Geopolitical Configuration Research Articles

Heading south: theory, Viva Riva! and District 9

This article begins by reflecting on how the geopolitical configuration outlined in Edward Said's Culture and imperialism (1993) has been radically altered both by the decline of the US empire and, in conjunction with it, by what Jean and John Comaroff describe, in the subtitle of Theory from the south (2012), as Euro-America's evolution toward Africa. From there, the article turns to Viva Riva! (2010) and District 9 (2009), two films that appropriate the conventions of Hollywood blockbusters to produce cinematic narratives set in contemporary African urban landscapes which lend themselves to be viewed through the lens of recent theoretical debates on the becoming global of the south. These films’ gazes produce an image of African cities that is legible as a dystopic vision of the global future.

Gardens of Eden or Hearts of Darkness? The Genealogy of Discourses on Environmental Insecurity and Climate Wars in Africa

This article argues that the securitisation of Africa’s environment and climate in the early twenty-first century has less to do with multidisciplinary inquiry into the complexities of climate change, development and conflict, and more with historically established paradigms of thinking about Africa, its ecosystems and notions of disorder and violence. Securitisation is the result of a specific moment in the post–Cold War era with its particular geopolitical configuration and of deeply embedded modes of imagining the African continent, its peoples and their relationship with the environments they inhabit. The main objective of this article is to historicise and politicise the prevailing dystopian discourse about climate-induced insecurity. I show that the assumptions and chains of causality that constitute today’s climate wars narrative are remarkably similar in nature to the environmental narratives that underpinned imperialist and post-independence discourses on environment and development, legitimising highly authoritarian interventions against local populations by governments.

Mortes prematuras e conflito armado pelo domínio das favelas no Rio de Janeiro

O artigo se propõe a ir além do uso de variáveis socioeconômicas e individuais agregadas relativas à pobreza, para incluir fatores relacionados com o espaço urbano, hoje parte da explicação sociológica do crime. A análise ecológica das distribuições dos delitos busca a compreensão da natureza complexa da violência para identificar fatores que influenciam o comportamento, aumentando ou diminuindo o risco de cometer ou de ser vítima de violência nas mesmas condições socioeconômicas. Como muitos dos indicadores são dificilmente mensuráveis, as respostas a essas questões tornam a pesquisa etnográfica imprescindível, com a necessária substituição de alguns conceitos para incluir as práticas sociais interiorizadas (etos) que permitem a articulação entre o subjetivo e o objetivo, o micro e o macro. Para acompanhar os complexos processos que provocam e consolidam tais práticas sociais, a pesquisa foi feita segundo o método dos casos desdobrados, que permite vincular o local a outras esferas da vida social em abordagem histórica com pluralidade de fontes de dados. O mapeamento dos diferentes domínios nas favelas (milícias, diversas facções de tráfico e neutras) permitiu identificar áreas de conflito, que se concentram próximas a rodovias, portos e aeroportos, o que evidencia uma configuração geopolítica dos conflitos armados pelos territórios do tráfico. Este resultado é ressaltado pela alta incidência de homicídios registrados nos bancos de dados oficiais e nas percepções apresentadas nas pesquisas de vitimização.

China-ASEAN Relations Amidst Territorial Dispute, Maritime Conflict and Nationalism: Challenges and Prospects

This paper looks at the impact of the rise of China on the geopolitical configuration and international relations in the East Asian region the main flashpoints of which include the high-profile disputes over the ownership of the islands, atolls, reefs, cays and islets in the South China Sea (SCS)/ Biển Đong (East Vietnam Sea)/West Philippine Sea which reflect in a large part in reality resource conflicts. The rapid growth of China’s population, with an increase of more than ten million people per year, and the general shortage in energy resources to feed her rapid economic growth underlines the importance of the resource-rich SCS. In terms of geopolitics, the Spratlys occupy a highly important strategic position, the key to the control of the SCS and critical hub in China’s sea route transport connection with East Asia, West Asia and the Indian Ocean. Looking at the Spratlys and Paracels disputes as the major military-related security problem in the relations between China and ASEAN, the paper examines the challenges posed by China’s ascendance in the global arena in recent decades, in particular within the context of the changing ASEAN-China relations in terms of both geopolitical and economic terms, with special focus on the attendant problem of the conflict in the SCS and the critical issue of finding a solution to the conflict.

