Nature Of Trouble Research Articles

A randomized, double-blinded feasibility trial of educational materials for hiccups in chemotherapy-treated patients with cancer.

Chemotherapy can cause hiccups but few randomized controlled trials have focused on hiccups. This trial examined the feasibility of such research. This single-institution, multi-site trial used phone recruitment for patients: (1) 18years or older, (2) able to speak/read English, (3) with a working e-mail address, (4) with hiccups 4weeks prior to contact, and (5) with ongoing oxaliplatin or cisplatin chemotherapy. The primary outcome was feasibility. Patients were randomly assigned to one of two sets of educational materials, each of which discussed hiccups and palliative options. The experimental materials were almost identical to the standard materials but provided updated content based on the published medical literature. At 2weeks, patients responded by phone to a 5-item verbally administered questionnaire. This trial achieved its primary endpoint of recruiting 20 eligible patients within 5months; 50 patients were recruited in 3months. Among the 40 patients who completed the follow-up questionnaire, no statistically significant differences between arms were observed in hiccup incidence since initial contact, time spent reviewing the educational materials, and the troubling nature of hiccups. Twenty-five patients tried palliative interventions (13 in the experimental arm and 12 in the standard arm), most commonly drinking water or holding one's breath. Eleven and 10 patients, respectively, described hiccup relief after such an intervention. Clinical trials for chemotherapy-induced hiccups are feasible and could address an unmet need.

Sexing East Asian History

Sexing East Asian History Sabine Frühstück (bio) Todd A. Henry, ed. Queer Korea. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. 400 pp.; ill. ISBN 9781478001928 (cl); 9781478002901 (pb). Howard Chiang. After Eunuchs: Science, Medicine, and the Transformation of Sex in Modern China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. 416 pp.; ill. ISBN 9780231185783 (cl); 9780231185790 (pb); 9780231546331 (ebook). Howard Chiang, ed. Sexuality in China: Histories of Power and Pleasure. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018. 272 pp. ISBN 9780295743462 (cl); 9780295743479 (pb). Recently, the flagship Journal of Asian Studies devoted a substantial portion of its November 2020 issue to reflections on the impact of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990) on the historiography of gender and sexuality in Asia over the last thirty years. Three of that historiography's leading pioneers—Gail Hershatter (China), Tamara Loos (Southeast Asia), and Geeta Patel (South Asia)—uniformly acknowledge the game-changing quality of Butler's book.1 In a parallel recent move, the historiography of gender and sexuality has been more frequently deployed regarding regional rather than either national or global frameworks, in part due to the fact that "global history" has lost its initial glamor. Conversely, it is more difficult to determine what impact the historiography of gender and sexuality out of Asia has had on Euro-American theory. Although its representative reach is minimal given both the quantity of scholarly production in the region itself and the size of its population, a range of publishing venues suggests that the history of gender and sexuality out of Asia is in the process of securing a place within the larger field. In addition to its solid footprint in this journal, it is featured in recent issues of The Journal of Homosexuality and, slightly less substantially, The Journal of the History of Sexuality. The works reviewed here make powerful contributions to the field of gender and sexuality studies at large—as well as (in part) to women's history and, of course, Asian Studies. Until recently, queer sexualities have been notoriously underacknowledged in both Korea and China—in contrast to the increasing devotion to interstitial loci and queer identities in current scholarship that recognize the troubled nature of sex and gender elsewhere. Indeed, when sexuality in Korea has been the focus of academic and public attention, it is often with regards to either the victimized (heteronormative) female former sex slaves of the Japanese empire or the globally prominent male [End Page 153] representatives of K-pop's sexualities. Queer Korea, by contrast, is a collective, multidisciplinary pursuit with two goals: to queer the field of Korean Studies, which editor Todd A. Henry, a rising star in the field, (uncontroversially) diagnoses as "nationalistically heteronormative;" and to critique the field of queer studies that has remained stubbornly Euro-America-centric (8). As Henry notes in an exemplary introduction, Christian rhetoric in part informs the frequently aggressive posturing of South Korean conservatives against sexual and gender minorities; one result of such posturing has been that individuals characterized by their non-normative sexualities and gender variances are denied full citizenship rights. Korean conservatives frame their refusal to grant those rights with respect to "past traditions, especially by highlighting the purported lack thereof" (4). It is worth noting that, even on the superficial level of conservative rhetoric, this position differs from that of the country's (largely non-Christian) neighbor and former colonial ruler Japan; Japanese conservatives evoke traditions with an added declaration, stating that traditional Japan has always been "accepting" of such individuals and practices and, thus—to the chagrin of Japanese queer rights activists—there is no need to explicitly formulate rights for non-normative genders and sexualities.2 Henry's introduction suggests that it is primarily fundamentalist Christians who enact reactionary speech and politics in South Korea. But in so doing he downplays the degree to which militarization both governs homo- and transphobia and helps to conceal the fragility of heteronormative masculinity. Few able-bodied men in Korea escape the country's mandatory military service—which is sustained in part by the continuing threat of a hostile regime in the North, and in part by the shadow of military...

