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Technology has always played an important role in global politics, economics, security, and culture. It has continuously shaped the structure of the global system, its actors, and the interactions between them and vice versa. However, theories of International Relations (IR), and in particular those of International Political Economy (IPE), have performed little to theoretically conceptualize technology as a powerful factor within explanations of change in global affairs. Although technology often is implicitly present in the theories of IR and IPE, it is often interpreted as an external, passive, apolitical, and residual factor. This essay argues that to develop a better understanding of transformation in global affairs, technology has to be integrated more systematically into the theoretical discussions of IR/IPE. Technology should be understood as a highly political and integral core component of the global system that shapes global affairs and itself is shaped by global economics, politics, and culture. This paper makes the case for an interdisciplinary approach, which systematically incorporates insights of Science and Technology Studies (S&TS) to provide a better understanding of how technology and the global system and politics interact with each other. In so doing, it opens the field to a richer understanding of how global systemic change is impacted by technology and how global politics, economics, and culture impact technological evolution.

This essay focuses on the cultural literacy that popular songs of lament in the Philippines in the1970s and 1980s created and depended on and discusses the way this cultural literacy contributed to the popular revolt against the dictatorship in 1986. I fo

Material queer analyses argue the urgent need to reincorporate class to comprehend sexual (re)formations in advanced capitalism, and some theorists propose a revitalized historical materialism as a framework for doing this. In contrast, this article illuminates the significance of class for late modern sexualities by taking a 'cultural' approach to the issue. By analysing gay men's personal accounts of class (dis-)identification that were told in interviews in Britain, the article elucidates the ways in which class and sexuality were articulated as intertwined, and how class and gay identities were constructed relationally through each other. Specifically, it generates insights into the performativities of classed gay identities; the differential value attached to working- and middle-class identities; and how narratives of (dis)identification often articulate gay and working class identities as relational 'Others'. Contrary to some theoretical and popular notions of gay identities as classless, my analysis shows that class identities can be centrally important to gay ones. While the relationship between gay classed identities and socio-economic positioning is not straightforward, such identities illuminate how cultural, social and economic (dis-)incentives promote distancing from 'working-class' forms of existence and strong attachments to 'middle-class' ones and to the idea of gay class transcendence. Such distancing and attachments are also features of sexualities theory and research that deny the significance of class.

The article concludes that while democratic culture is important to democratic governance, associations are neither uniquely helpful nor always helpful, and that it would be productive to shift the study of democratic culture from a focus on voluntary ass

The principle of democracy is one of equal dignity for all cultures. But today the relationship between culture and politics, though close, often appears tense and occasionally contradictory. The introduction to this issue of Diogenes sketches the work do

This article argues that media in China today enjoys greater leeway for independent expression than popularly perceived outside that country, and analyzes vectors responsible for this transformation. It discusses Western and Chinese media models and deconstructs the view that while the West provides for free press, media in China provides no room for independent, anti-hegemonic thought streams. It establishes that while both media are subject to similar pressures and identify with a near similar set of social and ethical responsibilities which shape their discourse, the manner in which the two construct discourses are different, and, this manifest difference, rooted in dissimilar cultural, historical and audience realities has resulted in misconceptions regarding Chinese media. To reinforce this argument, the article analyzes articles from the Shanghai Daily, and demonstrates how, much like its Western counterparts, it too represents different sides of the debate even on issues sensitive to the state such as democracy and Tibet, albeit in a uniquely Chinese way. The article examines vectors responsible for transformation of Chinese media in the post liberalization phase, especially the Internet, and the concomitant changes they have brought in media practice. The article emphasizes the need to culturally contextualize media analyses.

This paper elaborates on the deliberative democracy argument for freedom of expression in terms of its relationship to different dimensions of autonomy. It engages the objection that Enlightenment theories pose a threat to cultures that reject autonomy and argues that autonomy-based democracy is not only compatible with but necessary for respect for cultural diversity. On the basis of an intersubjective epistemology, it argues that people cannot know how to live on mutually respectful terms without engaging in public deliberation and developing some degree of personal autonomy. While freedom of expression is indispensable for deliberation and autonomy, this does not mean that people have no obligations regarding how they speak to each other. The moral insights provided by deliberation depend on the participants in the process treating one another with respect. The argument is related to the Danish cartoon controversy.

This paper begins by reviewing the ancient Chinese worldview, one imbued with cultural particularism wherein the Middle Kingdom identified itself as the centre of the universe. I then distinguish the ways in which historically the Confucian East and Christian West have respectively exerted cultural hegemony. I next analyse China's rebuffing of liberal democracy, and how the CCP's retention of one-party rule has generated concerns about its legitimacy. I conclude by showing that China and America each possess moral traditions - specifically Confucianism and Jeffersonian Deism - that have overlapping outlooks. Both maintain a worldview that disavows extremism. Based on this broader philosophical-religious analysis, I argue that contentions over liberal democracy notwithstanding, China and America share moral ideals vital for confronting some of today's exigencies.

