “[demeanor] and level of speech he desires them to use” (p.26). A
reassessment of Anderson and Geertz thus suggests new insights for power studies, (i.e., that
notions of the person, the shape of a life narrative, and space are all interconnected and imply
each other—and cannot exist in absence of one another, in essentialized, defined silos such as
“class/hierarchy” or “self,” which remain sociological concepts that are posited by an
ethnographer and then culturally reconstructed by his or her observations (p.29).
In chapter three, Joanna Cook analyzes the power of materiality/religious icons
among Thai Buddhists. In observing their rituals, the spatio-religious materialization of
sacredness and symbolic transfers of power to amulets worn by devotees are illustrated
(p.41). Here, useful parallels may be drawn to late modernity’s mass consumerism and
commodification of products, where power, protection, and aspiration become wrapped up in
the cloak of nouveau riche materials that often signal authority, power, and distance. Cook
believes that Buddhist “mediators simultaneously understand their meditation as generative
of power and seek the protection of others.” This, however, seems inconsistent with many
Buddhists’ more commonly understood (and perhaps clearer) notions of giving merit to
others as part of one’s own merit-making and that to receive such merit from others further
helps one’s own journey towards nirvana. Thus, while Cook’s analysis of materiality is
sensitive to local practices, the paucity of actual interviews with Buddhists suggests the essay
lacks sufficient emic analysis. For example, if rituals such as voluntary pain experienced
through tattooing enable “a transcendence that echoes the generation of power through
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renunciation,” what is the experiences of Buddhists when voluntary or enforced warfare
occurs?1 This minimal evidence is ironic given the volume’s attempt to ground studies of
power within localized norms.
In chapter four, sakti (an Indonesian indigenous concept of power) is similarly
explored structurally but through the medium of movie and TV. Here, connections between
spirit beliefs and material transformations revolve around commodity relations such as land
and power (p.54). As a critique of Benedict Anderson’s “essentialized notion of power”
(p.56) and to offer a more grassroots perspective, Adrian Vickers’ spiritual and religious
topographical survey enables us to better comprehend how Indonesian media and its use of
horror imagery/movies that inhabit key power sites such as mountains, graveyards, and
rural/urban spaces (implicating female sexuality and power) posit themes that resist male
control (p.62). Here, spiritual possession “provides alternate versions of modern selfhood
[i.e.,] possession by forms of the modern that have been perverted or possession by the
opposite to the modern. The possessed body is the ultimate challenge to the notion of the
modern, coherent self” (p.63). The media partly implicate power because it is within a
“complex set of power relations … between the highly material (commodities) and the
immaterial” that “spiritual power is ambivalent” in films (p.63). Viewed likewise, media
analyses that reduce topics to state and state power are overly simplistic. Vickers concludes
that the increase of horror in Indonesian films reflects not only the “increasingly rational
understanding of the world” but also a critique of (male) state power/control. However, one
wonders why the opposite conclusion is not drawn – that this increase in horror in films
reflects an increased enchantment or projection of power in the rationality of modern power
relations.
Five other essays in the book – the symbolic appropriation of war-made objects in
Cambodia (in Krisna Uk’s chapter six), tensions over cemetery plots in Singapore (in Ruth
Toulson’s chapter seven), ambiguity in power of planning in urban Malaysia (in Richard
Baxstrom’s chapter 10), the deployment of sapiocracy—the popularization of a sage-like
leader—in Vietnam (in Markus Schleckler’s chapter 11), and “prayer power” in the
Philippines (in Deirdre de la Cruz’ chapter 12) – discuss how power relations between the
state and people may be understood by investigating common, everyday items, rituals, or
concepts. Objects such as warplanes, cemeteries, government plans, hagiographies, and
prayer in and of itself are seen as endowed with inherent power. When they are domesticated
and carved, worshipped, or nurtured by locals, what may have been distant/foreign, stateowned/zoned, abstract/uncertain or nationalistic/idolized, become, in and of themselves,
objects of empowerment or re-animation that conquer, sidestep, or resist the powerful when
appropriated by the ordinary people against external/state forces. For example, war planes
that once threatened death are now part of Cambodian funeral rites, “warding off evil spirits”
(p.85). Unlike the Melanesian cargo cult phenomenon, for Uk’s Cambodian villagers (who
had not seen such technological objects), such modern replicas (e.g., warplanes) are not
linked to any millenarian movement. Rather, the mimicry and appropriation of objects such
as war materials (chapter six) or government plans (chapter 10) may be seen as forms of
powerful protection from evil or an uncertain future, to channel any disruptive forces so as to
serve tutelary (p.87) or prosaic purposes (pp.135-149).
In other instances, the Singaporean Hokkien,2 with their cemeteries forcibly relocated
by the state (chapter 7), “provides an occasion for heckling the state from the penumbra of
the sacred” (p.103). Indeed, the “creativity and resourcefulness of a communal life that
refuses to surrender its integrity to the hegemonic ‘other’ motivated by the desire to dominate
1
2
Jerryson, M., & Juergensmeyer, M. (2010). Buddhist warfare. New York: Oxford University Press. A distinct ethnic Chinese group that originally hailed from southern Fujian, China
Southeast Asian Perspectives on Power
165
and control” (p. 92) aptly describes many of these essays. Conversely, grassroots ritual such
as prayer may also be appropriated by the state to construct new idioms of power that tap into
but also cannibalize “people power” – e.g., when “‘Prayer Power’ betokens the persistence of
the dominant social and political class, as a slogan, it unwittingly parodies it” (pp.177-178).
Space delimits two other aspects of power – the “big man”/“man of prowess” in
Indonesian wibawa (chapter 8) and the upland/lowland divide in area studies (chapter 9).
Briefly, for Loren Ryter, “The origin of this wibawa [influence] in the deeds that office itself
allows [local officials] to perform [is a] prowess that depends on their official position and on
disavowing precisely such dependence” (p.117). For Sarinda Singh, bureaucratic officials
placed in geographically marginal (i.e., upland) postings are not necessarily disempowered,
but their placement in such locations may become grounds for economic opportunists to
reframe these postings and become big fishes in small ponds (pp.130-131).
By gathering such diverse essays of rich ethnographic description and analysis, we are
given new lens through which to examine emic orientations, feelings, and deployment of
power. Though many such forms of localized power may be underground or go unnoticed or
unrecognized by the state, the on-going appropriation of power by the ordinary people of
Southeast Asia means we ought not ignore its salience for studies on power.
Curiously, although the book is helmed by four editors, several essays are marked by
suspect editing, such as run-on sentences that span six to nine lines (p.39), missing references
in the bibliography (such as the one for Mary Steedly, p.156), and undefined terms (such as
“occult traditionalism,” p.178). Minor quibbles aside, this ground-breaking volume upturns
long-held and essentialized conceptions of power in Southeast Asia while modeling new
ways of analyzing and understanding it. This text should be required reading in anthropology,
political science, and cultural and area studies on power.
Cheong Weng Kit, PhD
Sabah Theological Seminary, Malaysia
wkcheong@stssabah.org
Danilo Di Mauro. The UN and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: American hegemony and UN
intervention since 1947. London and New York: Routledge, 2012.
In this book, which started out as a PhD dissertation in political science, Danilo Di
Mauro tackles the question of the intervention of the United Nations in the Arab-Israeli
conflict. Based on thorough statistical analysis of voting patterns in the Security Council and
the General Assembly, as well as data on UN mediation and peacekeeping missions, his
somewhat unexpected conclusion is that UN activity in the Arab-Israeli conflict has not been
determined by developments in the conflict itself but rather by the internal dynamics of the
UN organization.
Di Mauro sets out to examine UN “activity” on the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1947.
He defines activity as “the sum of all the deliberative (resolutions) and operative (mediation
and peace mission) acts, intended to control and resolve the conflict” (p. 1). In other words,
activity is what takes place inside the “black box” of the UN (p. 2). Few conflicts in modern
times have received as much attention as the conflict in the Middle East, and the choice of this
particular conflict, therefore, offers a wealth of material for analysis. The book’s introduction
defines the concepts, sets up a theoretical framework, and lists a number of hypotheses for
each of the four areas to be examined (Security Council voting, General Assembly voting,
mediation, and peacekeeping missions). Chapter one then offers one of the major
contributions of the book, with its extensive description of UN activity on the Arab-Israeli
conflict in the period since 1947. Chapter two defines in more detail what is meant by the
“Arab-Israeli conflict” and describes the conflict related variables used in the analysis.
Chapter three analyzes the relationship between UN activity (measured here as Security
Council and General Assembly resolutions) and the evolution of the regional conflict. In
chapter four, Di Mauro analyzes voting behavior in the General Assembly in relation to the
Arab-Israeli conflict and identifies a crucial shift after the change of majority in that body in
the mid-1970s, while chapter five looks at voting behavior in the Security Council. Chapters
six and seven then investigate UN mediation and UN peacekeeping missions in relation to
activity in the Security Council and the General Assembly, as well as their relations with the
dynamics of the conflict itself.