Remembering and forgetting Confederate monuments: taking the bitter with the sweet

This article addresses contemporary and long-standing debates over Confederate monuments in the United States by examining the removal of two monuments in Memphis, Tennessee, one dedicated to Nathan Bedford Forrest (1821-77), and the other to Jefferson Davis (1808-89). A review of the rationales behind the origins of the Memphis monuments as objects of commemoration and the longer histories of their sites reveals the troubled nature of these symbols of white supremacy in the events leading to their eventual removal in 2017. It references the alignment of their production with two spikes in Confederate monument production between 1896 and 1919 and 1954 and 1968, during periods of segregation and political nostalgia. The study of the Memphis monuments and the fragility of their historic narratives segues into broader discussions around the analysis of Confederate monuments to propose that although forgetting may lie behind their longevity, remembering is critical to their future interpretation. Such discussions resonate beyond the subject of Southern US Confederate monuments, as part of wider international debates around contested monuments and responses to them.

RECALIBRATING THE INTERNATIONAL INVESTMENT REGIME THROUGH NARROWED JURISDICTION

AbstractThe legitimacy crisis confronting the international investment regime has called for reforms to eliminate the asymmetric and troubled nature of investment treaties. These instruments grant extensive investor protections without offering reciprocal safeguards for host States wishing to preserve regulatory space. This article argues that any reform designed to redress imbalances in the existing regime should first aim at narrowing the personal jurisdiction of investment tribunals. Problematically, access to most investment treaties depends on broad nationality requirements, which have enabled investors to use corporations or passports of convenience to obtain treaty protection. This practice exacerbates the unbalanced relationship between host States and investors. It increases host States’ exposure to investment treaty claims and allows investors to circumvent newer, more State-oriented investment treaties. Using as an example the novel anti-nationality planning approach embraced in the 2019 Dutch Model BIT, this article suggests effective treaty mechanisms that States can adopt to restrict the range of investors that are entitled to claim.

Empire of Friends: Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia by Applebaum Rachel (review)

