Contestation Of Narratives Research Articles

Unravelling military aggression: Ontological insecurity, great power narcissism, and Japan’s international relations, 1868–1971

Abstract This article examines the extent to which or how self-identified great powers resort to military aggression following events that challenge their sense of greatness. It problematises the prevalent notion that great powers and events exist and have effects independently of the narratives that constitute them. The article does this by engaging with Ontological Security Studies, Great Power Narcissism, and the psychology of vulnerable and grandiose narcissism, as well as by analysing Japanese identity narratives in two periods seemingly marked by equally challenging events – the Meiji era (1868–1912) and the post-war period (1950–71). It finds that Japan’s military aggression against China in 1894–5 was enabled by vulnerable narratives of shame and insult, while the decision to wage war with Russia a decade later was facilitated more by grandiose narratives. Despite Japan’s overwhelming defeat in the Second World War and the persistent desire among conservative elites for great power status and identity, however, overall post-war narratives did not feature similarly negative emotions and calls for revenge. Japanese great power aspirations were arguably curtailed in this period through intense narrative contestation, notably progressive counter-narratives featuring more self-reflective expressions of guilt and remorse, and even the self-reflexive desire for a non-great power identity.

Keep Calm and Carry on? Fissure, Perception, and Narrative Contestation Following the Demise of the Crown

Abstract On September 8, 2022, after more than 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth II passed away. The responses among the public, media, and state institutions to the news were varied, with competing views on the role of the monarchy and the legacy of the queen. The questions this article seeks to answer are (1) how the monarch’s death introduced a fissure into the United Kingdom’s autobiographical narrative and (2) how exactly this moment led on the one hand to efforts to reaffirm the dominant UK autobiographical narrative and on the other to efforts to contest this narrative. In framing this analysis using Gestalt psychology, we theorize the role of perception in subjects’ experience of a fissure as well as their subsequent attempts to manage the ensuing anxieties. We show how perception enables and guides avenues for narrative contestation as well as conservative attempts to (re)establish the predominant autobiographical narrative by exploring how the government and the royal family sought to create a sense of continuity and transfer royal authority onto the next generation while activists attempted to subvert this established narrative to problematize the country’s (post)colonial history and societal inequalities.

Theorizing Strategic Narrative Disruption: Local Non-State Actors and India’s COVID-19 Narrative

Abstract At times of global crises, political elites may attempt to (re)position states they represent as having particular roles at the global level. How might their efforts be disrupted? The idea of “disruption”, and how it relates to contestation, remains under-explored in the strategic narratives literature. In this article, I develop a preliminary theorization of strategic narrative “disruption,” through an empirically rich investigation of the counternarrative of the COVID-19-related domestic migrant crisis in India by local critical media actors. This counternarrative, I argue, constituted the migrant crisis in ways that served to disrupt the Indian government’s emergent global-level strategic narrative of India's role in the COVID-19 pandemic. Developing the idea of disruption as distinct from, and providing the discursive raw materials for, narrative contestation, I show how attempts by political actors to narratively (re)position the state around specific, identity-affirming roles in global politics may be disrupted by locally produced counternarratives that complicate or contradict key claims in the former. In new media ecologies where narratives gain resonance quickly and widely, such counternarratives become available to global audiences and give rise to new discursive framings that become available for use in future narrative contestation.

A Shiʿi Lebanese reading of Sunni Hadith: progress, inclusivity, and an empowered contestation of narratives

ABSTRACT This article assesses a Shi‘i-Lebanese debate over Sunni Hadith in the context of state formation and Shi‘i integration into this new entity. ʿAbd al-Ḥusayn Sharaf al-Dīn al-Mūsawī, the most authoritative Shi‘i-Lebanese jurist of his time, relied on Sunni compilers of Hadith, to prove the veracity of Shi‘i Islam, to a Sunni audience. Nevertheless, these treatises cannot be viewed as traditional polemics. Instead, they reflected Mūsawī’s position as a proud Shi‘i leader of a community which received historical recognition in the new nation state. Beyond Lebanon, Mūsawī perceived himself as a peer of Sunni modernized forces and thought the time was ripe for acceptance of Shi‘ism, through shared values, a pan-Islamic vision and a critical approach to Hadith, in its content and narrators, within a more humanized depiction of the Companions. Mūsawī did not deviate from classical Shi‘i notions. Nevertheless, he joined forces with Shi‘i reformists in their quest for historical reconciliation with Sunnis, within an expanded notion of orthodoxy. In his understanding, Sunni recognition of a toned down Shi‘i historiography, together with Shi‘i endorsement of Sunni Hadith, may pave the way for a cross-sectarian narrative based on a progressive vision of Islam and on a rational approach to the texts.