Japonia – nadzór korporacyjny i finanse publiczne

Japan ‒ the third economic power in the world – has been for over a decade, in a state of a prolonged stagnation spreading over the domains of its economy including the banking system. Japan’s participation in the II World War resulted in a humiliating defeat. Japanese cities were completely demolished. Japanese industry and infrastructure were also totally destroyed. Yet, within the next two generations, Japan managed to succeed in economic achievements that were commonly known as “an economic miracle”. The completely ruined country, deprived of any natural resources, has become the world’s economic power, and the leader in many economic domains. The reason for is that Japanese people are characterized by strict obedience towards authorities, diligence, patience and a proper assessment of the post war political situation all over the world made by the Japanese government. Measured and systematic investments of the 60’s and 70’s of the 20th century, were carried out in traditional industries e.g.: metallurgy, textile industry, ship-building industry as well as more modern ones such as automobile and electronics industries. Good quality and reasonable prices of products soon gained popularity among external markets. During a rapid development of 1954-1971, Japan adopted an anti-import policy and closed its market for foreign goods. This policy as well as the well-thought-out strategy of development resulted in a dynamic economic development of the country. Therefore, Japan became an important Americanally in the geopolitical configuration of powers.

KINIJOS PROPAGANDA RUSIJOJE: ESTETINIAI STRATEGIJOS ELEMENTAI

Chinese propaganda in Russia is not easily noticeable against a background of real or alleged similarities between the countries, strategic partnerships and at least declared cooperation. However, the topicality of this research lies in the fact that both are large countries, big players on the international scene, and the weakening of Russia due to Sinification may have very serious consequences for the international geopolitical configuration and may therefore shape the nature of the processes taking place in it. When talking about Chinese propaganda in Russia, it needs to be agreed that the dis­cussion is not so much about the future of the BRIC bloc system as about a G2 system (just USAand China), i.e. a bipolar international system and its potential to become unipolar in the near future with the Celestial Empire in the role of hegemonic player. The aim of the article is to analyse the aesthetic aspect of Chinese propaganda in Russia. Having regard to the multifaceted nature of the problem being analysed, an interdisciplinary approach was adopted, including linguistic, art studies and prognos­tic analysis methods. In the first part of the article an attempt is made: to analyse the ideas and concepts put forward by China in Russia on official internet (theoretical level of the concepts); to study the ways and means of putting forward those ideas and concepts, i.e. special characteristics and style of the language and the rhetoric used (linguistic level); to study the artistic visual aesthetics solutions used (visual level). In the second part of the article an attempt is made analyse the Russian reaction to Chinese propaganda: ideological and pragmatic Sinophilia (acceptance level) and Sinophobia (rejection level). In the third part of the article it is asserted that bearing in mind the current post-modern attitude that we humans are primates with basic exotic–erotic and emotional–visual orientation, in the spiritual realm Chinese propaganda manages to put forward the Chinese vision of aesthetics or aesthetic metaphysics as a substitute for religion. It is asserted that Confucianism and aesthetic metaphysics are not alternatives; rather they are complementary, resources of Chinese propaganda in Russia that reinforce one another. The article espouses the opinion that the Confucian level of Chinese propaganda in Russia is aimed more at the public, community sphere of social val­ues, seeking to harmonise the leading values of Russian and Chinese society; or, more precisely, to encourage Russian values to slowly but surely adapt to Chinese values. Meanwhile, the aesthetic metaphysics content of Chinese propaganda is di­rected not at the public, social, community, civic sphere of values or the modelling of individual’s behaviour in regard of this projection, but rather at the individual, private, intimate, personal level. The article stresses that the external social sphere (Confucianism) and private personal life (aesthetics) could be said to immanently embody the holistic impetus that lies within humans to reconcile and harmonise eth­ics and aesthetics; however, this harmony is now written not so much in Cyrillic as in Chinese characters.To summarise, the article proposes the conclusion that Chinese propaganda in Russia is expressed at the direct/obvious pragmatic level for getting an effect on the formulation and execution of foreign policy as well as at the indirect/not-so-obvious level of passing on cultural and civilisational values, with respective orientation to short-term and long-term gains.The part of Chinese propaganda in Russia that seeks direct/external goals can be said to have been successful so far, since Russia maintains a basically benevolent diplo­matic – strategic stance toward China. The success of non-obvious and deeper-reaching Chinese propaganda in Russia is more debatable. Nonetheless, there is a channel or space open to interaction, where Chinese aesthetic propaganda and Russian large-na­tion propaganda (which in a sense is also aesthetic) can meet and compete.