The analysis throughout strives to be thorough, empirical, and objective. The
pervasive use of statistical methods contributes both to the book’s major strengths and its
weaknesses. Di Mauro states that the intended audience for the book are scholars interested in
third party interventions in conflicts, and, indeed, his finding that the UN activity in this
particular conflict owes more to the configuration of groups of states inside the organization
than to developments on the ground in the conflict itself goes against conventional wisdom
and offers a substantive contribution to that literature. This finding is particularly evident in
the analysis of UN mediation and peacekeeping missions, where Di Mauro finds that there is
no influence of variables describing the conflict (e.g., intensity of the dispute, number of
victims, level of hostility, type of conflict, or involvement of the major powers) on the activity
of mediation (pp. 188-189), while there is a negative relationship between the number of
security-related drafts introduced in the Security Council and the numbers of and budgets for
peace operations (p. 224).
A second contribution of the book lies in its theoretical explanation of the United
States’ ambivalent relationship to the organization. After decolonization, the majority in the
General Assembly shifted, and the third world states have, since the mid-1970s, composed a
distinctive voting bloc on the Arab-Israeli conflict. The United States found itself in
opposition to this bloc and has increasingly had to rely on its veto in the Security Council to
get its way on this issue. Di Mauro’s book provides clear evidence for this shift in voting
patterns and also provides a compelling explanation for why the United States nevertheless
The UN and the Arab-Israeli Conflict
167
remains a member of the UN and still accepts the organization’s involvement in the ArabIsraeli conflict. As a hegemon, the United States could have left when the organization went
against its wishes; however, says Di Mauro, even though the United States is the most
powerful state in the world, it still relies on the UN for legitimization of its policies. The UN
is a constitutive part of the international order in which the United States is the hegemon, and
the United States is therefore unable to exclude the UN completely even when the US
disagrees with the organization’s policies. Following the same logic, UN decisions on the
Arab-Israeli conflict will still be legitimate even if they may not always be followed up with
action (pp. 238-239).
Despite the robust results they offer, the overwhelming use of statistical methods in
this book will undoubtedly also serve to alienate potential readers. The book is full of figures
and tables, and the text would have benefitted from further editing to make it more easily
accessible to a non-specialist audience. Furthermore, the reliance on such methods leads, on
occasion, to instances in which the book is unable to answer the questions posed because the
method cannot work with the available evidence. For example, in the introduction, Di Mauro
hypothesizes that “groups and majorities [in the Security Council] are led by the P-5, who
affect the number and the subjects of the drafts proposed” (p. 9). However, it later proves
impossible to test this hypothesis with the available statistical methods because of the
constantly changing identity of the non-permanent members of the Council (p. 136, 231). But
this does not mean that it’s impossible to analyze changing coalitions within the Security
Council and whether such majorities are being led by one or more of the permanent members.
This is one instance where Di Mauro’s analysis could usefully have been supplemented by the
use of qualitative methods such as detailed narrative process tracing of key moments and
decision.
A second weakness of the analysis resulting from the reliance on statistical methods
lies in the problem of operationalization of the variables. Di Mauro explains convincingly
why he is interested in UN “activity” – what goes on inside the UN “black box” – rather than
“output” and that he therefore chooses to count the number of roll calls in the Security
Council and the General Assembly instead of simply looking at the number of final
resolutions. Unfortunately, the method’s need for a quantifiable measure prevents Di Mauro
from going deeper into the dynamics of the UN to look at the full picture of its “activity.” As
anyone who has studied the decision-making process at the UN can attest, the majority of
activity takes place outside the formal setting of meetings and roll calls – in corridors, behind
closed doors, and in the delegates’ lounge – and the majority of draft resolutions never even
make it to the voting stage. For any one issue, several states may propose resolutions or talk
about various proposals, but rather than having formal votes on all these proposals, draft
resolutions will be withdrawn once it becomes clear that they’re unlikely to receive the
necessary majority. As Di Mauro himself points out, the General Assembly rejected only 3%
of all proposals before it(pp. 16-17), while the Security Council, rejected 18.6% of the
proposals it voted upon (p. 22). In both cases the two organs accepted the vast majority of
proposals which were put to a vote. These numbers illustrate that despite the effort to expand
the evidence beyond merely looking at adopted resolutions, the chosen measure of roll calls is
not adequate to analyze the complexities of UN activity in the General Assembly and the
Security Council on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Overall, this book makes a contribution to the study of UN intervention in the ArabIsraeli conflict because this is an area few have studied before. The descriptive chapter in
particular, as well as the theoretical explanation for why UN activity is more related to the
internal dynamics of the organization than to developments of the conflict itself, offer
valuable insights into the subject. However, the book neglects the very large existing
historical literature on the Arab-Israeli conflict. Even though the author’s stated goal is to
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contribute to the field of conflict resolution, the book’s findings should be of interest both to
historians of the Arab-Israeli conflict and to historians of the UN. Unfortunately, both of these
groups are unlikely to take much notice of the book because it doesn’t engage with existing
debates in those disciplines.
Ellen Jenny Ravndal
St Antony’s College, University of Oxford
ellen.ravndal@sant.ox.ac.uk
Aaron Hughes. Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction.
Durham: Acumen, 2014
Theorizing Islam is a companion of sorts to Aaron Hughes’ earlier book, Situating
Islam, in which he examines the relationship between the study of Islam and Near or Middle
Eastern studies, set against the background of Edward Said’s seminal critique of these fields
in Orientalism. In this new work, Hughes shifts his attention to the relation between Islamic
studies and religious studies as fields of scholarly enquiry or, more specifically, to certain
writings by “scholars of Islam working in departments of religious studies” (p. 3). By way of
self-disclosure, I should point out that as a scholar of Islam working not simply in a
department of religious studies but in a department of theology and religious studies, I do not
like either the designation “Islamic studies” or “religious studies”; the reasons being that the
former implies the notion that I do a kind of “Islamic theology”, while the latter appears more
to identify a kind of disposition toward the work than describe the subject matter itself.
Therefore, I prefer speaking of the “study of Islam” and the “study of religion.”
In examining the way Islam is studied in the setting of generic departments for the
study of religion, Hughes takes his cues from Bruce Lincoln, Russell McCutcheon, and
Jonathan Z. Smith, scholars of religion who are not so much engaged in researching
particular religious traditions or phenomena earmarked as “religious” as they are in
examining the ways in which their peers do their work and present their findings. The
resulting critiques and alternative approaches advocate a more consciously self-reflective
attitude toward the theory and method of the study of religion.
The writings of Lincoln, McCutcheon, and Smith offer much food for thought in
contemplating the awkwardness that characterized and – to an extent – still characterizes the
relationship between scholars of Islam and of religion, respectively. Historically, the scholars
of religion seemed somewhat in awe of the philological erudition of the Islamicists, while the
latter tend to display a degree of disdain towards religious studies, which they perceive as
being primarily interested in archaic and tribal religious traditions.
While the study of Islam can benefit from drawing on the theoretical work done by
Lincoln, Smith and McCutcheon, Theorizing Islam falls short of expectations in that it does
not sufficiently critique or deconstruct the current state of affairs in Islamic Studies as a
subfield of religious studies (despite the words “disciplinary deconstruction” appearing in the
book’s subtitle), nor does it offer much in terms of an alternative approach or research agenda
(despite the appearance of “reconstruction”). From the confrontational tone employed in the
book, it also becomes clear that the work is very much driven by a particular polemic
between certain scholars working in American Academe. Perhaps this also accounts for the
fact that Hughes restricts his critique to a very limited topical focus and infelicitous choice of
examples, while his suggestions for alternative approaches are equally narrow as well as
rather summary. Much of what is presented in this book has also appeared in print elsewhere.
Theorizing Islam focuses on the representation of the figure of Muhammad and the
status of women in Muslim societies. It is somewhat puzzling why Hughes has chosen to
impose such a restriction since the whole edifice we conventionally and conveniently refer to
as “Islam” also encompasses a rich tradition in theological, legal, philosophical, and spiritual
or mystical thinking, as well as a whole array of often culturally specific practices. Only
toward the end of the work does it become clear that Hughes considers research into these
subject areas the province and domain of scholars working in Near Eastern studies who have
specialized in Islam, not of academics from the study of religion.
Hughes directs his criticism of Islamic studies toward three individuals in particular:
Carl Ernst, John Esposito, and Omid Safi, showcasing them as prime examples of individuals
who engage in what he calls the “crypto” or “quasi” theology and “apologetics,” informed by
170
liberal Protestantism. Hughes argues that this is the “regnant discourse” coming out of the
Study of Islam section of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Associated with
prestigious universities such as the University of North Carolina, Georgetown, and Duke, the
three individuals singled out by Hughes are certainly very influential and high profile AAR
members, but I question whether they can be made representative of the full range of
scholarship in the study of Islam as a subfield of the study of religion. Moreover, as a nonUS-based academic, this reviewer would also like to observe that while the AAR may be the
largest professional organization of scholars of religion in North America, America is not the
world; therefore, the Islam Section of the AAR does not represent global scholarship in that
field. To this outside observer, Theorizing Islam comes across as a very parochial polemic
from within a certain section of the global community of scholars who conduct research into
Islam and the Muslim world.