Activists use emotional language and images - what Greenpeace co-founder Bob Hunter coined 'mindbombs' - to convince people that some actions are wrong, morally and environmentally. For instance, for over 50 years anti-sealing activists have employed mindbombs to transform seal pups into babies and seal hunters into barbarians. Although 'image politics' contributed to the decline of the Canadian sealing industry in the 1980s, its effectiveness has been - and continues to be - rocky, particularly as pro-sealing voices counter with competing claims of cultural rights, traditional livelihoods and sustainable use. Drawing on Tilly and Tarrow's 'cycles of contention' framework, this article argues that controlling and predicting the global uptake of messaging is becoming harder as activists operate in an increasingly crowded discursive landscape, as campaigners and counter-campaigners articulate scientific and moral frames that resonate differently across changing social and cultural contexts, and in light of globalising markets, transnational networks and changing media.

"By the end of Russia's regime transition to democracy (1991-2001), Russia displayed a mosaic of different sub-national regimes. A number of economic, social, and cultural factors have been investigated to explain how the sub-national regime transitions produced such heterogeneous results. This article intends to contribute to the debate by focusing on the role of the European Union (EU) in the democratic regime transition in the regions of Russia and, in this context, explores the international dimension of sub-national regimes. The main question raised in this article is what was the role of the EU, if any, in the formation of different outcomes of sub-national regime transitions? The analysis is based on a quantitative study that is combined with a number of interviews assessing the EU's impact on sub-national regime formation in Russia during the period of regime transition. The article explores the international dimension in sub-national regime change in Russia while controlling for a number of social, economic, and cultural variables. It argues that the EU has indeed contributed to the process of democratization in the regions of Russia. The approach developed in this article arguably has implications for both area studies and studies of democratization"

"A meaningful discussion about the democratic limit or boundary is only now beginning. Martha Nussbaum's call for a world citizenship in response to the terrorist bombings of 9/11 has animated this conversation in the USA. In South Africa, the political transition from apartheid to democracy keeps running-up against the substance of the 'people'. In the absence of any 'traditional' unifying principles (of language, culture, religion, race and so on), the identity of South Africans is elusive. We might note too that much of the cosmopolitan literature on democracy appeals to a shift in scale, from the territorial state to the world or globe or even planet. One of the key gaps in democratic theory, however, has been its failure to conceptualize such a limit. How can democrats discriminate between citizen and non-citizen without being discriminatory? This is the question that this article seeks to address. It does so by following a major development in the work of Ernesto Laclau - from his collaboration with Chantal Mouffe in their groundbreaking work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy to his most recent book On Populist Reason."

The experience (as opposed to the concept) of homelessness is hardly part of the academic discourse in education, cultural studies, or human development. One of the central goals of our special issue is to create a bridge between homelessness as a persona

In the context of spiralling decay that, in recent decades, has engulfed all spheres of the human condition, this article seeks to endorse Tomaselli's essentially ethical position, advancing that the foremost contextual launching pad for cultural studies

Twenty years ago Gearid Tuathail called for an approach within Political Geography that made geopolitical culture and the formulation of foreign policy the object of analysis. He specified the task of what subsequently became critical geopolitics as the

I'm going to draw mainly upon Edward Said's short chapter on 'The Uses of Culture' in his collection of articles published in 2000 to discuss the need for anti-civilisational thinking. Here, Said takes on Samuel Huntington, who at the time had recently pu

As President Barack Obama spoke a few words in Portuguese at Rio de Janeiro's Municipal Theatre drawing upon similarities between Brazilian and U.S. Histories and making reference to Brazilian culture, analysts believe that Brazil's relationship with the United States over trade and foreign policy has warmed as a sustained applause echoed throughout the theatre. "Our journeys began in similar ways," Obama said during his speech. "We became colonies claimed for distant crowns, but soon declared our independence. We welcomed waves of immigrants to our shores, and eventually cleansed the stain of slavery from our land," Obama said. Eduardo Eugenio Gouvea Viera, who represents FIRJAN Brazil's leading industry federation said "It was an historic speech. The message he gave was that the most worthy value to Brazilians and Americans is freedom," Viera told Brazil's official Agencia Brasil reports CNN. Abdias Nascimento, a representative of Brazil's Movimento Negro, said Obama's speech was "profound. Obama succeeded in striking the most sensitive chords in the souls of Brazil and Americans." In stark contrast, former Environment Minister Marina Silva, criticized Obama for abstaining from mentioning the environment and emissions trade negotiations, issues that have divided Brazil and the U.S. Early Sunday, President Obama's entourage made its way to Rio de Janeiro's infamous favela (a Portuguese word for "shanty") Cidade de Deus, whose social issues of drug wars and racial disparity were memorialized in the film "City of God" oringally "Cidade de Deus," directed by Fernando Mirreille and Katia Lund that was nominated for an Academy Award. The Obamas' visit to the favela was a symbolic if not an historic gesture that was well received by the Brazilian public in a nation known for its strong African heritage but a less than favorable record on racial and class discrimination. Favela residents cheered the arrival of the first family and Cidade de Deus schoolchildren watche