Embedding the War on Terror: State and Civil Society Relations

ABSTRACTThe global war on terror was used by the Bush administration and its allies to defend a US dominated geopolitical configuration. To this end, counter‐terrorism measures (CTMs) were introduced which strengthened the alignment of development aid with diplomacy and defence. The broad, adverse effects of CTMs on civil liberties and human rights are well documented. Despite the advent of a new US administration and a ‘soft power’ approach to international relations, the legacy of the war on terror remains embedded in the laws, policies and attitudes of many states and regimes that continue to enclose the lives of citizens. This article describes the experiences of civil society organizations (CSOs) as ‘securitization’ processes unfolded. Studies over two years involving some forty countries provide an on‐the‐ground view to probe the gains and losses of securitization, both for governments in the US‐led ‘coalition of the willing’ and for civil society in terms of the pressures emerging from a development‐for‐security agenda. The authors identify some of the perverse zero‐sum effects on governments of CTM philosophy and the means employed. Findings also show asymmetry between northern and southern CSOs in terms of their negative‐sum subordination, found in the definition of security and in the vulnerability to new risks involved in undertaking development work.

Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom

Once upon a time scholars assumed that the knowing subject in the disciplines is transparent, disincorporated from the known and untouched by the geo-political configuration of the world in which people are racially ranked and regions are racially configured. From a detached and neutral point of observation (that Colombian philosopher Santiago Castro-Gómez describes as the hubris of the zero point ), the knowing subject maps the world and its problems, classifies people and projects into what is good for them. Today that assumption is no longer tenable, although there are still many believers. At stake is indeed the question of racism and epistemology. And once upon a time scholars assumed that if you ‘come’ from Latin America you have to ‘talk about’ Latin America; that in such a case you have to be a token of your culture. Such expectation will not arise if the author ‘comes’ from Germany, France, England or the US. As we know: the first world has knowledge, the third world has culture; Native Americans have wisdom, Anglo Americans have science. The need for political and epistemic de-linking here comes to the fore, as well as decolonializing and decolonial knowledges, necessary steps for imagining and building democratic, just, and nonimperial/colonial societies.

Untranslatables: A World System

brooks obvious dangers. Postnationalism can lead to blindness toward economic and national power struggles that literary politics often front for, while potentially minimizing conflict among interests of monocultural states and multilingual communities (as in current U.S. policy that uses an agenda of cultural homogeneity to patrol immigrant languages and to curtail bilingual education). National neutrality can also lead, problematically, to promotion of generic critical lexicons that presume universal translatability or global applicability. Theoretical para digms, many centered in Western literary practices and conventions, thus forget that they are interculturally incommensurate. Moreover, though planetary inclusion may be goal of new lexicons in contemporary comparative literature, they often paradoxically reinforce dependency on a national/ethnic nominalism that gives rise to new exclusions. Ideally, one would redesign literary studies to respond critically and in real time to cartographies of emergent world-systems. Parag Khanna, writing from an American think tank perspective on shrinkage of U.S. as a superpower, usefully identifies a host of new Second World, midsize empires built up from global trade-offs in resources and financial services whose networks traverse but also bypass The Big Three (China, Europe, America). Khanna's nomenclature, from retro regionalisms (the Middle Kingdom, Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere) to modern transnational acronyms like the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, associated through their common status as sites of the world's greatest concentration of foreign-exchange re serves and savings) assigns renewed momentum to thinking in empires (problematic in my view), but it is at least responsive to geopolitical configurations that overturn Western assumptions about who should be aligned with whom: New Literary History, 2008, 39: 581-598