This is not to deny that the targeted AAR triumvirate have a particular way of
engaging with Islam as a religious tradition that is open to challenge. However, rather than
assuming a disqualifying either/or attitude, the alternative and/and position would allow for a
more comprehensive but still critical examination of different ways of engaging in the study
of religion, an option left open by the taxonomy proposed by Russell McCutcheon, in which
he distinguishes “theologians” from “liberal phenomenologists” and “critics, not caretakers.”
In addition to questioning the wisdom of Hughes’ focus on the figure of Muhammad
rather than theology or law for deconstructing and reconstructing the study of Islam, this
reviewer also notes Hughes’ unfortunate selection of books for critical examination in the
first chapter. From the titles and the authors’ introductions to the works that Hughes selected
(Memories of Muhammad, by Safi, Following Muhammad, by Ernst, and In the Footsteps of
Muhammad, by Ramadan), it becomes clear that the objective of these publications is to
showcase not critical scholarship but theological – perhaps even devotional – meditations and
personal interpretations of the significance of the figure of the Prophet for practicing
Muslims. As such, challenging these books does little to substantiate the scholarly
deconstruction of the subject matter that Hughes purports to undertake. Hughes instead ought
to have chosen other works of scholarship from within the field. While his reservations
against using one’s academic credentials and institutional position for such a publications are
understandable, scholars of Islam are not alone in doing so: High profile scholars have
always banked on their academic reputations for driving particular political, ideological or
confessional agendas -- although in the present instances -- it may be quite another thing
when this agenda is so closely related to their specialism. In this regard the academic presses
involved also carry part of the blame in including such publications in their fund
Nonetheless, Hughes appears not to approve of such practices, calling the selfdescribed “Islamic Religious Studies” approach of Rethinking Islamic Studies, which Carl
Ernst co-edited with Richard Martin, “manipulative in its use of sources, and distortive in its
conclusions” (p. 3). The title of that particular volume may be rather grandiose and its
contents fall short in delivering on a real rethinking of the field, but, as Hughes observes in
the chapter of his current work dedicated to the Ernst and Martin book, their text was
conceived as a festschrift for Ernst’s close colleague Bruce Lawrence of neighboring Duke
University. Selecting such a volume of essays for a criticism appears to be part of the
ongoing polemic between different camps in the American academy, while criticizing
another publication making more solid scholarly claims would have lent stronger support to
the valid arguments Hughes is trying to make. Moreover, this chapter has had an earlier
reincarnation as a book review for – ironically – the Journal of the American Academy of
Religion. As also pointed out by Hughes, a lot of this output is generated because of the
climate in which the study of Islam has to take place in post-9/11 America, forcing
Islamicists to walk a tightrope between apologists and Islamophobes.
Theorizing Islam: Disciplinary Deconstruction and Reconstruction
171
A final weakness of the book is its misleadingly entitled chapter “John Esposito and
the Muslim Women.” Not only do women feature only peripherally in this chapter (which
deals primarily with the undeniably prominent place occupied by John Esposito in an array of
US higher education institutions), but Esposito’s significance in the field rests not on his
original scholarship but on the role he has managed to invent for himself as a facilitator and
mediator. Therefore, he does not present the best example of a touchstone for the state of
affairs in the academic study of Islam. In all fairness, Esposito makes no claims that he does.
When he was made aware of Theorizing Islam, he responded by sharing a biographical sketch
of himself through the AAR Islam Section’s mailing list. That bio highlighted his ten-year
background in Catholic seminary training, followed by studies of a variety of religious
traditions and relatively late shift in focus to the study of Islam at Temple University, which
at the time was dominated by the “Islamization of Knowledge” approach of Ismail Raji alFaruqi. Technically, also, Esposito works not in a religious studies department but in the field
of international affairs, and his high profile is shaped by his involvement in the discourse on
religion in the American public sphere rather than within academia.
On these grounds one could indeed debate whether such figures should preside over
organizations such as the AAR or MESA. Here considerations of access to government
administration and, even more importantly, funding bodies may have prevailed over scholarly
credentials – in view of the political realities surrounding higher education and academic
research that is not necessarily a bad thing in securing money streams for the academic study
of Islam.
To offset the “Islamic Religious Studies” of which Hughes disapproves, he proposes
an alternative approach: “New Islamic Studies,” of which he says: “This ‘New Islamic
Studies’ privileges the examination and analysis, not the mere description, of Islamic data”
(p. 118). Unfortunately, his chapters offering alternative approaches to the study of
Muhammad and Muslim women do not really deliver in terms of unpacking the more critical,
analytical, and theoretically embedded engagement advocated by Hughes, though in this
regard, the closing chapter offers a bit more. While Hughes’ borrowing from Bruce Lincoln’s
thirteen theses on method published in 1996 gives an insight into where he is coming from
and what he envisages as the concerns of this new approach, the proposed agenda – broken
down in five destructive and five reconstructive theses – takes up only three and a half pages,
a bit meager for a book that promised a new “theorizing” of Islam.
Carool Kersten, PhD
King’s College London
carool.kersten@kcl.ac.uk
Beshara, Adel (Ed.). The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, pioneers and identity. New
York: Routledge, 2011.
This book brings together seventeen essays on different facets of the origins, emergence,
and uses of the idea of Syria as a nation and its associated nationalist ideologies. The volume
takes a refreshing perspective in moving beyond national boundaries to look at how local figures
conceived of their land and themselves as a united or “unitable” political space. The work is
broken up into four parts. The first, “Essential Background,” includes a chapter on the history of
the name “Syria” in terms of its etymology and its uses from ancient to modern times. The
subsequent chapter looks at the way communalism interacted with the rise of the idea of Syria.
Arnon Groiss concludes that the rise of the Syrian idea came “not at the expense of the
communal bond but rather as a … supra-communal tie” (p. 31). The essays in this section differ
from all subsequent chapters in that they analyze broader phenomena.
The remaining fifteen essays analyze the specific or groups of individuals and their
places within and contributions to the history of Syrian nationalism. Of these, all but two – on
King Faysal of Syria and then Iraq and King Abdullah I of Jordan – are concerned with the
literary works of various intellectuals spanning the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The
works of each thinker are analyzed for the particular ways in which they used the idea of a
Syrian nation and, therefore, contributed to the development of Syrian nationalism in general.
The second section covers the 19th and early 20th century “forerunners” of Syrian
nationalism. The writers and journal editors of the arab nahda (awakening/renaissance) Butrus
al-Bustani, Jurji Zaydan, Khalil al-Khuri, and Rashid Rida are each given chapters, as is the
Belgian Jesuit priest Henri Lammens. The intellectuals are treated as foundational figures for the
idea of Syria, laying the groundwork for subsequent developments and uses.
Section three examines the role of the diaspora in the rise of Syrian nationalism. The
diasporic figures considered in these chapters include Syrian émigrés in the United States and
Egypt. A chapter is dedicated to each of the émigrés residing in the United States: Gibran
Khalil Gibran, Ameen Rihani, and Mikhai’l Nu’aymah. These chapters consider how the
experience of being abroad enabled these men to promote the cause of Syrian nationalism to
foreign governments and sew popularity for the cause of Arab and Syrian liberation among the
members of the diaspora communities in which they lived. The two chapters on Egypt involve
comparative analyses of groups of Syrian émigrés. Caesar E. Farah examines the works of Farah
Antun, Mayy Ziadah, and Abdul Rahman al-Kawakibi, who each spent varying amounts of time
in Egypt, though Antun was also briefly in the United States. Marilyn Booth’s chapter is the
only one of the volume that examines Syrian identity exclusively in reference to women through
an analysis of the women’s press in Egypt. Booth examines the differences in the views on Syria
held by these women and the local reception of their views and activities in Egypt.
The fourth and final section includes essays on twentieth century contributors to Syrian
nationalism. The chapter on the relationship between Syrian nationalism and King Faysal, who
had briefly been ruler of Syria in 1920, takes a critical look at his role and portrays him as
supporting Syrian nationalism more out of utility than conviction. The chapter on King Abdallah
of Jordan examines his diplomatic designs to have a single state created in Greater Syria out of
the colonially divided Arab states and why his project failed to unite the region anew. Three
chapters examine the father and son paragons of twentieth century Syrian nationalism Khalil and
Antun Sa‘adeh. A single chapter looks at their conceptions of Syrian nationalism while abroad
The Origins of Syrian Nationhood: Histories, pioneers and identity
173
in Latin America. A chapter written by Sofia Sa‘adeh, the eldest daughter of Antun, outlines the
ideas and goals of her grandfather, Khalil, in regards to a united and independent Greater Syria.
The final chapter of the book looks at how Antun Sa‘adeh built off of earlier “elementary” ideas
of Syrian nationalism to “[mold] them into a systematic system of thought and a definite
program of action” (p. 360). The predominant focus on the Sa‘adehs is not entirely unwarranted.