REVIEWS 191 the book: ‘through this work, I want to contribute […] to the history of masculinity between the media, bodies, masses, space and violence; to the history of nationality and transnationalism between inner-Soviet dynamics and globalization influences; to the history of Soviet generations; but above all to the history of Soviet popular culture after the death of Stalin’ (p. 11). The book is somewhat narrower in scope and largely contributes to the history of football fan culture in the USSR with frequent and valuable observations regarding Soviet history, politics and culture through the eyes of Soviet football fans and officials. The book creates a good sense of how football fans relate to the Soviet past and how their identities are shaped and have changed over time. This intense focus on football fan culture, gleaned from years of scrupulous archival work and in-depth interviewing makes this book an extremely valuable and original contribution to research on the history and culture of Soviet sport after Stalin. Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Artemi Romanov Literatures, University of Colorado Boulder Applebaum, Rachel. Empire of Friends: Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY and London, 2019. xi + 275 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $49.95: £41.00. When a relationship between peoples is symbolized by tanks, it provides a clear pointer towards the complex and troubled nature of that association. Rachel Applebaum’s study of Czechoslovak-Soviet social and cultural interactions is punctuated by these armoured fighting vehicles — liberating tanks in 1945, ‘normalizing’ tanks in 1968 and, finally, a tank painted pink in 1991 in the aftermath of the 1989 transformation. Historically, the nations of Czechoslovakia enjoyed an ambivalent relationship with their powerful cousins to the east. Widespread respect for Russia’s pre-eminent position as the principal Slavonic nation was, in general, and among the elites in particular, accompanied by a critical attitude towards the internal political system during both the imperial and Soviet periods up to the Second World War. Prior to that event, actual contact between the respective peoples was limited — but that all changed in 1945. On 9 May of that year, Soviet tanks liberated the Czech capital, then in the grip of an uprising against the Nazi occupiers. In the early stages of the fighting, Czech insurgents were aided by another Russian force — that of the anti-Soviet army of General Vlasov (though not mentioned by the author). History, however, is written by the ultimate victors, and it was the iconic SEER, 98, 1, JANUARY 2020 192 images of grateful children of Prague presenting bouquets of lilac to the heroic Red Army tank-crews that came to represent the outcome and set the scene for most of the next half-century. Nevertheless, respect for Soviet wartime sacrifice was genuine and widespread and, coupled with the legacy of British and French responsibility for the dismembering of pre-war Czechoslovakia under the terms of the 1938 Munich Agreement, some reappraisal of international alliances was inevitable. Initially, even within the transformed geopolitical reality, Czechoslovakia sought to maintain a balance between East and West. But, following the Communist takeover in 1948, that equilibrium disappeared and ties with the Soviet Union became exclusive. A work of this type is unavoidably selective in its coverage and episodic in structure, though many of the salient developments of the period are carefully considered. The developing attitudes towards the Soviet role in the war and the memorialization of the Red Army liberation, focused on the concept of gratitude for the heavy sacrifice made, receive deserved attention. The impact of Soviet culture is also scrutinized in the shape of mixed public reaction to Soviet films and to Socialist Realist works of art. In terms of direct contacts between individuals, most interesting are the experiences of Czech and Slovak students in the Soviet Union during the early 1960s. Also revealing are the accounts of numerous touristic exchanges, in the form of organized groups visiting in both directions. The limitations of this study result largely from the nature of the source material, mainly official reports in Czech (former Czechoslovak) and Russian archives. Consequently, an incomplete picture emerges with the unfiltered views...

Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe by Paola Tartakoff

Reviewed by: Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe by Paola Tartakoff Sarah Ifft Decker Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe. By Paola Tartakoff. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020. In the thirteenth century, Christian Europe felt under attack from both internal and external enemies: heretics, Muslims, Jews. In response to these threats, whether real or imagined, lay and ecclesiastical authorities heightened their efforts to consolidate Christian identity and reinforce boundaries between faiths. Rising anti-Judaism, in particular, reflected anxieties about the potential instability of Christian identity. However, these attempts to construct social and legal separation between Christians and Jews went hand in hand with the constant blurring of lines. The rhetoric of boundary maintenance itself revealed the troubled nature of these boundaries. Conversion, although potentially desirable, highlighted the permeability of the borders between faiths. Power dynamics in medieval Europe meant that, in theory, conversion should occur in only one direction: toward Christianity. But reality was messier than theory. A small number of born Christians converted to Judaism; Jewish converts reverted to their former faith; liminal individuals occupied the interstices between Judaism and Christianity. In Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe, Paola Tartakoff offers a nuanced exploration of how Christians and Jews thought about these compelling yet dangerous movements between faiths. Tartakoff adopts the pioneering approach of intertwining the study of Christian conversion to Judaism with that of Jewish conversion to Christianity, which she describes as “two subjects whose historiographies have passed until now like ships in the night” (9). By exploring conversion as a bidirectional phenomenon, she offers new insight into both the experiences of converts and the multifaceted attitudes of both communities toward conversion. Her careful delineation of the parallels and divergences between converts paints a portrait of religious transformation, change, and fluidity that is at once broadly synthetic and richly detailed. [End Page 231] Tartakoff frames her narrative around a particular case study, an unusual situation that is illuminated by the broader context of anti-Judaism and multidirectional conversion in thirteenth-century Europe. In 1144, the Jews of Norwich had weathered the earliest recorded ritual murder accusation: they were charged with the murder of a Christian boy named William. Then, nearly a century later, in 1231, a group of Jews from the same city were accused of kidnapping and forcibly circumcising a Christian child named Edward, with the goal of making him a Jew. The story of Edward intersects in striking ways with false anti-Jewish accusations of ritual murder and host desecration, on the one hand, and Christian forcible conversions of Jewish children, on the other. Tartakoff contextualizes Edward’s story by placing it in conversation with discourses of anti-Judaism, Jewish and Christian attitudes toward conversion, and the lived experience of converts. In closing, she offers a speculative yet compelling reading of Edward’s case as a Jewish effort to reclaim a neglected child of contested religious status. The author begins the book by addressing thirteenth-century Christians’ renewed anxieties that Judaism was attractive to Christians and that Jews were actively seeking to lure Christians from their faith. These fears reflected broader concerns about the instability of Christian religious identity. Such concerns went beyond Judaism: the prevalence of Christian heresy and the reports of Christian apostasy to Islam disquieted church leadership. Ecclesiastical writers portrayed Christendom as under attack from diverse forces of spiritual corruption, forces that at times became blended into a single enemy. The Norwich circumcision case both highlighted and reinforced these anxieties. Tartakoff then investigates the link between fears of Christian apostasy and other manifestations of a multivalent Christian anti-Judaism. The thirteenth century witnessed the consolidation of discourses of anti-Judaism that cast Jews (in reality, a vulnerable minority) as powerful enemies bent on the destruction of Christendom and the suffering of Christians. The allegations of ritual murder and host desecration that plagued Jewish communities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries framed Jews as dangers to present-day Christendom because they were deliberately working to reenact their past murder of Christ. Tartakoff focuses here on the motif of circumcision, central to the accusation levied against the Norwich Jews in the 1230s. Circumcision functioned as the sole aspect...

Troubling institutions

Institutions have troubled us for decades. Although the history of this engagement has been noted as somewhat “fragmented” (Billo & Mountz, 2015, Progress in Human Geography, 40, p. 199), geographers have engaged in detailed discussion on how to research institutions (Flowerdew, 1982, Institutions and geographical patterns, Croom Helm, London, UK), and noted their multifaceted and heterogeneous nature. In a special issue in 2000, Philo and Parr initiated a discussion on an emerging and wide ranging literature of institutional geographies and their epistemological frames. This collection seeks to invigorate institutional geographies in thinking through trouble and moving to develop “geographies of trouble.” This special section on “Troubling Institutions at the Nexus of Care and Control” has emerged from three sessions at the annual conference of the RGS‐IBG in 2016. The papers reflect a diverse engagement with the institutional in geography and provide novel insights around the nature of trouble. We believe geographers could develop trouble, scaling up to map the interconnected circuits of trouble interventions but also to move forward and consider how these networks and institutions are changing, adapting and increasingly troubled themselves.