Inhibition vs. exhibition: political censorship of Chinese and foreign cinemas in postwar Hong Kong

This article traces clandestine film censorship in colonial Hong Kong during the Cold War. Based on film studio records, press coverage, historical accounts, and recently declassified government documents, albeit limited and incomplete, the article examines sample cases and controversial foreign and Chinese films to throw light on the predicament of cross-border film exhibition in a distinctively politicized period. The evidence and arguments in this study point to a different conceptualization of transnationality and boundary-crossing of cinema grounded in its specific historical and geopolitical configuration. It is less about the easy traffic of capital, human resources, commodities, and ideas across the border than the dangerous trafficking of movie images, ideologies, human actions and propagandas that could destabilize the territorial boundary and its political status quo. Film screening and viewing in the colony are subject to strict official surveillance to quarantine the visuality of politics in the shadow of Cold War paranoia.

The Tai Polities in the Upper Mekong and Their Tributary Relationships with China and Burma

In the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries Ming China established so-called “ Pacification Commissions” of different ranks— such as xuanwei si and xuanfu si— in Cheli (Moeng Lue or Sipsong Panna), Babai (Lan Na), Laowo (Lan Sang) and Menglian (Moeng Laem). The rulers of these polities were expected to regularly send tribute missions to the Ming court. The recognition of Chinese overlordship, however, did not mean that the Tai polities had lost their capacity to conduct their own foreign policies ; they sometimes even went against Chinese interests. The geopolitical situation in the whole region changed dramatically with the rise of the Toungoo dynasty in Burma. Most of the Tai polities in the upper Mekong and Salween basins submitted to King Bayin-naung (r. 1551– 1581) and became Burmese vassal states. During the following three centuries, a pattern of power relations emerged with China and Burma sharing joined overlordship in many of these states, such as Sipsong Panna and Moeng Laem. Based mainly on Tai and Chinese sources, this paper examines the nature and the strength of the dual vassalages, which varied from region to region and fluctuated over the centuries, depending to a large extent on the geopolitical configurations. Much emphasis is given to the exchange of tribute and to the question of how the Tai elites perceived their own political status. This paper also discusses how the Chinese and Burmese perceived the tributary relations and how the local Tai elites tried to manipulate them for their own needs.

Memories of a Future Home: Diasporic Citizenshp of Chinese in Panama (review)