Adel Beshara, the volume’s editor, has worked extensively on Antun Sa‘adeh and his Syrian
Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). The SSNP is one of the only political parties to carry the
legacy of both the pre-colonial and colonial era advocacy for a united Syria described earlier in
the volume. The overwhelming focus on the Sa‘adehs, however, seems more a function of the
editor’s scholastic interests than strict historical significance.
Stephen Sheehi’s chapter on Butrus al-Bustani provides one of the more nuanced
analyses in the book. Taking an approach similar to that of the other authors while also being
more explicitly theoretical, Sheehi draws on Marxian/Gramscian theory to conceptualize the
contribution of Butrus al-Bustani and thinkers like him as providing “a language and
paradigmatic logic to a new epistemology of modernity” (p. 61). More broadly, the essays in
this volume are all consistent with an Andersonian1 view on the construction of nationalism and
its associated national myths and can be viewed as case studies of Anderson’s paradigm in
action.
There is, however, a certain contradiction underlying many, though not all, of the
chapters in this work, most likely due to the framing of the book by its editor. The volume’s
essays are each attempts to analyze the social phenomena that are part of the history of the idea
of Syrian nationhood. This implies conceptualizing the notion as historically contingent.
Despite this fact, there is a primordialist presupposition that appears to run through many of the
essays. The Syrian nation is spoken of as having ancient roots whose emergence in the modern
era in a nationalist form is treated as historical necessity. Modern Syria is repeatedly associated
with the ancient and classical notions of Syria dating back to the Assyrian empire and is assumed
to have re-emerged after centuries of “being burdened by … Ottoman domination and ruthless
exploitation” (p. 1). According to Beshara’s introduction, by the time of Syrian nationalism’s
earliest appearances in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, “Hardly anyone called the
country by its correct name. Instead of the name by which it was historically known, that is
Syria, it was often called Bilad al-Sham, a loose term that did not always have the same
geographical meaning” (p. 1). Throughout the book, “Syria” is put in a contrapuntal position as
both the Western and, apparently, the “correct” name for the state—as opposed to the Islamic
name Bilad al-Sham, whose use is indicative of “national stagnation” (p. 1). The volume’s
introduction appears to be largely responsible for this framing. The origins of Syrian nationalism
treated in this volume are treated as “a national revival in a very limited sense” (p. 4) due to
internal divisions among and between the communities. This notion of revival, however,
necessarily implying pre-existence, is mutually exclusive with the notion of the “origins of
Syrian nationhood” dated in the early nineteenth century by the volume’s chapters.
Despite a set of approaches clearly influenced by Benedict Anderson’s idea on the
historicity of nationalist imagination (in other words, the ultimately arbitrary basis of their
1
The understanding of nationalism elaborated by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities which
views nationalisms as the product of collectively imagined communities that extend beyond simple faceto-face relations any individual might be limited to. Nationalisms qua imagined communities became
imaginable in the modern era through print capitalism which saw the diffusion of printed media written in
spoken languages that would later become national languages of specific communities.
174
existence and delineation), the Syrian nationalist mythology seems to be taken as fact. The
concern with discourse comes at the near total expense of the treatment of material conditions in
Syria. While economic factors do appear in the work (e.g. Groiss, Sheehi, and Zachs), these are
components of arguments about individuals and ideas. Nationalist discourses are but one
component of Anderson’s view of nationalism. Anderson also took into account the material
conditions that make those discourses possible and give them social force. With little to no
consideration of economic factors, the essays in this volume imply the Syrian nation’s ahistorical
reality, while simultaneously outlining its historical construction.
Another issue with the volume is the near constant reference to the influence or
inspiration of “Western ideas.” With the exception of Kaufman’s chapter on Henri Lammens
and Shehadeh’s etymological chapter, each contributor analyzes the role of Arab figures relative
to Syrian nationalism. Unfortunately, virtually every author relies on a variation of the same
argument: it was exposure to western ideas that enabled a nationalist sentiment to emerge. This
connects with the overall treatment of Syrian nationalism as a historical necessity. While each
figure treated throughout this work has a distinct or unique role in the history of Syrian
nationhood, by treating the idea of Syria as a primordial phenomenon lying in wait, it somewhat
denudes the objects of each chapter of their constructive, productive roles. Furthermore, it
emphasizes European exceptionalism at the expense of more contemporaneous, indigenous roots
and causes. Sheehi’s chapter on Butrus al-Bustani is a notable exception in the volume by
making a more au fait argument in which al-Bustani is treated as part of the “indigenous
intellectuals” (p. 61) who contributed to the formation of a modern epistemology that would be
the basis for a local nationalisms.
Lastly, there are two practical issues with the volume. First, the reader deserves a more
carefully edited volume. Minor typos abound throughout and Gibran Khalil Gibran is repeatedly
and, at points, consistently spelled as “Kahlil.” There are also a few instances in which works
that appear in the chapter footnotes do not appear in the collective bibliography at the end of the
volume. These are mechanical issues that do not detract from the force of the arguments made,
but they do lessen the pedagogical value of the book, if only slightly.
Pascal Abidor
McGill University
pascal.abidor@mail.mcgill.ca
K. Raja Reddy (Ed.). Foreign Policy of India and Asia-Pacific. New Delhi: New Century
Publications, 2012.
The growing expansion of trade, investment, and production linkages with the
transition of power from the West to the East has increased the strategic importance of the
Asia-Pacific region, which is home to economic powerhouses like China, India, and Japan as
well as emerging economies like Indonesia and Vietnam. The region has also drawn attention
because of the security issues related to the South China Sea and Korean Peninsula. Many
scholars agree that the actor dominating this region will dominate world politics. For this
reason, multiple actors are involved in the struggle for supremacy of this region. In this
existing geo-political environment, India is acutely aware of China’s growing influence and
the PRC’s policy of excluding the US from the region. In his new edited volume, Foreign
Policy of India and Asia-Pacific, K. Raja Reddy examines the foreign policy of India, whose
mantra is peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific and whose foreign policy, according to
Reddy, seeks to meet the demands of an interdependent world. The essays written by the
scholars analyze, from many inter-disciplinary and vantage points, the involvement of many
actors in the Asia-Pacific and, their respective foreign policy agendas, along with an
interpretation of those agendas and positions from an Indian perspective.
The first chapter is written by A.N. Ram, who contends that there has been a
remarkable rise in trade between India and Southeast Asia. This rise has been facilitated by
the introduction of India’s Look East Policy (LEP)1, adopted in the early 1990s. The growing
partnership among regional actors as a result of this policy changed the perception of India as
an International actor and strengthened New Delhi’s international strategic and economic
importance. The LEP, originally envisioned as primarily an economic policy, has now
acquired a strategic dimension. Reddy argues that the LEP takes India’s domestic priorities
and concerns into account and that these priorities form an indispensable core around which
foreign policy is oriented.
Kripa Sridharan highlights the geo-political importance of Southeast Asia to the US,
the European countries, and the three Asian Powers, China, India, and Japan. She points out
that India has emerged as a significant new player in the struggle for supremacy in the region
joining the US, Japan, and China. Of China, she asserts, “The ASEAN platform allows
Beijing not only to project a credible image of itself as a responsible rising power” (p.27) but
also to weaken the Japanese economy in the region. The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in
1994 and the ASEAN-Plus Three (APT) in 1997 brought cooperation between Northeast
India and the Southeast Asian nations. However, she says, a more meaningful regionalism
would lead to greater cohesion and consolidation instead of merely expanding the regional
platform for external actors.
The third chapter is by Ganganath Jha, a well-known Indian expert on Southeast Asia. Jha
warns that the development of Al-Qaida in the Arab world and Jemaah Islamiyah (Ji) in
Southeast Asia after the 9/11 incident have alarmed the international community. The
suppressing of such terror by military means, lead by the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, is
1
India’s 1991 Look East Policy was implemented in order to cultivate economic and strategic relationships with
the nations of Southeast Asia in order to bolster India’s standing as a regional power and a counterweight to the
strategic influence of China. The LEP marked a strategic shift in India’s foreign policy orientation, with the new
approach including a focus on expanding regional markets, investment, and industrial development, as well as
strategic and military cooperation with other nations concerned with the expansion of China’s economic and
strategic influence.
176
counter-productive, asserts Jha. Instead, he says, a more culturally embedded approach is
essential in India and among the nations who are a part of the ASEAN relationship. As an
example, he cites how China has used the traditional wisdom of Buddhism and Confucianism
to strengthen ties with ASEAN in the post-financial crisis (1997) era, which enabled China to
emerge as the largest ASEAN trading partner in 2006. Jha also argues that India-Pakistan
disputes precipitated the debacle of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
(SAARC)2. Kashmir remained volatile, and trans-border terrorism was supported by one
against the other. India is geopolitically connected with ASEAN states through land borders
of 1600 kilometres with Myanmar. It has maritime borders of thousands of kilometres with
ASEAN states in the Indian Ocean alongside the Bay of Bengal. Considering the
commonalities among Southeast Asian nations, India and ASEAN working together can
prove to be mutual beneficiaries in the realms of energy, IT, and other joint ventures, all of
which will be an integral part of a common market by 2020.