(Un)African women: identity, class and moral geographies in postcolonial times

The concrete and abstract geographies of difference on the African continent not only arise from environmental, socio-cultural and religious factors but also from the historical and differential impacts and experiences of colonization and its legacies. In this paper, we use the web series, An African City, as a reference point, to examine the troubling nature of binary depictions of a colonial/traditional Africa and a new/modern/global Africa. Relying on Postcolonial feminist methodologies of critique and deconstruction, we propose that in countering such simplistic narratives, Africa ought to be seen as constructed, abstract, material, plural and confusing in order to account for its complexities. In particular, we focus on the centrality of women to African identity discourses. We argue that while Afropolitan and Africa rising discourses simultaneously challenge and interrupt problematic colonial constructions of Africa as backward and in need of salvation, they also (perhaps more problematically) still re-centre the West as the progenitor of progress, thereby reiterating the colonial tale.

Unshared Presuppositions and Assumptions in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood

Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood depicts the leading character Hazel Motes’ frantic struggle to escape from his own Christian faith. Interactions between Hazel and other characters reveal that not only Hazel but also other characters are somewhat bound to and affected by Christian dogma. Still, these characters act according to their own peculiar sets of values, and communication between the characters often turns out to be quite unsuccessful. In order to highlight the troubling nature of their communication, which can be concurrently disturbing and intriguing to the reader, this article examines how the characters’ presuppositions are linguistically triggered and how they are exploited as prompts to the ensuing communication, through being ignored, dismissed, or accommodated by participants engaged in the confabulation.

Genealogical Relatedness: Geographies of Shared Descent and Difference

This paper explores genealogy through a focus on what I describe as the idea of genealogical relatedness. This is a model of human relations which emphasizes relationships between people defined through the reckoning of connections based on birth and parentage. I offer a geographical analytical framework for exploring both popular genealogy and ideas of genealogical relatedness, shared descent and difference. It is one that both attends to the variety of ways that collective identity is defined or explored through genealogy and is alert to the troubling nature of genealogical categorizations and differentiations especially those which are figured in terms of concepts that seem to be most progressive, including ideas hybridity, diversity, and universal humanity.

Negative Ecstasies: Georges Bataille and The Study Of Religion Edited by Jeremy Biles and Kent L. Brintnall. Perspectives in Continental Philosophy. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. Pp. 311 + xii. Cloth, $95.00; paper, $32.00.

This volume brings the unconventional theorizing of Georges Bataille, whose impact has been felt in other areas of the humanities for the last fifty years, into the study of religion, where his thought has had only a limited influence through the writings of scholars like Amy Hollywood and Michael Taussig. To remedy this tardy and sporadic reception, the authors gathered here have used Bataille's work to “do” as well as “undo” religious studies. Not only do the collected essays utilize Bataille's ideas about the sacred, economy, sacrifice, sovereignty, and transgression to explicate religious phenomena like mystical experiences and esoteric sexual rites, they also enact those ideas in order to “disrupt” religious studies and treat disciplinary boundaries as “so many occasions for transgression.” Here, we have Hugh Urban and Jeffrey J. Kripal respectively using Bataille to examine sexual difference in the Assamese cult of the Tantric goddess Kāmākhyā and the role of trauma in mysticism across cultures alongside David Chidester, Kent Brintnall, and Paul Hegarty exploring the religious dimensions of World Cup football, unprotected anal sex between men, and electronic noise music. Bataille's utility (a word he would surely despise) in interpreting aspects of religion that overlap with his areas of interest (sex, violence, excess) is in evidence alongside the destabilizing effects of his ideas when they are accepted, “bareback,” as it were, into existing theoretical models. Along with an excellent brief introduction to Bataille for religionists, there are essays that compare Bataille with Kristeva, Foucault, and Teilhard de Chardin, others that use his ideas to understand the connected religions or pseudo-religions of neoliberalism and free market capitalism, and an exploration of Bataille and dreams. Especially welcome is Stephen Bush's essay drawing out some of the often-overlooked ambiguities in Bataille's writings as well as the potentially troubling nature of his meditations on cruelty. The essays collected in Negative Ecstasies bear the marks of being carefully selected and thoughtfully commissioned from a wide array of scholars. This book is highly recommended for those with interests in continental philosophy of religion, theoretical approaches to the study of religion, popular culture, and the genealogy of religious studies.

