Global Rhetoric Research Articles

‘Be confident’: the discourse of ‘resilience’ and ‘confidence’ in Greece

ABSTRACT The spread of #MeToo in Greece can be read as a feminist intervention that gives ‘voice’ to subjectivities that have experienced sexual violence or abuse, while also opening up the public debate so that (sexual) trauma becomes part of feminist critique in the country. What many Greek commentators and critics have failed to notice to this day, however, is the way in which #MeToo in Greece has been deeply connected to the broader culture of ‘resilience’ and ‘confidence’, as well as of ‘character’. Apart from decentring Anglo-Saxon thought and including research ‘outside of it’,, this article highlights how the ‘celebratory’ tone that embraced the ‘voice’ of #MeToo in Greece, has unintentionally silenced the different social positions from which certain femininities originate. As a result, some women (usually middle-class, Greek) are being ‘heard’ more than others (e.g. those from lower social strata, the LGBTQ community, refugee women, women of African descent, or mixed race). Through a critical analysis of popular culture in the country between 2017 and 2022, I demonstrate how a neoliberal postfeminist logic is not merely a ‘Western’ discussion but has become a global rhetoric.

Domesticating the Global War on Terrorism in West Africa: Implications for Sub-Regional Security

Objective: The objective of this study is to the recent incidences of terror attacks in the West African sub-region that have only overwhelmed national governments concerned. Using the case studies of Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, and Niger, the paper interrogates the recent scourge of terrorism in these countries within the context of sub-regional security. Theoretical Framework: The structural conflict theory, which argues that conflict is built into the systems and structures of society, is employed in the work. This is based on the radical transformative agenda promoted by globalization and accentuated by the violent intra-state conflicts in Africa, especially following the restructuring of the international security architecture after the end of the Cold War in 1989. Method: The methodology adopted for this research utilizes the qualitative research design using the case study approach. Secondary data is engaged for this study, alongside thematic analysis for the harmonization of data. Results and Discussion: The study discovered that the activities of domestic terror groups is hinged on the unresolved rhetoric of globalization. The study concludes that until there are institutional measures to strengthen the fragile politico-economic structures hurriedly erected after prolonged dictatorships in the countries concerned, the solution to the threat of terrorism will remain a tantalizing mirage. It canvasses for the creation of a civil-military alliance in the war on terror, and the strengthening of democratic institutions to bring about good governance which will make states better equipped to curb terrorism. Research Implications: The practical and theoretical implications of this research are discussed, providing insights into how the results can be applied or influence practices in the fields of national security, strategic studies and even institutional democracy. These implications could encompass the protection of lives and property within the state, protection of the state’s territorial integrity and the consolidation of democracy by state governments. Originality/Value: This study contributes to the literature by highlighting the fragilitiy of democracy in West African states as a consequence of prolonged terrorist attacks that are yet to be adequately catered to by civilian governments. The relevance and value of this research are evidenced by it practical applicability across the fields of policy and strategic studies, and political science.

Participation of young women in sexual and reproductive health decision-making in Malawi: Local realities versus global rhetoric.

Despite the global prioritization of addressing adolescent girls' and young women's sexual and reproductive health (SRH) and participatory rights, little research has examined their lived experiences in shaping their engagement in SRH decision-making processes in the global South. Further, few studies have explored how structural and societal factors influence their agency and participation. This critical and focused ethnography, informed by postcolonial feminist and difference-centred citizenship theories, conducted in Malawi (2017-2018) elicited perspectives of youth and key informants to help address these knowledge gaps. Our findings show that the effective implementation and uptake of global discourse on participation and gender equity is hindered by inadequate consideration of girls' and young women's local political, cultural and social realities. Many girls and young women demonstrate passion to participate in SRH policymaking as agents of change. However, patriarchal and gerontocratic political and social structures/institutions, and gendered and adultist norms and practices limit their active and meaningful participation in SRH decision-making. In addition, donors' roles in SRH policymaking and their prioritization of the "girl child" highlight an enduring postcolonial power over agenda-setting processes. Understanding young people's experiences of gendered participation and scrutinizing underlying systemic forces are critical steps toward realizing young women's SRH and participatory rights.

Inside the Teaching Machine: Rhetoric and the Globalization of the U.S. Public Research University

Inside the Teaching Machine: Rhetoric and the Globalization of the U.S. Public Research University

Transatlantic Collaborations: Baccalaureate Nursing Students' Experiences of Participating in a Semester-Long Study Abroad Program.