Tridib Chakraborti delves into the pattern of cooperation among ASEAN member
nations and describes the region as being a genuine community despite the diverse histories
and, social and political backgrounds of its member nations, along with the countless
instances of external and internal “interference” that are negotiated by ASEAN members.
Through its existence over more than four decades, the collaboration among the ASEAN
members has been maintained, and the region’s organizational cohesion has been retained
because of the nature of the organization as an “articulated community.” Mala Selvaraju
discusses the rise of India, which has strengthened the trade between ASEAN and India to
US$30 billion in 2006. She warns that India’s road to membership within ASEAN is not
smooth, as there is a strong rivalry between the “rising tiger” (China) and the “rising
elephant” (India). However, the conflicting interests of these giants will not lead to serious
instability in the region.
V. Suryanarayan takes on the communal politics in the political system of Malaysia
and its implications for the Malaysian Indian community. The increasing Islamization of the
country and destruction of Hindu temples in the process pose serious threats to the Hindu
way of life. He points out that Indians (7.1 percent) are the most disadvantaged section in the
country in the socio-political sphere and predicts turbulent times in the coming years.
M. Prayaga and A. Lakshmana Chetty analyze the deadly cyclone (named “Nargis”)
in 2008 in Myanmar. The military junta sought international help, which had been declined
on an earlier occasion but was readily provided by global community this time. Regrettably,
the issue of cyclone relief became a source of tension within the already strained relations
between the Western countries and the military regime of Myanmar. Syed Ali Mujtaba
highlights the tug of war between the “call of conscience” and the real politics in IndiaMyanmar relations. He points out that developing India’s northeast region (through the ‘Look
East Policy’) and reaching out to ASEAN member nations while simultaneously
2
SAARC is a regional organization founded in 1985 and currently has 8 member countries to chalk out their
differences and promote welfare of the people, to improve quality of their life and accelerate economic growth.
SAARC has bolstered regional unity and cooperation in the way it was envisaged to have. In this regard, it is
compared with processes such the ASEAN or the European Union (EU). However, the asymmetrical
distribution of capabilities between the member states, the capital-centric approach to regional integration, and
the inability of national regimes to view cross-border commonalities, as nodes of cooperation between countries
rather than sensitive zones are debacles for SAARC.
Foreign Policy of India and Asia-Pacific
177
implementing a strategic policy to contain Chinese influence in Myanmar are the factors
compelling India to develop proactive relations with Myanmar at this time.
C. Ravindranatha Reddy analyzes the importance of Vietnam in India-Vietnam
strategic partnerships. Vietnam, the geographic center of the ASEAN member nations, enjoys
a unique role within the ASEAN organization, as a strong Vietnam can contribute not only to
peace in the region but also to stability of Asia within the world market. For India,
establishing a special relationship with Vietnam can counterbalance China’s power and act as
a psychological restraint. Y. Yagama Reddy elaborates the idea of regionalism, which has
been emerging as a potent force in the process of globalization. He contends that a vast
region like the Asia-Pacific is identified as an “entity.” G.V.C. Naidu focuses on how India
has become an important player in the changing strategy of American foreign policy. The US
involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq may result in a new line of thinking about
“arrangements” or “coalitions” instead of its “alliances.” In this regard, India’s strategic
importance as a “friend” to the US in realizing its objectives in the Asia-Pacific is increasing
remarkably.
S. Utham Kumar Jamadhagni contends that the construct of Asia-Pacific as a single
region is an oversimplification of the complicated relationships that each Asia-Pacific
country shares with other nations on three different continents: North America, Europe, and
Asia. The multiple members of the Asia-Pacific region and their respective relationships with
major powers on other continents make for a complicated web of relationships among all
players. India is a recent actor in the region, and its addition to the group brings with it both
further challenges and opportunities. For example, though India has recently been recognized
as part of this region, its historical exclusion in security architecture is a major impediment.
He argues that India’s membership within APEC, the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, a
free trade forum for Pacific Rim member economies that seeks to promote economic
cooperation throughout the Asia-Pacific region, could be the best means to enhance India’s
contribution to the world economy. Sudhir Singh asserts that the growing Indian profile in the
international system has provided an opportunity for the US to use India as a check against
China. Toward this end, the US administration has convinced Japan to have a better
relationship with India in the hopes that these changing relationships will have an immediate
impact on peace, security, and human security development within Asia-Pacific.
C. Sheela Reddy and N. Amareswaran highlight the growing importance of AsiaPacific and the maintenance of peace and stability within its borders. Considering the
increasing competition between India and China for strategic space in Asia and Africa, New
Delhi should support any proposal that favors the US presence in the Asia-Pacific in order to
avoid Chinese domination in the area. B. Srinivasulu and V. Ramesh Babu elaborate on the
Four Asian Tigers, (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) policy of exportdriven economic development and how their economies were taken over by India and China
by a strategy involving cheap labor instead. Rajaram Panda analyzes Kevin Rudd’s3
unsuccessful efforts to build security architecture for the Asia-Pacific community. Rabindra
3
Kevin Rudd was Australia’s 26th Prime Minister, held office from 2007 to 2010, and 11 weeks in 2013. He
defeated the conservative coalition headed by John Howard during the elections held in November 2007. On 24
June 2010, he became one of the few leaders to be removed by their own party (Australian Labor Party) in their
first term as Prime Minister. In June 2013, Rudd swore again as prime minister after he was voted Leader of the
Parliamentary Labor Party. Following Labor’s defeat in the September 2013 federal election, Kevin Rudd
resigned from Parliament.
178
Sen discusses the flurry of exchanges and visits by the leaders of India and China in recent
times and sees them as attempts to bring bilateral relationships between the two nations in a
new direction. However, he contends that China is not happy with India’s aspiration for
permanent membership in the UN Security Council, and he views the Indo-US nuclear deal
as undermining the non-proliferation agreement.
D. S. Rajan highlights China’s attempt to establish “harmony” in the Asia-Pacific
region and its proposal to set up a regional security cooperation. As a check, however, Japan
and the Southeast Asian nations look to the US and India for balancing and confidence
building, respectively. G. Jayachandra Reddy discusses the possible avenues of cooperation
between India and Australia towards achieving energy security. India’s dependence on the
import of raw materials, science and technology, are the main elements in the partnership. P.
Munirathnam Reddy and E. Subbaram Krishnaiah explain the contentious issues of the nation
building process in Fiji among two racial groups: Indigenous Fijians and Fiji Indians. India’s
involvement in the navigation of this process would be of immense benefit since the Indian
government has already extended its assistance in the infrastructure development and the
development of rural areas in Fiji. G. Vijay Kumar Reddy and M. Prayaga present the Indian
contribution to the growth and development of New Zealand and the continuing practice of
native Fiji Indian cultures in New Zealand.
Unlike most edited works, this edited volume has neither an introduction nor
conclusion. Some of the chapters (e.g., chapters six and eight) have not provided endnotes
and it look more like journalistic pieces than academic research papers. The volume also does
not highlight the future of India and Asia-Pacific in a complete manner, other than naming a
few different country-specific problems. The book also does not deal with the limitations of
India’s Asian vision, which Stephen Cohen calls India’s “Inner Ring,” except for a brief
description of it in chapters one and three. Finally, and the most importantly, the book is
hesitant in discussing the rise of India’s maritime power and its strategic vision in the AsiaPacific to act as a capable power against an assertive China.
Despite these shortcomings, the book highlights a clear message that after nearly half
a century of piloting a Non-Alignment Movement, India is moderately asserting itself on the
world scene, a move that has been facilitated by the LEP, a cornerstone of India’s foreign
policy. The book deals with India’s strategic partnerships with key regional actors, noting
that its rapid growth of trade and investment links will soon place India as a major actor in
shaping regional politics in the Asia-Pacific. This work will be a valuable resource for
researchers dealing with foreign policy of India and Asia-Pacific.
Md. Abdul Gaffar
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
abdul54_isj@jnu.ac.in
Sun, Wanning and Jennu Chio (Eds.) Mapping Media in China: Region; province, locality.
Routledge, London and New York; 2012
The economic transformation that China has undergone over the last several decades is
regarded as one of the most important events in recent international relations. The Chinese
government plays an important role in some of the most prominent international groupings (e.g.
SCO, BRICS). China is also a heavy hitting negotiator when it comes to climate change and
other international debates. Indeed, the more China develops, the more important it becomes for
other international actors to understand the global giant. How the Chinese government functions
is a crucial aspect of understanding China. Specifically, it is imperative, say the authors of this
text, to understand not only China’s international economic and political policies but also its
domestic and social policies and, critically, its media. They say, with more interaction between
the international community and China, there must be an increased focus on the way the Chinese
media works.