Contending for Invented Space in African Context and Biblical Text: Intersecting Gender, Sexuality, Ethnicity and Economics

The Ujamaa Centre for Community Development and Research, through the work of Sithembiso Zwane, has theorised a continuum of contested space, including invited space (controlled by dominant sectors), invigorated space (whereby marginalised sectors contend for space within invited space) and invented space (as marginalised sectors transform these spaces into space they control). In this article, we extend our conceptualisation of contested space to the biblical text itself, recognising within biblical text these three forms of space, both in terms of socio-historical text and narrative text. We use the book of Ruth as our biblical text, recognising, first, the production of the canonical text as a contestation of space, following the hermeneutic of Itumeleng Mosala by working backwards away from the canonical form towards marginalised textual remnant voices and second, that literary-narrative setting within the book of Ruth can be read as a contestation of space. Socio-historically, we argue that the canonical text co-opts marginalised textual voices (in terms of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and economics). Narratologically, we argue that the Ruth narrative includes traces of both socio-historical contestation and narrative contestation of space through Ruth's struggle for invented space. Alongside this focus on the biblical text, we reflect on how the Ujamaa Centre's community-based work might use these resources for re-reading Ruth with local Southern African communities (in both South Africa and Mozambique) struggling for redemptive invented space in the intersection of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and economics.

Territorial dispute at home: strategic narratives contestation over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands nationalization policy in Japan

Abstract Japan’s ‘nationalization’ of three islands of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in 2012 involves a Sino–Japanese territorial dispute as well as a strategic narrative contestation within Japan. This article argues that ‘strategic narrative’, a persuasive discursive tool, can exert power through three communicative processes (formation, projection, and reception) in the same way as Copenhagen School’s ‘securitization’ concept. Thus, the strategic narrative can be used to explain the mechanism of securitization. In the 2012 Diaoyu/Senkaku nationalization crisis, the then Tokyo Governor Ishihara Shintaro formed and projected a ‘provocation narrative’ to securitize the territorial issue, and then Japanese Prime minister Noda Yoshihiko attempted to use a ‘peace and stabilization narrative’ to calm things down. After analyzing the narrative contestation processes between Ishihara and Noda, this article finds that it was Ishihara’s triumph on the battlefield of strategic narrative, despite the result of the ultimate success of Noda to ‘nationalize’ the disputed islands.

Great Power as Narrative Contestation

Great Power as Narrative Contestation Chris Ogden (bio) As scholars have long tussled over, the designation of being a great power in international affairs—and the pathway to achieving such a status—is dependent on myriad factors. Many observers maintain that it is those elements that are hard, tangible, measurable, and objective that are the most pertinent and meaningful. Analyzing these gives us the ability to cast a relative assessment of those states that are rising and those that are falling. Others seek to complement these perspectives by including factors that are softer, less obvious, more social, and subjective. Such notions serve to provide more specific insights concerning how history, memory, and identity impact how states rise and the motivations, goals, and ambitions underpinning such trajectories. Key to these understandings are the stories that states tell about themselves—who they were, who they are and who they want to be—through often selective renditions of the past and aspirant tales of the future. Within these assessments, it is importantly the narratives that states tell that are decisive, and this is the theme that Manjari Chatterjee Miller tackles in the geographically and historically wide-ranging (albeit slim) volume Why Nations Rise: Narratives and the Path to Great Power. The most relevant contemporary case studies in this regard are the Asian behemoths of China and India, whose twin ascents look set to be the most consequential phenomena for the field of international relations (IR) in the 21st century. Both countries seek to re-establish their lost statuses as great powers, which were besmirched by external aggression after centuries as "natural" power-centers in the international system as investigated in Miller's earlier book Wronged by Empire. Both also seek to do so via strategies designed to augment their domestic development and modernization, which frequently place them into the central vortexes of the international system and pull other major states and actors toward them. Understanding how China and India perceive themselves, and the rhetoric and narratives framing their re-emergence, has thus never been so critical. These stories underpin a process of mutual socialization between those states aspiring to be great powers and those that have already attained such a position, which involves the former group [End Page 148] adhering to the criteria and standards set by the latter group. As Miller fittingly states, "a rising power is not revisionist (at least initially). It is, instead, accommodational. It has to accept and conform to the current international order before it can reject it" (pp. 9–10, italics in the original). Miller makes a largely convincing case for understanding why some states achieve the status of great power and others do not by drawing our attention to the need to acquire material power (be it economic and/or military) in conjunction with having national narratives that adhere to current global norms concerning great-power conduct. It is the marrying of these narratives with capabilities and behavior that allows would-be great powers to become active ones that are welcomed into the great-power concert. At its core, such contentions point to the importance of a process of almost auto-socialization by states that rests upon the need for accurate knowledge and a willingness to replicate existing behaviors, whereby a rising power must recognize, learn, and then mimic the accepted conduct of contemporary great power. It is only once a contender state has been let into the great-power club that they can then alter the prevailing norms. Following this logic, those states that are unwilling to play the current "great-power game" will be unable to gain access and the enshrining of great-power status that such entry brings. It is for these reasons that Miller cast China as an "active" state that has played by the rules and is thus a great power, and identified India as a "reticent" state that refuses to adhere to the current conventions and thus is not—nor appears likely to become—a great power (chapters 5 and 6). In these ways, becoming a great power is accurately portrayed as a process within which Miller places a special emphasis upon "idea advocacy," whereby it is imperative to have...