AIMThe aim of this study was to describe students’ experiences during a 15-week semester involving clinical placement in an Irish university.BACKGROUNDInternationalization is promoted and facilitated through study abroad initiatives within nurse education. Collaborations were developed between one university in the United States, an Irish university, and service partners. This study abroad initiative involved planning logistics, curriculum learning opportunities, and negotiating clinical placement in meeting state professional requirements.METHODA qualitative descriptive approach was used. Following ethical approval, 19 fourth-year students participated in focus group and individual semistructured interviews. Data analysis followed a thematic approach.RESULTSConnecting our worlds details a process of acclimatizing, navigating learning, and using person-centered practices, illustrating meaningful learning in a journey of personal and professional development.CONCLUSIONMoving beyond the rhetoric of globalization is critical in future proofing initiatives in developing nursing practitioners while balancing potential safety risks in a post-COVID-19 era.

COVID-19 and the Corpse of Neoliberal Globalization

The COVID-19 pandemic is as much a process of globalization as it is its outcome. In the wake of the death, socio-economic devastation, and radical uncertainties it has unleashed, this paper re-examines globalization anew. This paper’s focus is on the role that neoliberalism has played in precipitating the COVID-19 disaster, especially in the wealthiest nations of the West. Re-visiting history, the paper takes issue with the rhetoric of globalization that had been sold as a project ushering in an interconnected global village exalting culture and community. Against such exuberance, the paper recalls that globalization was a post-Cold War project celebrating liberal-capitalism’s ‘triumph’ over state-socialism. It reveals globalization to be foremost about economic accumulation, not community edification. Moreover, in the realm of ideology and policymaking, the past four decades have seen liberalism devolving into neoliberalism, and many national states becoming financialized corporate states. Especially in the West, the liberal state has been captured and financialized. Austerity—not redistributive growth—has reigned, engendering historically unprecedented social polarization which COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated. Globalization, I argue, has served as rhetorical cover for the social destructiveness of ‘neoliberalism’. The approaches and outcomes of pandemic management in much of the West are a further indictment of neoliberalism. Whereas ‘herd immunity’ had been the early de facto pandemic strategy of many neoliberal Western governments, most of East Asia a state-led commitment to ‘zero transmission’ and minimum casualties, leading to vastly different health outcomes.

Unpacking “glocal” jihad: from the birth to the “sahelisation’ of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

ABSTRACT Jihadist groups are often analysed either by looking at their global rhetoric, or by focusing on local grievances. Despite the distinctions made between the global and the local issues, these groups often belong to a complex “glocal jihad,” meaning that the borders between local, national, regional, transnational, and global layers, are partially blurred due in large part to the symbolic dimensions and imaginaries shared within the broader jihadist landscape. Rethinking and clarifying the notion of “glocal jihad” and applying it to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) reveals the complex interconnections that exist between the different layers and the ambiguous spatial reality of the group. The glocal jihad is understood as a dialectical process and as a sequence of events and actions occurring in intertwined layers. By analysing the “glocal realities,” this article will attempt to craft a critical understanding of the group.

‘One Harmonious Body’

Abstract This paper examines aspects of Dionysius of Halicarnassus’s reception of Herodotus, including his use of ethnographic polarity and his assessment of Herodotean scope and unity, to argue that Dionysius’s adulation of Herodotus is related to his own articulation of nascent Roman imperialism. In particular, Dionysius’s response to Herodotus’s variegated but monolithic narrative is connected to a rhetoric of empire germane to his own interests as a critic and historian. I first recall some contours of Dionysius’s admiration of Herodotus and the consistency of purpose expressed across Dionysius’s corpus, before analyzing his ethnographic spin on Roman history. Later, Dionysius’s use in On Demosthenes of a speech by Xerxes is read as reinforcing some of the imperial themes of his own work, including the emphasis on a global rhetoric that replays the Greek repulse of a barbarian foe.

Beyond climate policy: The perspective of sustainability

Since the 2019 European elections, the spotlight has been on climate protection. However, this strict focus obscures a broader view. Sustainability has three dimensions, all of which are of equal value. Thus, realising sustainability requires holistic action and a forward-looking approach. Sustainability also has the potential to be the driver behind economic modernisation and innovation. To tap into its real potential, what is needed is, instead of the apocalyptic global warming rhetoric of a self-fulfilling prophecy, a sound vision that unites ecological sustainability, economic performance and social justice. Given the European People’s Party’s comprehensive views on politics and society, the party is predestined to take the lead in the debate about a sustainable EU. Among Germany’s Christian Democrats, a renewed positioning around this topic has recently begun.