Reviewed by: Memories of a Future Home: Diasporic Citizenship of Chinese in Panama Kathleen López Memories of a Future Home: Diasporic Citizenship of Chinese in Panama. By Lok C.D. Siu. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. Pp. xix, 247. At the heart of Lok Siu's engaging, well-researched book about Chinese Panamanians is the question of what it means to be Chinese in a diaspora. Siu makes a major contribution to international migration and Chinese overseas studies by developing the theoretical concept of "diasporic citizenship." Rather than taking for granted a coherent, homogenized "Chinese diaspora," Siu demonstrates its complexities and disjunctures through detailed ethnographic research on people who self-identify as Chinese, including those of mixed descent. The Central American nation of Panama offers a particularly rich context for such a study, as its history includes a neocolonial relationship with the United States, formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and more recently, economic and cultural exchanges with the People's Republic of China (PRC). This ever-shifting geopolitical configuration has influenced the sense of belonging among Chinese in Panama who must choose, for example, to ally with Taiwan or the PRC, or to attempt to balance ties to both. Organizationally, the book opens with an introduction and a brief history of the Chinese in Panama, followed by five thematic chapters that illuminate different aspects of Chinese diasporic citizenship: transnational organizations, migration patterns, geopolitics, new immigrants, and globalization and the China-Taiwan conflict. Owing to different migration flows, the Chinese Panamanian community is highly diverse in terms of race/ethnicity, class, occupation, gender, generation, religion, and language ability. This very diversity engenders discussions about which China should be officially acknowledged and how Chineseness is defined. Passionate debates erupted during the 1996 annual meeting of the Convention of Chinese Associations of Central America and Panama and its related beauty contest, the subject of Chapter 2. Siu examines the "masculinization" of formal participation in the meetings (dominated by men) and the "feminization" of informal interactions, such as shopping and tourist excursions, as well as the beauty contest (p. 63). In 1996, the two finalists were the Taiwan-born Miss Costa Rica, whose flawless Mandarin and more traditional Chinese appearance appealed to recent Chinese immigrants, and the locally-born Miss Honduras, a contestant of mixed descent who struggled with Chinese, but spoke proficient English. Siu comments, "What is at stake in the beauty contest involves not only who gets to represent the Chinese diaspora, but also what qualities are deemed to be idealized characteristics of that diaspora" (p. 75). At that particular juncture, who couldbest embody Chinese beauty, femininity, and diasporic community for the Chinese of Central America? [End Page 272] The acts of migrating and remigrating, while commonly associated with rupture from the homeland, can also help to shape a sense of diasporic belonging. Through four richly detailed life stories, Chapter 3 reveals how "serial migration" produces a sense of home and identity among diasporic Chinese. Moving beyond traditional studies of immigration and assimilation and building on recent works on transnationalism, Siu defines serial migration as "a circuitous and open-ended process that entails crossing multiple national borders over an extended period of time and often over generations…" (p. 86). We meet Fernando, a Panamanian of mixed descent who describes himself as "part Chinese, part white, part black, and part indigenous" (p. 91). His paternal grandfather immigrated from China to Jamaica, where he opened a store and married a black Jamaican, then moved on to Colón, Panama, during the late 19th century. Fernando's father, who had been sent to school in Jamaica, returned to work for the United Fruit Company. Fernando followed this pattern by also attending school in Jamaica, but went to Chicago for his university degree. He eventually came "home" to Panama to become an English teacher in Canal Zone schools. Despite Fernando's mixed heritage, he actively participates in Chinese social networks and diasporic activities (pp. 91–95). For others, such as Victoria, forced migration from China in 1949, class and gender struggles in Panama, and marriage to a non-Chinese have contributed to a sense of alienation from the larger Chinese Panamanian community (pp. 103–108...

Entre la geografía y las relaciones internacionales

Tabula Rasa es una revista científica del área de las ciencias sociales con una periodicidad trimestral, dedicada principalmente a las disciplinas de la Antropología, Historia, Sociología, Trabajo Social, Geografía Humana y Estudios Culturales.

Apocalypse now? Continuities or disjunctions in world politics after 9/11

This article argues that the widespread assumption that the events of world politics since 9/11 represent a radical break in world politics is incorrect. It goes on to argue, first, that world politics since 9/11 displays far more continuities than disjunctions and, second, that the belief that there was a radical change signalled by 9/11 is deeply problematic not just for conceptualizations of world politics but also for practice. This argument is then discussed in the context of four specific areas, the geo-political configuration of world politics, the ideological shape of world politics, ideas and assumptions about the use of force in world politics and the relationship between civil liberty and security.

Manifest and other destinies: territorial fictions of the nineteenth-century United States

and Other Destinies critiques Manifest Destiny's exclusive claim as an explanatory national story in order to rethink the meaning and boundaries of the West and of the United States' national identity. Stephanie LeMenager considers the American West before it became a trusted symbol of U.S. national character or a distinct literary region in the later nineteenth century, back when the West was undeniably many wests, defined by international economic networks linking diverse territories and people from the Caribbean to the Pacific coast. Many nineteenth-century novelists, explorers, ideologues, and humorists imagined the United States' destiny in what now seem unfamiliar terms, conceiving of geopolitical configurations or possible worlds at odds with the land hunger and providential mission most clearly associated with Manifest Destiny. and Other Destinies draws from an archive of this literature and rhetoric to offer a creative rereading of national and regional borders. LeMenager addresses both canonical and lesser-known U.S. writers who shared an interest in western environments that resisted settlement, including deserts, rivers, and oceans, and who used these challenging places to invent a post-western cultural criticism in the nineteenth century. Le Menager highlights the doubts and self-reckonings that developed alongside expansionist fervor and predicted contemporary concerns about the loss of cultural and human values to an emerging global order. In and Other Destinies, the American West offers the United States its first encounter with worlds at once local and international, worlds that, as time has proven, could never be entirely subordinated to the nation's imperial desire. Stephanie LeMenager is an assistant professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Alternative Pasts, Future Alternatives?