The Chinese media is an important aspect to understand if one wants to understand the
control of the Chinese government with respect to the Chinese society. Media in China is highly
controlled, and it is generally regarded as the “mouthpiece” of the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP). The CCP has been using the media in order to promote and disperse the information and
ideas which it regards necessary and conducive to a harmonious society and highly controls the
information available to the Chinese people. However, this system has been undergoing a shift in
power since the introduction of the Internet. Even though the Chinese government originally
introduced the Internet in order to help in the overall economic development of the country, the
Internet has—much to the government’s dismay—also helped the Chinese people voice their
political, social, and economic discontentment with the government. This development also
highlights the way the central leadership pitches itself against the provincial and local leadership
in China. Finally, say the authors, with the introduction of market reforms, there has been a
reduction in the media subsidy and, thus, the media sector has also become highly
commercialized. This has led to a boom in the media industry in China both at the national and
provincial level.
With this background, the book Mapping Media in China, as argued by the editors, is an
attempt to “reflect the full range of topics and materials that can be, and in fact should be,
analyzed as ‘media,’ with provincial Chinese media as our focus” (p. 9). The book is an edited
volume divided in five parts. Each section discusses a different theme, including methodologies
and frameworks; local politics; rural cultures; regional formations and rescaling place. The
authors have contributed chapters within these sections attempting to understand what
developments and changes have taken place in the regional media landscape and politics in
China in the last decade. However, what the book lacks is a chapter concluding the overall
debate and arguments presented in the book.
Some of the important arguments presented by the authors are discussed. Zhao and Xing
argue in their chapter that “expansionist and profit driven logic of the Chinese commercial media
has brought new patterns of class-based inclusion and exclusion in social communication” (p.
45), a conclusion at which they arrive based on their “examining the central-local dynamics and
the impact of a profound class differentiation on media production and representation.” Sun
argues, “The government’s role as a guarantor of public order and social justice has been
completely overshadowed by its commercial interests” (p. 74). Another important argument put
forth by Svensson is that “…the relationship between local, provincial, and national media is
180
quite dynamic” (p. 210). Each author’s contribution strengthens the argument that a study of the
Chinese media is essential to understanding Chinese thinking and society at large. It also brings
to light the new role that the provincial and local media are undertaking. Rather than just being
the conveyor of news as directed by the central media; today, these local media also play a
crucial role in formation and dissemination of news.
Mapping Media in China provides a detailed analysis of the “provincial media” in China
and how it has transformed over the years. This book can be regarded as an essential read for any
scholar or student trying to understand the Chinese media today and how it functions in the
changed environment. The authors have conducted in depth analyses that enrich the discussion of
the Chinese media.
Gunjan Singh
Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, Delhi
gunjsingh@gmail.com.
Tareq Y. Ismael and Jacqueline S. Ismael, Government and Politics of the Contemporary
Middle East: Continuity and Change. New York: Routledge, 2011.
This book is an introduction to Middle Eastern political history and a fine addition to the
growing scholarship in Middle Eastern studies. The complex ethnic, tribal, religious, linguistic,
cultural, and historical background of the Middle East poses great challenges for any scholar
who attempts to craft a comprehensive book that does justice to its subject. Answers to even
basic questions like where the Middle East is or what qualifies as “Middle Eastern” vary from
person to person and from continent to continent. Therefore, it is common practice for any book
that deals with the region to make some necessary sacrifice to its scope—be it at the historical,
political, cultural, or geographical level. This is also the reason why we do not yet (and perhaps
cannot) have an authoritative and comprehensive history or political science monograph (or
textbook) on the region. This very fact understandably stimulates the appearances of new
publications every year.
The Ismaels’ book is another attempt to discuss current issues in the Middle East in a
historical context. The book is divided into two main parts. The short first part (at 75 pages)
examines two indispensable legacies that have shaped the culture and politics of the Modern
Middle East: Islam and colonialism. In this section, the authors briefly cover the long history of
the region, starting from 5000 BCE and ending at 9/11 to elucidate basic Islamic themes such as
the “Pillars of Islam,” “Islamic jurisprudence,” the “heritage of Islamic political thought,” and
“Islamic modernism, revivalism, and fundamentalism.” The main problem in this section is the
authors’ heavy reliance on only one or two sources as well as their dismissal of some of
controversial issues. For example, on page 45, the authors write that “the relatively physical
frailty of women, the social bearing of a woman tended to suffer to a point where infant
daughters were buried alive.” Such a statement demands a proper footnote. In fact, their
references to only a few academic sources in each chapter is a serious issue throughout the book.
Also, in the rest of the book, too much space is dedicated to historical narrative, leaving little
space for their analysis of current events.
The longer second part (at about 350 pages) of the book looks into specific Middle
Eastern countries, which they categorize as being divided into the northern Belt (including
Turkey and Iran); the Fertile Crescent (including Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, Israel, and Palestine);
and the area to the West and East of the Red Sea (including Egypt and the members of the Gulf
Cooperation Council). This part opens up with the case of Turkey. After a brief history of the
Saljuks and the Ottoman period and a short introduction to Turkish nationalism, the book
investigates the Turkish political system, with a particular focus on the 1999 elections. The
remainder of the chapter focuses on the Kurdish insurgency, the Turkish economy, and foreign
relations. Although the chapter provides us with a concise history of Turkish political history, it
lacks important events such as 2002 elections and the discussions surrounding the changing
nature of the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party after 2007. Written with the help of
an Iranian journalist and researcher, Ali Rezaei, the chapter on Iran is one of the most lucid,
comprehensive, and up-to-date parts of the book along with the chapter on Iraq. Unmistakably
reflecting the expertise of the authors in Iraqi studies, the chapter on Iraq is the longest and most
detailed section of the work. Unlike the content dedicated to Turkey and Iran, however, the Iraqi
historical narrative begins not with the ancient history but with the First World War. Two long
sub-sections are dedicated to the “US invasion,” Kurdish nationalism, and their repercussions in
182
the region. Another sub-section on the Ba’ath party is interestingly missing a basic definition of
Ba’athism itself.
The Syrian Arab Republic and Lebanon are examined in the same chapter. Syria, being
an important political actor in the region, should deserve more than eighteen pages, only one of
which is dedicated to Bashar al-Assad. Written with the help of Glenn Perry, an expert on Egypt
(begging the question why a more relevant expert was not selected), the next chapter deals with
the Israel-Palestine issue, which is one of the region’s major sources of instability. The conflict is
a long and complicated struggle with key issues of mutual recognition, borders, security,
Jerusalem, and human rights. It is the only chapter within which discussions land themselves
occasionally on class divisions, interest groups, society, and political parties. Except for one
report (Asher Arian, Nir Atman, and Yael Hadar’s The 2006’s Israel Democracy Index: Auditing
Israeli Democracy: Changes in Israel‘s Political Party System: Dealignment or Realignment),
the chapter relies almost exclusively on newspaper articles. This chapter should include a more
through and objective treatment of the main actors. For example, while Israel is shown as a
country which “leads the world in inequality,” HAMAS is depicted as a mere political party with
hardly a military branch. The chapter on Egypt starts with the emergence of modern Egypt and
places much focus on Egypt’s relation with the US, particularly Egypt’s role in the invasion of
Iraq. The Gulf Cooperation Council chapter investigates Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain,
Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates within 44 pages. Keeping the recent devolvement in the
region in mind, at least, Saudi Arabia and Qatar should have had a more in-debt analysis.
Should this text be republished, it should incorporate more recent developments like the
Arab Spring, Syrian Civil War, and ISIS to its narratives. Additionally, the book’s subtitle title
reads “Continuity and Change,” but this concept is not very well examined within the specific
country chapters. A discussion on this subject would certainly enhance the value of the book.
Also, reworking some chapters and creating a common structural pattern would be useful too.
For example, some chapters have a long section on pre-modern history, while others lack a
discussion of the economy, and some do not have demographic information; still others do not
have maps. All that said, the book uses clear and comprehensible language and has several
valuable pedagogical features like relevant maps and sections on further readings. Therefore, it
would be a good resource for students of Middle Eastern Studies.
Özlem Madi, PhD
Furman University, USA
Isik University, Turkey
ozlem.madi@isikun.edu.tr
Anna Sun. Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary
Realities. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.
An ideological conflict regarding the nature of Confucianism has led to a deep study
of whether or not Confucianism can be classified as a religion. Anna Sun explores the
components of Confucianism that are often cited as religious and questions Confucianism
being qualified as purely religious, especially in the 21st century. The preface briefly outlines
the context of each of the nine chapters, which divide the book into three sections: Sun (1)
explores the complexities of classifying Confucianism as a world religion, (2) provides a
methodical evaluation (ethnographical research) that attempts to identify who are the
Confucians, and (3) discusses the importance of the modern revival of Confucianism in China.
The author also highlights the motivations and interests behind her work, and she does "…
not attempt a substantive definition of religion in this study; as a sociologist, [Sun] believe[s]
that it is important for us to stay value-neutral regarding whether Confucianism is a religion"
(p. 7). As such, those interested in the historical construction and development of
Confucianism, specifically in China, will find Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested
Histories and Contemporary Realities an enjoyable read.