Urban Transformations and Land Governance in Peri‐Urban Khartoum: The Case of Soba

AbstractThe New Urban Agenda and SDG 11 promote inclusive urban development, but limited empirical knowledge exists on how such global rhetoric plays out on the ground. This paper contributes to the inclusive city debate by focusing on the case of Soba, a peri‐urban area at the fringes of the capital of Sudan. Based on an explorative study of secondary material, semi‐structured interviews and structured observations it aims to systematically analyse the dynamics of peri‐urban development. Findings show how the rising pressure on land results in commoditisation, (informal) land‐use changes and a multitude of other land transformations. The paper concludes that the mismatch of urban land policies has resulted in increasing fragmentation of urban space and socio‐spatial discrepancies between those who can afford to buy land or transform it into urban uses and those who cannot. It sheds fresh light on the challenges of the inclusive urban transition agenda.

Brokerage, Creativity and Space: Protest Culture in Indonesia

ABSTRACTProtest movements in Indonesia resist the government’s liberal development policies and the destruction of culture and environment through capitalist intrusion and land (or sea) grabbing. This article analyses the role of intermediaries, or brokers, and how they draw on a global rhetoric of human rights, as well as environmentalism, indigeneity, local identity markers, and performative means to mobilise resistance. Drawing on Lindquist, the broker here serves as a theoretical concept and a methodological entry-point for an ethnographic study of intermediation and translation between different places and spaces involved in these protest movements. The article first conceptualises brokerage and carves out its creative and performative aspects, challenges, and spatial dimensions with regard to emerging resistance – a combination that has not been covered in the anthropological literature on brokerage so far. These conceptual reflections provide a framework for the analysis of two Indonesian case studies – one in Bali, one in Maluku – and the various translation processes involved, including environmentalism and indigeneity, media convergence and local creativity, in which the crossing of space and networking are important features in protest brokerage.

Nouveau monde ou nouvelle utopie ? Sur la tentation transnationale du roman francophone : L’Exemple de Khatibi et Laferrière

Abdelkébir Khatibi (Maroc) and Dany Laferrière (Haïti–Québec) belong to different cultural areas, but share the same linguistic practice in a postcolonial context. They are also similar in their conception of writing literature in a transitional world for a global age where the novel, as a Western form in its origin and under its authority, and also as an access point to modernity for the writers of the global South, aims at a certain form of transnational order. Both of these writers reject the dogmatic definition of identity from the perspective of an origin and of a supposed secular pact between fiction and nation. This paper examines the shift between francophone global fiction by way of a “regional criticism.” However, this emerging global rhetoric, recently called “littérature-monde,” may appear as a new utopian paradigm.

Using new TB tools: global rhetoric and ground reality

Using new TB tools: global rhetoric and ground reality

Building a green economy of low carbon: the Greek post-crisis experience of photovoltaics and financial 'green grabbing'

Abstract Under the global rhetoric of 'the green economy' Renewable Energy Resources (RES) projects have proliferated across the world. This article examines the growth of photovoltaic projects in post-crisis Greece, grounded in a green energy discourse. The aim is to provide insights into how green economies are built and what new appropriations they (might) entail. It is based on a Foucauldian oriented discourse analysis, in depth semi-structured interviews and review of a variety of other sources. The article argues that justificatory discourses for green growth implicated in 'green grabbing' involve the complex interplay of neoliberal and disciplinary 'environmentalities.' These seek to construct 'green economy' entrepreneurs and compliant subjects. A relatively undocumented and understudied aspect of green grabs is the appropriation of public and private financial resources for photovoltaic projects, with significant negative impacts on livelihoods. In Greece, this has resulted in the accumulation of capital by a few large RES companies, as well as significant impacts on the livelihoods of domestic and small business electricity consumers and small/medium photovoltaic investors through debt. Key words: Greece, green economy, photovoltaics, green grabbing, environmentality, Foucault, green energy

Realizing Universal Health Coverage in East Africa: the relevance of human rights

Applying a robust human rights framework would change thinking and decision-making in efforts to achieve Universal Health Coverage (UHC), and advance efforts to promote women’s, children’s, and adolescents’ health in East Africa, which is a priority under the Sustainable Development Agenda. Nevertheless, there is a gap between global rhetoric of human rights and ongoing health reform efforts. This debate article seeks to fill part of that gap by setting out principles of human rights-based approaches (HRBAs), and then applying those principles to questions that countries undertaking efforts toward UHC and promoting women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health, will need to face, focusing in particular on ensuring enabling legal and policy frameworks, establishing fair financing; priority-setting processes, and meaningful oversight and accountability mechanisms. In a region where democratic institutions are notoriously weak, we argue that the explicit application of a meaningful human rights framework could enhance equity, participation and accountability, and in turn the democratic legitimacy of health reform initiatives being undertaken in the region.