9, and: Untitled, and: 12

“9”:In this footnote, the speaker seeks to investigate the space between self and society and between self and a beloved other, attempting to define or make meaning from that precarious place. “such a pretty man and what a dancer”:In this poem, the character i little i describes the troubled nature of the relationship between her and her beloved, Mr. R, while challenging the reduction of the female body to uses of mending, maintaining social structure, or as a symbol of beauty and reproduction. “12”:In this footnote, the i little i character uses fairytale echoes to communicate the complications of the self in regard to Mr. R, who is both beloved and who represents a source of suffering for the speaker (i little i).

Micropolitics of Public Space: On the Contested Limits of Citizenship as a Locational Practice

This article provides a social-psychological account of how public space dynamics may be consequential for the daily construction of citizenship. The article is organised around three interrelated ideas that are illustrated by a case study. First, it is argued that certain social-psychological processes that are typically involved in the construction of citizenship can be re-conceptualised as place-based processes that are located in public space. This interest in the ‘locational’ construction of citizenship implies focusing on membership, belonging, status, rights, entitlements and recognition as emplaced practices rather than as dislocated entities. The second idea relates to the troubled nature of citizenship as a place-related psychological category whose boundaries are hotly contested whenever disputes about controversial behaviour in public spaces surface. Accordingly, ‘the citizen’ is constantly re-shaped as everyday place-discourses and territorial practices in the public domain unfold in problematic ways. Finally, it is argued that such ‘locational’ constructions and enactments of citizenship in public space are usually framed by broader ideological dilemmas that are relevant to the maintenance and change of a given socio-political order. The ultimate purpose of the article is to demonstrate the potential for public space to become a possible site for grounding a social psychology of citizenship.

Asking for Trouble

Asking for Trouble

Politics of innocence: Hutu identity, conflict, and camp life

Chapter 1. Introduction: The Troubled Nature of the Victim Position Chapter 2. Histories of Conflict Chapter 3. Creating Refugees Chapter 4. Lukole as Social and Moral Decay Chapter 5. 'Big Men' and 'Liminal Experts' Chapter 6. Establishing Public Authority: Rumours, Violence and Politics in Lukole Chapter 7. The Loss of Innocence Chapter 8. Conclusion References Index

Substantively Constrained Choice and Deference

AbstractSubstantive accounts of autonomy place value constraints on the objects of autonomous choice. According to such views, not all sober and competent choices can be autonomous: some things simply cannot be autonomously chosen. Such an account is developed and appealed to, by Thomas Hill Jr, in order to explain the intuitively troubling nature of choices for deferential roles. Such choices are not consistent with the value of self-respect, it is claimed. In this paper I argue that Hill's attempt to explain the problem with such a choice, and Marcia Baron's interpretation and defence of his view, fail in this task. The troubling nature of some choices for deference cannot be explained in terms of a substantive self-respect condition for autonomy.

Impact of a Mental Health Training Course for Correctional Officers on a Special Housing Unit

Impact of a Mental Health Training Course for Correctional Officers on a Special Housing Unit