The concept of Confucianism was formally recognized at the 1893 World Parliament
of Religions in Chicago as one of the major world religions. James Legge, a late 19th century
Scottish sinologist and the first professor of Chinese at Oxford University, and Friedrich Max
Müller, a philologist and orientalist editor of the Sacred Books of the East, strategically used
their academic expertise to introduce a novel way of studying religion. It can be argued that
Confucianism as a world religion was merely a concept shaped by Legge and Müller to gain
academic respect by institutionalizing the term “Confucianism” as a full discipline in
religious studies. Sun argues that “[i]t was through Legge’s interpretation of Confucianism
as an ancient religion of China that Confucianism came to be seen as one of the great world
religions” (p. 60). However, the issue of whether Confucianism should be classified as a
religion is still up for debate. Sun suggests that there are four historical controversies over the
religious nature of Confucianism. She examines the involvement of the Jesuit missionaries in
China, scholarly and intellectual debates, a failed movement to establish Confucianism as a
state religion, and the religious nature of Confucianism by pointing out the main issues,
participants, and resolutions with respect thereto in a chronological manner.
Being a long tradition of over 2,500 years, Confucianism is difficult to define as it
elaborates on multiple human conditions ranging from conventional wisdom to our
association with Heaven (tiān rén hé yī 天人合一). While the Chinese government has not
recognized Confucianism as one of the five major religions (Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism,
Islam, and Protestantism), many historians, philosophers, Confucian experts, and a number of
academics believe that Confucianism should be recognized as one of the major religions in
China. These individuals argue that Confucianism involves a collective set of widely
practiced religious acts that play an important role in the social and religious lives of the
Chinese people. Such proponents claim that while the Chinese tend to have limited
affiliations with other religions, they widely adhere, unwittingly on occasion, to the themes
and practices of Confucianism.
184
In her ethnographic research, Sun discovers that there are no specific religious rituals
that make someone a Confucian (e.g. like baptism does in Christianity or the guiyi does in
Buddhism)1. She agrees that modern practices of Confucianism lack an official religious
organisational infrastructure and notes that is not practiced in dedicated temples. In fact, she
declares, “[a]ll Confucian temples [in China] belong to SACH [State Administration of
Cultural Heritage],” and such temples “are officially classified not as religious sites but as
cultural ones...” (p. 158). Needless to say, Confucianism remains widely classified by the
outside world as a religion. Indeed, Sun lists (in chapter 4, table 4.2) ten institutions of higher
education in the United States offering courses on world religions, among which
Confucianism is included. Her study shows how these universities position themselves
towards Confucianism and how their courses refer to Confucianism as a religion.
Sun then compares and presents both the non-religious and the religious
interpretations of Confucianism. She first examines the non-religious interpretation of
Confucianism as a sort of code principles or philosophies dealing with having good morals
and virtues, i.e. individual morality or righteousness (yì 義) and being humane (rén 仁)2. The
American Philosophical Association, for example, identifies Confucianism as a philosophy.
On the other hand, the religious interpretation is regarded as a religion mainly because of the
academic recognition (in late nineteenth century) of it as such and its ritual practices (lĭ 禮)
such as ancestral worship and other ceremonial activities performed in Confucian temples,
households, or elsewhere. Moreover, the American Academy of Religion, an influential
institution on religious studies, delimits Confucianism as a religion and publishes articles that
reflect this assumption. Fournier De Flaix and Louis Henry Jordan (chapter 5), both social
scientists from the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, redefined the
religiosity of Confucianism and made a strong declaration that Confucianism was in fact a
religion—the second largest in the world behind Christianity.
The third part of this volume deals with the revival of Confucianism in contemporary
China. Sun began her fieldwork in 2000, studying Confucian rites and practices in
approximately twelve Confucian temples and Chinese households. Her research consisted of
the observation of individuals’ personal conduct and the assessment thereof through surveys
in order to determine whether or not Confucianism can be said to be emerging as a religion in
the country. She dedicates chapter 7 to the relationship between women and Confucianism
and the intellectual impact they have had on the revival of Confucianism in China. She notes
that Confucian rituals are usually practiced by women—though others, including
predominantly students and senior citizens, participate in religious rituals at Confucian
temples; the former to receive blessings from Confucius for their national university entrance
examinations, and the latter to bless their family members through prayers.
In recent years, the Chinese government has identified the importance of
Confucianism and its core values. A clear example was Hu Jintao’s political slogan on a
desired “harmonious society”. This motto was taken from the teachings of Confucius while
many other references to Confucius were made in the 2008 Olympics. Also, more than 400
1
Baptism symbolizes the admittance to the Christian Church whereas in guiyi one ‘takes refuge’ in the three
gems, i.e. Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
2
Within this interpretation, Confucianism is generally linked to political concerns and social order. Confucianism as a World Religion
185
Confucian Institutes have been established around the world promoting mandarin language
studies, the Chinese culture, and educational and cultural collaborations; the Institutes do not
offer a heavy emphasis on Confucian doctrines, yet one of the general principles of the
Constitution and By-Laws of the Confucius Institutes is to construct a “harmonious world”.
Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities
gives the reader a general guideline to follow while deciphering both sides of the argument
central to determining whether Confucianism ought to be classified as a religion. The text
does not truly answer the question as to whether Confucianism is a religion or not
(disregarding the fact that it was formally recognized as such by the World Parliament of
Religions in Chicago in 1893) but instead offers an alternative to classifying it either way.
Anna Sun gives the audience the opportunity to reflect on the historical construction of
Confucianism and how it has developed since the late nineteenth century. She asserts that
“[w]ithout a recognizable or identifiable base of believers, Confucianism as a religion has
primarily been a matter of academic and political concern” (p. 80); nonetheless, no matter its
official classification, Sun leaves the reader with no doubt that Confucianism will continue to
be an essential part of Chinese cultural traditions.
Rogelio Leal Benavides
King’s College London
rogelio.leal@kcl.ac.uk
Metin Heper & Sabri Sayari. (Eds) 2013. The Routledge Handbook of Modern Turkey.
London and New York: Routledge.
Following a growing interest in Turkey as a result of its development as a regional
and global power, this book discusses the politics, economic strength, and identity of Turkey
as a predominantly Muslim country with a combination of historically secular and religious
political institutions, along with the country’s democratic processes. The handbook responds
to recent developments and debates in order to foster an awareness that would be both
beneficial and illuminating and offers a definitive resource with regard to information that
could be used as both primary and secondary literature for case studies. The handbook
provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of modern Turkey. Offering a selection of
articles by leading scholars from a wide range of perspectives, this reference work offers a
new, in-depth survey of contemporary Turkey. The handbook traces a number of historical
developments relevant to the contemporary context while also looking at recent phenomena.
The book is thematically organized, and the articles are divided into a number of sections.
The sections in turn describe and give an account of the history, culture, politics, society,
geography, and economy of modern Turkey.
Heper and Sayari’s edited volume The Routledge Handbook of Modern Turkey gives
insight into a country that is often regarded as unique in both in Europe and in the Middle
East. The handbook is composed of six parts, each of which has been selected to present
various aspects of the Turkish context, and each part in turn consists of a collection of articles
that together form chapters offering a complimentary overview of relevant sub-topics or
issues. Presenting diverse and often competing views on all aspects of Turkish history,
politics, society, culture, geography, and economics, this handbook will be an essential
reference tool for students and scholars of Middle East studies, comparative politics, and
culture and society.
First, a strong set of scholars provide an overview of Turkish history from the early
Ottoman period to the contemporary Turkish republic. This section accommodates the
Ottoman legacy of modern Turkey, and the chronological order makes it easy to follow
historical developments.
In the second section, a number of cultural aspects of contemporary Turkish society are
presented through the discussion of seven sub-topics: cinema, literature, fine arts, music,
architecture, and the media and television. The authors discuss and evaluate the issues in this
section while regarding Islam as an overarching frame that has determined values and shaped
cultural life for centuries in a variety of ways; the impact of Islam is studied and explored by
the authors.
The third part of the text presents a political overview of contemporary Turkey. The
first article in this section is historically situated, and the reader is introduced to aspects of
Kemalism and Atatürkism that have shaped the contemporary political domain in Turkey.
What follows is an adequate explanation of the historical and cultural developments of
Turkey, thus allowing the reader to critically assess the historical issues that play into the
political dimension of modern Turkey. This section is also the largest and is composed of
eleven chapters that consider a range of topics, including secularism, the status of the Kurdish
community, relations with the European Union, and civil-military relations in Turkey.
Although not all dimensions of the socio-political domain have been covered (such as the role
of leftist, alternative, and resistive movements, which are not really dealt with and potentially
should warrant a section of their own), the section in general covers a number of particular
facets of Turkish politics in a satisfactory manner and gives the reader insight into the basic
and primary issues facing the Turkish state.