Global South rhetoric in India’s policy projection

While an on-going statist project tries to portray India as a ‘rising power’ in world politics, the fact remains that India’s global projection continues to be heavily fashioned by the Global South rhetoric. Such rhetoric is inclusive of irredentism and contestation with western norms and ideals along with cooperation leading to a complex process of interactions shaping up the global order. For countries like India being claimant to the status of ‘civilisational state’, the strong urge for autonomy along with the self-perception of national and cultural greatness is shared by the elite along with a sense of strategic importance. Such identity formation, however, reduces and sometimes obliterates the gaps between ‘internal’ and ‘external’, bringing into academic scrutiny the whole range of policymaking and to what extent it matches the state rhetoric.

Traitors in Love: The Spanish Civil War Romance Novel in Jewish North America

ABSTRACT The essay examines a series of male-authored North American romance novels set in the midst of the Spanish Civil war, to argue that their common plots of cross-cultural love—between North American gentile soldiers and European women—represent a Popular Front political allegory. Furthermore, Canadian Jewish novelists adapted this internationalist romance trope, bringing together the global comradeship rhetoric of the Popular Front, the gendered nationalism of unification novels, and the problematic absorption of ethnic markers in Canadian civilizing plots and Jewish assimilation narratives alike. In particular, I look at two Canadian Jewish writers, Ted Allan and Charles Yale Harrison, to argue that their novels reveal the masculinist whitewashing tendencies of patriotic romance fiction. By subverting heteronormative Euro-American depictions of international love as inevitably disastrous, authors like Allan and Harrison imagine a broader definition of citizenship, one that accounts for religious and ethnic diversity as well as for class-based identification. My essay elucidates how Canadian writings about Spain are situated at the intersection of decolonizing identity and cosmopolitan leftism—a narrative that complicates our understanding of the leftist internationalist literature the Spanish conflict inspired. In their response to a very particular moment—of Canadian, North American, and Spanish social flux; and of Jewish migration and mainstreaming—Canadian Jewish novelists display an early attempt to articulate a national identity at once patriotic and cosmopolitan.

Towards a progressive home-making: the ambivalence of migrants’ experience in a multicultural condominium

Following the rhetoric of globalisation and hyper-mobility, the ideas of placelessness and detachment from place seem to be the essential features of contemporary cities. This conceals the human necessity to constantly create new senses of home and new home-making practices. Starting from ethnographic research in a multicultural condominium (called Hotel House) in Italy, the paper uses the urban experience of migrants to look at different home-making practices by analysing them as multidimensional (spatial, social and emotional) processes. Firstly, migrants living in Hotel House produce ‘home’ by imbuing domestic spaces with their own memory and meaning and creating public and collective spaces characterised by ‘homely relations’. In both cases, they produce material, emotional and symbolic resources. Secondly, the paper analyses the ‘dark side of home-making’, inasmuch as the social density of the home-making practices in Hotel House’s domestic and public spaces also favours strong forms of social control, particularly relevant for women and young people. Thirdly, the paper analyses how the sense of home sustains a collective intercultural mobilisations against Hotel House’s institutional abandonment and stigmatisation that reveal the threshold-crossing capacity of ‘home’. Home, in conclusion, is not a romanticised, fixed and bounded place to protect. It is a plural and conflictual field of action that can support social exclusion but can also open new interconnections and possibilities of peoples’ empowerment.

Book review: Carmen Pérez-Llantada, Scientific Discourse and the Rhetoric of Globalization: The Impact of Culture and Language

Book review: Carmen Pérez-Llantada, <i>Scientific Discourse and the Rhetoric of Globalization: The Impact of Culture and Language</i>

Disqualification of sport in health-related promotion of physical activity – A global social phenomenon?

Global health organisations exert homogenising pressure on national communications concerning the promotion of physical activity (PA). Simultaneously, the disqualification of sport as a health-medium (Michelini, 2015) is a main feature of contemporary health promotion.A theoretical framework based on systems theory (Luhmann, 1985) has been used here to explore the prevalence of the disqualification of sport. The empirical analysis examines and compares the content (Mayring, 2003) of 25 documents on the promotion of PA issued by the ministries of health in Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and the USA. These countries are representative of different welfare state typologies (Esping-Andersen, 1990): Conservative, Scandinavian, and liberal, respectively.The results show similarly sport-hostile communication in conservative and Scandinavian countries, but not in the liberal case study. American strategies are, to some extent, more sport-friendly. This does not contradict the existence of influential global rhetoric on the promotion of PA which disqualifies sport as a health-medium. Indeed, the case studies contain much similar content as well as a shared attitude towards sport. Nevertheless, the case of the USA shows that national health communications still display some degree of adaptation and dissimilarities. The mechanisms at the root of the differences in national rhetorics on the health-related promotion of PA constitute a relevant topic for further analyses.