Georgi Derluguian writes that Cohen’s exposition of the alternatives facing Gorbachev as reformer misses key elements that would give his analysis a firm disciplinary foundation: the social mechanisms involved in formulating and spreading competing discourses, the structural coalescence of potentially contentious groups and their actual mobilizing, the institutionalization of political gains, elite and oppositional brokerage, geopolitical configuration, and shifts in economic flows. He calls for a more rigorous analysis that would incorporate these elements, and he illustrates his method by sketching a number of key nodal points in the history of the USSR that would allow scholars to examine counterfactual, alternative pasts.

Structural Change and Democratization in the Major Power Subsystem: Some Systemic Puzzles of the Democratic Peace

Two systemic puzzles of the democratic peace are examined within the context of the critical major power subsystem for the 1816–1992 period. One puzzle concerns whether the relationship between systemic democratization and conflict should be linear, curvilinear, or unpredictable. While the arguments for the latter two possibilities are persuasive, the empirical evidence suggests that the relationship is negative and linear in the major power subsystem. The second puzzle focuses on the relative strength of democratization, particularly, vis-a-vis hegemony, in reducing conflict. In contrast to earlier findings, structural change, conceptualized and measured in terms of global and regional power concentration patterns, in conjunction with democratization, predicts significantly to systemic levels of militarized dispute behavior. The democratic peace phenomenon thus works similarly at multiple levels of analysis but its emergence has not eliminated the explanatory utility of older emphases on geopolitical configurations and structural change. At the same time, we do not need to choose between old and new explanations, as long as we can integrate them into coherent and more compelling explanations than their stand-alone equivalents.

The Location of Alashiya: New Evidence from Petrographic Investigation of Alashiyan Tablets from El-Amarna and Ugarit

Ancient Near Eastern archives of cuneiform texts contain tablets whose origin is unknown. Letters often do not contain the name or address of the sender. Moreover, the locations of some ancient Near Eastern countries and cities have not yet been clearly established. Hence we perform a research program that intends to fill this gap through a systematic provenance study of the Amarna letters and other Near Eastern texts using petrographic and geochemical methods. So far, over 300 tablets have been analyzed. This paper presents the provenance of the Alashiya letters from Amarna and Ugarit as well as an assemblage of Cypro-Minoan texts from Cyprus. Petrographic and chemical examinations indicate that the Amarna letters from Alashiya originate from the area on the margin of the Troodos Mountains in Cyprus. Various lines of evidence make it clear that the raw material was collected by the scribes in their immediate vicinity and not transported over large distances. Within Cyprus, either Kalavasos-Ayios Dhimitrios or Alassa Paliotaverna/ Pano Manadilaris are identified as the source of official Alashiyan letters. Since the geopolitical configuration of Late Bronze Age Alashiya is still unclear, the implications of our conclusions for this vexed issue are discussed.

Rethinking the Modular Nation Form: Toward a Sociohistorical Conception of Nationalism

Our current historical conjuncture is marked by a global proliferation of nationalisms that have fundamentally, and often violently, transformed the inherited geopolitical configuration of the post-war era. The apparent resurgence of nationalism has been matched by a growing convergence across disciplinary divides on the problematic of nationalism. A few salient prior works notwithstanding, it is mainly in the last two decades that nationalism has emerged as a central preoccupation of contemporary historical and social-scientific analyses. Remarkably, the stubborn persistence of nationalism in the current context of neo-liberal global restructuring and the dizzying expansion of nationalism research have not enhanced analytical consensus on core theoretical and methodological issues. Indeed, the rush for an analytical “fix” on nationalism has tended to fortify rather than resolve inherited methodological divides, especially that between objectivist and subjectivist approaches to nationalism.

Geopolitical Configurations

Geopolitical Configurations