Introduction

[ 2 ] asia policy Introduction Nicholas Eberstadt, Aaron L. Friedberg & Geun Lee By many measures, the U.S.-ROK alliance—formalized and underpinned through the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty signed between Seoul and Washington—qualifies as a signal historical success. After all, the proximate objective of this military alliance was to deter a second North Korean attack on South Korea (with the first such attack, in June 1950, having launched the devastating 1950–53 Korean War) and, for the five decades that the treaty has been in force, the peninsular ceasefire has steadily held, albeit at times uneasily. Moreover, this U.S. military guarantee helped to assure stability and security in the Northeast Asian region during the Cold War era, thereby facilitating South Korea’s own remarkable economic and political development. By the mid-1990s, the Republic of Korea (ROK) qualified for membership into the OECD, formally joining the world’s roster of affluent and highly industrialized constitutional democracies—an achievement that is, considering South Korea’s starting point in 1953, hard to imagine absent the strong and continuing military and political bond with the United States. Notwithstanding those past successes, the U.S.-ROK alliance is under growing strain today—and the increasingly troubled nature of the current security relationship is no secret on either side of the Pacific. Given South Korea’s tremendous relative rise in recent decades, some degree of friction and readjustment would arguably have been inevitable in this alliance. Today’s growing tensions are, however, more than a reflection of mere “structural” developments. Over the past decade, fundamental differences have emerged between Washington and Seoul over the perceived objectives of the alliance. Most critically, U.S. and South Korean policymakers now do not entirely agree on the nature and urgency of or the appropriate responses to the “North Korean threat.” Since the Mutual Defense Treaty is cast as a pact for resisting potential North Korean aggression, this fissure has potentially profound ramifications. nicholas eberstadtis Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Senior Adviser to The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). He can be reached at . aaron l. friedbergis Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Chairman of the Pyle Center on Northeast Asia at NBR. He can be reached at . geun lee is Professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul National University and President of the Korea Institute for Future Strategies (KiFS). He can be reached at . [ 3 ] roundtable • u.s.-rok alliance Additional disagreements, however, have arisen with U.S. attempts to re‑conceptualize the purposes of the alliance in the post–Cold War era. On the one hand, tensions have increased especially since September 11 given that Washington is proposing new options for extra-peninsular projection of U.S. military force from bases and places in South Korea. On the other hand, Seoul is insisting that the U.S. military presence in Korea should relate strictly to the defense of the ROK. No longer supported by quite the same shared sense of purpose that characterized the relationship in earlier decades, the U.S.-ROK alliance now appears to be heading into a more unhealthy and uncertain middle age. In recent years, the woes of the U.S.-ROK alliance have generated a veritableblizzardofpapersandavirtualthrongofconferenceson“rejuvenating the alliance”—efforts to little analytical or policy effect. Unfortunately, too much of this well-intended work has attempted to finesse—or paper over— existing and indeed widening differences in strategic assessments by Seoul and Washington. Ratherthanattemptingtosquarethatcircle,thisroundtableinsteadworks from a somewhat more radical analytical diagnostic: a rigorous “alternative futures” exercise on the U.S.-ROK alliance. What would it mean for South Korea, the United States, and other affected parties if the U.S.-ROK alliance did not actually exist? How would we describe the “hypothetical geography” of a Northeast Asian region identical to the one we know today, save for the absence of any defense or security relationship linking Seoul to Washington? This approach to the U.S.-ROK alliance problematik is instructive for two main reasons. First, there is an intrinsic intellectual utility to the alternative futures method: for over a generation, such exercises have been...

"What Are You?": Exploring Racial Categorization in Nowhere Else on Earth

Fiction writer Josephine Humphreys explores the complexities, falsifications, and implications of racial classification for the Lumbee Indiansof Robeson County, North Carolina in her historically based novel Nowhere Else on Earth...In this essay I interrogate the troubled nature of Lumbee racial classification in both fictional representations and historical events by relying in large part on theorist Samira Kawash’s assertion from her essay, “The Epistemology of Race,” that “Race, we might say, is not a nothing-at-all, but a something that says nothing.” (From the opening paragraphs)

Hated Identities: Queers and Canadian Anti-hate Legislation

Drawing on queer theory and post-structuralism, this article explores two “gay bashings,” the murders of Alain Brousseau and Aaron Webster. In both cases, we argue that the application of anti-hate crime legislation reveals the troubling nature of attempts to legally fix sexual identities. The law imagines gayness to be innate and obvious. These cases show that sexual identity is fluid and contingent. Our study also shows that, through the application of hate-crime law, sexual identification is not necessarily self-determined. Politicized communities, legal actors, assailants, and media all participate in naming someone's “gayness.”