The (de)legitimation of torture: rhetoric, shaming and narrative contestation in two British cases

Existing studies on democracies’ involvement in torture emphasise how governments have been able to circumvent the international anti-torture norm and shape public discourse on the issue through powerful rhetorical strategies of denial and exception. Less attention has been paid, however, to the rhetoric of opponents of torture and how it impacts on governments and security agencies. This article proposes a typology of four common arguments against torture, which make use variously of ethical, utilitarian and ‘shaming’ rhetoric. These arguments often take a narrative form and are extensively contested by governments. Drawing on the literature on rhetorical coercion, I argue that anti-torture narratives can play an important role in constraining democratic states and significantly reducing their perpetration of torture. Yet the multiplicity of narratives at play opens up opportunities for governments to accept some messages against torture while simultaneously contesting others in a way which enables them to continue their involvement in torture. I develop this argument through a comparative analysis of the role of torture in two British counterterrorism campaigns – against Irish republican terrorism in the 1970s and against jihadist violence after 9/11. Differences in the content and salience of the narratives advanced by critics of the government during the two time periods explain much about why the British government contested some arguments against torture, but accepted others. This variation helps to explain in turn why British security agencies carried out coercive interrogations on a wide scale during the 1970s, while their perpetration of torture was significantly reduced in the post-9/11 case.

The contested privileging of zero carbon: plausibility, persuasiveness and professionalism

The global policy challenge of responding to climate change comprises a ‘super-wicked’ problem which consistently defies solution. Despite the UK government’s commitment to zero carbon by 2050, there is little clarity on how this ambitious target is going to be achieved. Even at the level of individual buildings there is a perennial risk of unintended consequences if top-down targets are pursued in isolation of other considerations. The quest for zero carbon is hence embedded within ongoing processes of narrative contestation, and inextricably intertwined with issues of professional identity. It is contended that design is an inherently social process which continues throughout a building’s lifecycle. It is within this context that designers seek to accommodate zero-carbon targets alongside a multiple of other priorities. Hence, any radical shift in the nature of educational provision may well prove to be counter-productive. Yet, much more could undoubtedly be done during education to incubate the quest for low carbon as an essential component of professional identity. There is a need for professionals continuously to hold others to account on the basis of the plausibility of their zero-carbon narratives. Of equal importance is the need to ensure that built-environment professionals continue to respond to the changing policy landscape. Policy relevance The global policy challenge of responding to human-induced climate change defies technological solution. While the aspiration of zero-carbon buildings has been applauded by the built-environment professions, it remains unclear how this ambitious target is going to be realised in practice. Designers are routinely required to accommodate zero-carbon targets alongside multiple other priorities. Hence, any focus on the single criterion of zero carbon in isolation of other considerations risks being untenable. Built-environment professionals will hence limit their ability to influence if they allow themselves to become single-issue activists. This remains true irrespective of the severity of the pending climate crisis. But there are positive steps that can be taken. University educators could do much more to encourage students to embrace the quest for zero carbon as an essential part of their professional identity, and to encourage them to project this identity by continuously challenging the status quo.