187
The fourth section discusses the pillars of Turkish society. There are sections devoted
to the place of women and young people as well as analyses of minorities and the impact of
increases in urbanization. Many of the constituents of modern day Turkey are found in cities;
as such, next to the process of urbanization a section is devoted to the makeup of Turkish
cities. Turkey’s geography is discussed in the fifth part. This section discusses the
environmental and demographic aspects of modern Turkey. Although some of the material
could have been provided earlier to give a better idea of numbers and proportions with
respect to some of the topics discussed in earlier sections, this section provides a clear and
concise explanation of the issues that are at play in this domain. In the sixth and final section,
four chapters review Turkey’s economic status and development. One of the most significant
aspects of contemporary Turkey has been its economic growth and development. This section
starts with an introduction to Turkey’s political economy before discussing and analyzing the
major issues facing the Turkish economy. As a consequence, this chapter is not as
introductory as the others but does offer more of an argumentative side to the proceedings.
One example of a shortcoming in this book is that Sayari asserts in the introduction
that the guidebook represents a “falsifying model” against the arguments regarding the
“incompatibility of Islam and democracy” (p. 1). Problematically, not a lot of evidence is
provided to actually falsify this sentiment. Instead, the authors leave the book itself as an
argument and expect the reader to piece together the facts provided within the text to
substantiate the claim made in the introduction. Perhaps this is slightly symptomatic of the
type of literature the book represents, namely, an introductory work or textbook that provides
in-depth information and material in the form of a recent survey of literature and data, but
cannot be considered a work that puts forth new or controversial theories or standpoints. The
primary shortcoming of the book is that while it provides an excess of information, it does
not provide a critical voice to each of the sub-specific texts and therefore remains a onedimensional, informative resource rather than a critical expose of modern Turkey.
Overall, The Routledge Handbook of Modern Turkey offers the reader a promising
handbook that serves as a reference for scholars interested in Turkey. Its separation into
different research domains with case studies of specific aspects within those domains works
very well to offer the reader a simple guide to follow, with quality information easy to find.
The guidebook’s interdisciplinary authorship will serve students from different backgrounds
as well as help researchers with case studies within a variety of sub-disciplines.
Laurens de Rooij
Durham University
laurens.de-rooij@durham.ac.uk
Christoph Brumann and Evelyn Schulz (Eds.). Urban Spaces in Japan, Cultural and Social
perspectives. London and New York, Routledge, 2012.
The book Urban Spaces in Japan by Routledge is a collection of several essays and case
studies from a broad range of disciplines related to the design and planning of space in Japan.
The case studies focus on the urban space, public space, and body space in Japan.
Many researchers have studied the concept of urban space globally. Even though urban studies
and perceptions have been influenced by the contemporary globalized world, space in Japan has
held its own connotations and particularities that make its perception of space different from that
of other cultures.
Taking on a very ambitious proposal, this book demonstrates the different conflicts
related to the control of urban space in Japan. The different authors of the book’s chapters
present social studies and pragmatic cases on historical and contemporary issues related to urban
space in Japan. This book brings to mind personal anecdotes for this reviewer, having lived in
Japan for seven years and also provides for the lay reader clarifications of many important facts
about the Japanese urban culture. Researchers of this region will find the book very useful with
its explanation of the different vicissitudes, challenges, and cultural aspects related to the
appropriation of urban spaces in specific case studies of the country.
The first chapter serves as an introduction to the book. Chapter two references the
development of urban Japan and the importance of the “shi” (city) in the development of the
Japanese economy. This section explains the difference between two periods, the first, from 1950
to 1990, when urban growth went hand in hand with an economic boom and the second, from
1990 to the present, during which the economy has declined and the cities have shrunk. The
author believes that urban shrinkage is not necessarily a bad thing and that it can, in fact, have a
rather positive effect on the nation’s urban future. For example, he says, a shrinking city offers
future opportunities such as reduced traffic, more space, and less pollution. Chapter three is a
historical essay about the appropriation of public space in the Japanese occupied Manchuria.
This essay provides readers with an understanding of the urban achievements of Japan as the real
power behind the puppet state of Manshûkoku. Furthermore, the relation of those achievements
to East Asia’s new modernity and the urban growth of modern Japan are examined.
Chapter four is related to the changes in urban Kyoto. The author examines the
dichotomy between the traditional and the modern city as a consequence of new, stricter building
codes in Japan. The subsequent chapter expresses an appreciation for public space in accordance
with a thoughtful understanding of Japanese culture (as opposed to from an international or
“outsider” point of view). In contrast, chapter six, provides an analysis of citizen participation in
urban development of Japan as it compares to the participation of citizens in Germany. Although
both countries have similarities related to planning, regulations, and citizen participation, urban
planning in Japan is more centralized than it is in Germany, which has stricter regulations with
respect to building height, type, etc. In general, the urban systems in both Japan and Germany
offer citizens the opportunity to comment on urban issues but not to decide their ultimate
outcomes.
Chapter seven analyzes the importance of neighborhood associations in pre-war Tokyo.
The significance of these associations is related to the way in which neighborhood inhabitants
perceive and appropriate urban spaces. The relatively high level of participation of Japanese
citizens in neighborhood associations in the pre-war period is not a product of Japanese urban
traditions but mostly of the local traditions of keeping harmonious social relations and providing
Urban Spaces in Japan, Cultural and Social perspectives
189
mutual help among inhabitants. Japan has a “long and vital tradition of local self-help and strong
neighborhoods (Kurata, 2000). However, many urban residents form part of an indifferent
community, in which strong communal relations among neighbors through participation in
communal activities are absent.
Chapter eight addresses the conservation and preservation of the existing and historical
urban landscape. In most European cities, the government endorses and promotes preservation,
while in most Asian countries, priority is placed upon development. This essay highlights the
few examples of urban spaces that have been conserved in Tokyo, as the city has only a few
structures of historical significance, most of the buildings being relatively new. The reason for
this may be that for the Japanese authorities, history does not hold as important a place in Tokyo
as it does in other historical cities such as Kyoto and Nara. The author believes that conservation
efforts in Japan depend on civil society groups, which have been facing considerable difficulties
due to lack of government support.
Chapter nine is an empirical analysis of how space is gendered and how men and women
in Japan appropriate space differently. In a future stage, this research could be developed very
successfully, the author asserts, “The genderization of spaces is effected through the organization
of perceptions, in particular of glances and the body techniques corresponding to them” (Löw,
2006). The analysis explains the nonverbal behavior of users inside an underground station, in
accordance with gender. For example, women tend to walk and stand erect with their arms kept
close to the body and knees together. In contrast, men walk with full movement of their bodies
and are more relaxed when standing. The way that each gender approaches space is very
different and, the author concludes, males have a “right of place” most of the time. The presented
analysis of this chapter is especially noteworthy because it is an empirical study that may require
strict research methods.
Walking the city is the basis of chapter ten. The author takes an interesting approach to
the city walker or flâneur and the appropriation of urban space in Japan through narrative. This
study shows authors such as Nagai Kafû, who describes his walks in Tokyo as dichotomies
between Edo areas1 and modern neighborhoods. The author believes in the importance of the
flâneur and how city walkers can potentially help in the future design of space in Japanese cities.
The last chapter is a vision of the future of urban Japan based on an imminent population decline
and shrinking cities. The author believes population decline can lead to livable cities that will
attract and retain people. One argument put forward in this essay is on the negative impact of a
“construction state,” which wasted money on unnecessary projects that damage the environment.
However, this construction system demonstrates the potential of transformation into a positive
element for the country.
1EdoisthenameofTokyobefore1868whenitwasalreadytheworld’sbiggestcity.Nowadays,intheold
traditionalneighborhoodsofTokyo,itispossibletoimaginetheJapanesecultureoftheEdotimes.
190
Overall, the book presents an important contribution to the understanding of certain
elements of the urban space in Japan. Some chapters require a stronger consideration of the
values of Japanese culture in order to avoid inconsistencies or misconceptions. A stronger
interpretation of the importance of Japanese culture and idiosyncrasy, for example, could
substantiate the thesis presented by the authors. Unfortunately, the illustrations are not of the best
quality and the book lacks a final concluding chapter in which the ideas and dilemmas of the
preceding chapters could be summarized and compared. While the chapters differ in their
disciplines, a final conclusion would allow the lectors to grasp a better comprehension of the
themes discussed.
References
Löw, M. (2006). The social construction of space and gender, European Journal of Women’s
Studies, Vol. 13 N. 2, pp. 119-113.
Kurata W. (2000). Komyuniti Katsudô to jichikai no yakuwari (Community activities and roles
of self governed associations). In Kwaôsei Gakuin Daigaku Shakai gabuyu kiyô. 86, pp
63-76.
Jean Martin Caldieron PhD
Florida Atlantic University, School of Architecture
jcaldie1@fau.edu
The Journal of International and Global Studies is published for the Center for International and
Global Studies by the Lindenwood University Press. Submissions are invited that address
contemporary globalization issues. In particular, the Journal seeks high-quality, original work
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The editorial board prefers essay manuscripts between 5,000 and 8,000 words oriented toward a
readership composed of multi-disciplinary scholars, but written to be accessible to nonspecialists. Essays are not accepted from pre-doctoral students.
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Material appearing in the Journal of International and Global Studies does not necessarily
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Editorial correspondence, requests for permission to reprint articles, and contributions should be
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