In Democracy and the Political Unconscious, Noëlle McAfee analyzes social pathologies that have arisen in the United States since September 11, 2001. In particular, she argues that we have been suffering society-wide repetition compulsions and time collapses, compelling us to experience the trauma repeatedly, and we have been acting out in ways that continue the cycle of suffering. She also presents a prescription for how we might work through these issues more democratically and fruitfully using deliberative talking cures. McAfee's application of the psychoanalytic model to society is fascinating, and she offers concrete and practical suggestions for how to better resolve social trauma. In the first four chapters, McAfee presents a perspective on humanization that centers on social participation. Human identity is developed in making and keeping social commitments, rather than in the achievement of autonomy. Language enables humans to sublimate and channel drives into public meaning. Silence is troubling because it reflects a social unconscious that alienates people, cutting them off from full participation. McAfee argues that modernity itself causes trauma, as the world has become disenchanted and devoid of meaning. In addition, specific elements of modernity, like colonization and the slave trade, have played significant roles in the development of the social unconscious. Because our culture remains mostly silent about privilege and race, historic traumas continue to haunt us. McAfee suggests that isolationism, repression, McCarthyism, and the abjection of supposed barbarian elements are all subconscious defenses against working through modernity's social traumas. These defenses prevent the development of a public sphere of deliberation that has demonstrated its ability to work through traumas in Eastern Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere. Following Derrida, McAfee

Using a critical review of selected works on Africa by prominent African intellectuals, this interdisciplinary study concludes that, contrary to Amartya Sen's theory about the "real freedoms" that people enjoy in democratic states, these freedoms cannot be realized in Africa, because the continent's mode of capitalism is dependent upon international finance. This system cannot function as an autonomous structure and has engendered major political contradictions in the continent's nation-states. The capitalist ruling elites have hindered the expansion of full democratic rights in Africa by encouraging and exploiting the politics of class division. The African experience with liberal democracy indicates that Sen's theory of development and "real freedoms" fails to take into account these contradictions as well as the religious and cultural idioms in Africa that run counter to liberal conceptions of emancipation. Achieving democracy and freedom in Africa is not merely a question of capacity building, it involves resolving difficult issues of power - particularly, in class and gender relations. The essay concludes by suggesting that there needs to be a shift away from conceptualizing development in terms of only economic factors to a new approach which combines more enlightened neoliberal capitalism with new indigenous strategies of development.

The literature on globalization of services has tended to focus on advanced industrial nations, underestimating the important role Southern markets have played. Given the complexities of the global economy, much can be gained from exploring the ways in which flexible management practices and workplace culture in the United States and India have increasingly conjoined under an emerging set of common principles. In particular, one finds similar phenomena contributing to patterns of job insecurity in both countries: non-standard employment contracts, long working hours, growing emphasis on individualization, and increasing control over workers. Interestingly, workers in both countries have similar strategies in staying employed as well as dealing with the growing insecurity. In neither country, however, has employment precariousness resulted in a backlash against the government. I posit the reason for this is that even as workers recognize the structural sources of job insecurity due to globalization, they individualize their failures and inability to cope with the changing market.

"While some types of democracy can sustain ethnic and cultural diversity, others can clearly undermine it. In The Dark Side of Democracy, Michael Mann argues that extreme crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing tend to occur, or at least be legitimized, within a majoritarian democracy framework. This article broadens Mann's approach in two directions: first, it confirms that majoritarian democracy in plural societies can provide the pre-existing institutional context where conflict, nationalism and exclusion can thrive, eventually degenerating into self-destruction. Second, it focuses on the tendency by some governments to turn to patriotism and populism as sources of legitimacy at a time when the latter appears to be crumbling. In addition, the article questions both the 'democratic peace' and the 'failed democratization' approaches for their reliance on an ideal type and fixed notion of democracy, arguing that the latter has been weakened by neoliberal globalization, particularly as it interacts with the legacy of pre-existing forms of majoritarianism. The article concludes that these forces need to be studied simultaneously in order to have a broader picture of the contemporary weakening of democratic practices and institutions within some nation-states."