To Be or Not to Be a Hero

Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in and around a so-called War Hero Village (Ranavirugama) in northwestern Sri Lanka, this article traces the social (un)becomings of Sri Lankan Army veterans injured during the civil war with the Tamil liberation front. It argues that such veterans have long been able to draw on a materially rewarding narrative of sacrifice and carnal capital—epitomized in the honorific ranaviru (war hero)—in order to produce a particular kind of veteran citizenship, let alone subjectivity, and thus to pursue socially meaningful post-injury existences. In the eyes of the veterans themselves, however, this celebratory narrative is eroding and a “collective narrative” characterized by a kind of social forgetting of the injured veteran is emerging. Material benefits notwithstanding, this narrative contestation entails a “struggle for recognition” that threatens to leave them not only disabled but also with no one to be, or become.

Sejarah Nalar Diplomasi Politik Indonesia di Kawasan Timur Tengah

The historiography of Indonesian political diplomacy in the Middle-East regions faces obstacles from the researchers themselves. The perspective contradictions are compounded by sorting data and sources. The appearance of Indonesian political diplomacy in the Middle East regions according to the Middle East researchers and academics themselves seems to be gloomy and lethargic, because they demand more than what Indonesia has achieved and done. Indonesia is considered not too interested in contributing to the recovery of conflict countries and the acceleration of the transition to democratic values. According to the other researchers who are not based on the Middle East institutions, the appearance of Indonesian political diplomacy in the Middle East is quite positive and slightly vague. Unlike the case with the version that came out directly from the Government of the Republic of Indonesia about their achievements and performance in building diplomatic relations with related countries in the Middle East. Some achievements are recorded annually and submitted to the public in their annual reports. The constraints in historical writing can be overcome by the historical reasoning approach which tries to examine reason, thought and awareness, and which not only focuses on historical facts and events themselves. This approach is able to map the narrative contestation and discourse ideology, and find solutions to the problems.

Strategic Narratives and Alliances: The Cases of Intervention in Libya (2011) and Economic Sanctions against Russia (2014)

Scholars of international communication recognize that strategic narratives are important for policymaking (Miskimmon, O’Loughlin, & Roselle, 2013) and scholars studying alliances suggest that communication is central to the formation and maintenance of alliances (Weitsman, 2010). This essay addresses how strategic narratives affect US alliance behavior—and hence international order—in two specific ways. First, alliance behavior can be affected by other allies’ narratives as demonstrated in the case of military intervention in Libya in 2011. Here the evidence suggests that the UK and France were able to use strategic narratives to influence the decision of the US to agree to military intervention in Libya by using narratives that could evoke a fear of abandonment. Second, alliance cohesion can be affected by narrative contestation by non-allies as demonstrated in the case of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014. Russia has used strategic narratives in a new media environment in an attempt to elicit a fear of entrapment to counter the US attempts to coordinate alliance support for economic sanctions. In both cases, distinguishing between system, identity, and policy narratives give us a deeper understanding of narrative contestation today. This analysis adds to our understanding of the factors that affect alliances set within a new media environment characterized by a proliferation of sources and outlets and thus a more horizontal structure of information exchange.

Irish Accents, Foreign Voices: Mediated Agency and Authenticity in In the Name of the Father and Fifty Dead Men Walking

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"> <span>Given the intensity of narrative contestation over the public history of and discourse around the modern period </span><span>of Northern Irish civil conflict known locally as ‘the Troubles’, for filmmakers from outside of Northern Ireland to be seen as making a legitimate contribution to existing debates, there is a pressure for their film texts to be read as ‘authentic’. This desire for authenticity fundamentally shapes the narrative approach taken by these filmmakers. Various filmmaking strategies have been employed in the pursuit of authenticity, but both Jim Sheridan’s </span><span>In the Name of the Father </span><span>(1993) and Kari Skogland’s </span><span>Fifty Dead Men Walking </span><span>(2008) have taken a distinctly narrative approach, relying upon local written autobiographical material. However, the way in which Sheridan and Skogland have sought to deploy the authenticity embedded in locally grounded source material flirts with self-defeatism as both films problematically obscure<br /> the limitations on agency imposed by the filmmakers on the<br /> local voices upon who claims of authenticity, and thus the films’ legitimacy, depend. </span> </div></div></div>